Tony Petitti is trying to make college sports worse with selfish tampering proposal

The past few years in college sports, especially for college football have been a period of immense changes. The College Football Playoff has expanded while NIL and the Transfer Portal have changed how teams approach building their rosters. Last Summer's House Settlement allowed teams to start directly paying their players through revenue sharing which was seen as a major step. With all of these changes have come a major downside.

Tampering has become a major issue in college sports as the bigger programs are using smaller schools as a feeder system. Even at the highest levels like we saw with the Clemson Vs Ole Miss war over Luke Ferrelli, coaches are using the buyouts in deals as a price tag rather than a deterrent. Dabo Swinney calling out Pete Golding has led to calls for stricter tampering rules from almost everyone.

Tony Petitti and the Big Ten want the NCAA to turn a blind eye to tampering

While it seemed universal that coaches and programs wanted to see strict rules put in place to discourage tampering. That was until ESPN reported that the Big Ten sent a letter to the NCAA asking for them to stop punishing schools for tampering and for a change to the rules.

The argument the Big Ten is making are that the rules the NCAA are outdated as they weren't made for this Transfer Portal era. The Big Ten is arguing that schools contacting players before they enter the Transfer Portal is a benefit as they'd be taking a bigger risk by blindly entering the Transfer Portal and hoping for the best.

The issue is the timing of the Big Ten's plea as Ross Dellenger of Yahoo reported that the NCAA sent a memo out to teams that they're going to be cracking down on tampering.

The Big Ten clearly has another motive that would be behind the belief that the tampering rules should be abandoned. Among the leagues who would benefit the most from a lack of tampering rules. the Big Ten is likely at the top in a league of their own, even above the SEC.

Schools like Oregon, Ohio State, and even now Indiana are able to spend at a higher level than most programs can. Allowing these schools to further push for players to enter the Transfer Portal would allow the Big Ten to build incredible rosters with players who likely haven't thought much of making a move.

Rather than enforcing stricter rules, moving to a model with truly no tampering rules would be a mistake. The contracts players sign need to mean something and allowing every coach to poke around to find out if a player has a buyout will make it hard for teams to build rosters outside of a year to year basis.

The Big Ten's proposal should be struck down pretty quickly as almost every other conference should disagree with this idea. Allowing this world to get even wilder would make life even tougher on coaches and it would likely lead to college football continuing to live in a world where we're seeing court cases weekly.