I didn’t watch the college basketball playoffs this year and I wouldn’t have missed them in years before that.

Why? The NCAA has ruined college sports by introducing NIL (short for name, image and likeness).

In short, college athletics have been turned into professional events.

I know, one person not watching televised college sports isn’t going to make any difference to the powers that be.

But what if a lot of people who like amateur college athletics do the same thing.

Conn Carroll writing in the Washington Examiner magazine called attention to some other changes in March Madness this year in a column headlined “How NIL killed March Madness.”

He begins by commenting: “Since expanding to a field of 64 in 1975, at least one school from a mid-major conference had made the NCAA’s second week of play, more commonly known as the Sweet 16, every year.

“This year for the first time ever, no small schools made it in. Every team in the Sweet 16 (came) from a power conference. If you want to know why no school from a mid-major conference made the Sweet 16 this year, all you have to do is look at the rosters of the teams that did.

The Southeastern Conference sent seven teams, the Big Ten and Big 12 each sent four and the ACC sent one.

“Of this years’s Sweet 16, only Purdue featured five starters who began school at Purdue. Duke and Michigan State featured four starters who began their collegiate careers at those schools, while BYU featured three, including a fourth who started just up the road at the University of Utah.

“But Arizona, Michigan and Kentucky all featured starting fives with zero students who began their careers at the schools they currently represent. Instead these schools built their rosters by raiding Dayton, Delaware, Drexel, Howard, New Mexico, Nevada and San Diego State.

Since at least the 1950s, college students have been allowed to transfer schools and still compete in college athletics. But until recently, they had to sit out a year in order to do so.

More importantly, starting in 2021, student athletes are now allowed to take NIL money from entities representing the schools.

Before NIL, it made sense for a marginal star player to stay at a small school where they would be guaranteed more playing time and the chance for big exposure on the national stage come tournament season.

But in the NIL era, a typical power conference’s basketball starter gets anywhere from $200,000 to $800,000 a year to play, while most mid-majors can afford only $10,000 to $50,000 per player.

“The end result is that as soon as a mid-major finds and develops a good player, that player then immediately leaves for a bigger school.

“No other sport is like this. In Major League Baseball, teams get six years with a player before he is a free agent. For the NFL, the length is four years. But in the current college system, every player is a free agent at the end of every season.”

The column reminds me of the presentation by former Oklahoma State Coach Tom Holliday who told Kingfisher Rotarians recently that he was saddened that college sports had been turned to professional.

He talked about the effect on college sports due to NIL, commenting “this is the reason several high profile coaches in all sports retired early from major college jobs.

“They didn’t want to be a part of the new professional element,” he was quoted.

He said outstanding coaches are leaving the profession due to the frustration of developing a player only to see them leave for other schools.

The Washington Examiner’s Carroll suggests Congress may have to step in to implement a solution, apparently a federal law.

Carroll also believes the problem could be alleviated by limiting the number of transfers a student can make or re-implementing the one-year sit-out for transfers.

Will sports fans stop attending college games? If they do, schools and the NCAA will discover the error of their ways.

As I recall, Oklahoma State University didn’t win a single conference football game last fall after losing key players to other schools.

It seems reasonable that it will also cause problems for the more affluent schools. All the players can’t make the big bucks. How will the other players react when fellow team members are zipping around in fancy cars wearing expensive clothes when the less highly regarded players are asked to continue showing up daily for tough practices where they serve primarily as blocking dummies for the big shots.

It’s no secret that college athletics are a year-around effort today.

All players devote hours of intense off-season work improving for the next season. Not to mention, players can get hurt in practice as well as in games. What will be the second level athletes’ incentive to continue playing?

What will be the incentive for high school athletes to sign a scholarship agreement with smaller schools?