\u201cYou know, a lot of people go to college for seven years.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know. They\u2019re called doctors.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s one of the most biting exchanges in Tommy Boy, and one that the writers had to know was a guaranteed laugh. Calling yourself something like a senior or junior after seven years is absurd. It deserves to be mocked.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That used to be universally accepted.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Look, I had fun in college. I made some of my very best friends. I went to a lot of parties. I learned a little bit too, but I also would not want to be there a second longer than I had to be. That seems pretty normal, right?<\/p>\n
At 44, I know I don\u2019t have anything in common with the current generation of college students, and since I never played football, I have even less in common with today\u2019s college football players. Maybe that\u2019s why Diego Pavia\u2019s fight for a seventh year of eligibility<\/a> makes me cringe.<\/p>\n My opinion of Pavia as a player has not changed. I still think on the field he\u2019s a lot of fun to watch, but let\u2019s be clear. Trying to stay in college forever is some loser-ass behavior.<\/p>\n Rece Davis made a big show<\/a> of calling out Pavia for his post-Heisman tweets. Will he be willing to do the same when College GameDay goes into overdrive on New Year\u2019s Day? I would hope so. A 20-something tweeting \u201cF the voters\u201d is hardly newsworthy. If Diego Pavia and his attorneys are successful in court, it will make college football worse.<\/p>\n Very little thought or strategy seems to go into the NCAA\u2019s decisions these days, and the organization\u2019s policy on professional basketball players joining US college teams has never really been consistent or clear. Now though, it\u2019s allowing guys to join college teams after being selected in the NBA Draft or after spending time in the G League. Nothing makes sense<\/a>. You can\u2019t really blame Diego Pavia for trying his luck.\u00a0<\/p>\n There is a very real place this leads though and it would be a huge problem for college football.<\/p>\n Think of the long list of people before NIL existed that were in the same boat Pavia is right now. Tim Tebow, Johnny Manziel, Brady Quinn, and so many others that set the college world on fire had absolutely no business in the NFL. I suspect that is what Pavia has heard. I don\u2019t know what he\u2019s getting paid at Vanderbilt, but I would guess that his wallet is about to take a hit if he can\u2019t secure an NFL paycheck.<\/p>\n My question is where does it stop? Lawyers already got the All-SEC star one extra year of eligibility by successfully challenging the NCAA\u2019s ability to count seasons played at the JUCO level against players\u2019 eligibility. If Pavia wins another appeal, why would anyone believe he and his lawyers wouldn\u2019t immediately start trying to justify an eighth year?<\/p>\n I have spent a lot of time rolling my eyes at the things ESPN\u2019s College GameDay has bemoaned in the past as \u201cthe end of college football as we know it.\u201d Endless eligibility really would be a dramatic ground shift with no upside.<\/p>\n Plenty of us grew up in places where the college teams were a bigger deal than the NFL. For us, the draws are the uniform, the name, and the traditions. But college football didn\u2019t grow to its current level of success<\/a> by relying only on people like that.<\/p>\n Casual fans tune in when stories catch their attention or when there is so much hype around a player destined to be a future NFL star that they have to see him right now. That goes away the minute college football turns into a halfway house. Who wants to watch a league full of guys good enough to make money but not good enough to make NFL money?<\/p>\n It might sound harsh calling Diego Pavia a loser, but this is behavior that has to be stopped. I want to see Nick Saban defend the sport with the same passion<\/a> he defends Lane Kiffin. I want to see Desmond Howard and Kirk Herbstreit speak about grown men taking spots from kids that could have NFL futures if they developed in college with the same disdain<\/a> they did for the transfer portal.<\/p>\n College GameDay has a duty to shame the hell out of Pavia\u2019s effort. Tommy Boy quarterbacks would be awful. Shame Pavia, shame Vanderbilt, shame Clark Lea, and anyone else you need to to stop this garbage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cYou know, a lot of people go to college for seven years.\u201d \u201cI know. They\u2019re called doctors.\u201d It\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":643243,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2026],"tags":[20605,7491,7,7205],"class_list":{"0":"post-643242","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-college-gameday","9":"tag-diego-pavia","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-vanderbilt-commodores"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115814789618703918","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/643243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}