USC QB Malachi Nelson in the portal

Yes, it's a joke as it is and has been in a transition stage since the BCS and then through the playoff era started.  Instead of going directly from amatuer collegiate athletics to NFL minor leagues overnight, it's been a staged process. NCAA has always been a corrupt, absurd, hypocritical, selectively enforcing entity created to grift $ out of major university athletics.

Now going to a 12 team playoff, and what seemingly seems like 2 mega conferences (B1G and SEC) which will be akin to the NFC and AFC and probably be further divided into geographic divisions that make more sense eventually, the last step is setting up a proper payment model of salaries or rev shares for the "student"-athletes.

Not surprisingly, fairly compensating and paying the group that puts in the most work, risk and effort in to create the product on the field is of least priority - and players will be the last to be justly rewarded.

Is it that different from other sports, just with 5-10x the teams?

Also, I don't know what anyone would expect without contracts. It has changed the game for sure, but I wouldn't say it's any worse, competition-wise... at least for the P5 level

No. You just like perpetually whine about “how things used to be.”

No, this is good. Players shouldn’t be under the thumb of their HS coaches determining which colleges they get to visit, and they shouldn’t be stuck in undesired situations under control of their coaches once they’re in college. Until revenue sharing becomes a thing, giving players this kind of mobility is the only thing keeping cfb from being totally exploitative.

Aside from the moral aspect, I attribute this mobility, along with NIL, for creating the greater parity seen in the game recently. Given that, it’s good for fans of the sport in general

Who’s going to make a Football Manager type strategy game for college football. About the only thing the transfer portal comes close to resembling is the international soccer transfer market, where players regularly move teams in search of playing time, more prestigious (and well playing clubs), steps up and down in competition. How long until someone tries to introduce loans of young players to lower division teams in order to get experience?
 

The great differences, of course, are that cfb players are time limited to, at most, 6 years of competition, and that soccer player transfers bring monetary reward to the team they’re leaving. 

Just wait until our season ends and guys who are currently on our roster start hitting the portal. 

Fortunately, the portal also giveth.

I know what you mean though. For me, it'd be nice to have some predictability as far as what the team is going to look like next year and beyond.

CFB may be a mess but I love the position this is putting Michigan in-especially with Jim Harbaugh at the helm. This program is operating from a baseline culture that has about as many duck-in-a-row as there can be had. We are making lemonade while everyone else is being overwhelmed with the sourness.