Pro-style roster management comes for college football

Texas Tech made headlines over the fourth of July when they dropped a big bag to secure the top offensive tackle in the state of Texas. What will this mean for college football?

The blue blood programs of college football, with deep pockets or easy enticements to secure loaded rosters, are facing a massive conundrum in the coming era of the game.

We are headed towards one of two possible worlds. One, in which there’s a sort of soft salary cap among the top 30-40 programs or so, as well as a sort of salary floor, and it’s no longer possible to hoard talent the way schools like Nick Saban’s Alabama or Kirby Smart’s Georgia have done in the past.

Two, there aren’t many restrictions but there are more schools like Texas Tech or Indiana who suddenly find themselves equipped to toss out big money to star prospects and humble the bigger schools like the Raiders did the Texas Longhorns for the services of 5-star Felix Ojo.

Kid signed for a $5.1 million guaranteed, three-year contract to play his college football in Lubbock, TX. Even the Longhorns can’t toss that kind of money around for every top blue chip they want.

So where is this heading? Probably to a world of greater parity in the game where the top programs have to differentiate themselves and maintain success like NFL teams do rather than Saban’s New York Yankees model of the past.