Did you give into temptation over the holiday weekend and watch some of the Yellowstone series rerun?
If you didn’t, and you never have bothered with the Kevin Costner-driven-and-scuttled five-season modern cowboy drama, here’s a recap.
The Yellowstone is a huge ranch in Montana, owned by John Dutton (Costner), who is fed up with society in general and is fiercely (and I mean fiercely) protective of his family and its ranch. Near the end of the series, he gets talked into running for governor, and wins, with the campaign credo being “I am the opposite of progress.
“I am the wall that it bashes against and I will not be the one who breaks.”
He is disgusted with the influx of outsiders threatening the state’s rural lifestyle, draining Montana’s natural resources, all in pursuit of profit. Dutton knows no boundaries in his personal war to defend the state’s status quo and his family’s path forward to future generations.
I’d like to tell you the story ends happily for John Dutton, but I’d be as big a liar as his adopted son Jamie Dutton, a squirrelly lawyer who can’t stop betraying family members to satiate his own ambitions.
But I can tell you John Dutton reminds me of me – at least, my view of college sports. It’s not at all what it used to be, and there’s no going back in time.
Well, maybe there is. Maybe when all the dust settles in 4-5 years, the college landscape will revert back to what it was when Joe Ferguson was a Heisman Trophy candidate in 1972 for the Arkansas Razorbacks and a couple years earlier, another Woodlawn quarterback, Terry Bradshaw, had just come from way off the beaten track to be the NFL’s No. 1 draft pick out of Louisiana Tech.
Which played In the NCAA’s College Division, a second tier for schools that didn’t have the resources to roll with the big timers in the SEC, Big Ten, Big Eight, Pac Whatever and the ACC.
Guess what? Thanks to Name, Image and Likeness, the transfer portal and the House settlement, there’s an altitude adjustment coming regardless of the attitudes and ambitions of Bulldogs, Warhawks, Ragin’ Cajuns, Demons, G-Men, Green Wave and their widespread peers.
They can’t begin to compare their resources with the shot-callers at LSU, Texas, Ohio State, Georgia, Michigan. Those schools will be paying some of their athletes a pool of $20 million, not including NIL deals funded by deep-pocketed boosters.
Texas Tech has its share and just signed a high school offensive tackle to a $5 million package over three years. Same bunch of Red Raiders spent a million last summer getting softball superstar pitcher NiJaree Canady, who left Stanford and led Texas Tech to the Women’s College World Series finals. She’s getting a new deal for next season.
NIL deals decimated the softball roster at UL Lafayette, long a Top 25 mainstay before coach Gerry Glasco bolted to Lubbock with deep pockets to instantly build a national title contender. The Cajuns were 29-25 this spring, 14-10 in the Sun Belt, a league they cruised through unbeaten or close to it for many, many years.
I say again: Texas Tech. What do you think the Aggies and Longhorns will do in response?
That’s the sort of recalibration that is unfolding all over. Yes, Coastal Carolina of the Sun Belt stormed into Omaha and reached the CWS championship round. But in the sports that define sports fans’ lifestyles – football and basketball – the TV revenue is immense and is not going to be shared down the line.
It’s heading Back to the Future. Back to the days of the University Division for the haves, the quasi-corporate athletic programs, and the College Division for the dreamers and the realists.
As the Yellowstone series ended, the Duttons were forced out of retaining the ranch. But the youngest Dutton son, Kayce, found a way to preserve it.
Those characters who did survive – that’s a literal usage – rode off into the sunset on happy trails.
Perhaps when the reformation of the NCAA landscape occurs, we might find out that the new normal is not totally terrible, at all. Turns out Beth Dutton never liked much about the Yellowstone, and she and Rip are settling a couple hours away where there are no
menacing neighbors and just as many beautiful vistas – and a promising, scaled down lifestyle.
Contact Doug at sbjdoug@gmail.com