"Boys, this is where I get off," said a Texas politician breaking the silence in a car after FDR announced his court-packing plan. It was just too much for even the most ardent FDR supporter.

Funny, I got up yesterday morning with the idea in my head to write an open letter to the Chancellor and powers at my alma mater, the University of Pittsburgh. This is where we should get off. Get out of major college football. Drop down a division. Play Villanova. That was before the announcement in late afternoon that USC and UCLA had located the Pacific Ocean in the Great Lakes. 

Major college football, the banker of major college sports, exists in name only after the NIL revolution exactly a year ago. It's unseemly for a university, already wearing a transparent fig leaf over its "amateur" cojones by giving "scholarships" to athletes, to have to line up boosters to pay 17 year-olds hundreds of thousands of dollars to "work" for them, and, oh by the way, to play tackle football at their favorite college in their spare time.

NIL removed the fig leaf entirely but the stripper had been taking it off for three decades. Conference realignment. We are never going to see the end of it, not until the stripper picks up every last dollar and coin from the stage floor tossed by "fans". We have never seen the end of it. The Big East, gone; the Big 8 now the Big XII with a completely different cast; the Big 10, now grown to the B1G 16; the ACC getting stalked by cannibals frantically replenishing in Boston, Pittsburgh, and upstate New York. "Tobacco Road?" The Alliance. A year after Oklahoma and Texas, once joined at the hip in the Southwest Conference, joined the Southeastern Conference, after OU's head coach left for USC, after Notre Dame's coach left for the SEC, a month after L.A. money bought Pitt's best player, USC and UCLA, all SoCal cool bolt for the SoCold of the B1G. ND has got to follow. And Clemson, Florida State, and maybe cash-strapped Miami, will get lured into the conference where it just means more, where nothing else means anything.

I've had enough. 

Pitt and BC and Syracuse can't compete in NIL fees with Alabama, Texas A&M, and USC. Pitt shouldn't want to compete with them, not with those "universities", not for 17 year-olds, not with that kind of money. Enough! Get off this anything-but-merry-go-round. It's unseemly. Jump off, drop down. Is this happiness you're pursuing, Pitt? I bet you're not happy. Money can't buy happiness. The pursuit of this "happiness" does not end with happiness attained, but rather with misery and a loss of self-respect and reputation. It's the oldest profession.