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you will be where we are,” Goalby said to the young players. Then he came with this disclaimer: “When you are twenty, you don’t think you will ever be fifty.”

John Underwood passed away before NIL and excess stipends to college athletes—principally football and basketball players—became standard, with the potential of bankrupting college sports.

Congress now has an opportunity to do some good for us, but if we get a law that we believe will work, chances are that it won’t. Maybe we should do away with scholarships altogether.

In 1954, the Ivy League agreed to award all scholarships based on need. I have enjoyed several Ivy League games, including seeing the Harvard-Yale Game in Cambridge, and have also taken in military academy games including the annual Army–Navy headliner. There was as much pure fun, excitement, and prideful cheering as you find at the Georgia–Florida, Oklahoma–Texas, and Alabama–Auburn games.

Although there is considerable ambiguity with all suggested plans, there seems to be a growing consensus that something must be done.

Somebody out there with the energy and cogency of a Billy Payne needs to surface with a concept that will work. There was only a handful of his closest friends who thought that he could pull off bringing the 1996 Olympics to Atlanta, but everybody knows the result of that remarkable story. If only Billy were twenty years younger.

This past weekend on the UGA campus, nothing could top the pure joy of the Georgia Bulldogs defeating Mississippi State to earn a berth in the College World Series.

There was drama, there was excitement, and there was euphoria with the Bulldogs of Athens, coming from behind twice to take the measure of a quality opponent in a classy performance that made the day of every Dawg (only those who hail from Athens, of course).

That once was the way it was with football. I sincerely hope we’re not going to let greed ruin the greatest of games.