NFF COO Matt Sign (left) and NFF President and CEO Steve Hatchell (right) with NFF Trustee Susan Calhoon (center) at the College Football Hall of Fame 10th Anniversary Celebration in Atlanta recently.
The changes keep coming, sometimes at warp speed.
NIL, transfer portal, conference reconfiguration and expansion of the College Football Playoff from four to 12 teams and--in the not too distant future--16 teams.
"It's not college football," said recently retired American Athletic Conference Commissioner Mike Aresco wtih a sigh.
"It's not the same game" is the mantra from the growing list of coaches who have hit the escape hatch button for either retirement or a move upward to the National Football League.
Ah, the NFL. There's the culprit.
College football, with free agency and some elite players making millions of dollars in addition to the normal scholarship benefits, has become the "NFL Lite."
No one knows where it is going, because the changes are so new and not enough rules and regulations are in place.
Which begs a bigger question.
Who is carrying the flag of college football?
I posed that question over a casual lunch a few weeks before the 2024 college football season officially began to Steve Hatchell and Matthew Sign.
Both men work for the National Football Foundation (NFF), which may indeed be the last outpost for college football as we know it.
Hatchell is the CEO of the NFF, which was formed in 1947, with leadership provided by a few familiar names: General Douglas MacArthur, legendary Army football coach Earl "Red'' Blaik and legendary sports writer Grantland Rice.
The mission, now as it was then, is to use the power of amateur football in developing scholarship, citizenship and athletic activity.
It is a mission which Hatchell and Sign carry to 120 chapters in 47 states, promoting the concept of college football as a sport, not a bottom line encounter.
Make no mistake, Hatchell and Sign know what they are doing. Their credentials speak for themselves.
They have been together at the NFF since 2005.
"A long time,'' said Hatchell, with a laugh, taking time between trips around the country as the NFF conducts business to promote the mission of college football as a life experience for thousands of players at evey level of the game.
Hatchell, who came out of the University of Colorado, has been a sports information director, a bowl director and a conference commissioner in a career which spans more than five decades.
He even dabbled in the wild west, serving as the commissioner of the Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association (PRCA).
Hatchell acknowledges the criticism of the trend in the game away from what was 70 years ago and even 10 years ago.
"It's been difficult, with the NIL stuff and all the other changes,'' he said. "A challenge, but from our standpoint, we are looking at more than 700 schools participating in football at every level and when you talk about the major changes, you are talking, what 50 schools, maybe 60 or 70.
"For the most part, the game is still the game, with student athletes going to class and all the other aspects which have been so much a part of it.
"Our mission is to promote that aspect and enhance that with various programs."
The NFF has a trove of those, including a promoted campaign about advertising how many actual college graduates are playing the game, each with a different story to tell.
Hatchell acknowledges that the headline news aspect of the sport sometimes is disturbing.
"You look at things and see players in their third or fourth school in four or five years and you wonder is anyone talking about education,'' said Hatchell. "You see the number of kids in the transfer portal and ask, how many of them have actual offers at other schools and what happens if they don't receive an offer.''
Sign parlayed a successful playing career at Rice into roles as an all-star game and bowl director and then as the NFF COO.
He is now a major player in an organization which is the keeper of the flame for the college game, which can still be successful without the bells and whistles of fame and fortune.
"When you come down to it, you are talking about a small percentage of players who advance to the next level,'' said Sign. "And even for the majority of players, the value of a college degree and how the experience of playing college football needs to be considered."
Sign came out of high school, flirted with Notre Dame and Tulane, before landing at Rice as a student athlete who quickly realized that the athletic part of that description had a definitive final destination.
Hatchell, whose career has melded smoothly with the changes of the game over the years, says the future is as exciting as it is uncertain.
"There are so many things that are different now and all the rules about to govern it are not even in place and there is some question about who is going to provide the leadership necessary to get things done,'' said Hatchell. "Some people have suggested to us (NFF) that we fill that role."
College football, with ongoing litigation among members and new television contracts with payoffs in the billion dollar range, right now seems out of control in many areas.
The doomsayers project major disasters in the future and the eventual absorption of big-time college football into an NFL-like structure, which includes workers compensation, salary cap issues and even work stoppages during a playing season which now is creeping to 17 games for a few teams.
But he also maintains the faith that most of the NFF world--which includes a re-enegized College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta and a variety of programs and promotions for 90 percent of the membership--can make things work the right way.
"It won't be easy,'' he says. "But we can do it.''