No matter what else happens, remember the T-shirts.
It’s easy for them to get lost in this whole saga. There are overwhelming distractions to come. But don’t forget about the T-shirts, because nothing else will matter when we’re done.
Not the social media hack that put images of a college football star wearing a gas mask bong on the internet just moments before the 2016 NFL Draft.
Not the football coach, the pious one who quoted scripture and made football miracles happen, who found himself undone by a sex scandal.
And not the money. That might be the hardest part. There’s money everywhere in this story, including the stacks of cash Mississippi State linebacker said he took from multiple parties trying to sway him to play football for their teams. There are also the untold dollars paid to college football players every year against NCAA rules, and the millions in legal fees spent to parse the former.
At times this story bends to the wildly unbelievable and entertaining, yet nothing about the Great Ole Miss Football Scandal has changed college football. Verdicts have been rendered and penalties enforced, none of which will amount to any measurable change to the system. Programs are still cheating, coaches are still claiming they don’t know it, and the gross economic inequity between those who manage college football’s business model and those who fuel it is still intact.