It doesn't take a genius to see that college football is in the midst of major change. Earlier this month, the Virginia General Assembly passed a bill that would allow universities to directly contract players and grant them name, image and likeness rights. In the wake of NIL-related litigation, the NCAA is reportedly in “serious discussions” to implement a formal revenue-sharing system and pay players more than $1 billion in damages.

Alabama has been an agent of change nationwide in recent months: In March, Nick Saban was invited to Congress to discuss the future of NIL at a roundtable hosted by Sen. Ted Cruz, and this week, the University of Alabama Blazers became the first Division I football team to officially endorse Athletes.org, an organization that describes itself as the “players association of college athletes.”

It begs the question: What's the future of sports in America? Podcast Episodes In a story published earlier this week, Dan Wetzel and Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports and Pat Ford of Sports Illustrated discussed the possibility of adding a draft-style event to the calendar.

College football is one of the most popular sports in the US and the world. Playoff television revenue alone rivals the entire NHL, and the sport dominates fall Saturdays, especially in the South. But college football is missing one of the things that makes professional leagues so dominant: offseason marquee events.

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The NFL has the combine, the draft and free agency, which combine to keep viewers interested when games aren't being played. The college game has almost none of that. The transfer portal is de facto After a free-agency format the past few seasons, a formal summer event could do wonders for the sport's offseason footprint.

As college football becomes increasingly and explicitly professional, industry leaders might consider creating an event that would serve as a draft for high school players, the committee reasoned.

“Can you imagine what would happen if conferences got together and gathered all of the top 50 recruits in the country in one place and asked them to announce their contracts one by one on live television,” Ford said. “Instead of having a signing session in December, have an actual show in February when other things are busy, especially if they could keep the contracts secret for that period of time.”

“we [signing day] “It's not going to be a big hit in February,” he added. “We can do bigger, we can do more.”

Ford did raise one caveat that could kill the idea: a lack of communication at the highest levels of the industry.

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“It will require coordination and cohesion that doesn't exist in college sports. The conferences will have to agree to work together,” he said. “They will have to find television partners that will work with them. They will have to have more control over the schedule. All of this is something that they simply haven't been able or willing to do before.”

Wetzel imagined a situation in which a recruit could reverse a promise in front of a large crowd.

“[A recruit could say] “You know, the last three guys went to Alabama. I'm going to Alabama. And then he tips his hat at the end. The crowd throws money at him, so it looks like he's shooting a money cannon.”

Dellenger went a step further and envisioned hosting SEC-only events in cities like Atlanta, New Orleans and Nashville.

“Can you imagine all the SEC teams arriving there, sitting on the side of the stage, selecting their high school athletes? People will come. I don't know if 700,000 people will come, but people will come,” he said.

No formal proposals have been made yet for offseason events — the sport needs to sort out its legal situation before implementing any changes of this magnitude — but it's worth keeping an eye on spring and summer as the next frontier for college football.

Charles Vaughn is a contributing writer for Yellow Hammer News.