It was only a matter of time before the fantasy world of fanboys who read box scores with more intensity than the actual game decided to take over the college sport.
CBSSports.com recently announced its plans to host a college version of fantasy football that will use the actual names of student athletes, which has been absent in most college fantasy-football games, as the legality of using a student's likeness has been debated. Thanks to a U.S. Supreme Court case in June that essentially declared that names and statistics exist in the public domain, CBS thinks its decision to replace ambiguous terms like "Florida QB" with the names of players such as Tim Tebow.
This development is not a surprise. Fantasy sports have been steadily expanding in recent years, reaching even the edges of the sporting world with versions for NASCAR and the PGA. If you sincerely thought this all-encompassing growth wouldn't find its way into the world of college athletics, you probably still play Madden on a 16-bit.
It's the way this generation experiences sports - through stat lines and gametrackers. Why watch the game when you can just wait for the box score afterward?
Welcome to the fantasy era, where reality is old school.
And now, college football has graduated from reality and has been inducted into the World Wide Web of fantasy gaming - with a non-endorsing endorsement from the NCAA.
NCAA spokesman Bob Williams told The Wall Street Journal a letter was sent to CBS arguing that the fantasy game was violating NCAA bylaws by using such close player likenesses. He then added, though, as paraphrased by the Journal, "that because of the added exposure fantasy sports can bring the student athlete, the NCAA does not intend to stand in the way of the fantasy game for now."
NCAA lawyers will watch CBS closely, but no legal action is expected, thanks to the law's gray area - even with the recent Supreme Court ruling - leaving the fantasy game to go unchecked as long as it doesn't hurt college football's bottom line.
By allowing the fantasy world to begin its slow trample on college sports, the NCAA has all but given the OK for fans to look at the student athlete as a professional, despite Williams' claim that the NCAA was "concerned with protecting the amateur status of the student athlete."
The NBA's one-year rule has already all but made every college basketball season an annual departure of one-and-done semipros. (CBS also announced they will launch a similar fantasy game for college basketball.) For years now, knowing their arms only have a limited shelf life, baseball pitchers have been choosing to spend years in the minor leagues over life on a college mound.
And now college football has its own claim to semipro status.
It was only a matter of time.
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