Why 2021 was a year of constant upheaval for college football

The good news for college football is that the 2021 season looked, more or less, like most seasons that came before, filled with big games, high drama and a satisfying conclusion, as Georgia won its first national championship in 41 years.

Off the field, however, 2021 was a year of constant upheaval, with college football enduring a flurry of transformational events — from the Supreme Court to the transfer portal — that has left the sport in a precarious position as the 2022 offseason begins.

ESPN talked with more than a dozen league commissioners, school administrators and longtime coaches to get some insight on where things stand as college football looks to establish a new normal in the aftermath of the Alston ruling, realignment, NIL and a new NCAA governance structure.

The Alston ruling

How it started: In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously against the NCAA, saying that limits on educational benefits was in violation of antitrust law. In a particularly withering opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that, “The NCAA’s business model would be flatly illegal in almost any other industry in America.”

How it’s going: Pick any major issue in college football and odds are the Alston decision is looming in the background. From playoff expansion to regulating the name, image and likeness marketplace to putting some limits on transfers, the NCAA is hamstrung by antitrust concerns and the end result has been an effective end to all but the most basic oversight of the sport.

“[The court] decided we were in violation of antitrust, and we’re not going to give you the latitude we gave you before,” North Carolina athletic director Bubba Cunningham said. “So we’re trying to get out of the antitrust issues but retain requirements of Title IX. The free market doesn’t have Title IX as an issue. And how do you handle these programs that generate money and balance that with programs that don’t? It’s a challenge.”

So what’s the answer?

The prevailing hope is the…