Harty: My take on attrition and beer sales
IOWA CITY, Iowa – Attrition is as much a part of college football as marching bands, tailgating and bowl games.
No team is immune from it. Even the superpowers like Alabama and Ohio State can’t appease everybody.
Iowa fans were reminded of that on Tuesday as two players quit the team.
Linebacker Justin Jinning and running back Eric Graham both have decided to move on after spending just one season in the program. Both players were redshirted this past season as true freshmen and neither appeared on the 2016 depth chart during spring practice.
Combine that with Jinning being from Texas and Graham being from Alabama and it was a recipe for attrition in both cases.
The desire for more playing time or to be closer to home are two of the leading causes of attrition, while academics also play a role.
Some players also grow tired of trying to meet the demands of playing big-time college football and suffer from burnout.
And you have those rare cases where a player decides to pursue a different passion.
For example, former Iowa defensive back Omar Truitt is now trying to launch his career as a rapper after quitting the Iowa football team this past winter. The Maryland native was recently profiled in a story written by the Daily Iowan student newspaper.
But it’s also reasonable to think that Truitt being buried on the depth chart probably helped influence his decision to quit playing football.
When you have 85 players on scholarship, but just 24 starting positions, including kicker and punter, attrition is unavoidable.
It’s the same with men’s basketball where players are transferring at an alarming rate.
Defensive back Maurice Fleming transferred from Iowa after the spring semester and will play for West Virginia next season as a graduate student. Fleming said he wanted to transfer to a school where he could possibly start as a senior.
He didn’t have that option at Iowa with 2015 Jim Thorpe Award winner Desmond King and three-year starter Greg Mabin standing in his way at cornerback.
Too much attrition at one time can lead to problems down the road with depth. But the circumstances are far from reaching that point at Iowa.
MORE BEER: Ohio State will make beer sales available stadium-wide during the 2016 college football season.
It’ll be a case of the rich getting richer.
It also will put more pressure on schools like Iowa to do the same thing.
The revenue generated by beer sales at Ohio Stadium will be used to fund two new full-time positions in the Ohio State Police Department at an annual cost of $300,000.
It seems that Ohio State officials are acknowledging the risk of serving more beer by having to increase its police presence.
“The safety of our campus community, including fans and visitors, is our number one priority,” said Craig Stone, chief of the Ohio State University police division. “Thanks to this partnership with the Department of Athletics, two new full-time officers will bolster presence and enhance campus safety year-round.”
The safety of fans and visitors has to be the number one priority, but the desire to make money is a close second for colleges.
The Buckeyes are simply the next domino to fall in that regard. Money has priority over everything except safety.
Iowa prohibits beer from being sold at Kinnick Stadium, but the pressure is building to change that rule, even more so with Ohio State expanding its beer sales.