Quarterback Market In College Football Has Become As Bloated As The NFL

NFL fans are all too familiar with the market for quarterbacks.

The demand for great signal callers in pro football FAR exceeds the supply, so teams are more than willing to pay top dollar for mediocre (at best) QBs to help deliver some wins to their franchise.

Look at some of the quarterback contracts in the NFL, and you will see several players being paid either purely on potential or because their team just didn't have a better option.

READ: NFL Teams Not Enjoying Dividends From Big Money QB Investments

Guys like Daniel Jones and Tua Tagovailoa were given massive contract extensions just for being "good enough," but it isn't entirely their teams' faults.

The market for quarterbacks is so bloated – thanks in part to more deserving signal callers like Matthew Stafford and Patrick Mahomes inking mega deals – that even mediocre quarterbacks can command a fortune, hamstringing their franchises from making other moves to help the team.

It looks like college football, in their quest to be the NFL Jr., is following down a similar path.

Trey Wallace wrote earlier about how bad the market has gotten in the transfer portal, but it's at its absolute worst when it comes to quarterbacks.

The latest offender is a familiar one: the Texas Tech Red Raiders.

I've written extensively about how Texas Tech has spent their way into becoming the next college football powerhouse, and while I can't fault them for playing within the rules (because there are no rules), it doesn't mean I have to like it.

The Red Raiders are all in on Cincinnati quarterback Brendan Sorsby, inking the former Bearcat to a $5 million payday.

I mean absolutely no disrespect to Sorsby, but is he worth more money than most NFL players on rookie contracts?

The answer is actually more complicated than that, though, as there isn't a salary cap (yet) in college sports, so Sorsby is technically worth whatever a team is willing to pay for him.

The problem is that for every Texas Tech (oil money) or Michigan (Larry Ellison), there are several other programs that won't be able to keep up in the arms race.

I'm not even talking about the Tulanes and James Madisons of the world. Even blue-bloods like Georgia and Ohio State don't have the booster base to keep up with any of the Texas schools.

That means teams like Tech, A&M, and even Houston can theoretically price out everyone for almost any player they want.

READ: College Footbal Is SIck - Transfer Portal, NIL, And More

Unqualified quarterbacks commanding top dollar in college football isn't a new phenomenon, either.

Miami reportedly paid Carson Beck somewhere in the vicinity of $4 million to forgo his final season at Georgia and skip the NFL Draft to come down to Coral Gables, and while the Hurricanes are in the College Football Playoff semifinals, most of that is thanks to their dominance on the offensive and defensive lines of scrimmage.

The Canes probably could have gotten a similar result this season if they had cut that quarterback budget in half or, God forbid, actually developed a quarterback that was already on their roster for a fourth of Beck's price tag.

Even non-traditional powers are upping the ante for quarterbacks.

A team like Duke paid their QB, Darian Mensah, $8 million over multiple years to leave Tulane after a stellar true freshman season.

Giving $8 million to a Group of 5 freshman feels risky, and while it paid off for the Blue Devils, it also robs a team like the Green Wave of the ability to develop a special talent like Mensah.

I don't have a solution to any of this, and I doubt the NCAA does either.

They let this genie out of the bottle and have no desire nor power to put it back, so we as fans are now forced to deal with the consequences.

Regardless of what ends up happening, this is just another example of college football following in the footsteps of its older brother, the NFL, and being all the worse for it.

I've said it before, and I will say it again: I want my college football back.