The Miami Hurricanes paid quarterback Cam Ward a lot in NIL money this year, purchasing his services via the transfer portal as a one-year rental to upgrade their program. Ward largely delivered on the investment, becoming a Heisman Trophy finalist and leading Miami on a College Football Playoff quest that fell just short.

Given the transactional nature of Ward’s relationship with Miami, his last act as a Hurricane fits. By all appearances he made a cold, me-first, team-second calculation—and the program signed off on it. Ward quit at halftime of the Pop-Tarts Bowl, playing the first half and setting the NCAA Division I record for career touchdown passes, then opting out. He watched the second half from the sideline as Miami bogged down and lost to the Iowa State Cyclones, 42–41.

It was an appropriate fiasco for a sport that cannot figure out December, and it underscores the transactional nature of the game right now.

It would help if Miami and Ward gave a better explanation of what happened and why. Coach Mario Cristobal declined to offer much insight, saying, “All meetings with players and decisions like that—we make them in private and we keep them in private. I’ll defer to not answering questions as it relates to that.” Ward apparently was unavailable after the game.

I’d imagine Miami fans who paid for tickets to the bowl game—and whose contributions helped pay Ward’s salary—would like an explanation. And I’d like to know how Ward’s teammates felt about having a quarterback bail on the team in that fashion. It essentially goes against the very nature of team competition.

If it was agreed upon before the game that Ward would only play half, it was a bad idea. Ward never should have played a minute, and Miami never should have gone along with such a plan. Whether or not he was trying to fulfill terms of his contract with a Hurricanes collective, this was a lousy look.

Perhaps it was a bit more honest than some draft-eligible players who have quietly quit on bowl games, half-stepping through cautious performances. Some players have agreed-upon snap counts going into a bowl. Others simply try to avoid contact—offensive players running out of bounds, defensive players not hitting with the usual ferocity.

But even if you want to give Ward and Miami credit for avoiding that charade, it still stinks. If you suit up and intend to play, you play the whole game. You’re either in or you’re out. No half measures.

This probably won’t seriously impact Ward’s draft stock, but it will at least be something he has to answer for. NFL teams investing first-round money in quarterbacks will ask a lot of nosy questions, and Ward should expect his Pop-Tart work stoppage to be one of them. At the very least, his prime competition to be the first quarterback taken in 2025, Shedeur Sanders of the Colorado Buffaloes, can point out to NFL teams that he played his entire bowl game, taking the usual number of hits in the process.

Between Ward’s walkout and Penn State Nittany Lions backup quarterback Beau Pribula opting to transfer immediately instead of staying with his team through the College Football Playoff, the sport has prioritized what happens next over finishing things out with your current team. The two situations are by no means the same thing, but they both underscore college football’s December problem and the shifting balance of power.

For decades, players had none of the power and none of the revenue. Now they have a lot more of both—which is not a bad thing, except when it produces bad situations. What happened with Ward and Pribula, among other players, suggests that the pendulum might be swinging too far the other direction, with teams at the mercy of players walking out whenever they so choose.

The transfer portal window, coaches changing jobs and the looming NFL draft process have all made December a mess. And so far, nobody has figured out how to clean that up. 

I asked Penn State coach James Franklin on Sunday if he has any ideas for solving some of these issues. His answer was long and thoughtful, not just a recitation of well-worn complaints.

“It is a challenge, and I think it’s one of those things that we can’t just keep talking about,” Franklin said. “We have to come up with some solutions.

“I’m one of the people that feel very, very strongly that we need a commissioner of college football. We need somebody that’s waking up every single morning and going to bed every single night thinking about what’s in the best interest of college football.

“Right now, I think that’s being done by the commissioners, but whenever you have people that are making decisions and running college football, they’re going to be biased towards what’s best to their conference. That’s not in the best interest of college football and the student-athletes.”

Franklin’s nomination for commissioner: retired coaching legend Nick Saban.

“I think Nick Saban would be the obvious choice,” Franklin said. “I think if we made that decision—Nick will probably call me tonight and say: ‘Don’t do this.’ But I think he’s the obvious choice, right? I think there’s some other really good candidates out there.”

Franklin also joined the chorus of people in the sport calling for the elimination of conference championship games. He would like to see conferences all play a uniform number of league games. And he’d like the season to start a week earlier. All those things could eliminate some of the overlap in December that is creating chaos.

“If you can take some of the stress off of the academic calendar—God forbid we talk about academics, right?” Franklin said. “That used to be every conversation started with academics, and that’s becoming less and less. Maybe I’m old-school and maybe a traditionalist, but I still believe in the model.”

The challenge that Saban or anyone else would be unable to adequately address is the unlimited transferring from one school to another. Players getting paid isn’t a problem; players getting paid to switch schools every season is. It undermines the academic mission, it destabilizes rosters, it wreaks havoc on high school recruits and it has turned off a segment of fans who don’t want to see players come and go like transients.

But good luck fixing that when the court system struck down the NCAA’s attempts to enforce its transfer rules. As long as the NCAA’s rules manual is deemed to be on the wrong side of the law, the only potential recourse could be completing the Congressional Hail Mary college leaders have been trying to execute for years. Even if that happens—the incoming new leadership in Washington, D.C., increases the chances—it likely will not occur quickly.

So it seems likely that we will still be sitting in a similar spot a year from now, in December 2025, watching a player exodus that cheapens the postseason. But hopefully nobody else decides to quit on their team in the middle of a game.


This article was originally published on www.si.com as Cam Ward’s Pop-Tarts Bowl Decision Highlights December Calendar Woes.