Do fans care where college football money comes from, even if it's Saudi Arabia?

ALTOONA, Pa. -- One of the more fascinating college football stories I've read in a while was published this week. It's by David Ubben from The Athletic and is titled: Could Saudi Arabia's PIF enter college football?

Wow, that's a loaded question! And one that I had not thought of before, to be honest, despite being very familiar with the Saudi Public Investment Fund through the whole LIV Golf situation.

Let me tell you right up front: I have no problem with LIV Golf, or that it's backed by the Saudi fund. If you do have a problem with it, morally, that's perfectly understandable.

Here's why:

Our government has concluded that some Saudi nationals had connections to the 9/11 attacks. That is deplorable.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is held responsible for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. That is deplorable.

Saudi Arabia is not a free country, and many citizens have restricted rights, including women and religious minorities.

Despite all that, the United States still does a tremendous amount of business with Saudi Arabia. Billions and billions and billions of dollars worth of business, across many, many sectors.

For instance, from the U.S. State Department: "Boeing recently completed a major deal with Saudi Arabia valued at nearly $37 billion."

OK, so why was there NOT a tremendous amount of backlash over human rights when that deal was brokered? And yet, when professional golf was brought into the mix, all of a sudden Saudi Arabia and its money became massively controversial.

Which gets me back to college football.

The Athletic story focused on four current college athletic directors and sought feedback on the possibility of Saudi Arabian money infiltrating college football in the coming years.

From the story:

"One (AD) said it won’t happen. Two said it’s all-but-inevitable. Another said it could happen, but it won’t look as simple as cutting a school a big check and getting a seat at the table."

There's also this very telling quote from one of the ADs about taking Saudi money.

“I’d say close to 50 percent of schools and athletic department leaders would navigate their way to yes. If you’d asked me before the LIV/PGA Tour came together, I would have said less than 10 percent. Because even the most aggressive and thoughtful athletic directors, everyone is afraid to go first when it comes to the PIF and their involvement in American sports. And the PGA just went first.”

Let's cut to the chase here.

If you're a Penn State or Pitt fan, or of any team, would you be opposed to your beloved football program receiving money from the Saudi public fund? And I mean potentially lots and lots of money, like tens of millions of dollars ... or more.

My guess is the vast majority of people would say no, they wouldn't be opposed to it. Those of you in that category don't care where the money comes from, as long as there's enough money to help your team WIN BIG BABY!

As for those who would still be opposed based on moral concerns ...

This country does enormous business with China, which, again according to our own State Department, has a “disregard for human rights." And yet, the NBA, for instance, has long done a tremendous amount of business with China.

Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, killing 2,403 people. We do business with that country. (You could say this in reverse, too, since the U.S. killed more than 100,000 people in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, and Japan still does business with us.)

A total of 58,220 American soldiers died in the Vietnam War. We do business with that country.

I could go on and on, but I'm really doing my best here not to make this overly political.

The Athletic story probed the possibility of the Saudi fund getting involved with NIL in college athletics. It used one particularly interesting word:

"In the modern, largely lawless era of NIL in college football, could the PIF eventually desire to get involved in helping programs acquire talent?"

Did you see the word? Lawless, as in there are really no rules or regulations overseeing so much money.

James Franklin has long contested that Penn State is behind many other power programs when it comes to NIL. Just take a look at this ranking from earlier this week.

Penn State isn't in the top 20. The school recently merged two collectives, Success with Honor and Lions Legacy, and the hope is that will help get everyone more on the same page with fundraising.

But look, Terry Pegula isn't coming along and writing a $100 million check for Penn State football, the way he did to start men's and women's hockey programs and to build an arena. The school only has so many insanely rich folks who could donate enormous amounts of money, and Penn State certainly needs enormous amounts because of NIL and Beaver Stadium renovations.

If there was some kind of setup where Penn State could get involved in a large pool of money generated by the Saudi public fund, would the school in fact go that route?

Hmmmm.

While pondering that juicy question, just know that all of this probably wouldn't necessarily come down to one simple thing such as the Saudi fund just forking over money to a school.

More likely, we'd be talking about TV contracts or vast NIL networks that could benefit a large number of schools. Just like LIV Golf financially benefits large numbers of individual golfers.

The question, then, would be rather if the Big Ten or whatever group of entity schools/TV networks would sign off on being under an umbrella where the money is raining down from the Saudi fund?

Again, going back to The Athletic story, college football is the second most popular sport in this country, behind only the NFL. There is so much money in the sport that it's crazy, but what separates college athletics from professional sports leagues is that we're talking about universities -- most publicly funded -- that are supposed to exist for the betterment of everyone, not just the football teams.

In that regard, convincing colleges to jump on board with the Saudi money would be a different animal than, say, the NFL or NBA agreeing to become partners.

Look, I don't have any answers on all this stuff. As mentioned previously, I hadn't even considered the possibility of Saudi money until reading The Athletic story and finding that some athletic directors do believe this will happen.

I just know that it didn't bother me at all that the Saudis were behind LIV Golf. Because I'm not a hypocrite who turns a blind eye to all the other things we do in this country that are very, very shady, all in the name of money.