College football hasn't been simple for a very long time.
There was maybe a decade or so, in between Teddy Roosevelt mandating that players stop grinding their skulls into a fine powder and bowl games meant to help prop up the Batista dictatorship, when the sport was pure and good and unencumbered by folly, but that time has long passed.
When I was younger, the Problem In College Football We All Have To Acknowledge was basically anything to do with recruiting. High schoolers getting paid, boosters buying cars for mom, fake summer jobs that dad doesn't have to show up for, and various other quaint rules violations that now just kind of seem cute instead of insidious.