This is an opinion column.

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We’ll start this week’s mailbag off with Alabama’s decision to change up its radio broadcast for the upcoming football season. The entire state of Alabama has been captivated by the story. We haven’t seen anything like it since the Crichton Leprechaun.

Eli Gold was the play-by-play radio announcer for Alabama football games for 35 years. It was a great run. Gold is an iconic, Hall of Fame sports broadcaster with a unique voice. Alabama fans love him, but Alabama made the decision to replace Gold for Chris Stewart for the upcoming season. Gold isn’t happy about it, but it’s a complicated situation.

Stewart called all the road games last season except the Iron Bowl. Gold wanted one more season, but Alabama made the decision to go with Stewart full time. Readers have had plenty to say.

GOLD WAS FIRED

Sylvia Miller writes:

Sorry, this response is not about the [SEC] bagmen or the baseball games played at Rickwood Field. My name is Sylvia Miller and I am expressing my sadness at the “firing” of Eli Gold by Alabama.  If you are told “your services are no longer needed, we are going in another direction,” that says firing in my book. What a slap in the face to tell the “Voice of the Crimson Tide” after so many years of faithful service. As a long-time supporter of the Alabama football program and Mr. Gold I cannot put into words my disappointment with the sleaziness with how this was done. Enjoy your column.

GOLD WAS ORDINARY

Bo Lollar of Berry, Ala., writes:

Joe, my young friend, truth be told, Eli Gold was never more than an ordinary football broadcaster…Now from all accounts, Eli is a nice individual, though I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting him, but I have listened to a football broadcast by him now and then, along with the occasional basketball game, and I have to say with football that you never even halfway knew what was going on in the game, with virtually no idea where the line of scrimmage was. The Bama fans didn’t know the difference, and didn’t care, as long as they were listening to Eli. Ever since I started listening to Auburn games in the early 1950s, Auburn has ALWAYS had a standout announcer, if not a standout team. Bama had one here and there, but that’s one thing Auburn had, a really good football announcer. I’m old and can’t recall all the names, I’d have to look some up to name them, but they were there.

That said, I don’t know why Eli was booted, and though Chris Stewart is a big improvement over Eli as far as broadcasting a game, Eli is a legend for them and maybe they should have given him a golden parachute, and might have, I hope so. He deserves it. What do you think?

ANSWER: The Iron Bowl never takes a day off. Even the dismissal of Alabama’s iconic radio announcer is a chance for Auburn fans to antagonize their rivals. I’m not about to start comparing radio play-by-play announcers, but Gold was anything but “ordinary.” I adore Eli Gold in the same way that I loved Auburn’s Rod Bramblett. I have a great respect for the craft of sports broadcasting and have many friends in the business. Everyone knows how I feel about Bramblett. With Gold, I respected his talent so much that I dedicated part of my book “We Want Bama” to his ability to paint scenes with his descriptions. Gold brought listeners into the game. He once told me it wasn’t enough to tell people that he could smell the popcorn at the stadium. It was his job to make people at home taste that popcorn like they were sitting inside a stadium enjoying the game. Like a great writer, Gold is a storyteller. I grew up listening to Gold on the radio during Alabama football games. I’m going to miss his calls, but I’m also happy for Stewart, who is taking over football games full-time beginning with A-Day. My biggest hope is that Gold continues his relationship with Alabama because, at the end of the day, he owes that to the fans who made him a legend.

SEC BAGMEN ARE GANGSTERS

My newsletter, “Joe Goodman’s SPORTS! Happy Hour,” comes out every Thursday at 4:20 p.m. It’s the only sports newsletter that hits like 4:20 and drops on 4:20. Readers can sign-up for the newsletter with this link or by simply entering your email address into the prompt at the beginning of the mailbag. I mention the newsletter here because some of this week’s emails come from my loyal bar patrons at SPORTS! Happy Hour. Former Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel recently said on Shannon Sharpe’s podcast that every school in the SEC had a bag man to deliver black-market cash to players. SPORTS! Happy Hour toasted the careers of SEC bag men everywhere, but apparently not everyone appreciated the kind words.

Jerry Morris of Vero Beach, Fla., writes:

Celebrating SEC bagmen is comparable to celebrating mafia bosses. Sure, teams like Tenenssee cheated in any and every way they could think of, however, to say every SEC school did so is merely glorifying something that was wrong over those who followed the rules. Vanderbilt had a bagman? You make me laugh. Look at their record and say with a straight face that you think they paid cash to get players.

Other schools may or may not have had bagmen at one time or another, but all of them all of the time? I think not. Your premise reminds me of the alcoholic who rationalizes that everyone who drinks is addicted just as he is addicted. Unfortunately, college sports are now professional sports because of the NIL. Throw in the legalized gambling and what was at one time an enjoyable weekend experience is now similar to walking through a cesspool. Greed and a flood of cash create a rotten smell.

ANSWER: SEC bag men are fans, too, Jerry, and we can only hope that most of them are living the good life of post-NIL retirement in places like beautiful Vero Beach. Are SEC bag men a little unhinged? Maybe. But mobbed-up gangsters? All the mafia kings I’ve known through the years like to take money as opposed to give it away. SEC bag men are only guilty of being gangsters of love for the team’s they cheer for on Saturdays in the fall. Any cashed-strapped foot soldier of SEC is a friend in my book. Now, if we want to compare the apparatus known as the College Football Playoff to a cabal of highly sophisticated goodfellas, then that’s a different story.

KILL THE COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYOFF

Patrick Dewees of Vestavia Hills writes:

I am frankly horrified that even before the expansion of the College Football Playoff begins on July 1, there is already talk of expanding it further. This is because the current contract runs through the 2025-26 season and a new agreement will need to be in place soon.

This is a chance to reduce the CFP back to four teams. In fact, I would not mind if there were no playoffs at all and no national champions, just Sugar Bowl champions and Rose Bowl champions. The expanded playoff undermines the regular season. For Top 10 teams to face elimination from CFP contention in a major regular season game gives the game a “Survivor” quality. Now such teams will not care as much that they lost because they know they will still make the CFP.

Just because a game is meaningless in terms of a national championship does not mean it is meaningless altogether. Teams can still play for a trip to a major bowl or for a conference championship or for a victory over an arch-rival. Alabama and Auburn fans never act like the Iron Bowl is meaningless. If conferences labeled by the media as “Group of Five” need access to a national championship, let them form their own division within college football and stage their own playoff. What do you think?

ANSWER: I think you’re onto something in terms of Group of Five teams creating their own division. Or, put another way, I think a select group of old Power 5 teams are going to break away from the Football Bowl Subdivision and form a Super League of sorts that pays players as employees. The SEC and Big Ten are leading the way and have already formed an alliance to begin hashing it out. Will that be the best outcome for college football? No clue, but that’s where the sport is headed.

Here’s what we know for sure. The current “model,” if you even want to call it that, is unsustainable. At this point, pretty much the only people who want college football to remain an endless loophole of unregulated transfer insanity are the lawyers. They’re the ones making the real money off the chaos. As for doing away with the playoffs, I don’t see why having Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl champs that advance in a playoff can’t work. I always felt like the playoff should be at least 16 teams, but at this point I’m in favor of a 24-team playoff with as many home games as possible for higher seeds. I’ve always said that expanded playoffs would infuse some parity into college football. The regular season will always be important in college football. It’s only 12 games. A four-team playoff wasn’t a playoff in name only. If we’re being completely honest, it was an SEC invitational ruled by Nick Saban that led the sport to where it is today.

Joseph Goodman is the lead sports columnist for the Alabama Media Group, and author of the most controversial sports book ever written, “We Want Bama”.