Hidden amidst all the hype and hand-wringing over the end of college football as we used to know and love it, there was a recent cautionary tale for the players who suddenly run the asylum.

Not much of one, mind you, even coming from the mouth of Kirby Smart, the two-time defending national championship coach at Georgia.

And it got scant little play two weeks ago at SEC Media Days. But it would have to do.

Smart’s message?

Today’s players may be getting legally rich off name, image and likeness, and they might be able to jump ship at the slightest glimpse of a greener pasture, but there are consequences.

There is a trade-off.

Namely, their days of living college in a Richie Rich comic book are coming to a close.

The notion of football facilities as the next and flashiest Taj Mahal is about to become as outdated as two-a-days.

As Smart noted, that money will now be pooled for the “collectives” that fund the NIL business. The mega-rich boosters who used to splash their names across the side of modernistic weight rooms will find something players can do for them to just stuff the cash in their pockets.

It will take some time before the Age of Glorious Excess is all phased out. They won’t be summoning the wrecking balls any time soon.

Fortunately, most of your pertinent schools already had the infrastructure pretty well in place.

Years of drunken spending by booster clubs and tradition funds had turned the top college program’s “football ops centers” into four-star resorts with nightly turn-down service in lieu of curfew.

LSU, for instance, has its futuristic “pods” equipped with TVs of course, a far cry from the old hooks above the bench in the locker room. These more resemble luxury-class trans-Atlantic airline seats — and even pull out into “sleeping pods,” just in case those noisy classrooms prove to be too much of a nuisance for a decent nap.

There’s also every video game known to man and a few others scattered about.

I may be wrong but it seems the first volley of this genre was a few years ago when a waterfall suddenly showed up in Alabama’s football facility.

Why? No idea. Part of Nick Saban’s “process,” I guess.

But the amenities arms’ race was on and, before long, if you didn’t have a barbershop on site, you weren’t really trying to beat Alabama (it worked for Georgia).

Clemson always seemed to make a big splash, whether it was the sliding board from somewhere to somewhere down below, possibly the state-of-the-art wading pool, or the min-golf layout adjacent to the Wiffle Ball diamond. Just for fun.

Team lounges are nothing new. Some schools used to even throw in a pool table, maybe foosball. The fancy-pants schools might have pinball machines.

Go to a team lounge nowadays and you might just find a state-of-the-art golf simulator and whatever virtual reality is up to these days.

As the focus shifts to funding collectives instead of play toys, look for these mini-Disney Worlds to start downsizing, possible down to NFL quality.

That was always the funny thing. Most of the filthy-rich NFL practice facilities and whatever passed for players’ lounges couldn’t begin to compete with what the colleges were up to.

No need to. You win with players. The NFL gets them by paying them.

Colleges did it with the flashiest toys and creature comforts.

Now that is changing.

Think back to high school graduation. You’d have much preferred Aunt Maybelline to slap some cold, hard cash, preferably American, in an envelope as your off-to-college gift instead of an alarm clock or pen-and-pencil set.

That’s kind of what’s in play here.

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Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics. Email him at scooter.hobbs@americanpress.com