By Christopher Harper
As college football fans look forward to bowl season, it’s time to realize that the sport has become an absolute mess.
I’ll put aside the flap over Florida State being excluded from the playoffs because I can see both sides of the argument. I also never liked FSU, so I admit my bias against the Seminoles. I also don’t understand why FSU has eluded the PC police for its mascot and name.
But I digress.
The collegiate model is changing, and revenue streams might need to be improved to fill the growing money pit. It should be noted that the average operating deficit among the 100 major programs stood at $18.8 million in 2019.
“Almost nobody is in good shape, and the few schools in decent shape are experiencing a world that’s much more unstable and uncertain,” Andrew Zimbalist, a sports economist professor at Smith College, told 247Sports. “Even if they’re in decent shape now, they still have to worry about it.
For example, the Big 10 started as a Midwestern conference that has grown into 18 universities spanning the country from east to west. That’s primarily because the league has the most lucrative TV contracts worth more than $1 billion annually. As the realignment of various leagues started, the Pac-12 took the biggest hit, falling to a mere two schools—Oregon State and Washington State—as Oregon, UCLA, USC, and Washington moved to the Big 10. Arizona, Arizona State, Utah, and Colorado joined the Big 12. Two West Coast teams, UC Berkeley and Stanford, are joining the Atlantic Coast Conference. The Big 12 lost Oklahoma and Texas to the Southeast Conference.
The impetus for conference realignment is rooted in money. That’s why Oklahoma and Texas secretly pursued the SEC in the summer of 2021 and opted to surrender $100 million to leave the Big 12 one year earlier than expected in 2024. UCLA and USC bolted the Pac-12 for the Big 10 in the summer of 2022 and will begin competing in the wealthiest conference in college athletics in 2024.
The salaries for coaches are out of control. According to an ESPN analysis, well-known programs spent more than $533 million in dead money owed to coaches who were fired without cause with time left on their contracts from 2010 to 2021. Now add the buyout of $76 million to Jimbo Fisher of Texas A&M!
The Wall Street Journal’s Jason Gay reminisced recently about the time Alabama coach Bear Bryant stipulated in his contract that he had to make a dollar less than the university’s president.
Two other changes—the transfer portal and the Name, Image, and Likeness plan—have created even more havoc in college football. According to Higher-ed Ethics Watch, the transfer portal has created “a lack of loyalty to the schools from which they transfer, a lack of loyalty to their teammates, many of whom cannot take advantage of the transfer portal because of their anonymity as a student-athlete, commercialization of college athletics, which once was a fully amateur sport, and outsiders buying the allegiance of student-athletes through promises of being able to financially benefit from their NIL after they transfer.”
Moreover, the NIL program has benefited only a few players and makes little sense when one looks at the top earners. For example, Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter of Colorado earned $4.1 million and $1.8 million, respectively, even though they played on a team that won only four games this year. Arch Manning has an excellent pedigree but has yet to start a game for Texas. Still, he’s estimated to earn nearly $3 million this year.
Simply put, college football is about making more and more money, but only a few colleges and players benefit from the current system.
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