Worried or confused about realignment? Wondering how/why college athletes can make money now? You are not alone friends!
I don't think many with an even remote interest in college football would disagree that there's a lot going on right now. Even with training camps just now kicking into gear all around the country, dark clouds of uncertainty surrounding the new reality of college athletes reclaiming their own image and conference realignment feel like they're dampening down what should be one of the most exciting parts of the year for football fans. Change is an inevitability in all things, and I wanted to use this post specifically as one part primer, one part opinion piece as someone who has lived through the last alignment while being a student athlete at the time for some unique perspectives.
In case you've been living under a rock this summer, a few things have happened in the college football world, namely that the U.S Supreme Court ruled against the NCAA in NCAA v. Alston that the organization's restrictions on "education related benefits" violated Anti-Trust law. In layman's terms, NCAA athletes now cannot be punished for use of their name, image, or likeness (NIL for short) by the organization. Considering the current political moment in the U.S in tandem with the fact this is far from the most worker's right friendly court (or country, for that matter) , a unanimous ruling just cements how absurd the NCAA's position of allowing universities and corporate networks alike to make billions off the backs of talented men and women whilst pushing ridiculous circular logic that granted student athletes less rights than their classmates. A random normal college student could become a hit YouTube or TikTok star and monetize their fame with zero issue but a college athlete risks forfeiting his eligibility for harmless events like signing memorabilia? Judge Kavanaugh put it best, "“Nowhere else in America can businesses get away with agreeing not to pay their workers a fair market rate on the theory that their product is defined by not paying their workers a fair market rate. … The NCAA is not above the law.”
Now I just wanna make this point from the jump, and of course being a former student athlete myself I am subject to bias, but this was an objectively good thing and needed to happen, regardless of the short term fallout, and don't let anyone, be it the NCAA or universities trying to deflect blame for their own greed and ass-covering in the near future convince you otherwise.
I place it akin to the legalization of weed in that things in the shadows that were already happening as seen in past controversies with the Ohio State tattoo scandal and basically the entirety of mid-2000s USC (Give Reggie Bush back his Heisman by the way!) can now be brought to light and regulated to ensure safety, fair play, and finally give players a fraction of the pie they've more than earned having a billion dollar industry built on their backs .There will be obvious growing pains and abuse cases that will crop up and yes certainly some areas with larger media markets and established brands may have an initial leg up, but over time those issues can get smoothed out from trial and error.
“As far as paying players, professionalizing college athletics, that’s where you lose me,” “I’ll go do something else because there’s enough entitlement in this world as there is.”
Still waiting on that retirement announcement Coach Swinney!
From a player's point of view, I think it might incentivize some to pursue playing time and be the big fish in small/medium ponds in order to make a name for themselves quicker than just riding the pine 2-3 years at a blue blood. Some might say kids fresh out of high school shouldn't be exposed to this kind of monetary influence, but in this day and age of media, personal brand management is an essential skill that will very much carry over into the real world, more so than many of the things they may learn in college proper. Making sure they don't get lost in the sauce and lose sight of their original purpose is another key life lesson to be learned here. In some cases, players who might build an especially large following in college (Think a Johnny Manziel or Tim Tebow) might even be incentivized to stay in school more so than they are now.
NIL is admittedly somewhat tangential to the current conference realignment craziness but I do feel it is a large amount of evidence towards this belief of mine; The NCAA is losing its grip on amateurism and the money machine of college sports , and in this ensuing power vacuum, both conferences and media corporations alike are itching to take its place.
Hard numbers, Courtesy of Forbes
The core issue of all of this comes down the $$$$ and by proxy the TV deals that each conference signs with their respective networks, the major players being ESPN, FOX Sports, and CBS. UT/OU feel the Big XII is due to continuously lag behind the other major conferences in terms of both money and general exposure and hope to fix that by jumping ship to the SEC. As much as I will mock Texas for having one of the bigger brand value-to-on field success discrepancies in college football in recent years (as well as some of the fans bragging about the SEC move in the face of this discrepancy like snobby dorks), I'm not going to pretend like I wouldn't have jumped at the opportunity if the shoe was on the foot that the prospect of solidifying their financial standing and potentially reinvigorating the on-field product like it has their former (soon to be again I guess?) rivals down in College Station.
Like even the simplest animal, the instinct for self-preservation and survival will always win out, but what's good for UT/OU is not necessarily good for the college football landscape as a whole, and they shouldn't really be all that surprised at the vitriol being spewed their way by those who'll be left in limbo staring down the barrels of great financial hardship and conference homelessness by these moves. At what point do other notable big name brand schools acquiesce to the same kind of pressures they did, leaving the same kind of messes in their wake? When and where does the line get drawn? It does dive a bit into conjecture and taking bits from anonymous sources, but some schools very much feel the heat of the figurative college football world eating serpent that the SEC/ESPN could become and want to to follow if only not the be left behind in its wake. Certainly their competitors in FOX/CBS and other opposing conferences might not take this sitting down, the Big XII definitely isn't with commissioner Bowlsby seeking to eek out his pound of finanicial flesh. Once the snowball gets rolling like it already has though, it might be too late, and what's exactly to stop them from deciding they want full control of the college football landscape and seceding from the NCAA entirely once they've hit an appropriate size in their minds? It sounds alarmist but the thought has very much crossed the minds of both talking heads and university higher ups alike
Funnily enough, a similar situation to the current realignment recently happened in the world of European soccer. A cadre of the most elite European football clubs worked in secret, dissatisfied with the current structure and policy of the UEFA Champions League, to create their own league which would effectively grant them full control of the pinnacle of soccer on the planet. It was known as The Super League
A name oozing with creativity
The ensuing backlash from fans, players, and even respective country governments alike was so massive and overwhelming, many of the clubs immediately reneged on their commitments and fired high ranking officials and executives who supported it. It is a clear example of how fan and general community pressure can overcome self serving greed, but could such a thing happen here in the states concerning the current realities of college football? Perhaps, especially when more and more fans and universities realize their schools and teams are liable to be on the outside looking in of college football Elysium.
I'll end with this point. In the never ending pursuit of money, I feel that a large part of the draw that has made college sports so profitable in the first place is being ignored. In many ways college sports feels like a natural extension of high school sports, localities with their own unique regional quirks duking it out with their neighbors for bragging rights. Regionalism is very much a thing and it is how many of these now big name brands came to be in the first place. One of the things I've hated seeing the most during these realignment phases is the ending of decades of tradition in rivalries like Missouri-Kansas or Texas-Texas A&M just for the sake of the almighty dollar. I'll be honest in that for myself, the CyHawk rivalry was never the biggest deal to me, but seeing the passion that many of my Iowa born and raised friends had for the game made me want to try that much harder for them. A significant part of the reason I even chose Iowa State was for the opportunity to play against so many of the schools I idolized growing up and get sweet revenge for overlooking me. The risks are of the sport becoming an all-encompassing national entity that cuts out and alienates some of these regions and a borderline developmental league for the pros, which in itself isn't a necessarily bad thing, but there's a reason things like the NBA's G-League don't garner a ton of eyeballs. Alienating a core constituency that craves that regional flair is a losing proposition for all parties involved.
Ultimately, there's only so much we can do as individuals in the short term. Many of the potential changes that would ensue would take at least a year to enact. Despite all of the previous discussion, officially things have moved at a snail's place since the original announcement of the UT/OU move and will likely stay that way for a while Controlling what you can control and not sweating the rest is one of the most essential skills I've learned from all my years of football, and so I'm going to do my best to blot out all of this nonsense and enjoy the fact I get to see my consensus top-10 alma mater take the field in a month's time and let the best AD in the land in Jamie Pollard handle all the hard work. For the sake of your sanity and well being I hope you can manage to do the same!
