Thursday, May 02, 2024

The Rich Get Richer, College Edition

As college athletics trundle blindfolded and barefoot through the furniture-filled, Lego-littered room of athlete empowerment and conference upheaval, questions often arise. Among them: Will major college sports look different? And, Is it really all about money? 

The answers, respectively, are ‘yes’ and ‘hell yes.’ The next installment of oversized collectives and “Our team has to go where?” commences in the fall when the two alphas – the Big Ten and Southeastern conferences – and the mid-alphabet, reactionary Big 12 and Atlantic Coast conferences re-open for business. The majority of Division I programs will see little difference in how they conduct their affairs, except as witnesses to the yawning financial disparities in the system. 

The latest example comes in the form of the College Football Playoff, which expands to 12 teams next season and whose rewards and payouts are heavily tilted toward the SEC and Big Ten. College snoop Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports dropped a well sourced, deep dive into the origins of the new playoff structure. Read it for yourself, but a couple of key takeaways are that the arrangement might not have been so one-sided had all parties been able to agree on a playoff format as recently as a couple of years ago, and the SEC and Big Ten went full brinksmanship and aren’t shy about displaying who’s in charge. 

Did I include this image of Greg
Sankey and Ted Cruz to damn by
association? Hard to say.
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said that his conference would have walked away from the playoff and figured out something on its own. “When we ended that set of meetings in January 2022 without a decision, I was clear: If you are going to walk away from this opportunity, we are going to reevaluate our position on format, revenue sharing and governance,” he said in Dellenger’s piece. Tony Petitti, commissioner of the Big Ten, said that “if we couldn’t craft a deal, we’d look at other options. We would have started over. Without seeing better alignment, we weren’t going to sign. We were 100 percent confident and made it clear that we were only going to do a deal that worked for us.” 

The Big Ten and SEC already distance themselves financially from the rest of Division I due to their massive football TV contracts. Both are expected to distribute in the neighborhood of $70 million annually to each member school going forward. The ACC and Big 12 will pay out approximately $40-45 million annually to their schools, under terms of their own TV contracts. Now add the new playoff deal, which will pay out an average of about $1.3 billion per year for six years. The SEC and Big Ten each will receive 29 percent of the revenue, the ACC 17.1 percent, and the Big 12 14.7 percent. Notre Dame will receive one percent, and the 64 schools in the so-called Group of Five will split the remaining nine percent, with a few extra nuggets and sweeteners thrown in. 

In terms of actual dollars, SEC and Big Ten schools will receive more than $20 million apiece, while ACC and Big 12 schools get $10-12 million each. Totaling it up, the discrepancy between the Big Two and the second two grows from $30-35 million per year to between $40 and $50 million annually. My public school arithmetic skills suggest that means a $200 million gap between first- and second-tier athletic departments inside five years. 

The Big Ten and SEC Bigfooted the discussions a) because they reasoned that they were the most successful participants in the playoff historically and brought more value to the table, and b) because they could. Sankey even disclosed that the 29 percent figure in the new deal was a compromise, that the initial proposal was an even greater cut but came down as part of negotiations. That, boys and girls, is leverage. 

In any case, upper tier college football will begin to look more like European pro soccer and the English Premier League, excepting things such as relegation and stoppage time and foreign financing – for now, anyway. Everybody’s playing the same game, but there are a handful of deep-pocketed franchises that can afford the best players, the best facilities and simply outspend the competition. It’s already that way to an extent, but the funding gap will make it even more pronounced. 



The SEC and Big Ten also reason that they and their schools need more money because their expenses will be greater. Travel ain’t cheap when your league stretches from New Jersey to southern California and the Pacific Northwest, or from central Florida to Oklahoma. Though the newly constituted Big 12 and ACC say: Tell me about it. 

The greatest expense, however, will be athlete compensation and whatever form that takes. Toward that end, the SEC and Big Ten have begun preliminary research into areas such as collective bargaining and athletes-as-employee status. Many figure that’s how it will play out in the effort to avoid out-and-out bidding wars, to get a handle on costs, and to produce something resembling consistent spread sheets in the event that private equity firms want to partner up with leagues or schools. What, you thought hedge funds and the mega-wealthy wouldn’t be interested in eight- and nine-figure revenue streams because the company letterhead is attached to college sports? You thought that college presidents and governing boards would decline access to that kind of cash, given those groups' possible mercenary practices? You’re new around here, aren’t you? 

Bemoan the fact that money has forever changed the college athletics that we grew up with and get all misty about. Though it’s worth noting that the old system was a charade in many ways – an underground economy hidden behind the mantel of amateurism and the glow of youth. Nine- and ten-figure deals disrupted and distended the system but also brought the entire enterprise into the light and revealed actions and motives. Most important, it gave the primary participants, athletes, additional freedom and a long overdue cut, as the old structure was both unfair and, as courts have repeatedly ruled of late, illegal. Change is afoot, and if we don’t know about the how, at least we have a pretty good idea about the why.

32 comments:

Whitney said...

Well said, OBXDave. Sadly.

And does that furniture-filled, Lego-littered room also have Tonka trucks in it?

Whitney said...

And continuing the conversation from last post, Marls has met me, and I had MRSA!

Not that we need to continue that comment thread. Unless we want to go on a run of David Roth VH jokes.

rob said...

i'm not saying marls took a culture from you and killed the boeing whistleblower. but i'm not not saying that, either.

zman said...

Is "took a culture from you" a new euphemism I haven't caught onto yet? Or did Marls misappropriate Whit's SEVA lifestyle?

rob said...

marls swabbed whit's mrsa-mouth, got that petri dish flowing. spread that shit around to keep the little man down.

Whitney said...

weird

Whitney said...

Also, that was 2006. That there is a kind of staph staying power that I don’t usually demonstrate.

zman said...

Lamborghini MRSAy!

rob said...

jojo and i are doing a book signing tomorrow. that sounds as ridiculous to me as it does to you. this has been a fun experience.

rootsminer said...

I have now seen Swan Lake twice in two weeks. Lotta culture for this guy. The Jester was a crowd favorite and had to pose for many photos with adoring fans.

zman said...

Did Jester strictly enforce the hard deck?

rob said...

pics post, rootsy! i'm trying to get a video of my kid's choreographic debut. their piece was bonkers, in a good way.

rob said...

big day here in the bato household. we're doing a book signing this evening, and my wife just got a new job in the school system that she thought was a reach when she applied for it. everything's coming up milhouse!

Mark said...

Biggest game for the Magic tonight since 2010 in Orlando. I seriously looked at tickets but anything decent was $250-300. Gonna pass and watch at home but...Greg is in town so he's leaving his kids with his parents and coming over to watch. Let's go!

zman said...

I heard the Knicks won a game last night?

Mark said...

That series was so fucking entertaining. I'm glad the Knicks won but I could've gone for more games.

OBX dave said...

Hey Mark, are Brunson, Doncic and Jokic three of starting five in 'old man rec league style' all-star team? Mostly, I mean pace they play. Very measured and calculating -- almost looks comfortable -- while everybody else zooms around them. Though Jokic skill set and vision convinces me he's an X-Man or an alien.

zman said...

I'm really glad I didn't volunteer to speak at zdaughter's career day, one of the dads was a Navy SEAL and now he's a doctor. My inner Costanza would've turned the whole thing into a Curb Your Enthusiasm as I accused him of not really being a SEAL, then getting my ass kicked, then accusing him of being the type of guy who kills civilians and mocking whatever area of medicine he practices in, then being thrown out of the school.

rootsminer said...

You'd have crushed it, Z. And if you didn't, it could have been content.

Marls said...

Navy seal turned proctologist?

rob said...

according to a friend of ours who came to the book signing last night, her 9 year-old said at bedtime, 'it's so cool that we know a real author'. i wonder who he knows.

but for real, that's some heartwarming shit right there. had a great time meeting the public last night. and the doggo actually made it for 90 minutes getting a lot of attention. this experience has been really neat.

zman said...

Right? The kids asked questions like "How many people did you kill?" and "What missions did you go on?" and the guy replied "It's classified" to all of them. He also said that he's still a SEAL and he could be called into action at any time, but at this point he's probably too old for that to happen. How do you follow that without losing all dignity? zdaughter scoffed "The next guy works in marketing for Home Depot."

rob said...

z’s canaries slipped into the final spot in the four-team playoff for the last promotion place in the championship. so you’re sayin’ there’s a chance.

Whitney said...

Good stuff, Writer Rob. Love it.

Whitney said...

Witnessed my first-born graduate from college last night. Every bit as gratifying and cool as I thought it might be.

rob said...

love that. long way from our first-born kids on the floor of the cowboy cafe in car carriers.

OBX dave said...

Congrats, Rob and Whit. Accomplishments, milestones, age, something.

And z, I still think you could have brought down the house with tales of not only what you do but what you did. I mean, killer lab monkeys and colorful family elders and travel and ridiculous cases you can't really elaborate on? Maybe with some Guidophonetics, as Whit described? It's gold, Jerry, gold! Let's see Mr. SEAL Classified top that.

Danimal said...

Very cool, Robby.

Mark said...

To answer your question from last night OBX Dave- I agree. All play at their own pace and have great footwork and deceleration. They all are also emblematic of something I harp on constantly. We far too often equate athleticism with explosive speed and vertical jump ability and it’s so much more than that.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander merits mention in that group as well. He’s more of a typical NBA athlete than those 3 but he’s not some crazy explosive guy. He (more often than not) beats defenders with angles, an array of pump/body fakes and pace.

Mark said...

This is also why it’s absurd when people act like Bird wouldn’t be able to compete in today’s NBA. He’d be just fine. Maybe better with the freedom of movement and increased emphasis on the 3. Guys like him and Magic would always be great.

Mark said...

My wife is out of town (again) and my daughter is having a bunch of friends over today for a semi pool party. Not sure why I agreed to this other than the fact that I’m an idiot.

Mark said...

Shitty way to end the season for the Magic but the trajectory is high for them. Gotta get some shooters and another creator this offseason.

Paolo is great and will get better but he needs help.