Two years ago, a Southeastern Conference NIL collective paid $150,000 to keep a defensive end from transferring. To retain him this season, it had to pay $1.5 million — and that’s just for one player.
There isn’t a day that goes by when university presidents aren’t forced to make difficult choices about the allocation of finite resources. Until recently, these decisions were hard, but navigable. Now, if you are a Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) university president, you are going to be held responsible for what happens next, not only to college football but to women’s collegiate sports and Olympic sports, which are fueled by football revenues.
Our balkanized system of college football — the conference structure itself — is at the heart of the problem. Recent conference realignments have made the issue even worse, disrupting traditional rivalries — the heart and soul of college football — as well as diluting regional matchups and increasing cost and travel burdens for colleges and athletes.
Competitive balance has eroded, with the same few teams dominating every year. The introduction of name, image, and likeness (NIL) rights, increased use of the transfer portal, and lack of salary caps are exacerbating the divide and have the potential to bankrupt the entire system.
Certainly, there are many traditionalists who love football inside the Atlantic Coast Conference, Big Ten, Big 12, and SEC. But those conferences are now unrecognizable, stretched and contorted in ways that make no sense and undervalue the game. The disruption has been even more extreme for the Pac-12, and other conferences will follow. If we don’t act now, sustainable college sports will shrink to 30-40 institutions. Without intervention, these factors will ultimately prove to be the demise of intercollegiate athletics as we have come to know them.
In the absence of a major rethinking of the college football system, the sport will evolve in one of two ways:
Our balkanized system of college football — the conference structure itself — is at the heart of the problem.
The first scenario is the implosion of FBS, with colleges and conferences jockeying for position and cannibalizing each other in a race to the bottom. Perhaps only 36 institutions could be left standing, barely able to afford the House settlement and soaring NIL costs of top-tier football. The other 100 FBS colleges will be fighting over revenue scraps, and by 2030 they will become largely extinct in college sports.
A second scenario is that the SEC and Big Ten will save themselves and accelerate the implosion by creating their own 36-institution “Super League” with football, basketball, baseball, softball, and a few other revenue sports. The NCAA and the rest of FBS will be left with no real revenue or future.
FBS presidents must take control of their most lucrative athletic asset and establish an independent, impartial entity to reorganize college football for the benefit of the 136 FBS colleges and athletes in football and all sports.
We are not advocating for the professionalization of college football. And we are not advocating for any particular group. Rather we are advocating for FBS presidents to make sure we are listening carefully to all options. For example, there is a new group called College Sports Tomorrow (CST), composed of college and pro-sports executives who are embedded in higher education in various ways. CST has recommended reorganizing FBS into the College Student Football League, or CSFL, a single, unified college football league designed to secure the future of not only football, but all college sports. While we respect CST, this group itself is not the point. It’s their ideas, their principles, and the substance of their approach that we encourage FBS presidents to contemplate. Their proposal was outlined in The Wall Street Journal earlier this week. It is an idea worth consideration and discussion.
The new football league they’ve proposed signals their comprehension of the difference between college and the pros. It would encompass all 130-plus FBS institutions. It would replace the NCAA and the College Football Playoff while maintaining aspects of the governance role of the existing conferences. The top 72 programs would compete in the Power 12 Conference, with the remaining 64 teams facing off in a second conference, the Group of 8.
The CSFL would improve college football and all of college athletics in three important ways:
As university presidents, we need to get back in the game and take responsibility for our future.
First, centralized league scheduling and smaller, tighter geographic divisions would ensure great matchups and competitive games; this means more colleges would stay in the race for longer — all while protecting and restoring historic rivalries. Postseason entrants would be determined by results on the field, not by a committee.
Second, the league would partner with a college student football players’ association that would work hand-in-hand with colleges to ensure athletes are treated as true partners, with compensation policies developed through negotiations that balance the freedoms of athletes with competitive balance of the overall league. Football players would be full-time students at the colleges and universities they attend. The CSFL would pay the football players directly, with no union on campus. We believe this would protect football players whether the courts rule them to be employees or not. All other college sports would remain in the current conference system or return to their traditional geographic conferences and financially benefit from growing college-football ratings and engagement.
Third, the CSFL would be owned by the FBS institutions and use a revenue-sharing model that rewards top programs for their legacy value and on-field performance, while placing guardrails around NIL, player salaries, and transfer portals to ensure a more level playing field. A more level playing field will increase viewership, which boosts the value and revenue that football can provide to the players themselves, as well as the rest of the portfolio of sports. Revenue from streamlined and better-coordinated sponsorships and media deals could be reinvested in rewarding athletes, fostering a sustainable and flourishing flywheel that would continue to support Olympic sports, women’s collegiate sports, and other intercollegiate athletics.
We have made no commitment to CST or this exact approach. But as university presidents, we need to get back in the game and take responsibility for our future. We can’t rely on commissioners or Congress to do this. More engagement, urgency, and leadership are needed from all of us to breathe new life into college sports and create a sustainable new model that is steeped in the cherished traditions we all want to preserve.
