It’s fun to focus on the games played on the field.
But the real to-the-victor-goes-the-spoils competition in college sports is going on in places you wish it wasn’t.
Down the hallways of the U.S. Capitol. On Zoom, and by e-mail between D.C. and Birmingham, and Chicago, and Charlotte, where the SEC, the Big Ten and the ACC are headquartered.
Nobody else matters. Texas and Oklahoma bolting the Big XII for the SEC has marginalized those spurned name brands just to the west of us. The west coast is a wasteland, with remnants of the Pac 12 unsure what their collective will be called after USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington slide into the Big Ten and Stanford and Cal stretch coast to coast to join the ACC.
That conference is the poster child for college sports’ hookups and breakups. Just as the Bay Area big boys prepare for cross country travel, the ACC is facing an exodus by standard-bearers North Carolina, Clemson and Florida State.
This week the NCAA and the real powers-that-be in college sports – the King Kong schools in the SEC, Big Ten and those atop the ACC pecking order – will vote whether to settle a federal class-action lawsuit challenging the current business model, and seeking full-scale revenue sharing for athletes.
The base amount to be awarded, some in back pay to athletes at Power 5 schools prior to 2021, is almost $3 billion. Then there’s the pay scale to the players today and in the future.
As is usually the case in college sports, the power mongers get hurt the least. And they’ll feel some burn, shouldering as much as $1.4 billion of that amount, to be spread over several years. But they have the fat TV and media rights contracts, and huge revenues from season ticket and merchandising, to cope with it.
About $1.6 billion will be carved away from the NCAA revenue that gets shared with less-prominent conferences, the mid-majors and small majors, and even the nearly big-time ones like the American and the Mountain West. Pity those that include our favorite Division I schools – Louisiana Tech’s Conference USA, ULM’s Sun Belt, the Southland that Northwestern State has called home for nearly 40 years, and the proud but fairly poor SWAC with Grambling as a iconic member.
It’s a dark and deep rabbit hole. And it’s real. Will have real landscape-altering implications, sooner than you’d like.
This week, administrators, coaches and fans of Southland schools are savoring the pending announcement that Stephen F. Austin has realized the folly of the WAC and is coming back to the SLC. It is good news for everybody, SFA and its former conference colleagues.
But it’s a garden hose going against a six-alarm fire.
By the time the new landscape of college sports stops shaking, there’s going to be a lot of agonizing budget decisions made, at all stops but especially down the line.
The money machines like LSU, Alabama, Texas, the Aggies, the Sooners and them Jorga Bulldawngs. O-HI-O and the Wolverines, the Golden Domers, et al will quiver a bit but lurch on. Their operations will radically change, but they will survive on top of the mountains.
The other 300-or-so current members of NCAA Division I? They’ll go through a massive makeover that they didn’t want, can’t alter, but have to handle.
If you’re old enough, you might recall the split-level of college sports before the mid-1970s, when the NCAA created divisions I, I-AA, II and III. Tech, NSU, Grambling, and Northeast in Monroe were clearly relegated to a secondary level of championships, called college division or even NAIA, and opportunities to play the big schools were infrequent.
Prepare for a 50-year shift backwards. How it’s branded won’t be the big issue. How it’s funded will be.
In the most dire scenario, we’ll see the end of Cinderella in March Madness. You won’t enjoy a run by Fresno State or Stonybrook or Coastal Carolina all the way to Omaha. No Ragin’ Cajuns in Oklahoma City.
The Group of 5 having a real shot at the big college football prize was already a fallacy before it began.
In the new order of college sports, it’s very likely that NSU, Tech, Grambling and ULM will become much better acquainted with Southern Arkansas, Henderson State, Ouachita Baptist, even Centenary, East Texas Baptist and Louisiana Christian.
There’s more common ground there than trying to dance on a financial cliff. Brace yourself for the shock waves.
Contact Doug at sbjdoug@gmail.com
