I have been a fan of college football since 1941, when I saw my first game at Pitt Stadium. The Panthers were upset by Duke, 27 to 7, with future Steeler Steve Lach catching two touchdown passes. That was a different era – players played “both ways”, offense and defense; the single wing was still in vogue; and professional football took a back seat to the college game. In those days my loyalties were equally divided between Pitt and Penn State.
Even then there were questions about the amateur status of the players. There were many rumors of scholarships being greatly supplemented by imaginary summer jobs. Nonetheless, in most cases the players were true student-athletes. There were three varsity football players in my thirty-six-student dorm at Penn State in 1950, and I observed first hand their difficulties prospering in the two dramatically different environments. One of them, an outstanding fullback, couldn’t handle the academic requirements of the role and dropped out of school permanently at the end of the year.
In the ensuing years the game evolved gradually. The introduction of unlimited substitution led to two platoon football and specialists. Emphasis on passing produced a more exciting game with remarkable support by fans. Many large universities began to welcome crowds of 100,000 fans at their home games. Their revenues grew sufficiently, enabling them to support numerous minor men’s and women’s sports. This evolution has accelerated greatly in the past four or five years and is threatening to become a revolution that will completely revise college football in the near future. Key components in this acceleration are the massive television contracts being awarded to major conferences, the initiation of NIL (name, image, likeness) reimbursement for the players, and the advent of the transfer portal.
Television money has already dramatically changed the landscape of Division I college football. CBS, NBC, and Fox will pay the Big-10 Conference over one billion dollars per year to televise its sporting events in the next seven years. Similarly, ESPN and ABC will pay the Southeastern Conference (SEC) three hundred million dollars a year for the next ten years for the rights to its events. These deals will net each conference member from fifty to one hundred million dollars each year. This bonanza, unfortunately, does not extend to members of other conferences; the consequence is a massive realignment with key universities leaving them and joining the Big-10 and SEC. The former PAC-10 has been gutted by the departure of USC, UCLA, Washington, and Oregon to the (already fourteen team) Big-10. Similarly, Texas and Oklahoma have bolted the Big Twelve to swell the SEC to fourteen teams. It is probable that the future will see two super conferences, each operating at several levels above the surviving minor conferences.
The introduction of NIL obviously was well intentioned, to permit athletes to participate in the revenue generated from sale of jerseys and souvenirs bearing their names, images, and likenesses. Once this achieved legitimacy in our legal system, a movement to force universities to consider their “student-athletes” as employees began. It is expected to be enforced in the next few years. NIL has evolved into an opportunity for wealthy fans to pay stars to play for their favorite teams. Nebraska coach Matt Ruhle recently reported that the going rate for a starting quarterback this year is two million dollars.
The transfer portal is another well-intentioned idea, intended to provide athletes the opportunity to escape an unsuccessful situation and try their luck elsewhere. Initially they could do this one time, by “sitting out” a year at their new university. Today it is unlimited and there is no penalty for switching schools. This year there are over two thousand amateur “student-athletes” shopping around for the best (NIL!) deal for them for next Fall. This is certainly beneficial for the individuals, but it too highlights the demise of the amateur athlete (at least in football and basketball).
So, where are we headed? It appears to me that the ultimate result will be a pair of twenty-four team super-conferences staffed by well-paid athletes, in effect professional minor leagues with their teams loosely connected to major universities. There will be no pretense that they are students, simply employees of the schools, like janitors, clerical help, or professors. The primarily function of these conferences will be vocational, to train the athletes for future careers in the NFL.
What does this mean for the other (314) Division I schools? The massive influx of money into the super-conferences plus the opportunity to pay their “employee-athletes” handsomely will produce a new level of elitism. The schools who don’t make it into the super-conferences will still be subject to the same rules for transfers and employee-athletes, but none of the advantages. I suspect they will attempt to revert back to earlier concepts, but be hampered by contemporary regulations.
And what about the other “amateur” sports? It is easy to imagine the super-conferences taking over basketball in a fashion similar to football, with all the same concepts – free agency (the transfer portal) and lucrative NIL contracts. But this cannot extend to the so-called Olympic sports. Penn State currently claims it supports nearly nine hundred scholarship students on thirty-one different Varsity teams. Being part of a super-conference member they should be able to continue that practice. The non-elite Division I schools will not have that luxury; the future for Olympic sports there may be in informal club teams.
I enjoy watching the Steeler games on television, as entertainment; they are filled with drama and suspense. Nonetheless I would gladly trade a whole season of Black and Gold TV performances for one October 1940s afternoon at Pitt Stadium with Dick Rothermund or a delightful day trip to State College with my wife and Dick and Mary White to watch the Nittany Lions in the 1960s.