Does College Football Have a Future?

The Academe Blog has my essay today about the looming decline of big-time college football.

The NCAA Business Model and the Inevitable Decline of College Football

Big-time college football is back, with all the tradition and pageantry, but the sport may soon face a well-deserved existential reckoning for two reasons—one physical and the other financial. First, parents may no longer allow their children to participate in youth and high school football, where the numbers have been declining for years. Even former Green Bay Packers quarterback Bret Favre says tackle football is too dangerous for children under fourteen, and nothing makes it any safer when kids get bigger and faster. As evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy continues to mount, more parents will steer their children to safer sports such as basketball and soccer.

There will always be high school students hoping for college scholarships, but that brings us to the second problem. Recent changes in the law, although aimed at ending the unjust exploitation of players, are likely to have the unintended effect of undermining the competitive balance in college football. That will ultimately reduce the number of teams and thus the number of scholarships, further diminishing football’s lure for aspiring students from all economic backgrounds.

Bowing to pressure from state legislatures and the courts, the NCAA has reluctantly suspended its “name, image and likeness rules for all incoming and current student-athletes,” meaning that top players can not only sell autographs and personalized jerseys—which they have always done under the table—but can also endorse products, businesses, and trading cards. That has been a bonanza for stars at high visibility programs such as Alabama and Ohio State, where quarterbacks have already signed seven-figure deals, but it won’t mean anything for offensive linemen at downstream programs. Even Stanford’s coach acknowledged that his top-tier university, with an endowment of almost $30 billion, will not be able to compete with Alabama for prospects.

The handful of schools that perennially contend for championships will have even greater rewards to dangle before high school recruits. What outstanding seventeen-year-old would turn down a guaranteed $1 million to play at, say, Georgia or Texas, in favor of an otherwise desirable spot at Kansas State or Purdue? Unlike the National Football League, there is no draft for college football, and thus no way to ensure even a minimal distribution of talent. The best players are already concentrated at the top programs. That is only going to intensify, especially if sponsors like shoe companies begin steering players to favored coaches and schools.

And the future is more fraught than that. In a unanimous decision formally limited to “education-related benefits, the US Supreme Court has given a strong indication that antitrust law will eventually apply across the board to college football. As Justice Kavanaugh explained in his powerful concurring opinion in NCAA v. Alston, “it is highly questionable whether the NCAA and its member colleges can justify not paying student athletes a fair share of the revenues.”

Like the NIL (name, image, likeness) changes, compensation reform will initially provide well-earned benefits to players, but it will also mean that the most high-flying schools, with wealthy boosters and tens of millions in football money, will have yet another way to attract the best athletes. Furthermore, a strict application of antitrust law would mean that the NCAA could no longer impose the current limit of eighty-five “scholarships” for each school. The Alabamas and Clemsons would not only be able to recruit the top players, they could stack the best three or four at each position, making it nearly impossible for less advantaged schools to offer anything close to competition.

The NFL solved this problem with a player draft, roster limitations, and a salary cap, but that is only permissible under antitrust law because the provisions are included in a union contract, negotiated by the NFL Players Association, with representatives from all thirty-two teams. There are about 130 teams in the Football Bowl Subdivision, the top level in the NCAA, with nearly complete player turnover every four years. Even if industry-wide unionization could be nominally achieved—which is highly unlikely, with every new cohort of high school of seniors competing for spots—it is doubtful that the courts would allow future players’ rights to be negotiated away by an inevitably unrepresentative union. Single-school, or conference wide unions might be more feasible, but they could not negotiate consistent restrictions for the entire sport.

The concentration of power at the top is already happening in college football, with high-profile programs at Texas and Oklahoma abandoning the hapless Big 12 for the more lucrative SEC. That might seem like a good deal for now, but it may not be so rewarding if the SEC becomes the only de facto major league. Television money is vast but not unlimited. The more the SEC soaks it all up, the less incentive there will be for universities in other conferences to invest millions in football.

The NFL has prospered thanks to revenue sharing, an equalizing draft, and a salary cap, none of which can easily be instituted in college football. Unless the most successful programs somehow learn to exercise self-restraint—a quality not in evidence during the recent scramble to join more prosperous conferences—the sport may become untenable, with only a handful of teams competitive at the highest level. In that case, the total number of scholarship opportunities will decrease as less successful schools drop football out of frustration. The threat of injuries will loom even larger for wary parents whose children cannot command huge NIL paydays, but who face the same risk of brain damage for ever-smaller returns.

As Justice Kavanaugh observed, the NCAA’s “business model” depends on “using unpaid student athletes to generate billions of dollars in revenue” for colleges and coaches. That injustice must end. And if it means that most universities will ultimately stop fielding semi-professional football teams, well, so much the better (and healthier).