College sports as you know changed forever over three weeks in July, and the reasons why were two developments involving money. One of them, the ability of college athletes to profit from the use of their name, image or likeness is positive. The other — plans by Texas and Oklahoma to join the SEC — is not so good.
The second change is the rich-getting-richer on steroids, concentrating most of college football’s elite teams (and the millions that follow them) into one conference. The SEC will soon be so powerful it could actually break away from the NCAA one day and be freed of its annoying oversight. When you’re an 800-pound gorilla, you can do things like that.
But first the good news: the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision June 21, which took effect July 1, that college athletes can finally reap some of the windfall created by their exploits. Like actors or pro athletes, they can now make money by licensing the use of their name, image or likeness to any company that can cut a deal with them.
A reform like this had long been sought, and for good reason. College basketball and football (and really, only those two sports) are multibillion-dollar enterprises. Top coaches get paid millions each year, and their top schools rake in tens of millions each year.
Now some of the athletes can hitch a ride on this gravy train. Advertisers, video game companies, clothing manufactures and others will want to make deals, mostly with big-name players. Some of the bigger stars are already cashing in for a phenomenon just beginning.
Alabama sophomore quarterback Bryce Young has already inked deals worth nearly $1 million for the use of his likeness. He is all of 19 and has not technically been named the starter for Nick Saban’s powerhouse. If he has a couple of good years at Bama before he enters the NFL draft, he will already be a multimillionaire.
If deals like that can happen in the first few weeks of this new era, bigger deals will follow with other stars. For the top hundred or so college athletes, each should be able to rake in at least several hundred thousand every year.
Like any big new thing, not all of the change will be good. Some freshmen will sign with the school where an advertiser will offer them the best deal. Some will transfer to other schools for the same reason. Teams that want to keep their stars will encourage boosters or local companies to show them a little love. But capitalism is like that, with unusual winners and losers, so let the financial games begin.
Plans by Texas and Oklahoma to depart the Big 12 for the SEC, which leaked last week, are not so benign. Almost every other college in the nation is disgusted by the power move. Well, except for the other megapowers in the SEC. Again, money is the underlying reason.
Most profitable college sports for 2021
(annual income; all are football)
1. University of Texas at Austin - $112,946,938
2. University of Michigan-Ann Arbor - $74,839,669
3. University of Georgia - $73,865,914
4. University of Notre Dame - $65,308,589
5. University of Nebraska-Lincoln - $59,761,297
6. University of Wisconsin-Madison - $58,230,546
7. Louisiana State University - $56,631,450
8. University of Tennessee-Knoxville - $55,851,736
9. Ohio State University - $55,014,561
10. Pennsylvania State University - $51,595,027
Source: CollegeRaptor.com
The Longhorns and Sooners had been making about $34 million per year in the Big 12, which ain’t too shabby. Once they shift to the SEC, however, that should increase by about $16 million per year. These are already two of the most lucrative football teams in college sports, and it’s like they both won the lottery.
If that were the only result of this seismic shift, college sports could probably suck it up and deal with it. But the new and improved SEC will have so many top-10 teams that it will virtually be a league of its own. The current system of the so-called Power Five conferences could be crumbling before our eyes. Once the dominoes start tumbling, the other conferences will be thinking about adding teams too or forming new alliances.
For now, the SEC remains the big dog. The final four teams in the college football playoffs could be SEC teams, if the powers-that-be let enough of them into the final scramble. And they’d better stay on the SEC’s good side, because the conference could decide one day to leave the NCAA. With complete independence, the SEC could negotiate its own TV deals. Instead of skimming the financial cream of college football, it could guzzle most of the bottle.
None of this has anything to do with traditional rivalries or bowl games. It’s all about cold hard cash. The SEC is quite wealthy now, but it wants more. A few years from now, the landscape of college sports will be completely different from what you and I grew up watching. All of this started happening in the span of three weeks in July. You just saw history unfold, whether you knew it or not.
TTaschinger@BeaumontEnterprise.com