The Monetary and Intangible Merits of College Football

When I think of college football, I think of my dad. Living in Ann Arbor, we have bonded over our shared love of the University of Michigan Wolverines football team. We love the energy, the competition, and especially the atmosphere at the Wolverines’ stadium: The Big House, which is the biggest stadium in the U.S. (University of Michigan, “Michigan Stadium”). We will often discuss the team’s best players like star running back Blake “the great” Corum or big games like Michigan versus Ohio State, renowned in college football as “The Game”; of course, we will also analyze our chances of winning it all (a national championship) and whether coach Jim Harbaugh can get us there. I greatly cherish the connection I have with my dad over this team and school, and it has kept me a Wolverine fan despite attending school at USC. However, in the current landscape, most people would say that college football is a business. With the institution of college football becoming increasingly more for-profit, it risks losing the intangible elements that make college sports so special.

This is a natural course, however, as college football is very profitable. The coaches for these teams reflect this. The average salary for D1 head football coaches is $1.75 million annually, with the top 10 highest paid coaches averaging $9.6 million. At the top of this list is Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban, who gets paid 11.7 million each year (NBC Sports Chicago, NBC). These high salaries are indicative of the sales that these coaches produce with their teams. The average ticket price for a Power Five Conference (Big Ten, SEC, ACC, Pac-12, Big 12) team is $147, which is even above the average NFL football ticket price. Alabama Crimson Tide tickets average a cost of $470 (Yodashkin, RotoWire). Scale this to the tens, sometimes hundreds, of thousand fans that college football stadiums can host and these teams generate abundant revenue for their university. In 2022, the highest earning conference was the Big Ten, which brought in a total of $845.6 million (equating to an average of $58.8 million for each school). This is almost $300 million more than the Pac-12, which earned $580.9 million (an average of $37 million per school). This was a major contributing factor in 4 teams’ — USC, UCLA, Washington, Oregon — decision to leave the Pac-12 to join the Big Ten. Although the conference has changed since its start in 1915, the Pac-12 has only expanded and never has it had such big losses before. However, with the potential to double earning, it is a sound economical move for these teams to join conferences with bigger markets.

However, while there is great economic benefit, it still comes at a very high price. Following the USC, UCLA, Washington, and Oregon move, the remaining Pac-12 schools joined other conferences as well. Schools such as Arizona, Arizona State, Utah, and Colorado are moving to the Big 12, and schools such as Stanford and UC Berkeley are moving to the ACC (Treacy, The Sporting News). So what started as the Pacific Coast Conference and had come to be known as the “Conference of Champions”, is essentially dissolved (Elbaba, Pac-12). This has serious ramifications for the future college sports landscape. After all, the name “Conference of Champions” was coined from winning championships, not among themselves, but against other conferences. Although teams have many local rivalries, ultimately they prided themselves in playing for the same historied conference (that has won the most championships). Now, losing this big conference leaves a void in a west coast power conference. This significantly detracts from interconference competition. Now, schools that embody California (and more largely the west coast region of the U.S.) like Stanford and UC Berkeley will be playing in the Atlantic Coast Conference, a region of the country which they have no connection to. Interconference competition is especially pertinent at the end of the year, when teams play against each other for hardware. Since all major conferences participate, most people believe this to be the most important part of the year. It can prove whether a good team was only good because they were in a weak conference or vice versa. It is the time of year when teams prove themselves to the nation at the highest level.

The loss of the conference also means the end of intraconference competition. With such a historic conference such as the Pac-12, there are naturally many rivalries and traditions. As a USC student, I was introduced to many of these: the legendary USC/UCLA rivalry, the Weekender, and many more. The Weekender is a tradition in which USC students will travel from southern California to northern California to watch USC play Stanford or UC Berkeley (whichever team they are playing away that year). However, with these moves, many of these long standing traditions will no longer happen. Although some major rivalries will be preserved, many subtler rivalries will be lost as well. For the past 3 seasons, Utah has beaten USC. Since I’ve come to USC, each year my friends and I hope for redemption, but it has yet to happen. Now, with these moves, USC and Utah will be in different conferences and will likely not play each other (unless in the postseason). So the redemption we have so long hoped for will never come, or likely not for a long time. The loss of these college football staples, big and small, can greatly affect the pride of the student body. At the end of the day, ticket sales for these giant stadiums would not be so high without great demand. Whether you cheer “Fight on!” or “Bear down”, college sports are so profitable because of school spirit.

This spirit, however, can also be diminished by the increasing transfer portal use. The transfer portal allows student athletes to transfer schools and subsequently play for their teams. This can benefit players’ professional development by providing opportunities to find better or more fitting programs and more playing time. It can also benefit universities if they get a star player, which gives fans hope and boost ticket sales. Generally, it’s a big boost in morale for a school’s team pride. An example of this can be seen in quarterback Caleb William’s transfer from Oklahoma to USC. Following coach Lincoln Riley, Williams transferred to USC in 2022. Fans were ecstatic. After a subpar 4–8 record in 2021, the school was ready for a bounceback year. Williams was quickly accepted as a true Trojan, and the Trojans’ hype around Williams was warranted as the team went 11–3 in his first year (USC Athletics, “USC football”). This exemplifies the merits of what the transfer portal can do. Yet, there is a flip side to the transfer portal. Oklahoma, after losing Williams, went 6–7 in the 2022 season. Almost reciprocal to USC, the typical football powerhouse had a 11–2 record the previous year (University of Oklahoma, “Oklahoma 2022 Football Schedule.”). The loss of a star player has major impacts on a team: the initial sting of losing a star player and the subsequent dip in success. Oklahoma spirits would naturally be dampened after such an unconventionally disappointing season. The transfer portal creates great opportunity for player movement, but those moves can weigh heavily on a school’s success and pride. Ultimately, these opportunities are meant to allow players to make the best decisions based on their individual development and goals.

However, these decisions are being further complicated by the advent of Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) deals. These deals allow college athletes to be compensated for any type of marketing utilizing their notoriety. This can be very profitable for players. According to a NIL marketplace, the introductory year (2022) of these deals showed a median student compensation of $65 for each NIL activity. This equates to an average compensation of $1,300 (Carter, Sports Business Journal). For a player of high caliber, the number can reach the millions. For example, the aforementioned quarterback Caleb Williams has reportedly made 10 million dollars from NIL deals (Sandoval, USC Trojan Football). That is a staggering amount considering these deals have only been active a few years. This money is in addition to the financial aid they receive through the school such as scholarships. These scholarships in turn are partially funded by the large revenues that the athletes bring in. These practices are good opportunities for players and, appropriately, give athletes paths for financial benefit. After all, these athletes are still students and still have basic needs. Not only that, but these students in a way provide a physical labor from which the university greatly benefits from. Thus, in theory, these systems should only bring positives to the college football system: maximizing revenue for schools and businesses while giving students the most amount of opportunity to benefit from their hard work.

In reality, this is not always the case. Unfortunately, financial aid does not always mean financial liberty. Startlingly, even with financial aid and scholarships, 85% of on-campus college athletes and 86% of off-campus college athletes were found to live below the poverty line. This invariably increases the difficulty for these students to meet even their basic needs. They also have limited work options given the challenge of balancing athletics and academics. Meanwhile, the NCAA, the governing body for all major college sports, makes billions of dollars (Stephenson, Law and Psychology Review). This unfair financial distribution is why other avenues of financial aid, such as NIL, were so strongly pushed for. However, NIL is not perfect either. There is already immense pressure put on student athletes as they are often under scrutiny of professional sports critics. This is even more so the case when athletes are very highly ranked and can create hype and attract attention. This attention, though, is what makes NIL deals possible. When you factor this in, there is even more pressure on these young athletes, some not even 20 years old, to perform. If they don’t, they risk losing their financial benefit. This type of stress can cause detrimental effects to students’ mental health (Stephenson, Law and Psychology Review).

If this college football landscape of switching teams, handling contracts, managing sponsorships, and pressure to perform sounds familiar, it’s because it is: it’s like the National Football League (NFL). Players are increasingly being treated as professionals, but it’s vital to remember that they are still students. While player development is important and college football needs to be enough of a business to provide sufficient resources to players, trending towards essentially a second NFL would come at the loss of what makes college football different from the NFL: the school. I have been a lifelong Wolverines fan not just because I grew up in Ann Arbor, but also because my dad was a student and currently works there. He feels immense pride in being a Wolverine and has shared that with me. College football is the physical manifestation of that. So I personally felt it when the Michigan Wolverines won the national championship this year. For the winningest team in college football, this was the first championship the team has won since 1997 (before I was born). Needless to say that Wolverine fans were waiting a long time for another championship. When it finally happened, I felt that immense sense of pride. Pride in the players, like Blake Corum, that I had watched for the past 3 years come so close to, but never reach, the top. The players who didn’t transfer when they fell short, but those who stayed and worked until they witnessed the maize and blue confetti fall at the national championship game. Pride in the coach who came back to his alma mater to rebuild Michigan into the football powerhouse that it once was. I called my dad, and even as I was across the country at school in California, we were still able to share that connection. The joy of winning is experienced outside of money. As college sports become more financially focused, they trend more towards professionalization and away from the unique college experience and the connections it forms in all facets: players to coaches to students to fans. People should have pride in their team, not just in themselves; instead of abiding by the laws of economics, it’s important to stay focused on the more fundamental joys of team sports.

References

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Carter, Bill. “Seven Data Points That Will Tell the Story of Nil in 2023.” Sports Business

Journal, Sports Business Journal, 17 Jan. 2023, www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/SB-Blogs/OpEds/2023/01/17-Carter.aspx.

“Looking at the Top College Football Head Coach Salaries in 2022.” NBC Sports Chicago, NBC

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“Michigan Stadium.” University of Michigan, tour.umich.edu/text-based/locations/michigan-stadium/. Accessed 27 Jan. 2024.

“Oklahoma 2022 Football Schedule.” University of Oklahoma, soonersports.com/sports/football/schedule/2022. Accessed 29 Jan. 2024.

Sandoval, Ricardo. “Caleb Williams Reportedly Made Millions in Nil Deals.” USC Trojans

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Stephenson, Luke. “More Money, More Problems? A Look into the Psychological Ramifications of Name, Image, and Likeness Deals in College Athletics.” The Free Library, Law and Psychology Review, 1 Jan. 2022, www.thefreelibrary.com/MORE+MONEY%2C+MORE+PROBLEMS%3F+A+LOOK+INTO+THE+PSYCHOLOGICAL…-a0711837890.

Treacy, Dan. “Pac-12 Teams Landing Spots: Where Washington, Oregon, Other Football

Programs Will Play in 2024.” The Sporting News, 8 Jan. 2024, www.sportingnews.com/us/ncaa-football/news/pac-12-teams-landing-spots-oregon-washington-football-2024/a12390637a0a4d3cd81fb1a0.

“USC Football.” USC Athletics, usctrojans.com/sports/football/schedule/2021. Accessed 29 Jan. 2024.

Yodashkin, Sasha. “Is the Price of College Football Tickets Sidelineing Students?” RotoWire, 7 Oct. 2023, www.rotowire.com/article/is-the-price-of-college-football-tickets-sidelineing-students-75547.