College Football's Cold War: SEC, Big Ten, and the Fight for Control

Seth Saunders: Yeah, yeah, fire up the grill, crank the speakers loud. Saturdays feel holy in this college crowd. Sethin' James on the mic, preaching gospel truth, talking rivalries, legends, red, black, old, and blue. From dead valley lights to the camp, Randall Cold. They're telling stories, they never get old. Ain't no bench, warm hearts on the show tonight. They're walking on proud. The stadium lies. Let a preferred walk-on. No scholarship still putting it on from the church of tailgate. Hands in the air. Welcome to the preferred walk-on show, the People's College Football Show. I am your host, Seth Saunders. Really appreciate you being here today. And whether you found us because a friend recommended the show, you saw a clip on social that piqued your interest, or you've been riding with us for six plus years, over 250 plus episodes. Just beyond fired up your here. And look, do it do us a favor, hit subscribe wherever you're listening, follow us wherever you're at. Hit the like button if you're on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you are, give us a follow so you never miss what's coming from us. It's a super simple thing to do, but it's the biggest thing you can do to keep an independent show like ours on the air and producing content like this. And over the last month or so, we've been doing a couple of different series based on essentially the landscape. Of college football as it sits today. And college football is richer than it's ever been, but it also feels probably as unstable as it's ever been. You know, we've talked about how rivalries are disappearing. Conferences no longer make any geographic sense, and the playoffs keep expanding or keep morphing without really a clear identity. And we did a show me the money series that. tried to delve into how players are getting compensated, how the system works, how the court decisions have affect all that. We've also talked about the TV money, how that influences things, how it's making it more and more, I think of a, and I've said this a bunch of times, it's a when, not an if, of when the playoff field expands and the reason for that are as they usually are. It's about money, right? And all those things that we've talked about in IL Revenue sharing, transfer portal, conference realignment, playoff expansion, the congressional hearings, court rulings. Every one of them, man, it's it's the same story. It's a all about power. And and really, that's kind of the one piece of this we haven't really talked about is where does that power sit today? And you know, for more than a century, really, as long as any of us, me certainly, and anybody listening probably, you are used to the traditional model. Where college football operated under a fairly simple structure where the NCAA made the rules, the conferences competed inside those rules, the schools followed whatever the conferences laid out, the athletes played, and we consumed it as a sport. I don't think anybody would argue that that structure was perfect, that the NCAA always did a great job. I think we're all very conscious that the old system was deeply, deeply flawed. But At least everybody kind of understood the hierarchy and who was in charge, who was the governor, who was the sheriff of everything. How about today? We're not super sure, are we? As current events would tell you this week, the NCW is weaker than it has ever been. And conversely, the conferences are stronger than they've ever been. Television networks are cutting billion dollar checks for deals. Members of the big conferences are getting paid out. Big, big money. We've got a deal where our athletes now are participating directly in the economics of the sport. And in my opinion, as they should be, Congress is now debating federal legislation as it pertains to the governance of college football. And as we saw all week long with the Brennan Soresby case, the court system is routinely inserting itself into disputes of all kinds and and most notably this week, eligibility. And I think, you know, we'd be remiss if we didn't also mention that behind closed doors, as the joint statements via the NCAA legislate or the congr congressional legislation, pending congressional legislation pointed out, the two most powerful conferences in America, the Big Ten and the SEC, are increasingly acting like independent nation states that are pursuing their own interests and the interest of their member schools, really above, I would say, the tapestry. Of college football itself. You know, they're not functioning as enemies. They're certainly not allies. But I think the best way to understand all this is through that lens, how how those two power players are operating. You know, it's we've looked at college football over the last month or so through a lot of different lenses. You know, we talked about it NIL, the potential playoff, the different avenues of realignment. But I gotta tell you, man, the way I see this, and if you if you know your history, Man, this is much more like college football's cold war. It's a battle for influence and leverage and control. And maybe most importantly, it's a battle over what the game that we all love is fixing to become over the next five years, the next 10 years, the next 20. And again, to me, it's it's pretty clear what this shapes up to, man. It's it is college football's cold war and it is fully. in action. And and before we get into why I think that and kind of lay out the reasons for terming it that and before we can kind of move forward, let's look back. Okay. I want you to think about college football in 2019. All right. Not I mean not that long ago. Okay. Not twenty years ago, not 10, six seasons ago. And I think we all remember that magical LSU team and Joe Burrow and that great core of wide receivers and coach O winning the national title. The transfer portal was in existence, but it wasn't like it in today, where you're moving and shaking each each year and rosters are flipping over. NIL didn't exist. Revenue sharing didn't exist. The Pac 12 was still in play. Texas and Oklahoma were still members of the Big 12. USC, UCLA, Oregon, and Washington are still in the Pac 12. The ACC was in a different version. The college football playoff was still four teams, you know. Collectives didn't exist. We didn't have players getting paid and signing seven figure endorsement deals. And, you know, probably most importantly from a governance perspective, we all knew who was in charge. It was the NCAA. And like I said earlier, I don't think any of us agreed with everything the NCAA was doing. You probably thought they were outdated. You certainly thought, especially if your school was involved, that what they were doing was unfair. But regardless of all that, When the NCAA made a ruling, that ruling generally was the law of the land. It's stuck. Okay. If they declared somebody ineligible, schools didn't go to the courts. When the NCAA issued a penalt penalty, the conferences weren't debating whether or not they should de enforce them. The NCAA said it and it was enforced. It was the central authority. And so I want you to go to the tailgate with me six years ago, as that 2019 season was happening. And think about sitting with your group of friends, the folks that you are fellowshipping with each weekend before you go and watch your favorite school. And you told them this hey, hey guys, within six years, schools are going to be directly paying athletes. The NCAA will be in shambles and on the edges of settling billions of dollars worth of lawsuits. Congress will be debating college sports legislation to help with the governance of the sport. Folks will be going to court. when it pertains to any type of dispute or issue involving the sport, the Pac 12 as we know it will no longer exist. Texas and OU will be in the SEC. USC, UCLA, Oregon, and Washington are going to be playing Big Ten conference games as members of those conferences. And the SEC and the Big Ten will have expanded to the point and sucked up so much of the oxygen in the room that they are the unquestioned dominant political and economic powers in the game of college football. And the biggest question each season as we all sit down at this tailgate won't be about who's going to win the national title, who's going to win the Heisman. What what are the different storylines that are going to happen? The question is going to end up becoming who in the hell runs college football today? Who is putting the parameters in place that are going to govern the sport and make sure it stays on the tracks? And man, think about that. If you had said that, In 2019, your tailgate group would have called you crazy. But that is precisely where we sit. And that's why I think I mean that was the push behind doing the show me the money series, behind talking about alternatives for playoff structure for a different way to look at realignment. Because I don't think any of those things are unrelated. What I think they are are symptoms of what is actually happening broadly in the game. And that is a massive transfer of power. The old way that we're used to doing things is gone. All right. And it's not coming back. And the problem that we're in, we're kind of in this leeway between how it used to be and where things are going. And in that spot, there's this gigantic power vacuum that hasn't fully been filled. And so you have all of these stakeholders, the NCAA, the conferences. The various schools, the most powerful brands, the athletes themselves, the courts, the TV networks, Congress. Everyone is trying to get a seat at the table, trying to figure out how they can be involved in what's going to happen moving forward. And the problem is there may not be a s enough seats at the table for all of these competing interests. And so at some point, we're going to have to fill that vacuum. With who is actually enforcing what is happening in our game and providing a through line for where it's going to go. And I want to discuss in a lot of ways, and some of this will rehash what we've talked about, but I want to talk about how we got to where we are. So let's flesh some of this out. Okay. Because I think what happens is you get caught up when trying to align with what's currently happening. By associating it with some type of flashpoint that created everything. And I think where that's currently sat, people say, ⁓ it's NIL. It's because we're paying the athletes. And others said, ⁓ it's conference realignment. It's because everything has changed. And others have said, well, everything was okay until the house settlement happened. And now the school's directly paying athletes. I don't know how we feel about that. And and look, I get it. Okay. Those have been newsworthy events. They've been covered to death. They have been all over the headlines. They're all over social media. But again, to me, all those things are symptoms of the broader issue. They're not the actual cause. And for me, the story of all this begins a whole lot earlier because, like with most things, everything didn't flip overnight. It was kind of a gradual hit, right? Small check here, small check here, small check there, until eventually we've gotten to where we are. And so it's kind of been one thing at a time, one concession at a time, one shift. at a time that all this has happened. And I and I think for me, where it started was with the Obanon case. And I think most college football fans remember the Obannon case because it was the death knell knell of NCAA college football. So if you grew up playing video games and playing NCAA college football, that was the point where that game went away because essentially EA couldn't do the game anymore. Or hadn't figured out a model yet to do the game while also compensating athletes. And just a quick rehash. Obviously, Ed O'Bannon was the plaintiff in that case. And he's a former UCLA basketball player, which it is interesting because if you're somebody of my age, ⁓ which is certainly old and decrepit, but man, I think of Ed O'Bannon. I think about national title UCLA team and I think about his brother who played with him. And what Ed O'Bannon has turned into is this case because it was such a shift point and really did open the door. For so much of this. And really, that case asked a pretty simple question. And that was how can the NCAA profit from student athletes' name, image, and likeness while preventing those athletes from receiving any compensation for that? And you know, today we don't think about that because it's just it seems so obvious given the landscape that we're in. But when that decision happened in 2014, it was revolutionary because for its entire history. The NCAA's complete model and the foundation that it stood on for justifying what it does, it sat on the fact that amateurism was premier above all. And the NCAA just argued essentially always that because of that amateurism, college sports were fundamentally different from professional sports. And everybody for the longest time bought that argument, accepted it, and was fine with it. And it justified all the restrictions. That's the that the NCAA was able to allow that in any other industry it would have been illegal, right? And so that Obanon decision obviously didn't dismantle the NCAA model or completely strip the NCAA of power. But what it did do was it introduced the idea that NCAA restrictions could be challenged under the law, that the NCAA wasn't immune from scrutiny that all other industries are. And the idea that courts might not simply say that amateurism is this magic wand that justifies any and every rule that a governing body like the NCAA could put down. And so again, the Obanon case wasn't the collapse of the NCAA. It wasn't even really a massive injury, but it was the start of the tumor that would eventually take it down. And then the next step in that progression in the court system. Was the Alstase. And we talked about the Austin case in some of our show me the money episodes. And I think for me, this is the one where if you were paying attention, things got really, really serious because unlike the Obanon case, the Austin case got all the way to the Supremes. It got all the way to the Supreme Court. And it was a pretty, from a legal perspective, narrow case. It was supposed to deal purely with education-related benefits, the ability to s receive essentially money on top. Of the traditional scholarship to cover things like, you know, laptops, graduate school scholarships, other academic incentives. And that's kind of how the dispute was framed as a very limited framework. But when the opinion was released, which ruled in favor of Alston, and it was not close, okay, it was unanimous. And it wasn't the main opinion that really got the biggest bombs out of this case. It was a concurring opinion. written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh. And if you've never read Justice Kavanaugh's concurrence from that case, look, I I understand. Reading legal opinions is not the the most enticing thing in the world. And it's usually what people do to go to sleep. But this one's worth reading if you're a fan of college football because it's set up everything that's happening in our game today. And in all honesty, i if you really parse it down and look through it, it reads much less like a legal opinion and much more like a warning shot at the NCAA's future And here's some of the lines that I think are most consequential. The first one was he said, the NCAA is not above the law. And this is probably the most important sentence ever written about modern college athletics. Because for decades, the NCAA operated as though amateurism solely, all by itself, justified anything and everything that they wanted to do. And what Justice Cot Kavanaugh was saying is nope, not now, not anymore. And then he said this, which this is a heater. In the legal world, okay. The NCAA's business model would be flatly illegal in almost any other industry in America. Think about that now. A sitting Supreme Court justice wasn't critiquing a particular rule. He was questioning the entire economic structure of college athletics and the justification for the NCAA. And then this is this is really good as well. He said traditions alone cannot justify. The NCAA's compensation restrictions. And I think that's where things shift because for decades and decades in court cases that happened before these, the NCAA always stood on their business. Hey, this is how we've always done it. And the courts and everybody else generally said, Okay, well, in that concurring opinion, Justice Kavanaugh was saying, that ain't enough anymore, guys and gals. Not in this court, not under antitrust law, and certainly not moving forward. It was a very clear and public warning and commentary that everyone heard. Conference commissioners heard it. ADs across America heard it. University presidents heard it. And perhaps most importantly, future litigants, meaning student athletes who also felt aggrieved under the NCAA model, they heard it. And so then NIL comes. And this is not a thing where the NCAA lost on NIL in court. But what that Kavanaugh opinion did is it set up a structure where the power players started going, wait a minute. If the NCAA and the Supreme Court is saying this, if the NCAA can't just say, ⁓ amateurism, and that covers everything, then why don't we do something to change it? And so states started passing legislation, state by state. And you probably remember this from that 2020 time frame, 2020, 2021. All these different states start passing NIL legislation and the pressure really, really intensified. Where the NCAA would have been facing fighting essentially legislation in all these different state courts to try and keep their place on top of the mountain as it pertained to amateurism. And they kind of realized this isn't gonna work. Okay. And so they backed down. Not because they wanted to back down. They just knew functionally that's where they had to go. And so that is if if you really put in the framework what NIL meant or what it still means, it's it's that. It's that point, right? It's that for decades athlete compensation was prohibited. And almost overnight after Alston and then after all the state courts start passing this legislation, that essentially disappeared. And it's not because the NCAA wanted it to happen or that they voluntarily went, you know, maybe we haven't been doing this right. Maybe the student athletes do deserve some compensation. No, it was all external forces that left the NCAA with no other choice. And This was a transfer of power away from them, away from the traditional governing body, away from Indianapolis, towards the schools, towards the conferences, towards the athletes, towards the market. And so that's how we get to the house settlement. And again, I don't want to rehash a ton of this because we've talked about it, but the house settlement came from the house case. And after Alston, everyone involved kind of realized well, we're not going to have any success on the merits of this. If it goes to the Supremes, because they've very clearly lay laid out what they think and where this will go. And so they said, okay, we got to start figuring out a way to make sure we come to a solution. And that's where the the house settlement came from. And really that settlement was just an acknowledgement of reality that things are no longer how they used to be. And I think really it's the moment the NCAA. Fully realized, I mean, I think the writing was very much on the wall, but fully, fully realized that it could no longer maintain any of the old, any of the old model. All right. Schools were going to share revenue, athletes are going to be directly compensated. You know, the marketplace had said what was supposed to happen. The courts had already been very clear on it. And that house settlement essentially formalized that the old system was completely over. And now we sit where we currently are asking the question. What replaces it? And I think that's where things are as probably interesting as they've ever been, because we don't know the answer to that. Technically, as we've seen, the NCAA's authority didn't disappear, it just got dispersed. Some of it landed in the conference lab, some of it went to the schools, some is now in the dominion of the athletes, some, as we've seen, sits with the courts, as as has been on the news the last couple weeks. Lawmakers are trying to get involved. And look, that's the world we're living in right now. There are various centers of gravity as it pertains to this college football power vacuum. And there's nobody that's sitting in a singular seat of unquestioned authority. And so you have every major stakeholder in the game competing for influence. And so that brings us now to present day, where we sit with this Brendan Soresby story. Because if you want to understand where power resides in college football today, this may be the single best case study available. And I want to make something very clear before we delve into this. This is not a segment about whether Brendan Swordsby should or should not be eligible, whether Texas Tech is right, whether the people that are upset about this are right. Look, reasonable people people can disagree on certain parts of this. Some folks can think the NCAA got it right. Some can think the NCAA got it wrong. Some can think they never should have gone to court about this. Some can think the court was ridiculous in their opinion on it and that there was Texas Tech money. Whatever your opinion is, okay? That's not the point of this segment. All right. The point is what happened after the NCAA made its ruling and made its decision because what did happen tells us all we need to know about the current landscape of college football. And look, historically the process would have been very straightforward. The NCAA would have investigated, the NCAA would have ruled, the NCAA would have punished, and then everyone would have complied. End of story. All right. Fans would have complained and raised hell. Coaches would have been upset. It would have been a loop on the news cycle with everybody debating it. There would have been social clips galore, but that NCAA decision would have reigned supreme. Now, today, as we saw, that that ain't a world we're living in. All right. It's an extremely different ecosystem. Here, the NCAA made their ruling. The lawyers got involved. There were appeals. They lost on appeal. They go to court. The courts got involved. Obviously made their decision. And now all the aftermath of that, the mushroom cloud, if you will, is that you got everybody and their mama commenting on this thing. Conferences, state officials, all the media, anybody and everybody, okay? About who should have the authority, who who should get to say this, who should get to say that. And what was at its very core an eligibility case based around gambling, but came a much broader question about governance, right? The question is who has the final word? Who has final say on what's going to happen? And so imagine 30 years ago, which I would have been in middle school, all right? Obviously a very different world, but nothing would have happened in that world if the NCAA said Brendan Soresby can't play. He's ineligible. That's it. Everybody would have moved on. There would have been people that were upset, but everybody would have moved on. And now we live in a world where anything the NCAA does, there is a potential legal review of that. And every enforcement action, every eligibility determination comes with some type of litigation risk or judicial scrutiny. And I look, again, I'm not here to comment on whether that's good or bad. It just is. And it represents Such a shift in power, such a shift in structure. The NCAA essentially was once judge, jury, and executioner. That was it. And now it's just the trial court. It's just where things start because then it's going to go somewhere else. And so I think most people have looked at this Soresby thing through the lens of this is an eligibility story. This is a commentary on how broken college football is. This is where we've lost the plot on college football. And I'm a little bit different on it. I see it much more as the ultimate stress test of the current system and who is actually in charge. And I think what we've learned is no one. Okay. There is no one who is functionally in charge. Governance is negotiable. And when that happens, power inevitably shifts to the body that has the greatest leverage. And I think for me, that leverage is still undetermined. Because we just don't have an answer on where that's gonna sit. And so I also want to talk about how all this plays with NIL Go, because obviously the Soresby case didn't involve NIL Go, but as we talked about in the Show Me the Money series, the Nebraska case did. And I think there's still lots of ongoing questions about how private money, let's call it, is gonna be governed in this athlete compensation world. And so Let's just start with a a simple premise here. Let's imagine you're one of the biggest programs in America. You're a Texas, you're an Alabama, you're an Ohio State, you're a Michigan. You've got plenty of donor support. Your conference is funneling in tons of TV money. You have national title aspirations every single year. You have a fan base that is demanding that standard. And now you have this house settlement that has created a mechanism where you can, with your hilted pockets, directly compensate athletes to get them to come help with that mission to to pull the rope towards that role. And and that's all well and good. But then the question became, and I think is still out there, is as we talked about, there's been all the stories about these huge roster numbers that are 30 million, 35, 40 big time numbers. Okay. Well, if the revenue share money is much, much smaller than that, A, how do we get above that threshold? And B, probably most importantly, What is the government and enforcement around that? Okay. And so if I am a winning program that had that has is very well resourced, that believes additional spending creates competitive advantages, I'm gonna spend and I want to spend. And so who who puts the clamps on me? What what walls do I have to play inside? And that takes us to the NIL go piece because the house settlement created direct revenue sharing. But it also created an oversight arm monitoring, review, and evaluation for those over-revenue share deals. And the goal in that is plenty of understanding, okay? Because you want to have a unbiased third party that sits in a position where they can evaluate these things. Someone to determine what fair market value means, someone to distinguish actual pay for services, real endorsement activity versus pay-for-play versus. Disguised recruiting inducements. And I think ultimately we would all agree that's a good thing. That's all something that we want. All right. But the bigger question then becomes how does that function in action? And who wins when all the parties involved disagree? And so think about this from the perspective of an auditor that's working within the NIL GO structure. Okay. So quarterback A signs a multi million dollar endorsement agreement. Is that legitimate? Certainly could be. All right. They've got a lot of eyeballs, most important person on the roster, probably have a good social following. I would think it would be good business to endorse somebody like that. A national championship caliber quarterback or even a caliber quarterback that's starting for a power four conference probably could genuinely possess that value on the market. How about ⁓ the starting guard on the same team? Is that multi-million dollar deal legitimate? Maybe, maybe not. But how do we determine that difference? How do we appropriately assign value and quantify, quantify influence and visibility? How do you truly measure brand power for a deal like this? And the short edge is who the hell knows? All right. Because we're trying to put structure around a marketplace that is fully subjective. And where there is subjectivity, dispute follows. And so the question that I keep coming back to is who is the sheriff? Who is in charge and who has the ultimate dominion and authority to lay the hammer down and enforce the rules? Because absent enforcement, there's no governance, right? And I think that's where we sit today. And love them or hate them, the NCAA used to have that unquestioned power. And look, I I am not an NCAA guy, never was. Always thought it was a flawed system. But in order for there to be order, there has to be some mechanism in place for it. Okay. And we don't really know what that is. And I think NIL Go represents one of the more fascinating developments in modern college football, not because of the actual deals, but because of the disputes involved in the deals. Because what they evidence, every single challenge, all the appeals, any disagreement, all the controversies, the Nebraska case, most public among them currently, comes back to the same issue is who actually has the authority. To make everyone comply. You know, one of the most overlooked realities in college football right now is that we're, as I talked about earlier, inside a governance vacuum. The old system is weak and pretty much depleted. The new system hasn't been fully established yet. And inside of that power vacuum, everyone is jockeying for position. It's like a situation where there's no parent and the children are all running free. Everyone is testing every boundary. that they can while also seeking clarity. And nobody knows what that should look like, which just creates conflict after conflict after conflict. And in that economy of conflict, as you would call it, you get the perfect storm for what I think is college football's Cold War. There's not direct confrontation. There's not an actual physical battle or a physical war happening. There's just competition and positioning and attempts to constantly gain leverage. And so if NILGO evidences the enforcement part of it, inherent in any Cold War are the two powers or or three or however many that are driving the conflict. And there are, I would think, unquestioned, no two more powerful entities in college football's current landscape than the SEC and the Big Ten. Nobody possesses more power than the two of them. And so if you think about The Cold War that we're all familiar with, the United States, the Soviet Union, two nations whose influence extended far beyond each of their borders. Their decisions affected everyone else. And even though they didn't necessarily control everything, they controlled enough that the world looked to them for what might happen or where things might go. They were the superpowers in the Cold War. Well, college football is in a very similar position. And Those superpowers, as I mentioned, are not difficult to point out. It's the SEC and the Big Ten. Now look, this has nothing to do with being pro SEC or anti-SEC or pro Big Ten or anti Big Ten. I'm just stating facts. Okay. Those two organizations are doing and have done what any successful organization is trying to do across any business model, and that's increase revenue, influence, improve their competitive position. The issue Isn't so much that they've both become extremely powerful. The issue more sits that they become so much more powerful than everyone else in their landscape. And when power gets concentrated like that, the entire ecosystem changes and the balance tilts. Okay. And that's what we're seeing in the college football world. And so let's let's again, let's go back six years and look at all the things that happened. The SEC grew, it added two power brands in Texas and OU. The Big Ten responded the same way, added huge brands and huge markets. UCLA, UCLA, ⁓ USC, Oregon, Washington. You could argue, probably not even argue. I think it's pretty straight away. The most valuable brands that could possibly be added to conferences west of the Mississippi are those six schools. And they're now residing in the Big Ten and the SEC. That's not about being competitive or anything like that. It's economics, right? And so think about how. Big a deal those moves are and how it just kind of happened without anybody really being able to debate it or say anything about it. That would not have happened in the majority of the history of college football. It would have upset the power balance in a way that would have been unacceptable for all the parties involved. You know, historically, conference realignment, whether it was adding teams like Arkansas to ⁓ the SEC or adding schools like Penn State to the Big Ten. It was much more about a regional adjustment than it was about an expansion. This, these moves by the SEC and the Big Ten were something completely different. It was consolidation for power purposes. It was the brands that were the most ambitious and held the most cards, making strategic moves to bring the biggest brands, the richest properties into their fold. And what that created was television inventory. And we talked about this. The T V money is where all this starts to play because the more inventory you have and the more TV sets in those member schools' inventory, the more money that you get. It's purely economics. Okay. And if you just follow the money, the economics in the money is always where it sits. And so whenever stuff happens within college football or anything like that, that's where I start to think. And that's why that's why I started the series a month ago. It's because I wanted to figure out what is happening in our game. Where are we going? What are the things driving this? And look, it's a pretty simple answer. It's the money, baby. It's always the answer. And what has happened with that shift, with realignment, with the bigger deals is that the SEC and the Big Ten are operating with financial advantages that not only didn't exist 10 and 20 years ago, they don't exist for anybody else in the game. And imagine the leverage. That creates for those conferences. It's enormous because with every new media deal they get and every every new contract that bloats up and there's more guaranteed money for their member schools. Imagine you're an athletic director at a different school or you're sitting in a boardroom as a school president at a school that's not in one of those member conferences. Do you think being in the Big 12 is as attractive as it used to be? Do you think being in the ACC is as attractive as it used to be? Because you start asking these questions. Can my conference invest more? Can we absorb mistakes if something goes wrong? What happens to our conference when there are inevitable downturns? And look, I'm not saying money determines everything, but it determines a lot and it creates a whole lot of options. And the more options you have, the more power that you have. And so let's do a quick thought experiment. Let's think about it like this, right? If If I'm Amazon, if I'm Jeff Bezos and Amazon and I decided tomorrow that I want to start a competing college football league, what is the first thing I am going to do when I'm in charge with that endeavor? I'm not going to start with smaller brands. I'm not going to go to the FCS schools and say, let's start. Okay. I'm not going to start with my lower level inventory. I'm going to try to acquire the biggest properties available to actually compete. I want the biggest audiences in the biggest TV markets with the most rabid fan bases because that's where my money proposition, my value proposition lives. Now ask yourself this isn't that exactly what has happened over the past decade with the SEC and the Big Ten? The most valuable brands now sit under two very prominent hats. I mean, that's plain as day. That's a simple observation. Now, I want to. Take a step over from the TV side of it, which is largely important. All right. And it's driving this as an economic engine. But let's talk about the political side of things as well. Because a as we've seen in the news cycle the last month or so, we've seen Congress introduced the Protect College Sports Act. And the ACC, Big Twelve, and other conferences generally expressed support for that. The SEC and the Big Ten, notably, did not. They even ex released a joint statement. That sounded less like two conferences and more like let's just say two allies with unique aligned, let's just say, expectations and goals that wrote, We do not support the Protect College Sports Act as drafted. Now think about that. Not the NCAA, not the broad base of the power four conferences, not all of FBS football, the SEC and the Big Ten, the two big boys at the dance together, issuing a joint statement on federal. legislation. And look, it's because they are the primary stakeholders in this. All right. And the center of gravity is completely tilted towards those two two schools because w and when you think about that in that landscape, the conferences stated, the Big Ten of the SEC said we support a sustainable national framework for college sports with transfer rules, eligibility standards, and athlete protections. But they rejected the bill, which is essentially what the bill said it was trying to do. Because they said there were too many issues that were unresolved. We want reform, but we want reform that works very well for us. And hey man, if you're those two conferences, why wouldn't you function that way? You got all the cards. You've got pocket aces. So why would you not function that way? Now, in that landscape, I want to talk about a conference with a ton of history that I think is probably given the current landscape as fascinating as any conference. And that's the ACC. Not because it's the strongest, obviously. And it's certainly not the weakest either, but geographically and I think from a positioning perspective, it sits directly in the middle of this Cold War War battlefield between the SEC and the Big Ten. And so if the SEC and the Big Ten are these competing superpowers, the ACC is that territory in the middle that everybody's kind of watching with piqued interest. Because there are some really, really great brands in the ACC conference. Florida State, Clemson. North Carolina, Miami, Virginia, Virginia Tech, programs with passionate fan bases, value, and programs with options that could go to different conferences and be a big time head. And so this is where I think the math gets interesting because all the discussions around the ACC and generally all the discussions around AC or realignment in general center around money. And obviously that's valid of talked about that. They're Tradition's not usually involved, the geography's not usually involved, the rivalries certainly are involved. It's always about the money because eventually everything comes down to a math problem. If conference A distributes significantly more money to me as a member school than conference B does, everybody takes notice of that. All right. The presidents, the ADs, the boards at these schools, and then the schools start asking questions like are we actually maximizing our opportunities for our future? Are we falling behind? And that's where this ACC grant of rights becomes, I think, super interesting and very important as it pertains to where we all sit. It's a legal agreement. And if you've read any of it, it's boring. But what that document did is it provided enough basis and standing and enough consequence that it froze movement of those power bands. Cause don't get it twisted. Absent the grant of rights, Florida State, Clemson, probably Carolina, I I don't think would be in the ACC any longer. They would have been scooped up by the SEC. They would have been scooped up by the Big Ten. Whoever the best bidder was, those schools would have left. The grant of rights has kept them in place because nobody can afford to get outside of it. And we're gonna see what happens on that. But what it does tell you is you've got a lot of powerful schools that are evaluating their futures based on the economic realities that sit with the way the conference structure is. And this is why I think the ACC is so important. To the conversation because the future of college football is gonna have much less to do with what the SEC and the Big Ten do. Look, whether it's the structure we currently sit in, whether it's a hybrid structure, whether it's the structure where the SEC and the Big Ten form some type of super league, those two conferences are going to be fine. The future of the sport as a whole may really depend on what happens in those conferences stuck in limbo in the middle. And by that I mean the ACC, the Big Twelve, and the upper levels of the G five. So think about C USA, think about the American. All right. Because those programs are ultimately gonna determine whether college football stays, like we all love it, broadly a national sport, or if it becomes really, really concentrated in these two power conferences. And so this is probably a very crude analogy, but it's what came to mind because I was thinking about the whole cult. Cold War thing. And so think about the Berlin Wall during the Cold War. Everyone had their eyes on it. Everyone was trying to figure out what was going to happen as it pertained to that Berlin Wall. Not because Berlin was the most powerful place in the world or the most powerful place in the conflict, but it represented something for everybody that was watching. It represented pressure and tension and uncertainty and the potential. for change. And that's what the ACC to me represents right now. And so whenever those things are in play, man, you got to pay attention. Because I think where this is going, and there was some scuttle butt about this this week, is the Super Lake. All right. It's been talked about before and it got brought back up again. Look, it's something that officially nobody wants and publicly nobody's advocating for. The various administrators, school presidents, the commissioners, Certainly the fans reject that and don't want that, but the topic keeps coming up. Now, why is that? And and part of the reason is you've got a lot of influential people that keep saying things that five, ten years, man, maybe even three years ago would have sounded outrageous. Okay. Think about this now. Earlier this spring, CC Commissioner Greg Sankey acknowledged frustration, growing frustration with the current governance structure and publicly discussed at his presser. At the SEC meetings, that hey, the SEC could potentially operate independently. And then you have, I think, in a lot of ways, the individual that has stepped into the shoes of Nick Saban in the college football coaches community. And that's Georgia head coach Kirby Smart. And Kirby Smart was asked during his press conference at the SEC meetings about the possibility, the potential of the SEC operating under its own rules as its own entity. And Coach Smart said, I'd be all for that. Now, does that mean that the SEC is leaving tomorrow? Does that mean that Kirby is the spokesperson for what is going to happen within the conference? No, of course not. Does not mean does not mean that. That and that's not the point of bringing these quotes up. The point is that you've got highly, highly respected leaders inside the sport. You can make an argument that Kirby Smart and Greg Sankey are two of the five most influential voices in all of college football, openly discussing the idea of the SEC just breaking off and not existing. within the current landscape of college football, which again, even three years ago would have seemed outrageous and probably have set the world on fire. And so look, man, I just think things are happening and things that we need to pay attention to. And I do want to define some things 'cause I think when people hear super league, what they imagine is something akin, and I've brought up the book The Club a bunch in the past month, but they they think about something like the Premier League with English football, a complete breakaway an an NFL style structure that is its own separate organization and includes, you know, these premium brands that will be a part of it. And look, maybe one day that will happen. Maybe it doesn't. I don't know. But that's not not really what I'm aiming at here. I'm I'm more getting at the question at what point does concentrated power, whether or not you define it that way, effectively become a leg of its own anyways? You know, if a small group is controlling a majority of the money. A majority of the viewership has as much say as anybody over how the playoff is going to be constructed, how the postseason will function, if they are producing most, if not all, of the championship contenders. What do we call that? And so I I wanna tread carefully because there's not public evidence that the SEC and the Big Ten are, you know, in cahoots and meeting privately to secretly plan a breakaway league. I want to be very clear about that. I'm not saying that, but there is evidence of some coordination. They're taking joint positions on things. They have, as reporting has indicated, joint discussions. They certainly have joint influence and they've shared joint concerns over governance in the pending legislation. And look, given their economic standing, given their stakes in the game as it sits today, that coordination makes sense, all right? They share interest. But I I'm not really questioning their coordination. I'm more questioning what the influence of that coordination is. Cause put yourself, let's say you're coordinator of the Big Twelve or or excuse me, commissioner of the Big Twelve, or you're a president in the group of five, one of the schools in the group of five, or you're an AD in the Big Twelve, every time you see something or observe something where the SEC and the Big Ten seem to be in lockstep, you have to kind of look around and ask yourself like, hey boys, if we got into a fight here, We got a shot. Like, are we getting knocked out in the first round or or do we have any shot at being in this thing? And it's really a leverage question, right? If you're one of those stakeholders, how much leverage do you have? Because the more leverage you have, the more power you have and the more value you can insist upon. Well, you know, look, that's that's true in the business world, that's true in politics, it's true in the media world, and it's for damn sure true in college football. And so I think that's what I would be asking if I was a fan of one of those schools or my school was in that conference. Because I don't think the biggest fear should be a formal super league where you have a group of member institutions that completely separate from college football as a whole. I think what we should be worried about is something more subtle than that. And it's where the SEC and the big team don't leave college football. They just become college football, if that makes sense. Meaning, I know and people probably go, well, what do you mean if they just become college? What I mean is is if they absorb everyone that's worth being absorbed and everybody else inherently just becomes irrelevant. So for example, I don't think any of us, especially in the world that I grew up in, would have thought anything whatever happened to the Pac Ten, which then became the Pac 12, nobody thought that would go away and snap your fingers overnight, Pac 12 was gone. And what I'm saying is If you believe in the sport in the incarnation that I believe in it, which is coast to coast, all across America, the regionality, all the things that are important about it, the SEC and the Big Ten essentially swallowing what the TV markets value, not what the fans value, but what the TV markets value, which is driving the money, that would make me the most nervous. And so inherent in any Cold War, it's not, again, an active battle with. you know, rockets being fired and shots being fired and all these things. There are all these political proxy wars that are happening behind closed doors and people strategically shifting their chess pieces. You know, they're looking for influence and resources and territory. And again, leverage. So it's not obvious that there's a war happening, but it's happening. And I think that's where college football finds itself today. Because almost every headline That we see about is a proxy war, NIL, player compensation, playoff expansion, realignment. All those things are just different proxy wars. Okay. And let's walk through some of them. So proxy war number one, the playoff. Most fans view this through a very straightforward lens. It's either I'm arguing for more football, more games, more inclusivity, and I'm for that, or conversely, I don't want any of that. I think the playoffs should be smaller. But it's really mostly the the the thing driving this is about access. Who's in, who's out, who gets a buy, who's gonna host games, who gets to say what the structure's gonna be. Because access means opportunity and opportunity means value. And so imagine two playoff formats. One provides more access and one concentrates access among the biggest conferences. Those aren't scheduling decisions. Those aren't Who gets in or does this work? That's about governance and economics and power, which is why all these playoff expansion discussions are contentious inherently, because the argument isn't about football. It's not about expanding the playoff. It's about what's happening underneath that. What's the disagreement about TV inventory, about potential revenue, about the influence it brings me? The playoff is just the battlefield. For those issues to play out. And you know, look, the Big Ten, the ACC, the Big Twelve support a twenty fourteen model or seemingly support a twenty fourteen model. The SEC does not. If the SEC did, it would have already happened. And so the reason the SEC doesn't support it is because there are backroom issues about access, inventory, revenue, and influence. That's the crux of this. Okay. And they don't they're not going to be on board until those things happen. And so what's the next proxy war? Revenue sharing. House Settlement created a framework. We're trying to work through that framework, but we've got more questions, which is how much money is enough? How can the schools allocate the funds they're supposed to allocate? How should we be compensating athletes? What advantages should be permitted? What compensation should be permitted? What should be restricted? And maybe most important out of all of that, is anyone in a position that they can stop the schools and the players? From pursuing every legal advantage avail advantage available to override whatever governing mechanism is currently in place. Because look, man, programs aren't out there competing to be average. They're competing to win. And winning programs are going to push boundaries. That's a tale as old as time. The only thing changing is what battlefield that boundary push is getting fought on. And that leads us in to the NIL piece, proxy war number three. It's supposed to be a simple concept, right? Athletes should be allowed to profit from their name, image, and likeness. And most people agreed about that. But then when the reality of that functionally happening and arrived, things got quite murky. And so now the debate is how should all that work? Who regulates it? How is it enforced? How should the benefit structure work? Who controls it? Again, where is the power? That's where we're at, man. This is all everything comes back to the power piece. Proxy war number four is the same things. Transfer rules. Transfer portal has Fundamentally changed roster management. Players have more freedom than ever to leave. Coaches have more uncertainty. Programs can rebuild quicker. They can also collapse quicker. Underneath all that sits the same questions. Who controls it? Who controls player movement? Are the NCAA making those rules? Is it the conferences? Should the schools have a say? Should the athletes have a say? Because it all affects the balance of power. And as we've seen, that balance is constantly shifting. Now, proxy war number five, Congress. Congressional legislation. Look, for for most of the history of the game, college or Congress has largely paid no attention to college athletics. Today, in the last five years, congressional hearings are it seems like there's another one happening every day as it pertains to something within the college athletics landscape. And so they are one of the people trying to get a seat at the table because this current structure is so unsettled. And as I think we all know. When the politicians get involved, not only do the stakes rise, but the chances that everything gets screwed up rise correspondingly with it. Proxy war number six, eligibility, which brings us back to the Brendan Sorbby stuff we talked about earlier. Eligibility, enforcement, litigation, governance, authority, all these forces are shaping college football one story at a time. It's a snapshot of college football's transition period. And we're at a moment now where nobody really knows. Who possesses the final word on any of this? And that's the defining characteristic of this. So this that that's the Cold War that's happening. All these different battles, all these different proxies happening behind closed doors and and trying to figure out what our sport is gonna look like. I want to bring you back to our last episode because this is kind of a something I've stewed on and why I like what I proposed last week, which is a 24 team structure. It's not about having the 24 teams. It's what the 24 teams can allow. If it's set up properly. And look, the lesson for that is the FCS. I talked about this last week, and I know people probably get sick of me talking about the FCS, but I think the model is beautiful and it works and it just gets ignored. I mean, think about what the what the FCS represents. All right. Regionality matters big time in the FCS. Conference identity matters and conference title matters. Traditional rivalries are intact. And maybe most importantly, Access still matters. Regardless of what conference I'm in, my program, my fan base knows there's a path. I win my conference, I earn my opportunity, I can compete for a national championship. It's simple, it's understandable, it's inclusive and keeps more stakeholders involved in the process. Playing college football playoff games on campus, man. Every single game in the FCS is played on campus except the finals. I understand because of the history. We can't do that at the F FBS level, or at least people can't get on board with that. Look, that's neither here nor there. We should play as many games as possible on campus. Like you're talking about packed stadiums, weather playing an influence, the regional passion involved, authentic college football. And the FCS playoff has been showing for years that campus playoff football works. Yet somehow we're not doing that in the FBS on a grander scale. It's just we know the blueprint is there. And Again, I think for me, the beauty of the FTS model isn't that it's perfect. It's not. All right. No model will be, but man, the accessibility is close to perfect. You know, programs, fan bases, they all feel connected to the championship structure of the sport. There actually feels like there's a real pathway. Whether I'm the University of San Diego in the Pioneer Conference with no scholarships or I'm Montana State. The premier conference in the FCS. Everybody knows I've got a chance to dance. I've got a chance to make it happen. And I just think, man, that's a lesson worth remembering because if we allow our game, the FBS game, to become too concentrated, too exclusive, too predictable, I just think we're losing the essence of what has made it so special in the first place. And so what if, what if the future of college football isn't that it's becoming more like the NFL? What if it's That they should be looking towards parts of college football that already work, like the FCS. I just I I think these are questions worth asking. And and given what we talked about, I think there are three potential futures for what could happen after college football's Cold War is over. And the one is very plain one, which I think has a distinct possibility happening, that it becomes the NFL light. I think this is the future everybody fears the most. The SEC and the Big Ten keep growing, they keep accumulating influence. The TVD deals that they negotiate keep getting bigger and bigger. The playoff structure that is negotiated gets bigger, but heavily favors those two conferences. And governance of the sport becomes increasingly centralized around those two power bands, brands. Sport certainly will still be popular. The money will still continue to grow, but college football is no longer what we all love it for. It's no longer regional, it's less diverse. It's not connected to its broader ecosystem. And I think that future is very, very possible. The second scenario I see is a managed expansion. And I think this may be the most likely because I think it's probably the easiest to pass on to the consumer. That's going to be still playoffs are going to expand further, but the access will increase, not just to the SEC in the Big Ten, but to college football as a whole, and mostly concentrated in the power four. The revenues will continue to grow. We talked about the potential for the TV deals if there's a 2014 playoff. And within that structure, the SEC and the Big Ten, as the brands with the most eyeballs, will still remain very, very powerful. But the broader ecosystem of college football will remain intact. It's more of an evolution and not a revolution. And so I would say this is probably where most folks hope things land or expect things will land. And and the third one is maybe this is. Pie in the sky, and this is just me talking because this is what I want. But what I want is this one. All right. I want the regional renaissance plan. And I think it does the best job of preserving what has made college football so unique. And that's regional conferences, traditional rivalries, playoff accessibility for everyone involved in the game, conference independent, more campus playoff games, the opportunity for national relevance for. programs across the country based on merit, based on them building their program and succeeding, a championship structure that feels connected to the stakes of the regular season and a conference championship. Certainly not a perfect system, but one that is much more deeply aligned with what I believe makes college football singular from any other sport. And look, before all y'all say this will never happen or that's unrealistic, I think most everything we've witnessed over the last six years in college football seemed Pretty damn unrealistic too. So the future tends to arrive a whole lot faster than we expect. Yeah. So look, man, I I think to end this thing, for as long as we've been watching college football, there was a single center of gravity that was the NCAA. And today, that center is gone. The power is scattered anywhere and everywhere across the landscape of college football. And everybody seems to be pulling in different directions with different interests. And everybody's trying to shape what they want the future to look like. And that's why I believe we are currently living right now today through college football's Cold War. Not because the sport is dying, quite the opposite, actually. The money's better than ever. There's more influence, I think, in the game, more eyeballs, more at stake. The NCAA no longer has its monopoly on power. But nobody has fully replaced that. And until somebody does, the battle's over, playoff expansion and NIL. Revenue sharing and transfer and eligibility, all that's gonna continue to rage on. It's gonna continue to generate most, if not all, of the headlines. But what I've tried to get at today is that underneath all those top-level headlines that you're gonna see is the story itself that remains unchanged is the struggle over who gets to decide what our sport becomes. Because ultimately. This isn't about money. It's not about conferences. It's not about the student athletes. It's not about governance. It's about authority and leadership and what's gonna happen in the future. And if you think I'm overstating this, remember now. A Supreme Court justice questioned the NCAA's entire economic model. Courts are intervening in eligibility decisions. Congress is debating legislation that would govern college sports. The SEC and the Big Ten are jointly combined. Trying to influence what that legislation looks like. And conference commissioners are outwardly and openly disagreeing on what a future playoff format might look at while while major coaches are publicly discussing scenarios, and conference commissioners for that matter, where their conference might just branch off and operate under their own rules. None of these things would have sounded plausible or normal five years ago. And today it's just ho-hum, another week in college football. And as we sit here today. with less than a hundred days to go before the college football season opens up. I think one thing is very, very clear. College football's Cold War has already started. The alliances are forming, the battle lines are being drawn, the power centers have very clearly emerged. And the decisions made over the next five to ten years are going to shape college football maybe for the next 50. Question isn't whether the sport has changed them. We know that's happened. All right. It's happening quicker than any of us want it to. The question is What is it gonna become on the other side of all this change? And right now, I think the thing that scares all of us is nobody knows what the answer is to that. So we'll see is is how it's all gonna go. I appreciate you being here. I appreciate you listening. ⁓ please let us know any of your thoughts, any questions that you have. Man, our sport is ⁓ it's never dull. It's never dull. Until next week, keep earning that scholarship, baby, and kiss your nooch.