For months now, as college athletics leaders brace for a world of athlete revenue sharing, they’ve made decisions consistent with an industry that is breaking free of its amateurism shell and evolving into a more professionalized entity.
Schools are hiring general managers to oversee their rosters, capologists to appropriately distribute cash and consultants to find untapped avenues to generate revenue. Many of them are altering the entire structure of athletic departments, including the creation of college scouting departments.
They are increasing ticket sales, slapping corporate sponsors on their stadiums and even exploring private equity — all in an effort to produce new revenue to distribute to players.
But perhaps the most significant sign yet of the evolution of college athletics can be found in, of all places, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Bill Belichick, the 72-year-old six-time Super Bowl winner, has been hired as head coach — a stunning move and a watershed moment in an industry that’s very quickly turning professional.
North Carolina’s week-long courtship of Belichick ended in an agreement on Wednesday between school and coach. While jarring for many, the hire is understandable and timely given the state of college sports.
Belichick knows pro ball.
College isn’t so different any longer.
In seven months, in fact, college athletics takes another giant leap into the professional world: Schools are permitted to begin directly paying players under a salary cap-type system related to the NCAA’s settlement of three antitrust lawsuits.
Already, ahead of the implementation date of July 1, programs are offering guaranteed financial packages to players, some of them even sending school-issued revenue-sharing documents to recruits. Most of these contracts are centered around purchasing an athlete’s commercial and endorsement rights, and some of them are even multi-year term deals featuring buyout language. Schools must stay within a cap, projected for now at $20.5 million in Year 1.
Contracts.
A salary cap.
Scouting departments and capologists.
Sound familiar?
Soon, the only things separating major college football from the NFL is the tether to higher education (they must still go to class!) and absence of employment (they have not, yet, been deemed employees). Even college recruiting is changing. Players and their parents aren’t necessarily courted through in-home visits or campus trips. These are, often, transactional relationships with guaranteed cash in the hundreds of thousands of dollars (for elite QBs, that number is often in the millions).
Belichick arrives in Chapel Hill as a master of pro ball. He won a half-dozen Super Bowls and 302 games in 29 years as an NFL head coach. Despite his age — UNC fired a 73-year-old for a man one year younger — the former Patriots leader is more versed in managing a professional roster than any coach in college football.
His chances of returning to a pro franchise limited or non-existent, Belichick spent most of his year off this season studying the college game. That was evident during a wide-ranging interview on “The Pat McAfee Show,” when he detailed the impending change to the college game.
He’d clearly spoken to college coaches — perhaps his good friend, Nick Saban — and read up on the impending settlement that ushers in this revenue-share era.
“A lot of colleges are looking at NFL-type models to structure personnel and coaching,” he told McAfee. “The job is obviously too big for one person. You need a general manager, a coach and salary cap manager.”
For North Carolina, the move is bold but, maybe, prescient.
The Tar Heels program is certain to experience a complete overhaul in the next several months. During his interview with McAfee, Belichick made it quite clear: He’d bring an NFL mentality and structure to Chapel Hill.
There will be awkward moments, and there may even be power struggles.
After all, while on with McAfee, Belichick suggested that his conversations with North Carolina officials centered around the football program’s “structure” and “who is reporting to who,” he said.
His hire may completely alter the way many college programs operate — if it works. Maybe this coaching search is a window into how things might operate in the future. It’s no real secret that influential board members involved themselves in the search, perhaps even steering it toward Belichick.
It is believed that the coach presented a list of demands and guarantees before he accepted the job, surely focused on revenue-sharing figures and the pecking order of power.
Who do I answer to?
How much money can I pay players?
Last week, before his team played in the ACC championship game, Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney was asked about Belichick’s potential hire.
“That’d be quite a story,” he smiled.
Quite a story? It’s the story of college football, and it likely doesn’t happen without the other story in the industry.
Kiss goodbye to the college football you once knew.
These are now the minor leagues.
