LAS VEGAS — As Charlie Baker moved through the Bellagio Casino last Tuesday evening, a man approached him with a complaint.
“What you guys did was wrong,” the man said.
“What did I do?” a perplexed Baker asked.
Replied the man: “You left Alabama out of the playoff.”
As NCAA president, Baker holds authority over many aspects of college sports. The College Football Playoff is not one of them.
But the exchange, in a bustling, smoke-filled casino on the Vegas strip, is a reminder of the power of college football, the misunderstanding of its place within the NCAA structure and the off-the-field disarray gripping the sport (the CFP selection process is, perhaps, the least of the issues).
Messy. Madness.
Chaos. Confusion.
These are words used last week during a three-day gathering in Las Vegas of some of the industry’s most influential leaders to describe a sport undergoing historic transformation.
Major college football exists in a state of unprecedented evolution as it shifts from an amateurism model to a professional entity, a move further complicated by its tether to higher education and academics.
As the expanded College Football Playoff arrives this week, the sport’s chaotic realities are on full display.
– A backup quarterback left his team, Penn State, to enter the transfer portal six days before his team competes in a first-round playoff game.
– An entire football team, Marshall, withdrew from a bowl game two weeks before kickoff as a result of so many players transferring out.
– A long-time and respected coach, Wake Forest’s Dave Clawson, abruptly resigned amid issues of the new era.
– At least three head coaches (LSU, Oklahoma State and FSU) are contributing a portion of their salary to their school’s revenue-sharing efforts.
– And, perhaps the wildest of them all, schools and their affiliated NIL collectives are promising prospects millions of guaranteed cash in an effort to distribute a large percentage of their pay before a new enforcement arm is implemented next summer.
‘It is absolute bedlam’
At the center of much of this is the NCAA’s settlement of the House antitrust case, which will usher into the sport direct pay from schools to athletes under a quasi-salary cap of at least $20.5 million annually per school.
While the move is expected to both stave off lawsuits that threaten to bankrupt the association and bring a level of regulation, the transition period between now and its implementation on July 1 is messy. In a competitive recruiting environment and with little real enforcement of rules, institutions are front-loading athlete contracts as a way to circumvent the impending salary cap next year and avoid being subject to the new settlement-related enforcement mechanism.
Deals executed before the settlement’s presumed approval in April are not expected to be subject to the new NIL clearinghouse, a Deloitte-run operation that is expected to police the many phony booster-backed compensation agreements so prevalent in the industry over the previous three years.
“Right now, it is absolute bedlam occurring across college football,” said Jere Morehead, the president of Georgia who chaired the NCAA Division I Board of Directors during the settlement’s approval in May.
“We should be definitive that we will go back and unwind these deals that are not legitimate third-party NIL transactions. We should not accept the notion that institutions, coaches or players can agree to anything they want until July 1. These deals, if not legitimate third-party NIL agreements, would be in violation of the settlement we all agreed to going forward.”
At its highest levels, major college football is at the center of a great divide happening within the NCAA: For years handcuffed by rules intended to legislate competitive equity among the hundreds of schools in Division I, the revenue-generating football powers are breaking free. Through court rulings and state laws, these programs, and their boosters, are afforded the ability to spend their riches recruiting and retaining athletes — without many or any limitations.
While most agree that power conference football players deserve to earn some of the billions their schools generate, the situation, in this period of accelerated change, has created uncomfortable, awkward and perhaps painful moments — many of them the result of a professional entity working without a professional structure.
There are no real binding contracts; there is no players association; there is zero collective bargaining; and there is no punishment for rule-breakers as many of the rules themselves are the target of legal scrutiny.
For example, the NCAA and conferences are somewhat handcuffed in enforcing their rules around both transfers and athlete compensation because of court rulings and state laws.
How the industry got here is quite simple: Schools and their leaders, generating billions in television revenue and ticket sales, delayed sharing wealth for so long that federal judges and state lawmakers forced them to do it.
“I’m indicting everyone, including myself,” Kevin White, an athletic director at six different NCAA schools over 40 years, told Yahoo Sports last year. “We should have been far more progressive and forward thinking over the past 20 years or more.”
Transfer portal timing and bowl season
It’s led the industry into a state of mayhem, administrators contend, never seen before.
Take for instance Penn State’s backup quarterback, Beau Pribula, a contributor in certain offensive packages, who entered the transfer portal ahead of the Nittany Lions’ playoff game against SMU. He says he was left with an “impossible decision” as the playoffs overlap with the open portal period — Dec. 9-28.
While it’s true that players participating in playoff games receive an extension to transfer, in this current landscape of quarterback movement, Pribula’s chances of securing a starting spot elsewhere — and perhaps more money — diminish if he waits.
The quarterback transfer market is a hotly competitive and lucrative one. It waits for no one.
“We got problems in college football and I can give you my word: Beau Pribula did not want to leave our program until the end of the season,” Penn State coach James Franklin told reporters on Monday. “Beau should not be put in this position.”
“It’s really sad,” said a source with direct knowledge of the quarterback’s move. “Agents have all the control and players are put in awful situations. He had to do it or he would lose any opportunity to be a starter.”
One day before Pribula’s decision, Marshall shined a light on another one of college football’s postseason dilemmas: the bowl system. Down more than 25 players and with a new head coach, Marshall withdrew from its bowl game, the Independence Bowl, two weeks before the game was scheduled to begin. Dozens of players are expected to opt out of their teams’ bowl games this year, too.
Industry leaders believe the bowl system needs to be re-examined and potentially overhauled in an expanded playoff era, and Nick Carparelli, the executive director of Bowl Season, has shown an openness to discuss alternative options.
But what are those options exactly? There are plenty of ideas, like the creation of a secondary playoff — call it a Football NIT — to be played out using bowl games, or requiring players to participate in bowls with cash incentives in future revenue-sharing contracts (some NIL collectives already do this).
The future of bowls should come to light over the next year. Many bowl contracts with ESPN and conferences expire after the 2025 bowl schedule. SEC and Big Ten administrators have discussed holding more control and ownership over their bowl games and their bowl revenue. Can they match up their own teams in non-playoff postseason games instead? Perhaps.
The fix for the portal, meanwhile, isn’t easy, though many believe that rev-share contracts from schools may reduce player movement. Eliminating the fall portal window could present problems and lead to more legal challenges. The portal coincides with the end of the fall academic semester. Coaches want to set their rosters heading into spring practice, and players want to enroll at their new school for the spring semester in January.
School administrators who make up NCAA committees already reduced the portal open period from 45 to 30 days earlier this year. Any more limitations — such as the proposal to have one portal window — could lead to lawsuits.
How are schools dealing with the financial aspect?
Legal issues grip the sport in fear and for good reason: The NCAA and conferences have lost the last several high-profile cases over rules that restrict athletes, including a 9-0 defeat at the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court in 2021.
It’s part of the reason why college leaders agreed in May to the landmark settlement of three antitrust cases (House, Hubbard and Carter). The settlement-related revenue-sharing concept moves college sports closer to its evolution into a professional model. In fact, schools are adapting to the pro-like structure.
One school hired a 72-year-old former NFL coach to run their program (North Carolina and Bill Belichick). Others have already hired general managers and capologists and are creating scouting departments.
With schools frontloading cash before the settlement’s implementation, salaries for even the most average of players are ballooning well into the six figures. Top-flight quarterbacks are in the seven figures.
In fact, Washington State coach Jake Dickert told reporters on Monday that the school made a seven-figure offer to quarterback John Mateer to remain with the Cougars. Mateer entered the transfer portal instead.
“College football is in a different place than it was five years ago,” Dickert said. “There’s $800 million new Power Four rev-share money infiltrated into the system right now. Backups at [the Power Four] level are getting $50-100,000.”
Schools, for years using football profits to subsidize money-losing Olympic sports, build gaudy facilities and pay millions in coaching contracts, are furiously scrambling for cash to pay athletes. Even some of the most lucrative and valuable football brands find themselves in a money-crunching position.
While schools have committed millions of dollars to coaching and staff salaries, a new trend has arrived: Coaches contributing a portion of their salaries for schools to use within the athlete revenue-sharing framework.
Take for instance the news from Baton Rouge last week, where LSU head coach Brian Kelly announced that he would match donations to the school’s collective of up to $1 million. In Stillwater, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State reduced coach Mike Gundy’s salary to direct it to the athlete revenue-sharing efforts. In Tallahassee, Florida, Mike Norvell announced a restructured contract with FSU that includes a $4.5 million donation this year back to the university.
There are plenty more issues outside of the revenue share concept.
The NCAA is in the midst of overhauling its Division I governance model to grant the power leagues — those big football brands — more authority in rule-making and cash-spending. And the College Football Playoff stands in a murky place with Big Ten and SEC leaders contemplating adjustments that may adversely impact others.
There’s also a new roster structure related to the House settlement that is expected to cost thousands of walk-on spots within Division I — a concept that has hundreds of parents outraged and planning to file a legal objection in the case. It has many leaders ticked off, too, like Val Ackerman, the Big East commissioner who recently penned a letter to Baker urging for a phase-in approach to the roster changes. However, the power conferences control many of these decisions, and there does not appear to be an appetite to change the roster situation.
Where does college football go from here?
All of these issues are tangled together, each of them a thread in this unruly fabric of college sports. Pull one and another unspools. Pull too hard and the entire thing unravels.
Many of these fabrics — the portal, NIL, revenue-sharing, the postseason calendar — took center stage last week in Las Vegas at events around the National Football Foundation’s College Football Hall of Fame dinner, as well as the Sports Business Journal’s annual forum.
The forum itself, as well the surrounding receptions and lavish dinners, is often a window into the state of the industry — one that, clearly, has never been more disrupted and divided. Deep-seated dissension exists, evident by the attendance alone.
Absent from the forum, for the first time in years, were the four most powerful leaders in college athletics. The power conference commissioners (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC) did not participate in the two-day event, their absence noticeable — a result, perhaps, of who did participate.
The forum featured some of the leaders who are proposing revolutionary changes to the college sports model, members of the group College Sports Tomorrow, as well as other private-equity executives. They say their intention is to assist the industry at its most vulnerable and fractured time.
This embedded content is not available in your region.
Despite their views and proposals being roundly rejected by leaders of the SEC and Big Ten, they continue to march forward. In fact, search firm executive Len Perna and his College Sports Tomorrow team delivered a presentation in front of Big 12 and ACC presidents earlier this month. Authors of a similar proposal, SMASH Capital’s Project Rudy, followed with a presentation of their own.
More meetings are planned, some of which transpired in Las Vegas between administrators and SMASH Capital representatives.
Many conference leaders are urging their counterparts to have an open mind about private-equity and future models for the sport, including American Athletic Conference commissioner Tim Pernetti. “What’s the harm in listening?” he said from the forum.
Perna described the industry as “a million percent broken” and only manageable “for five to 10 schools.” West Virginia president Gordon Gee, a leading member of Perna’s movement, agreed: “We have to fix it.”
Some hold different feelings.
“We are in a super league, we feel,” said Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione, five months into his school’s tenure in the SEC. “I don’t know that we have to create another one.”
But for all the in-fighting, for all the negativity, all of the festering issues, isn’t there a positive here?
Hasn’t college football gained parity?
Some believe so. Players, previously restricted to one school and penalized for transferring, are free to move at will. They are leaving schools as backups or role players for starting jobs and, in some cases, bigger paychecks, too.
“The state of college football has created a lot more parity when you look at the portal and NIL,” SMU football coach Rhett Lashlee said. “Teams can no longer load up, create a monopoly and dominate over and over again. No longer does a blue blood have four or five straight top-five classes. They can’t keep guys. These guys are leaving. They transfer so they can play and it spreads the talent out more.”
Without such a freedom of movement, would SMU be in the playoff? The Mustangs have a host of transfers from Miami and other power programs. What about Indiana? Its coach brought 22 of his former players from James Madison to Bloomington, and the Hoosiers are 11-1.
Though a football blue blood, would Notre Dame be here without the portal? Its quarterback played at Duke last season. In fact, five playoff teams start first-year transfer QBs.
“It’s very clear that this convergence of transfer portal, NIL and going from five to four power conferences, you’ve seen the effects of that related to competition,” ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said. “There is a drastic change. There are more good teams now in the country than there ever were.”
So, as the expanded playoff begins, college football finds itself in its most hectic and peculiar situation. And it has nothing to do with Alabama’s absence from the playoff field.
