The Death Of College Football?

Will paying student athletes destroy the game?

The Death Of College Football?

Is College Football going to fall apart without Congressional antitrust exemption?

According to this fortune.com article, the NCCA certainly thinks so:

As you can probably guess, this is being done under the guise of helping poor schools that allegedly cannot afford to pay their players:

There are quite a few things to unpack here, actually.

First of all: the claim that smaller schools are going to die of bankruptcy is an empty one. If, as Baker claims, it is true that 95% of colleges are losing money on fielding competitive college football teams, they really ought to stop fielding those teams. In fact — if they were actually losing millions of dollars year after year, you’d expect that they would have already dropped the sport. Schools don’t field college football teams for charitable purposes, after all.

Second: It’s unlikely that classing athletes as employees of schools will completely shut down football programs. How is this different than schools offering varying levels of scholarships to “student athletes?”

Third: The practice of paying players under the table to play for certain schools is well established and is actually quite old. By legitimizing a practice that has existed for well over a century, student athletes are provided with protections they would not otherwise have while being paid under the table.

However, Baker is right about one thing. The college football landscape will never be the same.

The recent Florida State developments make it obvious that conferences outside the Big Ten and SEC will not compete for long. If the money’s not there, the larger and competitive schools will do whatever it takes to go after the money.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? It depends on your perspective. Personally, I hate seeing the regional nature of the sport destroyed in the interests of large media institutions.

I’d love to know your take.