(This post was originally published by Matt Zemek on Trojans Wire.)
No one is trying to convert anyone else to Christianity here. The Bible is a great work of literature, regardless of whether you believe in God.
One of the more famous stories of the New Testament is Saul on the road to Damascus, a story of encounter with God and transformation into a very different person compared to the version which existed before.
College football is arriving at a Saul-on-the-road-to-Damascus moment. What we are seeing right now will necessarily transform college football compared to what it was before.
The obvious question is, “Will the transformation — obviously painful and difficult in its early stages — bring about the kinds of changes which will reflect and improved and more just set of conditions for various groups, ideally as many as possible?”
Some of these changes aren’t going to emerge immediately; it will take years for them to be appreciated or to be implemented, if not both. Some changes could occur sooner rather than later, if enough political will exists in the college sports industry. Some changes can’t easily fit into either of the two categories I just described.
Let’s offer a brief list of some big-picture issues college football ought to wrestle with, noting that the sport might not actually have the courage or wisdom to confront all of them:
- Coaching contracts — Though it is true that Nick Saban and Dabo Swinney bring in enormous amounts of revenue to a university, such that their high-dollar deals aren’t financially reckless or irresponsible (at least not on their own merits in a narrow context), it is just as true that dozens of relatively mediocre coaches shouldn’t be making out like bandits in the buyout game. Universities need to be a lot more responsible in offering high-end compensation which is tied to performance, while reducing guaranteed money. Coaches are not going to starve; they just ought to expect more of their money to come from achievement, which they should be able to appreciate along with the rest of us. That is hardly an unreasonable ask.
- Contracts and arrangements, broadly viewed — Consider all of the various contracts or deals in place in college football right now. Start with the College Football Playoff contract running through the 2025 season. Continue with various bowl contracts, future nonconference scheduling agreements, and apparel agreements such as Under Armour with UCLA. Who gets to decide which contracts get torn up and which ones remain intact? Will parties in these agreements find workable solutions or go to court instead? A primary thought here: Given the revenue shortfalls at various major universities, it might be in everyone’s best financial interest to scrap the current playoff format and put in a 16-team playoff for 2021 to begin to recoup lost revenues. I’m not recommending that plan; I am merely saying it could be viewed as an urgent need for a lot of schools and conferences. Does college football think it has to retain the current playoff contract, or does it move to start from scratch? Would this be a political firefight, or would it meet with widespread agreement? So much to consider…
- Athlete compensation — The fact that college football hasn’t yet been postponed for the fall (as the Ivy League has done) at the time this column is being written on the afternoon of July 10 is, itself, a loud statement about the extent to which schools desperately need to play games this fall. Stop and think about that simple point. This is SERIOUS BUSINESS, a matter of immense importance. If college football players are THIS important to the economic and financial health of the schools they represent, that makes them — in my eyes and the eyes of many others — “essential workers.” What should a decent, humane, well-functioning society provide for essential workers? Hazard pay. Paid sick leave. Guaranteed health care. College sports has a great opportunity to rethink its relationship with the athletes who make this economic engine hum. Oh yes, the finances are going to be a bitch here, no argument… but maybe that is precisely what could create larger playoff structures. Let’s be clear: If athletes play this fall, they would — in an ideal world — receive take-home paychecks plus other worker protections. That isn’t going to happen — not for 2020 — but it can certainly happen for 2021 and beyond if there are enough humane, enlightened, compassionate, forward-thinking leaders in college sports who now see — like Saul on the road to Damascus — just how much they have demanded of athletes over the years. It’s time to reshape the compensation model in favor of athletes.
- Scheduling — The move to conference-only scheduling as an adjustment by the Big Ten brings up a larger discussion about scheduling imbalances in college football. As it stands now, lots of ACC and SEC teams barely play each other in five- or seven-year segments of time. This is a chance for those conferences to remake their schedules to guarantee that teams play each other once every two years. The format: A “3-5-5” plan in which every SEC or ACC team would have three fixed opponents, but then rotate the other 10 teams in the conference in two blocks of five every other year. This is an opportunity for conferences to fix scheduling problems.
- Conference realignment: geography edition — NO, NOT AGAIN! But wait… doesn’t this make sense now? Doesn’t it make sense to admit that long-distance commutes within conferences are stupid, and that in order to save money over the long haul, conferences should be tight geographical clusters? West Virginia belongs in the ACC or Big Ten much more than in the Big 12. Nebraska should move back to the Big 12. Break up the AAC into its northern and southern members and form new conferences based on geography. No more Temple-versus-SMU conference games.
- Conference realignment: budgetary edition — Yes, you might be exhausted and cranky at the notion of realigning the conferences yet again — one decade after significant changes in the early 2010s — but with the Group of Five schools taking huge financial hits, maybe this is the actual set of circumstances which forces college football to separate the upper-tier schools from the lower-tier schools in a more conscious way. This is not something which can or will happen immediately, but it certainly needs to be revisited now. A first question is how many Conference USA/Sun Belt/MAC programs might consider downscaling to the FCS as a result of their losses they will incur. Once we get a sense of how the financials look (and how a new playoff proposal or something similar might address those shortfalls), a remapping of the FBS could begin in earnest.
These are just some of the big-picture topics facing college football in the short and long term. Hopefully, a lot of fresh thinking — leading to positive change — will emerge from the pain and hardship this industry is feeling right now, and will continue to suffer in the coming years.