$16B College Sports Revenue and Regulations: Knight Commission Insights

By 2032, college football playoff revenue and new lucrative conference media contracts are projected to reach $16 billion annually for 54 schools with the most lucrative football programs, according to a new report from Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics in partnership with CLA (CliftonLarsonAllen).

 

During this same time frame, the report also finds that 26 of these 54 schools will likely pay their head football coaches and ten assistants more than what they spend on hundreds of athletes, their scholarships, lodging, food, medical expenses, and insurance coverage.

 

In this episode of Changing Higher Ed®, Dr. Drumm McNaughton discusses these shocking findings, along with where this money should go and how it must be spent, with Amy Privette Perko, CEO of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, an independent group with a legacy of impacting college sports policies to prioritize college athletic education, health, safety, and success.

 

Amy also cites other challenges these numbers present, such as how this will unfairly impact other sports at these institutions and what this means for higher education as a whole.

 

Podcast Highlights

 

Two years ago, NIL rule changes were made that allow athletes to earn compensation for the use of their name, image, or likeness in endorsements and social media. However, recruiting inducements haven’t been enforced, particularly among the powerhouse programs. There is also a lack of uniformity. The new NCAA president, Charlie Baker, is pushing for more athlete protections, such as the use of common contracts so athletes know what they're getting into and requiring agent registration. These will likely require federal legislation.

 

The Knight Commission had CLA (CliftonLarsonAllen) perform some projections that are featured in a new report that looks at the top 54 public institutions’ football programs, particularly in regard to the incoming revenue from college football playoffs and new lucrative conference media contracts. All sources of athletic revenues for these 54 schools will likely reach $16 billion annually in 2032. The report asks where all this money is going, how it’s going to be spent, if higher ed is going to move to an employee or revenue-sharing model, and how this will impact other sports.

 

The new report also finds that if head football coaches continue to be the chief beneficiary at nine institutions in particular, 26 of the 54 Power Schools are projected to pay their head football coaches and ten other countable assistants more than what they spend on hundreds of athletes, their scholarships, lodging, food, medical expenses, and insurance coverage.

 

Six public institutions in the Pac-12 recently announced they would leave the Pac-12 to join the Big Ten and the Big 12 because 85% of them are tied to big-revenue football. From the Knight Commission's view, that particular realignment and others like it only work for football and will force other sports to travel more and cause athletes to miss more classes.

 

The Knights Commission proposes there should be one governing association for football called the National College Football Association that's separate from the governing association. Meanwhile, the NCAA will govern all other sports. This isn’t a proposal to dismantle every conference. There should just be two FBS conferences like the Pac-12, SEC, or ACC, and there should be at least eight schools that play big-time football that will have to play a specific number of Olympic sports cones to receive an automatic qualifier for those tournaments.

 

The National College Football Association should be funded by the College Football Playoff since the College Football Playoff is already independent of and generates revenue separately from the NCAA. That said, the College Football Playoff does distribute the revenue back to the FBS conferences, which is then sent to the schools. The NCAA receives zero dollars in revenue from FBS football and the College Football Playoff. That’s significant because the NCAA absorbs $60 million a year in national costs for that sport.

 

The leadership is fragmented among power conferences. The Knight Commission feels that a unified structure would be better for the future of football, football players, and all other sports. To get it done, university presidents will need to tell conference commissioners to work together for the collective good, or Congress will get involved.

 

University presidents will need to identify what they want to achieve from college sports. If it's just about the revenue from conference contracts and the power of the brand, then they have to change the structure of how they treat athletes. If the answer is to provide opportunities for athletes, then presidents must be willing to leave a little bit of money on the table to provide a reasonable regional competitive structure for other athletes and must ensure these athletes don’t miss too many classes.

 

Schools have also signed onto an NCAA constitution that identifies on what principle higher education bases their revenue distribution. The Knight Commission says that incentives must be tied to these constitutional principles. First and foremost, the revenues need to take care of their own cost, but there needs to be some changes within that distribution.

 

 

Read the transcript →

 

About Our Podcast Guest

 

Amy Privette Perko has led the Knight Commission since 2005, serving as executive director until October 2016, when she was named chief executive officer. During Perko’s tenure, the NCAA has adopted a number of the Knight Commission recommendations. The most prominent of these actions include requiring teams to be on track to graduate 50 percent of their players to be eligible for postseason championships, reducing athletic time demands on college athletes, and revising its revenue distribution to include incentives for academic outcomes. The Knight Commission recommended all of these actions in its June 2010 report — “Restoring the Balance: Dollars, Values and the Future of College Sports.”

 

Perko serves as the Commission’s spokesperson and has been quoted and interviewed by leading news media, including ESPN, USA Today, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, and numerous public radio stations. She has been a keynote speaker and lecturer at a number of events, including the CoSIDA Convention, the University of Florida’s Alan C. & Elizabeth Martin Moore Lecture Series, and UNC’s Parr Center for Ethics/Public Policy Carolina Forum.

 

About the Host

 

Dr. Drumm McNaughton, host of Changing Higher Ed®, is a consultant to higher education institutions in governance, accreditation, strategy and change, and mergers. To learn more about his services and other thought leadership pieces, visit his firm’s website: https://changinghighered.com/.

 

The Change Leader’s Social Media Links

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drdrumm/ Twitter: @thechangeldr Email: [email protected]

 

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