This post originally appeared on the Substack Two Homers and a Realist.
College football is experiencing quite a moment. We are suddenly in an era that includes payments directly to athletes (NIL from “outside the team’s athletic department” and soon revenue sharing from within the team’s program), the ability of players to transfer multiple times in their career with immediate eligibility (no transfer limits) and to do so in multiple windows within a year (transfer portals), and extended eligibility (JUCO years don’t count, etc.).
All of this is a lot for participants (players, coaches, administrators) as well as observers (fans, donors, media) to fully comprehend and adjust to. Clearly a lot is left to shake out and this rough ride might well get rougher before it settles into a new, sustainable, and acceptable normal.
While the impetus behind these changes have not necessarily been to improve the game, so to speak, I believe they likely can and will. This is before we consider just how good we can possibly feel about a structure with built-in inequities even if the product itself is pleasing. Surely some Romans sat in the Colosseum thinking “I wonder how the gladiators feel about all this …”
Historically various parties in college sports have experienced what have been unarguably different treatments and arguably unfair outcomes. The lawsuits that have brought about the recent changes were to challenge rules that one side, the colleges (through the NCAA), desired and one side, the players, argued was illegal. As has been the case for decades,1 the NCAA ultimately loses to legal challenge. What many don’t appreciate is that the cartel nature of the NCAA and its newly-found illegal practices, are part of a long-time struggle to bring more balance to the big sports it governs.
Balance comes in two flavors, and both are about sharing the wealth:
Balance within firms - among those stakeholders who are direct participants (players, coaches, and administrators)
Balance across the industry - among football and men’s basketball programs.
The NCAA is against more balance because its most powerful constituents are against it. This has been the case for about 80 years. Reducing balance (maintaining an unequal arrangement) in both areas is a means and an ends. It keeps the rich richer (means) and it gives the rich what they want (ends). More specifically, the rich programs want more wealth, and keeping the imbalance serves as a means to get and keep it. And the rich programs want to win in and of itself, and this imbalance is that ends.
That brings me to the point of this post. I would like to tease out the conflict between a desire for parity (do those who want it really know how it can be achieved?) and a desire for the old-world model of CFB.
What do you really want?
Either you want more "parity" (more appropriately called competitive balance) in college football, or you want the world where the big and powerful programs dominate primarily at the expense of players and secondarily at the expense of lesser programs. This is a challenge to all of us who love college football because, as I will argue, the old world is dead (good riddance), and the new order is not what many expected. Be careful what you wish for meets quit living off the expense of others to prop up your sham arrangement.
There have been claims of "parity" in college football for decades that simply amount to fans and journalists being surprised when a non-traditional team has a good season or when an upset occurs. Further, when fans of a team that was the favorite loses to an underdog, the fans of the favorite take solace in the myth that “well, there is so much parity today . . .” (so the loss wasn't as bad as it seemed). This is especially true when the favorite suffering the upset was a perennial power (a so-called "blue blood" or similar).
This motivated reasoning didn't make it true. Let's be very clear: the world of college football is inherently stable with great inequity ruling. There are upstarts that gain footing, and in some cases this footing takes. But it is rare and almost always simply a team moving from one position down the ladder to a higher level yet still prevented from the jump to being a top program.
Kansas State is indicative of this as they went from the bottom of football (112th out of 112 in winning percentage from 1945-1990) to the second highest quartile (22nd out of 126 from 1991-2023). This was incredible improvement. And it was fleetingly rare—the exception that proves the rule. Look at the top ten winning programs from 1945-2013 (by win%).2
Oklahoma 76%
Ohio State 75%
Penn State 73%
Texas 72%
Michigan 71%
Alabama 71%
Nebraska 70%
Southern Cal 69%
Notre Dame 68%
Tennessee 68%
Now look at the top ten winning programs from 2014-2023 (or just look at the prior list as the point has already been made).
Alabama 90%
Ohio State 88%
Clemson 86%
Georgia 84%
Oklahoma 78%
Michigan 75%
Notre Dame 74%
Boise State 73%
Appalachian State 73%
Louisiana State 70%
Two of the newcomers (Boise State and Appalachian State) are there only because we aren't adjusting for strength of schedule. No serious observer of college football claims either of them as a top ten program. The remaining newcomers to the top ten are household names. They were all good in the 1945-2013 era (Clemson was 19th, Georgia was 13th, LSU was 14th). Competitive balance (aka, parity) is no more or less true today than it has ever been.3
The sports economics literature has followed college football in particular for a long time as a great example of cartel theory—the powerful rule the roost. That actually may be coming to a an end, which is quite ironic given how much angst that change is being met with by those who historically have clamored for it. It seems everybody wants it (or so they have always said), but nobody really likes it (or so they say).
The way to a more competitive field has two major components:
Allow full competition within the league - remove the restrictions on how teams compete for talent
Eliminate the bottom - remove a major portion of the bottom teams from the league.
For decades the dominant powers kept a thumb on upstarts by using the NCAA as their enforcer to make sure smaller, lesser programs could not fully challenge. By limiting the dimensions along which programs could compete (primarily restricting pay to athletes), the powerful programs could reign since they held all the other cards. Specifically, they were big names commanding big attention (fan and media share and attention) with big donor bases (lots of non-pecuniary resources including facilities but importantly also including under-the-table payments to players) and other connections up (NFL) and down (high school) the supply chain.
The bottom teams served a key purpose: bringing scope to the league—a bigger league meant more attention and more revenue. Additionally, without them the powerful teams would not look so powerful. Yet if they were allowed to compete fully, they might disrupt the apple cart. That is what has emerged in this new landscape of direct, open payments to players and open transfer opportunities.
While it was not entirely the direct intention, the consequence of recent legal decisions is to more fully allow competition within the league through liberalization of payments to players and more transfer availability. This will bring about more competitive balance. Unfortunately for many, though, this doesn’t look like they imagined it would—it is way more disruptive.
This is NOT what I ordered!
As compared to the past and in the eyes of many, there is chaos today. At least there is a chaotic world that is very much not what many or most fans have expected. So we need order, but order will come within this new framework. The old world is dead. A new order can be had, but we cannot go back to the past. A world where teams can (must) pay players will leave many programs behind. To be sure, this is a natural, albeit unpleasant, result for those programs unprepared, ill suited, or unwilling to compete.
These programs will be the punching bags of the top programs and often serve as their de facto farm teams. They will now also find themselves on the decisively losing side against teams they used to consider equals.
Transfer rules accelerate and greatly extend what was already always true—that players change teams. Now they can do so repeatedly and without sitting out a year.
[Aside: Disliking this is your prerogative, but it really isn't something you should have a say over. A rule that harms the participants (players) for the benefit of outside interests (fans) and powerful incumbents (programs that obviously have unequal bargaining power like 50-year-old coaches and their programs against 18-year-old kids) is problematic on its face.]
Who can sustain and build anew is more dynamic. Just as Notre Dame, et al. had to adapt to the changing landscape of college football (more commercialization) whereas Harvard and Yale before them had refused to, programs will have to adapt to the new landscape. Oklahoma didn't like it when T. Boone Pickens money meant Oklahoma State had player facilities equal to or exceeding those of Oklahoma. Michigan and others were competitively harmed when southern schools like Miami started leveraging their advantages (good climate, proximity to players, and, yes, a willingness to make illegal-at-the-time payments to players). Today is like all of that only more so and at a faster clip.
The impact of the changes are not distributed uniformly. Transfers in particular but payments as well mean teams at the top and at the bottom as well as the middle face challenges. The top teams could lock in players in the past but so could lesser programs to a great extent. Now those players can find better fits more easily capturing for themselves their true value. And this movement is up to down as well as the more obvious down to up. There is also a big mix of sideways too that further frustrates those who don’t have a taste for volatility.
There is a sentiment that in the new world the rich, powerful teams will dominate, but this is mistaken in a couple of ways. First, greater opportunities to compete along more dimensions like paying players reduces the competitive advantage of the rich programs. There is a reason large, established firms seek regulation—they can more easily comply with it. The NCAA has been a cartel for the big programs not against them.
Second, people are mistaking volatility and disruption to the old order as something newly benefiting the powerful. It can and does, but, again, it will not be in a uniform manner. More importantly as demonstrated before, the rich, powerful teams have staying power. That’s why we can even conceive of them as such. If we had perfect parity, their would be no lasting recurrence with the top programs. There wouldn’t be top programs. There would be no such thing as a blue blood. Their dominance is nothing new. The better question is if they really can capture this to their pure benefit. There is little reason to believe that is the case.
What are you really mad about?
There seem to be two major types of frustration beyond the simple distaste for change or the more problematic distaste for players now making money. They are:
Fans of historically upper-tier programs feeling threatened by the new world
Fans of historically middle and lower-tier programs feeling threatened by the new world.
For the first group my reply is that you likely will be fine but you will have to adapt. Also, did you think you were entitled to your exalted status?
For the second group my reply is that now you can compete in ways and for opportunities that previously were not available to you but adapting might require more than you are willing to pay. Also, did you think you were entitled to a free pass to the VIP room?
Behind this is a lot of angst because the old world was a very comfortable place for a lot of stakeholders—just not all of them.
How Can We Fix It?
I titled the post about not having it both ways to mean you can’t go back to the way it was and have more competitive balance. This is almost tautological since the lack of competitive balance was the driving force for the way it was. And the way it was was less competitively balanced—in all respects.
We can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube, and why would we even want to since this is the way to something we’ve always desired? What we want is a stable world within the new world framework. In that we can have it both ways.
To make a political analogy: One can be supportive of immigration yet at the same time expect an orderly (non-chaotic) border. We can improve on the college football landscape.
Designing a complete solution would be more than a long blog post of its own. It would actually be a fool’s errand. There is no way to completely solve a complex problem like this on a single blueprint. It will take adaptation and emergence.
The best we can do is describe general characteristics that likely would bring about a future we can vaguely describe. Here are my thoughts:
I believe some form of contracts are the solution. This would certainly bring stability as well as some transparency, which is better for the system overall and the less-powerful and less-sophisticated parties.
Dovetailing from the prior point, that may give rise to a player’s union; however, I would hope that would not be the case as I think generally unions work to the benefit of union leaders rather than union members. Sports unions are perhaps on the better end of that spectrum.
Have a voluntary, negotiated break up of the league. Remember the point above about bringing more competitive balance by eliminating the bottom? That might serve dual goals by also better arranging likeminded and similarly capable teams. A stratification allows teams to decide what kind of football program they want to have. And it need not be permanent—relegation and promotion are a thing.
Stay open to and experiment with various transfer windows. There are likely better ways to time it seasonally. We need to keep tinkering.
Among the benefits that contracts would bring would be firmer terms upon which all parties can rely—that’s why we have contract law. As a surprising plus they return bargaining power to the schools from the coaches (who can today threaten to leave and take the team with them). College coaching pay has to take a haircut in the coming world. Note that in the pros the compensation is relatively lower for coaches. This might accelerate that new reality.
Big changes have come, but more is probably on the way. I guarantee you two things:
It won’t be exactly as expected
It won’t be as bad as you might fear.
Keep calm and carry on!
I am excluding Boise State as they were not in the top level of football for enough years to be considered.
For a more scientific examination of competitive balance, one could calculate the Noll-Scully Ratio where they would find it quite stable in this long history of college football—proving again that competitive balance (aka, parity) is no more or less true today than it has ever been.