Dear college football...

Dear College Football,

As someone who has lived my entire life in the Southeast (yes, even the year I spent in Texas qualifies as SEC country now!), it is impossible to deny the success of college football from a pure branding perspective. The bonds among players, fans, and teams, combined with the fierce rivalries between them, create tribalism on a level that would be the envy of any marketing organization. But these bonds may be fraying. To make the game more equitable for players, a series of real-time experiments are testing these bonds in ways not seen before.

It is worth mentioning a few of the important ways that college and professional sports have differed historically. At any level, playing time lies at the intersection of a team’s need and a player’s ability, but a college career is also, understandably, capped by eligibility limits tied to being in school. In addition, professional sports are, as the name implies, where athletes get paid market rates to make their living. Compensation for college athletes has been heavily restricted and comes primarily in the form of scholarships with no connection to how much money a program generates for its school, its coaches/staff, TV contracts, T-shirt and video game companies, etc.

Football specifically has a few additional nuances worth mentioning relative to other college sports:

• Football generates the most money of any college sport by far
• Football has the highest injury rate of any college sport by far
• It is virtually impossible to play NFL football without first playing in college

A series of well-intended changes were made in recent years that favor the players. One allows college players to profit individually from “NIL” contracts that protect the use of their personal name, image, and likeness. A second allows players greater flexibility to transfer more freely between schools. A third is a trend toward the best players opting out of their postseason games to avoid an injury that might jeopardize favorable prospects for the following year’s draft.

What can we expect if we follow these changes to their logical conclusion? As Charlie Munger said, “Show me the incentive, and I will show you the outcome.” We can expect that players will change teams more frequently in pursuit of their rational self-interests during their college years.? We can expect that the postseason will gradually become a contest of one team’s backup players against another’s. We can expect trust will be diminished as the basic identifying unit of the sport shifts from the team to the individual. As player and team loyalty diminishes, we can expect the same will be true for fans.

What can be done?

Some have said the playoff format coming next year may help, but that doesn’t change the underlying individual motivations for any of these changes. The likelihood of injury will actually be higher with more than just a single bowl game to play. Nobody wants to see anybody get hurt and risk their career at the same time. As a Miami fan, I watched Willis McGahee have a terrible injury in the fourth quarter of a double-overtime loss in the National Championship.

Thankfully, McGahee recovered and had a great NFL career, but the reality is that very few players make a decent living as professional athletes. I would be in favor of some form of insurance that automatically and fully covers at least the equivalent of 4 years of education for any college athlete who is injured while playing for their school.

I do think NIL contracts will evolve and should be structured to encourage playing through the postseason.

I also think that individual awards like the Heisman and all of the others for the best players at each position should be given after the postseason. For those who win these awards, not playing in the postseason is becoming a near certainty. If the likelihood of winning these awards is higher for those who play the whole year, choosing not to play would come at the expense of surrendering recognition and coveted high draft positions to players who stand with their teams and play their best when it counts most.

While it is always best to find market solutions, some sensible regulations are always needed. It seems the time between the regular and postseason should be regulated in a way that does not allow player movements or recruiting at a time when both player and coach focus on helping their team win should be at its peak.

In the end, I think college athletics in general and football in particular are a unique and enduring part of American culture. The ability to watch the best of the best compete at the highest level each year is something worth protecting.