On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: Is this the last season of "normal" college football?

College sports are in an existential crisis. And nowhere is that clearer than its biggest cash cow – college football, an essential part of America’s cultural fabric. But now a combination of fragmented leadership and an all-out chase for money, are upending century-old traditions. Meanwhile, neither college athletes nor fans have any say. Where does college football go from here? USA TODAY Sports Columnist Dan Wolken who co-hosts the podcast College Football Fix joins for a special deep-dive to explain.

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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Taylor Wilson:

Hello and welcome to 5 Things. I'm Taylor Wilson. Today is Thursday, the 31st of August 2023, and this is a special episode of 5 Things. College sports are in an existential crisis, and nowhere is that clearer than it's biggest cash cow, college football, an essential part of America's cultural fabric. But now a combination of fragmented leadership and an all out chase for money are upending century old traditions. Meanwhile, neither college athletes nor fans have any say. Where does college football go from here? USA TODAY Sports Columnist Dan Wolken, who co-hosts the podcast College Football Fix, now joins me to dig into it. Dan, thanks for coming on the podcast.

Dan Wolken:

Happy to be here. Thank you.

Taylor Wilson:

So Dan, week one of college football officially kicks off this weekend with a full slate of games after week zero, but conference realignment is upending the college football landscape. What's the main driver behind this realignment craze?

Dan Wolken:

Well, quite simply, it's money. You have to go back a long time to the 80s. The Oklahoma Board of Trustees sued the NCAA to get their television rights. Before that court case, which went to the Supreme Court, the NCAA actually controlled who played games on television, and there weren't very many games at all. So one week you might see Notre Dame, one week you might see Oklahoma. It was just a totally different world. Once Oklahoma won that case, it gave all of the schools control of their own broadcast rights. And what ended up happening was they pulled them in these conferences and then sold them as a package to the networks.

And over time, that obviously had great benefits for the fans. More games were on television. It had great benefits for the schools. They were making a lot of money selling the rights to those games. And the conferences were doing well also. But of course, as it evolved, the conferences saw, oh, well, if we add certain teams, we can make more money. And so the realignment has just kind of come a little bit in waves, and every five to seven years, when these broadcast contracts are finished, that's how these conferences and these schools try to make more money, is by adding new teams. And they can sell that to ESPN, CBS, NBC, whoever. And so it's just kind of evolved organically in that way, that the conferences have gotten bigger because there's more TV rights for them to sell. And that's why we are where we are today.

Taylor Wilson:

And Dan, the big point of conversation this summer has been about the PAC 12 and the PAC 12 conference is on the brink of collapse after several schools defected to the Big 12 and Big 10. Some of the sport's most contentious and historic rivalries will disappear after more realignment. Dan, can fans do anything about all this? Or do they need to accept this as their new reality?

Dan Wolken:

No, there's not much fans can do, because ultimately they're going to keep watching the games. And everyone hates what's happened in the sport. Everybody is confused by the way the map looks, and all of that is valid. It makes no sense at all that you've got a Big 10 conference that spans from Rutgers to Oregon. It's crazy.

But there's really not much that can be done from a fan standpoint because people want college football and they'll consume it and accept it in whatever form it happens. There's obviously huge problems for the athletes and the schools themselves in conferences that are this big and unwieldy. But for the fans, it's unfortunate in a way because there's a loss of some rivalries, but you also get some great new match ups. USC and UCLA, for instance, going into the Big 10 next year are going to be playing teams like Nebraska and Michigan and Penn State they've not played very many times, if at all. There's kind of both sides of it. Ultimately, there has not been any sort of indication that people are turning off college football because of all this realignment.

Taylor Wilson:

Do you think that will be, at any point, looking at the landscape over the next decade, the next few years, a breaking point for fans? Or are they just going to keep showing up?

Dan Wolken:

Well, it's interesting. Over time, college sports executives have argued that if you pay players, if they make money, if it's not amateur sports then fans are going to tune out, they're going to turn it off. They don't want to watch minor league sports. Well, each year, college sports gets more and more professionalized, from the coaching salaries to now players can make money off their name, image and likeness, to all this realignment. And there's no evidence that people are turned off by it. In fact, the ratings are good. The college football playoff keeps expanding, adding more teams, and I just don't see any sort of indication that there's going to be a breaking point unless we get to a stage where the 30 or 40 most valuable teams across all conferences band together and kind of leave everybody else behind. That's the one thing I could see that might really turn people off to the sport.

Taylor Wilson:

That would be akin to say the European Super League model that we saw pop up as a proposal in soccer a few years ago, for instance.

Dan Wolken:

Yeah, that's exactly right. And obviously the fans rebelled against that and it went away, but it's simply a logical endpoint of all this. How do these top schools, the most valuable properties, how do they make the most money? How do they maximize their profits? It's probably that model, and it's unfortunate, but without some sort of stop to this, that's probably a realistic future in the next 10 to 15 years.

Taylor Wilson:

And Dan, you've suggested maybe pulling college football out of the governance of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, or NCAA. This would essentially take it out of the university system altogether. Why do you feel that way, and how would that even work?

Dan Wolken:

I think the way that some people look at this is okay, college football's driving all of the realignment, all of the changes because it's the sport that makes the most money. It brings in billions of dollars.

But why are we having our tennis team or our soccer team or field hockey making these huge road trips, missing all this class time for sports that, A, don't make any revenue, and B, they're not televised. People aren't really watching these sports on a wide scale, so why are we doing this? Why don't we go back to more localized, regionalized leagues?

And it totally makes sense for everything outside of football. And at some point, football has gotten or will get so big, that you just can't manage it and regulate it the same way as all the other sports. And so there is a potential future where you just pull the governance of college football outside of the NCAA. It starts in a brand new system. It kind of makes its own rules. It does its own thing.

Maybe the schools aren't even really affiliated with colleges. They just sort of have licensing or marketing deals to use the name Notre Dame or to use the name University of Florida, whatever it might be. That would sort of help them get around a lot of the issues on Title IX, on employment basis, it would make it easier to collectively bargain if that's where the future of this thing is. But I think everybody realizes there's so much money in this sport that something's got to change because it's just such a different animal than everything else.

Taylor Wilson:

And you've called college presidents, conference commissioners and athletic administrators, "hypocrites, failed leaders, and pathetic backstabbers." Those are very strong words, though Dan, I think they resonate with a lot of folks. Why do you feel that way? And could any one leader or entity come in and try to right the ship going forward?

Dan Wolken:

Well just go back in the name, image and likeness issue. In the 10, 12 years ago, there was this lawsuit. Ed O'Bannon, former UCLA basketball player, sued the NCAA over the fact that his image was in a video game. It was clearly him, it looked like him. It had his stats, it had his number, it had his uniform at UCLA, but he wasn't getting paid for that. And basically the NCAA owned those rights in perpetuity. Well, he sued and he won. And I think at that point, it should have been clear to everybody in college sports which direction this was heading. But instead of taking a long-term approach to try to solve this in a way that was going to be beneficial to everybody, the NCAA just tried to hold on to power, hold on to limiting what athletes could make. And it's backfired on them, because they've lost legally, they've lost legislatively, they've lost at the Supreme Court. They've lost at every turn because their model never made any sense. And what they have needed for many, many years was somebody to come in and to say, "This is the system we need to pivot to."

But it's hard for them to do that because the NCAA is governed by hundreds, thousands of schools at different levels with different agendas. And the presidents are the ones who are driving this. But college presidents have way more to do and to think about than athletics. Athletics is just a minor part of their job. The hospital attached to their school makes way more money than college athletics. So of course, that's where their attention's going to be. College sports has needed better governance, like I said, it's become professional sports. It's needed to be run like professional sports. But the people in charge are still trying to run it like college sports, and it just doesn't work anymore.

Taylor Wilson:

You mentioned NIL. This is name, image and likeness. Of course, one of the biggest changes in recent years is that college athletes are now allowed to make money off of signing autographs and other things like that. How has this impacted the sport up to this point, Dan?

Dan Wolken:

I don't know if it's had a huge impact other than maybe spreading the talent around a little bit more. I think everybody when it started was looking at it and saying, oh, well, Alabama and Georgia and the schools with the most money and the rich boosters who really love football are going to get all the best players. Well, guess what? They were getting the best players anyway before this NIL stuff started.

If anything, I think what's happened is that schools who are maybe a little bit in a lower level than those truly elite schools have had an opportunity to make their case to some prospects that maybe they wouldn't have had the opportunity to get before. And the reason is because of money and what people can do for them on a sponsorship basis.

So I don't think it's had a huge impact competitively, but it has, I think, a little bit spread the talent around. And it's certainly given some schools an opportunity to fix rosters quickly if they've changed coaches, or whatever reason your program is suffering. And I think NIL, along with the transfer portal, has given you an opportunity to turn things around pretty fast.

Taylor Wilson:

And Dan, many of the coaches in college football, of course, make millions when you add up salary and bonuses. But for the players themselves, beyond NIL, they're still not being compensated directly other than scholarships. What's next in the fight toward actually getting players paid?

Dan Wolken:

Yeah, it's going to be, I think a long fight. It's going to be interesting to watch unfold. Obviously what schools want right now is protections, antitrust protections in a congressional bill that would specify that athletes cannot be employees, that they can only be students, and that they're not entitled to any revenue sharing. Honestly, I don't think they're likely to get that in Congress because I just think it's too difficult to pass legislation in such a divided environment in the House and the Senate.

Taylor Wilson:

And another major change coming next year has to do with the college football playoff, which of course decides the champion at the end of the season. It's expanding from four teams to 12 next year. How will this impact the sport, Dan, and might this give some schools an opportunity to at least raise their profile nationally?

Dan Wolken:

Yeah, I think the theory behind playoff expansion is sound. I don't think, at least in the short term, you're going to have a whole bunch of different schools winning. It's not going to be like the NCAA basketball tournament where you could have a whole bunch of different potential winners or programs, like a Baylor for instance, that won it a few years ago. They were not a historic power, but they were able to build a great team and win a championship.

I don't think we're going to see that in football, at least in the near term. I still think the Blue Bloods and the true big time programs are going to be the ones that are winning this thing. But I think what you hope is, all right, you get into that 12 team field, maybe you'll win a game. You build excitement around your program, recruits start to notice you. Donors and boosters start to think that something big is possible. They invest more.

So I think that's the theory. It's more of a slow build that programs that can maybe get into this tournament, advance once or twice. That starts to turn the tide, raise the ceiling for them, and that maybe 10 years down the road they would have a chance to compete at the highest, highest level. But, I think it's good exposure for all of these schools. It's a great incentive to try and to invest and to win something meaningful. But I don't know that, at least in our lifetime, it's going to change or greatly expand the pool of teams that we think of as national championship contenders.

Taylor Wilson:

All right. For now, we actually have some football to watch this year. Dan, what are you looking forward to this season as maybe the last year of college football as we know it?

Dan Wolken:

Yeah, I think there's a lot to look forward to. Obviously Georgia's going for a threepeat. That's going to be really exciting. Michigan has made the playoff the last couple of years by beating Ohio State. They've got a great team coming back. Can Ohio State, which is now kind of the underdog in that rivalry, can they turn the tables after dominating Michigan for so many years? So I think that's going to be really exciting.

Texas and Oklahoma are leaving the Big 12 after this year, but Texas comes in as arguably the favorite in the conference. They have not won the Big 12 in quite a long time, and I think it's going to be a big test for them. They're going to play Alabama in a non-conference game early in the season. That's going to be really cool.

And then on the West coast in the PAC 12, I mean, great quarterbacks up and down from top to bottom in that league, maybe the best group of quarterbacks they've ever had. And it's kind of ironic that in the last year of what we know as the PAC 12, if it even exists at all, that they're going to have some really high quality football and some guys who we're going to be watching throw it around in the NFL in a couple of years.

Taylor Wilson:

All right, USA TODAY Sports Columnist Dan Wolken. You can find the podcast College Football Fix wherever you get your pods. Thank you, Dan.

Dan Wolken:

Thank you.

Taylor Wilson:

Thanks to Cherie Saunders for her production assistance. Our senior producer is Shannon Rae Green and our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to [email protected]. Thanks for listening. I'm Taylor Wilson. I'll be back tomorrow morning with another episode of 5 Things.