As the rest of the sports world paws over the merits of the first 12-team College Football Playoffs field, announced Sunday and led by the undefeated Big Ten Conference champion Oregon Ducks, we direct your attention to a more prosaic, yet more long-term, part of the conversation.
Kirk Schulz, 61, is retiring in June after nine years as president of Washington State University. In a November interview with Cascade PBS, Schulz was asked several big-picture questions about his faltering industry, as well as what problems were most vexing to him.
“If you look at the high-stress points of my nine years, “he said, “I would say the two are COVID and athletics.”
He did not say whether the items were in proper order. But even coming in second to a killer pandemic tells more about the toxicity of college sports life than any Excel spreadsheet or casino bookmaker.
Schulz was referring to causes and outcomes of the Pac-12 Conference collapse that left WSU and Oregon State orphaned athletically. Because of weak media-rights revenues, 10 schools fled to the wealthier Big Ten, Big 12 and Atlantic Coast conferences — at about the same time that defeats in federal courts forced the NCAA in 2021 to begin treating athletes as the paid professionals they long should have been.
Smaller-budget schools like WSU and OSU are among the biggest casualties in the reformation because they lack the brands and alumni bases to compete for player talent in a marketplace of private money that so far lacks any real regulation or public disclosure.
Another acute episode in this quandary is underway in Pullman right now, as the NCAA’s transfer portal for players opens Monday. The Cougars were 8-1, including an Apple Cup win in Seattle over the Huskies, and briefly in modest discussion for the CFP field. Then the Cougs lost their final three games to big underdogs New Mexico, Oregon State and Wyoming, thanks to a collapsing defense.
WSU nevertheless was rewarded Sunday with a berth in the Holiday Bowl in San Diego against Syracuse. Yet industry cruelties also may punish, too. Their premier quarterback, John Mateer, a third-year sophomore who sliced up Washington, is taking offers for his services via NIL money. A Seattle Times story cited a claim by Pullman podcaster and booster Paul Sorensen that Mateer, who threw for 3,129 yards (65% completion rate), 29 TDs and 7 picks and rushed for 826 yards and 18 scores, already has a $1 million offer from an unnamed school. His NIL swag in Pullman this year was reported to be about $400,000.
Mateer’s successful predecessor as WSU QB, Cam Ward, a year ago took NIL swag worth more than $1 million to join the University of Miami. It appears the Cougs are becoming prey for the predators. To counter, WSU boosters have in the Cougar Collective a new 1890 Club (the school’s founding year) and charges members $18.90 for a monthly donation. They also have deals with a beer maker and a coffee bean company to donate a portion of retail sales to the collective.
All nice. But dimes, beers and beans are not the coins of this realm. Especially after the news of last week. One of the nation’s most sought-after QB recruits switched his commitment from Louisiana State to Michigan, thanks to the romantic whim of the world’s third-richest man.
Oracle founder Larry Ellison is reported by Front Office Sports to have provided a promised package worth between $10 million and $12 million to Bryce Underwood to be a Wolverine, via Champions Circle, the Michigan collective. Turns out Ellison is neither an alum, nor a fan, of the football team. But his sixth wife, Jolin, is both. So there you have it — weapons-grade gridiron whimsy.
It’s hard to imagine the equivalent event in the Palouse. I don’t even know if there’s a Mrs. Fudd.
The Huskies likely are no better off. The Montlake Futures collective was proud of its ability a year ago to get $1.2 million to Michael Penix Jr. to use his sixth year of eligibility at Washington, instead of declaring for the NFL draft. It paid off with a 14-1 record and a berth in the CFP title game. But after that, Penix and more than half the players, all the coaches, and the athletics director left for better things. This year, the Huskies finished their initial Big 10 season at 6-6 — they lost four road games against veteran conference schools by a combined 127-57 — and were rewarded with a New Year’s Eve game in a chill wind over the Rio Grande desert with Louisville in El Paso’s Sun Bowl.
At least the Huskies found a bit of revenge during the season, beating 27-17 their foe from the title game, Michigan. The Wolverines (7-5) were also decimated by departures, including their coach, Jim Harbaugh, a true Michigan man until he broke some NCAA rules and escaped sanction by fleeing to the NFL. Had he known of Mrs. Ellison, maybe a little NCAA jail time would have been worth it.
It is not hard to understand why Schulz is eager to move on from the big-time college sports virus (hey, his Montlake counterpart, Ana Mari Cauce, is bailing from her job too). But since he did not specify a posting or a passion that will occupy his post-Palouse life, and still remains fond of his days there, I offer a suggestion: Do the Cougs a solid by inquiring whether Mrs. Ellison has a vacancy at pool boy.
WSU alum here, where my heart remains, because of people who believed in me, though I have advanced degrees from the U of WA. I think Div. I college football has been bought by big media companies and players bought by those with deep pockets of money. A few will benefit while most won’t. The NCAA means little to nothing. College football has been corrupted. Let the so-called conferences separate from their universities. Who cares?
You’re making a point I’ve championed: Separate the entertainment dept from the university. Have an independent enterprise pay rent for the brand, stadium, colors and season-ticket list, and use the revs to pay for non-rev sports. Class attendance optional. Simple, yes?
I’m trying to think of a single thing to like about college football anymore. NIL money was supposed to be the great emancipator and distribute wealth to help all college athletes (at least a little), but as CW already stated it’s just another gluttonous permutation of rich (players)-getting-richer gangsta capitalism that’s ruined every other aspect of American society.
About college football players becoming kind-of, sort-of students, but not really – optional class attendance most likely means no class attendance. College athletics – by virtue of NIL and the unfettered ability to transfer – is increasingly professional, less collegiate, and untethered from their academic institutions, and frankly less palatable to their fan bases.
There’s no way a totally autonomous football team could survive independently from their academic institutions. For starters, instead of offering the pittance known as scholarships, teams would have to provide a real living wage to every player – a much heavier lift than room, board and tuition. Not to mention the ~ $15mm+ in coaches’ salaries, facilities rental and of course no backstop from a university’s general fund during lean times. Universities can forget about “licensing” out their names; costs of teams running as independent enterprises all but ensures they’ll be nothing left over for them.
Large benefactors/alumni of intercollegiate athletics have a genuine affinity for the institutions they support, engendered entirely by virtue of that amorphous, ill-defined (but very real) phenomena known as “tradition”. It drives everything. As college football (ESPN and Fox) continue their assault on the traditional model (via conference realignments, de-emphasis of traditional rivalries, devaluing of conference championship games, and de-deemphasizing traditional bowl games that matter, etc. It runs the risk of alienating those benefactors that fund NIL, build new facilities and make non-revenue (mostly women’s) sports possible.
The reality is that CFB still needs the universities more than universities need college football, it’s just that university presidents don’t have the guts to see it that way. Yes, universities need football to fund non-revenue sports. But CFB teams need university benefactors/alumni to fund their ridiculously expansive operations.
The moment of truth will come when CFB demands independence from the strictures of the collegiate model. This is where universities should call their bluff. “Why should we whore out our tradition and brand names to teams/players/coaches that don’t give a shit about our university?” “Why should we allow you to debase our good name that has meant something for over a century?” “Why should we let you greedy bastards abandon us and force us to curtail non-revenue sports?” Force college football to go it alone without the ability to co-opt their name and that will be the end of that movement.
For example, last year’s Huskie/Oregon game in Seattle was sold out. I’m sure after-market tickets went for $500-1,000 each – but only if you were lucky enough to find them. ABC made it their Saturday game of the week. What do you think do you think attendance (and ticket prices) would be if – with the same rosters – the big game was between the Seattle Sea Slugs and the Eugene Sweat Shop Sugar Daddies?
If you’re going to blow up the traditional CFB model, then blow it up completely. Create a minor league model akin to baseball. See you next October, Art at that all important Slug – Sugar Daddy game. 50 yard line seats, 30 rows up – $25 each.
Or a different developmental model like junior hockey. The major emphasis is of course on hockey, but the players attend high school or postsecondary education, and they get college scholarships when they age out but don’t go to the minors or pros. (By the way, junior players are now allowed to sign with NCAA teams, but that’s another story.)
I checked the stat sheet: 5th wife, not 6th wife.