It comes as no surprise that, as reported by The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand, ESPN will retain full rights to the expanded college football playoff. In fact, it comes as no surprise that Marchand broke that story Tuesday. The Athletic’s new media reporter is one of the best in the business and was a huge addition for the subscription site. Marchand reports that ESPN will pay $7.8 billion over the life of the contract which runs through 2032.That is significant news but, I submit to you, that today is not the big date to watch. No, the real game is in 2032 when this contract ends.
If we have learned nothing else, we have learned that the landscape of college football is ever changing and those changes come quickly. In eight years, college football may be unrecognizable compared to the way it looks now. We’ll cover that in a moment but there is another factor in play, the expiration of the major college sports rights agreements. As a reminder, the FOX, CBS and NBC multi-billion dollar contracts with the Big Ten expire at the end of the 2029-2030 athletic calendar. The ESPN deal with the SEC, also worth billions, expires at the end of the 2033-2034 athletic calendar.
Right in the middle of those two negotiating windows, there is the CFB Playoff deal expiring in 2032. Who knows what the changing landscape, in both the college football world and media world, will mean for ESPN, CBS, NBC and FOX when that day comes. By then our alien overlords may have launched an entirely new steaming platform that has all of our sports programming available for a small monthly fee or a human sacrifice. What is more of a certainty are some of the likely changes that will impact the asking prices of the participating conferences for both their media rights and their stake in the College Football Playoff.
The Dissolution of the NCAA
While the NCAA may not disappear entirely, their purview over the major college athletics programs will be greatly reduced or disappear entirely. The college sports ruling organization has seen their power slowly erode to the point major programs frequently thumb their noses at their attempts to enforce often antiquated rules. It is just a matter of time before the 50 or 60 biggest athletics programs jointly agree it is no longer in their best interest to hand over any of their power to the NCAA.
Once these programs and conferences reach this conclusion, the NCAA will already be dead. A new division of college athletics will be formed and those that have the money will make their own rules and enforce them to the extent they are willing to do so. What this arrangement also will endanger is the NCAA Basketball Tournament. March Madness is the event that keeps the NCAA afloat. CBS, Turner and the NCAA know that the tournament will never be the same without the big name teams that will be departing, so some sort of peace accord will have to be agreed upon to keep that tournament recognizable.
The Future of the Group of Five
With the major conferences and Notre Dame forming their own league, what becomes of conferences like the American, Sun Belt and the likes? Will they still have a seat at the College Football Playoff table or will they compete for their own championship and TV dollars? This is a massive question facing the future of the playoff. One has to assume the major conferences will be looking for more money and less reasons to share it in the future.
Players Becoming Employees
This snowball has already begun rolling downhill and there is no stopping it. In fact, making players paid employees may actually bring more stability to college football. Coaches are at a loss as to how they deal with the transfer portal, putting players under binding contracts could go a very long way in solving that headache. With that said, it will not be cheap to pay a roster of football players and that will mean the conferences will need more and more TV revenue moving forward. That will only raise the asking price for conference media rights and rights to the College Football Playoffs.
It is reasonable to believe all of these things will happen between now and the end of all the major college sports contracts. The question remains; can the major network players keep up or will college football price themselves out of the market? We will soon find out, the 2030’s will be here before you know it!
Ryan Brown is a columnist for Barrett Sports Media, and a co-host of the popular sports audio/video show ‘The Next Round’ formerly known as JOX Roundtable, which previously aired on WJOX in Birmingham. You can find him on Twitter @RyanBrownLive and follow his show @NextRoundLive.
