I agree that the minor/alternative football leagues haven't been profitable but this is different. These current major college football brands are huge. In some places they are much more popular than the NFL.
When you say "University involved" that is the point where I think they could make it work. They own those brands. License them out to a minor league football team and the money will flow just like it did before (if not much more with expanded CFP). However they do it, thinking in terms of brand and licensing this doesn't have to be such a binary win/lose situation for the sport or the schools. The only thing I don't see surviving is the old (largely mythical) marketing ploy that these high level football and basketball players are the same as other student athletes.
I can tell you full stop, if the Columbus clippers with buckeye leaves on their helmets play the Toledo mudhens with an M on their helmet I will not give one single solitary fuck.
Which is to say that I don't think the money will flow like before.... at all.
Whatever you guys think are marketing ploys now, need to continue to be marketing ploys or its all over.
The only thing I don't see surviving is the old (largely mythical) marketing ploy that these high level football and basketball players are the same as other student athletes.
Your sentence here is one word too long. The ploy needs to be that they are the same as other students. They just happen to also be famous and can make money because of that.
The minute you fully professionalize this, no one will give a shit. What are the ratings of the Little League world series vs The AAA Baseball Championship? (what do you even call that now? I have no idea)
I realize there are all these rando caveats like "well, its going to consolidate into super conferences" and all that shit... but take UCLA for example, they have 25 guys on active NFL rosters. Probably (easy math time) 18 of those guys are from the last 4 years (and the rest are outlier guys that have been around awhile. Obvious superconference member is putting 4.5 guys a year in the league (and 4 are on IR). 4. From 85 dudes that they turn over 25 of them a year. TCU is in the College football playoff and has 20 and two of those are Jerry Hughes and Andy Dalton, (and 6 are on IR) - the only reason I mention the IR guys and omit PS guys is to point out that its even a smaller number at any given moment against the 53.
Sure Ohio State is in the 40's in any given week, but, the point is those numbers fall really fast. That means 3 things, one is a lot of NFL guys come from outside what you would think are the top 40 teams (which is probably why drafting 18 year olds is a bad idea else those guys would have been recruited differently) and second, most college football players ARE in fact the same as other student athletes in the end, and the money they can make from their fame is largely going to be a product of how many stars they have next to their names. (Which is to say, speculative) So, third, if recruiting becomes a professionalized venture where minor league teams attract talent to college branded professional sports operations, how long are they going to shell out 1.5 million to kids that are busts more than half the time? I mean, they are paying the universities for the rights to use their brands so the money can flow like before, that's not going to be cheap, especially if they can't sell the contracts on to the NFL.
What's my point? Well, its pretty simply that if you don't have a bunch of motivated psycho boosters ready to shell out piles of their own cash for NIL, and leave it to the marketplace, I have a feeling that you're going to find out that free school plus stipend etc is closer than you think to the market value for the rank and file. Conferences may be better than at extracting TV revenue than ever, but ratings are going in the wrong direction. Are they going to keep getting that money if they change the game completely?
