Private equity proposals have promised top football schools like Alabama and Texas more money than they currently receive in annual distributionGetty Images
Private equity is one of the “most popular buzzwords within college sports at the moment” as universities, athletic departments and whole leagues are “searching for more revenue streams,” according to Ross Dellenger of YAHOO SPORTS. On a national scale, multiple separate groups have spent the last several months “sharing models with school administrators that would turn the 133-team FBS college football division into a smaller group of heavyweights battling in a tiered system, some with or without relegation.” The proposals feature “eye-popping money figures,” some of them “promising blue-blood schools like Ohio State, Texas and Alabama three or four times what they currently receive in annual distribution” — money derived from more valuable television contracts than those that currently exist. Despite the finalization of the College Football Playoff contract — an agreement that binds the 10 FBS conferences together for at least another eight years — these “private equity-backed super league concepts are still lingering” and “meetings are scheduled to continue next month.” Even the SEC is searching for revenues “far and wide.” But SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey, “arguably the most powerful person in the sport,” is “clear where he stands on the matter.” For those inside and outside his conference who are “enticed by promises of big paychecks, high-profile matchups and streamlined governance, he sends a message: We can do this ourselves.” For many within the industry, there is but “one final step, an inevitability in college sports: unequal conference revenue distribution — a system that rewards those programs generating more of the revenue” (YAHOO SPORTS, 7/17).
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