College football teams have the wrong incentives. Someone has to make them say no

When Martin Jarmond took over as athletic director at UCLA on May 19, 2020, he inherited a program in the midst of a pandemic, an apparel deal upon which Under Armour was about to renege, and a football team that had just gone 4–8 (4–5 Pac-12) under second-year head coach Chip Kelly.

His men’s basketball team finished 17-16 after firing Steve Alford midseason. And thanks to Covid-19, as well as weak fundraising and season ticket numbers, a record $62.5 million of debt for Fiscal Year 2021 was coming at his spreadsheets.

Jarmond needed cash, and he needed it quickly. Growing the total athletics budget is a priority for any athletic director, particularly one tasked with putting a winning football program on the field. And he was also to do that not at the expense of non-revenue teams at a program with the second-most NCAA Division I championships in all sports.

So when a lifeline was offered by the Big Ten Conference, and the $80-100 million per year in guaranteed media rights that comes with it, he did what was in the best interests of his institution. UCLA took the cash.

Flying gymnastics and swimming teams across the country for conference play? Not ideal, but not a problem, they said. Making drivable weekend league matchups for storied volleyball programs a thing of the past? Oh well. The Pac-12 has been famous for their Thursday-Saturday men’s basketball home-and-road weekends for decades. That will no longer be a thing, as the B1G Network demands games be played all week long.

And besides the extreme travel for Bruins athletes, there are plenty of other downsides: Once the Conference of Champions, the Pac-12 with their claimed history going back to 1915, has imploded. The conference bears plenty of responsibility here, as replacing commissioner Larry Scott with George Kliavkoff was like the Cleveland Browns transitioning from Hue Jackson to Freddie Kitchens.

The blast radius of USC and UCLA’s move has reached critical mass this week. Colorado is off to the Big 12, likely bringing Arizona, Arizona State, and Utah with them. Oregon and Washington are in need of a stable home, as are Cal and Stanford (the Cardinal are No. 1 on that all-time national championships list).

And if you’re Washington State and Oregon State, do you start calling the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University for some preseason tune-ups? Merging with the San Diego State’s of the world isn’t too bad, but the San Jose State’s and Utah State’s bring a lack of overall competitiveness and brands that can sell tickets.

Jarmond’s employment directive is to do what’s in the best interests of the UCLA Bruins and no one else. His bonuses, raises, and contract extensions aren’t based on his uplifting the overall health of the industry. They are for how much UCLA wins, raises money, and contributes to the brand of the university worldwide.

He did what was right for a school that needed stable dollars in the long-term, the consequences of February and March tennis matches 3000 miles away be damned. But the decision by him and the USC Trojans now-deposed Mike Bohn decision has upended college athletics for the worse.

And he shouldn’t have been allowed to make it in the first place.

The haves in the NFL have learned that they need the have-nots for the sport to have stability. It’s why the revenue sharing agreement in the league is so extensive. The Colts make a few bucks in their local market, but they’ll take in billions more from the Cowboys and Steelers and Giants of the world over time.

A salary cap allows them to compete on equal footing, something that will never and should never happen in college athletics. But equally shared revenue makes all 32 league franchises on par with each other, and everyone can compete. You’ve got to have someone to play that is somewhat competitive.

College athletics will never and should never have parity. North Carolina cares more about basketball than Lafayette. There’s far more passion for the Alabama Crimson Tide than the Kent State Golden Flashes, and that’s ok.

But completely separating the haves from the have-less’s and have-nots means the death of a reasonable nationwide competition. It’s the European Super League, but for “amateur” sports.

The Super League was 15 soccer clubs doing what was best for 15 soccer clubs, but to the detriment of thousands of smaller teams down the pyramids of their national leagues. It took administrators revolting and governments intervening to stop it from happening.

There are 133 FBS teams, and 362 Division I institutions overall. They compete for national championships in 27 sports, and all the haves take federal student dollars to fund their academic operations (remember books? the reason we’re here in the first place??).

Your tax dollars subsidize these schools, even the private ones. If Ohio State wants to not share any football television revenue with anyone else, that’s their choice. It could also be the choice of the US Department of Education to not give federally-backed student loans to their 53,189 undergraduate students. I don’t wonder what the Buckeyes might do when faced with that decision.

Colleges are public goods, even the private ones that gladly take Uncle Sam’s cash at the bursar’s window. And the federal government shouldn’t be afraid to step in and say “three-week cross-country water polo trips are really stupid. Stop it.”

When every school is incentivized to do what’s the best for it individually, it makes the collective industry far less healthy. European politicians and football fans realized this immediately and did something about it. But the American instinct towards unfettered capitalism has held back the cry for regulation outside of a few proposals going nowhere.

Any federal regulation should come with quite a light touch, as almost no oversight has berthed a $15 billion industry that’s reasonably healthy. But how about some very, very basic rules. Such as:

* No schools in your conference more than 1500 miles away from your campus. You may only change leagues once per 15 years. From there, do whatever you’d like.

File this under “student-athlete” welfare: The occasional road trip for an ice hockey team across the country for an early-season tournament is fine, and actually is a good thing. Sitting in a middle seat on Frontier Airlines so you can make a Monday morning class at 8:00 a.m. is not.

Conferences are the backbone of college athletics. Competing for conference championships is what the overwhelming majority of Division I players think about the day training camp starts each season. Conferences build rivalries, and they’re a good thing. They need to be about more than just the raw dollars available, and they need to make sense. Flying across the country simply doesn’t do that.

* Title IX still applies, as do the current minimums of six men’s and eight women’s sports for all Division I programs.

You can’t cut teams to make up cash shortfalls for your revenue sports, and every D1 team shall have access to a full-time athletic trainer every day, as well as facilities for health and rehabilitation. If you can’t meet basic infrastructure standards before any subsidy from the bigger schools, competing at the Division II level or below is likely for you.

* A set percentage of all media rights deals will be distributed to all schools that meet basic thresholds.

If the entire SEC had to relinquish just 10% of their TV deal to other schools, that’s at least $160 million per year to give other teams a reasonable chance to compete. Kick in that same amount from the Big Ten, ACC, Big 12, and each non-Power Five (Three? Two??) school likely takes in an extra $3-4 million a year.

If Akron can’t sell 15,000 football season tickets or raise $1 million via their boosters each year, Texas doesn’t have to subsidize them via revenue sharing. If Delaware State can’t afford to travel trainers and academic advisors to basketball games, Villanova shouldn’t be compelled to cut them a check. Baseline standards are needed, and those can be negotiated and set years in advance.

But the Akron Zips total football expenses are $6,133,980 a year, so yes this money would make a massive difference.

As far as competitiveness, if you’re in the SEC how is this a bad thing? All your ancient rivals that you loathe have to do the same, so there’s no disadvantage to anyone. You still keep all your revenue from donations, season ticket, student fees, licensing, and every other way you make cash. I think you’ll be just fine, Bama.

These seem like fundamental things to which everyone can agree, but if your athletic director and head coach don’t think so? Oh well, this is federal regulation and we’re doing it anyway. Feel free to lobby specific objections, but without some solid reasons why a dint of sanity should be injected into the process of conference alignment and the chase for dollars only, this should happen.

The new College Sports Czar shall be appointed by President and confirmed by the Senate, just like any cabinet-level position. They will serve a six-year term, can be reappointed one time, and will serve at the pleasure of the President (so yes they can be fired).

The Czar and his/her staff can only add rules and regulations to schools that accept federal student loan dollars, and after a 90-day public comment period. So if you want to stop taking those checks Ivy League, that is certainly your right and the Czar will have zero control over any of your operations. An advisory board made up of administrators, boosters, current and former athletes, as well as revenue and non-revenue sport coaches, will weigh in on all proposed actions.

The Czar shouldn’t seek parity, or even overall industry growth. They should only step in when institutional self-interest overwhelms reason and common sense. UCLA and USC will now play games again league opponents an average of 2000 miles from campus. They have destroyed the prospects of teams with which they have over a century of history and tradition. All because they did what was right for them, but wrong for everyone else.

Martin Jarmond did his job, and did it well. Someone needed to not let him.