I spent a few days last week at the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics convention in Las Vegas. NACDA brings in basically every athletic director and administrator in Division I and below, and the massive event serves as the largest gathering of brainpower for the industry.
Throughout the halls you’ll see AD’s, Senior Women’s Administrators, sports information directors, marketing directors, CFO’s, social media strategists, and every other off-field job in collegiate sports, plus some trainers and coaches too. The credentialed attend sessions such as “NIL Collective-Athletics Department Relations” and “Transforming Passion into Profit: Revealing Hidden Fans to Generate Incremental Revenue.”
The event was at the overwhelming Mandalay Bay Convention Center, home of the Las Vegas Aces, in an arena that’s on the other side of a complex measuring 2.1 million square feet. Did I mention this place was huge?
I worked in D1 sports for a bit over six years on the development and communications sides more than 15 years ago, but this was my first NACDA. I had heard about how massive the event was and how much was going on all at once, and that’s before I walked through the open exhibitor area where companies sell everything from ticketing software to custom chairs for arenas and fans.
I won’t quote anyone directly that I talked to here. While I had a media pass, I think most of what should be said at an event like this should be off-the-record (though with exceptions if you’re being particularly loud).
But here’s the TL;DR of where college athletics stands from those in charge as of right now:
- Nobody knows anything. Seriously, even the most important people
- The entire industry is basically on hold until the House case is resolved
- D1-AAA schools (aka the non-football schools) are furious about how much they have to pay as part of the proposed House settlement
- 2024-25 is likely the last season we’ll ever have scholarship caps in D1, as all sports will move to a roster limit model next year
- Lots of people are skeptical about private equity getting involved in college athletics. And that’s probably a good thing!
I’m not saying thousands of athletics administrators going to the desert while not being able to sports bet* was a complete waste of time, but a huge part of this convention could have been an email. An email that should have said “we’ll circle back once Judge Wilken approves or doesn’t approve this settlement, and we really hope she does.”
I directly heard the most powerful voices in college sports saying they’re planning for all contingencies, but they know as much as you do. That is the state of the industry right now, with schools begging the courts to accept a $2.6 billion fine for their previous antitrust behavior.
Decades of hiding behind canards like “student-athlete” and “amateurism” are rightfully coming home to roost. The problem might be that there’s still plenty of old school people running what is one of the most incestuous industries anywhere in America. Basically every AD in D1 got to where they are by going along with the nationwide party line, and also showing a penchant for some specific aspect of the job (fundraising, department management, quality coach hiring, etc).
Intercollegiate athletics has always been an industry that rejects outside-the-box thinking, and is snail-slow to adjust to changing dynamics. It’s why they haven’t won a court case in decades; because they continued to lean on litigation defenses that worked while Walter Byers was the NCAA’s dictator, but had almost no standing in modern labor law.
“They’re not employees because I said so, Your Honor!” And the same folks that fell in line behind this ostrich-like strategy are still at the helm in many places. It’s not great.
But I also met a younger, rising generation of leadership that is ready to take on the challenges of the unknown. Plenty of Gen X, Y and younger administrators that embrace how fundraising will be more important than ever under the new model. Because rosters will mostly be set by the dollars available to recruits. And instead of paper bags full of Visa gift cards via dead drops, those dollars will now be spelled out in legal agreements between a university and a player.
But just like their older counterparts, they’re in limbo until we get some established rules and guardrails for the industry and especially Division I. It just seems they’re ready to think about remaking how the industry functions in a more holistic way. And I hope plenty of those not burdened by multiple decades of “this is the way we’ve always done it” are the ones taking leadership and writing policy nationally.
But from both the young and old, I got the impression that the much-discussed private equity piece will be a very limited or almost non-existent part of the new landscape. And it won’t be NCAA legislation banning it, but that top-tier, brand-name schools can get better borrowing rates from their foundations and the bond market than firms charging Two-and-Twenty.
Plus the outside management advice that comes with PE does indeed clash with the mission of intercollegiate athletics. D1 sports don’t exist just to make a profit, but also to burnish a university’s brand worldwide. They provide academic opportunities to young people that might not have another route to college, and do so under the framework of Title IX. And Title IX is almost solely responsible for the recent franchise valuations in the WNBA and NWSL.
Private equity exists to make money by finding inefficiencies. Collegiate athletic departments will always be economically inefficient, because that field hockey team is never going to be profitable. And there is one thing everyone in the industry appears to agree on; losing money doesn’t mean field hockey shouldn’t exist anymore.
If you’re looking for good news, there was one universal point I heard made repeatedly and of which I am in complete agreement: College sports are going nowhere.
The death of intercollegiate athletics has been declared repeatedly for over a century. There’s always some forthcoming crisis that’s going to kill the golden goose.
But every time the eulogies are written, the insane passion of those rooting for State U brings plenty of dollars and energy to paper over all forthcoming threats. A $2.6 billion settlement will end up being just another blip on the historical timeline. Because the ties that tailgates bind mean far too much to far too many to see the industry go away.
While the rules will be different, they’ll probably be better. Coaches will be able to drive players home after practice in a rain storm. Those on scholarship will have enough pocket money to take their significant other on a date, instead of arbitrarily being held down by anti-competitive regulations that intentionally didn’t pay the cost of college attendance until less than a decade ago.
And if a coach is a dictator or a terrible person or gets fired, the players will have agency about the next step in their athletic and academic careers without penalties like having to sit out a year for no reason.
So college athletics will be fine, actually. It’s just in flux until there is some legal clarity after decades of the business model being based on illegal labor practices.
And once again, you can expect it to come out the other side bigger and stronger than ever.
* This is a good rule, and one I followed to a T while working in NCAA athletic departments. Any staffer caught betting on college sports beyond a March Madness pool deserves the permanent ban-hammer. The added prohibition on pro sports wagering might be a bit too much, but better to set the bar too high than too low.
