With college sports in chaos, 2 key meetings this week could chart a path forward: 'Something's going to have to give'
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WASHINGTON, D.C. — On Friday, dozens of dignitaries are scheduled to meet at the White House for a roundtable chaired by President Donald Trump to explore solutions for a college sports industry that many believe stands in crisis.
But on Tuesday, some 1,300 miles away in Dallas, a more private gathering is unfolding in secret.
University trustees and wealthy donors, as well as at least two university presidents, are holding a summit related to the state of the industry hosted by Smash Sports, a private capital-backed group of former television executives proposing a new model for college sports built around pooling FBS television rights.
Those with knowledge of the meeting spoke to Yahoo Sports under condition of anonymity. Smash Sports officials declined to comment.
The attendee list includes current and former board members and trustees, as well as mega-boosters, from more than a dozen schools and all four power leagues, including but not limited to Penn State, USC, LSU, Clemson, Louisville, SMU, Texas Tech, Boise State, Michigan, TCU and Maryland.
LSU president Wade Rousse and TCU chancellor Daniel Pullin plan to attend the meeting. In a statement released to Yahoo Sports this week, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a proponent of the Smash Sports plan, commended Rousse for attending and described Smash’s proposal as a “common-sense solution” to the financial instability.
However, not everyone agrees.
In fact, some board members and donors are attending independent of their universities and, in some cases, against the wishes of their conference commissioners, most notably those in the SEC and Big Ten, whose leaders have spoken against the plan proposed by Smash executives and others, like Texas businessman Cody Campbell, to consolidate media rights.
In a time of great divide over the future of college athletics, this week’s meetings in Dallas and Washington are the latest battlegrounds of a years-long power struggle between those in control of the current system and those seeking to change it — a fight over the future of a college football industry that, while unstable off the field, has evolved into America’s second-most popular sport.
“It’s all coming to a head,” says one key stakeholder.
How we got here
The college sports industry resides at a vulnerable and, some would say, dire place.
After years of resistance from schools to modernize NCAA policies prohibiting athlete rights, court rulings have paved the way for unlimited athlete transfer movement, uncertain eligibility standards and a ballooning player compensation system.
The NCAA’s settlement of three antitrust cases (often referred to as House), while legalizing direct compensation from schools to athletes for the first time, hasn’t necessarily delivered the stability that many expected.
At the heart of the matter is the intensifying pressure for schools, locked in a competitive recruiting environment, to share more and more revenue with high-level football and men’s basketball players from the coffers of football programs — which, for decades, used their profits to subsidize all other sports, pay coaches millions and construct gaudy facilities.
It has thrust many athletic departments well into the red.
Devoid of federal legislation and a collective bargaining agreement, college athletics now twists in the proverbial winds of escalating football and basketball player pay — with no end in sight.
Amid the industry’s rudderless transformation into a more professionalized entity, trust is wavering and frustrations are high. In fact, just eight months into the new revenue-share system, some leading college administrators are publicly supporting uncapping the rev-share system, urging commissioners to consider collective bargaining and even privately regretting their decisions to vote in favor of a settlement that, instead of delivering stability and congressional protection, has resulted in football and basketball rosters exceeding a combined $30 million as schools use donors, sponsors and apparel brands to legally circumvent the cap.
“It’s not sustainable,” said Ohio State president Ted Carter, who sits in one of the most influential seats within college athletics. “Something’s going to have to give.”
Sensing a vulnerability within the industry and fearing for its future, outside entities are mobilizing in an attempt to deliver capital to cash-craving schools and create a new governance structure. Two external movements — mostly independent of one another — are having the most success among high-ranking college executives:
The “Saving College Sports” campaign spearheaded by Campbell, the Texas oil tycoon and Texas Tech booster and board member who holds deep relationships in congress and the White House.
The Smash Sports proposal led by a group of former ESPN and Walt Disney executives (Evan Richter, Tom Staggs and Kevin Mayer) who have spent the last two years quietly socializing their plan with dozens of university presidents, athletic directors and key political figures — “Project Rudy,” a nod to the famous Notre Dame walk-on — that is backed by Smash Capital financing.
Each of these external plans, however, relies on one thing: Congress.
'Project Rudy' and 'Saving College Sports'
To make their plans work, Project Rudy and Saving College Sports need Congress to amend the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 to permit the 10 FBS conferences and the College Football Playoff — each now negotiating separate television deals — to negotiate one single media deal. Amending the SBA — under which pro sports leagues are granted antitrust protection to pool media rights — would, in theory, usher in billions more in revenue for colleges to offset soaring costs and, perhaps, bring more competitive balance to an industry that some believe has been monopolized by the two richest leagues: the Big Ten and SEC.
In fact, Tuesday’s meeting in Dallas was perhaps the impetus behind the timing of an SEC and Big Ten-authored white paper distributed to congressional lawmakers last week that refutes the idea of pooling rights as a solution and describes it as “misguided.” The ACC and Big 12 did not sign on to the paper despite being offered the option.
The SEC and Big Ten’s white paper specifically targeted Campbell, who responded by releasing a statement accusing the two leagues of not wanting to “fix” college sports because they “profit handsomely” from it. Smash Sports distributed its own separate response to lawmakers on Friday, a “rebuttal” document that discounts the leagues’ claims.
Pooling FBS rights is a hotly debated concept that’s driven a wedge between college stakeholders: some in the ACC, Big 12 and the Group of Six conferences who support or wish to at least consider the idea, versus those in the Big Ten and SEC who have dismissed the notion.
Tuesday’s meeting in Dallas is not insignificant, especially considering at least a half-dozen of the attendees hail from leagues whose leadership outwardly refutes the very proposal being discussed.
In a 16-page memo distributed to attendees and obtained by Yahoo Sports, Smash Sports details its plan, which, in short, features optimizing football schedules to arrange more attractive non-conference matchups; establishing a new governing body; and offering billions to schools in private capital cash meant to bridge financing before a consolidated rights package can be struck after current television deals expire. (Smash would presumably recoup that financing while accepting a piece of the new consolidated package.)
Smash guarantees that all 138 FBS programs, including the SEC and Big Ten, will see annual distribution increases as part of its plan and allows conferences to determine the distribution formula, as they do now under the College Football Playoff structure.
But at the center of the plan is a congressional amendment of a 65-year-old act. Opening the SBA would increase college football revenues, from a projected $6.7 billion in 2035 without consolidation, to $14 billion with consolidation.
Steve Bornstein, the architect of NFL Network who also worked for a decade as ESPN’s CEO, describes the plan as “the right path” and believes the SEC and Big Ten should “do something for the greater good.”
“If the answer is maximizing the value of college football, there is an approach,” Bornstein said. “It is consolidating rights.”
There are detractors. That includes executives from the two most prominent college football rights-holders, ESPN and Fox, who, when contacted recently, privately cast doubt that their network would pay twice the amount for a consolidated product. “It makes no sense to us,” said one official who wished to remain anonymous.
In its memo, however, Smash identifies Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google as potential bidders to naturally drive up the market.
Would this plan really work? At least one sitting governor in the SEC footprint believes so.
“College football is leaving billions of dollars on the table and unifying the media rights is the only way to capture this money,” said Landry, in his statement. “Everyone should get a proportional share based on their value of a much bigger pie, and when we do this, LSU, the SEC and all other schools and conferences will make far more than we ever could. Who could be against that? This is a common-sense solution that all conferences should explore.”
Meanwhile, within the same footprint, the SEC’s own commissioner pushes back.
In comments made to Yahoo Sports in July of 2024, Greg Sankey wondered aloud why college athletic administrators would “cede authority to an outside entity when they can make decisions” themselves. “Any of the ideas identified can actually be decided within a conference or a collection of conferences,” he said.
The SEC and Big Ten’s white paper points toward plenty of unanswered questions in these proposals and casts doubt on projections used by Smash and Campbell, calling them "flawed assumptions."
The two leagues are not alone in their questioning of Smash's motives. Reached for comment on the meeting, Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark offered what he described as his own "personal thoughts" and was clear that he does not speak for the conference.
"While I encourage collaboration and efforts to find solutions to challenges facing our industry, I take exception to the fact that Smash Capital — providing no novel concepts — is preying on the current vulnerabilities of many of our institutions, with the primary goal of generating a significant double-digit return," Yormark said. "If key stakeholders determine third-party resources are needed, I will recommend we engage with the right thought leaders and the most established financial institutions — a group Smash Capital is not part of."
Big Ten, SEC and Congress
On Capitol Hill, the concept proposed by Smash and Campbell is gaining steam.
A group of Senate Democrats led by Maria Cantwell (Wash.) drafted a bill, the SAFE Act, that would govern college sports and amend the SBA. Cantwell, in fact, responded publicly to the SEC and Big Ten’s white paper last week disputing the consolidation concept. She expressed her surprise that the leagues would oppose a move that, writing that the proposal, “would bring in more revenue to invest in women’s sports and our current and future Olympians.”
The message from Cantwell signifies the complicated relationship in which college sports’ two most powerful and richest conferences have with members of Congress.
While many Republicans hold favor with those leagues and support their lobbying effort for federal legislation, many Democrats view them as monopolizing titans who are overtaking the industry in a way that ruins college sports’ cherished Cinderella stories, as they far outpace — by tens of millions of television dollars — even their closest brethren, the ACC and Big 12.
Even some Republicans are expressing openness to the consolidation concept of media rights. Last month, Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri announced his pursuit of college sports legislation, prominently considering the amending of the Sports Broadcasting Act. Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican and chair of a Senate committee with control over college sports legislation, suggested an amendment to the SBA during a hearing last year.
Trump has made little to no public comment related specifically to the consolidation concept, though Campbell believes that the president’s executive order released last summer gestures toward the consolidation effort. The SEC and Big Ten’s white paper is in direct “disregard to the directives of the president and the will of the American people,” Campbell, notably a close friend to Trump, released in a statement last week.
More than ever, the rift between the Big Ten and SEC and all other FBS programs is clear. The two behemoth conferences, after threatening to leave the CFP to start their own playoff two years ago, negotiated a new revenue-distribution model where they earn a combined 59% of playoff revenues.
The two leagues were at the forefront of a chase for television cash that transformed the conference landscape into an unrecognizable swath of programs without much geographic or cultural sense (though the SEC’s 16 schools do remain contiguous). Among the power leagues, the biggest brands are consolidated into the two conferences, hogging prime television windows, producing eye-popping viewership numbers, generating the most cash and assembling the best talent.
According to figures shared with administrators last year, 18 schools produced 60% of the broadcast viewership over the last seven years of college football and six of those generated a majority of that. All of them, except one, are from the SEC or Big Ten: Alabama, Ohio State, Georgia, Michigan, Texas and independent Notre Dame.
The SEC and Big Ten’s expansion is a “natural evolution” of markets shrinking to a small number of big competitors, economic experts contend.
It has left some uneasy.
Two sitting university presidents at Big 12 and ACC schools (West Virginia and Syracuse) authored an open letter in the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2024 urging their presidential colleagues to take action on a new model before the Big Ten and SEC merge into a “36-school super league,” they wrote.
The Smash memo describes the two leagues as operating as a “duopoly,” which it expects to continue “to the detriment of the rest of college football” if the sport doesn’t maximize revenues with the consolidation of rights.
As recently as a few days ago, an ACC administrator in a position of power publicly skewered the two conferences.
Larry Benz, the chair of the University of Louisville Board of Trustees, posted a “dismantling,” he called it, of the SEC and Big Ten white paper, describing it as a “sophisticated defense of the status quo by parties who benefit the most” from the current environment.
In fact, Benz, as well as Louisville’s athletic director and university president, released on Monday — one day before the Dallas meeting — an eight-page white paper of their own, calling for immediate “structural reform” of college athletics.
At the center of that reform, prominently mentioned in the document, is none other than a concept at the heart of the future of college athletics: amending the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961.
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