The Big Ten Conference just signed a 7 billion dollar television deal. A number so astronomical that even I have to read it twice. And news like this will only further push the issue that college athletes in America should be paid. I’m not here to say that the Big Ten is not exploiting its athletes, or at the very least its football players. A pretty good argument could be made to say they are. In fact the same could be said about the SEC, or any other “Power 5” Conference. But that being said, there is nowhere near as much money in college sports as you may think. And that is because only a few schools are hogging all of it. And if you are a sports recruit, that matters a lot. Because you can’t pay people with money that doesn’t exist.

The fact of the matter  is that the money in college sports is incredibly concentrated at the top. The top teams in the most popular sports with the highest rankings throughout Division 1, are able to make very significant revenue from college sports. But that is only a small number of teams. When we watch college sports on television we are typically watching the 60 or so Football and Basketball teams, that offer full-ride scholarships to all of their players. But outside of Division 1 FBS, it is surprising to find that all football scholarships are no longer “headcount” scholarships. Instead they are equivalency scholarships. Which really means that the college coach has fewer scholarships available than they will have players on the team, and must decide how to break up that money.

What is most alarming to find out is that any team functioning under “equivalency” designation is not required to be fully funded by the NCAA. Just because they say that the maximum allowable scholarship dollar amount for D2 Football is 36, there is no guarantee that the college will put up even that amount of money. A school can decide that 20 scholarships is all they will give, and the coach will have to now stretch 20 scholarships worth of money for more than 80 players! D1 football is a sport that at least has the potential to “make money” in college sports, but if you are not a Football or Basketball program, in Division 1, it is highly unlikely that you will ever have that potential.

It is worth noting that the money in college sports is primarily generated through one avenue… major television contracts. So any college sports team, has to answer the question, when will we be on national television, and how big is the contract for when we do. I’m sorry to say that a little bit of ESPN + coverage is not going to cut it if revenue is what you are after. If it is not a cable syndicated channel, available nationally, then the money you will be making will not be billions or likely even into the millions. The Sun Belt Conference and Conference USA are reported to gross about $500,000 annually for each of their member institutions. Putting them at the bottom of Division 1 FBS revenue payouts.

So any program that is below that level in FCS or beyond can presumably no more than even that amount. To put that in perspective. The value of a full athletic scholarship at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) for an in-state resident is about $19,460 per year. So even if UTEP only recruited in-state players, the cost of a fully loaded roster of scholarship players is about 1.65 million dollars. For those keeping score at home that is 3 times more than their projected television revenue amount!

It doesn’t take much to see that the money in college sports is concentrated so heavily at the top that those who are at the bottom of FBS, are basically dogs fighting for whatever scraps fall off of the king’s table. And for FCS, D2, and D3 schools, they might as well be beggars on the street who will have to wait until the trash goes out before they can eat. This is the reason why many college programs, especially outside of Division 1 are underfunded. Forget paying the players, college athletic departments not named LSU or USC are mostly just trying to figure out how to balance the checkbook and avoid bankruptcy.

The conversation of paying college athletes is not a new one, and it may continue to gain traction, but recruits should know the truth about where the money is in college sports, and how it exchanges hands. If the games you will be playing are consistently going to be broadcasted on a national cable platform, there very well may be enough money behind it to trickle down to you. But most college athletes will be playing in 2000 seat stadiums and arenas or less, with nothing more than a few local tv cameras, or web cams available to record the action. If we pay the players, that is fine, but that will not be all the players, because it is virtually impossible to pay people with money that doesn’t exist.

KNOW THE GAME. WIN THE GAME.

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