College football free agent inflation and space force theory
TV money is getting infused into college football and it's going to change the market for players in a big way.
SEC dominance of the college football world in the playoff era has been largely reducible to three factors:
The stacking of talent in the American south, particularly in the “black belt.”
The creation of a playoff structure where regional powers from less passionate and talented regions who previously didn’t have to get through an SEC schedule in order to compile winning seasons were no longer protected from top southern teams.
Factors 1 and 2 combined with 3 by the BCS system and playoff structure have lead to a lot of titles in the south. You could also summarize it all with “Nick Saban” but I think that man just happened to be the best at marshaling all three.
What’s changing in college football right now is the primary means by which the SEC exploited the 2nd point, $hady recruiting practices. That’s why people are proclaiming the death of the SEC. That and the fact the SEC wasn’t that great this season.
For years, cheating in the form of under the table payments occurred in the SEC at a different fervor and volume than elsewhere in the country. Check out which programs nationally fared best in comparison. Ohio State? Oregon? Ever hear about anything going on there? Shane Gillis’ crack about how Alabama and the SEC were no longer alone in paying for players and the villain-esque justifying monologue Nick Saban annoyedly offered in response tells the story.
Of course Notre Dame was paying players previously, if perhaps not on the level of “Alabama Jones.” But what’s happening right now is schools are preparing to use television revenues for player compensation as a result of a new revenue sharing system. This is coming after an increased percentage of Big 10 schools was already starting to feel comfortable tapping into big time financiers for investment into the game.
The Big 10 and SEC schools are going to get something in the realm of $20 mill per year to spend on this, smaller conferences like the ACC or Big 12 will get about half that. Notre Dame has their own thing going with NBC and also a side deal with ESPN which may add up to a bigger total than any single Big 10 or SEC school. Maybe Gillis is pitching in too, who knows?
Even as we speak, different universities are allocating those funds for their upcoming rosters and looking to poach players off each other’s teams with NIL inducements. This is going to shake up the landscape considerably…