The house next door, which is for sale, looks different, said my son’s friend, who used to live there 30 years ago.
Well, we look different than we did 30 years ago. So many things look different. The purses in PGA Tour events have seen more than 700 percent increase in 30 years, bloating from the size of Shrek to Jabba the Hutt.
Another thing that looks a lot different – and is seemingly out of control – yet commands a lot of interest, is college football. One of the country’s marquee games this weekend is Clemson at LSU on Saturday night at Baton Rouge’s “Death Valley” (seats 102,321) as opposed to Clemson’s “Death Valley” (Memorial Stadium, seats 81,500).
College football generates an estimated $14 billion annually; yet here’s a fun fact from the U.S. Government Accountability Office: most programs spend more than they generate in revenue. The fatherly/grandfatherly advice: Don’t Spend What You Don’t Have has long gone by the wayside. This fact of excess spending comes from the same accountability office that reports the U.S. government has spent nearly $6.3 TRILLION in the fiscal year 2026, which is $1.8 TRILLION more than it collected.
And that’s not someone else’s problem, since all government money is money that belongs to you and me. The more palpable pain of the debt is the average $7,300 per household Americans pay each year on just the interest on the debt.
Back to college football, the NIL industry by which college athletes can make money on their name, image and likeness (does this sound like the golden calf?) is out of control. NIL data provider Opendorse estimates Big Ten schools will spend an average of $48.2 million annually for NIL across all sports this year. The SEC followed closely behind at $44.5 million.
It’s an arms race to be “the best.” It started with coaches’ salaries, predominantly in college football, such that some 35 states across the country boast that their top-salaried employee is a college football coach. Two of the top-10 paid coaches, Lane Kiffin of LSU ($13 million) and Dabo Swinney of Clemson ($11.4 million) will be on opposite sidelines in Saturday’s televised clash between the two teams.
Speaking of the telecast, there was a time when I was in college, the first nationally televised prime-time college football game was early in 1969 between No. 20 Ole Miss and 15th-ranked Alabama. It was an incredible event, won by Alabama, 33-32, despite an epic performance by Ole Miss junior quarterback Archie Manning, who completed 33 of 52 passes for 436 yards and two touchdowns and ran 15 times for 104 yards and three more touchdowns. Scott Hunter, Alabama’s quarterback, was merely brilliant if not epic, passing for 300 yards (22 of 29), at Legion Field, including the winning touchdown with 3:42 remaining.
Televised college football has evolved over the years to the point that Saturday’s game at LSU, for example, isn’t just available nationally on ABC but (6:30 p.m. CT) but it can be streamed on ESPN, the ESPN app, or live TV streaming services that carry ABC like Fubo (which offers a free trial for new users). Also, there will be pre-game coverage with the ESPN College GameDay broadcast live from Tiger Stadium ahead of the contest from 8 to 11:00 a.m. CT on ESPN and ESPNU.
So television and, now, the wider news media is a driver in the crazy, out-of-control arms race that faces lawsuits and threatened lawsuits about whether former NFL players should be able to return for a fifth year of eligibility. Or whether college basketball teams can recruit professional basketball players. They have the wherewithal to do so now with NIL money. And it behooves a school to get just the right players now, maybe more so than a coach, because of the more direct tie between compensations and championship outcomes.
And to think all this started in college rivalries that once had goals to win an “Old Oaken Bucket” or a “Little Brown Jug.” The one that always got my curiosity was “Paul Bunyan’s Axe,” which has been an annual prize in the Minnesota-Wisconsin rivalry since 1890. A note on the prize says it wasn’t presented to the winner until 1948. If you read between the lines, you might could figure that in the early years it was a feared “prize” for the loser.