🪫 College Football is Officially Broken

The only thing more American than college football on a Saturday in the fall is hating unions.

Now, I’m not here today to make the case for unions in this great country of ours but instead, I’m just going tell you a story about sports and we’ll see where we end up.

But first:

🗞 The Big Story: College Football Needs to Privatize (My Response)

📉 Biggest Loser: Why NIL Didn’t Fix Anything

🏆 Winner’s Circle: Joey Chestnut’s Biggest Beef

🗞 The Big Story

I got called out, and I’ll let you be the judge of whether or not I deserved it.

First, some context.

Earlier this week I posted a video making the argument for the privatization of college athletics, namely college football.

Now, my argument for this was multi-faceted:

1. $194 billion per year in taxpayer dollars goes to fund public universities (around 40% of most schools’ total funding).

2. This money seems to rise to the top in the form of high coaches’ salaries and athletic department budgets.

3. These athletic departments don’t need to be subsidized because they already make hundreds of millions of dollars per year on their own.

4. Taxpayer subsidies allow these athletic departments to feel emboldened to take on huge amounts of debt, that they then make students pay for through onerous fees.

5. Private schools, like Notre Dame, don’t do this and still make just as much money as public schools. So why can’t all schools’ football programs be run as private entities with no state, taxpayer, or student funding?

Admittedly, I messed a few things up in this explanation and I got called out for it by hundreds of people in the comments, including a prominent college football creator who goes by RicoKnows.

Now, Rico called the video “not remotely true,” going on to say that “football facilities and coaches are constantly paid by donors and collectives.”

And there is some truth to that. For example, Nick Saban’s almost $11M per year salary is largely paid for by donors, TV revenue, sponsorships, and ticket sales.

But if you do more digging, you realize that taxpayers and the students at these schools still foot a massive bill for these already profitable college athletic programs.

Let’s dig in:

For starters, it’s worth noting that student fees and state grants are just creative ways for universities to re-route money from the public into their multi-million dollar athletic programs.

Is there a line item on your tax return that says “For College Football”?

No.

But these funding mechanisms effectively act as taxes in the way that they redistribute wealth.

But now on to the real question, how does this happen?

Well, the Huffington Post has a great report that outlines how the coaches and staff in the University of Illinois’ athletic department cost state taxpayers $8.6 million in 2016.

That’s because coaches are considered university employees, and university employees have their healthcare, and retirement plans paid for by state funding - which comes from the taxpayers.

The report also goes on to explain that as the business of college football grows, it forces these athletic departments to grow their staff.

Which means ballooning costs for the state to hire more government-paid employees for which state residents have to pay a share.

Now, in my original video, I also mention how these college programs are run on debt and that the reason they often go into debt is to build new multi-million dollar athletic facilities that get paid for by students.

I specifically cite Clemson as an example of this phenomenon in which they use $1,414 per in-state student per year to pay for their mounting debt - much of which has been run up because of increasing athletic costs.

But if that’s not enough, USA Today has a great database that outlines the revenue, expenses, and total amount of money allocated from student fees, direct and indirect institutional support, and state money for all 232 public, DI athletic departments.

In fact, just 12 of the 232 public DI athletic departments in the country don’t take any money from students, the school, or the state.

Those schools are listed here:

While most top programs, like Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Auburn, and Clemson take millions every year in public funding to run their athletic departments that already make hundreds of millions of dollars.

Now, I’m aware that this list doesn’t control for just football - but that’s kind of my whole point. College athletics, primarily football, and basketball, need to be privatized because they make plenty of money to support themselves.

In fact, without the costs of running other, non-revenue diving sports, these athletic departments would be making even more money.

And maybe if they didn’t get the benefit of ripping off taxpayers and students for millions of dollars per year they’d be more responsible with how much debt they take on, how much they pay their coaches, and how they run their programs.

But regardless, this conversation is much too nuanced to speak in absolutes - and at first, I was as guilty as anyone.

However, I think we can all agree, athletic programs making $100M+ dollars every year aren’t entitled to our money… at least I hope we can all agree on that.

📉 Biggest Loser

College athletes keep getting f*cked over.

I’ve been deep in the rabbit hole of NIL on the back of this NCAA 24 debacle with EA Sports, and I’ve realized one thing:

NIL didn’t solve the problem of getting athletes paid, in fact, it only made it worse.

This is a great time to plug my podcast from this week with reporter Amanda Christovich of Front Office Sports.

If you’re at all interested in how companies and NIL groups are impacting how college athletes are getting paid, especially as it pertains to NCAA 24, this is a must-listen!

Also available on Apple Podcasts

A great example of this (that somehow got passed me last fall) was the highway robbery Fanatics and a NIL Group Licensing company called OneTeam Partners pulled on 4,300 college football players back in September 2022.

Here are the basics:

• OneTeam Partners represented 4,300 college football in negotiations with Fanatics to allow the company to sell jerseys of the players.

• Fanatics sells the jerseys for $140.

• The player’s cut is $3.92, or just 5% of the total revenue, per jersey sold.

Now, in the NFL players get two-thirds of the revenue from their jerseys with the other third going to a pool of money in the NFL Players Union to be distributed to all players in the league.

This means that even a third-string lineman will get a check at the end of the season, even if he doesn’t sell any jerseys.

But college athletes aren’t allowed to form a union, which means all of this excess money which would normally be redistributed back to players is either going into the pockets of Fanatics or the NIL Group Licensing companies facilitating these deals.

And so-called “competing offers” aren’t much better.

Remember The Brandr Group? The company currently suing EA in an attempt to stop NCAA 24 from getting made?

Well, last year they also partnered with a few dozen schools according to Amanda Christovich to offer athletes a cut of jersey sales and they were offering players $10-$12 per jersey sold - or about 10% of the revenue.

Now, these NIL companies claim that these are just baseline offers that are up for negotiation - but without any sort of players union, it's hard for these college athletes to negotiate better terms.

Oh yeah, it’s also worth noting that companies like OneTeam and The Brandr Group are the ones claiming that players’ unions aren’t needed at the college level.

But that’s only because it allows them to control the terms of the negotiations… giving athletes the option to either make less than $4 per jersey or not have their jersey sold at all.

Not exactly a win-win…

🏆 Winner’s Circle

Joey Chestnut is going for his 16th win in 17 years at the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest in Coney Island this July 4th.

Chestnut’s last time not winning came in 2015 when he lost to Matt Stonie (62 hot dogs eaten) by two hot dogs.

However, Chestnut didn’t just come out of nowhere.

In fact, before his rise to dominance in the competitive eating scene, there was another individual who was considered to be the greatest of all time.

His name is Takeru Kobayashi and his revolutionary technique and grueling training regimen allowed him to eat so much food that it would move his other organs out of the way, to the point that it limited his breathing.

Now, in 2007 Kobayashi entered the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest winning the last six in a row, and the year prior he had set Japanese and world records by eating 53 and 3/4ths hot dogs in just 12 minutes.

And with 50,000 people gathered to watch, Kobayashi took the stage to attempt to claim his 7th title in a row.

However, seated to his right was a relative newcomer - who had just entered the competitive eating scene two years prior.

Now, this newbie (named Joey Chestnut) had a break-out performance earlier that year in the deep-fried asparagus-eating championship by eating 6.3 pounds of asparagus in 11.5 minutes, but he had only ever participated in the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest twice.

The first time finishing 3rd, eating 32 hot dogs, and the second time - in 2006 - finishing second behind Kobayashi, eating 52 hot dogs.

And while many thought that 2006 would be the year Kobayashi would finally be beaten, the Japanese eater followed up his hot dog win by beating Chestnut again in the Johnsonville Bratwurst Eating Championship in Sheboygan, Wisconsin by eating 58 brats in 10 minutes, compared to Chestnut’s measly 45.

And it was at this point that it seemed like Kobayashi might be unbeatable, but the following year on July 4th, 2007 Chestnut came ready to play and beat Kobayashi 66 hot dogs to 63, setting a new world record and dethroning the 6-time champion.

But the feud didn’t stop there, because the next year the two-faced off again and ended regulation tied at 59 hot dogs a piece.

With the winner being decided in a 5 hot dog eat-off, the first to finish wins.

Chestnut downed his 5 hot dogs in 50 seconds, with Kobayashi finishing 7 seconds behind him.

The following year, in 2009, was more of the same with Chestnut dominating and Kobayashi coming in second.

And this is where the feud heats up.

Because the next year, in 2010, Kobayashi attempted to participate in the Hot Dog Eating contest despite not being signed with Major League Eating.

Now, the reason for this is because Kobayahsi didn’t like that his contract with Major League Eating would limit him from participating in non-MLE events - so he never re-signed with them and was arrested for showing up to the 2010 Hot Dog Eating Contest.

But Joey Chestnut points out that Kobayashi didn’t seem to have an issue with his contract until he started losing.

Kobayashi has even accused Chestnut of cheating - including in this pizza-eating competition from 2009.

Now, Kobayashi hasn’t competed against Chestnut since 2009 and it’s unlikely it’ll happen again any time soon - since then, however, Chestnut has gone on to win all but one Hot Dog Eating Contest, solidifying himself as one of the greatest athletes of all time.

⏱ In Other News:

• MLB attendance is projected to be up 6-8% by the end of this year, in large part thanks to new pace-of-play rules.

• Shams Charania is in hot water after tweeting this during the NBA Draft, leading many to accuse him of purposely moving the betting line. Charania is employed by FanDuel but the sportsbook rejects any wrongdoing.

• A Stephan F. Austin University women’s assistant bowling coach was caught sleeping with an athlete on the team. The worst part? His wife is the head coach.

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👋 No newsletter next week, I’m taking it off to enjoy the holiday. I hope you get a chance to do the same! I’ll see you on July 14th 🇺🇸