Should the revenues made by big-time college athletics be “shared” by all the schools? Do we want “revenue-sharing” socialism to come to college football and basketball? Many in Congress are answering yes to that question.
The NCAA isn’t the massive moneymaker the NFL and NBA are, but in many ways the product is more exciting than the boring professional leagues. That’s especially true in this month of March, when the hoops madness begins.
Even with the new “pay-to-play” rules that have turned college football and basketball into semipro leagues, with some of the star athletes earning more to stay in college than “going pro,” the fan interest is higher than ever before. So is the money the big schools are making.
There are a lot of legitimate complaints about these billions of dollars in TV contracts collected by the supposed “nonprofit” colleges. But keep in mind that the multibillion-dollar annual TV contracts for college football and basketball help subsidize the cost of all the other men’s and women’s sports — from badminton to cross-country.
The two mega conferences, the Big Ten and the Southeastern Conference, tend to dominate viewership and, thus, money — about $2 billion in TV contracts.
Now Congress has concocted the so-called Saving College Sports plan, which would create a government “oversight” panel that would negotiate media rights on behalf of colleges and conferences across the country. The idea is to share the wealth: Bring socialism to the football stadium and the basketball arena.
But the SCS proposal is an idea that only Bernie Sanders could love and is likely to generate less revenue for all NCAA men’s and women’s sports.
Advocates warn that, under current rules, only the big, rich schools get richer and win all the titles.
Wait. The Indiana Hoosiers, the losingest team in college football, just won the national championship without one single five-star recruit on the roster. A few years ago, tiny Villanova beat all the SEC and Big Ten behemoths to win the NCAA basketball championship.
The legislation also ignores the reality that as the kingpins in the SEC and Big Ten have gotten really rich, the other leagues have seen healthy returns and profits as well at roughly the same pace. The better the power conferences do, the better the mid-America and Big East conferences do, just at a lower scale. The rules also ensure that the smaller conferences are represented in the NCAA basketball tournament and the College Football Playoff.
Anything that makes the overall product less attractive hurts all the schools. Given that the games aren’t broke, it’s not clear what Congress is trying to fix here.
Socialism and revenue-sharing requirements aren’t likely to work in college sports any more than they have in any other industry. Congress has better things to do than impose price controls and revenue-sharing requirements on college sports.
Stephen Moore is a former Trump senior economic adviser and the cofounder of Unleash Prosperity.
