OPINION:
Should the revenue 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 NCAAs aren’t the massive moneymakers that the NFL and NBA are, but in many ways, the product is more exciting than the boring professional leagues. That’s especially true in March, when the hoops madness begins.
Even with the new “pay to play rules” that have turned college football and basketball into semi-pro 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 costs of all the other men’s and women’s sports, including badminton and cross-country.
The two megaconferences, the Big Ten and the Southeast Conference, tend to dominate viewership and thus money from about $2 billion in TV contracts.
Now, Congress has concocted the so-called Saving College Sports plan, which would create a government “oversight” panel to negotiate media rights on behalf of colleges and conferences across the country. The idea is to share the wealth, or bring socialism to the football stadiums and the basketball arenas.
The Saving College Sports proposal is an idea that only Sen. Bernard 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.
But wait. Indiana, 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 Big Ten and SEC behemoths to win the NCAA basketball championship.
The legislation also ignores the reality that, as the kingpins in the SEC and Big Ten get really rich, the other leagues have had healthy returns and profits too, and at roughly the same pace. The better the power conferences do, the better the mid-American and Big East conferences do, just at a lower scale.
The rules also ensure that the smaller conferences are represented in the NCAA tournament and the College Football Playoffs.
Anything that makes the overall product less attractive hurts all the schools. Given that the games aren’t broken — although some reforms are definitely needed in the name, image and likeness licensing and transfer rules — 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 every other industry. At some point, Congress should reconsider whether college athletics are “nonprofit activities” that are tax-deductible.
In the meantime, it has better things to do than impose price controls and revenue-sharing requirements on college sports.
• Stephen Moore is a co-founder of Unleash Prosperity and a former Trump economic adviser.
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