Privatization of college football/college sports

[TomCat88]

It already is a quasi-public/private endeavor of sorts with boosters and billionaires donating large sums of money. And there are quite a few private (mostly parochial) schools out there. I'm just wondering what a fully privatized college football landscape would look like. To be fully private you would have to have someone own/buy the school. I haven't put a whole lot of thought into this but I'm just wondering what everyone would think if UM and MSU were purchased and then run by individuals and their boards and committees.

[SparkCat]

It already is a quasi-public/private endeavor of sorts with boosters and billionaires donating large sums of money. And there are quite a few private (mostly parochial) schools out there. I'm just wondering what a fully privatized college football landscape would look like. To be fully private you would have to have someone own/buy the school. I haven't put a whole lot of thought into this but I'm just wondering what everyone would think if UM and MSU were purchased and then run by individuals and their boards and committees.

Impossible to say. Depends on the priorities of the owner and board. Education would greatly suffer.

[coloradocat]

I don't think there would be any need/justification to privatize the universities.

The athletic departments, or at least the two revenue sports, could be spun off though and the schools would likely just license their naming rights to the teams. The Bozeman semi-pro football team is never going to do as well as the MSU Bobcats, regardless of the management structure. The landscape wouldn't have to change much and in fact it might work better if it was incorporated and wasn't subject to the NCAA which keeps losing legal battles. Congress could probably create a legal structure, or fold them into the framework that professional teams are subject to, in order to facilitate stability.

[AFCAT]

The Bozeman Bobcats, sponsored by Montana State University. Nah, I'm done at that point.

[MTnative]

No. Absolutely not.

It was and always will be about education. I’d rather see us scrap athletics entirely than go to a privatized model.

[WetBreeches]

I think that football has to adopt a quasi-European soccer model. Transfer fees/buyouts to universities when a player leaves. Unfortunately to enact transfer fees/buyouts you would need player contracts. To get player contracts the player will have to be signing with the university/football team (not simply an NIL deal). If players are able to sign contracts with universities it completely removes the "amateur" status while also diminishing the NCAA's role in college athletics (because now it is the university managing its employees, not the NCAA managing an amateur student athlete). Different universities could set different standards for their employees (i.e. to qualify as a "football player" you need to be taking 12 credits and be under the age of 30) and obviously the opportunity for universities to game "standards" would be ripe. In this scenario, I believe the top programs will have completely ludicrous standards and it will become even more "pro ball light". My hope in this scenario, would be, that teams at the FCS level (or whatever "lower tier" came to exist) would develop rules similar to what the NCAA used to have. Because the fans at the FCS level want to be a part of a more typical college football experience as opposed to "semi" pro ball. Players could/would still move up, but at least the lower tier teams could receive compensation for their investment.