Steamboat Willie

LSU is trying to solve a math problem more schools are starting to face. Revenue sharing with athletes, rising roster costs and years of coaching buyouts have created a gap that donations alone can't close. The answer isn't just asking boosters for more. LSU is exploring a corporate entity it would own and control, one that invests in outside businesses to generate recurring revenue. Reports that the school already sold 10% of its future media rights for $100 million have been disputed, and no deal has been signed. The trend is still hard to miss. Boosters, ticket sales and TV money no longer cover what it costs to compete at the top, and schools are starting to raise capital more like businesses. Utah has partnered with a private equity firm, and Kentucky, Michigan State and Clemson have all set up commercial arms.

I thought Petitti's comments were interesting. He basically said if Congress can't get a bill done, the next step is working out CSC changes with the other conferences. If that doesn't work, the fallback is self-governance. He also made a point of saying that doesn't mean anyone stops playing each other, which tells me he wanted to shut down the breakaway league narrative before it got started. The bigger takeaway is that the SEC and Big Ten don't seem boxed in. A federal bill is one option, not their only option. That's probably why they're in no rush to meet congressional deadlines. The catch is that self-governance doesn't solve the legal problem. Without antitrust protection, you're back to writing your own rules and hoping they survive the next lawsuit. That's the exact problem Congress is trying to solve.

The associated-entity fight is what's really holding this bill up, mostly because there's no clean answer to it. The loophole is simple enough. Schools are capped on what they can share directly, so the big programs find ways to move extra money through multimedia partners, sponsors, and other affiliated businesses. Nebraska's the best example. The CSC threw out deals for 18 players after deciding Playfly counted as an associated entity and the contracts had no real business purpose. But not every Learfield or Playfly deal is fake. Those companies have thousands of legitimate sponsorships and media relationships, and you can't just assume every dollar tied to them is circumvention. Leave it wide open, though, and the biggest spenders keep building rosters outside the cap anyway. That's the whole problem. Everybody agrees there needs to be a ceiling. Nobody has figured out how to stop the cheating without dragging a lot of real business down with it. Which is why this is the piece that still isn't resolved.

One more thought, it appears the media rights fight is basically over, and the SEC and Big Ten won it. Pooling is voluntary now, and there's language saying nobody can sue them for sitting it out. What's actually holding things up is enforcement. They're not signing off on a bigger cap unless the associated-entity loophole is really closed, and I don't blame them. Otherwise the number means nothing and their own schools just keep escalating right past it. They also want the nine-year sunset gone, better antitrust protection so this doesn't just end up back in court anyway, and some assurance that a $22.5M retention pool stacked on a court-approved settlement cap actually holds up legally. That last one is Petitti's own point, and it's a fair one. He wants to read the language before he commits to it. None of that strikes me as unreasonable. But none of it is small either, and every one of those asks buys them more time. If they think they can do better next offseason, there's no cost to just waiting this out.

The biggest development today is what didn't happen. The SEC and Big Ten had a 9 a.m. deadline to give Congress their position on the revised bill, and they let it come and go, scheduling more calls with their presidents instead. That tells me they're still negotiating, not endorsing. And look how far the bill has already moved toward them. Media-rights pooling is now explicitly voluntary, with language barring lawsuits against conferences that stay out. The expansion limit goes to 19 members. There's a $20 million retention pool on top of the $21.3 million revenue-sharing cap, plus another $5 million restricted to women's sports, putting the total around $46 million. They're reportedly still pushing to get that full $25 million unrestricted, along with tighter recruiting language and killing the nine-year sunset on the cap. A month ago the question was whether the SEC and Big Ten would accept Congress's bill. Now Congress is writing a bill for them to accept, and they're still not saying yes. Whether they finally sign off probably determines if this reaches the Senate floor before Aug. 7 or slips into the fall.

The misconception here is that the media-rights fight is about forcing the SEC and Big Ten into a TV pool. It never was. Joining has always been voluntary. The real question is whether the final bill keeps enough incentives, or consequences, that "voluntary" quietly turns into "you'd better join." Postseason access was the actual lever, which is why Sankey went after it. Take that out and the section sits in the bill doing nothing. Those two keep cutting their own deals, and a pool without their inventory isn't the $4-8 billion everybody's been selling. So: political win for Cody Campbell, policy win for the SEC and Big Ten. He gets to say Congress passed a national framework. They get to say they protected the model that already runs the sport. But did we fix anything? The biggest spenders are already operating around these caps through associated entities. If the bill just legalizes what they're already doing, that's not a ceiling, that's a floor.

I agree. If you're going to put a cap on what players can make, the players have to be part of that conversation. You can't have Congress, the conferences and the schools decide among themselves what athletes are allowed to earn and expect that to be the end of it. If college sports wants the stability of the NFL model: spending limits, enforceable rules, etc.; eventually they're going to have to accept the other side of that model too. The players get a seat at the table.

Exactly. That's really the whole point. National rules don't accomplish much if nobody has the authority to enforce them and the penalties don't stick. Give college sports one set of rules and real enforcement behind them. That's where Congress can actually help. It's when they start trying to manage conference expansion, TV rights and the entire economics of the sport that they lose me.

I'm not against a bill. NIL, the portal, enforcement, that stuff needs a federal fix. You can't run college sports under 50 different state laws with nobody able to actually enforce anything. But we started out trying to fix that, and now Congress is setting spending caps, deciding who's allowed to expand, and rewriting how TV rights can be pooled. That's not cleanup anymore. At that point they're writing the operating manual for the whole sport, with everybody in the room lobbying for their own piece. And the funny part is the SEC and Big Ten opposed the committee bill and now look like they're getting a lot of what they wanted anyway. Not exactly shocking. Those two conferences cover 26 states, that's 52 senators, and you need 60. If a compromise ends the chaos, fine, I'll take it. I just can't shake the feeling that we're not fixing college sports so much as creating the next mess we'll all be back here arguing about in five years.

The added depth at center alone would be priceless.

A Longhorn football jersey with a small silver Apple logo patch would generate enormous attention. Apple rarely places its logo on third-party apparel, so such a partnership would be perceived as exceptionally exclusive. Combined with UT's academic reputation, Austin's tech ecosystem, and the Longhorn brand, it would likely become one of the most recognizable sponsorships in college sports. NVIDIA or Oracle would be cool as well.

Maybe?

Couple of biscuits shy of a TE.

I really think we received the worst seeding in Omaha we possibly could have gotten.

Current odds Brenden Sorsby is giving: Outcome IImplied Odds Current version passes largely intact +600 to +900 (10–15%) Passes after significant amendments +150 to +250 (30–40%) Fails, stalls, or gets pushed to a future Congress -120 to -180 (55–65%)