(This is the first of a two-part series on the hurdles USF faces as it tries to get into a Power Four conference.)
Almost from the day it played its first game against Kentucky Wesleyan in 1997, there has never been much question about where South Florida wanted to go. The only question was, could it get there?
As a major state university in one of the biggest TV markets in the country and with the potential to recruit top high school talent, playing in a Power Five, now Power Four, conference seemed a reasonable goal.
But 1997, and the ensuing years that followed it, was very different than the chaotic state of affairs that exists in college sports now. Then, there were some guidelines, now, there are none.
No one can tell you, with any certainty, what college football will look like next year or the year after that, what you will need to do to compete at the highest level.
One thing is certain, though. However college football reinvents itself, money will be a major factor, maybe almost limitless amounts of money. And if that becomes the case, will college football even survive?
College athletics is gradually becoming more of a business then a sport, with the funding of revenue producing programs, primarily football and to some extent basketball, the key to preventing a total collapse.
Already, it now costs almost $40 million to field a top tier college football team, $10 million or more for basketball. And those numbers are only going to rise.
The House vs. NCAA settlement agreed on last year allows teams to pay up to $20.5 million to players, with that number expected to increase over time. And that doesn’t include NIL (name, image, likeness) money.
There are supposed to be guidelines to control NIL, but nobody pays any attention to them. So the cash going into those deals depends solely on the amount of money supporters of the various schools are willing to spend.
As a result, the richest schools are going to have the best teams, because the foundation for most college football programs is signing the best “free agents,” players in the transfer portal going from one school to another. And the way to get the best players is to pay them more than they can get anyplace else.
That has made finding new revenue streams the top priority for almost all college athletic directors. One potential source of revenue, which is now permitted by the NCAA, is selling uniform patches.
Companies and corporations pay to have their logo put on a school’s team uniform, and if it’s a big enough brand, this can bring in millions for the college or university involved.
For example, LSU has a seven-year deal with Woodside Energy that pays it at least $10 million a year. Even Group of Six teams are getting in on the action.
South Florida has hooked up with Tampa General Hospital, which has become heavily integrated with USF athletics, on a multi-year partnership to have its logo on the Bulls’ uniforms.
Financial details were not disclosed, but UNLV, another Group of Six team, signed a five-year, $11 million contract with Acesso Biologics and the Tampa General Hospital-USF arrangement is probably pretty similar.
There is another source of revenue that teams and conferences can choose to exploit, but which most have chosen to stay away from because it is highly controversial, and that’s investment from private equity firms.
These institutions can make huge sums of money available to teams and conferences for use in strengthening their athletic programs and could enable them to be more competitive, even some at the highest level.
The problem is that private equity firms expect a return on investment, and if a team of a conference is unable to pay the money back – with interest – the firms might demand a say in how the team or conference is run.
Despite this, the Big 12 recently became the first conference to accept private equity money, agreeing to a five year partnership with Redbird that provides $12.5 million up front to the conference and extends a $30 million line of credit to each of the conference’s 16 teams.
While it has not said anything publicly, the Big 12 is the target Power Four conference for USF because its television contract is the first to expire in 2031, but before the Big 12 or any other Power Four conference even thinks about expansion, the out-of-control financial morass all colleges and universities find themselves in will have to be resolved.
(Next: For USF, will bigger really be that much better?)