Professional college football is here

The difference between NCAA and NFL keeps shrinking

Welcome to a beta edition of Club Sportico! Thanks for joining—please do reply with any critiques/comments/compliments!! Jacob leads off this week…

At least Florida State fans still upset (rightfully imo) over their exclusion from last year’s College Football Playoff can console themselves with the fact that an undefeated team will never be snubbed like they were again. That will make them feel better, right?

The Seminoles get to turn the page on Saturday, kicking off the 2024 season with a game against Georgia Tech in Dublin, Ireland. This year, teams are playing for one of 12 spots in a now-expanded postseason. Under the new setup, it’s possible a single school could play 17 total contests, in one of several changes that will make the games feel a lot more like what’s played on Sundays.

We have new power leagues this year, with 16 schools in the SEC and 18 in the Big Ten. More individual players are in new places, too. Colorado once again leads the way with 43 incoming transfers, based on 247Sports’ accounting, but 21 other schools have also added at least 20 portalers. NC State head coach Dave Doeren has explicitly said that his recruiting office is now “based on the NFL model.”

Regulations over how those players are compensated keep falling away, though the recent House settlement points toward what’s already being called a $22 million college sports salary cap.

Meanwhile, as I listened to experts around the country talk about this year’s new sideline tablet and helmet communications policies, amateur football’s big brother kept coming up. This will prepare players for the NFL… Ex-NFL coaches are ready to implement these procedures on college staffs… This is how the NFL does it, why shouldn’t we?

Naturally, those competitive changes have sparked corresponding alterations behind the scenes at athletic departments.

• Alabama under new coach Kalen DeBoer is now paying millions to a general manager.

• Clemson is currently looking for a literal CEO.

• Duke has brought in an ex-NBA expert to update its gameday operations, recognizing the need to attract recruits and fans if it’s going to maintain a seat at the football-dominated college sports table.

• And our valuations expert Kurt Badenhausen is surely clearing time in his already busy calendar to weigh in on how much each football program is worth, with private equity executives right there alongside.

For now though, uncertainty reigns.

Copying the NFL is no bad thing. It’s the dominant sport for a reason, and competitors have been stealing from its playbook for decades. The problems come when college football tries to take inspiration from the pros while attempting to maintain its own traditions (and profitable business practices).

Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin summed it up well.

“In some areas, we want to be professional sports, but then we don’t in these other areas and that’s why you have that chaos that you have in college football.”

And yet, the chaos hasn’t seemed to harm the sport yet (the old Pac-12’s left-behinds not withstanding). Ultimately, it will be up to the fans to determine whether college football can sustain its new bigness and professionality.

Collegiate athletics has long differentiated itself with pageantry and passion. So far, despite allllll the changes, those pillars remain. Just ask a Seminoles supporter.

tl;dr: 🏈🏟️💰 ➡️ 💥🌪️🤯 ➡️ 📺 👀❓

Last week, 60% of you agreed that the Cowboys would sell for more than $15 billion.

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Now turning it over to Eben for his Pick Six, including NBA stereotypes, a college sports first, and the truth about the world’s second richest man.

Story of the Week ⚽: We finally got details of the new NWSL labor agreement, and it’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen in major U.S. pro sports. The league is abolishing its draft, granting immediate free agent status across the league, and guaranteeing all contracts. Perhaps most radical to U.S fans, no player will be traded or transferred without her consent. I wrote this week about the deal, and why Europe loomed heavy on owners’ minds during negotiations.

Story of the Week (Non-Sportico Division) 🎰: “How sports gambling came to be such a hulking, clanging presence in our life is the ultimate sports media story—which is funny, in a ghoulish sort of way, given there’s not a lot of sports media left to tell it.” That’s from an excellent Bloomberg Businessweek piece written by Tommy Craggs about how legal sports betting is changing sports journalism.