Past is prologue for the evolving college sports marketplace and regulatory model. This episode offers a curated history of modern college sports from World War II to the present. As with nearly all aspects of big-time college sports, big-time football is at the center of every crucial milestone.

Big-time college football is the king of college sports culturally and financially. Because Power 5 football resides under the NCAA regulatory umbrella, these fundamental facts are often obscured. Lost in discussions about the NCAA as a national regulator and the future of college sports regulation is the dominance of football revenue in the overall business model. This episode looks at big-time football’s influence at the cultural and financial levels. I reflect on my personal experience—as a son of Tobacco Road and former Duke basketball player and as an interloper in the world of SEC football—to discuss the comparative cultural importance of football and men’s basketball. I also compare and contrast the financial impact of these two sports relying on a new financial database compiled by Sportico.

In this episode, I look at the role of the NCAA and Power 5 as propagandists in their quest for federal, protective intervention in college sports, emphasizing their target audience: the Senate Commerce Committee. Commerce has original legislative and oversight jurisdiction for sports-related matters and has been the epicenter of the NCAA/Power 5 campaigns to obtain unprecedented federal protections and immunities. The Power 5 now controls voluntary, private college sports regulation under the NCAA umbrella. How are they positioning themselves from a public messaging standpoint for a new and improved strategy in the Senate?

January 20th marked the official beginning of SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey’s new role as the unofficial czar of college sports when the NCAA membership voted to ratify the new NCAA constitution. As co-chair of the Division I Board of Director’s Transformation Committee, Sankey (and co-chair Julie Cromer, athletics director at Ohio University) will utilize Division I’s new authorities to operate largely independent of the NCAA national office bureaucracy. On Friday, January 21st, Sankey and Cromer sat for a podcast interview in the NCAA’s “Social Series” podcast. This episode analyzes Sankey’s and Cromer’s comments and how they framed the purpose for, and work of, the Transformation Committee. Sankey’s new role poses complex messaging challenges as he tries to reconcile the tension between the public face of the Committee and the realities of the regulatory and legal environment in college sports in 2022. Those realities rest squarely on the interests of Power 5 football—an obvious truth obscured by Sankey’s comments.