It might be less than 100 days until Penn State’s football season begins but it’s still much longer than that until the team plays a meaningful game during the 2025 season — that’d be Sept. 27 against Oregon at Beaver Stadium. (So, 123 days.)
It’s kind of the DNA of college football that important things get superseded by stories, though.
On a bigger scale that’s especially true with the federal court ruling (House vs. NCAA) that’ll eventually reshape what we’ve known as college sports.
We’ve heard it referred to as “the House case” or “the House settlement,” with the top bit of news being that athletic departments will have $20-some million every year to pay athletes (mostly football and men’s basketball players) as the pay-for-play era and revenue sharing become standardized.
In addition, roster limits in many sports will increase as all participants get a scholarship.
There’s much more — dominoes that could impact non-revenue or Olympic sports (pick your term), a potential third-party clearinghouse for marketing deals (hard to imagine that working well) and all the changes will eventually alter which Division I programs offer top-level sports and which do not. If you’re in central Pennsylvania, you already know of St. Francis’s move from Division I to Division III athletics going forward — a process that begins in 2026-27 and culminates three years later.
Still, when it comes to college football, it’s all about the story.
So, even with a windfall on the horizon and changes to the College Football Playoff format that could mean even more money, those most closely associated with the sport still want more.
No wonder some athletes seem entitled. If you model hubris, it becomes standard.
According to the House settlement, college football rosters would grow by 20 scholarship athletes, from 85 to 105, and every member of the team would earn a scholarship. Administrators, especially coaches and even the judge working to finalize the settlement remain focused on opportunities for those who could be disenfranchised by the ruling, though.
The judge seems worried about unintended consequences, and some intentionality in that regard probably is appropriate. Kudos for that.
Conversely, hearing coaches lament the loss of non-scholarship or walk-on (or run-on) players while getting 20 more scholarship players seems silly. It feels more like entitled greed.
After all, they’re getting 20 more scholarship players — with all those players engaged as part of the reimaged pay-for-play model. At the same time, they still want to be able to tell the feel-good stories of gritty, non-scholarship participants who occasionally play a meaningful moment during a real game while often helping bolster the team’s grade-point average by their presence on the roster.
Sure, college sports are built on such participants, and the stories of non-scholarship players provide feel-good moments that boost the history and tradition of college sports. That was before the pay-for-play era, though. Or at least before legalized pay for play.
These days it’s a different model, probably with a different type of participant — especially in the big-revenue sports. That’s OK, too. It’s not my preferred model, and not one that’ll spur me to buy tickets or support some booster group that pays athletes, but it’s OK if that’s the updated model that those in charge support.
What’s not OK is when the big business of college sports wants to frame its story as some pro bono, underdog entity as well — tapping into emotions and storytelling to eke out more engagement from fans.
My hope for the House settlement is that it does settle things, and at most some non-scholarship participants already on rosters get grandfathered and as they move along in their careers. After that, we’ll eventually get to a unified model where it’s all pay-for-play and if you want feel-good stories, you can find them with non-revenue sports, or at the Division II or Division III level.
That way the big business model remains a little separate from the feel-good underdog model.
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