They may as well have rolled out Quantum mechanics at this point. The attention span in this legal fight has flatlined for Joe Sixpack.
And that’s exactly what they want.
But before those running college sports – do we really know who they are at this point? – get comfortable with their shrewd shell game in the unfolding House settlement case impacting college football, understand this: no one in the history of business has survived by ignoring who they serve.
And with each passing month over the last four torturous years of paradigm change, those running college sports are on the edge of a catastrophic misread.
The fans, who fuel their collective sports, can only take so much.
So while attorneys for the NCAA and players fight it out in court over billions in lost revenue and billions more in future revenue, the fans – the one constant that has grown college football to unthinkable heights – have had a bellyful.
They’ve tuned out the monetary fight. They don’t care about billions made annually by Football Bowl Subdivision programs (some much more than others) and don’t give a rip how it’s split.
They don’t care about roster size and/or management, or that coaches continue to declare the loss of walk-ons is somehow, in some way, a death knell to the sport.
They just want their ball on fall Saturdays.
They want to roll into town Friday night, reconnect and avoid the grind of life, and hope like all hell this is the season they finally beat State. Simple, easy stuff.
But the flood of structural moves over the last four years – most made with zero foresight into how it impacts the product being sold – is now bleeding into their beautiful symphony of an escape. Tailgates and touchdowns have ben interrupted by lengthy litigation
Before we go further, this must be said: a majority of fans don’t care about money. It’s a titillating point of argument within the sport of arguing.
Our team is better than yours. Our conference is better than yours. Our band is better than yours.
And now, our quarterback makes less than your quarterback, and wins more games.
That’s it.
What does matter is player movement. What could lead to fans backing away from college football and not spending billions on the No. 2 sport in the country (behind only the NFL), is free player movement every single season.
They’ll put-up with a lot, these generational fans. An ever-changing postseason that morphed from media choosing a champion, to computer dorks and something called the Harris poll choosing it.
To a four-team playoff, and now a 12-team playoff, and what looks like at least at 14- or 16-team playoff beginning in 2026. They put up with Indiana and SMU being selected in the College Football Playoff, for the love of all things pigskin.
But players moving freely from team to team at an alarming rate, and the idea of school pride and loyalty dying at a similar rate, is where they may begin to draw the line.
The connection with fans and universities and school pride goes beyond school colors. It’s the development of players and coaches, and the investment of a three- or four-year journey of growing with your school.
It may sound hokey and contrived, but those at the top making decisions in the name of the NCAA better sit up and take notice. Because when you’re asking those you serve to spend more money on seat licenses and tickets, on apparel and flights and hotel rooms and rental cars and tailgating and everything else that goes into seven or eight home games every year, there will be hesitation.
Do you spend and invest time in a product that doesn’t align with what’s important to you, or do you sit home in your comfortable living room, with your own clean bathroom, and – here’s the key – when the game is over, you switch off your 70-inch television and a few minutes later, you’re on to the next thing.
Not sitting in traffic for the next four hours.
This isn’t that difficult. Figure out a financing plan that pays players their value, and then add hefty buyouts to all player contracts. That’s not collusion, that’s business.
If it were collusion, coaches could’ve argued it and won in court decades ago. They didn’t because it’s a legally sound move.
And if you want to keep your lower Bowl Subdivision schools from dying, force power conference schools to pay a premium talent fee to sign a player from Group of Five schools. They developed the players, they should be compensated.
University presidents have instead sent attorneys to argue semantics while bickering over billions, and sent conference commissioners to swanky hotels to bicker over a playoff.
Meanwhile, the DNA of the sport – its loyal and passionate fans – are minimized and marginalized.
And they can only take so much.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football witer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.
