A White House committee gathered sharp minds to save college football -- instead, they wrote a blog post

I got my start in the sports industry as a sports blogger. It was a wonderful time when any idiot could go online and share their stupid ideas for other idiots to find and bond over their stupidity.

I was perfect for it.

I would write about things that never had a prayer of happening, nor was there a need for them to happen. I can't tell you how many times I realigned sports leagues. I created new scheduling structures and divisions for MLB. I also wrote about a promotion/relegation plan for college football (that would one day be presented on this very website). It was all fantasy, and it was a lot of fun.

I tell you this so you understand that I completely understand what was happening in the White House committee's meetings on college sports reform. Those folks were vibing in there! Just coming up with any old idea to save college sports, and then being kind enough to issue their ideas last weekend, "for discussion purposes only."

Seriously, the White House wrote a blog post.

Unfortunately, that wasn't what they were tasked to do. College sports are in upheaval due to exploding television rights deals timing up with the ability to actually pay the athletes playing in the games, as well as those players suddenly having the freedom of movement. 

Many of the newfound liberties the players have are a direct result of the United States government and judicial system forcing the NCAA and its universities to do what common sense had dictated they do for decades. It's only natural that the NCAA would then turn to that same government and ask for a little help getting all of this under control.

Instead, we get an idea for a Group of Six playoff and a salary cap on coach salaries? How the hell do either of those solve the actual problems facing the sport right now?

Let's go over these ideas and what parts do and don't make sense, shall we?

Capping coach and administrator salaries

Sounds great in theory. It's definitely the kind of dumb idea that dumb people think is a great idea, one that would've driven incredible pageviews in 2008. There's no shortage of people who will happily tell you that The Real Problem with college sports has been the idiotic ways schools have spent money, with coach salaries and buyouts being a huge part of it. And they're not wrong! Schools have definitely made stupid decisions on coach salaries and agreed to exorbitant buyouts when the coach has no real leverage to force them into giving them that contract.

But how would it work? Is there a cap based on each specific position, or an overall limit to what you can spend on your staff as a whole? Also, how would it be enforced? If the cap for a head coach is, say, $10 million per year, what's to stop Georgia from giving Kirby Smart a 10-year, $100 million contract but then also signing him to a 10-year, $50 million deal to do a weekly radio show?

Also, if you strictly enforce the rules with the threat of tangible penalties, does capping coach salaries only push your best coaches to the NFL? If Ryan Day goes on to win three more national titles at Ohio State, does he get annoyed that he gets paid the same amount as Barry Odom (sorry for the stray, coach) at Purdue? Does the NFL -- which definitely will not cap how much you can pay the coach -- suddenly become a far more appealing option to Day?

Or if the salary cap applies to the staff as a whole, do we see assistants leaving for NFL jobs with higher pay? Does this all lead to a form of brain drain at the college level?

Again, in theory, capping salaries makes sense. It's just that the cap's unintended consequences could create different problems down the road. Also, to be blunt, I'm a free-market kind of guy. I want coaches to have the same ability to make as much money as possible -- same with the players. Anybody who argues it's wrong to limit player movement and then says you need to cap coach salaries is arguing against themselves.

Bird Rights

Coaches and administrators aren't the only group being subjected to a cap in this fantasy fever dream. The players would be too. Again, it's another idea that makes sense on the surface, and even if I don't agree with it entirely (free market guy), I understand the purpose of salary caps in sports leagues.

No, the part of the proposal I don't like at all is the proposal of a Bird Rights system. For the unfamiliar, Bird Rights (named after Larry Bird) are a feature of the NBA. The NBA has a salary cap, but Bird Rights allow teams to exceed the cap to retain existing players. You see, there was once a time when small-market NBA teams would draft a player who became a superstar, and then that player would immediately bolt for a larger market the first moment they could.

Well, by allowing the player's current franchise to pay them more than anyone else, that was a way to entice the player to remain with their current team. Players would then circumvent this by forcing their small-market team to sign them to a huge deal and then trade them to another team where they wanted to be.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver is a part of this committee. It's pretty clear that after sitting quietly for a while, he spoke up about Bird Rights in the NBA, and the rest of the room thought it sounded pretty cool.

But, again, those unintended consequences! For all the problems (real or perceived) that NIL and the transfer portal have created in college football, the one undeniable benefit is that the talent level at the top of the sport has evened out. Gone are the days of the blue bloods hoarding all the five stars. It's brought more parity to the top of the sport than ever before, and allowed teams to compete who never stood a chance before (Indiana won a national title, if you hadn't heard).

If teams are allowed to go over a cap to retain current players, it could put an end to that. That five-star defensive lineman who can't crack the starting rotation at Oregon right now might be more willing to spend another season as a reserve if Oregon can pay him more than USC can fit under the salary cap. It wouldn't stop the movement entirely, but it would slow it down, and probably not in a way that's beneficial for the sport.

It also limits a player's ability to maximize their earning potential, and, again, free market guy!

Finally, I don't mean any offense to Adam Silver, but let's remember he's currently in charge of a league that has had to impose 65-game minimums for individual awards like MVP to entice its superstars to actually play in the regular season. The NBA has also recently gone through multiple draft lottery variations to make losing on purpose less attractive to its franchises. Perhaps a sport that values the regular season as much as college football should pass on any ideas from the commissioner of the league that cares the least about its regular season.

Pooling media rights

There's a proposal to have schools from different conferences pool their media rights to maximize overall revenue potential. Again, another idea that makes some sense on the surface, but I'm going to do that thing where I push you beneath the surface again.

One of the biggest proponents of this idea is Texas Tech billionaire booster Cody Campbell. Another is Tim Pernetti, the commissioner of the American Conference. The Big 12, home of Texas Tech, distributed between $32 million and $50 million per school under its current television deal. The American paid out roughly $7 million per school in its deal.

The Big Ten made $1.37 billion in 2024-25, which it distributed among its 18 schools. Oregon and Washington received half shares of $48.4 million and $46.7 million, respectively. Ohio State received $91.57 million. On average, the 18 B1G schools got $76.1 million. The SEC received $1.03 billion for an average payout of $72.4 million per school.

You know what? Like Cody Campbell and Tim Pernetti, I would also like to pool the rights of the Cover 3 Podcast YouTube channel with those of the Big Ten and SEC. 

This is a great idea!

In all seriousness, does nobody else see the irony here? Rapidly growing television deals have contributed to many of the problems (real and perceived) in college sports right now, and one of this committee's solutions is to find ways to generate more television revenue.

A Group of Six playoff

I genuinely have no idea why this idea was even included. This might be the most Blog Post Idea of them all.

"Hey, everybody, we need to figure out how to save college sports! Things are getting too expensive! The players are transferring every year! Coaches are making more money than Congress! They simply must be stopped!"

"What about a Group of Six playoff? Those first-round games with Tulane and James Madison last year sucked."

"Genius!"

The reasons given were "to decrease travel costs and burden on schools for student athletes." Last time I checked, the Group of Six conferences were in the same country as the Power Four leagues, and had to travel the same distances to play their opponents. I kind of wonder if maybe the only reason this proposal was included was that some of the Power Four representation in these meetings don't like having to share some of that sweet, sweet playoff revenue with the Group of Six schools!

The College Sports Reform Task Force

Cool name. Sounds like the kind of thing that comes with sweet camo uniforms, and maybe some tactical sunglasses. 

A 15-member board to serve as a permanent governing body for college sports is fine. I have no problem with it (well, not until I see its ideas, anyway), because somebody will have to take on the task of running this whole operation when the dust settles and we have a "solution."

If only anything that's been discussed were a part of that solution!

The thing is, college sports need help, but the two fundamental things it needs the most help with are only partially addressed here. The first thing to figure out is eligibility. You can argue that the soul of college athletics is gone, but the one part that remains is that college isn't meant to be forever. Eventually, you're supposed to graduate and enter The Real World.

We need eligibility rules. The five years to play five is as good an idea as I've heard, and hopefully will become a reality soon enough.

The other thing the NCAA needs is an antitrust exemption. It may not be the perfect result, but it's the one that would allow things to operate normally (and by normally, I mean "like a professional sports league"). Create a task force that allows schools and players to come together and enter enforceable, binding contracts, while still allowing players to move.

The players can sign any contract with any school they want. It can be for one, two, three, four or five years. If both sides agree, cool! But if a player signs a three-year deal and decides after a year or two they want out, their new school has to buy them out of the contract.

Think of it the same way transfer fees work in soccer, or a coach's buyout. Not only does this give the school that recruited and developed them a return of sorts on their investment, but it could also help smaller Group of Six schools get some of that revenue you tried to save them from spending in your dumb G6 playoff idea back.

How all of this happens, I don't know. I started as an idiot with a blog sharing his dumb ideas, and while I've gotten older, my intelligence hasn't grown at the same rate as the gray hairs on my head. What I do know is that most of what the White House's college sports reform committee released last week was pointless and did not get us any closer to a solution.