The absurdity of the modern college sports landscape will be on full display this weekend in Blacksburg and Charlottesville.
Virginia Tech and Virginia both host fellow members of the Atlantic Coast Conference. The catch is that these two teams are from … California.
The Hokies play Stanford; the Cavaliers play California-Berkeley.
The story of how these two West Coast schools — both which are closer to the Pacific Coast than the home teams are to the Atlantic Coast — came to be in the ACC is a cautionary tale about what could happen on the East Coast in the coming years.
Both had been members of the Pac-12 Conference, which was regarded as one of the five “power” conferences in college sports. Then most of the other Pac-12 schools decamped for other conferences with bigger TV contracts, leaving four behind. Two stayed to rebuild the conference at a lower level; Stanford and Cal-Berkeley sought refuge in the only power conference that would have them: the ACC.
Why did the ACC want members so far away? Maybe it didn’t, but the league was also desperate to make sure it had at least 15 teams, the threshold required for its TV contract. With the addition of Stanford, Cal-Berkeley and also Southern Methodist University — in suburban Dallas — the ACC had 18 members. Why did the ACC want 18 members when it only needs 15? Those three faraway schools served as an insurance policy in case the ACC lost members — and there are some ACC schools that are openly making it known that they’d like to be elsewhere. Even three “extra” schools may not be enough because there appear to be four ACC schools that are casting eyes elsewhere.
All this instability in college sports is driven by one thing: money.
When the century began, the five power conferences — the ACC, the Big Ten, the Big 12, the Pac-12 and the Southeastern Conference — were all roughly equal in terms of TV revenue. (And at the time, the ACC actually had the most lucrative contract.) Now there’s a yawning gap between the remaining four conferences. We really have a Power 2 — the Big Ten and the SEC — and the other two conferences further back. That’s why some ACC schools are looking elsewhere. That gap may turn into a gulf in the coming years when TV contracts come up for renewal. The real danger period will be in the early 2030s when the Big Ten and SEC get newer (and certainly fatter) TV deals, while the ACC continues in its present arrangement until 2036. The president of the University of Miami recently warned that by then the Big Ten and SEC schools could be bringing in twice what ACC schools are. At that point, the cost of the ACC’s exit fee will be dropping to the point that a school could pay to leave, join elsewhere and still make money — assuming, of course, some other conference wants them. However, the most likely scenario is some TV network tells the Big Ten or SEC, “Hey, we’ll pay you a bazillion dollars for the rights to broadcast your games but we’ll pay you two bazillion if you can add some TV markets in the Southeast.”
And, oh, another thing that’s changed: Players now get paid. That means the cost of college sports is rising. Despite all the money that’s flowing through college sports, most college sports programs— even at the highest levels — lose money. That has forced most schools to rely on more “institutional support” — which often involves making students pay mandatory fees to support college athletics. Whether that’s a good idea to make students pay so their university can field a professional sports team isn’t a question that gets asked much — although it is being asked more often, and not just by me. The Richmond Times-Dispatch recently headlined a story “VCU now owns a professional basketball team. Should students have to pay for it?”
All that is by way of background, both for why Virginia Tech and Virginia are playing California teams this weekend and for the political action that’s playing out in Washington and Richmond.
Will Congress pass a landmark bill to regulate college sports?
Some schools are practically begging for the federal government to step in and do something most industries don’t want: regulation.
Earlier this fall, the U.S. Senate passed, by a vote of 77-22, the Protect College Sports Act. Whether the bill truly lives up to its name is a matter of debate (our state legislature avoids such propaganda by simply referring to bills by numbers, not public relations-driven names). This bill covers almost every aspect of college sports; the most controversial is the limit on what schools can spend on athletes. Proponents see that as a necessary way to hold down spiraling costs; opponents see that as free market restrictions on what players can earn when there are no such restrictions on coaches. Another controversial part deals with restrictions on how many times a player can transfer and under what circumstances. Then there’s the cap on the number of schools that can belong to a conference. The Senate’s cap was 20 members, which would mean the Big Ten — which really should be called the Big Eighteen — could take in two new schools. Four ACC schools — Clemson, Florida State, Miami and North Carolina — want that raised to 22. Why? It’s not so the ACC can take in more schools; they want to make sure there’s room for them in the Big Ten (or possibly the SEC) if the opportunity arises.
The president of the University of Miami recently gave an interview to Yahoo! Sports in which he flat-out said: “You cannot lock us into a conference.” The only loyalty is to the bottom line, which Miami president Joe Echevarria says is not working out for his school. That interview was the equivalent of the school setting up a Tinder profile to make its availability known.
The question now is whether the U.S. House will pass the Protect College Sports Act in the current lame-duck session — and, if so, whether it will tinker with the Senate version to expand that conference cap (or lots of other things). If it does, that would send the bill back to the Senate, which further complicates the prospect of passage in a lame-duck session.
Opinions on whether the bill will come up are all over the place. “A lot of us want something done but [are] still figuring out the new leadership and where we go from here,” Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, said Wednesday by text message. “So no real sense yet.”
Another Virginia lawmaker who has been keenly interested in the issue is Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Loudoun County. I asked him what the prospects were. “Depends on the final version,” he said by text. “But it looks like there is a path.”
On Wednesday, Charlie Baker, the president of the NCAA, was in Blacksburg, where he took part in livestreamed “fireside chat” with outgoing Virginia Tech President Tim Sands and Athletic Director Brian White. “Many of us are working very hard to get the Protect College Sports Act through,” he said. “What better time than a lame-duck session when no one has to worry about any election?”
The argument against the bill passing in the lame-duck session is that there’s not much time for legislators to get anything done and they’re all distracted — some are retiring, some have been retired by voters, others are looking ahead to the next session. The argument for the bill making it through is that this is the most politically insulated time of the whole congressional calendar. Baker said that half the legislation Congress passes typically happens in a lame-duck session. He also said that because so much legislation comes to the floor then, there are more opportunities for deals. “That’s not exactly glamorous or high-minded but it is the way the two branches get things done,” Baker said. He knows a little bit about politics: He used to be governor of Massachusetts.
Whether this bill passes, and what it says about conference membership caps, could go a long way toward determining what the ACC looks like in the future — or whether there even is an ACC. Without this bill, it seems likely someday there will be an open season on the ACC from the Big Ten and SEC (and maybe the Big 12, too). Without this bill, there’s still room for half the league’s teams to leave.
Beneath the Power 4 level, there is also movement, as schools scramble to find a way to get into the Power 4. James Madison University recently jumped from the Sunbelt to the American Conference, which is considered a step up (because it has a bigger TV contract). Now Marshall University is doing the same.
Will Virginia change how it pays for college sports?
While the prospect of action in Washington on regulating college sports remains a question mark, there was some little-noticed action in Richmond this week that could shape how Virginia schools pay for college sports.
The state budget that passed back in June contained a provision — state Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville, was the champion — that sets in motion a state study on college athletic finances. That budgetary language directs the study to cover four important points:
- evaluate approaches taken by other states to create sustainable funding models for intercollegiate athletics
- assess the local, regional and statewide economic impact of college athletics
- consider the impact of the provisions of § 23.1-1309 on intercollegiate athletics in the commonwealth in light of evolving trends in intercollegiate athletics
- assess the impact of federal regulatory or legislative proposals on college athletics in the commonwealth
Here’s what this means — or could mean. The first point is self-explanatory: How are other states doing this? That seems worth finding out. The fourth point is also self-explanatory: How is the law changing? We’ll find out some of that in the next few weeks, if Congress acts.
It’s the two points in between where the action is. It’s clear that college athletics do have some economic impact; anybody who’s tried to book a hotel room in a college town on a football weekend finds that out in a hurry. A study by the Virginia Tech Foundation released earlier this year calculated that Virginia Tech athletics generate $479.5 million in economic impact a year and support 4,372 jobs and lead to $35.6 million in state and local tax revenue. This study seems likely to establish that the state has a vested economic interest in schools fielding strong sports programs. A winning team equals more tax revenue. A clever wordsmith might be able to translate this into data center equivalents. Want $35.6 million in tax revenue? Would you rather have a winning football team or about 18 data centers? Take your pick. (My very rough math is based on a 2023 state study of data centers.)
The third point to be studied might have the most impact. The code section being referenced is the one that sets a cap on what percentage of athletic revenue a school can get from school funds and student fees. For Virginia and Virginia Tech, the figure is presently limited to 20%; for James Madison and Old Dominion University, it’s set at 55%. For other schools, playing at lower sports classification and without access to TV revenue, the cap ranges from 70% to 92%. Nobody really questions the subsidies at Division II and Division III schools; it’s the Division I schools where we see the modern reality that some students are going into debt to pay for what amounts to a professional sports team. I have no idea what this study will say but if college sports aren’t just a desirable thing for the school but an integral part of some local economies, then it’s easier to make the case that somebody needs to pay to make sure these college sports programs are operating at a high enough level that they’re good investments. Should that be the students? If not them, then who?
We may find out sooner than we thought. The Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, the General Assembly’s research arm, this week moved the study up a year. It’s now expected in fall 2027, just in time for the University of Virginia’s road trip to play its new Atlantic Coast Conference rival Stanford about 15 miles from the Pacific coast.
We’ll have more politics, just of a different sort, in our weekly political newsletter, West of the Capital, that goes out Friday afternoons.
