On the latest episode of the College Football Survivor Show, hosts Shehan Jeyarajah and Bobak Ha’Eri discuss conference realignment and what it could do to the sport and the fans who follow it. They also talked about the game being played off the field, with financials becoming a larger and larger part of college football.
Here’s what they thought about college football being driven by money:
Listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever else you get your podcasts.
Jeyarajah: “There is no question about it. I think that when you look at every decision and every bad decision that’s been made over the last, I mean, really last 50 years, but especially the last five to 10 years. All of them are in the pursuit of money. And I wanna be clear, I don’t think it’s just about the money. It’s about what the money says about you.”
“And so ultimately it just becomes a statement so much about what you can accomplish off the field, whether it’s in coaching salaries, whether it’s in facilities, whether it’s in conference affiliation, whether it’s in recruiting. I mean, Georgia has a recruiting budget that’s like a million more dollars than anybody else in the entire country. And I think that in a hilarious way, we stopped focusing on the football.
“There’s so much good stuff happening on the football field in college football. And, you know, I’ve talked to people before and, you know, we’re really in agreement. The greatest cure to worrying about all of these external factors is to attend a football game. Because ultimately, when you go to a football game … that is the greatest cure to all of this because it should be about the football.”
Ha’Eri: “We’re in a situation where I’m not sure how to resolve it because I think as much as we wanna say it’s not about money, money is absolutely the motivating factor in all of this. And I wanna be clear, it’s not just sports. Universities are in an arms race against each other to have the best dorms, to have the best programs.”
“So they have to figure out ways to pour the profits they get in back into them. But it’s still a race to pull in as much money as possible. And really with sports, it seemed like it was unlimited. But I think even college football has slowly come to the conclusion that there is actually a finite pool of money out there for them.”
“Should there be a decision for more teams to just finally let go of this rat race and move back down? Are we seeing kind of this situation where teams have felt obligated to stay up? Are we reaching a moment where we see a necessary shakeout of programs that perhaps should not be on the highest level and could perhaps create a better form of football for their fans?”