Casey Wasserman, founder of Wasserman Media and chair of the LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Organizing Committee, shared his thoughts on the direction of college sports during an interview on The Rich Eisen Show last week.
Wasserman said one of the key questions is whether college football will remain within the NCAA — where it largely subsidizes Olympic sports across the country — or whether it will become its own separate entity.
“I think we’re at this turning point which is, college football is absolutely the second-most popular and valuable sport in America — it’s not even a question,” Wasserman said. “The question is, do they monetize that opportunity and keep all the money in college football and don’t share it, so college football becomes its own entity, away from the NCAA? So, Michigan basketball and UCLA basketball are part of the Big 10, but college football is its own thing?”
“And then Michigan basketball and UCLA softball are over because there’s no money,” he continued. “Because the money – 90% of the value and the economics – come from college football. Or, do you keep them in the system, and use that money to solve the problem, because NIL [name, image, and likeness] is not fixing the problem.”
Wasserman said NIL has made the problem worse over the past few years by concentrating even more money in college football.
“NIL is just, truly pay-for-play, and where are you going to spend your money, you’re going to spend money where you drive revenue, and you drive revenue in football,” he said. “So, you were just making the rich richer in that system.
“You know, I think the average NIL deal in the country is $500 … But Ohio State says it costs them $13 million a year to maintain their roster. I mean [Coach] Ryan Day says that publicly. That’s not a secret. I can assure you in terms of Title IX, he’s not spending $13 million – Ohio State’s not spending $13 million a year – on their women’s programs.
“So it’s just made college football way more outside the system, and the problem is that all of the Olympic sports, if you will, or basketball and all the Olympic sports only exist because football provides so much of the economics to subsidize those.”
Team USA’s Olympic success, of course, depends on the survival of Olympic sports at the NCAA level without federal funding to support the movement.
“By the way, in this country, all of our American athletes who are Olympians, are trained in universities,” Wasserman said. “So if we lose that system, we don’t have Team USA any more. Our government does not provide funding to the U.S. Olympic Movement. There’s zero federal dollars going to any part of the U.S. Olympic Movement. All of our athletes are trained in colleges, and that’s a great source of pride. And that’s going to evaporate.”
In terms of solutions, Wasserman said the NCAA doesn’t have “the control or purview clearly, because it’s very clear the conference commissioners at a minimum and the university presidents are running the system. You have to keep the money in the system.”
He doesn’t expect the federal government to come to the rescue because the current system benefits many politicians with SEC and Big Ten schools in their state.
“The only entity with the ability – I’m not sure they’re capable or qualified – but the ability is the federal government,” Wasserman said. “It takes national legislation, but here’s the part where miss, or underestimate.
“If you’re a senator from Mississippi, or Iowa, you kind of like the system the way it is [for the SEC and Big Ten],” he continued. “Are you really going to take away from yourselves to prop up the Big 12 and the ACC and these other conferences to lift everybody or do you like winning the national championship every year, or having the SEC and Big Ten get a disproportionate share of income? You’re asking people to be truly magnanimous for something that is truly local and parochial to their states and their environment.
“That’s a hard thing to do to get the two senators from Georgia to say, ‘yeah, we’re going to take money away from the University of Georgia, who wins national championships – the pride of the state – and we’re going to give it to Washington State.’”
If the NCAA and the federal government are unlikely candidates to save Olympic sports, who might step up? Wasserman suggested there is an opportunity for conference commissioners to come together, though it certainly sounds idealistic after their recent trend of making decisions based on college football and TV money.
“I think what you’re going to have to do is the conference commissioners, there’s really the Big 10, the SEC, the ACC and the Big 12, are going to have to say, ‘Look, football is great and we can make a lot of money organizing college football in a different kind of way, but if we’re doing that and it’s not benefitting all the other student-athletes, we’re actually missing the mark here, and we’re not doing our job, and we’re not actually serving the universities,'” said Wasserman, a UCLA alum. “I mean, UCLA, we’re proud of all those athletes and student-athletes who do incredible things. So, we’re going to miss that if they don’t take that ownership of that responsibility and embrace it, they’re going to be the ones who get blamed for it, and the system right now is totally screwed.”
Wasserman proposed another creative solution that doesn’t involve the need for cooperation from conference commissioners, federal legislators, or NCAA officials: a Hail Mary from the NFL.
“I actually think the NFL can say, look, we can help solve the problem, not take control of college football, but sort of create the pathway, and use that as a means to save all these Olympic sports that are good for this country and by the way, think about the Paris Olympics this summer: There’ll be 100 athletes competing in Paris for countries not for the United States, who went to college for free and got their athletic training at American universities,” Wasserman said. “We train our competitors. Talk about power and soft power … that’s a powerful thing. All those things are going to go away if we don’t fix this problem. To push the institutions to do what’s right to maintain the sanctity of non-football sports, I think the NFL has a real opportunity to be a leader in that movement.”
You can check out the full conversation below, which also features a preview of how Los Angeles will operate during the 2028 Summer Olympics.
Very interesting! And consider a joint effort by the NBA and the NFL. Now we have some serious money to help NCAA football and basketball
Wazzu catching strays lol
Let’s say IF, college Football where to break out of the NCAA. How fast do you guys think that process would take, from the conversations starts until they Are actually out and Olympic sports will be in danger? And also, does anyone think this would really happen, or is this just a «what if» conversation?
Crazy how college football has to subsidize college basketball, i though college basketball was already popular
I am confused as to why Team USA’s Olympic success is tied to the existence of training being available at American universities. If our taxpayers and colleges only trained US athletes, it would be an advantage. However, as the article notes, our taxpayers are funding the training of athletes all over the world. They compete against Team USA in all of these Olympic sports.
I don’t understand what “soft power” the Arizona taxpayers are exercising when they are funding Leon Marchand’s training to help him win gold medals for France and possibly get an education.
If the NCAA, and all sports returned to the mission of training American student-athletes to be successful leaders in all walks of life, I… Read more »
Universities have been around for over 1,000 years, and even military academies have had international exchange as a part of the mission. The American university system has always embraced this tradition, so I don’t know what you’re talking about when you say “return to the mission” of only training/educating American student-athletes.
Perhaps I am mistaken, but I don’t recall so many international athletes occupying college rosters in prior decades. Whether it’s basketball, track, tennis or swimming, I believe there are more international athletes participating today in college sports.
While there is nothing wrong with international student athletes coming to the US to be student-athletes, I am just not sure how it benefits Team USA, as claimed in the article. Why would the NFL want to spend money to train swimmers from France, Canada, Hungary and Poland to compete in the Olympics against the USA?
I swam decades ago. There were plenty of international athletes then, and just like today, they help to make our swimmers even faster.
So what can the NFL do to save Olympic sports and why would they do that? And how does title 9 come into play?
If we have to count on Congress, conference commissioners, and the NFL to “do the right thing,” it sure sounds like we should be planning for the end of non-revenue sports as we know them in the US. I guess it’s time to start learning how other countries do it.
Was thinking the same thing as I finished up the article. Hard pressed to find anyone optimistic about the longevity of Olympic sports in the collegiate environment.
I admit I was (and still am) skeptical that NIL will be the death of Olympic sports. But it’s obvious that the attempts to get a handle on NIL have not gone well, and if the only fixes getting any traction are existential changes to the NCAA system, then Olympic sports are in trouble.
Not for one basketball player:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZVTTRwzbGU