In my opinion, one of the biggest stories in college athletics is the failure of leadership to disconnect "This is a problem for me personally" with "This is a problem for my industry." I think most of the doomsday quotes you've seen in the past two years can boil down to this phenomenon.
Countless coaches, ADs, presidents, commissioners and even Congresspeople have complained about how the twin changes of the Transfer Portal and NIL have "broken" college sports, yet the evidence says college football has never been more popular.
College football ratings are up 28 percent over the past five years and 12 percent this season, numbers that outpace gains from other sports, which means it can't just be attributed to the 2018 Supreme Court ruling that loosened restrictions on sports gambling.
"There are certainly emerging sports that have gaudier growth % off a lower base of viewership," Fox Sports executive Michael Mulvhill tweeted last week, "but among well-established major properties I don’t know what in all of TV is trending any better than CFB."
Twenty-six games passed the all-important 4 million viewer threshold over this season's first seven weeks, 18 percent more than 2021 and a 44 percent increase from 2018.
Such growth can't be attributed to any one thing, but it's hard to see those figures and argue the Portal and NIL have hurt college football as a television property. It might be a coincidence that college football is as popular as it's ever been at a time where 13 of the AP's top 21 teams are led by transfer quarterbacks, but it's probably not.
The system in place that allowed, for example, Sam Hartman to transfer from Wake Forest to Notre Dame and get paid in the process might create a massive headache for coaches, it might have negative implications for schools lower on the totem poll, but it's better for college football as a whole if Sam Hartman is Notre Dame's quarterback, not Wake's.
However, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey apparently has his own explanation for college football's steady and undeniable growth in TV ratings.
When talking about the Portal-and-NIL on Paul Finebaum's show Thursday, Sankey attributed them to... the strikes in Hollywood?
"I know that the problems may not manifest themselves in attendance and TV ratings right now," he said. "Keep in mind the TV ratings are at a time when there have been a set of strikes that doesn't provide a lot of new programming outside of sports."
"Collectives are shifting the oversight of athletics programs away from our campuses, that's a reality." @SEC Commissioner @GregSankey explaining the current state of college athletics and the NIL space. pic.twitter.com/L8xqwh8p71
— Paul Finebaum (@finebaum) October 19, 2023
I'm sorry, what?
It's true that the writers guild was on strike from May to September and the actors have been on strike since mid-July, but what??
The effects of the strikes won't be felt at movie theaters until next year, so Sankey can't be talking about that. The strikes have affected TV programming, but think about what Sankey's really saying here. Think about the load of absolute malarkey Sankey just asked the public to accept: that more people are watching college football because they apparently can't stream the latest episode of "Abbott Elementary."
Again: WHAT??????????
As someone who's thrown rhetorical garbage at the wall in a desperate attempt to win an argument I know deep down I'm losing a time or two in my own life, it sounds like Sankey is throwing rhetorical garbage at the wall in order to be proven right.
Greg Sankey is a smart man, but that is one of the most non-sensical arguments I've ever heard in my life.
Keep in mind: Sankey just went on a Disney property to argue that his product, which starting next year will be largely funded by Disney, may not be all that valuable.
There's only one way to make sense of this.
It sounds like Sankey is so afflicted by College Sports Administrator Brain that he wants to be proven right. It sounds like he wants attendance and TV ratings to drop so the public so the public will care about his personal problems as much as he does. (Here's a hint, Greg: they don't.) It sounds like he wants the product to suffer in order to be personally vindicated.
I won't say Sankey definitively believes any of those things, but it's the only way I can make sense of a college sports executive whose industry is funded by TV ratings arguing that TV ratings are artificially high... because of the writers strike.
The Portal-and-NIL nexus is by no means perfect. It has driven many coaches from college football, and undoubtedly made just about all of them think about getting out. Administrators are right to attempt to bring some semblance of order.
But it'd be great if coaches, ADs, presidents, commissioners and lawmakers would also acknowledge the underlying truth: that this system, haphazard as it may be, is fundamentally good for their industry.