College football and basketball could soon look very different.
Two parallel tracks are occurring for the money-making sports in college athletics.
For several years now, there has been talk of the power 5 conferences breaking off from or forming a super division of the NCAA and having some kind of a hybrid pro-college model for football.
It would allow the players who really generate the income to be paid much more than the considerable value of a college education while allowing the athletes to go to school if they chose. They would have a four-year academic scholarship to use whenever they wanted.
In some proposed models, the football revenue would still support and save Olympic sports at the major colleges. Most alumni and fans might like this model because it would still be football played at a very high level with their schools represented.
This would happen because there is no minor league in professional football. That is left to the college game as the feeder system to the NFL.
With basketball, the proposed minor league models would sap most of the one-and-done athletes, but there would still be enough quality players left to keep the competition going strong.
The names on the front of the basketball jerseys will remain more important than the names on the back, and the rivalries would still be fierce between the schools and the fans.
In many ways, the game would revert to what it looked like in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s before so many players began leaving with eligibility remaining. It would eliminate those who never really had an interest in attending college in the first place.
The transition would be complicated and a lot to figure out for those who don’t closely study the talent level of the 5-stars coming out of high school. The college players would be much more worthy of the tag student-athletes that they all carry today.
As long as the arenas remain filled and the TV rights fees continue paying conferences into the multi millions, and there remained the highly profitable NCAA tournament, college basketball will go on in a manner that could be simpler to administer and control.
There may be less money to pay coaches exorbitant salaries and build fanciful facilities, but both need limits that would be good for the new look of college basketball.
