Private Equity Threatens College Sports
Tre’Jean Watkins
College athletics have been a staple of traditional American values for decades, going all the way back to the 1920s. Tailgating with friends, alumni, pregame team walks, bands blaring, flyovers, on-field traditions, big-time moments, court and field storming—they’re all integrated in this glorious space, and we wouldn’t change any of it.
Well, that’s if we were in control.
College athletics have changed in recent years. With the introduction of massive budgets, TV deals for conferences, conference realignment, massive stadium renovations, and big-time donors, everywhere you turn, it feels like the space itself is morphing into a monstrosity we never thought was possible.
However, those don’t even take the cake. What has really changed the perception of the financials surrounding college athletics — and what’s going to not only shape the future of financial injections in college athletics, but also further grow the gap between the financial giants and “poorer” schools in college sports — is the relationship between college athletics and private equity.
Private Equity in…Collegiate Sports?!
I’m sure you’ve heard of it recently.
The Big Ten conference and its mingling with private equity firms, Florida State and its talks with private equity firm Sixth Street—these topics are raging in college sports, and not for the right reasons.
We’ve all shared our concerns about the horrors of NIL. How it’s shaping conferences, separating financial giants from schools just hoping to survive, and forcing some schools to move down a competition level from D1 to D3 just to stay afloat, is borderline ludicrous.
But private equity joining the table has an ethical and moral nuclear-sized risk that’s larger than the problems of NIL. If it isn’t controlled, we could be looking at a collegiate landscape hellbent on representing the most ugly aspects of capitalism, not on the well-being of student athletes and students in general.
Private Equity Could Destroy Collegiate Sports
That’s a very, very bleak possibility.
And although it probably won’t get to that point — considering legislation has already at least been discussed about this issue — the fact that we’ve gotten to this point says a lot about where collegiate sports are and where they’re potentially heading.
We already have a massive problem with students not being able to afford necessities while attending school. We’re talking regular students, off scholarship, and not being taken care of like college athletes. Sacrificing their chance at an education just to fund ludicrous NIL and, in return, their own revenues in exchange for budgets sponsored by evil equity firms is downright dystopian.
That’s just for the regular student; we haven’t mentioned the extreme downsides for student athletes either. More pressure on 18-22 year olds, the money spent on them to succeed, and give schools sighs of relief so they won’t owe equity firms.
It’s all one big, disgusting joke.
Control over private equity and its inclusion in collegiate sports needs to be established. Personally, I favor the idea of eliminating private equity entirely from collegiate sports, but with how money-hungry and greedy schools are now, I doubt that’ll happen.
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