The professionalization of many teams makes sense. Honestly, it seems like the logical conclusion. Are Alabama fans fans of their team because they are graduates or support the academic mission of the school, or are they fans because its the closest thing they can get to professional sports near where they live? The truth is that there are large parts of the country that do not have professional sports, so they latched on to college sports. Its no coincidence that most of the blue blood programs aren't in major markets and the teams that are in major markets struggle with fan support. If the Alabama Crimson Tide football team was no longer made up of students from the University of Alabama, but were simply professionals that played their games on the campus of the University of Alabama, I don't think any of their fans would care as long as they were still able to beat the team from the next state over. That's what it has always been about with these big state schools. Probably the only thing holding them back has been the fact that its been cheaper to run the whole thing with the sham of amateurism allowing them not to pay their players. Now that they are paying closer to a real market rate for the players, it might actually end up costing them money to keep the game up because there is no salary cap and the money going to players could be coming out of the money that would normally go to donations to the university. By spinning off football into a second tier professional league, they can control wages while also reducing expenses by cutting a ton of women's sports that are no longer needed to meet Title IX requirements.
The problem for schools like us is that we couldn't keep up with this even if we wanted to. We don't have that regional identity that would drive sustained fan interest. Maybe us fans alive right now would remain fans, but what would cause the next generation of fans to become ND fans? If there is no academic component, no religious component, no cultural identity, and no regional identity, what would our professional team even be? Maybe some people with Irish ancestry would still be brought in by the mascot, but is that enough for a future fanbase? And we are probably one of the lucky ones among national academic institutions. How would Northwestern or Duke or Stanford survive? How would the service academies? What about the directional state schools?
As far as I can see, there are only a few ways out of this. First is some sort of congressional action. Jack said he doesn't see it happening until the mid-2030s, so that does give us some time. Maybe China ends up kicking our butt in the 2028 LA Olympics and Congress is embarrassed enough to seek reform of the Olympic pipeline, and thus also collegiate sports. Who knows how that would turn out, but it would be enough to push us off the current path.
Second, I can see some amount of push back from university presidents. Maybe its the fear of the loss of power or maybe its a genuine affection for the collegiate model, but enough push back from leaders of enough of the big powers could force a change in direction. Just like a few massive schools moving conferences caused a shakeup that almost killed a conference, I could see a few massive schools putting their foot down stopping the professionalization process.
Third (and somehow maybe the most likely?) is that the people backing all these various spring football leagues realize there is already a built in fan base in these smaller markets that they could activate instead of trying to shoehorn in another professional team in a major market. I don't know what the league would look like in terms of fall vs. spring, playing on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, having players who have no relation to the university or doing like the AAF tried and connecting teams to the college. I don't know if they would license the university's logos, names, and colors, or simply make it an association (a la the Chicago Bears combining elements from the Cubs, University of Chicago, and University of Illinois). But the reason I could see this being attempted (besides the fact that there have been so many failed secondary football leagues), is that this might make the universities more money than they currently get without the risk of professionalization killing their golden goose, which would be protected against the failure of the professional team. If they can reign in NIL so that is goes back to the intent of the rule instead of the current situation, it could increase fan support without drawing away too money donation money. They can then still keep their expenses in order without a decrease in revenue while also benefiting from an increase in revenue from the professional team playing in their stadium or using their symbols, and all of this could be done without them having to take a wrecking ball to the current system that benefits them so much.
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