University presidents may not realize it yet but the debate about the realignment of college football conferences will force them have to deal with a question none of them wants to answer ― is a modern American university a “business” or a non-profit, tax-exempt “educational” entity?
If universities want to act like a business, they should be taxed like a business. They should not be allowed to hide behind the non-profit tax shield to conduct big-time athletics or indoctrinate students to be left-wing socialists.
It would be one thing if college football programs were making $100 million per season and sending $50 million to fund academic scholarships for non-athletes or support cancer research in campus laboratories. But they don’t. 100% of the money teams generate stays within the athletic program, mostly to fund scholarships of non-revenue producing sports; Title IX athletics for female students; travel and training expenses and, of course, coaches’ salaries.
When college football coaches make $10 million per year and have assistant coaches making over $1 million to coach special teams or wide receivers, those programs are clearly “professional” in nature and undeserving of being protected from taxation as a non-profit entity. Once the outer layer of the onion is peeled back revealing the 100% business nature of college football, the next layer to be peeled back is the blatant politicization by faculty as they indoctrinate and intimidate students to support policies of the far-left ― which is a prima facie example of how to violate 501c non-profit statutes. A big fat target will have then been painted on each institution of higher education at which lawmakers can take aim to justify eliminating their overall tax-exempt status.
College football has long been dominated by the same colleges for decades. Any cursory review of the top 20 teams since 1950 includes the same teams: Alabama; Notre Dame; Michigan; Ohio State; Southern Cal. Such programs have been “big business” for a long time whether any college president admitted it or not.
Why not recognize the reality of college football as a business and abolish the conference structure? Make every college an independent like Notre Dame and put the top 20 teams in a top tier nationwide league not unlike the English Premier League in soccer. Each team would have to play nine games against other top-20 teams which would guarantee at least a half dozen Top 20 matchups each weekend.
No one wants to see Alabama maul FAMU or The Citadel. Stop it. Give the football fan the best matchups week-in and week-out. That is what American competition is all about, not destroying creampuffs to pad statistics and win/loss records.
No team, including Alabama, could go through a season undefeated any longer with such tough competition each week. Traditional powerhouses such as Oklahoma would likely lose 3-4 games each year instead of feasting on relatively weak Big 12 competition to go 10-1 and be in contention for a national title each year.
Each of the top-20 teams would play three games against any of the 60 teams in the second tier. If they lose two out of three games versus a second-tier team in a season, they are pushed out of the top league into the second tier.
Conversely, if a team in the second-tier defeats two out of the three top tier teams they play in a season, they qualify to play the next season in that top tier. There would be 45 teams in the lower tier of college football who would compete against each other for the right to move up with three victories against Tier 2 teams.
All independent business operations. All taxable. Survival of the fittest.
There is absolutely no justifiable reason why any major college football program in America which might generate $100 million in revenues in the next round of TV contracts deserves to be protected in any way, shape, fashion or form under the non-profit statutes of the US tax code. At the same time, there is no justifiable reason why any university which restricts free speech, freedom of thought and practices left-wing indoctrination policies should not forfeit their non-profit status for violating 501c3 statutes forbidding partisan political activities.
University presidents and athletic directors should be aware of all of the ramifications they are about to set in motion as they chase the Almighty Dollar in the next round of realignment. It is a Pandora’s Box they may one day wish they had never opened but one Congress and state legislatures should address nonetheless.
