“We need to find one of these really rich people in this city to step up and stroke a check and I’ll do everything I can to make you the most famous person in this city… You’re telling me there’s not one person who could stroke a $20 million check right now?” — Arizona State head coach Kenny Dillingham in December 2025.
This column’s intent isn’t to be critical of Kenny Dillingham or what he said. In the current environment of major college football, he is 100% right. This is a national issue putting major college sports on a collision course with reality.
It also puts them in an uneasy conflict with fundraising efforts for things like endowments and scholarships that benefit the academic mission of the university—but that’s another column for another day.
To be clear, that $20 million ask for football is not a one-time request. They’ll need another check next year and the year after that and…
Begging donors to throw $20-30 million to cover payroll for a college football team every year is not a business model. And there are risks involved.
The few people who can write those checks will get donor fatigue. Or they’ll decide they want to be more active, even helping pick the players that they’re paying for. That scenario was in the book “Blitzed!” which is a novel I wrote using real stories from today’s world of college football.
For years, big donors have often taken on the appearance of a de facto “team owner” granted access and perks commensurate with their contributions. But schools risk granting donors outsized visibility and power that supersedes the governing structure of the football programs and the universities these programs are supposedly there to serve.
Some donors can fire and hire coaches. Depending on the balance or imbalance of power between a university president, their governing board and the football program, the big donor may have the ability to shape the program and even the administration to their will.
The history of major college football is filled with examples. In the 1980s SMU was hit with the NCAA’s death penalty for major violations that reached all the way to the governor of Texas. Over 100 years ago, even Ivy League and major college donors were engaged in questionable schemes to pay players.
In the late 1920s, coach Amos Alonzo Stagg at football power the University of Chicago wrote about playing “ringers.” He categorized these ringers into three classes: ones who didn’t even register for classes, ones who registered but rarely attended classes and ones placed in departments where the work was easy or little or no work was required. He went on to say that alumni donors are the biggest causes of developing “athletic immorality” and they often have the cooperation from university administration.
And what about those alumni “funds”? He said, “Not infrequently, these funds are contributed by alumni or other organizations for the use of athletes.”
That was written in the late 1920s, but it sure could’ve been written today. Schools pay the best of the ringers that can be found in the transfer portal. And with each transfer portal cycle the salaries are escalating and alumni are asked for more money.
In the world of acronyms like CFP (College Football Playoff), NIL (Name Image and Likeness), NLI (National Letter of Intent), APR (Academic Performance Rating) get ready to hear a new one: ROI (return on investment).
Donors covering a big money payroll for players are going to want to see some ROI. For now, wins and championships may suffice. But how long will that last?
The college sports arms race used to be about facilities. Payroll is where the real war is being waged now. And Kenny Dillngham’s statement at ASU reflects that. (He just lost his starting QB to a better offer from LSU).
The new college sports reality requires an actual business model and the professionalization of the administration. Asking someone to write a $20+ million check every year to cover the team’s payroll isn’t a business model. Neither is it a sustainable approach over time.
Skyrocketing football spending and costs have been outpacing increases in ticket pricing, media rights payouts and even the money another expansion of the College Football Playoff may bring. That money was spent long ago. At most schools it was spent before they realized that there would be a $20.5 million revenue share/payroll.
That number will go up every year as dictated by the House v. NCAA settlement that serves as the current de facto “labor agreement” until it is challenged and overturned in court.
That day is coming.
In 2021, the NCAA lost a landmark Supreme Court ruling in the Alston case. It was a total blowout, a 9-0 shutout that revealed an ongoing major vulnerability.
Justice Kavanaugh took the unusual step of writing a concurring opinion that seemed to invite more litigation stating that “The NCAA is not above the law” and “The NCAA’s business model would be flatly illegal in almost any other industry in America.”
That ruling set the stage for where we are now.
People wealthy enough to write a $20 million check to cover a college football team’s payroll didn’t get to amass that kind of wealth by handing out checks with nothing in return. And let’s not confuse eight-figure checks to college sports programs with “philanthropy” or “charity”.
Donors are not alone in being asked for cash. Involuntary student activity fees are being created solely to fund athletics. These fees tag all students for several hundred dollars a year. Money from university corporate sponsorships is being funneled to players. Those can become NIL payments above and beyond the revenue sharing caps.
Previously, all athletic sponsorship dollars helped cover costs for sports at a university. The pressure of squeezing dollars for payroll is already starting to have an impact. Budgets for things like academic support, sports medicine and men’s and women’s teams are being scaled back at many schools.
Eventually college sports will have to come to its senses and build a business model that can be self-sustaining based on actual revenues from operations covering their expenses.
A day of reckoning may force coaching salary realignment to squeeze out revenues needed to pay the athletes. Reality check: The days of college sports being overwhelmingly played by amateur student-athletes are gone for good. I made this argument over four years ago in an email to other trustees at Penn State.
Even some university presidents no longer talk about a head coach’s role in educating student-athletes. They know what fans want. They’re talking about playoffs and national titles far more than anything else.
We’ve reached this critical point because university administrators, athletic departments, conference commissioners and NCAA leaders have allowed the boat to be rocked by every new judicial ruling rather than to take charge and help set the course. And they’ve engaged in unchecked spending even as the uncertainty continued to swell.
Governing boards have been complicit as well through their lack of oversight. At major college programs, slightly less than 50% of the governing boards have unique standing committees that have oversight of athletics.
If universities can’t or won’t handle this, they may be forced into solutions that they may not like. Those donors covering annual payroll may ask for a stake in the department beyond some perks of access.
Utah has broken the private equity seal. Given the Big Ten’s now public attempts to score a private equity/capital deal we know those discussions are happening on a much wider scale. But that equity comes only by yielding an ownership stake. Most find that concept to be counter to the traditional ethos of college sports.
Those days of traditional amateur sports are gone. Hoping someone will write a check every year is not a sustainable business model.
Some hard conversations have already happened. Much harder conversations await and will usher in even harder decisions. All because the slow slide into this has been largely allowed by people who will not risk the lucrative positions of power afforded to them by the chaotic status quo.
There is no going back. There is no staying put.
It may not be fourth down yet, but if it isn’t we’re certainly looking at third and long. And when we reach fourth down, punting is no longer an option.
