“Let ’em Break Away”

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“Let ’em Break Away”

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The threat, or perhaps better stated, the now presumed eventuality, of the Big Ten and SEC breaking away from the NCAA to form their own Super League is no longer discussed as a long term hypothetical.

It is no longer seen as something which may come in the 2030s, when the current television contracts expire.

It is now being openly discussed as today’s reality.

To be sure, there are still disclaimers with every comment, but no one is pretending that it’s not likely to happen, with the messy divorce coming perhaps sooner rather than later.

What is being freely admitted today is that the system is not working. The “guardrails” supposedly put in place with the House settlement and the creation of the College Sports Commission are being ignored, with attempted enforcement seen as mere speedbumps in schools’ headlong race to get ahead.

The Big Ten, with three straight national championships in football, has the least reason to gripe about the status quo. Yet even the biggest of the big boys are not happy with the status quo.

Big Ten athletic officials vented their own frustrations at their league meetings this past week, with voiced concerns over governance from the NCAA and CSC. Hopes for the SCORE Act, which would have granted the NCAA antitrust exemptions to regulate outside income, were dashed when a potential U.S. House vote was scuttled last week.

“I don’t believe it’s working today,” Washington athletic director Pat Chun said. “The whole point of going into the settlement was to manage the third-party money and actually have a functional cap, and once that didn’t happen, that really undermined the fundamental reason of why the settlement was going to have any chance of having durability.”

The Big Ten has not yet threatened to leave the NCAA or CSC, but it’s keeping its options open.

“There’s a strong feeling to try to do everything we can, No. 1, to see what happens out of Congress and obviously support whatever comes out of that, if it does,” Indiana athletic director Scott Dolson said. “Beyond that, I would say there’s definitely an effort to make certain we can really coalesce together with the other conferences and work within the governance structure that exists … but at the same time keeping everything on the table and exploring whether options we may or may not need to pivot to, depending on the outcomes of a lot of things that sometimes are out of our control.”

SEC meetings are this week. And while discussion over the possibility of moving the College Football Playoff from 12 to 24 teams will dominate the conversation, talk of breaking away will be a strong No. 2 on the quote list.

So, if the conferences which have benefited the most from the current imbalances and lack of rules are not happy, what about the rest of the Power Four?

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This past week, administrators at the University of Louisville gave the public a peek behind the curtains. The look they provided as to how the sausage is being made was certainly not pretty …

For years, schools across the country, including schools like Louisville (and Colorado),  have patched together budgets with one-time transfers, accounting maneuvers, deferred costs, hidden subsidies and hopeful projections.

Last year’s projected athletics deficit at Louisville hovered just below $30 million. But it was softened by a one-time $10 million university transfer, a new student athletic fee, and a new $25 million line of credit, to be used over two years.

This year, the band-aids are no longer available.

The student fee is now baked into the Louisville budget. The one-time money disappeared. A couple of football home games disappeared, too. Some previously stripped-down expenses — particularly financial aid — had to come back.

What remains is the clearer picture Louisville officials are now willing to say out loud: This is roughly a $30 million-a-year problem, until something changes.

Not because Louisville suddenly became reckless. Not because Louisville was naive.

It’s because the business model of college athletics changed almost overnight.

In another era, an athletic department facing this kind of deficit might slash spending, retreat from the arms race and try to stabilize.

But Louisville athletic director Josh Heird told the school’s board the problem with that strategy.

“If we don’t have talent on the field or the basketball court … we have no opportunity at all to increase our revenue streams,” he said. “If you stop spending now, you lose.”

Let that sentence resonate for a second …

“If you stop spending now, you lose”.

Which brings us back to dear ‘ol CU.

This past week, Colorado athletic director Fernando Lovo was interviewed by Brian Howell of the Boulder Daily Camera. Lovo acknowledged the issues facing CU, including a budget deficit this fiscal year which may reach $27 million (most of the deficit coming from the addition of House settlement payments, with this year payout coming in at just over $20 million).

“The challenges for me have been navigating this new landscape of college athletics and understanding how Colorado can succeed in that new world,” Lovo told the Camera. “But, I’ve said it before and I’ll continue to say it, that we have everything we need here to be successful. Every challenge that I’ve faced, I’ve found a solution. It may not be right away, but I can see the pathway to overcoming those challenges. And they are opportunities for us because if we can overcome them, I think we can be a force to be reckoned with in this new world of college athletics.”

Lovo touched on areas where new sources of funds may become available:

• “We’ve got to have a successful football program to be able to help our bottom line”;
• “We have to have Folsom be used 365 days a year so that we can keep those revenue streams coming in”;
• “We’ve been really aggressive on the naming rights front. I’ve been involved in a number of different pitches, and we’ve got a great thing to sell”;
• “We’re pedal to the metal, as I say all the time. Now’s the time we’ve got to seize momentum, and we’ve got to capitalize on these next few years so that we’re prepared for whatever is coming in the future”.

Sounds great, but is it even realistic? Is it even fair to CU fans (and fans of similarly situated schools) to even hold out the hope of being competitive against programs in the Big Ten and SEC?

The numbers don’t lie, and they are bleak for schools not in the “Big Two”.

Media rights distribution numbers, from the USA Today …

• Big Ten: Distributed a record $1.37 billion overall in fiscal 2024-2025. Full-share members averaged roughly $76.1 million to $79.9 million, with top earners like Ohio State reaching $91.6 million.
• SEC: Distributed $1.03 billion overall, resulting in an average payout of approximately $64.4 million per school.
• ACC: Projected per-school distributions generally hover in the $43 million to $55 million range depending on the school’s specific bowl and TV criteria.
• Big 12: Distributions generally range from $38 million to $43 million.

CU recently received a huge donation from the Crawford Family Foundation. The donation, $6 million over three years, is to be divided between the WHOLE Program — which stands for Wellness Health Optimal Life Experience – and the Athletic Director’s “discretionary fund” (read: paying players).

So, CU just received one of its largest single donations – ever – but in the end, the donation only amounts to an extra $1 million per year to pay players over the next three years.

Now, go back up and look at the media distribution numbers.

The Crawford Family Foundation, as much as it is appreciated by Buff fans everywhere … doesn’t even make a dent in CU’s current and long-term financial disadvantages.

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Iowa State, like Colorado, is a Big 12 school on the outside looking in. This off-season, the Cyclones lost their head coach, Matt Campbell, to Penn State, with Campbell taking some of his best players and assistant coaches with him to State College.

So you can understand the frustration and bitterness of Iowa State athletic director Jamie Pollard, who spoke to reporters last week.

“I would turn it around and say we should break away from them,” Pollard told reporters along his annual Cyclone Caravan and filmed by Cyclone Fanatic. “Let them go, but they have to go in all their sports and see how fun it is to play baseball and softball and track when it’s just the 20 of you.

“That’s probably a little more draconian, but that’s how I feel about it. Let’s quit talking about it, quit threatening, go do it.”

With the reality of how much more money the Big Ten and SEC have to work with than schools in the Big 12 and ACC, Pollard’s wish may come true.

Colorado will play Northwestern this fall. CU has a long history of success in college football. Northwestern, meanwhile, was once a laughing stock of the sport, with a 34-game losing streak between 1979-82. The Wildcats are blue bloods of the sport by anyone’s definition.

This year, Northwestern will receive over $75 million in media distributions; CU roughly half that. Next year, the gap will be the same, if not wider.

You tell me: Which team has the greater chance of sustained success?

The storm clouds are brewing … and they are getting closer on the horizon.

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The House settlement, the creation of the College Sports Commission, and the SCORE Act were all also supposed to help rein in the unregulated spending which is plaguing collegiate athletics.

But these measures, and the NCAA in general, have failed spectacularly to provide any governance. Anytime a school or player doesn’t like an existing rule, they go to court, find a friendly judge, and get an injunction to get what they want. Schools will pay lip service to the rules, but ignore them if they perceive obeying a rule will give their competitors an advantage.

Schools like Colorado, Louisville, and Iowa State are overspending, in a desperate attempt to keep up.

But that model is not sustainable.

“If you stop spending now, you lose”, said Louisville’s athletic director.

In the end, though, many schools will not be able to keep pace.

What was once seen as likely, perhaps even inevitable, is no longer mere fodder for podcasters.

It’s our new reality.

“Let ’em break away”, says the Iowa State athletic director.

That truth may be coming sooner than we thought …

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Tags: Brian Howell, Fernando Lovo
This post, about the Spring/Summer game, from the 2026 Season, is filed under Article.
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