Jack Graham
The Canvas Stadium debt ghosts are waving receipts in my face and laughing as I write this, but listen to Jack Graham.
While the blue bloods put the chess pieces in place for a college football super conference, you line up the best of the rest. Oregon State, Washington State, San Diego State, Boise State, CSU, Air Force, Army, Navy, Tulane, UConn. Get private equity to foot the bill. The Wild Card Conference, presented by Bain Capital.
Crazy? Oh hell yes. But Crazy left the station about five stops north.
“If someone came forward and said, ‘We’re going to form this new conference,'” the Rams alum and former CSU athletic director told me last week, “And we’re not just going to fund the conference, but we’re going to distribute money to the school not only for funds (name/image/likeness), but also for funds that can pay the players in replacement of the broadcast (deficit). If I were an expert in private equity, I would look into that.” .
Like paying players, the transfer portal, unions and mega-conferences, private equity in college athletic departments seems inevitable, doesn’t it? Last month, two major firms, Weatherford Capital and Bain Capital, announced the formation of Collegiate Athletic Solutions, which would provide up to $200 million in private financing to athletic departments in exchange for a share of the profits.
Crazy? Amen. But Crazy jumped the fence about 35 months ago.
College football is the end of the higher education showbiz, and the NCAA’s call to settle the class-action lawsuit named for former Arizona State swimmer Grant House was strictly a business decision.
It was also a kick in the teeth for the little guys barely clinging to the NCAA big table, none of whom were specifically named as defendants in House’s original complaint. Only now they have to help big brothers everywhere pay the bill.
“In effect, a tax is being imposed on Group of 5 schools,” Graham grumbled.
Published estimates peg the cost to a Mountain West school if the deal is approved at about $500,000 per year, money that will be withheld from typical NCAA distributions such as men’s and women’s basketball payouts.
But the biggest hurdle for companies like CSU, Wyoming or the Air Force is how they will approach paying student-athletes in the coming years. Yahoo Sports estimated the additional costs for a Power 5 program, in the future, at $30 million per year.
It’s going to be a tough bar for the Rams to touch, much less surpass. First, because CSU expects an average of $12.2 million in annual bond payments for Canvas through 2050, an investment that was Graham’s pet project. And second, because $30 million is about half of what the department reported as total athletic revenue ($64.3 million) in 2022-23, its latest audit of the NCAA.
“So you have to find real capital from an outside source,” Graham said. “Most presidents I’ve known… don’t have the vision. (A new conference), that’s called “enterprise risk.” Which most of them don’t understand.”
Crazy? No doubt. But he’s so crazy it might work.
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