It’s funny that despite all evidence everywhere to the contrary, people still instinctively think more regulation will somehow benefit the little guys. If only we had the right regulators. Maybe Hillary Clinton could run the NCAA. I’m sure that would work out for the little teams. Wall St. only loved her because of her outfits.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results...The NCAA's charter is to maintain a competitive balance and it's existing framework is not doing that in CFB. Here again is my three part poston how to fix the issue. Along with competitive balance, it addresses deferred player compensation and the reality of conference media $$$.
1. Athletic Department spending caps on a per sport basis, set to allow competitive balance and sufficiency (rising proportionally to inflation each year) You get a set amount, so you have to decide how much you pay assistant coaches per annum, how much you pay for recruiting expenses per annum, how much of a new head coach will cost in the out years...Skill, as opposed to bigger schools outspending smaller schools being the deciding factor in championships. Sure, you still will have the taxpayer giving state schools an advantage in real property and pensions, but at least a lot more balanced then what happens now.
2. With spending capped to less of an insane level, the conferences will take a large share of their media rights money and set it aside to provide a post-playing career annuity to college athletes, with annuity value set by each relative sports revenue (Title IX may force a minimum). If an athlete passes before the athlete receives his full annuity, his/her beneficiary gets it. This way you keep the intrinsic student-athlete value that straight pay destroys, while compensating the athlete appropriately for the revenue thay have generated.
3. Because of the Athletic Department spending caps being universal in CFB, teams don't need to spend all of their conference share, so the conferences keep the media/merchandise excess revenue and use it to fund the annuity, on a CFB-wide universal scale. If Conference A has more money than Conference B after the annuity payouts, the remaining money is then evenly divided between Conference A's member schools NON-athletic scholarship funds.