It’s no secret that the line between college and professional sports is vanishing — not gradually, but rapidly. What was once a quirky in-between world of marching bands, bowl games, and unpaid “student-athletes” is evolving into something that looks and operates like the professional leagues. And I’d be willing to bet that soon, like the pros, you’ll see private ownership of college teams.
It’s not far-fetched, it’s just the next logical step. You’ve already got tens of millions in booster money pouring into college athletics, funneled through NIL collectives and endorsement deals. It’s only a matter of time before those same boosters start wanting a return on their investment and buy the teams outright. And if not them, then someone else will. Private equity groups are already buying up stakes in professional sports franchises; why wouldn’t they move into the college market next? If there’s money to be made, people are going to look to make it. As it is, ownership for professional sports teams has jumped from hundreds of millions of dollars, to billions of dollars. Mark Cuban paid $285 million for the Mavericks in 2000, and sold a majority stake in 2023 at a valuation of $3.5 billion. The Boston Celtics just sold for $6 billion, after having been purchased for $360 million in 2002. This speaks to the pent-up demand, at and exceeding critical mass, for major sports team ownership. And when there’s that much demand, supply will follow, and the college landscape is the most obvious and readily available source of supply.
What would that look like? Private ownership that licenses the school’s name and intellectual property (logos, fight songs), builds a roster through contracts and sponsorships, and arranges for its players to be enrolled at the university just enough to keep up appearances. At that point, the teams — still wearing the colors of the old alma mater — would be functionally indistinguishable from professional squads.
Multi-year contracts would become the norm. They have to. As I write this, Indiana University lost its entire basketball roster to graduation or the transfer portal. Teams – sorry, I mean “schools” – need more certainty, and contracts provide that. And with contracts comes the logic of professional management: trades, buyouts, performance incentives, and roster restructuring. Once a player is under contract, there’s nothing stopping schools — or their privately managed equivalents — from trading talent to better fit their schemes or salary structure. It’s not theoretical. Many major universities are already creating new administrative roles modeled after professional front offices — titles like “general manager” or “director of player personnel.” These aren’t academic advisers. They’re deal-makers.
We may even see a draft system. Imagine a future where high school athletes opt into a national collegiate draft, administered by the NCAA or a new governing body. Teams — or ownership groups — would make their selections based on scouting reports, with top recruits going to the highest bidders. Contracts could include signing bonuses, salary scales, trade protections, and transfer restrictions. Athletes would retain agents. Trades between schools would become normalized. The transfer portal already serves as a kind of free agency — it’s only a short step from there to full-blown transactions.
In such a system, even the term “student-athlete” becomes laughable. The players would enroll in name only. Their primary relationship would be with the owner or managing entity — not with the university, not with the athletic department, and certainly not with the classroom. The NCAA might still host the tournaments, and the players might still wear the school’s jersey, but the connection between team and university would be largely symbolic.
To be clear, I support athletes being paid for their services. They generate massive revenue, fill stadiums, and drive billion-dollar TV contracts. The idea that they should sacrifice their health and labor for “scholarship money” while head coaches rake in $10 million a year was always absurd. For decades, NCAA officials, university presidents, and coaches lined their pockets while preaching the virtues of amateurism. It was a racket, and they knew it.
The system’s hypocrisy ran even deeper. Colleges handed out scholarships to non-scholars, admitted athletes with dramatically lower academic credentials than their peers, and looked the other way when coursework was outsourced, fudged, or outright fabricated. The very institutions that claimed to stand for academic integrity were complicit in its erosion, so long as the wins and revenues kept coming.
So many will hail this transformation as a long-overdue correction — a way to bring fairness and financial justice to a deeply exploitative system. And there’s truth in that. The old amateur model was never noble. It was always about control, about monetizing labor while masking it as virtue.
But we shouldn’t pretend that something valuable isn’t being lost in the process. The sense of school pride, of shared identity, of teams representing something larger than themselves — those traditions don’t easily survive once the players become contractors, the coaches become CEOs, and the teams themselves become business assets.
Modern college sports have always existed in a tension between nostalgia and commerce. That balance is now broken. The market has taken over. The traditions are hollowing out. The loyalties are fading. The language of alma mater and amateur spirit will soon be replaced by the logic of investment portfolios and return on equity.
The soul of college sports isn’t being preserved — it’s being privatized.
And when it’s over, when the transformation is complete, the athletes will still take the field, the bands will still play, and the fans will still cheer — but it won’t be for the school. Not really.
It’ll be for the brand. The team. The asset. Owned and operated by men sitting in the owner’s box.
