Paper No. 4

Why meaningful reform must account for existing contracts, incentives, and institutional constraints—and how a new system could emerge alongside the old.

“A nation without a national government is, in my view, an awful spectacle.”
— Alexander Hamilton

If the case for reform were solely a matter of principle, it would already be complete. The existing system is unstable, its authority uncertain, and its incentives misaligned. But systems of this scale do not yield to principle alone. They are sustained—and constrained—by the practical realities of contract, coordination, and dependence.

The primary obstacle to reform in college football is not disagreement over ends. It is the difficulty of altering a system that is deeply, and deliberately, locked in.

This paper advances a central claim: meaningful reform is both necessary and achievable, but only through a phased transition that respects existing commitments while establishing the foundations of a new order.

I. The Reality of Institutional Lock-In

Modern college football is not merely a competitive enterprise. It is a network of long-term contractual commitments among conferences, institutions, media partners, and postseason operators.

These commitments are substantial, both in duration and value.

The Big Ten’s current media rights agreements with Fox, CBS, and NBC extend through the 2029–2030 season and are widely reported to exceed $7 billion in total value. The SEC’s agreement with ESPN runs through 2034. The Big 12’s media arrangements extend into the early 2030s. The Atlantic Coast Conference’s media rights agreement with ESPN—combined with its grant-of-rights structure—extends through 2036.

The College Football Playoff itself is governed by a long-term agreement with ESPN, recently extended through the 2031–2032 season. Bowl games, conference tie-ins, and related sponsorship agreements further entrench the existing structure.

These agreements are not peripheral to the system. They are its economic foundation.

They allocate revenue, define competitive relationships, and create binding expectations among the parties. They are negotiated precisely to provide long-term certainty. That certainty, once established, cannot be withdrawn unilaterally without consequence.

II. Grant of Rights and the Limits of Exit

Among the most significant of these constraints are conference grant-of-rights agreements.

Under a grant-of-rights structure, member institutions assign to the conference their media rights for the duration of the agreement. In practical terms, this means that even if an institution were to leave the conference, the conference—and its media partners—would retain the rights to broadcast that institution’s home games for the remainder of the term.

The Atlantic Coast Conference provides the clearest example. Its grant-of-rights agreement extends through 2036. Any member institution seeking to exit the conference would not only face a substantial exit fee, but would also forfeit control of its media rights for more than a decade. The economic consequences of such a move are prohibitive.

These provisions are not incidental. They are designed to prevent precisely the kind of fragmentation that might otherwise occur in a system driven by shifting incentives.

They also illustrate a broader principle: the current structure is not merely customary. It is contractually enforced.

III. The Cost of Immediate Change

The temptation, in the face of systemic instability, is to advocate for rapid and comprehensive reform. But in a system governed by contract, speed carries cost.

These agreements are legally binding. They cannot be disregarded without triggering consequences that are both predictable and severe.

An abrupt attempt to replace the existing structure would expose participating institutions and conferences to:
- Claims for breach of contract
- Claims for tortious interference with contractual relations
- Potential damages measured in the billions of dollars
- Injunctive relief sought by media partners to preserve their rights

Media companies, having committed substantial capital in exchange for defined rights, would have strong incentives to enforce those agreements. Conferences, in turn, are bound not only by external contracts but by internal commitments to their member institutions.

The legal system is not indifferent to such arrangements. It exists, in part, to enforce them.

The result is that no single actor—not a conference, not a group of institutions, not even a newly formed governing body—can unilaterally unwind the existing system without incurring extraordinary legal and financial risk.

What has been bound by contract cannot be dissolved by preference. It must be succeeded by design.

IV. The Limits of Inaction

At the same time, the alternative—indefinite continuation of the present system—is no solution at all.

The current model relies on continual adaptation without underlying stability. Rules are revised, enforcement is adjusted, and new mechanisms are introduced, but the foundational problems remain unresolved.

Incremental change, in this context, does not produce equilibrium. It postpones it.

A system that cannot sustain its own rules, and cannot defend them in court, will not be stabilized through marginal adjustment.

V. The Case for Phased Transition

If neither immediate disruption nor indefinite continuation is viable, a third path must be considered: structured transition.

A phased approach to reform would proceed on two parallel tracks:
- The honoring of existing contractual obligations
- The construction of a new governing framework capable of supplanting the old

These tracks are not in conflict. They are complementary.

The existence of long-term agreements does not render reform impossible. It defines the manner in which reform must occur. Contracts fix the present, but they do not control the future beyond their term.

The question, therefore, is not whether the system can change, but when and how that change is prepared.

VI. The First Dominoes

A transition of this magnitude does not begin with dissolution. It begins with coordination—primarily among conferences, rather than individual institutions.

The first steps toward a new system would not require the immediate abandonment of existing agreements. They would require the alignment of key participants around a shared future framework.

Those steps would include:

1. Formation of a Football Governance Working Group
A coalition of leading conferences—most plausibly the Big Ten and SEC—would establish a joint working group to define the structure of a successor system.

2. Development of a Model Framework
This group would articulate the core elements of the new system: compensation structures, eligibility rules, transfer windows, enforcement mechanisms, and governance principles.

3. Engagement with Athlete Representatives
Any durable system must incorporate athlete participation. Early engagement would be essential to establishing legitimacy and laying the groundwork for a collectively bargained structure.

4. Preliminary Alignment with Media Partners
Media companies would be engaged early to align incentives around a more stable, coherent long-term product.

5. Non-Binding Institutional Commitments
Institutions would begin signaling intent to participate in the new framework upon expiration of existing obligations.

6. Regulatory and Legal Preparation
Participants would begin addressing antitrust, labor, and governance frameworks necessary to sustain the system.

These steps do not disrupt the present system. They prepare its successor.

VII. The Constraint of Conference Membership

Any proposal for reform must also account for a practical constraint that is often overlooked: the leading programs in college football are not independent actors. They are members of conferences whose internal arrangements bind them together.

In the SEC, Big Ten, and other major conferences, institutions share media rights, scheduling structures, and revenue distributions. These relationships are governed by contracts, bylaws, and long-standing institutional commitments.

As a result, the programs that would form the core of any new system cannot, in the near term, selectively disengage from their conference peers. They cannot construct a new competitive structure that includes some members while excluding others without implicating the same contractual and governance constraints that limit broader reform.

This reality has immediate implications. Schools such as Vanderbilt or Mississippi State in the SEC, or comparable institutions elsewhere, are not incidental participants. They are part of the structure that defines the conference itself.

In the short term, therefore, meaningful reform must proceed with conferences largely intact. The question is not how to exclude institutions, but how to operate differently within existing groupings.

This constraint does not eliminate the possibility of differentiation over time. But such outcomes, if they occur, will emerge through transition rather than declaration.

What cannot be separated at the outset must be governed in common, until such time as separation becomes both lawful and practical.

VIII. What Must Be Given Up

No transition of this kind is without cost.

Institutions may be required to relinquish certain forms of short-term flexibility in exchange for long-term stability. Conferences may yield aspects of their autonomy to a centralized governing structure. Media partners may adjust existing assumptions about inventory and control.

Athletes, as discussed in prior papers, may accept defined structures in place of unrestricted movement.

These are not trivial concessions. They are the price of coherence.

A system that seeks stability must, by necessity, limit certain forms of opportunistic behavior. The question is not whether such limits exist, but whether they produce a more durable and equitable result.

IX. From Possibility to Implementation

The question is not whether reform is difficult. It is.

The question is whether the present system can endure in its current form. It cannot.

Between these realities lies the necessity of transition.

A system so deeply embedded cannot be replaced by declaration. It must be succeeded through construction—carefully, deliberately, and with full recognition of the constraints that define the present.

The alternative is continued improvisation within a structure that has already begun to fail.

That alternative is not stability. It is delay.