LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Epictetus, coach of the Greek Giants, somewhere after the Year 100 season, gathered his team around and gave them some extraordinary advice.
"Everything has two handles," he said. "One by which it may be carried, the other by which it cannot."
Smart guy, Epictetus. If he were around today, he might point out that college sports is trying to carry itself using the wrong handle.
The Big Ten and Southeastern Conferences, in particular, are tightening their grip on the handle of money, consolidation, exclusivity. They believe that if they can just control the revenue and the structure, they can control the outcomes.
But they can't.
Because there's another handle here that can't be ignored: context, access, shared experience. Grab only one, and the whole thing slips.
As conferences consolidate, playoff models expand, and revenue-sharing takes center stage, a simple truth is getting lost: Half the teams have to lose. Even in a conference of superpowers, half the teams will finish in the bottom half. That's how sports work.
Everyone wants a seat at the big table. But in a super league, half the chairs still face the wrong direction. If the SEC and Big Ten broke away tomorrow, half their teams would be unhappy by November.
That's not a failure of the system. That is the system.
And even for the teams at the top, the math isn't working anymore.
Ohio State ran a deficit in the most recent fiscal year. Michigan won a College Football Playoff title – then posted an operating shortfall. These are flagship programs with all the advantages of branding and exposure — and they're still in the red.
So what chance does a Kentucky or a Louisville have?
Both just borrowed money — Louisville from a bank and its university, Kentucky from its own university reserves — just to maintain operations while treading water in the new revenue-sharing reality.
That money runs out. Then what?
The status quo is not sustainable. That reality is beginning to sink in, everywhere. College athletic departments haven't cut spending enough – even as they face the challenge of administering pro sports.
That's where Cody Campbell, the Texas Tech booster and businessman, may have a better grasp of the situation than most.
He's not preaching fairness. He's trying to save the product. Campbell's proposal to pool media rights across the Power Four conferences and create a broader revenue-sharing structure isn't some soft-hearted appeal to equality. It's not super-conference socialism.
It's a business strategy. A move to keep the whole enterprise from toppling under its own weight. You can read about it in this USA Today feature.
The broader the umbrella, the more chances you have to keep fan bases engaged. To preserve rivalries. To give meaning to a 9–3 season at Kansas State or a March run from Providence.
The bigger the club, the more "winners" you create.
But narrow the system? Shrink the sport to a dozen haves and a hundred have-nots?
That's not consolidation. That's collapse.
Even the teams on top will feel it — because what makes sports matter isn't just winning. It's the structure that gives those wins weight.
The Harlem Globetrotters understood this. They were already a great team. But they lacked a counterpoint. That's how the Washington Generals were born. The Globetrotters didn't invite the Generals into the act out of pity. They did it because they had a vision.
A show that traveled. A business that scaled. A sport that connected.
College sports needs the same kind of decision now. Not to protect a class of pre-ordained losers, of course — but to preserve a system where more people can still win.
It doesn't take a Harvard economist to see that in the current system, the best-funded programs can survive, but the rest will soon face existential decisions that change the face and structure of college sports as we know it – especially among Olympic sports.
Everybody wants to be the Globetrotters. But without someone to play, you're just spinning the ball by yourself.
A model that only works for the top isn't a model. It's a countdown. And many programs — and the universities supporting them — already hear the clock ticking.
Or as Epictetus might remind us in the locker room one last time:
Pick up the whole thing by the right handle.
Or drop it trying.
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