Over the summer, as college administrators scrambled to unearth new cash for the onset of athlete revenue sharing, a svelte, bespectacled man visited with leaders at some of the most high-profile athletic departments in the country.
He presented to them his solution for the unwieldy entity of college football.
It is called Project Rudy.
“His claim is that everybody will be saved,” said one power conference athletic director.
As SEC and Big Ten leaders prepare to meet Wednesday and Thursday in Nashville for a historic summit of the industry’s two powers, there is an unreported undercurrent driving the discussion: Project Rudy.
Spearheaded by former Disney executives-turned-investment professionals, Project Rudy is a super league-esque concept — separate and more simplified than the one made public last week — that incorporates football programs of the four power conferences in a 70-team structure. The model preserves the four power conferences, expands the postseason, overhauls scheduling, tiers revenue distribution and, most importantly, infuses as much as $9 billion of private capital cash into the system.
The architects behind the model work for Smash Capital, a venture capital and private equity firm with offices in Los Angeles and New York. Representatives from Smash Capital declined to comment when reached last week, but their concepts are outlined in a 14-slide presentation obtained by Yahoo Sports.
Over the last four months, athletic directors at more than 25 power conference programs have seen the presentation, many of them in person during meetings with Smash Capital representatives. Others only held phone or Zoom calls about Project Rudy, its name a nod to the famous Notre Dame walk-on, Rudy Ruettiger. Three of four power conference commissioners were shared details of the model directly from the architects as well (those from the SEC, Big 12 and ACC).
In a recent acquisition, the architects of Project Rudy successfully recruited to join their team one of the most respected people within the college space: former Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick. It is a stunning move for someone who just six months ago sat on the College Football Playoff governing committee as one of the most powerful decision-makers in the industry.
“Of all the ideas I’ve seen, this one makes the most sense,” said Miami athletic director Dan Radakovich, who has seen the presentation. “Conferences are kept intact, commissioners still have an important and valuable role, and there is the ability for schools to make increased money from bigger matchups and more playoff games.”
More than three dozen people spoke to Yahoo Sports for this story, many of them under condition of anonymity. The topic is sensitive at a time of great divide, wavering trust and historic transformation.
College sports resides at a vulnerable place as court rulings and public perception shift against its traditional amateurism model. At the heart of the matter is the intensifying pressure to fairly share revenue with high-level football players from the riches of the NCAA’s most profitable football programs — which, for decades, used their profits to subsidize all other sports, pay coaches millions and construct gaudy facilities.
Sensing a vulnerability within the sport and fearing for its future, outside entities are mobilizing in an attempt to deliver capital to cash-craving schools while creating more professionalized models to replace the current crumbling structure from a bygone era.
As major college athletics bursts (reluctantly) from its amateurism façade, Project Rudy lurches over the gathering of Big Ten and SEC leaders.
This new multi-billion-dollar idea is poised to escalate the budding partnership between the two leagues, accelerating what some believe are inevitable changes in both revenue generation and distribution. At the center of the debate are two men: SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti.
“The Smash Capital idea is brilliant,” says one high-level SEC school administrator, “but you’ve got to convince those two guys.”
Project Rudy
The architects of Project Rudy — Evan Richter, that bespectacled man; Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs — spent years working for the Walt Disney Company, much of it together, according to their biographies posted on the Smash Capital website.
Richter specialized in Disney’s investment and innovation side; Mayer was chairman of Disney’s direct-to-consumer business; and Staggs spent 27 years there, most recently as its chief operating officer. Not unimportant, Staggs and Mayer founded Candle Media, a premium content company that launched in 2021 with backing of private equity giant Blackstone.
The trio’s experience in the media world and relationships with private equity distinguish them among several other proposed super league-esque models, administrators tell Yahoo Sports. Most of their meetings with college officials — led by Richter — have happened on campus and spanned from as little as 90 minutes to as much as two days.
Project Rudy is built on two somewhat simple concepts to increase revenue from television networks and corporate sponsors.
(1) Arrange more games between power conference programs by eliminating all games against Group of Five and FCS opponents; expanding the playoffs; and pitting blue-blood powers more often against one another.
(2) Consolidate the media rights of the 70 schools under one agreement, instead of the current structure of five different packages (one for each power league and Notre Dame).
The plan’s other concepts — tiered distribution with relegation, for instance — hinge on the cash boon from those two ideas. According to the slide presentation, the proposed changes will result in an increase of media and sponsorship revenue of about $15 billion over a 12-year period.
The growth is derived from holding 1.5 times more “marquee” games (playoffs, top bowls) and three times more “quality” games (rivalries and blue-blood matchups); while eliminating games against non-power opponents (currently 18% of FBS scheduling).
An upfront infusion of $5.3 billion in private capital — borrowed from future media revenues — would provide schools immediate cash during a three-year transition period, helping them buy out non-power opponents and supplementing their annual television distribution. Television distribution, normally split evenly across conference members, provides schools their main source of revenue to fund athletic department expenses. It is the driving force for the most recent wave of conference realignment, as schools eschew historic rivalries and geographic footprints to shift to leagues with TV deals that pay out more money.
Under the Smash plan, once current conference media deals end in seven to 10 years, a consolidated, centrally negotiated media deal is struck with Smash and the networks, themselves owning equity in the new “league.” The centralized, for-profit “league,” as it is described in the slide deck, keeps 5-12.5% of new revenues after distributing guaranteed payments to schools (no school will see a decrease in its distribution from what it receives or is projected to receive under its current media contracts).
According to the proposal, school-by-school distributions would skyrocket, cash that presumably would be used to help sustain Olympic sports — something that administrators contend is threatened by the advent of revenue sharing. However, the revenues will be allotted unequally. Project Rudy separates the 70 programs into three tiers.
– Tier 1: the top 16 schools earn per-school revenue projections from $130 million in Year 4, escalating to $250 million in Year 12 (double the SEC and Big Ten’s current distribution rate).
– Tier 2: the next 22 schools earn revenue of $60-$110 million (similar to the SEC and Big Ten current rates).
– Tier 3: the last 32 schools earn projections of $30-$60 million (similar to the Big 12 and ACC rates).
The model offers a variety of ways to determine how to tier schools: the previous season’s results, perhaps, or an aggregate of results over a stretch of seasons. The model also features a relegation and promotion system to pave a way for schools to move up and down the tiers. However, one proposed model suggests having eight “permanent” members of Tier 1, a move presumably to placate the biggest brands in the sport.
The slide deck leaves specific tiering and relegation decisions to those operating the “league,” which, according to the slide deck, includes a centralized “commissioner” or “commissioners.”
The deck describes the model as a win for all sides: schools, fans, networks and, of course, the athletes.
One page of the deck, in fact, details how the increased revenues will “offset player compensation obligations.” Project Rudy is meant to work within the settlement of the House antitrust lawsuit that the NCAA and power conferences struck with plaintiffs. The settlement, preliminarily approved on Monday, will permit universities to directly share revenue with athletes under a capped amount that is expected to average about $25-28 million annually per school over 10 years.
Perhaps not coincidental, Project Rudy, over the 12-year model, projects for each school an annual average revenue increase of $25 million.
“The Smash proposal appeals to people because it helps with an immediate issue,” said one high-ranking Big Ten school administrator, “but private equity usually wants a high rate of return and a high level of control.”
What changes are SEC, Big Ten mulling?
The meeting of SEC and Big Ten leaders, while long discussed, is perhaps not coincidentally timed. It unfolds amid a flurry of action related to the future of the sport.
Last Tuesday, an outfit called College Sports Tomorrow publicly launched its version of a future model of college athletics: a 136-school football-only breakaway that consolidates media rights, arranges schools in divisions based on geography and incorporates collective bargaining.
Separately, Smash Capital representatives were in the process of organizing an in-person meeting of more than a dozen athletic directors in October. That meeting has now been pushed back, according to those briefed on the matter.
And then, last Friday, two university presidents (West Virginia and Syracuse) authored an open letter in the Chronicle of Higher Education urging their presidential colleagues to take action to avoid the Big Ten and SEC merging into a “36-school super league.”
In an interesting wrinkle, Yahoo Sports obtained a copy of the original letter. It was signed by six university presidents. Four of the presidents removed their signatures before publication, most notably one each from the SEC and Big Ten.
The confluence of these events is, perhaps, the public crescendo of a years-long power struggle between those in control of the current system and those seeking to change it — a fight over the future of a college football industry that, while unstable off the field, has evolved into America’s second-most popular sport.
“You’ve got entrenched interests,” said Len Perna, the man spearheading College Sports Tomorrow and the CEO of the college athletics search firm TurnkeyZRG. “The people doing the best in the current system don’t want to see it change.”
While the models from both Perna and Smash Capital have captured the attention of many administrators, the two most powerful conference commissioners, Sankey and Petitti, have both publicly expressed skepticism, if not doubt, in outside concepts or modeling.
In comments made to Yahoo Sports from SEC football media days in July, Sankey wondered aloud why college athletic administrators would “cede authority to an outside entity when they can make decisions” themselves — words that now seem squarely directed at the Smash Capital plan. “Any of the ideas identified can actually be decided within a conference or a collection of conferences,” he said.
When reached last week, both Sankey and Petitti declined to comment for this story. But plenty of high-ranking officials agree with their commissioners: Let’s do this ourselves.
“We don’t need a middle man,” said one SEC school athletic director.
“I’d like to go at it to see if we can figure out something ourselves,” said a Big Ten athletic director.
Within a meeting room this week at a downtown Nashville hotel, a subsection of power league administrators will, in fact, come together to explore some of these exact concepts.
– An SEC-Big Ten football scheduling arrangement: This would more routinely pair big brands against one another in made-for-TV matchups that generate additional revenue. Such a move would likely require the SEC to move from eight to nine conference games — a lingering issue inching toward a resolution. “It is inevitable that we play nine (conference) games,” one SEC school official told Yahoo Sports recently.
– Changes to the future College Football Playoff format: This includes a proposal to have multiple automatic qualifying spots for the Big Ten and SEC — a move that Big Ten officials presented to CFP leaders in the spring and one that was met with backlash from Big 12 and ACC commissioners. If the postseason gets “right,” the Big Ten and others could then have the ability to “play stronger non-conference matchups,” Petitti told Yahoo Sports in July.
Still, pushback against such a format remains. “One thing is for sure: Fans don’t want an artificial championship,” Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark told the Houston Chronicle over the weekend. “They want a real championship just like every other sport. There are no free passes. Let’s earn it.”
A potential change to the selection process — is the committee the best way? — is under consideration as well. The two leagues, as well as TV partner ESPN, hold control of many of these decisions.
– And, finally, the distribution of new revenue: Whether this emerges as a conversation point in Nashville remains unclear. However, the Smash Capital proposal’s unequal distribution as well as uneven distribution changes in the ACC and within the College Football Playoff have charted a path for such a structure to emerge in the SEC and Big Ten, where its most valuable members receive the same television disbursement as those deemed less valuable (Vanderbilt, Mississippi State, Northwestern, Purdue, etc.).
According to figures shared with administrators, 18 schools produced 60% of the broadcast viewership over the last seven years. Within those 18, six schools generated a majority of that: Alabama, Ohio State, Georgia, Michigan, Texas and Notre Dame.
“It’s a concept that has to be considered for certain level schools,” said Gene Smith, the former Ohio State athletic director, regarding unequal distribution. “Whether or not it can be done, I don’t know, but there is a reality to what certain schools bring to their conference. And it needs to be considered, but I do believe in the conference structure. Ensuring other schools in the conference maintain significant financial support is critical.”
So what’s the best path moving forward?
As a negotiating director for Nike decades ago, Chris Bevilacqua often found himself in a room with college football heavyweights like commissioners Jim Delaney, Roy Kramer and John Swofford. He once told them a simple truth about college athletics.
“My point with them was you couldn’t have constructed a more inefficient structure,” said Bevilacqua, now a leading member of the College Sports Tomorrow plan. “That happened 20-some odd years ago.”
Since then, the issues within college athletics have grown more complex and, some contend, dire. The NCAA is paralyzed, its enforcement entity handcuffed by court rulings and state laws after years of resistance from its members (the schools) to modernize athlete compensation rules.
Meanwhile, a chase for television cash transformed the conference landscape into an unrecognizable swath of programs without much geographic or cultural sense. Among the power leagues, the biggest brands are consolidated into two conferences that continue to distance themselves from all others. The SEC and Big Ten hog prime television windows, produce eye-popping viewership numbers, generate the most cash and assemble the best talent.
It is a “natural evolution” of markets, says Perna.
“Markets tend to shrink down to a smaller number of bigger competitors,” he says. “Railroad companies, tele-communications … that’s how markets go.”
There is a downside to all of it, says former Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby.
“It’s a zero-sum game,” he said. “You have one winner and one loser. Take the aggregate of the Big Ten. Those who have been traditional winners, some of them are going to have to lose.”
Amid all of this, looming on the horizon is the next iteration of athlete compensation: sharing revenue directly from schools to their players — a concept permitted from the House settlement agreement. Whether they are striking new sponsorship deals, slashing administrative staffs or increasing ticket prices, schools are digging for dough.
This unruly state has cracked the door for the emergence of outside forces. Conversations around future models such as Project Rudy have reached the presidential level, been discussed within meetings of conference executives and, for some, remain a viable option for the future.
Some don’t see it that way.
If the Smash model represents the “right path,” one conference executive told Yahoo Sports, “then why wouldn’t the conferences with the most influence figure it out, put out to bid the new entity to media companies and get free media money?”
But, contended an ACC administrator, “You’re going to have to involve a private-equity firm to get the numbers you want.”
The proposals were openly discussed, at least on a limited basis, at a gathering of conference commissioners in Chicago two weeks ago. There are those who want to further explore them. “In a world of uncertainty, you’ve got to kick the tires,” Yormark told commissioners during meetings.
ACC commissioner Jim Phillips expressed to some privately a willingness to discuss the Smash model during a summit of his athletic directors next Monday in Charlotte. Even NCAA president Charlie Baker has an interest. He is examining the proposal, those with knowledge of the discussion tell Yahoo Sports.
So are plenty of others. How serious are they? It is unclear, but the list of administrators who have seen the presentation or, at the very least, have been shared its contents covers the country’s richest football powers and then some: Florida State, Georgia, Miami, LSU, Alabama, Clemson, Penn State, Auburn, Oregon, Ohio State, Notre Dame, Texas, USC, Michigan, Baylor, Florida, Iowa State and Arizona.
Many administrators from those schools will gather this week in Nashville.
“Greg (Sankey) and Tony (Petitti) have to look at this and give it a sign to take it further,” said one power conference athletic director. “If those two don’t want to do it, then it’s not going to work. I think there are a lot of ADs in their leagues who want to see it have a good vetting.”
In comments he recently made while on former Ohio State coach Urban Meyer’s podcast, Sankey made clear his stance: He is not interested.
“I don’t want to dumb down the Southeastern Conference to be a part of some super league notion with 70 teams that some people speculate would happen,” he said. “They want to be us, and that’s on them to figure it out, not on me to bring myself back to earth.”
The Smash proposal has plenty of faults, critics of it say. In fact, both the Perna and Smash models need congressional assistance in the form of a change to the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 — the only way they can legally consolidate their rights. Perhaps it is why Project Rudy provides the Group of Five with one access spot into the playoff, which some view as a political play to appease necessary members of Congress.
Another looming issue: Will media companies be interested in this? They are at the heart of the matter. Within the Smash proposal, networks are given the opportunity to invest $4 billion over 12 years into the concept for a 30% equity share of “the league.” Is this doable? And would networks, years from now, pay rights fees that are double and triple their current value?
Questions abound. For some, answers are easy.
“Too many schools are saying, ‘This makes a lot of sense,’” says one supporter of the model who presides over a power conference athletic department.
“We’re not ready for it,” rebutted a high-ranking Big Ten school official. “There has not been a tipping point — yet.”
“Will this happen eventually? Yes,” said an SEC school executive. “It’s all inevitable.”
So, this will happen in 15-20 years?
A chortle emanates from the other side of the line.
“Oh no,” the person said. “Much sooner than that.”
