Project Rudy pitches an umbrella-style solution for NCAA football

The GIST: With an uncertain future looming, the latest reimagination of college football (CFB) — called “Project Rudy” — is being spearheaded by former Disney executives as an umbrella-style solution buoyed by private equity (PE). Stack chips for the rainy day.

How did we get here? With conference realignment trends shaking up the sport, decision-making power has largely been consolidated into the SEC and Big Ten conferences. CFB leads college sports in everything from revenue to media rights, with top programs generating more than $100M annually, so concerns about equity and parity have only increased of late.

• Project Rudy isn’t the first attempt to separate the most powerful college football programs from the NCAA, or reshape its structure, as the org’s president called for last year.

Why now? House v. NCAA is on the cusp of a groundbreaking settlement that will introduce revenue sharing of up to $20M with student-athletes. For the NCAA’s most affluent programs, this will quickly become the baseline for recruiting the best players — further increasing the divide between top programs and the smaller schools already struggling to compete.

The proposal: Project Rudy’s 70-team structure, funded by PE firm Smash Capital, would feature tiered revenue distribution, an expanded postseason, and a scheduling overhaul with more marquee games. With an influx of approximately $9B from PE, the project would take CFB’s biggest fish and put them in their own pond in an effort to level the playing field.

• Notably, all 70 programs would be sold as a single-entity media rights package (instead of by conference), pouring rocket fuel on CFB’s already-lucrative media rights and revenue streams. Cha-ching.

Zooming out: PE is increasingly influencing pro sports, including in the WTA and NWSL. And unlike major men’s leagues, the NWSL allows PE firms to own majority stakes in teams. Both Bay FC and Seattle Reign FC have infused additional capital into their assets, raising Seattle’s valuation from $3.5M five years ago to $58M today.

• There’s plenty to sort out before PE investment — or any major CFB reshaping — takes place, but with revenue-sharing imminent in college sports, we can’t help but wonder: How would a change like Project Rudy, and the cash it inevitably generates, influence women’s college sports under Title IX?