ALTOONA, Pa. -- This is such a great question. It's something I've been discussing a good bit recently on some statewide radio shows with media friends Jed Donahue and Joe Lodanosky from the PA Sports Network.
So, it was terrific when LambertFan posted the same question in my Live Qs file on Thursday.
What will college football look like in 10 years?
I'll break down some things to think about here, but I'll be honest up front with this answer: I don't know.
Nobody knows.
Primarily because so many things in our world are changing so quickly that it's becoming nearly impossible to try and predict the future.
Shoot, as far as we know, AI will have taken over the world in 10 years and humans, let alone college football, won't even exist!
I'm joking there, although not as much as you may think. The AI destruction of humanity is indeed coming -- yeah, I'm serious -- but it will take longer than 10 years. Maybe 50 years.
Anyway ...
Let's consider this stuff with regards to the future of college football.
WHAT WILL TV LOOK LIKE?
This is BY FAR the biggest issue, and it's something nobody can possibly have any real grasp of right now.
Think back to 10 years ago and how you watched TV. Most of you were still using cable or satellite dish services, since cutting the cord hadn't become a big thing yet. But now? If you haven't already cut the cord and gone entirely to streaming, what exactly are you waiting for?
Problem is, in 10 years, nobody has any idea what the primary source (or sources) of TV consumption will be. All these competing streaming services will have to merge at some point, you'd think, simply because nobody wants to be paying for 15 different ways to watch TV. That's a gigantic nuisance.
Will ESPN be around in 10 years? Yes, probably, but what will its business model be like? As cable and its bundled packages go by the wayside, ESPN and its parent company, Disney, will have to go through numerous trial-and-error phases to find out what works best.
Networks will still be major broadcasting partners. But again, as viewers turn primarily to streaming services, will the major networks still be as lucrative as they've been in the past?
All of this is a complicated way of asking this: Where will the TV money come from?
If we don't really know what TV will be like in 10 years, we cannot possibly know which services will have the money, or how much any of them will be willing to pay.
The Big Ten recently signed a $7 billion TV deal. But it's only for seven years. A decade from now, we can assume the Big Ten will still have a huge deal somewhere, but then again, I'm a big believer that networks will command much, much more control over everything then, since they'll be the ones paying the absurd money.
As I wrote recently, the Big Ten sold its soul with the TV deal, and every TV deal going forward will be the same thing for every conference.
So, in a nutshell, what will college football look like in 10 years? Whatever the TV networks want it to look like is the best answer.
WHAT ABOUT NOTRE DAME?
The BIG domino in all of this.
As long as the Fighting Irish can make enough TV money, they will remain independent. But how much money will be enough, when Big Ten teams are making upwards of $90 million a year, and SEC teams aren't far behind?
Notre Dame cannot and will not just sit back and make $30-40 million less than the highest-earning Big Ten and SEC programs. If the disparity becomes too great, Notre Dame could be forced to finally join a conference.
But which one -- the Big Ten or the SEC?
No, I cannot imagine it would be the ACC, because that league will never be able to pay anything near what the other two super leagues can pay.
The guess here is that, at some point, Notre Dame will join the Big Ten. That's where the Fighting Irish belong geographically, and it just makes the most sense.
But will it make the most cents?
Look for a bidding war between the Big Ten and SEC. And ultimately, whatever Notre Dame decides will determine a whole lot about what college football looks like in a decade.
THE OTHER DOMINOES
The Big Ten would certainly love to have Notre Dame. And if that happens, the league could decide against any further expansion. Same goes for if the Irish go to the SEC.
The conference shuffle will continue to take place regardless of what happens with Notre Dame. Will the Big Ten look to add Washington, Utah, Stanford, Arizona State or any others?
What about North Carolina? A lot of people seem to think the Tar Heels would be a good addition to the league.
I don't.
North Carolina wouldn't move the needle enough, in my opinion, for the other Big Ten members to willfully divide up their piece of the TV pie even further.
Clemson would. Or Florida State. But not the Tar Heels.
Look, we can speculate until we're blue in the face about which schools will be looking to jump ship from their current leagues, and subsequently which leagues would even still survive as major players in the college landscape.
It will come down to money, plain and simple. Which is why I started all of this discussion up above with the TV aspect.
Nobody wants to get left holding the bag, being on the outside looking in and watching everybody else count their TV money. People at Clemson and Florida State already feel like bagholders in all of this because of the ACC's weak TV deal compared to the Big Ten and SEC, but for now, there doesn't seem to be anything those schools can do about it.
They're stuck in the ACC, in large part because of a strict rights deal that runs until 2036.
In 10 years, though, things could be a whole lot different as the end of that rights deal draws near.
SOME PREDICTIONS
I'll take a stab at some things here, just for fun, so we can look back in 10 years and see what I got right and wrong.
• Notre Dame will join the Big Ten within the next decade. Why? I just don't see the Fighting Irish being able to land a big enough TV deal that would allow them to keep up with the Joneses as an independent.
• The Pac-12 will no longer be a major factor. USC and UCLA already left, and I can see Washington, Utah, Stanford and others also bolting. That league is in big trouble.
• The Big 12 will try to do everything it can to remain a power player, including looking to aggressively expand by adding current Pac-12 members.
• The ACC could be in a lot of trouble. The league just doesn't have enough money for Clemson and Florida State to remain happy. Now, whether Clemson can remain an elite program for another decade also is a big question. I don't believe it will, and that Dabo Swinney could look to leave and become Nick Saban's successor at Alabama.
• Penn State will make the College Football Playoff seven times in the next decade, starting in 2024 when the field expands to 12.
• I doubt Penn State will win a national title in the next 10 years. It could happen, since the Lions be in the playoffs a bunch, and it would just take one magical run. But the deeper you get into the playoffs, it means beating multiple teams like Alabama, Georgia, Clemson, etc. Gonna be tough.
• What will be the most successful program over the next decade? Alabama was the answer for a long time, but the way Kirby Smart has things rolling at Georgia, I'm gonna go with the Bulldogs.
• Will Jim Harbaugh ever win a national title? Nope. Odds are better that he'll leave for the NFL before that happens.
• NIL will continue to be a huge factor in where certain stars go to school, and some will continue to make millions. But as time goes on, the average Joes won't be as impacted by NIL anywhere near as much as they would like. There's only so much money to go around.
• The transfer portal also will continue to be a major factor. But the cautionary tales of players finding out the grass isn't always greener on the other side will make more and more players think twice about just up and leaving. The NCAA actually did a great thing when it limited the no-penalty transfer to one for undergraduate students.
• Ultimately, we will see college football players be deemed as employees, and unionized. Making the entire sport the NFL Light.
• Will James Franklin still be Penn State's coach in 10 years? Hmmmmm. Now that's a good one. I'll go out on a limb and say no, because he will continue to do such a good job that some other power program will come along and make him an offer he can't refuse. Either that, or he'll go make a ton of money as a TV analyst, a role he’s well suited for.
