More Money, More Problems? 2026 Gearing Up to Be a Pivotal Year for College Sports

Last night, approximately 20 million people watched Indiana University win its first-ever college football national championship, capping off a chaotic year for those who follow the business side of college sports.

Among the myriad questions in play: Can a university contractually force students to play football for their school? That nearly became a reality for the University of Washington (UW), when a student-athlete signed a $4 million name, image, likeness (NIL) deal to play at UW, only days later to announce his intention to transfer to another university, allegedly for a better offer. (The student has since decided to return to UW.) Lost in the debate over contractual tampering and the NIL arms race: Whatever happened to selecting a school because you wanted to get a degree there?

Big-time college sports have always had an awkward relationship with higher education, from Ohio State University (OSU) quarterback Cardale Jones’s infamous “we came here to play FOOTBALL, we ain’t come to play SCHOOL” Tweet to the more unsavory allegations of academic fraud at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill over a decade ago. That said, graduation rates for student-athletes are routinely higher than the national average, per data from the NCAA. (To his credit, Mr. Jones did return to OSU to finish his degree.) Not to mention that successful intercollegiate athletic programs often bring visibility—and donations—to a university far more effectively than any marketing campaign.

But change is coming alarmingly fast in college sports, in ways that further blur the lines on campus between the academic world and professional sports. Not long ago, colleges would risk devastating sanctions from the NCAA if they dared offer anything that resembled an impermissible benefit to student-athletes. Today, schools have a de facto salary cap of $20.5 million in the form of NIL, where the most talented prospects can offer their services to the highest bidder. Combined with the easing of transfer rules, the off-season now more resembles an NFL free agent signing period than a semester break. Moreover, the growing prevalence of the multi-billion-dollar online gambling industry is already showing signs of corrupting the integrity of college sports, most recently by the investigation of six men’s basketball players from three different universities for manipulating games for betting purposes.

Speaking of billions of dollars, college and university athletic programs are poised to receive a massive influx of cash in the form of partnership deals with private equity firms. But university governing boards are right to be skittish. Witness the pushback from the trustees and regents of several Big Ten universities, who balked at a $2.4 billion proposal that they felt the conference was pushing too quickly to allow boards to perform their due diligence. While up-front money may be enticing to college administrators, transactions of this magnitude necessarily require sign-off by boards, and only after thoughtful deliberation and access to full information. A more prudent example is the University of Utah’s approach, where trustees spent months in discussions before agreeing to a $500 million deal with Otro Capital to manage the university’s athletic revenue. The Big 12 has already announced plans to investigate a private equity partnership, and others will inevitably follow suit. University boards—often unfairly maligned as glorified boosters rather than public fiduciaries—must step up their game to ensure that their institutions do not sell out their educational mission for clicks and views on ESPN.

As exciting as competing for national titles and conference championships can be, the academic and financial health of colleges and universities must come first. Only a quarter of four-year institutions require students to take a college-level course in literature, according to the American Council of Trustees and Alumni’s What Will They Learn?^® project, while at the same time employers are placing an even higher premium on humanistic skills as AI disrupts entire industries. At least one projection predicts as many as 370 colleges in the United States to close or merge within the next decade, citing declining birth rates. If last year is any indication, 2026 will bring many novel developments in college sports that will force trustees to be vigilant and engaged. But the nation’s future calls for them to be even more protective of higher education’s core purposes.