How TCU coach Sonny Dykes would clean up college football
As the sport heads into a new frontier with revenue sharing, TCU head coach Sonny Dykes wants to clean up college football.
Theoretically, the new era of rev share should level the playing field among the Power Four conferences with most teams allocating between $15 to $16 million of their revenue share pool to football.
It would also return name, image and likeness to its original concept with athletes signing deals with local businesses and other brands. The last few years NIL had turned into pay-for-play deals from collectives. That should be over if the new enforcement policies are followed.
“Finally the talent is being compensated in college football, my sincere hope is everyone operates within the spirit of the rules just like they do in professional sports,” Dykes said on July 9 at Big 12 Football Media Days in Frisco. “I’d like to see college football cleaned up for the student athletes. I think as coaches we’re supposed to set an example for them, my hope is teams will operate within the new rules and we’ll have great parity in college football.”
Equal playing field
In this new landscape TCU would have the same money to spend on its roster as Ohio State or Alabama, but college football’s history has shown that if there is a loophole to be finessed then a college booster or coach will find it.
The money has exploded in college sports with coaches, athletes and universities all reaping the benefits. But with increased earnings comes increased expectations and those increased expectations can lead to bad actors trying to get a leg up on the competition.
“There’s so much passion around college football right now that you’re going to have boosters that want to break rules,” Dykes said. “That’s been part of the game of football forever. It’s been happening forever, but I think we’re finally developing a system that is supposed to help provide some guidance in that. My hope is Deloitte has teeth and that college football provides them an opportunity to help manage these things.”
Deloitte launched ‘NIL GO’’ to authenticate the validity of NIL deals for valid business purposes and some NIL deals that would have been approved just a few months ago have been rejected.
It’s a good start, but Dykes isn’t ready to say he completely buys in to Deloitte’s ability to curb down on potential cheating.
“I would like to say my confidence level is very high, but I don’t know if I can say that,” Dykes said with a grin. “My hope is that there’s enforcement. The games ought to be decided by the teams that evaluate, recruit, develop, coach, retain and create a culture. Those teams should be the ones that get rewarded.
“It shouldn’t be decided by who has the most boosters or the richest boosters, that’s ridiculous. My hope is that those things will actually matter and the programs that do things the right way will be rewarded for doing them the right way, that’s my hope.”
Unequal playoff field
Stern enforcement isn’t the only thing Dykes would like to see in the sport. With the College Football Playoff likely expanding to 16 teams, Dykes was frustrated with potential formats that would’ve had the Big Ten and SEC receiving more automatic bids than the Big 12 and ACC.
“I think we need to go to 16, the only format that makes sense is the 5+11,” Dykes said. “If you’re going to give a certain amount of bids to a league, for me, it’s hard to believe anybody was really talking about that. It’s ridiculous. That would be like saying the NFC has better viewership than the AFC so the NFC is going to get eight teams in the playoff and the AFC is only going to get four.
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard or seen in my life. I can’t believe it’s being discussed, I mean the game should be decided on the field. Every team should have access to it based on how they played on Saturday.”
Dykes does have a solution that would make comparing the conferences an easier task for the CFP selection committee.
“I think it’s time we have uniform scheduling,” Dykes said. “Every team either needs to play nine conference games or we need to drop down and play eight. Whatever it is, everybody needs to do it.”
While the SEC deserves credit for its ambitious non-conference scheduling by most teams, the league’s top teams have also been known to add a late season easy win against a lower tier Group of Five school or an FCS opponent. The ACC also only plays eight conference games.
Meanwhile TCU and teams from the Big Ten are playing in conference games in late October and early November.
“It’s a huge advantage for some of the leagues to only play eight conference games,” Dykes said. “Out of conference scheduling needs to be consistent as well. If you’re going to compare teams, you got to have as many as the fundamentals be as close as they can be in order to compare.
“That means we have to play the same number of games. We’re one of only maybe two teams that are playing 11 Power Four teams, not many teams are doing that. We have a very difficult schedule, that’s okay, but I do think there’s need to be consistency with scheduling.”
