So, let me throw a conspiracy out there…a growing American trend is to cast off the traditional (at least for the past thirty or forty years, especially since HOPE scholarships and the like) pathway of thirteen years of school followed by four to seven or more years of university or college education, student loan debts, and earning degrees that find you no more prepared for a job and the real world than the diploma you received from a high school.

Meanwhile, business is booming within the ovals that adorn every campus, where football programs play. Media rights, NIL, expanding playoffs, and the entertainment value of a “college” football program is becoming more appealing than the college itself.

I’d say that’s been a longer trend than just recently, but hang with me.

So, the powers that be (Mickey Mouse, Greg Sankey, Jimmy Sexton, Nick Saban, etc…) see the writing on the wall and realize that there’s a need for college football to continue to thrive even if the college itself is eroding. The college is less of an institution and more of a brand. As the college football brand grows, the amateurism that was supposed to get a piece of the NIL pie starts to get whittled away. The players and programs cost too much money with too little return. NCAA and Title IX be damned.

The fat doesn’t just get trimmed from the “Olympic Sports”, either:

They’re not talking about sports programs, either.

Now I know what you’re thinking…this is probably not a terrible thing. After all, why let your 18 year old kid leave home and go upside down in debt to earn a degree in Therapeutic Animal Yoga Studies just to come back home and live in the basement while working at Starbucks, amirite? Maybe the “fat” are programs with little academic merit in the first place, right? Keep your law and medical schools, business and pharmacy schools, etc., but make the offerings lean and 21st century relevant.

I’m all for it.

But what’s really going on? Let’s start up the road at Anderson Community College:

As previously reported by FITSNews, Clemson’s debt has climbed to approximately $1.15 billion while long-term liabilities have surged to roughly $2.65 billion. At recent board meetings, trustees openly criticized university leadership for failing to bring expenses under control, with some pushing for aggressive cuts while others warned the university lacked a coherent long-term reform strategy.

It was during that period of financial pressure that internal audit findings raised additional concerns about Clemson’s handling of PSA budgets.

Documents reviewed by FITSNews indicate auditors warned of a “potential conflict” involving consolidated spending targets between PSA and CAFLS due to statutory restrictions tied to certain PSA funding sources. The same materials stated PSA funding “should support all PSA functions” and warned PSA budgets “should not be suppressed to meet consolidated spending targets.”

Those findings closely mirrored concerns raised internally by PSA officials, who feared regulatory and public service operations were being caught in the middle of Clemson’s broader budget crisis.

According to emails and audit materials reviewed by FITSNews, some Clemson personnel believed funds tied to legally mandated PSA operations were effectively being treated as part of a larger institutional balancing strategy — despite statutory restrictions governing how portions of that money could be used.

Shorter: probably poor financial planning, alongside dwindling state and federal funding contributions, and strains from usual institutional funding from donors who may now be streaming their contributions to pay for NIL.

But what about Duke?

At the forefront of top political adviser Stephen Miller, Trinity ‘07, and Trump’s agenda was mandating universities axe diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, limit international student enrollment and decrease their reliance on federally funded research. The administration also changed student loan policies, cut Medicaid reimbursement rates and increased the tax rate universities would have to pay on their endowment. 

For institutions like Duke that operate both a University and a Health System, the lapses in federal funding cut key revenue streams. In response, Duke enacted a $364 million cost-cutting program, becoming one of the first universities to trim its personnel pool amid the federal funding changes and one of the institutions with the largest budgetary cuts.

The program has produced $229 million in savings across Duke’s departments and schools for the fiscal year 2026 budget, according to a September Academic Council presentation by Executive Vice President Daniel Ennis and Rachel Satterfield, vice president for finance and treasurer. The goal, though, is to reduce its expense base by $350 million by 2030, which Duke aims to accomplish by saving an additional $47 million in each of the next two years, another $30 million in fiscal year 2029 and $11 million the year after. That leaves Duke with $364 million saved — $14 million above its initial target.

Note: this is not a Playpen post; rather, it’s just some insight into a rising narrative that NIL is ruining everything.

As I explored other examples of this, it seems to point back to poor planning or being surprised by federal cuts and changes to regulations that colleges and universities once thrived from. As I mentioned earlier in the offseason about FSU, it seems that, in cases, that aggressive desires to expand, met with state and federal cut backs, and not being helped by trends in sports funding, is creating a serious financial strain with colleges.

In Indiana, cuts came from a state law to cut or consolidate programs that generated a low number of graduates. That makes sense. Syracuse cut programs to align more with student demands. UNC Chapel Hill is cutting six of their area research centers, which don’t generate many graduates, either, but serve as research centers for existing faculty and their staff.

In other words, the golden age of housing the “those who can, do; those who can’t, teach” and university researchers that was being funded on the backs of increasing tuition and upticks in government funding is over. Time to get lean, in other words.

I subscribe to the idea that society (I think I gleaned this from Sociology at UGA) swings like a pendulum, periods of lean and periods of glut. Seems there was a period of glut that they were enjoying (noting the rise of cost of colleges when someone told me how much they were shelling out for it gave me a minor heart attack the other day) and they didn’t foresee the lean.

In other words, NIL isn’t THE problem, but keeping up with the Joneses and maintaining the media footprint and impression isn’t helping, either. Funny how we can’t fund a research center for educational purposes but we can pony up forty million dollars in a heartbeat to see ninth-year seniors earn a million dollars and win a National Championship while they are older than 40% of NFL rosters.

So, do I still think that the powers that be are meeting at the Bohemian Grove and planning to fracture college football programs from the NCAA and colleges altogether?

I mean, probably. Hell if they could completely break away from the NCAA they wouldn’t be shy about telling you that was the plan all along.

But to break from the school altogether for the sake of profiteering?

Nah. Those ratings don’t come from fair weather fans who just decided to start watching Georgia football, after all. If that were the case, the passion would be lost and the ratings you see from the B1G and the SEC wouldn’t exist if you removed the school from the equation. The school is a part of the equation, and the uniqueness that separates college football from the NFL would be lost without it.

If you don’t believe me, watch the UFL.

Now whether they care about the school or not is a whole other thing, but, for now, I believe that college football will remain attached and committed to the school. They just don’t care if you cut the Research Center for Slavic, Eurasian, or Eastern European studies.

And you probably won’t either.