Football will be played. Because if it isn’t, everything will crumble.
In a new story for ESPN.com, Dr. Patrick Rishe, director of the sports business program at Washington University in St. Louis, projects “astronomical financial implications” if universities can’t get football players on the field to make them money. He says the athletic departments may not have a choice, financially, with a collective loss of more than $4 billion in football revenue for the Power 5 conferences.
Oregon State’s AD thinks it’ll be so bad, “we’d almost have to get a whiteboard out and start over”:
“Anywhere from 75 up to almost 85% of all revenues to our departments are derived directly or indirectly from football,” Oregon State athletics director Scott Barnes said.