In Follow The Money, Ben Portnoy will bring you into a weekly deep dive into the business of college sports.
Before we jump in, I thought it would be helpful to briefly explain what were doing here.
College sports have never experienced a more topsy-turvy era. Longtime traditions and the increased need for commercialization are clashing at every turn. Quarterbacks are signing multi-million dollar deals. Television contracts are popular fodder for fan bases. Even jersey patch deals are becoming mainstream.
Each week well capture some of the angst and inherent fluidity of the ecosystem as we look at the off-the-field storylines that are shaping what youre seeing on Saturdays.
With that, lets get into it.
There is no place quite like Baton Rouge.
This is a city where football is king, where politics and the Tigers intertwine like PB&J and where power struggles and backroom dealings are the currency of the day.
So what better place to begin the 2026 football season than a Louisiana courtroom?
For those who havent spent the last two weeks locked into PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) tracking court cases, lets rehash whats happening down on the bayou:
Yeah, its a lot.
That said, the LSU situation got me thinking: What if the SEC really did kick the Tigers from the league? And, if it did, what kind of brand value or sponsorship dollars might LSU command on the open market as an independent?
“A conference like the SEC is just bigger than a single school,” Rob Temple, CEO of Pivotal Sports & Entertainment, told me. “A team moving out of it may have a change or an impact on its sponsors tied to the school or whatever, but the big money around advertising and distribution of content, all that kind of flows to another place.
“But the idea of private equity coming into college sports â just like Americans have gone and become owners in the EPL â if that dynamic ever came into college sports, and you got into valuations of franchises, thats different. That’s a huge hypothetical.”
Independence isnt anything new in college sports. Notre Dame is the poster child, but others have played this game â BYU in the 2010s and Miami in the 1980s immediately come to mind. Pulling it off these days, however, is increasingly complicated.
For one, scheduling is its own challenge. Independent UConn and its administrators have long addressed the issues this poses in trying to piece together a coherent ledger.
Theres also a matter of whether LSU would subsequently control its own media rights or whether it’d remain tied to the SECs ongoing deal with ESPN. The rights would likely revert to the school, but thats no guarantee â see Clemson and Florida States lawsuits against the ACC in recent years for further proof.
Media rights control aside, the most obvious parallel in all of this is Notre Dame, which brings home an annual payout that neighbors the SEC and Big Tens media rights distributions in the $75 million range through its NBC deal and arrangement with the ACC.Â
Could LSU fetch that on the open market? Thats less clear.
“It’s no knock on LSU; its just Notre Dame has been Notre Dame, and they’ve operated independently for so long that to assume LSU would immediately have that same level of independent value is probably unlikely,” one media rights consultant told me. “Do they have a good shot of it? Sure, perhaps in the Southwest, but I think the point is, I don’t know if they have that same level of national recognition and standing to be considered independent.”
Theres also the matter of the schools broader business value.
The Athletic <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7467869/2026/07/28/college-football-program-valuations-rankings-2026-texas-notre-dame-osu/?unlocked_article_code=1.1FA.hHJK.tKcGV9xihJV6&source=athletic_user_shared_gift
