Welcome back to The Varsity, my private email on the comings and goings of the people who actually run the business of sports.

I’m writing this from Washington, D.C., where, yes, the ACC Tournament is in full swing. But I’m most excited about spending my Saturday in the burbs, watching the local Major League Rugby team, Old Glory, host the Chicago Hounds in its home opener.

I spent last night at Cap One Arena watching Syracuse lose by 18 and Clemson lose by 21. I also ran into scores of college sports executives who shared their angst about the future of their business as the industry professionalizes at warp speed—and with private equity and other players at the gates ready to aid the transition. My report from the tourney, and the front lines of this massive and evolving story, is below.

Let’s get to it…

1. Big East deal chatter: The Big East’s media rights deals with Fox and CBS are set to end after the 2024-25 season, but I’ve been told that the conference has been making a lot of progress in its renewal talks with both networks, and they both appear likely to re-up. Plus, I hear the conference is holding out one more package for a third media partner. Fox signed the Big East to a 12-year, $500 million deal back in 2013 that gave the network rights to men’s basketball games. About five years ago, CBS signed a deal for 20 basketball games, agreeing to carry at least four on its broadcast network. CBS is expected to increase its number of games once these negotiations come to a close.

   When Fox originally signed this deal, in 2013, the company had just launched its dedicated sports cable channel, FS1. Since then, Fox has added Big Ten and Big 12 games, which has caused some observers to believe that it would drive a hard bargain for the Big East. The collapse of the Pac-12, though, gives the network more windows to fill. But Fox has loyalty to the Big East, which was among the first groups to commit to its then-fledgling ESPN competitor. The relationship between Fox Sports and Big East executives is said to be among the strongest in the business.

2. Women’s basketball bonanza: This season, college basketball’s biggest trend has been the growth of the women’s game. But I was nevertheless astonished earlier this week when I compared viewership numbers for the women’s Big Ten championship, featuring Caitlin Clark’s Iowa team against Nebraska, with the climactic Duke-UNC men’s game. The final Blue Devils-Tar Heels game, usually the biggest in any season, registered 3.09 million viewers. The Clark game nabbed 3.02 million.

   Overall, women’s basketball ratings are up around 60 percent this season, which was the focus of a fun wager I made with a source during the ACC Tournament last night. Last year’s women’s championship game, between Iowa and LSU, averaged a record high 9.92 million viewers. What’s the likelihood that this year’s game eclipses 10 million? We made it a friendly over/under contest. For the record, I took the under. But I also know that I will lose if Iowa reaches the game, no matter who they play.

3. Complaint Department #1: Feedback is always welcome at The Varsity, and I promise to share plenty of it. To wit: A good source called me this morning to gripe about what I missed in my commentary regarding the Comcast-MASN dispute: the NBA’s national rights deals. In short, Comcast has forced Root Sports, SportsNet Pittsburgh, and MASN to transition to more-expensive and less-penetrated digital tiers—moves that sources suggest could cut the channels’ revenues by as much as 30 percent. Of those channels, only the Mariners-owned Root Sports carries NBA games (the Blazers).

   Comcast appears content to draw a hard line with R.S.N.s that broadcast baseball games. But will it pull the same stunt with regional sports networks that carry NBA games? (Comcast’s R.S.N.s currently have deals with teams such as the Warriors, Celtics, Bulls, 76ers, and Kings, and Diamond Sports holds the rights to 15 NBA teams.) After all, Comcast C.E.O. Brian Roberts is vying to win a national NBA broadcast deal for Peacock and NBC, perhaps reviving the glory of the Ahmad Rashad-John Tesh era. Will Adam Silver demand Comcast give those R.S.N.s better terms because, ultimately, they help his teams? These types of trades happen during negotiations but rarely get discussed when deals are announced.

4. Complaint Department #2: Another source called me yesterday to complain that I should focus more on the Saudis’ $1 billion offer to invest in the men’s and women’s tennis tours. “It’s a fascinating one to follow,” he told me. “It’s a mess.”

   Interestingly, the Grand Slam tournaments have their own set of motives for doing a deal—they feel like the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, and US Open are enough. The ATP and WTA are certainly wary of alleged sportswashing, and they are watching the PGA nightmare in real time, but they also like the idea of getting a cash infusion.

   Meanwhile, preliminary reports suggesting that the Saudis are hoping to merge the men’s and women’s tours do not appear to be accurate. And I’ve been told that there’s no 90-day deadline on the offer. But what is clear is that the tours and Grand Slam tournaments need to get better organized to avoid the problems the PGA Tour still faces with LIV Golf.

5. Jerry Legend: WSJ’s headline on its Jerry Levin obit framed the longtime media executive as the man “behind the Time Warner-AOL merger,” which the story called “the worst in the history of corporate America.” The New York Times headline referenced “a merger debacle,” which the story also described as “the worst corporate marriage in American history.”

   I covered the cable business back in 2000, when Levin announced the merger that would wind up leading his obituaries and redefining a generation of media combinations and unwindings. Decades before that AOL deal, rather ironically, Levin had earned a reputation as a visionary. In the mid-1970s, he fully grasped the profound power of live sports to turbocharge a cable business and media brand. Back then, he put HBO on a satellite in order to turn it into a national service. HBO’s first big national event was the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier “Thrilla in Manila.” Levin was a titanic figure in the cable business of the 1980s and 1990s, embarking on a strategy of owning distribution (Time Warner Cable) and programming (Turner Broadcasting) at the same time. Rest in peace, Jerry.

Alas, we’re at the beginning of a Silicon Valley-sized economic shift in sports, and it’s probably better to be open about it. So perhaps it’s not a surprise that a group of the most powerful figures in the sports business—people like the NFL’s Brian Rolapp, Browns owner Jimmy Haslam, and 76ers owner David Blitzer—have come together with the expressed intent of fixing college football. This informal group, which has been described to me as a “think tank,” also includes former NBA player Grant Hill, former MLS president Mark Abbott, Syracuse University president Kent Syverud, University of Oklahoma president Joe Harroz, University of Florida president Ben Sasse, West Virginia University president Gordon Gee, University of North Carolina athletic director Bubba Cunningham, and University of Tennessee A.D. Danny White. Perhaps not all that shockingly, the think tank’s efforts to meet decision-makers in college sports have been rebuffed. None of the conference commissioners have met with them.

The mastermind behind the think tank is TurnkeyZRG’s Len Perna, who hopes the group can find a way to professionalize college football at a time when the cost of losing lawsuits, combined with the possibility of unionized players, will cripple most athletic departments, which can simply no longer afford the costs of competing at the highest levels. Of course, the group has drawn the ire of many college types, a number of whom questioned the inclusion of Rolapp, who reports directly to Roger Goodell. For what it’s worth, several sources have said that Rolapp is not representing the league as a member of the group, and is merely interested in keeping college athletics as healthy as possible. He has one son who played for Michigan, and another high schooler who is expected to be highly recruited.

In any case, the think tank is trying to ideate around a single college football league that could better handle some of the changes being forced on college athletics—from dealing with players associations to matters surrounding how players are compensated. The think tank’s plan is to include all FBS schools in the league. It wouldn’t be an equal revenue share for all the schools. Rather, the system would split the schools into different tiers, with the schools in the highest tiers getting the biggest cut of the revenue. But even with the schools occupying different tiers, the structure would create a counterpart to a players association that they believe is likely to form. And the existence of one entity would allow college football to negotiate with media companies like a league. It would also help in everything from scheduling to promotions.

After all, it’s simply not sustainable to have 10 conferences doing their own collective bargaining deals. Schools would find that they have much more leverage as one large entity. The timing of all this, naturally, is quite poignant. The approval of an expanded College Football Playoff system was viewed as the first step toward having the CFP agree to an ESPN deal that would run through 2032. That deal has been on hold until everyone involved has signed off on the playoff’s new structure.

Executives like Gerry Cardinale and Casey Wasserman have publicly expressed how undervalued the college business remains. On a recent podcast taping with Bill Simmons, in fact, Wasserman suggested that college football could double its revenue with a different structure. As it turns out, private market thinking has irreversibly entered the college football ecosystem. And there’s nothing the NCAA can do to stop that from spreading.