Not All College Football Programs Can Afford To Compete With Alabama Crimson Tide, Others

By Eben Novy-WilliamsBloomberg

University of Idaho President Chuck Staben was home with his family in Boise on New Year’s Day when he got an angry message from an alumnus. “Are you watching the Rose Bowl?” it read. “That’s the sort of experience Idaho had before you made your awful decision.”

Almost two years after Staben announced that the Vandals would no longer compete in college football’s top division and a month after the school won its final Football Bowl Subdivision game, the angry messages haven’t disappeared. Neither has Staben’s conviction that lower-stakes football is the right thing for his school.

“There is this hyper-polarization between the haves and the have-nots,” said Staben, whose team will compete next year in the Football Championship Subdivision. “We’re not deciding between the Rose Bowl and FCS. We’re deciding between being a marginal FBS program and FCS.”The University of Alabama will play the University of Georgia tonight for college football’s national championship, a matchup fueled by rabid fans, talented players and hundreds of millions of dollars. Both schools are among the 15 highest-earning university athletic programs. Alabama athletics, which has won four of the past eight football championships, generated $161 million in revenue in 2015-16; Georgia took in $120 million.

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