Next fall, the Honors College at the University of Arkansas will offer another signature seminar. Ozarks at Large has already previewed classes exploring how history informs the future of business and what the future of AI and integrative health might look like. Now comes the future of college sports.
The course will be co-led by Noah Pittman, associate dean of enrollment for the Honors College, and Scott Varady, vice chancellor for advancement at the University of Arkansas. And with all due respect to the futures of business and AI, maybe the future of college sports is even more unpredictable.
Pittman: That's something we always faced when we taught "Razorbacks and the Nation." We would be preparing for class, and then there'd be a new court case, or a new legal challenge, or a commissioner of a major conference would say something different. That makes it very difficult. I have a background in teaching American politics courses, which can change really quickly, but it's nothing compared to college sports. Wouldn't you agree, Scott?
Varady: Yes, it was always entertaining because you would have to — it was almost like watching for a court filing or a change in the stock market. You had to check two hours before class to make sure nothing dramatic had happened that day or that afternoon when we were teaching. You just stayed on top of it. And I think you were just honest with the students: here's what happened today, has anybody seen this? And then you'd talk about that issue and how it impacted what the subject was that evening.
Kellams: NIL, of course, has shifted the landscape. I'm sure you'll be talking about that quite a bit.
Pittman: Yes, and I'm really excited. The front office — the new organization within Razorback Athletics — actually, we had a news release the other day about the course, and they reached out immediately and said they'd love to come talk to our students. It's one thing to read about it in the news, but to get an actual person who's doing this daily, working with athletes from multiple sports, trying to figure out how to allocate funding within rules that are also constantly changing with the College Sports Commission — it's going to be really exciting to have someone like that speak to the course.
Kellams: NIL has been officially around for a few years now. Three, at least?
Pittman: I want to say right after COVID is when — I'm trying to remember exactly, because it was there, but it wasn't nearly as big as when we first taught the course in 2022. We discussed it, but I think that was before those collectives really started to form around athletic departments. So it's changed quite a bit. Four or five years, and it's changed since it debuted multiple times. It morphs constantly.
Pittman: And I think people get revenue sharing confused with NIL.
Kellams: So let's talk about that. NIL — name, image and likeness — is money that can be directed toward an athlete. Revenue sharing: How is that different?
Varady: Institutions can provide that directly to student athletes. NIL is supposed to be legitimate pay for work, an exchange between a student athlete and a business or individual or company where they're doing actual work and promoting something — think of a celebrity endorsement. If they choose to endorse a product or a nonprofit and get paid for that endorsement, that's totally legitimate.
Pittman: Revenue sharing just started this year. Something we did in our class last semester was give students $20.5 million — which is roughly the revenue sharing an institution can spend up to — and ask them how they'd allocate that among all their different sports. Obviously football is a main revenue driver for a school in the SEC. But at a place like the University of Arkansas, we want to be good at football, we want to be good at multiple sports — men's basketball, baseball, women's sports, track and field, which we take very seriously. It was really interesting to see their perspective on how they would allocate the money. They were all over the place.
Varady: I think they found it very hard to make those actual calls in the real world. It's one thing to think about it from 50,000 feet; it's another to be on the ground trying to make those decisions and implement them. That exercise brought it home.
Kellams: Something that has been going on for a few decades, but has really sped up at times, is conference realignment. We've seen North Dakota State, who has been dominant at the FCS level, go to the Mountain West. The Pac-12 has gone through trauma. Television contracts are running out for some conferences in the early 2030s. What role does that play in the future of college sports?
Pittman: That's a big one. Our commissioner, Greg Sankey, talked about this the other day — the SEC is at 16 schools right now, which, before Arkansas joined, was 10 schools. That's a major difference. And there's still talk about whether we'll add in the future, what the pros and cons are of bringing in new television markets. But at the same time, if you add a new school, when you're dividing your revenue among the schools, that could conceivably be less money. It just depends on what's the best play. TV has really driven a lot of the conference realignment we've seen, especially the last 15 years. And for conferences outside of the SEC and Big Ten, there's just constant thinking about who's going to leave, who's going to stay, what are the ramifications of a school leaving, what's the buyout? I don't think it's going away. What would you think, Scott?
Varady: No, I agree, it's going to continue to consolidate. The money is the fuel to pay for sports and support the enterprise, and I think revenue streams only grow more critical as we move forward.
Kellams: What will you start with? What does the first session look like?
Pittman: Scott and I have taught this for University of Arkansas honors students in the past. This is going to be for SEC honors students — we've already got 10 of the 16 member institutions participating. Our very first speaker is going to be Matt McCoy, our senior associate general counsel for Razorback Athletics. He's spoken to our class before, but he's going to give a big-picture overview — not just Razorback Athletics, but what has happened in the legal landscape. I don't think he could fully prepare right now because we don't know what the summer is going to look like. But from someone who's a practitioner who's done this a long time, speaking about what all these legal cases mean — we'll have some pre-law students in the course, but most won't be — and what ramifications that has on college sports. We're really excited to start strong there.
Half the class will be plenary session over Zoom with big-picture topics, and the other half will be on-campus sessions at each school, with a campus coordinator hopefully bringing in faculty and athletic department officials. Hunter Yurachek has always spoken to our class — he does a great job and is very accessible — and hopefully that level of access will be the same at all the other SEC institutions.
Varady: We've had real-world practitioners in the course — people Noah and I know from Razorback Athletics, for the most part, or formerly in the department — and they do a phenomenal job bringing their journey and what led them to the role they held. There are so many students who still have a strong interest in going into collegiate athletics, and I think this gives them very real-world exposure to the grind, the drive, and the time it takes to get there. But kudos to Noah, because this class across the SEC is the first time this will ever be done, to my knowledge.
Pittman: This is the first time SEC honors colleges have coordinated on any class. We've done it with other honors colleges in the state of Arkansas on other topics. We'll see how it goes, and hopefully pursue future topics within the conference.
Noah Pittman is associate dean of enrollment for the Honors College at the University of Arkansas. Scott Varady is vice chancellor for advancement at the U of A. They will co-lead the Honors College signature seminar "The Future of Sports" next fall.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
