The Ohio State Buckeyes are the hottest brand on the marketplace right now, at least of the teams that are still playing by the typical conference media rights rules. In the wake of the Duke Blue Devils basketball team signing a deal to stream five games on Amazon, though, USA Today's Matt Hayes believes the dam would truly break if Ohio State football took its brand to the streaming marketplace.
Hayes listed all of the massive streaming platforms as potential options for Ryan Day's program. Per Hayes, "Why wouldn’t Duke basketball jump in on this action? And here’s the scary part for the rest of college sports: When does Ohio State football make a move? When do Alabama or USC or Texas or Michigan say, screw it, we’re tired of Mississippi State and Rutgers and Vanderbilt and Maryland riding our coattails. We’re going to take our media rights and find out just how much someone is willing to pay. Don’t kid yourselves, Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, Apple — or any streaming service worth its weight in dragging, commercial-filled garbage — will throw millions upon millions upon millions for seven Ohio State home games. Live sports are the only guaranteed winners in broadcast television and streaming. Live sports with Ohio State? A revenue-driving king."
Hayes' column here may be the single greatest piece of PR for OSU this offseason, and for quite some time. If even one higher-up opinion is swayed, this could be a multi-million-dollar boon for the Buckeyes.
Of course, it'd simultaneously be a very bad thing for traditional College Football admirers.
Ohio State could trigger a College Football super-league by breaking from the Big Ten
Ohio State exiting the Big Ten would probably have TTUN and others considering the same. If enough teams leave the B1G, it's the end of Power 4 football as we know it. Who knows how long the SEC's biggest brands would hold out from doing the same? The Texas Longhorns bring in more revenue than practically everyone besides the Buckeyes most years anyway.
If you're looking for signs we're at the beginning of the end, and why Cody Campbell, Chairman of the Texas Tech University System Board of Regents, is trying to get his "Saving College Sports" lobbying across the finish line, look no further than Duke being celebrated for negotiating its own deal, and Ohio State being pushed to do the same.
One would think the rumored College Football Super League would be the next logical step after this ball starts rolling. We'll see. But a revolution may have already begun.
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