Monoculture and the Commercialization of Everything

Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Long Run. September is here. Summer is winding down. Pumpkin spice lattes are already flowing (Lord, help us). I found an apartment. And we finally have sports that aren’t baseball (although the Track & Field World Championships did not disappoint last week).

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Let’s hop into it.

This weekend marks the kickoff of college football. I’ve always enjoyed the anticipation of this time of year. Summer wrapping up, the start of the new school year for many, and there’s a slight crispness in the air. Football is back.

But for many, this college football season will be the end of an era – the last season for many long-standing rivalries and conferences that geographically make sense.

Next season, the sport will change dramatically.

The best teams will soon belong to just 3 conferences. The Big Ten Conference will expand from 14 to 18 teams, and the SEC and Big 12 conferences will both increase from 12 to 16 teams.

While this change may not seem significant, not many sports conjure the deep emotional connection that college football does in America.

In a matter of just a few weeks, the Pac-12 Conference, which was at one point the premier college athletic conference of the west coast, basically went poof.

If you’re curious, here’s a brief recap of how it all went down in August:

• Oregon and Washington left the Pac-12 for the Big Ten, following the announcement of a similar move by USC and UCLA several months back.

• Colorado, Arizona, Arizona State, and Utah also decided to leave the Pac-12, but instead for the Big 12.

• This left the Pac-12 with just four teams: Cal, Oregon State, Stanford, and Washington State.

• Now, Cal and Stanford are leaving the Pac-12 for the ACC (Atlantic Coast Conference), despite being about as far as you can get from the Atlantic coast.

• Meanwhile, Oregon State and Washington State are being courted by the Mountain West Conference and the American Athletic Conference.

• And just like that, the Pac-12 nearly ceases to exist.

And beyond the conference reshuffling, there will be a new format to the postseason, as well — after ten years of the 4-team playoff to decide the national champion, the 2024 season will involve a 12 team-playoff.

I have a lot of questions. Is any of this a good thing? How will the realignment change our experience as fans? What does this dramatic change in college football say about our culture at-large?

Let’s dive in.

For as long as most of us can remember, geography determined how we divided college sports conferences. The Big Ten was for the Midwest region, and the Pac-12 was (as the name suggests) a pacific coast conference.

The conference map (at least the largest ones), looked something like this:

Now, with the new system, USC (in Los Angeles) and Rutgers (in New Jersey) will be in the same conference (you read that correctly).

And now, the Pac-12 is all but gone, and the the Big Ten, a conference traditionally known for Midwest state schools, looks like this:

Why the sudden changes?

As is often the case, money talks.

Blame the TV networks, blame the schools

College football conferences are like businesses. They make money primarily from TV deals, where major networks pay them for rights to broadcast their games.

The schools, which make up those conferences, receive a cut of those deals.

So schools with good football teams draw more attention from fans, which is more attractive to TV networks (because they ultimately make their money from advertisers, who want more eyeballs).

The flow of money then generally goes:

Advertisers → TV Networks → Conferences → Schools → Teams

With each group taking a cut along the way.

The largest deals happen between the TV Networks and the conferences.

• Starting in 2024, the SEC begins a $3 billion deal for 10 years with Disney.

• Similarly, the Big Ten reached a deal with FOX, CBS, and NBC for $7.5 billion over 7 years.

It makes sense, then, that the conferences who can bring in the largest deals have more bargaining power, because they have larger pies to share amongst their members.

People have been asking for years how long it would take before TV money destroyed college football, and whether this realignment has done that is up for debate. But it’s hard to argue that it didn’t destroy the regional distinctiveness that gave college sports their magic to begin with.

Breaking down geographic borders

The breakdown of geographic borders in college football is just a small example of a similar, much larger trend.

For most of human history, we were tied to our local communities. The main constraints were resources – time, money, energy – which were required to traverse long distances. It was hard to justify traveling thousands of miles unless you had a super compelling reason to do so.

Now, flights are more accessible, the internet makes working from anywhere a reality for many, and slowly but surely, geographic barriers are no longer stopping us from interacting with others all around the world.

But with the new college football realignment, specifically, there’s an even bigger trend playing out – the commercialization of everything, and the loss of regional and cultural distinctiveness across society.

The commercialization of everything

While the conference realignment will make the schools more money from TV deals, it misses the point.

What gave college football its charm to begin with was the entire experience around the games – the historic rivalries, the banter between visiting fans when teams nearby played each other, the tailgating and traditions that bred camaraderie and community.

And it’s not to say that all of those things will be gone, but too often we see commercialization ruining the parts of the thing that made the thing so enjoyable to begin with.

My friend, Billy Oxley, wrote a thoughtful piece on this topic of what he calls “Cultural Moneyballism” and how it’s popping up all across society. He argues that the “mass-market-ification” of everything leads to less “personality” and more of everything looking the same.

And personally, I think one of the best parts of college sports is the traditions of different schools, the game day rituals, camaraderie, and local intricacies that make each team unique.

Even in college basketball, the small conferences with the Cinderella stories, the underdogs we all want to root for, and the history surrounding teams of all sizes and locations keep the game exciting (beyond the athletic talent itself).

Instead, we’re now left with two super-conferences – the Big Ten and the SEC – essentially controlling the pie that is college sports, while the smaller conferences still remaining are left with the crumbs.

And beyond just football, what does this mean for the other sports that don’t produce as much revenue? Track & Field, Swimming, Wrestling – with already extremely limited budgets relative to their Football and Basketball peers, how will the significantly further distances to competitions affect the players and fans?

Not every team has the luxury of flying across the country for competitions every weekend. This will cost a lot more money to travel, but it will also cost athletes academically with increased time off school and classes.

Football players will be fine. The realignment was made for them, and they have the budget & resources to handle it.

In reality, people will still want to watch football, and the players will still want to play. That’s all that really matters for the TV networks who pay the schools.

But the schools have become so focused on money that they forget about the athletes that actually have to deal with the consequences of their decisions.

Oligopoliztation breeds monoculture

What we’re seeing here is nothing short of an oligopoly – where a few small market participants control the majority of a market.

And what we’ve seen throughout history is that when competition degrades, making it near impossible for new entrants, the distinctiveness of the product goes down.

For example, in the real estate world, a few large developers are owning more and more market share, and new apartments all look like this:

In the automotive industry, 3 manufacturers own the majority of the market, and cars have lost the distinctiveness they once had:

And we see this trend play out all across our lives. If you still aren’t convinced, check out Billy’s full article for countless other examples.

One of my favorite things about the New York restaurant scene is how so many restaurants aren’t chains, but independently owned by families or smaller restaurant groups and have been around for generations.

These restaurants hold on to a cultural distinctiveness that gives not only great vibes and unique dining experiences, but also significantly better food and higher quality ingredients than their large chain counterparts.

I like to think that the same is true of college sports – the unique traits of each conference and school, the ability to support a number of other sports beyond just football, traits that we’ve all enjoyed for decades, have real value. I hope oligopolization doesn’t take that way.

Regardless of how the college football conference realignment plays out, I think the bigger theme is that we’re trending towards a single monoculture across America, one where geographic bounds are removed, one where we have to be careful celebrating cultural traditions lest someone get the wrong idea and cancel us, and one where a few large players control the majority of wealth and market share.

In our careers, we see nearly all of the smart, talented young pursuing certain careers not necessarily because they want to, but because society tells them it’s the right thing to do.

But as we discussed before, being different can be a good thing in many ways, both for ourselves and for groups at-large.

What I implore each of us – whether ourselves, our businesses, things we create, whatever it is – is to be different. Be unique. Be distinct.

Pursue intrinsic meaning rather than external validation. Celebrate traditions, even if they seem weird. Don’t create something we don’t like just because we think others will like it.

Personally, this blog is an amalgamation of random things I find interesting. I could write about what I think will get the most clicks/shares, but that would be inauthentic. By just writing about what’s on my mind and what interests me (everything from college football to running to money & philosophy), I can be uniquely myself, and that’s something no one else can replicate.

It seems like the modern world is converging toward a single monoculture without personality. Maybe our purpose, the meaning we derive from this thing called life, is to fight that force and be different.

Bringing it all back to college football (as we’ve detoured from the original topic a bit), money matters.

We can’t ignore that fact, and money creates access and influence that is nearly impossible to gain without it.

Most major colleges serve three functions:

1. Providing education, life experience, and credentials to tuition-paying students

2. Performing world-class research

3. Having good sports teams that draw fans and community support

Without 1 and 2, colleges wouldn’t exist.

College football has certainly provided incredible value to the schools that they wouldn’t have enjoyed without it. But as is often the case, money complicates things.

Money talks, and it often comes out on top. And rather than complain about it, the least we can do is focus on creating things of value for those around us, being uniquely ourselves, and taking steps each day to fight the forces of monoculture.

-Owen

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