Throughout the chaos of the last five years brought upon by the current era of college athletics, the idea of private equity purchasing college football programs as they would professional teams has been discussed.
In this hypothetical world where entire programs are sold in order to keep up with the ever-growing demand as it relates to Name, Image and Likeness, certain programs would be worth a whole lot more, with teams in the SEC and Big 10 being evaluated at similar levels as NFL franchises.
The Athletic ranked the top-10 most valuable programs in college football based on what their hypothetical purchase price would be, and to no one’s surprise, the Texas Longhorns topped the list with half of the top-10 being made up of SEC teams.
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At a staggering near $2.5 billion, the Longhorns have become the biggest and most expensive brand in the sport. Not far behind is the Ohio State Buckeyes at $2.3 billion trailed by Notre Dame and Michigan, the only two other programs to cross the $2 billion threshold.
Georgia rounds out the top-five at $1.95 billion followed by Alabama at $1.8 billion, then Oklahoma and USC at both $1.6 billion.
Tennessee took the No. 9 spot at $1.57 billion, while Penn State rounded out the list at $1.4 billion. Four other SEC programs cross the $1 billion mark and all are ranked in the top-20 as well with LSU (No. 11) at $1.32 billion, Florida (No. 12) at $1.16 billion, Auburn (No. 14) at $1.11 billion, and Texas A&M (No. 17) at $1.05 billion.
Fans hope to never see the day where their beloved programs are sold, but it may not be all that far away if schools continue to struggle to keep up with the growing budget demands it takes to put a competitive roster on the field.
