Todd’s Take: What If Indiana Athletics Was Separated From The University?

Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhart said the Wildcats’ continuing mission is to “put championship rings on fingers” and he believes this new approach makes that more possible.

“How we finance our teams, protect our future and support our student athletes – will have to change,” Barnhart said in a UK Now story, a news source run by the university.

“That’s what this new model represents – an understanding that in the market we are in that we have to be creative. We have to find new ways to generate revenue, manage expenses and think about opportunities to grow,” Barnhart added.

Kentucky’s new model is interesting, but it is still attached to the university at the hip. I would imagine it would be a bridge way too far for fans who prefer the college athletics model over pro sports to have it any other way.

Still, you hear things now and again. Usually just hypothetical theories thrown against the wall, nothing actionable, about how the brands that make up college athletics might split completely from affiliation with the universities they’ve been identified with. That they could become their own entity. Very close to, if not openly professional.

You hear this idea raised up the flagpole for a number of reasons. Athletic departments could have independence outside university rules, structure and politics. To get around restrictions or square them that could be imposed by a governance structure or the courts. Or to allow big-time sports like football to operate without regard to other sports in the athletic department.

It’s all talk, and nothing has moved in this direction. But it doesn’t feel outside the realm of possibility. Kentucky’s move on Friday may not be a slippery slope to something like this, but the hill is getting muddy.

Why would separating the athletic department from the university be possible or desirable? The idea is grounded in the notion that the brand name of big-time athletics is enough to sustain itself as an entity separate from university structure.

For example, Indiana Hoosiers is a brand, one that is coveted and protected by Indiana University. But everything that comes with “Hoosier Nation” is something you could easily envision standing up on its own. After all, fans have been supporting Indiana athletics for over 100 years. It’s something that has become an entity all its own over time.

Many Indiana fans are proud alumni of Indiana University, but many Indiana fans are not. The IU athletics brand has sway from border-to-border inside the state in a way no other school can match – not even Notre Dame.

You see IU flags and banners hanging on houses of alums and non-alums alike. Being an Indiana fan is about state pride as much as it is university pride, and most Big Ten schools benefit from the same dynamic.

How would you feel if it wasn’t IU athletics but just “Indiana Hoosiers”, a pro or semi-pro brand? Existing inside a “Big Ten” unmoored from colleges entirely?

Perhaps these Hoosiers still play in the same facilities on the Bloomington campus and chase an evolved version of championships we’ve grown accustomed to, most likely not run by the NCAA, but by whatever new entity sprang up to replace it.

It could be, in most ways, like college sports have always been, at least for major college programs, but it’s not a college enterprise anymore.

Would you still support it? How important is it to you that Indiana athletics is affiliated and tethered to Indiana University?

I think it’s fascinating to ponder. I also think it’s such a radical scenario to wrap your head around that most fans would initially recoil against it. There’s good reason for that. Things like four-year eligibility could be gone. The notion of the student-athlete itself would be consigned to history.

There are fans who like college sports for what they are – or were. There are already sizable groups of fans who hate NIL and will likely hate the revenue sharing to come too.

Would depending on brand loyalty be the cash grab that would finally see college sports to fly too close to the sun and kill the golden goose?

We’re not there yet, so it’s nothing to worry about in the here and now, but changes like the one Kentucky approved on Friday continue to come. The creep toward professionalism continues apace.

It’s also instructive to remember that the college landscape as it currently exists would have been unthinkable a decade ago. Life moves pretty fast.

So who knows? “Indiana, Our Indiana” is sung with pride “for the glory of old IU.” It’s not out of the realm of possibility to think that someday fighting for the Cream and Crimson could be for the glory of something else.