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Coronavirus tackles colleges looking for football money

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College football is a mindbogglingly commercial enterprise. For everyone, that is, but the people who actually play it. That’s why many players and now …
College football is a mindbogglingly commercial enterprise. For everyone, that is, but the people who actually play it. That’s why many players and now the Big 10 university presidents are throwing flags on a fall season. The financial incentives are to do just the opposite. Propelled by a deluge of ads, an average game now runs to a stupefying 3 hours 24 minutes — 16 minutes longer than NFL games and 23 minutes longer than what college games lasted in the mid-1990s. Ads, moreover, are omnipresent in stadiums and in the names of bowl games. And the people who profit from this largess can’t get enough of them. Television networks crave college football as an anchor to their fall lineups and pay billions for rights. Sports apparel makers use it as a kind of marketing platform. And, of course, universities turn themselves inside out in pursuit of more and more football revenue. For decades, this uniquely American system of student-athletes working for tuition, room and board while others cashed in worked fine. But as the money has risen to astronomical heights, college football has begun to look less amateur than exploitative.

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