Over the past two years, I have begun to feel my decline in sports participation. You could offer the old man take of, “the game is not the same,” but I choose to dig deeper into myself. At first I blamed my experience working in sports. I thought maybe because of that I over consumed it, and in gluttony, lost my love for it.
Again, I felt this was too simple. I thought about why I loved sports in the first place. I love going to games. I love watching film of old games. Why would this part of me die? It drove me to do anything in the industry at all. It got me my first job(s) in football play-by-play analytics. In my exploration of this, I chose to go to more Titans’ games with my Dad last year. Obviously, the Titans were terrible last year. The football was beyond unenjoyable. Cam Ward calling us “ass” was beyond apt. Yet, I still found myself having fun. The motion of defenses ruining our star QB, it is something that is still somewhat cool to see. A chess game of 22 people in real time. I find it engrossing, and truly fascinating that we can coordinate like that with each other as humans so well, and bring such ferocity.
As I left my final game last season, at the now named Nissan Stadium, I looked at the giant block being built next to it. I sighed and remembered how little our owners are going to pay for that stadium. I think about how this season (2026-2027) may be the last season I can afford Titans games for about 3 years. As soon as the new stadium is finished, the ticket prices will increase. No matter if the Titans are good or not. Across the league, and across all American sports leagues, we see cities put into this bind. “Fund this stadium or we will move” and when the city funds the stadium, very few see benefits from it.
This is the general strategy of the NFL and the rest of the American sports leagues. Price out the average fan and lean into corporate seat packages. Additionally, they know you are going to have to pay for their product either way. Let’s say, I promise my wallet, that I will not go to a Titans game in 2027-2028. I still want to watch the Titans on TV. Ignoring local blackouts, you can either buy Redzone (which has ads now) or you can get NFL Sunday Ticket for $240 a year. Ignoring the fact that the NFL regular season runs for 18 weeks (roughly 5 months), if I want to just watch the Titans, I have to buy something (or be a pirate).
I am picking on the NFL (because I hate them) but like I said earlier; this is a problem that is rising across all American sports. Most drastically, in Collegiate sports. The problem of a rising cost for fans, an exorbitant cost for local governments and schools, and an extreme profit for the sporting bodies and teams.
I have given up on going to Tennessee Volunteer games for the foreseeable future. You can call me broke. I call it irresponsible for my wallet. There’s little justification (in my mind) to pay for a ticket to see an 8 win team for nearly $300 in the Upper Deck. I want to be in Neyland when Lane Kiffin comes back with LSU, but I am not giving Ticketmaster a resale cut, fees, (for almost third of my rent) to see that. You can call it principled, but I call it pragmatic. You could say that Vol fans are just that passionate and “everyone wants to be there.” To some degree that is true, and does move the needle. However, Ticketmaster allows botted resellers. Ticketmaster is known to work with ticket selling entities, to provide additional cuts on resales (look at the World Cup 2026/FIFA). Not to mention, the University of Tennessee just flat out told fans tickets would be more expensive because of NIL. You could accept this at face value, but you’d risk being naïve.
In the fiscal year of July 1, 2022, through June 30, 2023, the Tennessee Athletic Department announced a record revenue of $202 million. At the end of the 2024 season, spending estimates put the school’s football roster at around $11 million. In 2026, Tennessee brought in the #1 transfer portal class for Rick Barnes (to waste). That is estimated to have cost the school between $18 to $20 million.
These are indeed large numbers. The largest numbers spent (by all schools) ever for collegiate athletes. I will spare you my long-winded opinion on why this is overdue (for now). Only to say, the system is broken. It has been for a long time. The business of raising athletes in this country is fundamentally flawed. First and foremost, the athletic departments are not helping the schools enough. Tuition rose nearly $2,000 for in-state students at UTK while I was there (2016-2020). In the 2020 season, they fired their 2nd head coach in 4 seasons. The schools are making record profits, and they are the pipeline system. Keep in mind that they are protected under the NCAA as well, so when they are reporting expenditures, none of that is taxed.
I find that the business of sports is killing my love for the game itself.
So much of my inspiration, and all of my work ethic was derived from athletics. It is a discipline that can serve you in your life. It is a lesson in comradery and community. It is a place for all of us to be equal and show who is best on any given day. Sports are romantic in the truest sense. In our world, one of the great equalizers is the field. You cannot claim to do or be something you are not. You cannot fake greatness. You cannot make it up. We are losing that to the soulless leagues that run our athletics. It is driven by their greed. This is not a revelation, but it needs to be a wake up call. In a capitalist society, there is only so much we can demand. We cannot solve capitalism through football or baseball; but we can protect the sports themselves.
One of the only decent things FIFA has ever done is establish the Football Associations (FAs) across the countries that participate in FIFA. These FAs allow countries to compete in the World Cup Qualifying, host a National League, a National Cup, and even participate in the Continental league structure. We have no such thing in the Untied States (other than the United States FA which I am not getting into). The closest thing we have is the MLB’s monopoly protection in 1922.
This is where we need reform. We need organization, and we needed it yesterday. To say we are in unprecedented times would be quite the understatement. We are fast approaching a day where one of the NCAA’s best options is going to be fighting for dominance as a professional league against their current partners. If you do not believe me, then I ask you to look ahead. Currently, the NCAA is mired in lawsuits about its tax exempt status, and its claims of amateurism. Threatening its tax exempt status. Let’s say they lose those cases in the next 5 years, how big will NIL have gotten by then? If the teams are being treated as professional, have bigger stadiums, turnouts, and could pay the players equally… its not implausible.
College football (and sometimes college basketball) is a place of “dark money”. The boosters of schools, and the money that comes raining in, is (and has been historically) truly unquantifiable because there is zero oversight. Its been well documented how boosters have paid players in the past, and now it is slightly above board. So now, the NCAA is buying time. Some schools are already spending the equivalent of a 1994 NFL roster, on one or two programs. This system also offers something the NFL does not. A place to operate outside of regulation, without a true agent, constant offers on your skills, and benefits of education! Its a market that is unregulated and will end up hurting the players and fans if it is not regulated.
In my honesty, if I had to choose one team between the Titans or the Vols, I would not hesitate to choose the Vols. Going to a game in Neyland Stadium is a religious experience. It is nothing short of spectacular, and the school knows that. When you see promos of UTK, it is almost always on Fridays (wear orange on Fridays) or game days. That is the lifeblood of more than the school, but the city of Knoxville itself. Put this into perspective. The local government just paid the Titans $900 million. Sure, we got the Super Bowl in Nashville for 2030, but that is one week of boosted revenue for the city. Try to compare that to what happens in Knoxville, Tennessee on an average Saturday. The amount of people that come into the city and spend money on god knows what, it is literally one of the main stimulants of the city’s economy.
I know it sounds crazy, but our framework is out of place. The other (extreme) alternative that we are heading towards while unregulated, is a complete bastardization of college sports. Where the professional status of schools reduces the league to less than 50 teams. The dreaded “Super Conferences”. We are at risk of losing the true traditions of our sport entirely because we are not looking at the battle behind the curtains or we think we cannot speak on it. The sanctity of our sports, are at risk, and the game(s) we love truly could be gone, forever.
The hope has always been in the fans though. We and the athletes we cheer on are the things that make sports great. Not billionaires, not boosters, and certainly not Rodger Goodell. Oversight is not a sexy thing, and it is not easy to advocate for in unison. However, it does work and can give us protection. Both from the greed of teams and leagues. In 2021, several team principals, and owners across Europe devised a league known as the Unify League (UL) or European Super League (ESL). Through massive fan backlash, player backlash, and support from UEFA, a majority of the teams withdrew (looking at you Real Madrid).
We as fans in America are capable of doing things like this. The NFL and NCAA do need your money, and they need your viewership. All of the leagues do. This article is not calling you to boycott sports though. I want us all to be more outspoken and bothersome. I want us to engage in the community of sports. Not ignore it. The greatest thing about fandom is the assumed togetherness, despite everything outside of that stadium going on. Very few places like that can exist in society, and they want to price us out of it.
Do you want to end blackouts? They could tomorrow if they wanted to. Do you want to see a price decrease? Start pirating and boycott their subscriptions. Do you want to see ticket price decreases? Organize fans to miss a preseason game or throw tomatoes at your owners box. I don’t care, get creative. Otherwise, your team is going to move, or your going to forget the last time you went to a game. There is a difference that you can make. We are the difference in the experience, fan cheering noises in an empty stadium during COVID felt as hollow as it looked. Fans are part of the experience, and thus should be active as such. We should be treated as such. We need to end the acceptance that we are a guaranteed margin in sports. A guarantee to the bottom line. We need to acknowledge the power in that “guarantee” and demand better.
At the end of this season, I will be attending the final Titans home game. I don’t care if I see kickoff, I just want to see the clock hit zero. The final seconds of the Titans in a stadium that stood for less than 3 decades. A stadium I grew up (and suffered) in harmoniously with the other Titans faithful. I don’t know when my next Titans game will be after that. I am assuming we won’t make the playoffs (unless the world is ending). I am going to try to watch it get demolished but jury’s out on the feasibility of that. The new stadium even comes with less seats and PSLs that are at least double what they cost 2 years ago in Nissan Stadium. I’ve thought about how this could be the last chance to get in on the Predators season ticket system. I need to get at least half seasons, and I can lock in my rate. This will be the last season that is affordable though, because Bridgestone is receiving a $700 million “update” in the Summer of 2027 (no the team is not paying for it).
Perhaps I am being dramatic. Perhaps I am broke. Perhaps we are not talking enough about this. I don’t want to pretend like I carry the one solution but we need to be having conversations. Somewhere, we have to draw the line. These leagues are making record revenues, profits, and everything just gets more expensive every season. There needs to be change, and we can be a part of it. There are so many avenues of organization in today’s society. Go bother a state rep, go start a fan forum or find one that exists (cause they do), or even just protest at the games by bringing a sign saying “End local blackouts”. The leagues actively try to keep “bad” fan signs away. They are silencing you so they can do whatever they want. So they can keep treating their fans like we are worse than the Metlife turf. They want the bargain to be, “we run the league you watch, you pay what we say and that is the cost.” Perhaps I find it silly to think that is fair.
Sources:
2 – https://utsports.com/news/2024/1/17/general-tennessee-athletics-reaches-new-revenue-milestone
3 – https://www.volnation.com/forum/threads/nil-spending-estimates-for-each-team-wow-on-tn.371024
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