On July 1, Crimson Brand Partners takes over commercial operations for University of Utah's athletics department as part of a $100+ million deal that routes most of the department's revenue streams into a new for-profit entity, backed by private equity firm Otro Capital.
My take--from that day forward, every feature of college sports life gets pushed towards one giant question: is this making us enough money?
Private equity is not philanthropy. It is an aggressive financial vehicle that buys established operations and hunts for ways to extract more return from the same underlying business, usually on a short time horizon, with investor money typically locked up for years. And it expects a return on that investment that beats the stock market.
I am not against people making money. But make no mistake, this is dangerous.
Apply that model to Utah's athletic department, and we already see what happens: In the weeks surrounding the finalization of the deal, there have been layoffs and restructuring as resources get shifted into Crimson Brand Partners. Some people have been invited to reapply under the new for-profit enterprise, which surely has its own – different – mission statement.
If the University isn't careful, educating athletes will be reframed as just another cost to be managed rather than a societal mission. Even more than before, college sports will become a financial asset, not a path towards human development.
Why? Because that PE investment return has to come from somewhere. And, as we know, the most monetizable asset is the athlete's performance on the field, packaged through NIL, media rights, biometrics sold into data-hungry markets, and other commercial deals that can funnel a premium back to the school and its investor-partners.
And Utah isn't alone: the Big 12 has its own PE deal with RedBird Capital, the Big Ten nearly signed one worth $2.4 billion, and Utah's AD says he's already fielding calls from other schools asking how to do the same.
College sports has always had money – that's not new. What's new is the rapid convergence of new technologies and incentives like AI and biometric tracking, all arriving at once, with no coherent regulatory framework built for any of it. And now PE – the investors contractually situated to reap the financial rewards from all of this activity.
In this new field of play, who is looking out for the athletes?