College football is one of the hottest properties in broadcasting. The Big Ten Conference recently made a deal for more than $1 billion a year with several networks, mostly to air its football games. The College Football Playoff is expected to grow substantially from its current $470 million-a-year deal when it expands to 12 teams after the 2024 season, and further increase the value under its next deal two years later. So when the National Collegiate Athletic Association said last week that increasing its revenue is a top goal, it may not have seemed like a major challenge. But that’s not the way things work in big-time college football, whose leading conferences legally aren’t required to share a dime of their burgeoning riches with the NCAA.

---