Once you start getting into 22m dollar annual rosters for basketball and 50m dollar rosters for football, the local tv commercial car dealer guy certainly helps, but we are reaching new levels of wealth to fund this type of stuff.
We know Ellison’s funding was primary in the Underwood signing this year for 10m+. Private equity money is likely going to be approved for the Big Ten in the 9 figures per school range. It was just reported Lombardi of UNC went to Saudi to try and fundraise. I think we are teetering on an edge similar to when all the Qatar/UAE/Saudi money poured into European soccer a decade or so ago and totally upended everything.
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Yes, but one Ellison or Les Wexner can dwarf an entire legion of car dealers with a stroke of the pen with negligible impact to their net worth. And if I had to guess, ADs have been tapping out their car dealers-level donors for a few years now. Those donors matter (especially for non-power programs who don’t have a sugar daddy), but there are levels to this.
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His son David is the media guy, and he’s a USC dropout and don’t believe he’s shown any interest in sports. I believe its Larry Ellison’s current wife (5th? 6th?) who is the Michigan fan, not David’s mother who was wife number 2 or 3.
Just did some pruning in here… appreciate the focus on the original topic
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