The Tennessee 10% Ticket Surcharge is Only a Beginning

By Rock Westfall

On Tuesday, the Tennessee Volunteers made a significant announcement to their loyal season ticket holders. They revealed that a 10% talent fee would be added to the cost of 2025 season tickets. This fee, a part of the Vols NIL program, will be used to compensate players.

The new policy has caused plenty of rage from media and fans, but to Tennessee’s credit, they are striking while the iron is hot. The Vols are 3-0 and have been winning dominantly. This week, Tennessee hits the road to face the Oklahoma Sooners in one of the biggest games of the weekend. Vol Nation has restored the roar and has that good old feeling back. In turn, UT athletics had already been seriously investing in players and coaches, including a new deal for coach Josh Heupel in 2023.

This new NIL-oriented initiation will only be the start in college football. It is safe to bet on other top or aspiring programs to follow suit. While charges of greed are understandable, it must be pointed out that Tennessee is simply implementing the time-old adage about capitalism to charge as much as the market will bear.

As history has shown with seat licenses, once such changes are introduced, there's no turning back. Fans should prepare for the inevitability of these new fees.

The 2020s Version of Seat Licenses

A generation or so ago, college football programs began charging long-time, loyal season ticket holders a seat license fee, which fans had to pay a separate fee to purchase tickets. At the time, there was outrage and stories about Grandma and Grandpa being moved to the end zone or priced out of their seats altogether. Yet the schemes worked, and most fans paid, with new ones replacing those who wouldn’t or couldn’t.

What must be remembered about any college football price gouging is that after the cries of greed and vows not to pay, everyone goes ahead and pays anyway.

In fact, you can make a case that the greed was worse in the case of seat licenses than the new talent surcharges. The NCAA House case is up in the air, and nobody knows for sure what the final NIL and revenue structure will look like and who will be responsible for NIL.

Additionally, as we have seen with cases like Florida and Jaden Rashada , rich boosters are discovering that teenage football players are a riskier investment than international emerging markets run by tinpot dictators. Thus, there is a noticeable drop in enthusiasm and investments for private investors getting involved in NIL.

Rick Neuheisel of Sirius XM College Sports Radio believes that the NCAA will have to enter a collective bargaining agreement with the players to facilitate the institutions themselves paying NIL. If that's the case, Tennessee is looking like a visionary in this effort.

Fans Enable the Greed and Abuse

Before NIL, the schools indeed had the upper hand. And the multi-million-dollar coaching contracts and buyouts became indefensible. But now the pendulum has swung with player’s rights complete with exotic luxury cars and millions of dollars in payments to the best players.

Legislatures in states like Missouri have passed laws to make it easier to retain in-state talent with NIL. And now Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek is proposing that citizens donate at least $25, if not $100, per month for NIL. It has all become undeniably ridiculously shameful. Yet it is on some level necessary.

While it is easy and partially justifiable to rant at the schools for bilking the fans and donors to increase the NIL, there is a reason why it's being done: Because it can be done.

Personal seat licenses and NIL surcharges would end immediately if fans made a goal-line stand and simply did not pay, even at the cost of losing season tickets or even the loss of games. Instead, after some muttering and grumbling, the fans pony up every time.

We have reached a point in all sports where there appear to be no limits on what fans will sacrifice in personal dignity or financial support for their programs. The cost of attending a major professional or college sporting event has reached irrational levels, and the constant commercial breaks during games are beyond the point of being blatantly disrespectful of fans’ time.

But we have also reached the point where fans have no right to complain. They are enabling everything. Stop paying, attending, and watching commercial fest TV broadcasts if you don’t like it.

Those who don’t respect themselves do not deserve it from others, so spare me your crying towels.

Write that check, bro.