Colin Cowherd urges USC to act more Republican

If USC truly wants to rebuild their football program, Colin Cowherd believes he knows the key to success. They have to act more Republican.

The Athletic recently ranked the top-25 most valuable college football programs. USC ranked eighth on the list, but its average football revenue was 28th, trailing programs in much smaller markets such as Utah, Minnesota and Iowa.

Cowherd noted the California economy would rank as the fifth largest in the world. To further drive Cowherd’s point, California’s economy was recently updated to the fourth largest globally, surpassing Japan. Even Los Angeles County would rank as the 19th biggest economy in the world if it was its own country. Despite USC being in such a large market, it still fails to generate more football revenue than Utah and Minnesota.

“Democrats fall in love. Conservatives fall in line, they don’t get distracted…I’ve said this with college football, gotta be more like a Republican. Fall in line. Don’t worry about the rowing team…USC is highly political and highly distracted.” – Colin Cowherd pic.twitter.com/1nUis7nG3P

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) July 22, 2025

“For years and years people always worry about market size in sports,” Cowherd said. “Passion trumps market size. USC is an incredibly distracted market.”

Tuesday morning on First Take, ESPN’s Andrew Hawkins claimed the most valuable and marketable athletes play for the Dallas Cowboys because of their popularity. And that may have been true 20 years ago, but it isn’t the case anymore. Similarly, LeBron James didn’t have to play for the New York Knicks in the prime of his career to become a billion-dollar athlete. Cleveland and Miami worked out just fine for him. So, how does USC take advantage of their market size to boost their football revenue? Cowherd suggests they get more conservative.

“There’s an old saying in politics,” Cowherd said. “Democrats fall in love. Conservatives fall in line. They don’t get distracted. They find their candidate and they defend him. They get in line. Democrats, guy has a great speech, they fall in love. They don’t agree with everything, they fall out of love. Very emotional.

“And I’ve said this with college football, gotta be more like a Republican. Fall in line. Don’t worry about the rowing team. Don’t worry about who else is doing well. If you want to be a college football power, it’s all football. You gotta lean in. And USC is highly political and highly distracted and is very concerned about all the programs getting theirs. That doesn’t drive revenue.”

Credit Colin Cowherd for crafting an analogy that no other sports host could come up with. Because no one in mainstream sports media is better at dragging political analogies into the conversation than Cowherd. But this is one of the concerns around the revenue-sharing era in college sports. As most of that revenue gets shared with basketball and football programs, will they start dropping other sports?

Cowherd has been plugged in at USC. And as Cowherd looks at USC’s football revenue, he’s essentially urging them to stop worrying about their neighbor. You want to make more money? Hone in and get selfish.