Ryen Russillo wants Big Ten leadership to ‘f*ck off’ with equity deal: ‘Why can’t you fix this?’

Michigan and USC appear to have stalled a proposed deal between the Big Ten and the University of California system’s investment fund for now, but the dam may not hold for long.

And as college sports conferences and athletic departments signal a willingness to go to such extreme lengths to raise a mere $2.4 billion, longtime sports host Ryen Russillo is waving a red flag.

The proposal between UC Investments and the Big Ten would have delivered cash payments to each conference program on a tiered basis. The top schools would receive nearly $200 million, while the bottom-rung schools would get closer to $100 million. While Michigan appeared to have more material concerns about striking such a deal, USC seems to have backed out over its placement within these tiers.

In response to programs searching for cash as a response to supposed increased costs in college football, Russillo delivered a simple message on Wednesday on The Ryen Russillo Show.

“Let me share my sympathies to the programs that are in debt because of costs: F*ck off. I hope that was clear,” he said.

“If you look at college football and the structure of how lucky the people running this have been, you had free labor for decades, and then once the NCAA was like, ‘We probably can’t hold them off much longer,’ we’ll let someone else pay them through NIL. And then we had this thing pass where you can pay $20 million for your team, I’m not really sure how any of that works.”

Russillo broke down why, while newly approved direct payments to NCAA athletes and rising coach costs are real, he sees no end in sight for revenue. In short, there is no “bubble,” Russillo argued.

When you factor in programs’ ability to raise money from boosters, who arguably have a greater ability to drive winning with their dollars than ever before, Russillo can’t believe schools expect anyone to think they need cash.

“It’s one thing for the boosters to help with the NIL, they’re helping, if not paying all of the (coach’s) buyout,” Russillo pointed out. “And these programs are like, ‘We need to find a way to get more cash to get ourselves out of the red.'”

The problem, as Russillo has pointed out in his coverage for years, is that colleges and athletic departments do not show restraint in their spending. The tales of past big slides in the practice facility or a recording studio for NIL opportunities have been replaced by this season’s coaching musical chairs.

Players earning $20 million total per university is not changing the economics of college football nearly as much as fiscal irresponsibility, Russillo argued.

“Sure, the salaries keep going up. It’s an arms race every single year. You have to have the updated practice facility that you’re showing to recruits,” he said. “But when you look at these projections, and you say you’re likely going to be making double per team by 2030 than what you were making in 2023 or 2024, why can’t you fix this? Why do you need to do something like this?”

Zooming out, Russillo likened athletic departments’ balance-sheet mistakes to the broader culture on college campuses. He pointed out that, just as athletic departments argue they need direct cash infusions to stay afloat, university tuition has skyrocketed decade by decade.

Russillo questioned whether the cries for cash are a byproduct of truly rising costs, an increased value placed on the products and services a college sells, or merely something that looks more like greed.

“There’s plenty of this stuff that I don’t understand. What I do know is that no matter what happens, the cash isn’t there to solve anything as much as it’s there just to be spent.”