Who will stop the enshittification of college sports?

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Because I am a super cool dude who absolutely knows how to relax, I read “Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It“ by Cory Doctorow right before football season started.

Enshittification, as it turns out, doesn’t just mean “to get worse over time," although Doctorow acknowledges in the book that many people use the term that way. It also doesn’t mean “I wanted to cuss in a news story but the AP Style Guide won’t let me do it unless I’m quoting a book title,” although that might be at least part of the reason the term took off. It actually refers to a specific way certain kinds of tech products get worse over time.

The product starts out serving the needs of users, becoming popular and building a large customer base. Then the product gets a little bit worse to benefit business partners (by, say, extracting user data to feed advertisers or interrupting the user experience with tons of ads). Then the platform gets worse for users and business partners, to the benefit of shareholders. But at that point, users and businesses are trapped, unable to easily leave as the product gets worse and worse.

Good examples of this phenomenon are Facebook, Amazon, Uber and Twitter.

Once enshittification gets going, it’s really hard to stop, especially since Big Tech can make it difficult for anybody to swap platforms or change services. Individual employees and managers can fight enshittification, as can robust antitrust enforcement, labor laws and consumer protection … but even then, it’s difficult to get anybody to throw their arms up and yell stop before it’s too late.

I’ve been concerned about this phenomenon in college sports for a while, and yesterday’s formal announcement of the expansion of the College Football Playoff to a whopping 24 teams next season just solidified those fears. I’m worried college football is heading down a path of slow enshittification, which a lot of people might not notice until it’s too late.