Billion Dollar Ball – Gilbert Gaul on Money in College Football

In his latest book “Billion Dollar Ball: A Journey Through The Big-Money Culture Of College Football”, Pulitzer prize winning author Gilbert Gaul examines the money culture of college football and how it has come to dominate a surprising number of colleges and universities.  Gaul tells host Frank Dubofsky says that the University of Oregon exemplifies emerging relationships between universities and corporations in branding colleges through their football team. “Oregon is a perfect example of the scaling up of college football. It’s had good teams on and off across time but it’s only really in the last decade…that Oregon has ranked in the top ten…and you can tie that right back to decisions that were made, including Phil Knight at Nike, in which they wanted to ramp up the football program in branding the University, to get it on television, to get it to its rightful place as a football power and began investing huge amounts of money.”