How about returning to the tradition of college sports being merely a recreational break from academics, where scholastic merit cannot be trumped by athletic ability, and where the highest paid employees of states are not football coaches?
I spent a term as an exchange student at the Catholic University of America, a smallish university with a completely unexceptional D3 football programme staffed with actual students. And they got two thousand people to their football games! Much of the campus! Alumni! People who lived in Brookland and fancied some live sport!
I mean, I knew how seriously people take high school football too. But even really good UK university sport can play to an audience of the players supportive romantic partners only. A different (and quite refreshing) world.