ESPN college football play-by-play announcer Chris Fowler appeared on The Paul Finebaum Show on Tuesday afternoon to discuss many hot topics around college football, and of course, the “Fair Pay to Play” act came up in discussion. During the conversation, Fowler presented what he seems to consider a potential problem with each college football player profiting off their own name, image and likeness.

“Let’s just say athletes can now benefit from their name and likeness to get paid. Has anybody thought about how that works? So here’s a company, let’s just say, for the sake of argument, there’s a company in Birmingham that really values the name and likeness of every Alabama player,” Fowler said. “You have a free market economy where all of the sudden the name and likeness is worth $100 grand to everyone on that roster to this company, which really wants Alabama to win.

“Now you’re writing checks everywhere left and right, and it’s a bidding war. That’s not beyond the realm of possibility if the wild west were to break out and this rule were enacted, and that’s just one small example of a problem.”

Listen to Fowler’s full example of this issue here:

With these comments Fowler sounds like a member of the college sports “old-guard” who will think of any possible excuse to keep college football the way its been for 150 years. Yes, Fowler is correct that a football player will have more opportunities for endorsements with a school like Alabama, but the Crimson Tide football program is already giving kids more future football advantages than other less prominent programs. That’s no different than if one graduated with a business degree from Harvard as opposed to a Division III school.

The Alabama football brand carries weight, particularly in the southeastern part of the country, and always has.

Furthermore, if my math is correct, Fowler’s example has a business in Birmingham paying out $8.5 million in endorsement deals if each Alabama player is really worth $100,000. I write for a living, so ask me to run your business accounts, but boy, it doesn’t seem like a company in the state of Alabama would ever come close to making back $8.5 million if it were to use the entire Crimson Tide football team in endorsements for that cost.

Yes, Fowler’s correct that Alabama companies want the Crimson Tide to win, but don’t companies in say, Green Bay, Buffalo and Pittsburgh want their NFL teams to win? In theory, the better the Packers, Bills and Steelers do, the more revenue grocery stores, companies that sell football merchandise, and other businesses using NFL players on those teams for endorsements would make.

But fans don’t see NFL teams pairing up with Dick’s Sporting Goods to provide potential free agents that could help the team win endorsements deals as incentive signing bonuses.

Actually, the bidding war that Fowler is describing, if it were ever to happen, sounds an awful lot like a free market, which is encouraged in just about every American field of business.