LSU Ogden Honors College Joins SEC-Wide Initiative Examining the Future of College Athletics

HNRS 3100: The Future of College Athletics brings together honors students from ten SEC universities to explore the rapidly evolving business, legal, and media landscape of college sports.

BATON ROUGE, La. — The Roger Hadfield Ogden Honors College will offer HNRS 3100: The Future of Collegiate Athletics this fall as part of a first-of-its-kind collaborative initiative uniting honors programs at more than half of the Southeastern Conference.

College athletics is navigating its most disruptive era ever, driven by the transfer portal, name, image and likeness (NIL) rights, ongoing legal battles, and sweeping conference realignment. Honors colleges and programs at ten SEC universities are coming together to help students make sense of it all.

"I'm excited for our students to see how different things are at other SEC universities, but how some things are also very similar," said Joshua Jackson, Assistant Professor of Sport Communication in the Manship School of Mass Communication and HNRS 3100 instructor. "At the end, they'll connect the dots to learn just how much college athletics influences the world around them."

The hybrid course pairs virtual plenary sessions with athletics leaders and industry experts with institution-specific colloquia and in-person tours of athletic facilities. Students will explore revenue sharing models, athletic department budgeting, licensing, sports marketing, sports journalism, and the legal ramifications of recent policy shifts, gaining cross-institutional exposure that few undergraduates receive.

"Our Ogden Honors students are so fortunate to get a true 'behind the scenes' look at intercollegiate athletics at the highest level," said Jonathan Earle, Dean of the Roger Hadfield Ogden Honors College. "As I always say, it's both athletics and honors that have the five-star recruits."

The initiative grew out of the 2025 SEC Honors Conference in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where honors leaders proposed a shared, conference-wide conversation on the future of college athletics. Participating universities include LSU, Auburn, Mississippi State, Texas A&M, Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, and South Carolina.