Today's Lesson: TV Eyeballs Make Geography & Tradition Blink
The last season of college football as we know it is fast approaching. Navy vs. Notre Dame on Saturday from Dublin. Enjoy the games!
Next year at this time, Oklahoma and Texas will be preparing for their Southeastern Conference debuts. UCLA and USC—and Washington and Oregon and ???—will have little Big Ten logos on their geographically challenged uniforms.
Honestly, this is one of the many moments when I miss my dear friend Chris Dufresne, who was the heart and soul of this TMG College Sports outpost of sanity. He would know how to make sense out of all this.
He would dislike it—maybe even hate it—as much as so many of us do. The blatant money-chasing in a so-called amateur sport has gotten so far out of hand.
In an effort to at least understand it—because I can’t imagine ever liking it—I have been trying to wrap my mind around a reasonable theory. And it is basically this: Whether we like it or not, college football conferences are basically emulating every other national-franchise business in America. They revolve around television networks and the exposure that comes with being beamed coast-to-coast.
I can the hear cynical, sardonic conversation I would have with Duf about this absurd reality. . . that it is more important for every conference to follow the Big Ten and have games being played in every time zone and as many major markets as possible than it is to preserve the sanctity—and sanity—of the traditions of a beloved sport.
Just the other day, for example, I realized that I had gone from thinking that Stanford and Cal in the Atlantic Coast Conference was really a stupid idea—to thinking it makes perfect sense, even though the thought still makes me bristle.
Note: Since I wrote the first draft of this column, the ACC reportedly is moving closer to deciding whether to add SMU as well as Stanford and Cal.
I’m sure Duf would have many more darkly practical examples of how a sport we love has been forever changed by chasing television revenue.
And what’s next? We would wonder.
The SEC and the Big Ten will realize that, if they can cut their current mega-TV deals as two superpowers, they can really knock things out of the park if they merge into one all-encompassing irresistible force.
And if they are really ruthless—which of course they are—they form a new entity. And invite a few ``outsiders’’ who bring eyeballs to the television table. Mainly ACC teams like Miami, Florida State and Clemson—whoever television wants.
And since everyone is ``reapplying for their jobs,’’ to use the corporate term, it’s easy to move forward without Northwestern and Vanderbilt and Rutgers and Mississippi State—whoever doesn't bring enough television eyeballs to the table.
Very sad? Yes. But very practical. One super-power football conference of, oh, 64, schools.
Then the remaining schools get together and work out their own football futures. Fewer dollars. But more sanity.
The other thing is, there needs to be a reordering of the rest of college athletics.
It will probably be difficult to cut basketball loose. The football juggernaut won’t want to give up NCAA tournament power and money. But at least let the other sports be organized in a geographically-correct, financially sane and athletically correct way.
At this point, Chris and I would sigh and shake our heads. But at least we would have a way to wrap our minds around the crazy turns that college football has taken.
We would also know that our future vision would be clouded by the unforeseen. Because while we love college football because it’s so unpredictable on the field, we also would realize that we hate how unpredictably the sport has veered off the field.