Posted on 01/06/2015 2:04:12 PM PST by dangus
For universities looking to make their football teams nationally known and profitable, the great college-football realignment is likely coming to completion. There are fewer major conferences. Just a few short years ago, the Big East was 5-0 in bowl games, but now survives only as the weak American Athletic Conference. The WAC no longer sponsors football at all. The Conference USA is an empty shell. Even the Mountain West Conference, despite subsuming the best of the WAC and Big West, is weaker than it once was.
The Big 12 may be looking to expand back to 12 teams from 10. That will be the last chance any up-and-coming teams will have to hit the big time. Some say the Big 10 could still pluck Texas from the Big 12, but that would be bad for the up-and-comers: such a move would be more likely to trigger a Big-East-style collapse of the Big 12 than make room for new teams in a power conference. So two teams will move up to the big time. My advice to the rest of the conferences is to disband.
One new power conference could possibly emerge, but at the cost of all other football conferences. Sports hates odd numbers, and there will be plenty of also-rans after the Big 12 takes its pick of them. These teams -- minus the two that get promoted -- could form a trans-American conference like the AAC hoped it could become: Air Force, BYU, Boise St., Rice, Houston, Utah St., Memphis, Cincinnati, E. Carolina, Navy, S. Florida, C. Florida, Memphis, Army and Marshall. You can see where there would be natural East and West divisions.
But to any team that does not form such a Conference of Miscellaneous Teams: give up football. A 50,000-seat stadium is too expensive for six home games per year. So is chartering a jet of 85 players… and paying for 85 scholarships. Even with all the licensing, TV deals, etc., only the best of the best football programs actually come anywhere near covering their costs. Far more cost each student thousands of dollars over four years.
Yes, a surge to national prominence can lift an entire school; just ask the University of Maryland. But Maryland was already in a major conference. Sorry, U-Conn: the only way you're going to attract attention is by resuming your greatness in basketball. Maybe Georgetown and Villanova will still let you play with them. Meanwhile, do you know what's *not* good for your reputation? Creating an entire program of courses that 85 football players can pass.
I'm not calling football players dumb jocks. Many professional athletes are far more intelligent than anyone suspects. But college football players are not putting academics first, and if we're talking about building national reputations, the courses *should* be challenging to someone who *is* putting academics first.
Time to move on. There's always basketball. And if you're trying to find something to excite your student body on a Saturday afternoon and you only have 15,000 fans to entertain, a 15,000-seat arena just makes more sense than an 80,000-seat stadium. Or you could actually put the focus of a university athletics program back on such things as health, sportsmanly competition and such by promoting participation rather than spectating. And we could save billions of dollars to put to education.
Title IX is doing that already.....................
Good point: Title IX raised the cost. Now the schools have to pay for 170 scholarships to offer 85 football scholarships.
Just do away with conferences and have the NFL create a farm system like baseball, that will take out some of the insanity and they can play for school again and not the hope of a NFL payday.
For me I'd rather watch High School football and then College long before the Pros. Seems High Schoolers and even college ‘Students’ love to play the game for the game as opposed to the money.
Frankly, you’re right. I think that’s EXACTLY what should happen. But the profitable teams will never go for it. And as one who advocates subsidiarism, I couldn’t support Congress forcing them to do it. I could even picture supporting Congress labeling football subsidies a misuse of federal funds, but that would only drive out the unprofitable ones.
I tell you what: If only about 50 colleges actually paid football scholarships, you’d get rid of a LOT of the corruption of high school sports!
The Power 5 teams need to play each other with the exceptions you mentioned of the legit non-Power 5 teams. No more FCS schools, not more directional schools, no more “choir boy” schools like Incarnate Word. The SEC West got exposed during Bowl Season because as a whole their non-conference schedules are a joke. I have zero respect for Baylor. If you they want to be considered legit then have a legit non-conference schedule. These joke programs survive because of the pay check they get when they play a Power 5 program. Cut off that money and these programs will disappear of move down to their proper level whether FCS or D-II.
Leave it alone. Now in caps: LEAVE IT ALONE!
I’m sorry, but IMO there’s something fundamentally broken about wasting your time watching a sporting event, when you’re not related to anyone on the field.
Four Power Conferences (absorb the Big 12 into the other conferences)
Each conference can have three or four divisions where each team plays the other in their division.
Then you have conference semi-finals at the home stadium of the higher seeded team, then the usual Conference Championship Game, with the four conference champions playing in the playoffs just like they are now.
And voila! There’s your 16-team playoff.
I cant even figure out this kooky “bowl” game system. There must be 100s of them!
Do they even have a meaning?
Bowl Games are now the College Football version of the NIT. Meaningless.
“Open for debate: Let’s Get Rid of MOST College Football Programs”
No.
I win.
I agree, and while we’re at it, let’s not go to an art gallery when we aren’t related to the artists. And don’t get me started about going to a concert where you’re nephew isn’t the bass player!
Yes.
They soothe my soul.
I have a hard time understanding the size and scope of the college sport business at what is supposed to be an academic institution.
Baylor haters gonna hate.
Might be a pretty big dent in the supply of circuses.
Need to reduce scholarships to 60. Perhaps over next 10 years.
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