God dammit do I hate this.
What's sad is the Cal football social media/promo team has to just keep posting and doing its thing.
Current day version of the band playing while the titanic is sinking.
Which is extra sad because it's not even entertaining. Like, if there was ever a time to start sh*tposting, this is it.
Came to post about this. I’m so annoyed. What made college football worth watching were the regional rivalries. If where we land is a junior version of the NFL, I will watch it even less than I do now, which isn’t much.
I’m a huge Oregon State fan, owing to their basketball games showing up late at night on ESPN when I was a kid. Gary Payton and those Ralph Miller coached teams. I almost went to school there and walked on.
My wife and I had football tickets at the end of the 90s into the mid 2000s before our lives got busier and traveling to Corvallis was a hardship. We were in the stadium when Simonton, Jonathan Smith and the group beat USC en-route to a Fiesta Bowl win. Still one of my favorite experiences as a fan. It’s a tragedy that will all go away.
That said, there’s a part of me that hopes they land in a regionally coherent conference like the Mountain West and maintain some of the vibe of the PAC 12 while the rest of college football continues to morph into something unrecognizable.
Also I’d be remiss if I didn’t add that in my opinion the real villain in all of this is the growth at all costs mindset that’s beset college athletics.
At some point if there had been a cap on donations and some sanity in how these TV deals were handled we could have prevented this game of escalation that’s wiped out rivalries and any sense of regional coherence.
In short time college athletics might just become literally a minor league system for pro sports with scant attachment to schools. Maybe that’s for the best in the end.
I mean, I agree with you DS, but as I alluded to earlier, I am old enough to remember when Penn State killed its rivalry with my favorite school at the time, WVU. And when WVU moved to the BIG EAST to be a football power (and then drug most of the rest of its sports along with it). And of course, when WVU moved to the Big 12, where at the time it's closest regional rival was Iowa State, a mere 850 miles away.
And I can't tell you how many times my beloved Marshall debased itself and tore up regional rivalry to better its football money. When I was in High School, they were winning 1AA national championships, before joining the MAC, Conference USA, and now the Sun Belt.
Sadly, I think you are nostalgic for a time that, at least in my life, never existed.
Oregon and Oregon state played each other for a good 126 years. The PAC-10 has mostly been intact since the 1950s. So I don’t think that’s true for my sports history.
The other teams I closely followed (BYU and Boise State) had a rockier history, but still managed to maintain some rivalries for decades.
I can’t speak for the SEC, Big 10 or Big 12, but I feel like there are other core rivalries that have been around for a while until recently.
Yeah, and those schools played each other to make money. Not out of some sense of competition or state pride or any other reason. Those 100+ year-old rivalries are there for one of two reasons:
1. They make money for the two schools involved, or
2. Some state legislature wrote it into law to gain easy political wins (e.g. Florida vs. Florida State).
College football (and to a lesser extent other college sports) are there to generate money for the college--either directly or indirectly (i.e. alumni donations, increased enrollment, merch sales, etc.). And the second any college or university sees the chance to get a bigger bag of money somewhere else, most of them will take it.
Regardless of why they played each other (I’m positive there were multiple reasons) regional coherence led to rivalries that existed for decades and soon won’t. That’s sad. Rivalries where fans could easily travel and see the same teams and sometimes fans for decades. Something will be lost.
I remember someone writing on Twitter once that Americans don’t have anything like European soccer. What we have instead is college football. It seems like a shame to throw that away, regardless of why it came into being.
College football (and to a lesser extent other college sports) are there to generate money for the college--either directly or indirectly (i.e. alumni donations, increased enrollment, merch sales, etc.).
Only sport that makes real money is football in most schools. There's a bit with basketball depending on the school, but the rest of the sports at most schools lose money and are paid for by football dollars.
That's why all these crazy things are being led by football. Which is why this statement by Missouri's Eli Drinkwitz carries so much weight for me:
UpToIsomorphism wrote:College football (and to a lesser extent other college sports) are there to generate money for the college--either directly or indirectly (i.e. alumni donations, increased enrollment, merch sales, etc.).
Only sport that makes real money is football in most schools. There's a bit with basketball depending on the school, but the rest of the sports at most schools lose money and are paid for by football dollars.
That's why all these crazy things are being led by football. Which is why this statement by Missouri's Eli Drinkwitz carries so much weight for me:
That’s perfect. Of course, coaches salaries are part of what led us here. Coaches salaries and a lack of revenue sharing with the players that would have enabled other revenue streams like video games. But either way he’s right.
This is why I honestly hope Oregon State lands in the Mountain West or the PAC just reforms with the MW. I don’t want to see OSU players having to travel to their “rival” on the East Coast.
UpToIsomorphism wrote:College football (and to a lesser extent other college sports) are there to generate money for the college--either directly or indirectly (i.e. alumni donations, increased enrollment, merch sales, etc.).
Only sport that makes real money is football in most schools. There's a bit with basketball depending on the school, but the rest of the sports at most schools lose money and are paid for by football dollars.
That's why all these crazy things are being led by football. Which is why this statement by Missouri's Eli Drinkwitz carries so much weight for me:
As someone who used to be in meetings at a school where our Men's BB team would make the NCAA tourney every 3-4 years, I can tell you that the number of applicants and enrollment would increase based on our performance in that tournament. And that our success in one of the non-revenue generating sports (wrestling) would increase our alumni donations, not just to wrestling but to academic programs.
For most schools, it is all about the money.
I’m struggling to see what your point is. Yes, the ravages of capitalism in America cause us to underfund education. Everyone has to be mindful of money. That doesn’t mean schools aren’t trying to do the right thing and might not prefer a different economic arrangement if one were possible.
That is my point. I don't think most AD, school presidents, or boards of regents are money-grubbing assholes. I think most are desperate to keep their schools afloat and will jump at any chance to make that work. It's a bad system, but we don't have the political ability or will to change it.
I’m struggling to see what your point is. Yes, the ravages of capitalism in America cause us to underfund education. Everyone has to be mindful of money. That doesn’t mean schools aren’t trying to do the right thing and might not prefer a different economic arrangement if one were possible.
The problem is there is not one possible. Oregon, U$C, stanfurd can probably just snap their fingers have have millions flow in from alumni... the other schools can't. Cal can probably do it for academics, but definitely not athletics.
Larry Scott *thought* he could do exactly this... creating and owning the Pac-12 network to showcase non-football student athletes... building the Pac-12 HQ in the most expensive city in America so it could be closer to the technological capital of the country, one long-time ESPN Pac-12 writer reposted a statement Scott made when he negotiated the last deal basically saying.. "we dont' need partnerships with ESPN, instead we've decided to partner with Alibaba" (the gigantic Chinese multimedia company). He thought he could expand and find other money because "broadcast TV" was old and dying, and put all his eggs, and our collective Pac-12 university's eggs in that basket and turns out the only thing people care about is watching kids bash their heads against each other on Saturday afternoon.
One of the Cal bloggers I follow summed it up. "But college football's main audience is now the casuals who like gambling, playoff talk & NFL draft watching. Not fans, alumni or players." I've been speaking with a friend and UCLA alumfan, and he basically told me "yeah, it's sad, but like life, you gotta get paid what you're worth".
I’m struggling to see what your point is. Yes, the ravages of capitalism in America cause us to underfund education. Everyone has to be mindful of money. That doesn’t mean schools aren’t trying to do the right thing and might not prefer a different economic arrangement if one were possible.
To be fair, most big schools athletics budget is pretty much separate from the university. I know at UT, UT Sports generally gives money back to the university to fund a variety of things because they run a pretty significant surplus, even after paying for all the non-revenue sports. A large SEC school may not be the norm in areas that aren't as football crazy with an SEC ESPN contract though.
And I think the coach salary explosion was more about TV revenue allowing for it. When all that money started coming in, payers weren't being paid, so that TV money goes to facilities and staff.
Now with ESPN and Disney financially in a bad place, I'm not sure if something doesn't have to give in the truly long term. Carriage fees as people cut the cords are going to decline so that ESPN can't demand large chunks of everybody's cable bill. Everybody doesn't have a cable bill anymore. Eventually down the road, TV contracts won't be able to continue to rise on this crazy slope unless they figure out some other revenue model.
(That revenue model seems to be being helped by the intro of legal sports betting and all the advertising that brings with it).
Seen no Twitter: Henceforth, late-night ACC games shall be known as drACCar noir
Seen no Twitter: Henceforth, late-night ACC games shall be known as drACCar noir
This joke stinks.
College sports absolutely did start because of regional rivalries, way before there was money. Regular students decided to form teams for various sports, and then they challenged the team the next town over. That was totally organic, back in the day.
Fans don't care about the money, either, we all want to piss in our rivals' cornflakes. It's important with all imperfect institutions not only to know the direction in which we need to course correct, but also to understand how we got to where we are.
The rivalry, and the desire to get the better end of it, drives the money arms race. Rich donors who care about winning give a lot of money. Even now, with giant TV contracts, more money comes from donors who want to beat the hell out of the other schools.
In other news, here's a feel good story about a player giving up a scholarship for another player in need.
(Eastern Michigan)
I mean, ultimately, it feels like we're slowly, begrudgingly acknowledging that the NCAA is total horse-hockey and this all should just be minor-league football (but still professional).
That said, I don't see us ever fully moving to that point because the passion and tribalism in college sports is driven by the team's link to the college/university, and without that, it's just the XFL but with 18-22-year-olds. Maybe they'll figure something out.
Just need them not to try and not ruin March Madness. It's my favorite sporting event.
Would you consider upping it to 96 teams "ruining" it? Because they're definitely going to make the field bigger.
Yes. And we can discuss it in the hoops thread. Last I saw no real expansion plans, just people talking.
I mean, we already have a story about a player betting against his team. I am looking forward to the next level--when a player bets against his team and intentionally plays poorly to grab a big ol' bag of cash.
Yes. And we can discuss it in the hoops thread. Last I saw no real expansion plans, just people talking.
Oh man, now I have to join that thread just to discuss how stupid March Madness has gotten?
Stele wrote:Yes. And we can discuss it in the hoops thread. Last I saw no real expansion plans, just people talking.
Oh man, now I have to join that thread just to discuss how stupid March Madness has gotten?
This from @slmandel is the big TV bet on college football consolidation at the top.
That you'll gain more casual fans who don't follow CFB closely, to offset the smaller fanbases who get left behind and drop off.
they’re betting they can force a small number of teams down everyone’s throats and they’ll fall in love with those teams without realizing what the actual appeal of college sports is
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