Matt Hayes is one of my favorite sports columnists. He covers college football for The Sporting News, and his weekly “Pickin’ and Grinnin'” columns during the season are must reads. This column, though, just plain misses the mark. It’s a somewhat defense of the present have/have not system of college football and the BCS. Well, it’s not so much a defense as a caution of how things could be made worse.
Here’s what is happening. There are BCS and non-BCS schools. The BCS schools are schools in major conferences that have an automatic bid to the lucrative Bowl Championship Series. They are a slight majority of the 117 Division I-A football programs. The non-BCS schools are seeing themselves minimized and excluded from the BCS (read: money). You can see where this is leading — mostly pious, self-righteous posturing.
The non-BCS schools have wrapped themselves in the noble sounding group, the Presidential Coalition for Athletic Reform (PCAR). It is headed up by Tulane University President Scott Cowen (Tulane narrowly averted giving up it’s football program because of the costs this year).
Both sides have highly educated, well-connected members. This being America, and involving money, university institutions and football (and alumni pride) — well members of Congress are getting involved. On September 4, the House Judiciary Committee will hold hearings on how all of this works.
Hayes warns that could cause a seismic change in the landscape of college football, but not in the way the PCAR wants.
Here’s another way to look at it: The more the have-nots push, the more they lose. And the ramifications could change the face of college athletics profoundly.
“If they continue on this course and Congress gets further into this,” one prominent BCS source says, “at some point, we have to draw a line in the sand.”
That line could end the NCAA as we know it. The sport’s governing body has no real power over the universities other than to police their practices, which is why it has been conspicuously silent in this offseason of turmoil. What now is being discussed quietly among BCS athletic directors and conference commissioners is the top 50 to 60 teams in college football breaking away from the NCAA and forming their own league, forcing the rest of college athletics into the ice age. Don’t think it can’t happen. When money is the mitigating factor, there are no rules and no reason.
The have-nots want greater access to the multimillion-dollar BCS system and are hoping to build a case with antitrust laws, saying the system has monopolized the postseason because no non-BCS team has played in a BCS bowl since its inception in 1998. Now, the BCS schools don’t want to break away, don’t want the headache of forming a new governing body and dealing with logistical nightmares in other sports, particularly men’s basketball and its highly successful tournament. The have-nots know this, but their case gets stronger in the public eye when Congress is debating it live on C-SPAN.
The first thing, and Hayes knows this, is this isn’t BCS schools versus non-BCS schools. It is BCS Conferences versus non-BCS Conferences. A small but important difference, I will expand on later.
I won’t say, no way that this break-up would happen, but it is a little too far-fetched. The BCS conferences need the NCAA to confer the legitimacy and illusion of the student-athlete, no matter how hypocritical, eye-ball rolling inducing, snickering causing that phrase evokes in people. Breaking away solely for the money strips away their last argument against paying college athletes. They would be leaving themselves open to new litigation, problems and costs. Since Hayes is talking about unintended consequences, he should also consider the ones the BCS conferences would be facing.
As for the top schools leaving, does this mean the Big XII abandons Baylor? The ACC lets Duke go? The SEC, Vandy and Kentucky? No. Of course not. So you will still have programs that only serve to suck money from the better programs (and in Duke and Vandy’s case help make the Conference’s academic ranking of student athletes look better).
The small-school presidents want a national playoff modeled after the basketball tournament. But that tournament works because the competitive gap can be squeezed when a school has a dominant player. One such player means next to nothing in college football. Consider this: Four years ago in the NCAA Tournament, Wally Szczerbiak carried Miami (Ohio) to the Sweet 16 and scored 43 of the RedHawks’ 59 points in a win over Washington. Ben Roethlisberger, the RedHawks’ current quarterback and a potential No. 1 pick in next year’s NFL draft, faces a huge task to get his team’s offense to score at all in Miami’s season opener at Iowa.
Whether we want to admit it, there are certain teams that can’t cut it in I-A football. That’s why the NCAA recently set up Division I eligibility requirements to weed out those who don’t belong. Yet these are the same teams the non-BCS presidents believe deserve access to the more than $500 million in annual income the BCS conferences are paid. In their dream, each conference champion would earn a spot in the tournament, and No. 16 seed Middle Tennessee could lose to No. 1 seed Oklahoma by 50 and still pick up a couple million for its troubles.
By focusing on the fantasy, extreme version of a playoff, Hayes makes the whole thing look ridiculous. That plan wouldn’t happen. Just because that is the system in Division I-AA and II and III, doesn’t mean the BCS Conferences would go with agree to it. Obviously, there would be a compromise.
AS for admitting some teams can’t cut it in Div. I-A football, no question. So what. There are teams that don’t belong in BCS Conferences — Rutgers, Vanderbilt, Duke, Baylor, Indiana — but because they are in the BCS conferences, they always have a potential to get better and get a chunk of the BCS money. Kansas State went from bottom dwelling, joke team to perennial BCS/Big XII potential in 10 years. In part, because they play in a national, BCS conference.
Understand this: Television drives the BCS deal, and advertisers drive the BCS. Advertisers don’t want to shell out huge chunks of money for Oklahoma’s jamboree against North Texas. And ABC doesn’t want to show Tulane vs. Tennessee in a BCS bowl; it wants Tennessee vs. Southern California. Those who direct the deal and pay the bill want major teams or major television markets — preferably a combination of both — in those four games.
The BCS conferences have the product, and they’re selling it to the highest bidder. That’s free enterprise, not a violation of antitrust law, which is defined as a group monopolizing trade or commerce through unreasonable methods. This is a waste of taxpayer money by a group of university presidents who are upset because the mean men at the BCS won’t let them play with their ball.
Actually, there is a plausible antitrust argument. Just because “free enterprise” is involved, doesn’t mean antitrust activity doesn’t occur. Ever hear of Microsoft?
They are freezing out any other competition. Tulane, Toledo and Marshall could be as good as any team in a BCS Conference in a given year, but they wouldn’t be allowed to prove it, because they aren’t allowed to compete. The system, as set up keeps them from getting the shot. If a mid-major school gets better, the bigger schools won’t play them and risk a loss. This keeps the mid-major’s strength of schedule down, so they can’t get high enough in the calculations to qualify for the “at-large” BCS bid. I won’t disagree that it’s a waste of taxpayer money, but you could say that about most of the hearings Congress holds.
My personal views are on the fence over the whole thing. In part because Pitt is in a weird limbo at the moment. They are in the BCS right now, but there is a chance (maybe 25%) that they could be locked out in a couple years. Even the chance that could happen chills me.
