The changing face of college football

My efforts to post at least once a week hit a recent snag as I was diagnosed with a nasty sinus infection, had a minor medical procedure that drove me nuts for a few days and I've overwhelmed with projects. 


I promise to try and do better -- perhaps posting another column after attending Sunday's Alabama Sports Writers Association convention in Birmingham. 


This appeared on BOL a couple of weeks ago (FYI, the photo is from last year, I took it from my seat in Sewell-Thomas as Chris Stewart was interviewing Gene Stallings on air during a baseball game):

It seems almost fitting that as the rest of the country finally starts to turn its attention to summer with the approaching Memorial Day weekend that the Southeastern Conference and Big 12 decided to make a big splash Friday.


Bear with me a little as I plunge into this analogy.


With the announcement that the two leagues will pair their football champions, or best team not otherwise occupied, against each other in a New Year’s Day bowl game for five years beginning in 2014, they more than made waves.

It’s big news, period. However, as for the eventual ripples we’re all going to have to wait a little to see the extent, both short and long term.

By forming an alliance with the conference it just raided (.. is it the enemy of my enemy is my friend, or the fiend of my enemy … ah, never mid), the SEC has beautifully positioned itself for the expected switch to a four-team playoff that was in danger of being manipulated by a bunch of commissioners that, quite frankly, in many ways have SEC-envy.

Aided by the fact that when you win six-straight national championships it’s good to be the king, the league once again took a pro-active approach.

Might it lead to the demise of the Atlantic Coast Conference as we know it? Did we just take a huge step toward someday having four super conferences (although remember there was talk of Pac-10/Big 12 merger just two years ago)? To use a Talladega reference, was this the “Big One” that we’ve been sensing and expecting?

Perhaps, but first and foremost remember that the new bowl is primarily about the same thing that has driven all the major changes in college football over the past 30 years, money.

It goes back to a lawsuit in 1984, the NCAA v. Board of Regents of University of Oklahoma and Georgia Athletic Association. Simply, put, the Supreme Court was asked by the NCAA to overturn rulings that said the parent organization couldn’t limit the number of televised football games. The litigation had been triggered by the NCAA’s response by the College Football Association, an organization of the more dominant football-playing schools and conferences, to develop an independent television plan.

At the time, cable television was still a relatively new concept, with fans having very few options each weekend.

The Supreme Court ruled that the NCAA was essentially regulating free trade, performing illegal price fixing and “restricted rather than enhanced the place of intercollegiate athletics in the Nation’s life.” In the process, the court also rejected the NCAA’s arguments that widespread broadcasts could curtail live attendance and that competition on the airwaves would be bad for the game.

The same year as the Supreme Court’s ruling, No. 6 Ohio State played No. 18 Southern California in Pasadena, while the national championship came down to whether or not surprise No. 1 Brigham Young could defeat unranked Michigan in the Holiday Bowl (it did, 24-17).

The wheels that were set in motion are still spinning. The first of the big independents to join a conference was Penn State with the Big Ten in 1990. Roy Kramer, and others, realized that the 10-school SEC could take advantage of a loophole in NCAA rules to create an extra revenue-enhancing championship game, but in order to do so needed a minimum of at least 12 teams. South Carolina and Arkansas jumped at the chance, while the troubled Southwest Conference – which had a membership that included just two states -- fell apart.

“I personally was concerned that [Texas] A&M and Texas would leave and not include us,” Arkansas’ Frank Broyles said at the time, when the SEC was interested in a package deal that never materialized.

Accelerating matters was the SEC signing a landmark five-year, $85 million deal with CBS. Days later, the ACC signed an $80 million deal with ABC and ESPN, and CBS quickly added the Big East, which formed in 1991, for $75 million, including basketball games.

Florida State signed on with the ACC and Miami with the Big East (but later jumped to the ACC with Boston College and Virginia Tech). The Big Eight evolved into the Big 12, Notre Dame signed an exclusive deal with NBC, and the revolving door has kept going.

But college football had another lingering problem, the national championship, and again the sport was led by its pursuit of profits. Over the previous 29 years, there had only been eight bowl games matching teams ranked first and second, with growing concern that Congress might soon intervene should some sort of playoff system not be implemented.

One of the fathers, if not the father, of the Bowl Championships Series was ACC executive Tim Mickle, who supposedly one day started scribbling down ideas for a new bowl format on a restaurant napkin. It grew into rotating a championship game between the major bowls.

“Maybe I should have kept it to myself,” Mickle told writer John Feinstein years later, after NCAA presidents used the BCS as a preemptive strike and excuse for not creating a playoff, thus strengthening their grip on football revenues and bowl payouts.

That’s the real reason why there hasn’t been a playoff until now, to keep the money where it is and from being distributed to all schools participating in football, not just those in the BCS.

With this latest move, though, the SEC and Big 12 have their own version of the Rose Bowl, and not only is there the potential to basically auction the game off to the highest bidders for game locations and broadcast rights, but it also gives both conferences a major chip in the negotiations over the four-team playoff and more.

Long story short, the SEC-Big 12 bowl agreement isn’t the first splash, or necessarily the biggest in this long process, but another cannonball dropped squarely on college football’s power struggle – with most of the those involved not really caring about how deep or rough the waters may be, just that they keep swimming where the color remains green.