If you thought things couldn’t get any uglier for college football than whatever uniform Oregon wore on the field last week, think again.
First it was the steady stream of news about improper benefits given or sought by high-profile players and their families — think disgraced Heisman Trophy winner Reggie Bush and last year’s winner, Cam Newton. Then came reports of widespread cheating at the likes of North Carolina, Ohio State and Miami.
Those incidents centered debate on the inequity between institutions that earn millions of dollars from their football programs and players who are largely “professionals” but not compensated as such.
As Taylor Branch wrote recently in the The Atlantic, “the real scandal is not that students are getting illegally paid or recruited, it’s that two of the noble principles on which the NCAA justifies its existence — ‘amateurism’ and the ‘student-athlete’ — are cynical hoaxes, legalistic confections propagated by the universities so they can exploit the skills and fame of young athletes.”
But in the billion-dollar business of college football, what cut, if any, to give players last week became a secondary discussion.
The drive to cash in on the lucrative television money has the 120- team Football Bowl Subdivision headed down a path toward creation of a handful of “superconferences” involving, perhaps, 64 teams.
That’s a setup expands the gap between haves and have-nots and will undoubtedly lead to the additional loss of annual and regional rivalries that make the college game great.
It also threatens to create head- scratching alignments, such as a suggestion last week that Air Force might join the Big East.
While it’s difficult to pinpoint when college football began speeding down this road, momentum was gained last year when, prompted by Missouri’s failed effort to move to the Big 10 (which now has 12 schools), Nebraska and Colorado bolted the Texas-dominated Big 12 for greener pastures. Texas A&M took the same step this month, accepting an invitation to become the 13th team in the SEC. That was followed by the 12-team Atlantic Coast Conference welcoming Syracuse and Pitt from the Big East.
The “superconference” momentum may have stalled when Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott announced Tuesday that his league, which added CU and Utah last year, would not be extending invitations to Texas, Oklahoma and their two little sisters.
That decision sits well with folks at CU, for now. Their move to the Pac-12 lets them play regularly on the West Coast, where they have a deeper alumni base, and aligns them with like-minded research institutions. The Buffs’ brass did not relish the thought of playing once again in Oklahoma and Texas.
The Pac-12 was able to hold off expansion, in some measure, because the TV deal negotiated this year delivered a hefty payday.
But, in the current race for revenue, it’s hard to fathom a scenario in which a 12-team league is where the collegiate football expansion follies end.
