Boola-Boola Gives Way to Moolah-Moolah

And that's a good thing for college football

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Excuse me and pardon me and apologies in advance, but we’re looking at the current college football mosh pit all wrong.

Instead of tuning in the sad violin concerto, we should be toe-tapping to Dixieland jazz. Instead of singing the blues about the loss of rivalries, the obliteration of one mediocre football conference (the Pac-4) and, oh dear, the demise of all that good ol’ college tradition, we should wail joyfully, like Aretha seeking respect, at the prospect of having Southern Cal in the Big 10 and Oklahoma in the SEC. And UC in the cocoon of the Big 12.

Forever, college football had relied on its myths to survive. Brisk Saturday afternoons in Ann Arbor, Woody and Bo, college players making millions for everybody but themselves. Truth is, purely amateur football has never really existed, certainly not in the four decades since the Supreme Court decreed that the NCAA would no longer be the exclusive vendor of national TV rights.

Since then, it has been only a matter of time until we arrived where we are today.

Freeing the serfs players to make their own deals accelerated the process. Now, college football is one very big capitalistic hullabaloo.

What’s wrong with that?

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Especially for people like me, a guy who went to a D-3 school where football season consisted of Homecoming weekend. One Saturday a year, we ventured to Wilson Field, armed with flasks of Southern Comfort, to cheer on the mighty Washington & Lee Generals play another ampersand school. Emory & Henry, maybe.

If all college football had going for it was autumn odes and boola-boola fairy tales, it would have died a long time ago. It’s hard to see now, in the musical-chairs moment it occupies currently, but. . .

College football is better now than it has ever been.

Deny that, UC football fans.

Tell me I’m crazy, TOSU folks. You’ll still play Michigan every year. But you’ll also quite possibly exchange the meaningless blood-letting of Big 10 fraudster Rutgers for a late-fall showdown, perhaps in the wondrous Rose Bowl, with UCLA.

Armchair watchers might not take in ‘Bama-Vandy. They might take a look at Tide-v-Texas.

Go ahead, bemoan how “greed’’ has ruined college football. Attack the follow-the-dollar suits as opportunists who, all together now, Don’t Care About the Game. But also consider this:

There is nothing inherently wrong with making lots of money. John Cunningham, UC athletic director, isn’t sitting there in his Lindner Center office, counting cash piles. He’s too busy making sure UC athletics has a seat at the big-boy table once all this boogaloo-ing stops.

(Cincinnati.com)

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So far, so very good, Mr. Cunningham.

From the Atlantic magazine:

Disney, which owns ESPN, successfully landed all of the SEC’s media rights in 2020 with a 10-year, $3 billion deal that begins in 2024. The agreement will pay the SEC about $300 million a year—a huge bump from the $55 million a year that CBS was paying the conference. Especially now that Texas and Oklahoma are set to join the SEC in 2024, the conference appears to be set up for long-term success. So does the Big Ten, which last year secured a seven-year, $7 billion media-rights agreement with Fox, CBS, and NBC.

The money tree means better facilities for the hirelings. You could complain about priorities. But since when have college sports concerned themselves with priorities? Now that players can make money, schools aren’t “cheating’’ as much to land them. Hypocrisy will always be part of the quasi-am landscape. At least now, the hypocrisy is more transparent.

I own an an earned cynicism about this topic, courtesy of four decades of following games played by kids for the benefit of adults. I didn’t exit the womb believing the system was corrupt.

Sports are entertainment. Rivalries will always exist, because rivalries attract eyeballs and eyeballs = TV dollars. College football might live in the shadow of an active volcano, but that burnin’ ring o’ fire won’t ever annihilate TOSU-Michigan, Texas-Oklahoma or Harvard-Yale. Musical chairs won’t make the autumn air any less transcendent.

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Some of us will gladly trade the loss of the Keg of Nails for a Saturday night roadie in Tempe or Tucson or Boulder. How cool might it be to see the Colorado Primes at Nippert?

Or, maybe you’d rather see the Bearcats host ECU. In the name of tradition.

Some traditions are worth keeping. Others are UC-Temple.

Youse can clutch your pearls at the loss of tradition and rivalries and pretend amateurism. I vote for better games. Here I am now, entertain me.

Now, then. . .

THIS MATTERS ONLY TO NERDS SUCH AS I, BUT IT IS MY BLOG. . . The PGA Tour just released its 2024 schedule. Same schedule, basically. Same issues. Namely: Four major championships in April, May, June and July. Zero before April, zero after mid-July.

Golf has decreed since forever that there be four majors. As other sports aggressively expand their playoffs, golf stays the same. Its only move has been to shift the PGA from August to May, which for some of us was a dumb, disorienting move.

The Tour bosses will say the FedEx Cup should occupy our thoughts and eyeballs now. I love golf and watch a lot of it, and I still don’t know how they determine the FedEx field. Nor am I especially interested in finding out. It’s just about cash, not prestige.

Why not expand the majors to five or, better, six?

Start the season with an interest explosion: Make the Players Championship the 5th major. Move it back to mid-February, a week or two after the Super Bowl. Weather can be iffy in Ponte Vedra then, but no moreso than at St. Andrews in July.

Move the PGA back to August or September. Replace its May slot with the Memorial.

More majors, more interest. Less time watching the Wyndham and wondering why.

ONCE MORE WITH FEELING. Larry Fannon will tell you why you should go to Italy with him. This Wednesday night, 7:30, Oasis Golf and Conference Center, Loveland. Be there or die wondering what real chianti tastes like.

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TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . A Double Shot of Southern Beach Music. It’s an acquired taste, located but not limited to the Eastern seaboard from Virginia Beach to Hilton Head.