Tag Archives: College Football

A Sensible Way Forward For College Athletics During The Pandemic – Which They’ll NEVER Do

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Clemson University quarterback Trevor Lawrence, a Heisman Trophy candidate and potential first overall pick in next year’s NFL Draft, tweeted this on Monday about the very real potential shutdown of college football because of the coronavirus:  

“People are at just as much, if not more [at] risk, if we don’t play. Players will all be sent home to their own communities where social distancing is highly unlikely and medical care and expenses will be placed on the families if they were to contract Covid-19. Not to mention the players coming from situations that are not good for them/ their future and having to go back to that. Football is a safe haven for so many people. We are more likely to get the virus in everyday life than playing football. Having a season also incentivize’s players being safe and taking all of the right precautions to try to avoid contracting Covid because the season/ teammates safety is on the line. Without the season, as we’ve seen already, people will not social distance or wear masks and take the proper precautions. Let’s work together to create a situation where we can play the game that all of us love. Not divide and argue. There is a way forward”.  

Lawrence is not wrong – and I don’t disagree with him. There is a way, as Lawrence says, for colleges to positively advance their mission forward for athletes that, for the moment, does not include playing sports.  

There are a vast number of college athletes that, to paraphrase Lawrence, “will be sent home to situations that are not good for them.” For a good number of students, higher learning offers a functional community and, more importantly, a structure that they can’t get when they are not on campus accomplishing something that will constructively and positively move them forward towards better lives. In the case of on-campus athletes – especially the ones in sports that create great revenue for colleges – colleges have gone to great lengths to create this façade of athletes as students.  

The term “student-athlete” is a made-up term and concept coined in 1964 by Walter Byers, the first-ever executive director of the NCAA, to counter attempts to require universities to pay wages, salaries, or workers’ compensation. In the almost 60 years since, college athletics have succeeded in this aim, making staggering amounts of money in the process. This has been the ethic behind depriving millions of college athletes since any portion of that obscene monetary haul while at the same time making the flawed claim that “you can’t put a price on the college education they are getting”.  

Well, now is the perfect time for the NCAA and big time colleges and universities to put their money where their mouth is. Colleges are in a unique position to actually begin treating and dealing with these athletes as the first half of the term.  

If sports is not really an option for these athletes for the time being, then honor their scholarships. If it truly is safer on campus for athletes, like Lawrence claims, then let them stay on campus and reap the rewards of being in a “bubble” that best protects them during this uncertain and scary time during the pandemic, with access to health protocols and medical care they wouldn’t ordinarily be able to afford. Let them work out and stay in the shape and condition required for their sport (health and safety protocols allowing) when it is possible to carry on.  

Until then, the operative two words for these colleges should be “student” and “scholarship”. For the time being and despite the ethic the NCAA and big time colleges have pushed for over half a century, these athletes can’t really be “athletes” right now. So emphasize that they are there on a “scholarship” – which the last time I checked meant school (you know, college’s PRIMARY mission). Emphasize their education and encourage them to take as many classes as they can (virtually or otherwise according to health and safety protocols) in the time they clearly now have, and – heaven help – work towards a degree.  

These colleges and universities with big time multi-million dollar athletics claim they care about their athletes, and that you can’t put a price on a college education. Fine. Then right now make more of a priority out of helping your “student-athletes” learn something else substantive other that football, basketball, etc…  

…Of course, you as well as I know that the member schools of the Pac-12, Big-12, Big-10, SEC, and ACC will never do this. It makes way too much sense!  

Texas A&M Has To Go For It’s Own Good

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Earlier this week, Texas Governor Rick Parry gave a Republican Party motivational speech in Dallas, and for whatever reason went off the fanatical right-wing track on a tangent to declare unequivocally that his alma mater, Texas A&M, would join the Southeast Conference. I’m not cynical enough to believe that with that statement the school was pushed into acting quickly now that their secret backroom negotiations were out, but I’m sure it didn’t help. Nonetheless, here we are three days later and the Division-I college football landscape has experienced another major tectonic shift, with it about to get worse over the coming year.

 

Don’t listen to the status quo apologists on the sports networks preaching that Texas A&M’s imminent move from the “Big XII” [insert appropriate snide misnomer here] to the SEC is motivated by ego. The move is motivated by what it’s always motivated by; money. And in this case, rightfully so.

 

The Big XII – which with this move will be reduced to just nine teams, making the name of this conference all the more asinine – is the only Division-I conference in which the revenue is not equally shared. Every other team in the conference is guaranteed $9 million dollars per year, even the teams that have made up this conference since its inception, while Texas gets $22 million.

 

The college football apologists will argue that Texas is deserving of this unbalanced revenue distribution because they are the Big Dog in the conference, the powerhouse athletic program in the pack. With the possible exception of Oklahoma, that may be true, but the other conferences in top-flight college football have their powerhouses (the Big Ten has Ohio State and Michigan, the SEC has Alabama and Florida, the Pac 12 has USC, the ACC has Miami and Florida State, the Mountain West has BYU, The WAC has Boise State), yet those conferences have more equitable monetary distribution.

 

No wonder Nebraska bolted for the Big Ten. Along with Oklahoma the Cornhuskers are an original member of the Big XII – and certainly nobody is going to argue that either the Sooners or the ‘Huskers’ athletic record takes a backseat to the ‘Horns – yet these two national powerhouses and the other six teams that made up the original Big 8 gladly accepted Texas (along with Texas A&M, Baylor and Texas Tech) into their conference 15 years ago after the embarrassing collapse of the Southwest Conference only to be treated like second-class citizens.

 

It’s not as if nobody wanted to see Nebraska or Oklahoma before Texas joined. Before Texas joined the Sooners and Cornhuskers annually played in the best rivalry game in college football. To accommodate Texas and their unfair demands, Oklahoma and Nebraska were split up into different divisions, marginalizing their annual war to once every three years. When the economic distribution became untenable, Nebraska bolted for greener yet fairer pastures, eliminating the rivalry entirely.

 

Texas A&M doesn’t need Texas. TEXAS NEEDS TEXAS A&M! Texas’ historical reputation as a national force has been predicated on ruling a conference – any conference – with somebody to beat up on. It’s one thing to beat up on your conference foes on the field (A&M can live with that; it gives them something to strive for competitively and makes for a higher level of play), but a 5-7 team like they were last season that still insists on its overwhelming cut of the revenue is farcical. Under those circumstances, it’s not really hard to understand why Rice, SMU, Houston, Arkansas, and TCU couldn’t rid themselves of Texas fast enough.

 

Now the breakup of another conference that Texas is in is unfolding before our very eyes. With the loss of Nebraska and Colorado (to the Pac 12) the Big XII is currently down to ten teams, losing their status as a superconference and, even more importantly monetarily, their championship game. Yet they still maintain the misnomer “Big XII”, an illusion they must maintain to hopefully raid other conferences’ teams in the future to provide newer pigeons for Texas and get back to superconference status. And the conference commissioner, Dan Beebe, and its member athletic directors and presidents continue to genuflect at the Longhorns’ alter, under the mistaken belief that in order for their athletic programs to survive they need Texas. The reality is that Texas needs a conference to rule more than the Big XII – or any other conference for that matter – needs Texas, because if Texas was as powerful and influential as they think they are, then they would give up the illusion of being in a conference and just join Notre Dame as an independent…

 

…Which we all know they won’t do.

 

Is the move good for Texas A&M? Who really knows? I don’t like the SEC any more than I like Texas, but at least the Aggies will get revenue equity. Plus with the addition of A&M, the SEC is unbalance and will need to find at least one and maybe three new members to attain megaconference status (something I was hoping for the Pac 12 last year, but I digress). Are Clemson, Florida State and Missouri soon to follow? And what will the other conferences do to maintain their relevance? It looks like the free-for-all we all expected in 2010 will happen sometime in the next year.

 

I for one am glad to see that the Big XII is now in survival mode. If they continue to believe that their very existence is tied to Texas and their unfair revenue slice of the pie, then in the long run they will go the way of the dodo – and the SWC (the hitch they should hook themselves to is Oklahomas, but the Sooners will be fine wherever they land because, well, they’re the Sooners). Right now, Texas is like the sibling in the house that has joined a street gang, and the only way to get rid of him is to sell the house from underneath him…

 

-daveydoug

The True National Champions

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Oklahoma and Florida can battle for the BCS. But we’ve already crowned the true national champ.
by Rick Reilly

NOTE: This is a reprint of an article that appears in the current edition of “ESPN The Magazine“. It is worth reprinting here because it couldn’t be more right — daveydoug
Some gifts people give are pointless: Styling mousse to Dick Vitale. An all-you-can-eat card to Kate Moss. The BCS Championship given to Oklahoma or Florida.

It means nothing because the BCS has no credibility. Florida? Oklahoma? Who cares? Utah is the national champion.

The End. Roll credits.

Argue with this, please. I beg you. Find me anybody else that went undefeated. Thirteen-and-zero. Beat four ranked teams. Went to the Deep South and seal-clubbed Alabama in the Sugar Bowl. The same Alabama that was ranked No. 1 for five weeks. The same Alabama that went undefeated in the regular season. The same Alabama that Florida beat in order to get INTO the BCS Championship game in the first place.

Yeah, that’s how it is now in the shameful, money-grubbing world of college football. If you’re Florida and you beat Alabama, you get a seat in the title game. If you’re Utah, you get a seat on your sofa.

Hey, remind me: What do they give out for one of those BCS things anyway? It’s been so long since I cared. Something from Sears? This is the sixth year in the past 10 that the title has been in dispute under this cash-grab, fan-dis, monopoly that the BCS has created. Which is why the title game just doesn’t matter anymore. It’s like being named Miss Ogallala. Or Best Amish Electrician.

Just take a look at the teams that think they’re worthy of being called national champs:

USC? Great year. Wonderful. Let’s all go to SkyBar and celebrate. But it lost to Oregon State, a team Utah beat.

Texas? You think beating Ohio State by a nubby three points gets you the title? The Big Ten was 1-6 in bowl games! That’s like pinning David Spade!

Florida and Oklahoma? They lost. Utah never did.

So that’s it. Utah is the national champion. The Utes should probably have two now, actually. They went undefeated in 2004, too, and their coach still thinks they were the best team in the land. Smart fella named Urban Meyer. Coaches Florida now.

By the way, we’re calling our title the “national” championship because it actually includes the whole nation-all 119 Division I schools-unlike the BCS, which includes 66. Yeah, the BCS somehow eliminated the middleman-the NCAA. The conferences these schools play in take their dump trucks full of cash straight from the TV networks and fairness can go suck a lemon.

Do me a favor. Call Ohio State president Gordon Gee and ask him why he won’t support a playoff. He’s one of the most powerful presidents in the NCAA. He could get it done. If he says anything other than, “We don’t want to share the loot” then you know he’s lying his bow tie off.

“This is not how we normally do things in America,” says Utah president Michael Young. “In America, quality usually wins, not conspiracy. And there’s a reason people usually enter into a conspiracy. It’s money. You make money doing it. And those that are in on the conspiracy want to stay in and keep everybody else out.”

Sure, BCS blowhards will hand you schlock about how the college football season is like a playoff, how it’s an elimination tournament every week. Really? Well, how come Florida and Oklahoma weren’t eliminated with their losses? Utah ran the table, beat everybody set in front of them, including Ala-damn-bama in no less than the Sugar Bowl, and gets the bagel.

Oh, by the way? It was Utah’s eighth straight bowl win, the nation’s longest streak. Among the losers during that run? Let’s see USC, Georgia Tech, Pittsburgh, and now the legendary Houndstooth Hats.

“What else do we have to prove?” asks Utah’s magical quarterback, Brian Johnson. Good question. He and the Utes essentially whipped Alabama at home. Handed Nick Saban a garlic necklace to wear the entire off-season. Stepped on his team’s neck 21-0 in the first three possessions and never looked back. Let’s see. Who was it that was losing to Alabama until nearly six minutes into the fourth quarter? Oh, yeah. Florida.

What, you want the Utes to win a spelling bee? Make a prize-winning souffle? Knock up Angelina Jolie? What?

It just slays me. It really does.

Call Myles Brand, president of the asleep-at-the-wheel NCAA, and ask him if he and his greedy presidents are going to stand in defiance of president-elect Barack Obama, who wants a playoff and wants it yesterday.

Ask Brand what he’s going to do if Obama starts asking the Justice Department to look into anti-trust hearings against the BCS. The Utah Attorney General has already launched an investigation into that very thing. Or ask him what he’ll do if Obama asks the Department of Education to consider withholding federal funds from these schools that have entered into this secret club called the BCS. You don’t think playing in the title game means millions in general-fund donations for a school? That’s as unfair as anything Title IX fought against.

Until all these people do the right thing, I’ll be celebrating with the true national champions-the undefeated, untied Utah Utes. (Our new slogan: Utahk about a team!)

Lemonades for everybody!

— Rick Reilly —
“Life of Reilly”
ESPN The Magazine