Amid all the problems in the world, it seems like a day of repose to think about college football. Not think about Ukraine and Russia. Not Israel and Hamas. Not elections in Iowa and New Hampshire. Not the January 6 anniversary, the Southern border, Biden's democracy speech, Trump's rally speeches, climate, abortion, Christian nationalism, housing affordability, woke politics, anti-woke politics, and not Harvard, an institution too much in the news.
Jack Mullen has a wider perspective than I do. He reminds me that people care more about sports than they do candidate debates. Candidates fill small rooms. Football fills stadia. Jack Mullen looks at sports with a practiced and sentimental eye. He remembers the tradition of college sports, traditions of supposed amateurism, traditions of old rivalries, traditions of eligibility, traditions of conferences. He also follows the business of sports. College football has long been a business. At long last, people are admitting it openly.
Jack Mullen grew up in Medford where he and I worked together thinning and picking pears in local orchards, then later for U.S. Representative Jim Weaver. He lives in Washington, D.C.
Guest Post by Jack Mullen
"Greed is good." What Gordon Gekko posited in the 1987 movie "Wall Street" found strong resonance in 2023. “Sports Explains the World” is the title of Shaun Raviv’s popular podcast. Sports indeed explains how modern-day Gordon Gekkos upended years of tradition in sports.
The Big Ten Conference, synonymous with 20th century Midwest institutions and values, found a passionate regional culture that was embodied in college football. The fin de siècle Big Ten entrance of Penn State in 1990 bothered football traditionalists who enjoy the regional flavor of college sports. However, at the same time, Big Ten TV ratings soared with the addition of the football powerhouse Nittany Lions. Football programs at Maryland and Rutgers, operating under heavy deficits, were easy prey to expand the Big Ten football coverage into the New York, Baltimore and Washington D.C. markets. You’d think enough is enough.
In the words of ESPN football GameDay icon Lee Corso: “Not so fast, my friend!”
California Dreamin'. Ever since gold was discovered at John Sutter’s mill in 1848, California became the America’s land of milk and honey. Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren and television network executives saw dollar signs when it appeared they could expand the Big Ten to the nation’s second largest TV market, Los Angeles.
As every college football fan on the West Coast knew, there was a level on condescension by USC towards other schools in the Pac-12 conference, especially the four schools in the Pacific Northwest. Commissioner Warren, a former NFL executive, knew USC possessed a wandering eye. For years, USC has felt entitled to more television money than the paltry $31 million scattered to other 11 Pac-12 conference schools. A pot of gold lay at the end of the rainbow once the Big Ten television contract came up for renewal. Warren and USC secretly entered discussions about the Trojans joining the Big Ten.
The Big Ten’s new $7 billion contract with Fox, NBC, CBS and Peacock starts out paying $60 million to each conference school. Once Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott, schmoozing USC for as long as he could, resigned, USC bolted to the Big Ten, leaving the new Pac-12 commissioner, George Kliavkoff, with the news that both USC and UCLA, would leave the Pac-12 and join the Big Ten.
Had the University of California Board of Regents not endorsed the UCLA’s joining the Big Ten, the Pac-12 could have survived as the Pac-11. An inevitable chain of events occurred as first, Colorado, then Utah and two Arizona schools left for the Big 12. Soon Oregon and Washington joined the Big Ten (at $31 million, half of the payout for USC, UCLA and the other 16 Big Ten schools. Left in the dust: Oregon State and Washington State.
As the curtain drops on a most compelling 2024 college football season since Rutgers played Princeton in 1869, there is only one conference with two nationally ranked teams in the Top Five. Those two teams reside in the overlooked Pacific Northwest, the Washington Huskies, which twice edged the Oregon Ducks.
So, good-bye to the league that willingly threw passes before other leagues did. Good-bye to the collection of towns and metropolises that passionate Bill Walton described. The Universities of Washington and Oregon gave the league, as Walton describes it, the “Conference of Champions,” a final season to remember. Such a shame the league disappears into a dark Texas January game night.
The Washington Post columnist Chuck Culpepper put it best. The Pac-12 died of a “common affliction known as television.” I can only add: Gordon Gekko, you won!
5 comments:
Gordon Gekko won when they started paying coaches millions of dollars a year. Michigan's coach makes over $8 million.
Professional sports are stupid and boring. College sports are just as bad these days. Also the Olympics. Adults getting paid tons of money to play games like children. Mind-numbing for people with no life.
Taking a day to think about college football is a good idea and the thoughts ought to be about chronic traumatic encephalopathy(CTE).
While we are taking that day to think about the young men who are being permanently injured in college football, don't forget those in professional football.
Maybe most important would be to think about those really young boys in high school and younger with their injuries and deaths. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/11/16/us/cte-youth-football.html
Of course, I'm sure all this thinking will cause us to think about ourselves, the fans, who watch and encourage this maiming, injury and death that we so readily and enthusiastically support.
Thank you ! I couldn't agree more, not having watched any College or Professional Sports since Dwight Clark made the catch for the 49ers decades ago.
Two things that have me avoiding the NFL these day:
- the proliferation of gambling
- Athletes who have to run to the end zone to celebrate the fact that they did their job.
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