COLUMN: Colleges need cash, so football's back

The fall of an election year always puts a certain fragrance into the air ... and though it smells the same, it’s not from area farmers fertilizing their fields.

Recent news out of the Big Ten and Pac-12 conferences showed that politicians aren’t the only ones spreading, uh, cow manure in the fall.

With much fanfare about improved COVID-19 testing, contact tracing, quarantine procedures and healthy practices, those two leagues (along with the Mountain West and Mid-American conferences) announced they’ll be joining fellow big-boy schools from the ACC, Big 12 and SEC in playing football games this fall, amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Many health-related reasons were trotted out by coaches, athletic directors and university presidents for this reversal of course from postponing all football games until the spring.

Here’s the real reason no one had the guts to say: Fall football games provide a desperately needed transfusion of cash into college athletic departments that would die without it.

NOW don’t get me wrong ... as the parent of an NAIA college football player who won’t get to play games until spring, I’m happy for the players and coaches who get to resume the sport they love.

A seven- or eight-game season, while only two-thirds the normal amount of games, works much better in the late fall than it would in the spring, especially in the northern parts of the country.

But if the Big Ten and Pac-12‘s new developments in the testing and treatment of student-athletes with COVID are so great, why is football the only sport coming back? Why not cross-country and volleyball too?

Well, there are millions and millions of reasons why football’s coming back and those other athletes will wait until spring. And none of those reasons have a thing to do with health or better testing procedures.

LOOK, we all know that college sports, especially at the NCAA level, are a business. A multi-billion-dollar business funded by network TV rights to televise events such as the NCAA men’s basketball tournament and Power 5 college football games.

That TV revenue from football and men’s basketball— and, in a non-pandemic year, a significant amount of money from ticket sales — trickles down to “non-revenue” college sports and makes them financially feasible.

I just wish someone would break out of politician-speak and be honest about it.

Instead, we get hogwash like this from University of Oregon President Michael Schill:

“This has nothing to do with money,” Schill said last week as the Pac-12 announced its new football plans. “It was never once mentioned as a consideration.”

So, are we fans supposed to be stupid enough to think Pac-12 presidents never thought about the benefits of football revenue, or are those university presidents stupid enough to think we’d believe this?

In a state famous for its dairy cows and the byproducts they leave behind in their pastures, University of Wisconsin Athletic Director Barry Alvarez came much closer to the truth with his statement on the subject.

As the Big 10 temporarily voted to postpone its football season to spring a couple months ago, Alvarez noted the entire Badgers athletic department would be at risk because football provides about $100 million of its budget.

Doing the math, he noted that in 2018-19, Wisconsin’s football program accounted for about 58 percent of the department’s $157.7 million in revenue, according to financial reports filed with the NCAA.

While limited attendance due to the coronavirus might eliminate most of the $24 million in annual football ticket sales (again, using 2018-19 figures), the decision to resume football in late October through mid-December will salvage much of the $46.5 million the Badgers make each year in media rights.

That’s a lot of cheddar.

So while we fans welcome the return of college sports to our television sets, and feel good for the athletes who can resume their seasons, never forget the ironclad rule about NCAA sports:

Money talks and (cow chips) walks.

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Joel Donofrio is a copy editor and sports writer for The Press. Email him at jdonofrio@cdapress.com.