THE CHEAP SEATS with STEVE CAMERON: All about the green, but games go on otherwise
Steve Cameron.
It took a bit of thumb-sucking and navel-gazing, but …
Finally …
Almost everyone in intercollegiate sports has had an awakening.
Tossing schools here and there without any regard for geography or longtime rivalries has revealed all this “realignment” in its true identity.
Naked greed.
And not just a way to produce massive new revenue for the NCAA’s hundreds of members.
Nope.
This is money for the biggest of the big-time football powers.
Period.
Everyone who didn’t get into the haul produced by Fox in the Big Ten, or from ESPN in the SEC, is just waiting around and treading water.
If not now (like some of the programs in the Big 12), then soon (most of the ACC) …
Irrelevancy, bankruptcy, or both perhaps — will be lurking around everyone who isn’t among the top 10 or 12 football brands.
We’ve seen Fox come up with $350 million from that safe in the back room to lure Oregon and Washington into the Big Ten.
That wasn’t about any particular love respect for the Ducks or Huskies.
It was about the all-consuming role of pure capitalism.
Destroy the competition.
IN THIS case, as we know all too well, the bombing target was the Pac-12.
Most likely, it means destruction of a historic conference that dates back to 1915.
We’re right in the collateral damage zone, too, with Washington State getting left in a leaking lifeboat when the rest of its “partners” ran off like rats from a sinking ship.
Stanford, Cal, Oregon State and Wazzu are now what’s left of what other schools and conferences laughingly call the “Pac-4.”
USC and UCLA departed for the Big Ten’s glamor and cash about a year ago, Colorado bailed for the Big 12 because Coach Prime (man, I’m already sick of that nickname) wants to recruit in Texas, and then the other five bolted for sheer survival on one horrible Friday.
What I find interesting is that now, after the carnage, a whole lot of stakeholders (except Fox and ESPN) actually have looked at the destruction and wondered, seriously …
“What have we done?”
The fate of all those athletes who don’t play football, actual students who will be forced to travel obscene times and distances to serve the TV gods, has become clear to anyone with common sense and a conscience.
Suggestions have popped up from people inside many universities and some major media outlets — most offering plans to amputate football from athletic departments.
In other words, finally admitting that Georgia and Ohio State and the rest of that gang are basically pro football franchises that happen to be attached to universities.
You’ll note that I left the two major TV providers off the list of those who now are beginning show genuine concern for schools like Washington State, and those thousands of non-football athletes who face outrageous schedules just to compete in sports they love.
FROM A story in The Athletic by Kyle Tucker and Dana O’Neil …
“Oh, my God, these people,” said recently retired Syracuse basketball coach Jim Boeheim.
“A few years ago, someone said, ‘Let’s get the (university) presidents more involved.’
“This is where we are. This is about money. We all know that. But they used to make $10 million, then 20, then 30.
“Every time, they spent it all. Now it’s 50, then 100. It doesn’t matter. We keep moving the line and they spend it anyway.
“Where does it stop? It makes no sense for intelligent people to be doing this.”
Missouri football coach Eli Drinkwitz worries about the damage, even though his program will pocket $80 million annually as a member of the SEC.
“Did we count the cost?” he asked after the Pac-12 implosion.
“Football will be fine, (but) did we count the cost of damage to everybody else?”
One Big Ten athletic director, who requested anonymity for obvious reasons, described the problem bluntly …
“Fox is now running the conference.”
As Boeheim said, it’s ALL about money — very little of which goes to athletes in the so-called “minor sports.”
Football is king.
That Fox/ESPN cash-dispensing tool is what has left the four remaining schools in the Pac-12 on life support.
ENDLESS hunger for more and more cash — with no regard for the victims — could come back to bite these media companies and their co-conspirators inside various universities.
Maybe.
That would be true irony, if a return to some version of the “old” college sports set-up turned out to stop the relentless greed.
Even better, it would be hilarious if money trumped money.
I keep thinking about all the giggles at the Apple TV offer that the Pac-12 turned down – because it promised only a $25 million guarantee per school, plus considerably
larger numbers if Apple snagged subscriptions to its streaming service.
Bear in mind, now …
Apple is anxious to get into the business of streaming live sports events.
There have been negotiations between Apple and Disney, which has ESPN up for sale since it wants to move in the opposite direction.
Consider: Apple ($276 trillion market worth) has access to FIVE THOUSAND, FIVE HUNDRED TIMES more money than ESPN ($50 billion).
The entire Fox empire is worth roughly $16 billion, so if it chose to take that path, Apple could swallow up both ESPN, ESPN+ and Fox Sports out of its petty cash drawer.
How funny would it be if Apple wound up owning both major media entities that have contracts with the Big Ten and SEC?
Remember that snide comment from University of Arizona president Robert Robbins, who dismissed Apple’s subscription service as “selling candy bars and Girl Scout cookies”?
Robbins may be knocking on doors if Apple rings up Disney CEO Bob Iger and Fox’s Murdoch family — just to let them know that the tech giant will be taking those sports products off their hands.
Everyone seems to agree this whole mess is about football, but even more about money.
Apple can play THAT game.
Email: scameron@cdapress.com
Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns appear in The Press four times each week, normally Tuesday through Friday unless, you know, stuff happens.
Steve suggests you take his opinions in the spirit of a Jimmy Buffett song: “Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On.”