Write On Sports LLC - "THE BCS IS A SACK TRICK " by Mathew S. Weiler

THE BCS IS A SACK TRICK

2007-04-27 14:59:08 | By: Mathew S. Weiler

Not because Michigan got screwed. Or Auburn. Or Oregon. These are all small points. The BCS is a three letter reminder of what really moves college football: television advertising revenue. It's a flawed system, of course, that does not make sense to Universities and fans, but there is perhaps something more sinister at play: it is the NCAA commoditizing itself, and in so doing, eviscerating its purported values.

One could argue that the marketing aspects of college football are unavoidable, and that college football forebears like Bryant, Canham, and Yost would be envious of all the attention given to their sport. Marketing the game to a mass audience is inherent in the concept of sport as entertainment. And in a free-market economy like the United States a market will follow public interest. OK. Fair enough. To the Victors go the spoils. But should these spoils undermine the values that the NCAA purports to uphold? The addition of a fifth BCS game underscores a less fundamental disconnect: there is more concern over dividing the spoils, making the BCS money accessible to non-power conferences, than in devising a system to determine a champion. The NCAA should take an honest look at this system, and ask how the BCS is advancing the core values of its organization and the university sports programs it purports to govern.

The hypocrisy of the NCAA is apparent. On the one hand, it preaches amateurism, competition, sportsmanship. It holds its teams and athletes to the strictest standards, so that the lure of riches does not ruin the purity of collegiate purpose. Yet the NCAA allows the BCS system to persist, which effectively denies college football athletes and fans the opportunity to have a champion determined on a level playing field. One wonders just what values the present system is upholding.

You see, the NCAA says this is all about amateurism. A-and sportsmanship. Yet we have a system apparently more concerned about looking after Tostitos, Pontiac, et al. than the players and coaches. The BCS pools television advertising revenue and distributes the money to the conferences. The BCS bowl games are scheduled to achieve maximum viewer-ship, hence maximum revenue. (How this profit-maximization benefits the purported constituent values of the NCAA, or the players and teams competing under these auspices, has yet to be explained, but let's overlook this fundamental disconnect for the time being.) I imagine that the NCAA tells its sponsors the current framework is necessary, because otherwise games would be played at non-holiday times, when fans will not travel, people would not watch as much television, and (gasp!) the athletes may have to study. If this assumed parade of horribles could be meaningfully substantiated, the NCAA may have a point--but even assuming the foregoing were all true, the problem is better described as lack of imagination and risk aversity: of course the NCAA can design a framework where schools host the earlier play-off games, and the more meaningful ones can be scheduled on neutral field, perhaps the traditional power bowls, and sponsorship can be worked out at each host school.

As things now stand, the bowls I grew up watching are gutshot. Indeed, the BCS has ruined the traditional bowls. Ironic that a system devised (albeit halfheartedly) with the idea of preserving the bowl tradition ends up ruining the whole thing. The New Years Day lineup is a shadow of its former self. I can't be the only one under-whelmed by the prospect of watching a Wake Forest-Louisville Orange Bowl on a Tuesday night. People in Los Angeles are still bitter about the Oklahoma-Washington State Rose Bowl a few years back, and mostly treated the Michigan-USC Rose Bowl like holiday leftovers. In the pre-BCS days, a Rose Bowl matching two teams in the top eight of the polls would be an event. So when hoary references to "the traditional of the bowls" is brought up as an argument against a play-off system, forgive me if I can't keep a straight face.

Of course, from a University's perspective the BCS system is even more absurd. There are over 110 teams playing division one football yet only six conferences are ensured a cut of the BCS spoils. Universities see their sports teams compete for a contrived title bestowed by a department store and not even officially sanctioned by the NCAA. Even to a university in a BCS conference, supporting a football program is a significant drain of resources. The conference revenue sharing provision of the BCS softens the blow for any one individual program (all but a handful of elite programs lose money on their football programs, by the way), but at the cost of turning the BCS teams into shills for FOX, ABC and their advertisers.

But the BCS cannot be meaningfully critiqued in a vacuum. The BCS is the culmination of a progressing trend: the commoditization of college football. All of that tradition, rivalry, energy, excitement? It has been monetized. Apportioned. Distributed in shares to the power college football conferences and their corporate sponsors. It started gradually. Re-arranging game times for prime-time television. Corporate sponsorship of bowls. Nike Swooshes festooned on jerseys. Tuesday night games; Wednesday night games; Thursday night games. What the Hell is that fifth BCS bowl again? The Tostitos Bowl?

If the NCAA sees its schools as empty shills, well then so be it. But rather than insulting the programs, the fans, and the Universities by trite reference to tradition, which is thinly-veiled risk aversity, at the very least the NCAA owes these constituents a sanctioned and meaningful way of determining a champion.

SACK TRICKS

You gotta be careful. You're sitting there, tending to your business, or perhaps just spinning around in your chair, playing on the Internet, assuming all along that someone else is tending the light at the end of the tunnel. And then, suddenly, it's dark, you're alone, and they come at you with a SACK TRICK! Constant vigilance is your only hope.

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