Jeffersonville News and Tribune
Money is the root of all the upheaval that’s damaging college sports.
Led by the Big Ten and Southeastern Conference, seismic shifts are occurring with programs bolting for greener conference pastures — greener of course representing money.
Notre Dame Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick summed it up recently as a guest on the Dan Patrick Show when he labeled the massive college sports conference realignment “a complete disaster.”
Conferences were once based on location, proximity to other universities and rivalries. Now they’re being forged out of greed, putting smaller schools in precarious positions while carving up traditions that have helped make college athletics so popular.
And while athletic directors, college presidents and conference officials are chasing bigger paydays, where is the consideration of the student athlete? As planned, these conference shifts will require students to spend more time in airplanes than some pilots.
When Oregon joins the Big Ten, players will be flying some 2,900 miles one-way to reach Rutgers. So much for attending a road game to support your team.
Many of these programs have little in common historically. Most of the Big Ten schools are clustered in the Midwest. The new alignment will see Indiana squaring off with UCLA, Wisconsin with Washington, and Purdue taking on USC in conference play.
Smaller schools will be forced to join conferences that may have little geographical connection to their campuses, and those programs don’t have private jets to transport players. Mid-sized universities and programs that don’t traditionally garner millions of dollars in athletic revenue will struggle for relevance.
These moves are determined by football, which is the biggest money-maker for college athletic programs. With the college football schedule being 12 games, and most conferences playing eight or nine conference games, many rivalry contests will be eliminated. It’s impossible for schools to play that many conference games due to divisional requirements.
There’s also concern about the competition aspect. A team playing football in the SEC or Big Ten will face a gauntlet of a schedule compared to other conferences, setting up scenarios where two- and three-loss teams would have a strong case for qualifying for the playoffs over undefeated teams with softer schedules.
And what about women’s sports? If football revenue is the determining factor for conference alignment, women’s programs could be hampered. What’s best for the football team may not be best for all of a university’s athletic teams.
The only positive aspect of conference realignment is the money that will be made by some universities. Many programs will suffer and it’s an overall negative development for collegiate sports.
The college athletics landscape is changing rapidly. From paying players to conference realignment, money is the force behind the change, and it’s not heading in a good direction.
