Agree with most of it, but will add...the conferences would all still be around, and the NCAA wouldn't be on life support, if they weren't run by such a bunch of swindlers. The B10 is the least swindley, and that is why everyone wants to join.
Having TV contracts owned and managed by car dealers/pizza restaurants at major universities was ridiculous. The B10 put and end to that and got the actual university TV money, rather than the hijackers who took the lions share before and in many cases still do at conferences which are not as well run.
I agree with most. However, i do have to say, there is not a small part of me that is nostalgic for the student athlete. Gary Fencik anyone? That being said, i was a freshman during Flying Illini time and had season tickets and still to this day remember when Vitale was in the house. So understand that even then it was a "pay to play" situation. I still remember the rumors of the BMW M5 and Ford Bronco that were driven around by certain team members whose family couldn't pay for the gas for those cars. Could tell you a fun story of how i won 2 great seats in the student lottery for the final 4 games that year.
Great post Mr Carter! As an ex Chicago area guy you know we're surrounded by the varied college loyalties of the Big 10 (or 12) I have lots of friends and family who live and die by the D1 fortunes of their men's football and basketball fortunes! IU, U of I, Purdue, Michigan, Michigan State, etc. Throw in a few random "Golden Domer's" and there's always a potential woof at every game, barbecue, or family gathering! The realignment was inevitable. Cash is King is truest in D1 Men's sports! Thanks again and hope you're enjoying the desert!
If it wasn't about money, ND would have been in the Big 10. Of course, there was the anti-Catholic sentiment in the 1930s....ND reminds me of the CBOT back in the days there was a rivalry with CME. They'd do anything to piss us off. ND joining the ACC reminded me of that.
This question of money and cheating and contracts and graduation rates and tv revenue and leagues and the stupidity of title IX as well as a few things I am missing are all part of the same festering pile of dung that has been "evolving" in college sports for 60 years now. Kentucky under Adolph Rupp, most major division 1 basketball and football programs. The art of cheating as perfected by the SEC in football. Schools that used to actually require athletes to attempt to attend class and get degrees that were not completely worthless. I see it broken down like this:
1. Schools long ago started realizing especially with the government getting into the student loan business that the more worthless degrees they offer the more kids they got in and the more money they made. So no more not-for-profit for Universities and colleges. Want to see which professors make the most money, find the one's with the biggest grants.
2. Up until 15 or so years ago men's college basketball had appallingly embarrassing graduation rates even with the Ivies, Academies and the Patriot league. Now the rates have risen by a multiplier of at least 5 and that is because now you can actually major in "underwater BB stacking." So the advent of the worthless degree in mass by universities has had another wonderful effect in that it has been able to sweep under the rug at least as it relates to graduation rates what Men's Basketball and Football are all about.
3. Title IX is the third rail of college athletic departments in that it kills so much of their ability to realize a profit because all of those sports, even by the NCAA's own admission do not have more than one or maybe two teams, usually no teams, turning a profit even when you include alumni donations directly to said programs. Title IX is a huge money and time drain on every single college athletic department. There are also some interesting sub-cultures amongst some of those sports.
4. Without men's basketball and of course Football most athletic departments would be defunct and every other sport would be club, which is what should be going on right now. If you can not stand alone and support yourself as a team, then instead of creating a false sense of reality, of importance and of interest, make the teams club. Kids are getting fed enough fairytales about reality, self worth, morals, ethics, logic and reason at today's institutions of higher learning, why not have college sports at least attempt to keep kids with one pinky toe in reality.
5. Trickle down effect- you see this in both football and especially basketball but the willingness to let in kids who in some cases can't pick out their names on a multiply choice test to win you five more games has had all sorts of distorting in some cases dangerous effects. Behavioral issues, especially towards the co-ed portion of the student body is real and I am hear to tell you vastly underreported. What has happened is these kids coming out of rougher, poorer areas who see this as a way out, this has become the sub-cultural norm in those areas and the reality is for every kid out of the poorer socio-economic areas who can play, ten can't tie their shoes. But they are all going to make it. I remember my eventual college coach sitting in my living room telling me he could find ten guys outside the gates of Fordham in the Bronx better than me, but he can't get them in either because of grades and or other issues. He failed to mention though if all I did was play basketball all day like they were doing, I too would be a lot better then I was. That pesky thing called school just kept getting in the way.
6. The NCAA- outside of our federal government, is there any worse governing body out there? Okay, FIFA maybe and the Olympic Committee, but the NCAA is created a lot of this mess through political correctness and its inability to have any say in college football, which is what has brought this whole thing about. One of the simple facts that rarely if ever spoken is that if it were not for the revenue from the Men's NCAA March Madness, the NCAA would not have the money to put on the post season tournaments for every other college sport outside of Football of course, Baseball, Men's Lacrosse and Men's Ice Hockey. Every other post season tournament does not warrant the number of paying fans and advertising to pay for itself.
7. Because as I have all ready laid out Universities have been all about profit for a very long time, there is nothing wrong with Basketball and Football players getting paid. It has been an unfair trade, even in the case of where I went to school. We are a small University, but the men's basketball team was the only team that made money then and I can assure you now. But if you are going to pay professors more money for bringing in "grants", then the two primary teams that bring in all of the money from TV, donors, shoe contracts you name it and when they are successful have been known to boost the school's income freshmen applications test scores and grades, the Notre Dame effect, should absolutely be getting paid.
8. Want to fix some of this- simple, require that all athlete qualify academically for the school as incoming freshmen. Oh, you also might want to doubly make sure that little Susie did not take your 320 pound defensive tackles SAT/ACT test as well. You do this, both football and basketball will look a lot different.
9. If schools are no longer about higher learning, but higher profits, this giant mess with the leagues makes all of the sense in the world, even if it hard to fathom the why of so much of it.
Agree with most of it, but will add...the conferences would all still be around, and the NCAA wouldn't be on life support, if they weren't run by such a bunch of swindlers. The B10 is the least swindley, and that is why everyone wants to join.
Having TV contracts owned and managed by car dealers/pizza restaurants at major universities was ridiculous. The B10 put and end to that and got the actual university TV money, rather than the hijackers who took the lions share before and in many cases still do at conferences which are not as well run.
Not negotiating a great television contract was the downfall of the Pac 12. Commish who ran it was a putz
Big Eight also a nitwit
I agree with most. However, i do have to say, there is not a small part of me that is nostalgic for the student athlete. Gary Fencik anyone? That being said, i was a freshman during Flying Illini time and had season tickets and still to this day remember when Vitale was in the house. So understand that even then it was a "pay to play" situation. I still remember the rumors of the BMW M5 and Ford Bronco that were driven around by certain team members whose family couldn't pay for the gas for those cars. Could tell you a fun story of how i won 2 great seats in the student lottery for the final 4 games that year.
Fencik played at Yale.....not the Big 10. Totally different scale. Seeing the Flying Illini in person would have been electric
As a Chicagoan, I know you are spot on.
Great post Mr Carter! As an ex Chicago area guy you know we're surrounded by the varied college loyalties of the Big 10 (or 12) I have lots of friends and family who live and die by the D1 fortunes of their men's football and basketball fortunes! IU, U of I, Purdue, Michigan, Michigan State, etc. Throw in a few random "Golden Domer's" and there's always a potential woof at every game, barbecue, or family gathering! The realignment was inevitable. Cash is King is truest in D1 Men's sports! Thanks again and hope you're enjoying the desert!
If it wasn't about money, ND would have been in the Big 10. Of course, there was the anti-Catholic sentiment in the 1930s....ND reminds me of the CBOT back in the days there was a rivalry with CME. They'd do anything to piss us off. ND joining the ACC reminded me of that.
Sadly, there's not much "Catholic" left in Notre Dame these days....
Nailed it.
"Northwestern is just the spoiled trustafarian little brother of Stanford."
Harsh, but fair. I made some lifelong friends there, but overall the place is insufferable.
This question of money and cheating and contracts and graduation rates and tv revenue and leagues and the stupidity of title IX as well as a few things I am missing are all part of the same festering pile of dung that has been "evolving" in college sports for 60 years now. Kentucky under Adolph Rupp, most major division 1 basketball and football programs. The art of cheating as perfected by the SEC in football. Schools that used to actually require athletes to attempt to attend class and get degrees that were not completely worthless. I see it broken down like this:
1. Schools long ago started realizing especially with the government getting into the student loan business that the more worthless degrees they offer the more kids they got in and the more money they made. So no more not-for-profit for Universities and colleges. Want to see which professors make the most money, find the one's with the biggest grants.
2. Up until 15 or so years ago men's college basketball had appallingly embarrassing graduation rates even with the Ivies, Academies and the Patriot league. Now the rates have risen by a multiplier of at least 5 and that is because now you can actually major in "underwater BB stacking." So the advent of the worthless degree in mass by universities has had another wonderful effect in that it has been able to sweep under the rug at least as it relates to graduation rates what Men's Basketball and Football are all about.
3. Title IX is the third rail of college athletic departments in that it kills so much of their ability to realize a profit because all of those sports, even by the NCAA's own admission do not have more than one or maybe two teams, usually no teams, turning a profit even when you include alumni donations directly to said programs. Title IX is a huge money and time drain on every single college athletic department. There are also some interesting sub-cultures amongst some of those sports.
4. Without men's basketball and of course Football most athletic departments would be defunct and every other sport would be club, which is what should be going on right now. If you can not stand alone and support yourself as a team, then instead of creating a false sense of reality, of importance and of interest, make the teams club. Kids are getting fed enough fairytales about reality, self worth, morals, ethics, logic and reason at today's institutions of higher learning, why not have college sports at least attempt to keep kids with one pinky toe in reality.
5. Trickle down effect- you see this in both football and especially basketball but the willingness to let in kids who in some cases can't pick out their names on a multiply choice test to win you five more games has had all sorts of distorting in some cases dangerous effects. Behavioral issues, especially towards the co-ed portion of the student body is real and I am hear to tell you vastly underreported. What has happened is these kids coming out of rougher, poorer areas who see this as a way out, this has become the sub-cultural norm in those areas and the reality is for every kid out of the poorer socio-economic areas who can play, ten can't tie their shoes. But they are all going to make it. I remember my eventual college coach sitting in my living room telling me he could find ten guys outside the gates of Fordham in the Bronx better than me, but he can't get them in either because of grades and or other issues. He failed to mention though if all I did was play basketball all day like they were doing, I too would be a lot better then I was. That pesky thing called school just kept getting in the way.
6. The NCAA- outside of our federal government, is there any worse governing body out there? Okay, FIFA maybe and the Olympic Committee, but the NCAA is created a lot of this mess through political correctness and its inability to have any say in college football, which is what has brought this whole thing about. One of the simple facts that rarely if ever spoken is that if it were not for the revenue from the Men's NCAA March Madness, the NCAA would not have the money to put on the post season tournaments for every other college sport outside of Football of course, Baseball, Men's Lacrosse and Men's Ice Hockey. Every other post season tournament does not warrant the number of paying fans and advertising to pay for itself.
7. Because as I have all ready laid out Universities have been all about profit for a very long time, there is nothing wrong with Basketball and Football players getting paid. It has been an unfair trade, even in the case of where I went to school. We are a small University, but the men's basketball team was the only team that made money then and I can assure you now. But if you are going to pay professors more money for bringing in "grants", then the two primary teams that bring in all of the money from TV, donors, shoe contracts you name it and when they are successful have been known to boost the school's income freshmen applications test scores and grades, the Notre Dame effect, should absolutely be getting paid.
8. Want to fix some of this- simple, require that all athlete qualify academically for the school as incoming freshmen. Oh, you also might want to doubly make sure that little Susie did not take your 320 pound defensive tackles SAT/ACT test as well. You do this, both football and basketball will look a lot different.
9. If schools are no longer about higher learning, but higher profits, this giant mess with the leagues makes all of the sense in the world, even if it hard to fathom the why of so much of it.
At this point, it might be quicker to name the teams NOT in the Big Ten. This is getting out of hand. 🙄
Go Illini!
I am contractually obligated to say Go Blue!