I had a eureka moment last night. It happened right before I passed out. You know, in that hazy state where you're dreaming of something bizarre…like Larry Scott, but also aware enough to realize it and think, "Fuck, why am I dreaming of Larry Scott!?" Smart scientists have labeled this phenomenon "lucid dreaming".
Anyway, in this woozy state I saw Larry Scott circa 1980-something. He was in a Lamborghini, wearing Ray-Bans, feathering his hair with a pocket comb, snorting a line of coke in the bathroom, and trading corporate junk bonds with Michael Milken.
I knew how that story ended, so like a good lucid dreamer I pulled a Michael J Fox and hopped in my DeLorean, fast-forwarding a decade to see what Mr. Scott would be up to.
What did I see? It was 1991 and Scott was now in Seattle, donned in flannel, Doc Martin's, and horned-rimmed glasses. He was hanging outside The Vogue with a cigarette dangling from his lip, and raving to someone who looked like David Geffen about a great new band led by a pretty yet grizzled moribund frontman. "David, he is perfect. You need to sign him. We can go to MTV with this guy and pitch the idea of Buzz Clips and 120 minutes of alternative rock!"…
I lived through that. It was cool and all at the time, but I know that story ends with a deranged, money-hungry chick, a shotgun to said rocker's head, and my trading in Chuck Taylor's for some business loafers. So, I fast-forwarded another decade.
It's 2000.
I'm working at Lucent Technologies and one morning walk in to find my co-workers in a craze. Overnight, our company stock shot from $10 a share to $65. "This is GRRRRREAT!!" I yelp, like Tony the Tiger. And there is Larry Scott, our CEO, explaining to us that at his discretion, the Lucent board of directors went ahead and split with the Baby Bells and became it's own entity, entitling it to an IPO.
I know how that story ends, too. I invest my paltry $5000 of savings into the great, new stock; four months later the dot.com bubble bursts, and I'm left holding a piece of paper worth a half-cent. Scott jokes, "A penny for your thoughts, Angry?", and I have to admit to him since I don't even own that much, I could use the money. He flips me a coin…and I give him the longest, most drawn out "Fuck you" humanly possible. I look down at the coin: it's a half-cent piece.
Another decade goes by. It's 2010. There, again, is Larry Scott. This time he's standing before Congress with Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson. In a Dr. Evil voice, he's pleading with a white-haired congressman from the Great Plains that unless the taxpayers fork over one hundred bazillion dollars (!) to Paulson, the U.S. economy will crash. The septuagenarian, borderline senile at this point in his career, buys into the fear tactics, signs the dotted line, and forks over the money. I know how this story ends, too. The recession turns into a depression, the only thing fending off that label being more propaganda and a government, headed by a promiser much like Larry Scott, that decides it doesn't want to count the long-term unemployed, seasonal workers, the homeless, etc in their economic figures.
In short, Larry Scott is "THAT GUY".
The hot shot chameleon who has pedigree and the charisma to match. The guy with big ideas who charms his way into the good graces of the influential, convinces them that some horrible idea is genius, and ten years down the line everyone's left shaking their head (or blowing it off).
So, when in my lucid state, I shift to modern times and see Larry Scott demanding the highest TV contract in college sports, I see Mike Milken, Hank Paulson, David Geffen, I-Village.com, and the IPO all at his side, all amassed into this one moment.
I wake up. I decide to write a blog about my night. A few hundred people read it. Some, who lived through these times, chuckle…but many don't understand. Most just close the page, muttering "Angry's lost it". They are just glad to be a part of the promised payday. Some respond with justifications longer than Martin Luther's scroll.
It's all good. I ate oatmeal for breakfast. I'm ready for the fight.
Look, I'm at the point in my life where it's impossible to pull one over on me. Have you seen the (wonderful horror) movie called "Death Proof"? Well, I am SCAM PROOF, and my scumbag radar is going haywire when pointed it in the direction of Walnut Creek, California.
Couldn’t disagree more. Scott will be the best thing to ever happen to the PAC-12. I was listening to Beaver Sports Radio last night and Bob DeCarolis and Bob said we just need to keep selling out the football stadium and he knows Pat Reser is willing to come in with a sizeable contribution to finish Reser Stadium as a lasting and well deserved memorial to AL. It looks like 2014 is a likely date to get things going for Reser Phase 3 if we keep selling out or filling it up 99.2+% like we did last year.
I would love to see that for all of Beaver Nation and I know AL would be proud because he loved the rise of the Beavers as much as we all did. I hope they go ahead and just do the full double-decker horseshoe with seating for 55+K so we then can be done with it and don’t have to worry about rising costs or when to finally complete our ideal double-decked horseshoe.
With the Huskies and Cal doing major stadium upgrades now and the Ducks probably getting started about the same time as us in another upgrade the timing is right to start getting the word out so that a few more checks for “Reser Phase 3” come into the athletic department. With the new track facility and basketball facility and new rec fields for all the students (some great soccer fields just in time for Timbers mania) this is a great time to be a Beaver at Oregon State.
Larry Scott is making a strong conference like the SEC with equal revenue sharing where teams like the Beavers can compete strongly and more national exposure and good facilities for athelets and students are a big plus. The BEAVERS will be in a BCS bowl again and Beaver Nation will grow soundly with the bold leadership of PAC-12 commish Larry Scott. This guy knows TV contracts and marketing..two areas that the Beavs have needed help in for sure. Nothing is certain in life accept change. You have to embrace it and let new life energize you. Its a wild ride but will be a fun and exciting one for Oregon State. GO BEAVS!!
The SEC is a disaster zone, not a paragon. The sooner people stop buying the media hype the sooner the sport as a whole can settle down. Low graduation rates, coaches admitting it’s commonplace to buy players, bad academic institutions, uncompetitive in most sports except football, etc etc does not make for a great conference.
This is the SEC: “we play weak OOC games and dominate bad teams. It made people believe we’re great. Now we have a lot of money…so much we can buy players, afford 5 million dollar a year head coaches, and pressure every other conference to keep up with our greatness! College football now sucks because of us? Nonsense, here is 10 million dollars ESPN, talk about us on Gameday, even when you’re in Pac-10 country, and make sure to tell the critics how great we are.”
Brilliant business plan!
The SEC is a disaster because the athletic departments have let the SEC become ‘Boosters Gone Wild’ Now, I’m not saying that that CAN’T happen here…but it won’t. Not in Corvallis at least.
You seem to insinuate that money guarantees corruption. That’s simply not the case. Just because we (should) have more money in the future than we do now doesn’t mean that corruption will follow.
Larry Scott has the Pac-12 on the verge of a massive payday which will benefit every team in the conference. It’s up to those teams, the conference and the NCAA to oversee the athletic departments to ensure that there is no corruption in recruiting. And my guess is that with the scandals circling the SEC (and possibly the Pac-10) that scrutiny will be greater than ever. In light of those facts, this is the PERFECT time for an increase in revenue.
College football is already big business. If you don’t like that fact, watch high school football.
I’m not saying that that CAN’T happen here…but it won’t. Not in Corvallis at least.
It will happen.
Oregon wasn’t corrupt until Knight infused them with money. USC has always had money, and USC has always been corrupt. You seem to be naive enough to believe money doesn’t guarantee corruption. This is your own issue to resolve.
Also, why wouldn’t it happen in Corvallis? Because of Riley’s ethics? They are overblown, first of all, and secondly Riley will not be in Corvallis forever. There will be other coaches at some point. I can name a couple dozen times OSU hosed me (in an unethical way) while in school. I mean, is it ethical to charge poor students $120 for a text book, then buy it back for $20, then sell it to another poor sap for $80? Let me guess, that’s not bad ethics, it’s good business?
*Laughs*
I don’t understand how that’s unethical…if you don’t like it, go online. They don’t force you to buy books from them, or at all. Buy an edition one behind the current level, buy a cheap version of the textbook made for students in developing countries, buy from a student and undercut the middle man, or just live without the book for the term. One term I had to buy $1000 of textbooks (used price from the bookstore) – I spent about $120 total.
Maybe it’s just me, but if suckers are willing to waste their money, I see no problem with taking it.
Unless you have worked problems only available in the newest edition, only to have that edition carried for that term only. Even better yet, and my personal favorite, when the professor is the author of the book and it is only offered new in the bookstore to insure that the professor gets the royalty.
Haha
If you’re willing to put in a little more effort, virtually all textbooks are also available for 1-2 day rent from the library.
I don’t know, I wasted my money for about a year, then wised up and learned to think outside the box. Valuable life lesson, and I apply financial creativity in many spheres – property investment, taxes, etc – largely as a result of this.
So OSU helped my personal professional development by asking ridiculous prices…can’t really say I’m angry about that. Forcing personal growth…isn’t that what college is supposed to be about?
Dude, you really have to get off this stadium kick. We simply cannot support it at this time, I agree it would look cool, but I like our stadium full right now than a cool empty one in the future. Also, would it be a tribute to Al Reser? He commented that he was done donating to athletics after the basketball facility, instead giving his money to the academic mission. Sure would seem to undercut his wishes to me if we built a stadium in “honor” of him.
Also, to continue with the money and corruption debate you have simply created a keeping up with the jones’ situation in our pursuit of a new stadium. Doesn’t that just make us the same as the SEC, is that what we really want? Read the previous article and the philosophical discussion had by Angry and Jack.
Seriously, that guy is constantly talking about stadium upgrades when we can’t even sell out what we have…
I enjoyed this piece greatly and imagined it finding its way to scott It also relates to decline of NCAA Football. More later when i’m not typing on a PDA. Thanks angry.
OSU grads, it being an AG school and all, might understand this analogy better than the long, anecdotal diatribe I just wrote:
Imagine you’re a farmer. Company X, let’s call them Monsanto, comes to you with a new fertilizer that will increase your profit 100%. You buy it, and make boatloads of cash for five years. Then you begin to realize your field has been over harvested and it is no longer fertile. The plants just don’t want to grow. You have to start buying tons of cheap inputs (ammonia/nitrogen) to just maintain what you had before. The townspeople begin to complain about poisonous runoff from your farm. You go out of business. The organic farmer down the road laughs at you.
This is what is happening. Everyone is blinded by the TV contracts and profit. The underlying problems are being ignored, covered up, or forgotten (um, what ever happened to Oregon?), and the sport as a whole is becoming infertile, to use the above analogy. That Larry Scott is championing this business model disgusts me. I hate the guy for it.
Regarding hypocrisy and mutually exclusive events: I don’t care if I’m excited about a championship game (which I am)…I can be conflicted and root for my team to make that game and also hate the guy who arranged it. Why? Because the game itself is not the problem; the game is exciting; the problem is in how the commissioner is going about arranging it and the obvious (negative) consequences that come with “big money”…
Pac-10/12 fans have really sold out on this. They want “SEC relevance” more than anything it seems. I find this especially interesting since, when the Pac-16 was being considered, many fans hoped the old Pac-8 would be reunited. To me this shows were our deepest desires lay, and how they are in conflict with our more conscious desires such as greed, respectability, relevance, etc.
Outstanding graphic description of what is going on. The flaw in your logic though is in not looking at what else is going on during those 5 years. To take some liberties with your analogy. The organic farmer down the road is able to be laughing because he was never in it for the money anyway. During those 5 years every farmer in the area that was competing with the farmer either began using the same or similar fertilizer or they were forced out of the market because they couldn’t compete.
To take it further, there is no reason why the farmer couldn’t have used some balance in those first 5 to extend the life of his soil.
OK, enough with the analogy. There is absolutely no reason that the Pac 12 has to take the money from the big TV deal and have it corrupt the whole conference. Granted, the propensity for that to happen increases dramatically with the extra money. But NCAA Football is one of the biggest businesses in this country and if it wasn’t Larry Scott and the Pac 12 grabbing it – then it would be someone else. And need I remind you that if someone else came calling on the Pac 10 to create a superconference, it would not be those schools in the Northwest that they would be targeting.
I understand your love of the purity of the game (not so sure it is that pure now) but Larry Scott is not the devil in this. I think he is doing the best with the cards that he is dealt. The answer to the corruption is not doing away with the money – cheaters are going to cheat.
Sparky, sorry, this comment was flagged as spam, and I just got to it.
I’ll just add this: the organic farmer is in it for money, too. He/she doesn’t work for free. Let’s not lionize them. In fact, they make more money with less overhead/input in many cases. The organic farmer is more efficient. Unfortunately, there is no “organic farmer” in the NCAA analogy…
So…you don’t like the direction college football is going, and Larry Scott epitomizes this transformation. Fair enough.
But what would you have the PAC10/12 do about it? Bury our heads in the sand and watch ourselves get left farther and farther behind the conferences without any qualms? I may not like the voting and political games, but I’d rather be part of the problem than stand aloof and get screwed out of BCS bowls year after year after year.
How about this, Tom Hansen or Larry Scott? GO
Nice Monsanto reference, lol.
Also, I do feel like we sold our souls to the devil (at the ultimate cost of the conference) to get Utah and Colorado, we got robbed. Those were weak additions.
Angry has lost it.
Agreed! He truly has lost it…he’s at a low point in his life and it truly shows.
I thumbed these posts up because they made me laugh.
Low point? Hardly. That was the day I came home with the clap. Anyone want to hear that story?
Lost it? That happened decades ago at little thing they call birth.
I actually feel pretty great, but thanks for the laughs and backhanded concern.
How did you get the clap Angry?
It involved cocaine, rum, the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, and a coquettish little thing from San Francisco. Ah, salad days.
PS. Still loling at you sending this to Scott.
Sounds like it could have been a pretty fun night, minus the burning and dripping, and the cost of penicillin.
I don’t think he’s lost it. As others mimic the SEC model, or the UO & Oklahoma State sugar daddy model, the true basis of the game – competition, suffers. The game as a whole suffers, and the outcomes become increasingly, and more frequently, less meaingful. It takes discipline to NOT go down that road, and Angry’s point is, Scott doesn’t have it. Does OSU? We’ll find out.
I offer USC and UO as examples. Recently, the only Pac-10 school to generate nationall respect was USC, now all of their acievements are called into question and less meaningful. I for one didn’t care who one the Auburn/UO game because both schools are [i believe] corrupt. Look at recent developments of auburn players talking about being paid; the school’s acievements WILL become less meaningful. UO is keeping things quiet now but it will bite them.
If fair comoetition dies not determine winners, and winnings are subdequently taken away, the outcomes are devoid of meaning why care who loses or wins? The duck’s acievements will eventually ring hollow.
Typed on a pda…
I think your anger is misplaced on this one. I can fully understand you wanting to keep some level of purity in the game we all love. However, money itself does not change right and wrong, or keep people from being moral.
I think this change is inevitable. Either the Pac 10 moves up or ceases to exist. NCAA Football is at its core a very big business in the USA. If Larry Scott wasn’t out there hyping the PAC 12 and trying to grow the footprint there would be someone just like him that would be coming up with a similar plan that including raiding some of our teams. And the truth is, the teams that they would be coming after would probably not be from the Northwest.
Larry Scott is not the devil in this, he is just a tool.
Scott has taken the great prestige the PAC-10 held and turned it into the BIG 12. I rather be poor old OSU and deal with the ups and downs than see what’s yet to come. Money is only going to create 4 powerful teams and leave the rest of us to rot. Yes we are going to ROT!
By that assessment aren’t we rotting now? We are currently one of the poorest schools in the conference. Why is this windfall going to give 4 teams a better opportunity than the rest? As a percentage of overall budget impact, OSU is going to see a much bigger jump than say USC. I’m just not following your logic.
We are rotting but not as quick as we will in the new system. By my assessment the ducks, usc, UW and either CO or UT or Stanford are going to get the bulk of the dollars because they bring them in. The PAC-12 like the SEC will have the elite teams on TV more and we will see less of the schools that aren’t in the top 4. Shoot we don’t even go play the Cali schools that count every year. That’s less money in the way of notoriety and exposure when beating those team like we have consistently. Recruiting is not going to improve if recruits can’t see us play. Sure the TV revenue will be nice but if we aren’t winning then what?
An infusion of money can work two ways.
1. Allow the guys already on top pull away further.
2. Allow the guys at the bottom move up a peg.
Both forces inevitably go to work when money is handed to the two parties, but we see from our society (i.e. class systems) how the distribution of money ultimately pans out. Those who already have wealth pull away. “Takes money to make money” yada yada. The reason for this is simple economics: if a person (or institution) has a surplus capital, they can put the capital to work for them.
In lay terms: if I have $1000 and need to make rent + eat, I cannot invest in starting a business. If person x has $300,000, they can use $1000 for rent + eating, and put $299,000 (i.e. their excess capital) into starting a business, or, generating money from money via investment or loans.
What you wind up with is an ever widening gap.
It’s for this reason that any argument about OSU gaining wealth or being equal falls apart. The wealth is relative, and therefore pretty meaningless.
I don’t understand your argument. Of course additional money will help top programs as well, but fixed marginal distributions are far more beneficial for the poorer programs.
In your analogy, if you make $1000 and are handed an additional $50,000, you suddenly have the capacity to invest significantly where you had none before. Person x increases from 300K to 350K, a modest 17% increase. Beneficial for both parties, but far more so from the hand-to-mouth person. How does that widen the gap?
Well, first off, if you make 1k and are handed 50k, most likely you’re going to save 49k for emergencies, etc. But, beyond that…
A school like Washington is going to take the 15 million and put it into a CD, Microsoft stock, “the Husky network” ala Texas, or some other form of capital growth. Why? Because they are rich, and they don’t need the money. A school like OSU will take the 15 mil and put it into restarting their track program (which will lose money), their basketball program (which will lose money), stadium renovations, etc. All of these are necessary and the money to do them is nice, but OSU will be going backward or treading water for five to ten years while Washington, Oregon, Cal, etc stash and grow capital.
Look at the SEC or Big 12 to see if windfall profits helped the bottom tier schools. They’re still at the bottom; they just have nice facilities. It’s all relative so long as the money is distributed evenly. To see the Beavers move up significantly they’d have to get a larger % than the other schools. At an equal % they’ll actually fall behind due to being behind from the start. A creative way to move up would to be more efficient than every other school, which is why I keep promoting this idea that we should be the Twins of college football.
As I said in another thread, I am working on writing something about the financial loss of 1 bad scholarship offer. It’s pretty fascinating.
I’m with Alex on this, I think this will close the gap at least in the short run. The common misperception on you must have money to make money is that any person that suddenly “has” money will be able to make money. The reality is that most people that have money also know how to make money. Look at all those people that hit the big one with the lottery and then in five years have blown most of it.
Now, I’m not convinced that OSU will make optimal use of this money to truly close that gap. But lets think about where the gap truly matters. One of the biggest areas is our facilities. I certainly would think we could use this infusion to finish the Basketball practice facility. Another area that is often talked about is our image, I would think this infusion could be used to enhance our exposure and maybe hire some talented people to do it in a more sophisticated way than we are doing it now.
My point is still, money is not the problem, the accountability of how we spend it may be.
OSUBABY, the deal is an even distribution of the dollars. That was the concession that the NW schools received for splitting the conference in a way that we don’t get to go to Southern Cal every year. You are right though in if we are not winning none of the money will matter because the private donations will dry up and we will lose in the end.
It was meant to give you a smile. Also I forwarded this rant to Larry Scott.
We need to grow the national exposure for the PAC-12. Larry knows how to do that. He was great for Women’s Professional Tennis. All the PAC-12 teams will get stronger. Larry is committed to a strong league from top to bottom and that is why he pushed hard for equal revenue sharing. With the upgrade in facilities happening across the conference and already having many real good teams and an exciting style of play the PAC-12 will take its rightful place at the top of the national landscape. The Rose and Fiesta Bowl will both showcase our teams more years than not. My guess is we will have 2 teams in BCS bowls 75% of the time. That will be very good for the conference. The PAC-12 will also help sustain OSU track which will be fun to try to grow the program and compete against Oregon who has the most storied national program. I also believe the PAC-12 will get OSU basketball a nice jumpstart and we will start going to many NIT and an NCAA appearance or two down the road a bit. If we can have both football and basketball nationally relevant and keep them consistently in that discussion that will be a great place for OSU fans, students and alumni to be. That is where Beaver Nation wants to get and Larry is doing a darn good job to help us achieve a high level. Two baseball nattys were nice as well and we would alll like to see the Beavs win another!
All of the above is why I just like college baseball.
Is Larry Scott that cigar smoking TV preacher? :)
I can’t stand this dude because of his ridiculous statements about maintaining “Historic Rivalries,” during his lame ass press conference explaining why the Northwest Schools got hosed in the conference split. He must have had some political strategist tell him to use that line to make everyone feel like the Bay Area schools deserved something extra. Yeah, the guy is a step up from the old mothball, but that isn’t saying much.
The infusion of money can only help OSU. They will never be able to keep up with the “powerful” schools, but maybe they could be solvent. I keep reading outraged citizens on blogs complaining about OSU athletics taking money out of the general fund. It does have some resonance with me as I have seen my son’s tuition go from 5000 his freshman year to near 8000 his current senior year. ( Understandably they pay the same at UO and there is more to this than money going into athletics ). Just on marketing, how do you compete with USC and UCLA in sales of jerseys, hats and memorabilia. Their market is 10 to 15 million. The state of Oregon is only a little over 3 million and most of the shirts I’m seeing are Ducks. And as for ticket sales, both the Coliseum and Rose bowl are over double Reeser. Our only hope is to take the money and create some niche environment that student athletes would want to come and bring their 5 stars. As for Scott, I will be impressed if next year I see good officiating. If he can turn that around in his short tenure, then my hats off to him.
Angery,
You are a dip shit when it comes to football, but damn that was good writing. Great job!
There is a whole ton of “Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc” going on in this post/discussion.
Just sayin, bros.
There might be. I am too lazy to read each sentence and think about it. If you’re going to make that accusation you should probably provide examples. Otherwise it just seems like you Googled “Logical Fallacy” and accused us of the first one you thought made sense, and you yourself don’t really know what it means. Just saying.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc
Yay! I R SMRT
Not quite getting the post hoc reference. Are you saying that we’re all assuming illogically that the discussion only occured because the post appeared? Just show your syllogism, and all will be fine.
Wait… maybe you think propter means discussion? So the translation would be “post this, therefore discuss this”.
?
Then how do I translate “cum hoc, ergo propter hoc”?
On a side note… is there such thing as a logical fallacy. I mean, if a fallacy is logical wouldn’t it be a truth?
Looks like glaadbeav watched the West Wing recently and managed to retain a bit of knowledge. :)
Haha, is that where it’s from? It sounded so contrived, like he’s just been waiting to drop that on someone.
More on Willie Lyles…
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=6275253
Indirectly implicates LSU…oh noes. Let’s see how long before another school gets in “trouble”, sweeping this story under the rug.
So is the UO/LSU showdown next fall now the “Willie Bowl?!?”
Too funny if both schools get in trouble before then for their use of Willie….this has juvenile humor potential ALL over it…”Ducks, Tigers caught with pants down: Indicted for Unethical Willie Use..”
Sorry….it was just too easy.
Maybe, like this gentleman from Eugene, UO’s AD, Phil Knight, et al just need to go on a bender to do the right thing and come clean on this Willie Lyles situation and get their finances in order:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/man-wakes-up-from-bender-with-financial-problems-s,19858/
Honestly Angry, you think Oregon gets the hammer dropped on it? We both know what they did. But do you HONESTLY think that Phil has enough money and power to make it go away?
Yes, because Texas and Florida and other Oregon foes (let’s face it, they’re national) have more power and tradition than Oregon, and they’ll want the Ducks eliminated from contention. Unless those schools are afraid of rocking their own boats…then Oregon will get away with it. The “investigation” has been painfully quiet, though. Not a good sign for those who want justice. Even if the NCAA brushes this one off, Oregon’s on the field achievement has been tainted. Though, with their marketing department, they’ll probably create a viral Youtube video that has them coming out of this smelling like roses…
And on cue, ESPN has an article about it being time to pay players…
http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=6276491&categoryid=2564308
This is another reality of Larry Scott’s lucrative TV deal. The more money to go around, the more people who will want a slice.
The arguments by the ESPN analysts are hilarious. “Just pay the players, the free market will solve everything!” and “a monthly stipend” lol lol lol.
Yeah. Like they don’t live like kings already.
If you want to pay them, then take all revenue gained by NCAA member schools’ athletic departments and pay the athletes the mean of all revenues divided by the number of athletes.
And what do we do with walk-ons or partial scholarships?
Why does every proponent of pay for play simply scoff at scholarship plus free room and board… often much better quality room and board than the average student? When I hear about athletes busing tables and trays in one of the school’s cafeterias between classes then working a part time job after school long enough to get home just in time to eat another dinner of ramen or eggs or a potato… just so they can only be half as much in what seems like an eternal debt after graduating from a school they actually worked hard to graduate from…
… then I might agree.
OR, how about the NCAA distributes all D-I TV revenue evenly amongst all D-I schools?!?
AND, establish a play-off? Conference Champs and second place teams go in the play-offs, 3-5 place teams go through a “consolation bracket” of “traditional” bowl games (Holiday bowls and lower).
I know, I know, never happen.
An update on the TV negotiations:
http://blogs.mercurynews.com/collegesports/2011/03/30/pac-12-football-and-basketball-update-on-the-tv-negotiations/
It sounds as if the Pac-12 network is going to be pay-per view/added fees for “premium” events. Did I mention I hate Larry Scott??
Right now, I get every Beaver game on FSN for $5 extra per month. If they go above $10, I doubt I’m a buyer. Cable is already too expensive.