From the Bench

Conference Realignment Pushing College Sports in the Wrong Direction

Robert Shields

The football conference realignment talks continue with much speculation from fans across the country. What is driving the talk this year is the movement afoot by the Big Ten to add schools to its conference, which many speculate will cause the SEC to kick into expansion mode to not be outdone for that TV dollar.

The biggest piece of the puzzle continues to be Notre Dame, but I don’t think Notre Dame will relinquish its football independence to join the Big Ten even if the Big East is pillaged and leaves its other sports playing in a second-tier conference because nothing else matters at Notre Dame other than football.

The other heavy speculation is Missouri to the Big Ten. Missouri still feels slighted from a couple of years ago when they beat Kansas straight up then lost the Big 12 championship game, which put Kansas in the BCS and left Missouri relegated to a lesser bowl game. Missouri fans felt cheated and should have been represented better by its conference.

Missouri also may want out because the revenue sharing in the Big 12 is not optimum for the school. The Big 12 revenue sharing tends to allocate more money to its TV teams, which to those paying attention means Texas and Oklahoma.

Because all of this, most see the Big 12 as the most vulnerable conference and the most likely to be raided right behind the Big East if expansion happens in earnest. This is also another reason you need to slap anyone who brings up the notion or lists any positives of the Hogs going to the Big 12. It’s all negatives if the Hogs leave the best conference in the SEC and go anywhere.

Right about the time the Hogs joined the Big 12 and started the new conference play would probably be about the time Texas and Oklahoma jumped from the Big 12 to the SEC leaving the Big 12 in the lurch a la the old SWC, but this time it would not be Rice left in the cold, but Arkansas.

I hate the concept of conference realignment. I believe it to be detrimental to college football in the long run. I know that I am a dinosaur at times, and I know many people love change and relish the idea of super conferences, but to me it is pushing college sports in the wrong direction.

All these changes and the possible creation of super conferences only make college football closer and closer to NFL Light. At some point, what is the difference between watching the Central division of the NFC or the Western Division of the SEC – it will all be contrived solely to generate revenue.

Ultimately, that is what expansion is all about – creating revenue. Do I think these super conferences will emerge? I do not believe it will happen this year, but I do think it’s inevitable because of the before-mentioned revenue demon that drives college athletics more and more to being a true professional sport.

There is a pending court case in which a former UCLA player from the 1995 championship team that beat the Hogs in the final game of the NCAA tournament is suing because his image shows up in one of these video games that the kids play. In the game, a kid can pick ancient teams such as the 1995 UCLA team, and a particular player looks very similar to and has the same number as the player suing. It is a “likeness” case.

Years ago, I would have laughed at such a suit, but in this day of the NCAA and college presidents and athletic directors trying to make every buck like a pro team, maybe these college players deserve their share since the schools get royalties off these game sales.

In the end, I hope college athletics and especially football will deviate from its present course of mimicking the NFL because that was far from the model that drove college football to its success.

But if college sports truly wants to go this route and be solely about making money like the pros, maybe it is time they started paying their employees.




Send what was different for the Hogs in the 1995 championship game they lost after an 11-game winning streak in the NCAA tournament to fromthebench@yahoo.com