Blow it Up

            Normally on Saturdays in autumn I’m looking over TV listings and the schedule on ESPN3.com looking for college football games to watch. If you want you can catch games from noon until nearly midnight and beyond. This week I just can’t do it. I just look and shake my head in disgust. Perhaps the straw has indeed broken the camel’s back.  It has nothing to do with what has happened on the field. It’s the bitter taste this sport has left in my mouth so many times. College football is badly broken, and perhaps this week’s scandal at Penn State was simply the straw that broke the camel’s back. I’m taking this week off from watching.

I hope I’m not just being dramatic. Then again, maybe that’s exactly what I’m hoping for. Strange way to start a post, huh? I can’t decide, and actually that illustrates my feelings pretty well. I’ve been kicking around my feelings on the whole Penn State sexual abuse scandal for almost a week now. This isn’t going to be another column on who to blame. There have been more columns written on that this week than you can read. Some condemn everything that moves, some even partially defending Joe Paterno (this one by Sally Jenkins is among the best, which is no surprise since just about everything Sally Jenkins writes is top notch). What seems clear is that a formerly well respected program, one that is often held up as an example of what’s “good” about college football, ignored something hideous in its own locker room and young lives were destroyed.

Just over a year ago, Notre Dame student Declan Sullivan was killed while filming football practice in a scissor lift in high winds. Ever since that day the college that has been a part of my life and soul since before I can remember (my father went there, my high school job was there and I cheered for that football team to the point obsessive-compulsive behavior for a while) has steadfastly refused to take any real responsibility for it. The student knew he was in danger (his eerie tweets from that day still send chills down my spine) and yet no one at Notre Dame seems to know who told him to go up there. Was it the coach (Brian Kelly, who has exhibited behavior ranging from “refusal to take responsibility” to “raging asshole” since he arrived)? Was it the athletic department? The school has passed the buck on this as quickly as they’ve passed NBC’s bucks into its bank account.

Around the country news of players being shopped around from college to college by parents, taking bribes from coaches and boosters to play football for one school or another. Don’t worry about classes, those will be taken care of for you, just put on the damn jersey. Eighteen year olds are coming out of high school and are immediately told by the new authority figures in their lives that you have to cheat and lie to get ahead.

Great job, oh ye institutions of higher learning.

It’s simple to say that money is at fault. These schools make tens of millions from their football programs and the easy thing to do is point the finger at the moolah and say it’s made them lose perspective. Except that’s not it. Money is not making them behave this way. It really isn’t.

The problem is the culture that forces them to pretend it’s not about the money.

Let’s get one thing straight. College football has always been about the money. It was in the days of Fielding Yost, Pop Warner and Knute Rockne, and it still is today. Yet colleges aren’t allowed to say that out loud. They have to pretend these programs are not designed to be profit centers for their schools. They have to pretend they are simply there to provide extracurricular activities to the “student/athletes.” Please.

These programs are meant to be money-makers for the universities. Some are better at it than others, such as Texas, whichwas valued by Forbes at $119 million in early 2010, but all of these programs are there to generate revenue and nothing more. They make this money by exploiting the athletes, who technically are not supposed to get a dime. Not for the thousands of jerseys sold with their numbers on them, not for the tickets sold to see them (I have never once paid to see a member of a school’s board of trustees), not for the hundreds of millions in TV contracts handed out by the networks, not even for video games that bear their images and likenesses. People get upset when players take money, but why wouldn’t they? They know what’s going on. They know who is bringing in all this dough and many of them (rightfully) want a cut.

But since this façade of amateurism is held in place by the schools and the laughable institution known as the NCAA, this has to happen under the table. This gives rise to the booster culture that is prevalent at major college programs. Booster is a nice word for “jock sniffer with money.”  These people want to be around athletes and want to feel they are a part of a glamorous team, so they pay their way in with cash and gifts to the players themselves, who then buzz around them (you know, like flies buzz around horse shit, which is the most accurate illustration of a booster-athlete relationship possible).

This also begets phrases such as “preserving the tradition” of the school and doing things “for the good of the program.” Since they are embarrassed to admit teams are profit centers, schools pretend that the teams are a part of the very fabric of their educational institution (in fact many schools keep their athletes completely separate from the traditional students, stashing them in athletic dorms, feeding them in athletics-only dining halls and building multi-million dollar workout/entertainment facilities to keep them occupied during downtime).

There is a simple way to end this lying and cheating, and that’s just be up front about what these programs really are. They are pro teams put out there to bring money to the schools. Just like schools sell anything on which they can print the school’s name and logo in order to make money, schools put out an entertainment product (college football) to make money. Just like the students get paid to work in the bookstores and souvenir shops, students should get paid to put on the entertainment product. Pay the players.

Some say that is not profitable, but I’ll call baloney on that one too. There is an easy way for college football to be a lot more profitable than it is now. It’s a radical move, but one that is long overdue. They should dump the NCAA.

One of the reasons I was happy when schools started bailing out of the Big 12 was I was hoping for college football Armageddon. That was the closest these schools have come to doing it, but they didn’t quite have the guts. The Big 12 should have folded and the member schools should have been dispersed to the SEC, Big Ten and Pac Ten. The ACC and Big East should have merged to compete with the new superconferences, and the domino effect would force just about every independent school or big-name mid-major (Boise State, Army, Navy and BYU or example) to join a superconference as well. They’d each have their own TV network (The success of the Big Ten Network paving the way) and network/cable TV deals (which would be worth a lot more money with more schools involved for each conference). Then, since they had every school anyone would care to really watch, they could tell the NCAA to take a hike, create their own national championship tournament (conference title games as the quarterfinals, with the winners going to a football final four and then a national title game) and sell the rights to FOX or ESPN/ABC for staggering amounts of money. They could keep it all then, skipping the millions of dollars of administrative costs the NCAA wastes. Why share the money with them? The NCAA has shown itself to be incompetent to handle big-time college sports and this way they don’t even have to sweat the other schools that don’t draw crowds.

Then these schools would be free to pay the players some of the money they deserve (even if that means pairing down the rosters, which is fine since 100-plus players on a team is silly enough as it is) and stop pretending they’re something they’re not. The boosters would go from being back-alley corruptive influences to just being rich fans in the luxury boxes since they wouldn’t be needed to make back-door deals anymore.

The consolidation would be good for the sport. It would drop the corrupt bowl system while being profitable for the schools that draw money. Running it more like an NFL-style business would be better for everyone involved, and more honest as well.

I don’t know that it would have saved Declan Sullivan’s life, but perhaps some standardized safety guidelines would have kept him off that lift in a howling wind. I don’t know that it would have kept sexual abuse from going on at Penn State, but perhaps it would put a dent in the “preserve the sacred reputation” culture that swept it under the rug for so long.

These schools say they are there to educate the students. Fine, teach they don’t have to lie and cheat right out of high school. Teach them their hard work has value. Most of all, stop insulting them by pretending you’re doing them a favor by allowing them to play football for the glory of the old alma mater. Those kids have been lining the school’s pockets for decades. They’re the ones doing the favors.