Does the NCAA make a difference?

Here it is New Years Day. The climax of life's great pleasures, the annual football orgie. Wall to wall excess. The last and biggest of 35 bowl games named after everyone but your local chemical cockroach killing company. What was a tight little fraternity of 8 or nine bowls has fallen victim to the philosophy of "everybody" must get a trophy to feel good about themselves, or must get a bowl check and the extra month of practice to feel good about themselves. That's read have something to sell to recruits. These things are now named after everything from potato chips to cars.

Parallel to this is the circus that is Cam Newton and the Ohio State five. Newton's father (a preacher no less) supposedly shopped his son's services around for something like $150,000 to $180,000. Newton was let off the hook because it could not be proven that the player did not know what the father was doing. At Ohio State, Terrel Pryor and four other starters were suspended for selling team memorabilia to outsiders and pocketing the money. Total value of the money changing hands was about $2,000 to $2,500 per player. The suspension was for the first five games NEXT YEAR. Head Coach Jim Tressel said they could only play in the Sugar Bowl if they promised to return next year. What?????

Big time college football has gotten too big for the NCAA rule book. The enforcement division cannot keep up with number of violations if it wants to investigate each incident thoroughly. The only solution is to cut the ticky tack violations out of the rules and just punish "major" misconduct. This is the direction the conference consolidation is taking us.

Eventually, the BCS conferences will leave the NCAA and form their own umbrella organization. The BCS conferences are where the football money is and football money is power. Money means TV, TV means market size. With rare exceptions, the BCS conferences cover the top TV markets in the country. The ones they don't have are covered by mid-major football programs that are gradually migrating to BCS conferences. TCU to the Big East is a logical stretch but it still happened.

The new non NCAA umbrella will pay the players a stipend and that will be no problem given the TV money that flows to the major schools. What Oklahoma and Georgia opened up in 1982 (that right of schools to sign there own TV contracts) is at the core of this. That's where the "BIG Ten" network, the "SEC Network, et al, came from.

Until the conference re-alignment is done, and its isn't yet, we will have the above contradictions in the definition of a "player" in the NCAA. We will still have our post season orgy that climaxes today. But pause for a moment today and reflect on where we have come from. The Four Horsemen, Doc Blanchard, Roger Staubauch are fond memories of the baby boomer's childhoods or before. Things aren't that way any more. Pleased pass the Fiesta Bowl chips and call the shop and see if my bowl game muffler is installed yet. I have seen the enemy and he just converted third and long.