Not a big fan of the news Texas and Oklahoma want to join the SEC. Yes some paid commentators on ESPN think it is a great idea and say NCAA sports will be better for it. Nope!
First it will mean less players will get to play in meaningful games because the NCAA football championship will become diluted. Instead of more conferences vying to include teams we will have less conferences where only the top teams year over year will play. The more you consolidate the more the best players will only want to go to fewer and fewer schools so they have a chance to play in a playoff to championship game.
Many other football programs will be dropped which will mean less money for those schools for other sports or other endeavors. Sure the football team picks up the lion share of money from games, but in the long run school recognition helps them to raise money in other areas. If alumni are engaged then they donate more, but if there is nothing for them to get excited about they drift away from their college experience.
I am not going to get into Universities are big businesses anyway so it won’t matter because some of that is true. Yet if you talk to many students who had a good experience their four years they will tell you some of that involved cheering on one or more sports teams while in school. And if colleges and universities build that rapport with their students it does help the institution long term.
Cutting back on the smaller schools or schools in the newly forming large conferences that get caught behind with recruiting and the experience for the students is diminished when there is nothing to get excited about. Sure they may have a team, but once power is consolidated to a few schools then interest and attachment dry up for alumni.
And some of you may cheer that it should be this way since they are institutions of higher learning. They are also institutions of social indoctrination, friendships, lives explored, adventures and so on that add to a person’s overall persona. Sports is not the end all, but it is a part of this developing experience. And not all students will be into sports and that is fine, but they may be into art, music, history, politics, math, science, languages, which benefit from a strong alumni base.
Universities should have their primary focus on education and if you look around nowadays you know we need it, but the universities need activities to make the experience for their students something they remember. In talking about this with someone today, they related a story that just personified being part of a rivalry and was funny as heck. If there ever was a moment to make fun of the other team, this was it. Good fun, of course, and it was.
And it is stories like I heard that bond people and they tell it for years. And this is important, maybe not as much as their education, but important to their lives and their life long friendships.
Again this is the United States and money triumphs over what is actually best.
No cheers tonight.
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