The question came over a beer. “Frank, which sport has experienced the biggest upswing in your lifetime?” “College football,” I said without hesitating. It used to be a niche sport, the favorite of some. It’s big now. Really big.
The College Playoff is one reason, but not the only reason. Other key factors are ABC-ESPN and the NCAA.
Big money flows to big-time college football, and a major source is ABC-ESPN. Consider this: for the rights to broadcast just 7 games a year for the next twelve years (the playoffs and four other bowl games) ABC-ESPN will pay the NCAA $7.3 billion dollars. That’s just one example of the scale of the TV game. Unprecedented coverage of National Signing Day is another. Bottom line: ABC-ESPN showcases college football. It’s a major dimension of the ESPN brand.
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The NCAA helped enormously by granting autonomy recently to the Power 5 conferences. That move provides separation between big schools (about fifty) with resources to compete for the national championship and other schools (about 200) that work diligently to stay out of the red.
These things–the college Playoff, ABC-ESPN, and conference autonomy–make college football a fifth major league. That’s right, a MAJOR league in the same bracket as the NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL. The NFL is inarguably the giant, but it’s related curiously to NCAA football. On the one hand CF is pro football’s unofficial farm system. But the two sports compete with each other, too. They play during the same time of the year, with teams located in the same geographical areas, and with clubs vying for attention (and dollars) from an overlapping fan base.
My friend didn’t ask a follow-up question: “Frank, did you see this coming?” “No!” would have the answer: “Hell, no!” The evolution of college football—from the time I was a kid until now—represents a stunning metamorphosis.
My initial sports memories (going back in the late ‘50s) are all about major league baseball. Baseball was king in those days. It’s pro football now with college football moving up the chain. College football was both big and small when I was a kid, and I was lucky to be in touch with both.
Big schools played big games. Syracuse (where I was born) fit the part, winning the National Championship in 1959. But the Big Ten was the
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biggest of the big and the Rose Bowl was the game of the year: the Champion of the West (The Big Ten, once “The Western Conference”) played the champion of the Pacific 8 (now Pac-12). Down South it was the Southeastern Conference with legendary schools (Ole’ Miss), coaches (Bear Bryant, ‘Bama), and players Billy Cannon (LSU). The Southwest Conference (now defunct) had Texas and Arkansas. And the Big 8 (now Big 12) “owned” Thanksgiving Weekend. Just about everybody I knew watched Oklahoma v. Nebraska each and every year.
Almost every small school (it seemed) had a football team in those days. St. Bonaventure, Canisius, and Niagara–“The Little Three”—played in my neck of the woods. All three had dropped football (for financial reasons, as did many other small colleges) by the time I entered college. Some of those schools (San Francisco, for example) had national reputations in football.
A number of liberal arts colleges still play football today, mostly in NCAA’s Division III, but “small” doesn’t figure into the national equation. Ohio State, Alabama, Florida State (and other household names) make college football major league.
Some analysts quibble about whether “pro” applies to big-time college football. Why bother? Major college football—the kind that ABC-ESPN features—IS pro football. For proof just look at data that USA TODAY presents and analyzes annually—coaching salaries, revenues, expenses, and subsidies (money to support athletics from non-athletic revenue streams), recruiting, and the like. The scale is enormous, comparable to major pro sports—except for the fact that major college football doesn’t compensate athletes for playing. Even the new policy—adjusting stipends to fit living expenses—will add only about $5000 a year (on average) per player to college athletic expense ledgers.
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But, on the inflow side, there seems no end to the $ available to support major college football. Consider this: Auburn will spend $14 million for a new electronic scoreboard at Jordan-Hare Stadium. And Bloomberg found that many universities are soliciting donors to establish athletic endowments.
Yeah, major league baseball was king when I was a kid. Now it’s football—pro ball, first and foremost, with faux pro (college ball) on its heels. College football is like baseball used to be (and to some still is): a year-round addiction. In college football there’s pre-season practice (late July-Aug), the season (Aug-Nov), the bowls and playoffs (Dec and Jan), Signing Day (Feb), and Spring practice and game (Mar and Apr).
The calendar hasn’t changed over the years. It’s just that more and more people are paying attention theses days to college football–more than ever before.
Move over pro sports. College football needs a seat.
ENDNOTE: How have other pro leagues evolved over time? When I was a kid the NBA was a non-factor, largely because the league was new (established in the late ’40s) and teams were clustered in the Northeast and Midwest. For example, three teams were located along the New York State Thruway (also I-90 today) in central and western New York State—the Syracuse Nationals, Rochester Royals, and (later) Buffalo Braves. Fort Wayne, Indiana even had a team. Arguably the NBA didn’t become a national sport until the early ‘80s when Magic and Bird made the transition from college to pro.
It was pretty much the same for the NHL. “The Original 6” teams (the Bruins, Rangers, Redwings, and Blackhawks) are in the Northeast and Upper Midwest. The Canadian teams in those days—Montreal and Toronto—are in the same geographic area. The NHL certainly had rabid fans in my youth, but pro hockey wasn’t a national sport. And even though fan interest has expanded considerably since then, the league struggles financially, even in Canada; and the NHL doesn’t have a national TV arrangement equivalent to the other pro leagues.
Pro football wasn’t king back then, either. The American Football League (AFL) shook up things in professional football, but the AFL didn’t start playing until 1960. Consolidation with the NFL and the launch of The Super Bowl (1967) began the NFL’s evolution to mega-sport status, but the transition didn’t happen automatically. Consider this: you could buy a ticket to Super Bowl I (Green Bay v. Kansas City) for $12; and there were thousands of empty seats at The LA Memorial Coliseum that day.
