(Photo caption: ESPN executives take a break after a recent meeting in Bristol, Conn.)
You have to hand it to Gene DeFilippo. He kind of flipped out by telling Jeff Jagodzinski to hit the bricks, leaving him in the current predicament with Magnum P.I. running things, but at least the man isn't afraid to call it as he sees it.
So much secrecy surrounding the ACC's thinking about conference realignment. Commissioner John Swofford bragged about the so-called 4 by 4 by 4 committee (4 presidents, 4 athletics directors, 4 faculty athletics reps) charged to explore the ACC's positioning, but he refused to identify the people on the committee.
People in power across the ACC, including at Clemson, became very tight-lipped a few days before it was revealed Pitt and Syracuse are coming aboard.
In the absence of candor and insight, it's refreshing when someone steps up and has no problem acknowledging reality. And DeFilippo, Boston College's athletics director, did precisely that when he said this in a recent story by the Boston Globe:
"TV -- ESPN -- is the one who told us what to do. This was football; it had nothing to do with basketball."
The surprising thing is not what DeFilippo revealed, but that he chose to reveal it publicly. This is stuff that's been said privately for some time, but often it takes something like this -- unambiguous, and on the record -- for people to really notice.
Even before this revelation, it was more than obvious how much control ESPN asserts over college athletics. You play when they say you're going to play. If you're Texas, you take tens of millions of dollars in exchange for ESPN infiltrating your program and chronicling all the behind-the-scenes stuff.
At this point it would be disingenuous not to acknowledge that there's some good to ESPN's pervasiveness. We enjoy watching shows about college football during the week. We enjoy the extra analysis, the saturation of coverage. We love Thursday-night football, and Friday-night football is quickly gaining some stock as well. We like the fact that we can watch just about every game out there. We appreciate being able to watch games on our computers.
And of course this is a good thing for those of us who make our livings off of chronicling the sport for a living. The bigger it gets, the more people who are interested in our coverage. Can't imagine many people out there would want to pay 10 bucks a month for wall-to-wall coverage of intramurals.
That said, it's funny to think back years ago and recall the explanation from college presidents when asked about the prospect of a playoff in college football. They were against it because there were too many games already, and these "student-athletes" needed to have their heads in the books.
Then the presidents signed off on a 12th regular-season game that created a seventh payday for most major college football programs, and the "academics" argument fell apart on itself.
Now people in power try to tell us that college athletics is not a commercial enterprise, that it's still about an "academic mission" and all that. It's a laughable notion to begin with, given that Tostitos/Allstate/Discover/Vizio is virtually tatooed on the foreheads of BCS participants. And then Georgia gets paid $3 million to trash its traditional uniform and sport truly hideous garb for its opener against Boise State. And then there's Maryland's uniforms...
At this point, nothing can be dismissed as a zany conspiracy theory anymore. Remember a few years ago when talk of superconferences seemed outrageous? Heck, it seemed a little "out there" just a few months ago when folks suggested ESPN was the one calling the shots on the entire realignment phenomenon.
Now, not so much.
LW
No comments:
Post a Comment