(05-07-2013 11:11 AM)FoUTASportscaster Wrote: (05-07-2013 10:20 AM)FloridaJag Wrote: They have to make it up with an increase in merchandise sales; however, why leave $750,000 dollars on the table. That is alot of scholarship money or operations money.
And THAT'S exactly my point. Who cares if Alabama can afford it, it is money taken off the table.
There is only one sport in the NCAA at all levels where the championship is outsourced. Why on earth is the NCAA's potentially most lucrative postseason outsourced to the bowls and their executives? All that does is cost the Universities and Conferences money.
Even for a school like Alabama, that 750,000 could be returned to the general fund and help fund academics, rather than a bowl executive and staff, who all get over a million dollars for managing one bowl game.
For the G5, that is a huge, HUGE difference. We all love the pageantry of the bowls, but we love the pageantry of the NCAA's too.
BTW, ESPN owns seven bowls. That's part of the answer right there.
I keep hoping one day, the NCAA will man up and institute a playoff system, let conferences opt in and then sell the broadcast rights. Because the NCAA usually covers travel costs, schools would make more and eventually the pressure would be there for all conferences to join. Then, the BCS or whatever crap is there can go the way of the NIT, which used to be the Men's Basketball premier postseason tournament.
You can still have bowls and do a playoff, just like basketball has the NCAA's and the NIT.
the bowl games started out being owned by the conferences that is why the NCAA does not own them
the D1-AA playoffs did not start until 1978 and by that time the bowl games for D1-A were 70+ years old (the first Rose Bowl in 1902) and the conferences had no interest in giving that up
there was a time in history when airplanes and private jets and the like did not fly all over everywhere much less for a cheap price and a time when people did not have reliable cars they could jump in and drive for 5-6 hours with their family and friends
and there was a time when a bowl game was more than just two teams coming to play a game it was a city wide event with major things going on and associated with it
it is popular to only try and remember back to when the BCS started in 1996 and cry that the "big boys kept us out and don't want to play with us"......yes because by then the big boys had put decades and decades into building the bowl games into what they were and the little guys were playing playoff games in front of half full stadiums down in D1-AA and not getting on TV and getting no revenue for their efforts
there was a time when there were only 3 over the air TV networks instead of 250 channels of crap and ESPN The Ocho so TV stations could pick and choose what they wanted to show so they went for the things people actually wanted to see VS something that gets some warm bodies half paying attention in front of the set
basketball is not football.....you can't play back to back to back football games even with different teams on the same field often times unless you want some teams playing on torn up crap and especially before the time when there was artificial turf
basketball teams and basketball courts can take game after game after game or at worst play a game every other day.....you can't subject football teams to that specially at the end of the season and for the "important games"
it is popular to pretend there was some great conspiracy to prevent the little guys from having a fair chance, but the reality is it was not possible to have any type of a meaningful playoff in 1902.....1942......1962 or even into the 1970s and by then the bowls had been built into something that was a major attraction and there was still only a few TV channels to show them on and they were owned and controlled by the conferences and featured conference matchups and they were a draw for the people in the MAJOR cities that hosted them as well because of the other things that went on in conjunction with them...the idea that all of that should just be tossed aside so the "little guys" with few fans, few viewers, no draw for general "football fans" and the like is just a fallacy in the minds of those that can't remember past last week much less that conferences put a great deal of time and effort to build up those bowls
things change, but that does not mean that they will change where one day the NCAA says "hey look how poorly the "fair" D1-AA playoffs do lets force the major conferences into that model"......especially when the major conferences will answer with...BYE! and BYE! will probably include all their sports as well as football and the NCAA can go back to being the arbitrator of fairness and equality like before the CFA came into existence and pushed TV revenues through the roof VS what the NCAA was pulling off
and the reality is for most of history the NCAA was not even pulling off a basketball playoff that was the NIT doing that and it was in the biggest city in the USA with plenty of infrastructure and local fans and it was INVITATIONAL so they could make sure to not be stuck with dead weight and it was basketball with much smaller teams, the ability to host multiple games one after the other and for teams to play 2-3 games in a weeks time span VS one game a week.....so the NCAA is not the super hero of championships and playoffs they are the johnny come lately and new kid on the block
