(08-08-2019 07:26 PM)AppManDG Wrote:  

(08-08-2019 10:31 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  

(08-03-2019 10:37 PM)AppManDG Wrote:  

(07-31-2019 03:53 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  I always refer to it as 1981 because the vote was in late 1981 but it in no way, shape, nor form was related to 1978's creation of I-A/I-AA.

1981 was NCAA crassness at its prime. The powers in Shawnee Mission wanted OU and UGA to drop the anti-trust lawsuit, they wanted the CFA to quit trying to do its own TV.

The solution they came up with was change the "or" in the I-A criteria between sport sponsorship and attendance criteria to an "and" to eliminate a bunch of schools.

The NCAA tried to sugar coat making the following promises. There would be more post-season opportunities, there would be a minimum amount of TV coverage, and there would be no changes that would interfere with schools continuing to play each other if they ended up on different sides of the split.

Horse manure all around.
In short order post-season was deregulated in I-A and every FBS league ended up having more post-season opportunities than any FCS.
The TV deal couldn't be delivered because the NCAA lost the lawsuits and the TV contract.
Before the decade ended the 6-5 bowl eligibility rule was adopted and initially no wins over I-AA would count then it was only one win every four years.

That final change broke the camels back and spurred a dash of schools rushing to I-A. In short order, Akron, LaTech, AState and Nevada were all in or back in I-A and it didn't help when schools regularly playing them said they would no longer play because the bowl eligibility rules.

The schools forced into I-AA got screwed 10 ways to Sunday as the NCAA didn't deliver on the promises and failed the primary missing on keeping the power school using the NCAA to negotiate the TV deal.

App State was at the center of the suit Georgia & Oklahoma brought against the NCAA. The NCAA contract called for certain number of exposures for all conferences,
The same weekend nationally ranked Georgia & South Carolina were playing ABC showed App vs The Citadel. I still have a copy of that game.

Odds are one of UGA and South Carolina had already hit their maximum for TV appearances.

That was a point of contention the NCAA had no intention of fixing at the time.

That was probably the case, but it was late October and CBS still owed the SoCon an exposure. Perfect Storm.

The App State/Citadel game in 1981 was in late September, 9/26.

Also, while Georgia vs South Carolina was surely a game of interest, as the game featured Herschel Walker vs the guy who would win the 1981 Heisman, George Rogers, it was not a matchup of top teams. Both had lost by then, Georgia was #17 and SC was unranked.

The big game that day was #1 USC vs #2 Oklahoma.

That said, App State did figure in to the court case. When the District Judge ruled against the NCAA in late 1982, a decision that the supreme court would uphold two years later, his ruling noted that on 9/26/81, ABC had aired USC vs Oklahoma to over 200 markets and App State vs the Citadel to only 4, and yet because of the NCAA contract, all four schools were paid the same amount of TV money. He cited that as an example of classic restraint of trade.