(07-31-2019 03:53 PM)arkstfan Wrote: 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.
In fairness to the NCAA, they never promised the schools/conferences forced down that if the CFA decided to litigate the TV issue anyway, that the NCAA would win. Nobody knows what will happen when something goes to court. Nor could the NCAA force the CFA to drop the TV lawsuit once the new IA requirements were implemented.
Not being stupid, the smaller IA schools being forced down to IAA knew all this before the 1981 vote, but they also felt the pressure of the CFA TV lawsuit, so those that voted for the change (and not all did, the Ivy strongly opposed it) were gambling that doing so would mollify the CFA and cause them to drop the TV lawsuit.
But, what is often left out of this discussion is that TV money wasn't the only animating force during 1981-1982. A big issue was control, namely the perception that for years, the smaller schools had been blocking the bigger schools procedurally on NCAA issues. Both Bear Bryant and Joe Paterno complained about that at the time. This of course is a very similar issue to what animated the push for "autonomy" thirty years later, in 2012 as the CFP was being formed - the Big schools not wanting to be constrained in NCAA councils by the votes of smaller schools.
When you look at the dueling 1981 ABC/CBS/NCAA TV deals and the NBC/CFA deal, the money that the Oklahomas and Penn States would be getting wasn't all that much different. The CFA signing with NBC and the OU/Georgia/Texas lawsuits was initially largely a leverage move to pressure the small schools that routinely voted against big school proposals to accept a reorganization that would reduce the number of small schools in IA, and hence the voting power of the smaller IA schools. Basically, for several years the big schools were complaining about getting blocked, but those complaints were ignored in NCAA councils until the CFA negotiated the NBC deal and a few big schools filed the lawsuits. It worked - once the NBC deal was signed and the lawsuits to protect it were filed in the summer of 1981, the small schools woke up to the threat and agreed to the "emergency" late 1981 meeting that resulted in the new IA rules that booted out the Ivy League and others.
The importance of control back then is illustrated by the split among the Big schools that existed at the time - the Big 10 and Pac 10 were not only not members of the CFA, between 1978-1980 they also had initially supported the smaller IA schools in NCAA councils. But, at the emergency 1981 NCAA meeting, the Big 10 and PAC 10 changed their posture and joined the other big schools in voting for the rules that sent the Ivy and others down to IAA, even though they continued to abstain from the CFA and the TV rights battle. So the Big 10 and Pac 10 were able to see a common interest with the other major conferences on the issue of control, even as they did not on the TV issue. The Big 10 and Pac 10 would essentially remain separate for 17 more years, until joining the BCS in 1998.
In the end, despite the reorganization that forced 40 or so schools down to IAA, the CFA proceeded with the TV lawsuit, and we know what happened with that aspect of it. So the big schools got their procedural cake (fewer smaller schools in IA to block big school moves) and were able to eat it too (TV contract freedom).