Good morning, and welcome to Tuesday, August 8. Rick Seltzer wrote today’s Briefing. Julia Piper compiled Comings and Goings. Get in touch: rick.seltzer@chronicle.com.
TV money runs the show
College athletics’ game of musical chairs sped to a frantic pace this weekend. Keep an eye on what unfolded, because it will reverberate across higher education more generally as a reflection of college leaders’ true priorities.
The Pac-12, one of the so-called Power Five conferences, was down to just four institutions Monday: the University of California at Berkeley, Oregon State, Washington State, and Stanford universities. This weekend, the Big 12 and Big Ten poached a collective five institutions, capping a dizzying year of colleges moving between the Pac-12, Big Ten, and Big 12. And the moves might not be over.
Changes have been brewing because conference television contracts are coming up for renewal. Two football heavyweights, the Southeastern Conference and the Big Ten, were the major winners. The SEC soon starts a 10-year, $3-billion television deal with ESPN, and the Big Ten is entering a seven-year, $7-billion contract with Fox, CBS, and NBC.
But the Pac-12 has struggled to find a broadcast partner.
Meanwhile, colleges in other conferences are saber-rattling about leaving for more greenbacked pastures. Florida State University is unhappy with the ACC because its television contract pays less than the new Big Ten and SEC deals. FSU’s athletic department is reportedly considering raising funds from private-equity investments.
Some college leaders argued realignment is in players’ best interests. Ana Mari Cauce, president of the University of Washington, said it’s about stability and national television visibility for players.
Yet coaches are saying the quiet part out loud: These are money plays. As Deion Sanders, the University of Colorado’s new football coach, said last week:
- “It’s about the bag. Everybody’s chasing the bag.”
Irony alert: The NCAA has been lobbying Congress to save college sports from a lack of a national standard on name, image, and likeness deals. As Jemele Hill wrote in The Atlantic:
- “Now colleges’ hypocrisy is being fully exposed. Athletes were simply seeking equity and fair market value, and they’re finally able to get it. Colleges have been beholden to money the whole time.”
Realignment hurts the NCAA’s ongoing case for players as amateurs, Michael McCann wrote in Sportico. Colleges are making decisions based on revenue and reputation and not on academic interests like minimizing travel during the semester, he wrote. Television dollars for football are driving the changes, but athletes in less-remunerative sports outside of football must also live with them.
Television has run college sports since 1984, when the National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma Supreme Court case allowed institutions to sell their broadcast rights, Dan Wolken argued in USA Today. Tradition, geography and academics mean little as the networks jockey to get the teams they want on the air without paying for the teams they don’t.
The bigger picture: As revenue-producing sports featured on TV, Division I football and basketball are the crucibles where college values meet money. Their visibility makes them standard bearers for U.S. higher education. But when the media market, not institutional values, is orchestrating decisions, what message does that send?
Quotable: “You either eat or you get eaten,” Neal Brown, head football coach at West Virginia University, said.
