Money and Mediocrity in the NCAA

By BARRY FRIEDMAN

Now that the NCAA bowl season is behind us — it is, right? There isn’t some George Santos Family Foundation Bowl at Citi Field coming up? — it’s a good time to review the pointlessness of the entire endeavor. 

Before I do, though, if you still support Santos, you are banned from mocking any piece of driftwood any congressional district or state sends to Washington.

Which brings us to the Guaranteed Rate Bowl, formerly the Copper Bowl, formerly the Insight.com Bowl, formerly the Insight Bowl (without the .com), formerly the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl, formerly the Cactus Bowl, and formerly the Cheez-It Bowl (which shouldn’t be confused with the current Cheez-It Bowl, played in Orlando).

Might as well call it the Velcro or Sharpie Bowl.

This year,  it was Oklahoma State University against the University of Wisconsin. The Badgers won, 23-17, which isn’t important now— nor, let’s be honest, was it important then. Both teams finished the regular season with 7-6 records and 4-5 records in their conferences.

Only ignominious gamblers and fans from both schools in deep denial cared about this one.

Played at Chase Field in Phoenix, the game drew 23,187 — Chase Field holds 48,000 — but with the right camera angles, you wouldn’t know that. The payout, from television rights, was $1.625 million each, which is serious money until you consider the allotment of tickets the schools have to buy from the NCAA (at inflated prices), the cost of travel, food, and lodging for the players, band, cheerleaders, and administrators, and the cut of the gate each school’s conference takes. Wisconsin is in the Big Ten, which currently has 14 teams, but will soon have 16; OSU is in the Big 12, which currently has 10 teams, but will soon have 14 before eventually settling on 12.

Don’t ask.

And it’s not like the players aren’t well compensated.

It’s not. They’re not. 

In the 2021 Guaranteed Rate Bowl, the, ahem, student-athletes from West Virginia and Minnesota received a Theragun Pro massage, a Lululemon 22L Cruiser backpack, and a 26-ounce Ice Shaker bottle.

And now these same players want rights to their own NIL (name, image and licensing) — ungrateful bastards! 

In 2011, the University of Connecticut played the University of Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl. Both schools received $2.5 million each; still, UConn lost $1.8 million on its appearance, in part because it sold only 2,271 tickets of its allotted 17,500, meaning it had to eat the cost of 14,729 of them— or $2.9 million. According to ctpost.com, there was $685,195 in travel expenses for players, staff, and administrators, another $369,817 for the band and cheerleaders. Then all those people, including a hundred 300-pound football players, had to eat — another $460,941. 

And to put a bow on all this, after UConn lost, the following day its coach, Randy Edsall, resigned to take the Maryland job.

“Bowls have become network-owned, commercial enterprises, in some cases, pitting average teams in money-losing bowls for the benefit of a few,” Charles E. Young, 79, president emeritus at the University of Florida and a member of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, said at the time. “I think the losses are higher than anyone knows.”

The NCAA rules for postseason eligibility state: “An eligible team is defined as one that has won a number of games against Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) opponents that is equal to or greater than the number of its overall losses (e.g., a record of 6-6, or better).”

There are 131 schools in the FBS and 43 bowl games. That means 86 teams went “bowling,” as we kept hearing from announcers, because they’re clever and hilarious — or 66% of all schools in the country. 

The NCAA postseason is mostly about giving out participation trophies, a time for linemen of 7-6 teams to signal to the camera they’re No. 1 while holding trophies from bowl games that have more sponsors than Giuliani has ex-wives. It’s also a time for rich donors to get drunk in out-of-town hotel bars. One coach told me the best thing about going to a bowl was that his team got to practice for another month after the regular season ended. 

That’s just terrific. Fans from Stillwater and Madison get to enjoy a weekend in Phoenix while players miss family holidays and increase the chances of chronic traumatic encephalopathy— and all for games that Do. Not. Matter.

And often they really don’t. 

“An institution that finished its season with a minimum of five wins and a maximum of seven losses and achieves a multiyear football APR score that permits participation in the postseason (e.g., 930) to be identified as alternates in descending order of the most recently published multiyear FBS football APR scores, which are a team’s total points divided by points possible and then multiplied by 1,000 to equal the team’s Academic Progress Rate.”

Cryptocurrency is easier to comprehend.

In 2020, Mississippi State University, with a 3-7 record, was invited to the Armed Services Bowl in Fort Worth, Texas, to face my sometimes beloved alma mater, the University of Tulsa, which was entering the game 6-3. The thinking at the time was that had MSU not had its non-conference schedule canceled — COVID was running rampant — it presumably would have racked up victories against lesser opponents and reached the magical, mythical, meh six-win total. The game, incidentally, drew 9,000 spectators in Armon G. Carter Stadium, a venue that holds 45,000. There aren’t enough good camera angles to fix that. At the end of the game, after an MSU player was called for unsportsmanlike conduct, a melee ensued. It’s unclear what caused the incident, but if I had to guess, I’d say they were fighting over who thought this game — like the candidacy of George Santos — was a good idea in the first place.

Barry Friedman is an essayist, political columnist, petroleum geology reporter — quit laughing — and comedian living in Tulsa, Okla. His latest book, “Jack Sh*t: Volume One: Voluptuous Bagels and other Concerns of Jack Friedman” has just been released. In addition, he is the author of “Road Comic,” “Funny You Should Mention It,” “Four Days and a Year Later,” “The Joke Was On Me,” and a novel, “Jacob Fishman’s Marriages.” See and friedmanoftheplains.com.

From The Progressive Populist, February 15, 2023

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