Congratulations on an outstanding project, and I can’t wait to see what you guys come up with in the future. I still feel like I — an out-of-state alumni willing to pay to follow my team’s games via PPV broadcasts, etc., for longer than there was an internet — got off easy, tho’.
It definitely seems clear there’s more than enough blame to go around among the TV, the NCAA, and everyone else who sought to maximize their profits by preventing reforms and adaptation. But as a fan, I ultimately enabled all of them. I was a sucker for TV coverage that celebrated and elevated rivalries into events with national significance they’d never had before. I nodded sagely when people said the NCAA’s amateurism rules might be hard to justify, but that the organization still had players’ interests at heart — and that there should be penalties for rule-breakers until the rules were changed. I elected the officials who failed to do anything about it. It was my cash that ultimately found its way into coaches’ and agents’ pockets.
As fans, we provided the demand for this sport, and we clearly didn’t think much about who supplied it or how it was supplied. Was there any way college football was going to survive the amount of money we were willing to throw at it? I’m not so sure.
Thanks for engaging so deeply with my comment, guys. And I agree completely: what I was proposing was very much a narrative shift in presentation from what you guys plotted out. It wasn't intended to say you guys were wrong so much as to present an alternative point of view built around an analysis of where the locus of control sits in these choices. I also, to Godfrey's point, bristle at the obfuscation of control of the NCAA and conferences, who are often presented as separate from their membership.
Congratulations on an outstanding project, and I can’t wait to see what you guys come up with in the future. I still feel like I — an out-of-state alumni willing to pay to follow my team’s games via PPV broadcasts, etc., for longer than there was an internet — got off easy, tho’.
It definitely seems clear there’s more than enough blame to go around among the TV, the NCAA, and everyone else who sought to maximize their profits by preventing reforms and adaptation. But as a fan, I ultimately enabled all of them. I was a sucker for TV coverage that celebrated and elevated rivalries into events with national significance they’d never had before. I nodded sagely when people said the NCAA’s amateurism rules might be hard to justify, but that the organization still had players’ interests at heart — and that there should be penalties for rule-breakers until the rules were changed. I elected the officials who failed to do anything about it. It was my cash that ultimately found its way into coaches’ and agents’ pockets.
As fans, we provided the demand for this sport, and we clearly didn’t think much about who supplied it or how it was supplied. Was there any way college football was going to survive the amount of money we were willing to throw at it? I’m not so sure.
Thanks for engaging so deeply with my comment, guys. And I agree completely: what I was proposing was very much a narrative shift in presentation from what you guys plotted out. It wasn't intended to say you guys were wrong so much as to present an alternative point of view built around an analysis of where the locus of control sits in these choices. I also, to Godfrey's point, bristle at the obfuscation of control of the NCAA and conferences, who are often presented as separate from their membership.
Thank you very much for sending it in!