OPINION:
The Pac-12 conference, which was founded in 1915 and has won more NCAA championships in team sports than any other college sports conference, last week dissolved in a matter of hours, mostly because a handful of its member schools decided that they could make a few more bucks in television revenue from football.
Some of the schools went to the Big 12 conference (which now has 16 schools), and some went to the Big Ten (which now has 18 schools).
This is the natural terminal point of the effort started in the early 1980s by colleges to challenge the NCAA’s monopoly on television revenue from football.
That effort included legal challenges, and in 1984, the Supreme Court, in NCAA v. Board of Regents, ruled that the NCAA had violated the Sherman Antitrust Act and infringed on the ability of its members to make as much money as they could from football.
In his dissent, Justice Byron “Whizzer” White, a football player and Heisman Trophy runner-up at the University of Colorado before he walked on as a justice at the Supreme Court, predicted the scramble for cash and suggested that the NCAA was about something bigger than maximizing football revenue.
“Yet each of these regulations represents a desirable and legitimate attempt to keep university athletics from becoming professionalized to the extent that profit-making objectives would overshadow educational objectives,” he wrote.
Unfortunately, we have arrived at the moment that White feared.
The court decision created a pathway for the current structure of college sports, in which the largest five conferences — the Big Ten, Southeastern Conference, Atlantic Coast Conference, Pac-12 and Big 12 — make the most money.
It is important to realize that the schools in these conferences are subordinating the interests of their student-athletes, chasing relatively small amounts of cash. For instance, when the University of Oregon announced it would join the Big Ten last week, it was reported that the school will receive annual payouts of $35 million to $40 million from Big Ten media partner Fox.
That’s less than what Big Ten schools usually get, but it’s better than their current Pac-12 deal.
For comparative purposes, a couple of years back, the University of Oregon wrapped up a giving drive that netted $3.24 billion. It’s not like it needs the extra few million dollars from the Big Ten.
Unfortunately, the young men and women in these schools are the ones who will bear the burden. Student-athletes in all sports — because conference affiliation does not just involve the football teams — are going to wind up flying across the country to matches and games (and flying back again) while trying to have some semblance of a normal college life.
The Big Ten will now stretch from New Brunswick, New Jersey, to Seattle; the Big 12 will stretch from Florida to Utah.
The least surprising and most discouraging part of this story is the confirmation it provides that university regents, trustees and administrators don’t really care about the young men and women who rely on them for leadership and guidance.
What they really care about is the cash.
It is no accident that these same school “leaders” have been fighting vigorously for years to prevent football players from sharing in the money they earn for the schools. You have to admire their tenacity in prioritizing cash for the university over any other consideration.
If the purpose of a university is to build an ever-more profitable, telegenic football program, perhaps we can sheer away some of the tangentials such as classrooms and professors and whatnot.
If the purpose of a university is something else entirely, then administrators, trustees and regents should start acting like it.
• Michael McKenna, a columnist for The Washington Times, is president of MWR Strategies. He was most recently a deputy assistant to the president and deputy director of the Office of Legislative Affairs at the White House. He can be reached at mike@mwrstrat.com.
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