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As I was running errands this afternoon, I was listening to Bob Valvano's talk show.  He has an afternoon talk show on the local ESPN affiliate and does an overnight show for ESPN radio on the weekends.  If you don't know Bob, he also does color commentary for ESPN during basketball season, and the occassional football game, as well as the local (Big East Network, for now) broadcast of Louisville games.  He's Jimmy V's brother and a former college head coach.


All that is by way of introduction since I want to Bob the credit for this idea.  He proposed today that, assuming the NBA ever solves its labor problem, and more about that at a later time, it should seize this opportunity to change its calendar and start games in December and run through July, instead of the normal October through June.  Why, because on the front end there is too much competition (NFL, college football, NASCAR Chase, World Series)  and no one pays attention to the relative meaningless early season and when the playoff start, there is still competition: March Madness, the Stanley Cup, the opening of baseball season, the Triple Crown, the Masters and some others. 

However, once the middle of June hits, there's nothing.  Baseball is in the middle of the season and it doesn't demand the interest of the casual fan and what else is there?  From roughly mid-June to the beginning or middle of August, there is a relative sports desert.  All we have is baseball, regular season MLS, golf, tennis and regular season NASCAR, if you will. Even horse racing takes most of July and early August off without more than a couple of major races.  The NBA would have the field to itself.  I think the networks would love it as it would give them some high demand television in traditionally slow months.  It all makes a great deal of sense to me, which of course is why they won't do it.

The NCAA Board of Directors approved a proposal to allow schools to distribute up to $2,000 a year or the full cost of attendance, whichever is less, to student-athletes in "head count" sports, i.e. men's and women's basketball, football, and those in " equivalency sports" who reach the full value of a scholarship. Amazingly, the NCAA Board, which is composed of member university presidents actually followed through on a pledge to reform its policies in student-athlete friendly ways,

While the full cost of attendance change is likely to garner most of the headlines, the Board passed what potentially could be a more impactfull change, finally authorizing multiyear scholarships up to the full term of eligibility. This should help stop the oversigning problem which plague the SEC., and the disgraceful practice of wholesale running off of players that seem to accompany every coaching change. Additionally, the presidents voted to allow institutions to provide aid to any athletes who came back to school to complete their degrees following exhaustion of of their eligibility. They also raised the Academic Progress Rate required for postseason eligibility. Taken as a whole, this was probably the single most student athlete friendly day ever at NCAA headquarters. The presidents made good on a number of commitments they had made over the years and NCAA President Mark Emmert made a significant down payment on his credibility as a student athlete friendly reformer. Much is left to do, but we must always stop and recognize progress when it occurs. I've bashed the NCAA on many occasions for ignoring the welfare of the students in favor of the sports administration complex (similar to the military industrial complex.). These steps don't end the arms race, don't begin to reign the outrageous salaries being paid to coaches, or the sale of the programs to corporate sponsors, but they took significant steps toward making the student athletes lives better, both while at school and, importantly, after they have left without a degree. For that, they deserve our praise.

Before I dive into the topic of the post, let me first say a word or two about the absence of recent posting.  I realize it's been a while and I want to apologize for that.  A combination of health issues, all now since resolved, thank you, and family matters have consumed my time for the last couple of months and I just haven't been able to devote any time to the blog.  However, with most of that behind me, I hope to resume posting on a much more regular basis.


In my absence, it seems that college athletics is engaged in another round of conference roulette, touched off, in part, by another ACC raid on the Big East, grabbing Pitt and Syracuse.  Has there ever been a more insecure conference commissioner than John Swofford?  This time, of course, the SEC joined in the fun early with Texas A&M longing to get out from under the huge shadow cast by its Austin rival, jumping from the Big XII.  The final shoe has yet to drop as Missouri is readying itself for a move to the SEC, with the Big XII then having to decide whether to just replace Missouri and stay at ten members or invite three schools and go back to 12.  By all reports, there is no consensus yet, although the Big XII presidents meet this week.

The Big XII decision has ramifications for the Big East, which is trying to salvage itself with a plan to expand to 12 football members by adding Boise State, Air Force and Navy for football and Houston, SMU and UCF for all sports.  Since Louisville and West Virginia are widely thought to be two of the three leading candidate to join the Big XII, all the Big East can do now is wait it out.

Aside from your favorite school may be playing next year or in 2013, there are two interesting undercurrents to all of this "ring around the rosey".  One is the unseen hand of ESPN; the other is the potential effect this maneuvering may have on the NCAA's and its members' tax exemption.  Let's take ESPN first.  To accept what I'm about to discuss takes a little bit of belief in conspiracy theories.  While I'm no usually prone to believing in them, this story has too many coincidences not to give at least a little credence.  First, a little history.  Within the past year or two,  three major conferences have signed new television agreements for football and men's basketball: the ACC, SEC and Big XII.  Both the ACC and SEC signed very lucrative long-term deals with ESPN, which created branded "ACC on ESPN", and "SEC on ESPN" networks among other enticements, like hundreds of millions of dollars.  The Big XII spurned ESPN and signed with Fox, its previous media partner.  Earlier this year, the Big East, in the final year of its existing ESPN contract, rejected an almost $1 billion contract in favor of negotiating next year, when all the other conference deals will have been completed.  Leading the charge to reject the contract was Pitt Chancellor Mark Nordenberg.  The two conferences most adversely affected by all of the school movement so far:  Big XII and Big East.  One further bit of evidence is the comment by the ever lovable athletic director at Boston College, who, in discussing the admission of Pitt and Syracuse, said "It�s 85 percent football money. TV - ESPN - is the one who told us what to do."He later apologized and said he misspoke but what would you expect him to do?

The tax implications of the realignment game are potentially far more impactful than any monetary gain a new conference and new TV contract may provide.  For more than five years, Congress has been "interested" in the tax exempt status of the NCAA and the athletic programs of its member institutions.  For any number of reasons, members of Congress have thought that athletic programs sporting budgets  in the tens, and even hundreds in the case of Texas and Ohio State, of millions and making decisions based on business necessity not the welfare of the student athlete were being operated as businesses and should be taxed accordingly.  In 2006, the House Ways and Means Committee sent a letter to the NCAA asking it to respond to various questions and justify its tax exemption.  While the issue has been on the back burner since, comments like these from our voluble friend at Boston College certainly don't help the NCAA cause.  When schools are jumping to leagues with questionable geographic and academic ties (see ACC or Boise State to the Big East) it becomes increasingly easy for the opponents of the NCAA to question its right to a tax exemption.

When the primary justification for a conference switch is to access a greater pot of TV money, or even to gain access to the BCS, without regard for the welfare of the student athletes who must do the far flung travel while also keeping up with classwork, can it honestly be said that such a move is furthering the academic mission of the university. Before you say football is only once a week and they generally charter planes at this level anyway, remember that most of these moves are all sports moves requiring the Olympic sports, which do not have the budgets enjoyed by basketball and football, to make the same trips.  Olympic sports generally travel commercial if they must fly and those are all day trips in both directions.  We all know how pleasant the commercial flying experience has become.  Athletic department actions which are so blatantly commercial, as jumping conferences for a share of TV money, may go a long way towards solidifying the argument that the NCAA and its member institutions are not engaged in activities that further the academic mission of the school, but are commercial enterprises that deserve to be taxed like ones.  Should that happen, not only would there be tax to pay, but donations to the athletic department would likely lose their charitable deduction, significantly decreasing the attractiveness of many season ticket packages.  As has been the case so often in the past, when it comes to college athletics, decisions are often made for all the wrong reasons or are not carefully thought through.  Athletics seems to attract emotional decision-making more than any other aspect of university life and, as a result, the entire enterprise of college athletics as we know it may be placed in peril.