Cook: Realignment issues arise again
Just when you thought it was safe to read the sports pages again…
Like that great white shark in Jaws, realignment has reappeared to take a bite out of the euphoria that accompanies the start of the college football season. When our thoughts should be on things like who will step up and pick up the slack for an injured star like Knile Davis at Arkansas, we are slapped right in the face with the will they or won’t they uncertainty of realignment.
Frankly, I’m tired of it. I was tired of it last summer when the project doomsday scenario of the Big 12 breaking up and the Pac-10 expanding to super conference status by feasting on the remains of the Big 12 seemed all but a done deal.
Of course we know how that turned out. The move of Nebraska to the Big Ten was the only move of importance, while the Pac-10 picked up just two teams-Utah and Colorado-that really didn’t give the conference the much-coveted national attention commissioner Larry Scott wanted.
Now it seems the Southeastern Conference is being cast in the role of the old Pac-10 as the greedy conference ready to snap up any team that would help add to the conference’s coffers. It doesn’t much matter if Texas A&M made the initial inquiry to the SEC or not, the league looks like the bad guy in the most recent scenario.
There is a certain irony in that realignment came in the same week as the pompous presidents met and decided they were sick and tired of the corruption that is rife in college athletics. So they did what academic people are known for doing-they decided to raise the APR standards. It was designed to give the appearance that academics are more important than athletics, which may be true to the heads of the academic side of institutions, but probably not true to the rest of the university, especially those in charge of raising funds.
But by raising the standards, they might have actually gotten the attention of the coaches. If a school fails to qualify for a bowl game or the NCAA basketball tournament it will be felt in the wallet-don’t forget football and basketball coaches have built-in bonuses tied to postseason appearances. Nothing gets through to a coach like hitting him in the back hip pocket, or at least that used to be the case. And for some coaches it still is. The problem with the elite coaches is they make so much money you wonder just how much a bonus for going to a bowl game or the big money basketball tournament even means to them.
Of course, not everybody is in the elite status and a postseason bonus can still be awfully important to the coaches who fall below that status. To many people, even the lowest paid college coach is still making more than most of the population so it is hard to feel sorry for any of them. But the first time the new APR standards causes your school to miss out on the postseason, then you will hear a groundswell of protests from the fans who will suddenly take a huge interest in academics.
A bigger question might be will the raised interest in academics help clean up college sports?
It’s not likely. There will still be teams (coaches) who will look for the easiest shortcut to winning, and that will mean there will still be athletes (or fathers) who have their hand out, and there will still be boosters who want nothing more then to use their influence (or cash) to land the hottest five-star recruit for their favorite team. It is doubtful that any of those people are going to be spending much time worrying about APR scores that might prove to a problem three or four years down the road.
Still the presidents have taken about the only step they can to strike a blow for bringing college athletics back in line. As recent issues at North Carolina, Ohio State, USC and others proved, something needed to be done and the presidents have at least made an effort. Just how much it helps remains to be seen.
As far as realignment goes, it is not over and probably won’t be until there are only two leagues left-Texas and everybody else.
