http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/sports/ncaafootball/texas-ams-expected-defection-to-sec-is-a-sign-of-ncaa-anarchy.html?ref=sports&pagewanted=print
excerpts ..
- No one is in charge.
For all the billions of dollars, millions of fans and boundless passion that surround college football, that has always been its glaring and bizarre flaw. No one is looking out for the greater good of the game. No one is guiding the sport toward long-term prosperity and short-term sensibility. No one is building consensus and channeling all of the ratings, financial success and popularity toward an outcome that is positive for everyone in the sport.
And with the conference plate tectonics poised to shift with Texas A&M's possible move to the Southeastern Conference, the college sports world finds itself, yet again, panicking about a major paradigm change.
excerpts ..
- No one is in charge.
For all the billions of dollars, millions of fans and boundless passion that surround college football, that has always been its glaring and bizarre flaw. No one is looking out for the greater good of the game. No one is guiding the sport toward long-term prosperity and short-term sensibility. No one is building consensus and channeling all of the ratings, financial success and popularity toward an outcome that is positive for everyone in the sport.
And with the conference plate tectonics poised to shift with Texas A&M's possible move to the Southeastern Conference, the college sports world finds itself, yet again, panicking about a major paradigm change.
- Texas A&M, meanwhile, will face a harsh reality on the field in the SEC, where it is light years from being competitive, and perhaps on the recruiting trail, where the local talent pool will be raided after recruiters from its new league are given an opening in Houston.
The new incarnation of the Big 12 unraveled quickly, awkwardly and publicly in 2011. The divisive issue was Texas' new television channel, the Longhorn Network, which drove a wedge between the Longhorns and the rest of the league before showing a minute of programming. (In what could be a summation of the current landscape of college athletics, ESPN created the Longhorn Network, which helped force Texas A&M to leave the Big 12, and now ESPN will probably have to pay the SEC millions more because the league is adding Texas A&M.)
- The A.C.C. is nervous that Slive will snatch a marquee university, even with the understanding among SEC presidents that the league would not add a university from a state that already includes an SEC team — which would seem to rule out Florida State.
- Once again, tradition and common sense have given way to television money and ego.
