If you want to predict the future, just follow the advice of Woodward and Bernstein: Follow the money. The fate of college football and the Bowl Championship Series depends more on cash and less on on-field flash, so let's look at the issues facing the most important players in college football (the ones who wear suits and ties, anyway).
Mo' money, mo' problems
The largest coaching contract in college football history was inked in 2007, between Nick Saban and the University of Alabama. Schools should expect to see the bar raised again in '08.
With Saban topping $4 million a year, agents should expect to see both windfalls and backlash from the rising salaries. Kansas' Mark Mangino, Illinois' Ron Zook, Missouri's Gary Pinkel and Cal's Jeff Tedford easily could finagle massive raises to join the $2 million to $3 million per season club -- either with their current school or with the next major program that axes its coach. Conversely, those piles of money will start to crush coaches. Astronomical salaries beget astronomical expectations, and 6-6 at Iowa -- the Hawkeyes' third mediocre season in a row -- would mean immense pressure for Kirk Ferentz and his $3 million annual salary. The same applies to Charlie Weis; his 10-year deal worth a reported $30 million to $40 million looks like robbery when you consider Notre Dame's dismal 3-9 season and the dearth of quality wins in Weis' three seasons.
Gentlemen, start your lawyers
All of the Southeastern Conference's television contracts -- with ESPN, ESPN2, Lincoln Financial Sports and the 12-year megadeal with CBS -- expire by spring 2009. This means a firefight over the rights to televise games in college football's most profitable conference. The SEC also could launch its own television network in the next year or so.
If the "Speed Equals Cash" conference does launch its own TV channel, expect the Big Ten Network to be its model. SEC commissioner Mike Slive asserted earlier this year that his league would not abandon a primary network affiliation but instead would see how negotiations went and then proceed. This essentially is the Big Ten model: Big games go on ABC/ESPN with others broadcast exclusively on the conference channel. Whether the SEC stays with CBS or leaves for even bigger money is a fascinating question, especially given Fox's ability to make it rain. Fox already holds the rights to the World Series, the NFL's NFC contract and four of the five BCS games. That makes a nice segue to ...
If the "Speed Equals Cash" conference does launch its own TV channel, expect the Big Ten Network to be its model. SEC commissioner Mike Slive asserted earlier this year that his league would not abandon a primary network affiliation but instead would see how negotiations went and then proceed. This essentially is the Big Ten model: Big games go on ABC/ESPN with others broadcast exclusively on the conference channel. Whether the SEC stays with CBS or leaves for even bigger money is a fascinating question, especially given Fox's ability to make it rain. Fox already holds the rights to the World Series, the NFL's NFC contract and four of the five BCS games. That makes a nice segue to ...
Fox attitude: Learn to love it!
With reportedly $320 million already invested in college football for the BCS games, Fox will continue to wedge itself into the picture as a force in determining how college football works out its messy compromise of a postseason ... whether you like the on-screen advertisements in between plays or not. (Thanks to those nettlesome ads during the BCS title game, we're now openly wishing for the failure of the movie Jumper.) Fox broadcasts four BCS games and likely will find a way to flex its muscles and sway bowl committees into making more competitive picks than this year's. More compelling picks might have been available had it not been for ...
Rose is a thorn
Everyone but Pac-10 officials and Big Ten officials blame the postseason mess on the Rose Bowl -- and by extension ABC/Disney/ESPN. t seems both odd and sad that much of the turmoil surrounding the creation of a playoff depends on what amounts to a faceoff between media conglomerates, but that's the sandbox we college football fans play in. ABC holds the Rose Bowl rights until 2014; so long as it does, there is no incentive for ABC to cooperate with Fox to create compelling bowl matchups. This year, the Rose Bowl bent to tradition and -- with Ohio State booked in the BCS title game -- selected Illinois out of the Big Ten instead of Georgia from the SEC. That set up not one but two reeking mismatches: Hawaii vs. Georgia in the Sugar Bowl (Fox) and Southern Cal vs. Illinois in the Rose (ABC). It's like an extremely uncooperative blackjack game at this point: Even with the dealer sitting on 15, one or more players could take the dealer's bust card, just as Rose Bowl officials did this year. The resulting matchups resulted in a 13 percent decline in ratings for Fox's four games and in a 20 percent decline in ratings for ABC's Rose Bowl. The chances of this happening again, even with the sheer amount of cash involved, remain high so long as the Rose Bowl is out of the cartel and making whatever crazypants pick it cares to make. (And this is how you get James Carville on ESPN railing against the Rose Bowl like it just ran over his favorite huntin' dog.)
The 800-pound gorilla (Plus-One) Disregard University of Georgia president Michael Adams' proposed eight-team playoff plan, or at least his sincerity and commitment to lobbying for it.
Politics in college football is indeed local.
Adams merely was pandering to football-mad Georgia alums still disgruntled with him over the firing Dawg legend Vince Dooley from the athletic director's post, according to the Georgia bloggerati. Instead, watch for real kibitzing over the possibility of the "Plus-One" scenario. Nothing happens before 2010 (the final year of the BCS contract) at the earliest, but Atlantic Coast Conference and SEC officials will push for discussion of the Plus-One format at a meeting of all 11 football conferences in April. The Plus-One format comes in two variations: Working existing bowls into a four-team playoff or having the top two ranked teams after the five BCS bowl games play for the national title. The trick to pulling off either involves ... well, there are two ways to put it. One is to say that in any proposed financial projections between the major franchises in college football, revenue sharing of an equitable and attractive manner will be paramount. nother way of saying this: You'll have to pay off the Pac-10 and Big Ten like you were trying to smuggle a troop of armed chimpanzees through Chinese customs. The Pac-10 and Big Ten each received $14.5 million from the Rose Bowl in 2005 alone. With CNBC's Darren Rovell conservatively estimating the worth of a college football playoff to networks at $160 million, huge chunks of that must go to the Pac-10 and the Big Ten to make a playoff of any kind possible. And with 11 conferences negotiating the deal (plus Notre Dame), ACC commissioner John Swofford's recent comparison of the process to "turning a battleship around" might not be adequate here -- it's actually more like turning a battleship with 22 unequally powerful hands on the wheel.
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