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College Football in 2020 in danger?

The_Great_Hornsby

By The_Great_Hornsby
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Veerbone
Veerbone

It’s horrible, why did the liberal state run governments let everyone die?  Shameful.  

Bob Lives!
Bob Lives!

Ignore this crap about personal injury lawsuits from Covid. It isn’t happening. It comes from a place of ignorance and fear, or worse, insurance industry propaganda.   Lawsuits alleging negligent spre

Xavi
Xavi

Potus also shouldn't be stealing money from the American people, giving no bid contracts for political favors, colluding with enemies to allow the murder of US soldiers, using the military and federal

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Shaggybevo

Shaggybevo 353

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1 hour ago, Penche Gringo said:
TFC will announce shortly that based on City of Austin extension of their orders of no gatherings of 10 or more, they have opted to cancel all tailgating on state lots.


 

We won't be tailgating this year.  Instead, we'll be protesting peacefully.

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Veerbone

Veerbone 116

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38 minutes ago, Chopper said:

Hey @SwanderedTalentthanks for going back in my comment history and negging me on posts unrelated to this thread, thereby confirming what a whiney, psycho little bitch you are. I appreciate your cooperation.

Aka being “Huckleberry’d”.   In lieu of public screaming they resort to “peaceful negging”.   It’s a chick thing.  

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Huckleberry

Huckleberry 32762

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1 hour ago, Veerbone said:

Aka being “Huckleberry’d”.   In lieu of public screaming they resort to “peaceful negging”.   It’s a chick thing.  

Aw, poor baby. Negged for crying about being negged.

And everybody knows I responded to you multiple times in various threads. I didn't resort to anything. I negged your stupid posts and also publicly called them stupid. Like this.

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DenverHorn

DenverHorn 56

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2 hours ago, Huckleberry said:

Aw, poor baby. Negged for crying about being negged.

And everybody knows I responded to you multiple times in various threads. I didn't resort to anything. I negged your stupid posts and also publicly called them stupid. Like this.

Beau Vine your sock or do you just go to the girls room at the same time to do your makeup?

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Lidig8r

Lidig8r 1863

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10 hours ago, Shaggybevo said:

We won't be tailgating this year.  Instead, we'll be protesting peacefully.

So, why couldn't a person apply for a Tier 1 Special Event Permit to take place in one of the parking lots? Allege you are protesting uh... hmmm... ah yes, you are protesting aggy's continued embarrassment to the State of Texas and that their jizz jars are responsible for the spread of Covid amongst the sheep population. The event date just happens to coincide with a home game that day. So, it's not tailgating. You are just providing a public service by offering up ribs and brisket to your fellow protestors.

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kopp0e

kopp0e 1135

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11 hours ago, UncleSonny said:

Haha, no fucking way...

Unless B1G & PAC make a swift deal to squash the formation of a players' union for 2020, it ain't gonna get green lit...

"Cancelling the [college football] season has less to do with athletes’ safety & more to do with anxieties over the organization of collegiate athletes en masse" -
@Derekcrim @nkalamb & @JohannaMellison the surge of athlete power #BigTenUnited #WeAreUnited
9:43 AM · Aug 12, 2020·Twitter Web App
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Hurtlocker

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Comcast and company are rebating customers for regional sports networks that don't play sports, reducing the sports networks' carriage with no content, and the mouse is hemorrhaging money.   This could end up being a big financial wound that won't heal for a while.

ESPN and Fox owed the Pac-12 hundreds of millions for the 2020 football season: Will they pay?

Excerpts:

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The conference stood to collect $276.4 million in media rights fees from ESPN and Fox in the 2020-21 college sports cycle, according to a copy of the term sheet obtained by the Hotline.

The vast majority of that payment was rooted in the 45 football games that were scheduled for broadcast on ESPN, ESPN2, ABC, FOX and FS1.

Will the Pac-12 get paid all of it, some of it … or not a single dime?

“I think (the networks) will prorate their rights fees to (the Pac-12), but I don’t believe it will be 100 percent of what they’re supposed to pay,” Patrick Crakes, a former senior vice president for programming and content strategy at Fox Sports, told the Hotline last week.

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Football accounts for approximately 80 percent of the value of media rights contracts.

If there is no spring season — if there is no Pac-12 football played until the fall of 2021 — the conference could be at risk of losing every cent tied to football.

Remove 80 percent of the $276.4 million, and $55 million would hinge on the networks’ ability to broadcast the men’s basketball inventory.

That’s $4.6 million per school in media rights for FY21 tied to basketball, as opposed to the $23 million per school in Tier 1 payments that would come with a normal, fully-loaded sports calendar.

Based on his experience with sports contracts, Crakes believes the conference could be left with zero compensation.

“If they don’t play in the spring, yes, the networks have contractual language that impacts what they pay in the event of lost game inventory,’’ he said.

“The language says they technically don’t have to pay.”

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Comcast, DISH, Cox, and other distributors pay ESPN and Fox monthly fees for the programming that airs on their systems. Those fees, in turn, are the foundation for the media rights payments that ESPN and Fox send to the conference.

The extent to which Comcast and Co. squeeze ESPN and Fox could impact their ability to compensate the Pac-12 for services not rendered.

“My concern is this emerging trend of refunding customers for the (regional sports networks) not broadcasting baseball games during April, May and June,’’ explained Weaver, whose dissertation was on the launch of the Big Ten Network.

In July, Variety reported that Comcast planned to “refund the programming fees its subscribers paid for regional sports networks” for canceled Major League Baseball games.

Refunds to customers for canceled college football could impact the distributors’ payments to ESPN and Fox, which could limit the compensation to the conference.

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Their ability to lean into Force Majeure — the inability to fulfill contractual obligations due to circumstances beyond their control — would seemingly become more tenuous if peer conferences play through the fall.

The decisions to shutter football would look more like a choice than necessity.

“If the ACC, SEC and Big 12 play, the optics are poor because the Big Ten and Pac-12 could end up as the only Tier 1 fall sports that canceled,’’ said Crakes, who noted Fox’s a deep relationship with the Big Ten through their partnership on the Big Ten Network.

 

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Js1

Js1 85162

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1 hour ago, Hurtlocker said:

Comcast and company are rebating customers for regional sports networks that don't play sports, reducing the sports networks' carriage with no content, and the mouse is hemorrhaging money.   This could end up being a big financial wound that won't heal for a while.

ESPN and Fox owed the Pac-12 hundreds of millions for the 2020 football season: Will they pay?

Excerpts:

 

Oh god, won't someone please think of the network profits and revenue!  This is truly the most important issue at play. 

Disney might have to release another movie for $30 to rent. 

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Hurtlocker

Hurtlocker 2208

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18 minutes ago, Js1 said:

Oh god, won't someone please think of the network profits and revenue!  This is truly the most important issue at play. 

Disney might have to release another movie for $30 to rent. 

Ha, the point wasn't network profits mattered as the concern, it was that if they aren't in great shape they could choose not to pay because there isn't a stream of money to cover the loss.   This, in turn, would hit the Pac/Big with $30-50m in losses, per school, in addition to gate/donations/etc.  The Iowa AD predicted $100m shortfall.   That will start to have a lasting competitive impact, especially since the Pac has already been trying to secure a loan to cover the losses.  That's going to leave a mark.

 

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Hurtlocker

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The silver lining to the pandemic I guess (from a sports board CFB perspective) is that the SEC finally has to play a season without being loaded with non-P5 cupcakes.

I cannot remember the last time the SEC had more than one team, usually Georgia, have 10 P5 opponents on their schedule.

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Sbbruin

Sbbruin 21785

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29 minutes ago, Hurtlocker said:

The silver lining to the pandemic I guess (from a sports board CFB perspective) is that the SEC finally has to play a season without being loaded with non-P5 cupcakes.

I cannot remember the last time the SEC had more than one team, usually Georgia, have 10 P5 opponents on their schedule.

Vandy misses Arky, maybe their one shot at a win.

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Wulaw Horn

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8 minutes ago, Fletch said:

Sweet. Check out for a few days and I see the usual cocksuckers want student athletes to die for money and entertainment. I love the human spirit 

You could stay checked right out and I doubt anyone will miss you- with sweet, sweet nonsensical takes like this. 
 

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Hurtlocker

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More financial thoughts.   Only because it is more important than people dying, obviously.   Why discuss it otherwise?

Football’s Economic Impact on College Towns, College Players and the NFL

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You know my saying: The business of sports always wins. This week, however, my adage was proven wrong, as the Big Ten and Pac-12 conferences pulled the plug on fall college football, setting fire to a collective billions of dollars worth of sorely needed revenue. For these two power players in the business of college football, health and safety, surprisingly, won out over the business of sports.

For now, the other Power 5 conferences—SEC, ACC and Big 12—are forging ahead with football. Perhaps their conference leaders received different medical and scientific opinions; perhaps they received different legal opinions (there are always lawyers). Either way, those conference leaders, for now, are more comfortable and confident managing the medical and legal risk of playing through a pandemic. And while reports indicated Big Ten presidents were clearly affected by evidence of myocarditis in athletes, those concerns and risks have not impacted the other conferences in the same way. For now. As evidenced by recent announcements of conference-only schedules by the Big Ten and Pac-12, everything is fluid.

Vast Economic Impact

The economic impact of those decisions is sobering, and Big Ten coaches were not shy about hammering home that point. Scott Frost of Nebraska (who played for us in Green Bay) and James Franklin at Penn State (who coached for us in Green Bay) spoke of losses in the neighborhood of $100 million. And those numbers are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the economic havoc wreaked by the absence of college football.

I lived in Green Bay, Wisc. for a decade, a city and region much more like one supporting a major college football team than a professional team. Indeed, in my recruiting of free agents, some of whom were reluctant to come, I played on the atmosphere of a college football town, with the community wrapping itself around the program.

It is hard to measure the economic impact a fall without football in Green Bay, not to mention the negative psychological impact it would bring. When I was there, we calculated over $10 million per game weekend, with that number said to be roughly $14 million now. And in researching similar regions in Big10 venues, the economic impact is strikingly similar:

Penn State (State College): $130 million per season
Michigan (Ann Arbor): $122 million per season
Wisconsin (Madison): $16 million per home game
Iowa (Iowa City): $14.5 million per home game
Nebraska (Lincoln): $12 million per home game

I vividly remember talking to an NCAA executive when they levied the penalties on Penn State football following the Jerry Sandusky child abuse scandal. While many were suggesting—and the NCAA was considering—a one-year “death penalty” for the program, the executive admitted to me that the “death penalty” was never a realistic option. We can’t do that, it will destroy that economy, he said, aware of the economic and psychological impact on the appropriately named Happy Valley.

College football is often the poster for the university at large; success on the field translates to success in development and admissions. I have seen it while working at Villanova: Our NCAA basketball championships in 2016 and ’18 led to upward trajectories in the number and quality of applicants as well as more donations and development activity. Now other conferences (we think) will fill our Saturday afternoon screens while Big Ten and Pac-12 brands will be “out of sight, out of mind” for the fall.

Uncertain Future

Players and parents are creating petitions to have the Big Ten reverse their decision, but that is a long shot. Big Ten coaches are promoting playing in the spring to keep some normalcy and prevent player defections. To that I say (1) hope is not a plan, and (2) good luck with that. All of us, myself included, remarked in March/April/May that we’d have surely have COVID contained by the fall when football returned. Well, it’s not contained; it’s worse, much worse. To suggest it will be contained in the spring is a hope, not a plan.

Beyond the physical toll of playing in the spring and then playing again in the fall, it is unrealistic to believe top players will stick around. Just as some top prospects have done at other schools prior to these decisions, some will get a head start preparing for the NFL combine and draft. They will head to training facilities such as IMG of Athlete’s Performance to be housed, fed and trained (and probably “bubbled”), all at an agent’s expense (agents usually fund training from January through June for the tune of roughly $25,000; now they will fund training for twice as long at twice the cost). In relative terms, we are not talking about many players, but we are talking about the best ones. There may well be college football for these conferences in the spring; it just won’t have top talent as part of it.

With those top prospects, unlike with the surprising conference decisions, the business of sports will win.

This was also an interesting take, keep in mind his job is writing about the business aspect:

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And Finally, a Personal Reflection

Tomorrow I will drop my youngest son off at college—makes me sad to write this—to begin in-person instruction among thousands of students, some of whom will not take adequate precautions about spreading the virus. And next week I will begin in-person instruction to 50 students in my sports law class at Villanova Law School, along with regular in-person meetings with my Fellows, advisees, etc.

None of this behavior sounds like the person who has—in this space and other forums—questioned playing football, a sport that requires the opposite of social distancing, in this time of virulent COVID transmission. I get it, I am not consistent here, expressing caution for athletes to which I have no personal or professional attachment, yet letting my sons, the most important people in my world, head out into an uncertain world where the virus has recently surged (my older son just moved L.A.), while I opt for in-person teaching to boot.

On the professional side, my primary point has been that we need to be honest that health and safety is not the top priority many claim it to be; if it were we would not have (non-bubbled) contact sports in 2020. Rather, the top priority is economics and I, as much as anyone, get that. And I guess that brings me back to the personal side. Health and safety are paramount, but there are other concerns.

I want my younger son to experience life on campus as a college freshman, I want my older son to pursue his musical talents in the place most conducive to doing so, I want to provide my students the optimal educational experience, all despite the risks.

Am I conflicted? Certainly. Apprehensive? Absolutely. But I feel, rightly or wrongly, the personal risk to my sons and myself can be managed. And that is the same decision the NFL has made for its players and staff. As with all things, we will see.

 

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Sbbruin

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There is some interesting info in here on what went into the P12 thinking.  Brings up some good points, but also finishes by saying that Bruin fans should just get used to the fact that UCLA will never prioritize football over academics or other institutional missions (primarily medical where Geffen alone has donated over $450 million over the last coupe of decades).  I guess there's pride ot be found elsewhere other than the football field.  But the football field would be nice too.

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There are so many misconceptions out there right now about so many things, so we thought we'd set the record straight on a few common mischaracterizations. 

And provide you a little insight into UCLA's perspective on the pandemic, bubbles, revenue and the bigger picture of college athletics. 

The last straw that got the Pac-12 and Big Ten to postpone sports

The primary impetus for the Big Ten and Pac-12 to postpone the football season was more evidence that the medical community just doesn't know enough about the long-term health risks of COVID-19.

There were a number of college athletes who had COVID-19, some without symptoms, and then had been found to have myocarditis, which is an inflammation of the heart that can lead to some kind of heart failure. That coincided with recently released data from a preliminary study about young adults experiencing a high incidence of myocarditis as a result of COVID-19. 

Again, there is so much unknown about COVID-19, and the possibility of myocarditis was just another uncertainty about long-term risks piled on to what the medical community doesn't know.  

What keeps Pac-12 presidents and chancellors up at night

The Pac-12 presidents and chancellors are more driven by the fear of endangering student athletes' health, and being held legally liable for it, than anything else. 

That shouldn't be viewed as cynical. Both of those concerns go hand in hand. 

And it's a very legitimate fear. College athletes aren't professionals. The universities can't dictate to them like employees. That distinction creates a huge space of vulnerability and liability unlike pro sports and pro athletes. 

Universities don't have the money or resources to take the type of precautions pro sports, specifically pro basketball, can.  The pro sports scenario that has clearly worked the best so far is the NBA bubble, and to pull that off it needed pro-sport money and buy-in.  Universities don't have either; in particular, they don't have the legal right to make amateur college athletes agree to take a health risk beyond, really, what the general undergrad population. Yeah, I know you're going to cite CTE and other health risks college football players have undertaken for decades. And you're absolutely right. But nothing in the real world works uniformly. Just because there haven't been college football players suing universities because of CTE doesn't mean they won't for COVID-19.  In fact, it might actually contribute to it, in a long-building, long-unaddressed health-issue-crisis sort of way. 

Why college administrators are discounting a basketball bubble scenario

We heard it come out of the mouth of Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott himself: "We cannot bubble our student-athletes like pro sports can. We're part of broader campus communities. Student-athletes are living with pure students, on campus, interacting."  It wasn't a mistaken throwaway line either. The actual Pac-12 news release featured the same sentiment from Scott: “Unlike professional sports, college sports cannot operate in a bubble." 

Scott is establishing the baseline for expectation -- and that is: don't expect college sports, even college basketball, to attempt a bubble scenario. 

Why establish that baseline? 

Because there are so many reasons why college athletic department administrators don't want a pervasive bubble solution.

It mostly comes back to liability, again.  

What if the Pac-12 adopted a 10-week bubble situation? It could find a location where it could house all 12 conference teams, and control the teams' environment, much like the NBA is doing in Orlando. 

From a fan's standpoint, it makes sense. Basketball is a much easier bubble proposition. Each team would only have to bubble probably less than 30 people. There are plenty of locations on the west coast with hotels and facilities that could accommodate 12 basketball teams.  

But to a college sports administrator, it exposes them to even more potential liability.  It's basically this: if a university wholly takes on the responsibility of protecting its student athletes from COVID-19, it wholly takes on the responsibility of the athletes contracting it.  As long as the athletes are personally responsible for their own actions, like football players have been in maintaining the social-distancing protocols in their personal lives during summer workouts, the university cannot be blamed for any COVID-19 consequence. Signing a waiver is out of the question -- from both sides. You wouldn't get enough players to sign a waiver, given that they'd be thinking they were giving up all of their rights for recourse if they did experience some highly adverse consequences from COVID-19. And the administrations would never agree because, even with a waiver, good lawyers could still present a decent case that the universities are still responsible for the health of their amateur students-athletes in a bubble environment. 

College football made it easy for administrators to reject a bubble solution. It's just too big, expensive, and implausible.  

College basketball, though, is a far easier bubble endeavor. So you'd think college administrators would be all over it, thinking that the college basketball bubble scenario is their best chance to generating some revenue. But from what we've experienced and heard, it's not so. They don't want the liability of any bubble scenario and are afraid that the college basketball bubble scenario is far more viable and makes more sense -- and harder to discount. 

The other big factor here is that the NCAA does control the college basketball national championship. There's that March Madness thing that generates upward of $400 million.  The NCAA is going to be deadset about playing some sort of NCAA basketball tournament, and college athletic departments are going to have to get onboard with some kind of college basketball season concept.  There could be some partial, mini-bubble scenarios, like the Pac-12 gets together for a handful of weekends and plays a round-robin amongst itself, instead of the higher risk of the conference road schedule for two months.  But if that happens, you can bet the "bubble" word will be discarded, since it implies an NBA-like, full lockdown.  Maybe "pod" will be used.  It will probably include the same kind of protocols for basketball players that were instituted for football's summer workouts -- which will, ever significantly, still not put the responsibility, or onus, of any COVID-19 consequences on the university. 

The illusion of college amateurism rears its ugly head again

So much of what is central to so many current issues facing college athletics is due to the NCAA's long-standing policy of pretty much ignoring the issue of college amateurism, and trying to preserve the antiquated concept. We've seen it be very prominent in the racial injustice issues felt among college athletes, and it's absolutely part of the COVID-19 issue.

Like we've said before, if the NCAA had just addressed the issue of college amateurism before, instead of sweeping it under the rug and hoping it never peeks out, it wouldn't be facing so much backlash now. If it had just passed the NIL legislation five years ago, say, that might have gone a very long way to creating a current environment in which the college athlete doesn't feel as grossly exploited. 

How does the amateurism issue apply to COVID-19 and bubbles? 

It's really at the core of it for college athletics.  

This is the default in college sports: There is always a big push from administrative forces to keep its athletes amateurs. The NCAA clearly only came kicking and screaming to the NIL table.  The NCAA and athletic departments know full well that there is a big cash cow out there that it doesn't want to cut up and share with its student athletes.  

If universities and the NCAA somehow step over the line in any other issue, like with the coronavirus, in treating its student-athletes less like amateurs and more like professionals, it endangers that cozy, little, antiquated situation its benefitted massively from financially for decades. It could be another break in the flood gates.  

Three Pac-12 schools have a higher-minded perspective -- and it's not all about money

Since you all are college sports fans reading this, it's likely you don't get the relationship and dynamic between universities and their athletic departments.

Like with the present situation with the coronavirus, you all want college sports to happen, and it’s a big priority in your lives. And in many instances, you don't want to face facts about the pandemic because it could take away that which you hold so dear. 

But that's not the attitude or culture of many universities. For many, their primary directive is all about being an institution of higher learning (crazy, right?). 

UCLA just had its hospital ranked No. 4 in the nation.  This is a serious place.  It's just not a football program that happens to have a university attached to it. 

In pro sports, the business is the sport. The product is the sport. For colleges, their businesses are higher learning, research, and academic pursuit and accomplishment, and the athletic department is that redheaded, problematic stepchild that is just a very small portion of their business. Very small.  

The Ivy League, in fact, looks at its sports as a fun little diversion.  It doesn't really make money from them. It only maintains them mostly for tradition. 

If you might have noticed, too, the Ivy League was the first Division 1 conference to cancel its football season.  It was the first to pretty much announce it was prioritizing the safety of its student-athletes above all else. 

Don't take that lightly. It was very significant. Especially to some universities in the Pac-12. 

Stanford, UCLA and Cal -- the universities -- all consider themselves on the same level as the Ivy Leagues. Kind of honorary members.  Stanford probably has the most reason to have this impression of itself, since in many instances its academics have it ranked even higher than most Ivies, and it's private. But UCLA and Cal aren't far behind in their self-image.  

Again, you have to try to understand. This isn't the Lakers or the Rams. These aren't sports organizations. These are prestigious universities in which most of the employees and even its students have no idea what a spread or match-up zone is. 

To put it in perspective, take UCLA's budgets. The UCLA athletic department budget is about $100 million annually.  UCLA, the university overall, has an annual budget of about $8.5 billion. That means that the athletic budget is 1.176% of UCLA's overall budget.  Whether you, as a college sports fan, like it or not, athletics is a speck in UCLA's universe. Yes, we know, athletics many times can impact a university's public reputation, and probably worth a little more than 1.176% to UCLA. But in the world of academia, it really isn't.  

Know, too, that while there are so many stories out there that are essentially ringing the financial death knell for college sports because of the pandemic, for UCLA, it's just not the case. Yes, UCLA will take a financial hit. The canceled fall football season could cost the athletic department upward of $60 million. Yes, and UCLA athletics doesn't have as much money coming in because of the situations with Under Armour and IMG. 

But, again, it's a small drop in UCLA's financial bucket.

Plus, it might not be too big of a net loss. Funding all of the fall sports costs a lot of money. Not just equipment, training, and food, but travel.  That's saving quite a bit of money on many sports that don't generate revenue.  All in all, while UCLA could lose $60 million without a football season, given what it's saving, it probably isn't that big of a net loss. 

And again, add that little net loss as a line item in UCLA's overall university budget of $8.5 billion and you'd barely see it. Not even a full drop in the bucket.

So, then, you understand why UCLA opted to shutter its fall season so easily. All in all, from a monetary and university standpoint, they don't mean that much, comparatively to the COVID-19 risk. 

The drop in the bucket isn't worth the liability, for sure. But, from what we know, the administrative side of the university is legitimately concerned about the well-being of its student-athletes, and it's not worth risking it over that drop in the bucket financially. There is some high-mindedness going on here, not just bottom-line financial liability worries. It's why the uncertainty of long-term effects of COVID-19 might resonate more with a school like UCLA than, say, one in the SEC.  In fact, we've heard that some of the biggest influence to postpone the Pac-12 seasons came from Stanford as well as UCLA and Cal. 

It's not difficult to see that UCLA, Stanford and Cal see themselves far more similar to Harvard, Yale and Princeton than they do Alabama, Auburn and Georgia.  I've heard that Stanford would sooner join the Ivy League than witness its student-athletes lose their amateur status.  The university side of UCLA and Cal are, again, probably not that much dissimilar. 

Now, of course, it's a bummer for those that do highly value UCLA's sports. It's especially a bummer for UCLA's athletes, because this isn't just a diversion for many of them, but a big part of their chance at establishing a pro sports career and a living. It is certainly a setback, but UCLA will undoubtedly try to provide every opportunity for its student-athletes to compensate for the situation in their quest for a pro career.  That's what higher-minded universities do -- instead of pressuring them to play amid COVID-19 concerns.  

It's, of course, a bummer for UCLA sports fans (and UCLA sports sites).  

For you, the college sports fan, you see other conferences seemingly value its football and basketball far more. Naturally, you're a little jealous, sure. You can get caught up in it, and not see why UCLA can't be more like an SEC school. After all, the fact that the culture of the SEC puts football on such a pedestal is probably the No. 1 contributing factor why that conference keeps dominating college football and winning national championships. And, as a sports fan, that's just damn fun. 

But that's just not UCLA -- nor is it Stanford or Cal. It's never going to be. 

I remember I was walking on campus a few years ago with a UCLA athletic administrator. I was asking him many very narrow-minded questions about the athletic department, how it lacked vision to compete at the highest level -- a lot of fan-ish stuff. He smiled, and then pointed at UCLA's medical center, and said, "You know, Tracy, there are other priorities at UCLA. Over there, they're actually spending a little time leading the world in trying to cure cancer."

If you've decided to be a sports fan of UCLA, you're going to have to come to the stark realization that it will always encompass its overwhelming prioritization of academics.  You're going to have to embrace it. Own it. Have pride in it, actually. If you're always longing for UCLA to act like it's an SEC school, you're in the wrong place. If you're going to be a UCLA sports fan, you're going to have to be a fan of UCLA, the university, as a whole, and that you're a fan of it actually trying to preserve higher-minded values. That might not get you wins on the football field as often as you like, but it is something that might, given a bigger perspective, have more value. 

 

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4th&Five

4th&Five 41480

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Just now, Hurtlocker said:

More financial thoughts.   Only because it is more important than people dying, obviously.   Why discuss it otherwise?

Football’s Economic Impact on College Towns, College Players and the NFL

This was also an interesting take, keep in mind his job is writing about the business aspect:

 

Playing the games won't have much impact on the college towns since 75% of the fans won't be going.

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SwanderedTalent

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2 minutes ago, Sbbruin said:

UCLA will never prioritize football over academics or other institutional missions (primarily medical where Geffen alone has donated over $450 million over the last coupe of decades).  I guess there's pride ot be found elsewhere other than the football field.

That's where Texas is too. We obviously prioritize football to a greater degree than UCLA does, but I don't think we prioritize it quite the way the schools that are winning big do. And it's because we do take a lot of pride in what the school is able to accomplish academically- the Dell Medical School is an amazing accomplishment, we have top ten programs in engineering and business and law. What we do on the academic side is world-class and it matters. There are at a max a dozen public schools in America better than Texas. 

But we don't seem to be able to consistently expand our academic mission and maintain our football competitiveness. Post Royal, we were badly up and down under Akers, terrible under McWilliams except for one year, terrible under Mackovic in half his years, won two conference titles in 15 years under Mack Brown, and now have Charlie Strong and Tom Herman to account for. 

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