It’s a matter of dollars and cents and there’s just none left.
I know you had hoped that in this off-season there would be minimal football news. Maybe some transfer portal news. Potentially television deals or coaching changes. Of course, the usual NFL combine comings and goings. But overall with all the news that has come out over the last few years in off-seasons with realignments, playoff creations, and the return of NCAA Football video game fun, I think most of us had hoped this year would be relatively quiet. Leave it to the SEC to change that narrative on a moments notice.
News broke this week about potential changes to the SEC conference schedule in relation to the expansion of the college football playoff. The too long didn’t read version is that as the college football playoff expands, the focus turns solely to conference games. Non-conference games, no longer matter in terms of easy wins. They won’t be used as qualifiers for automatic berths. This impacts the Big Ten and the SEC specifically, and the ripple comes back down to your favorite little conferece that could in the middle of America.
On the good side, this new setup and schedule means that there’s no downside to playing premier marquee matchups. In some respects, it’s almost a guarantee that happens. There’s already talks that the Big Ten and SEC will have a rotational schedule with each other. Fire up for Vanderbilt/Minnesota, football fans! Sarcasm aside, and with all due respect to the MAC, SunBelt, and other mid major conferences, it also means better preconference games and on the large scale that’s not a bad thing for a college football fan. I’m down for Alabama playing a rotating schedule of Ohio State, Penn State, or Michigan. And if you say you wouldn’t be excited about that, check your pants because they are on fire you dirty little fibber, you.
However, as a fan of a MAC program that change should worry you. Realistically, it should terrify you. Tremendously so, in fact. That one thing alone impacts the MAC tremendously. Long gone may be the days of an easy payday for some MACtion and an easy W for the record of the power 5 school. Instead the P5 program will try to schedule other P5 programs. A loss doesn’t hurt them and a premier opponent commands bigger crowds at higher ticket prices. And as those payday games get removed from the schedule, the MAC program that you love is going to have some pretty tough sledding when it comes to making their athletics budget actually function.
When I was in college in Muncie, Ball State spent three weeks in a row on the road at Florida, South Carolina, and Kansas State. The team got its ass kicked something fierce, but the department rolled back home with a fat checkbook balance for the games themselves. And that funding didn’t just to for Brady Hoke’s XXL sweatshirts or golf carts that needed fished out of the pond at the alumni golf outing. It funded swim caps for the diving team, tennis shoes for the track team, and balls and bats for baseball and softball. Simply put, it’s the ass thrashings the football team endures at the hands of P5 programs that fund the rest of the athletic budget. If that funding goes away, what happens? Let me introduce you to simple math… things get cut.
It’s already a dog eat dog world in higher educatioin. I spent nearly twenty years in that field and when I left last year it was the most dysfunctional and cannibalized that it has ever been. State funding continues to dwindle and higher ed in genral is under attack at almost every level. Let an athletics program run a multi-million dollar deficit and see what happens. Heads will roll, programs will shutter, and things won’t ever be the same. So, your friendly neighborhood MAC fan and higher education expert just thought you should know. But hey, enjoy your expanded playoff and Texas/Wisconsion September showdown. Because it’s all you’ll have soon enough.