The horror, the horror of a team like the great Ohio State or Oklahoma having to suffer the indignity of going on the road to play a game where there are a measly 30,000 people present?Originally Posted by *BaseClogger*
Please.
The horror, the horror of a team like the great Ohio State or Oklahoma having to suffer the indignity of going on the road to play a game where there are a measly 30,000 people present?
Please.
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Actually, that thought is frightening and stupid. It makes zero sense business-wise, and remember these football receipts finance entire athletic programs. If Ohio State was to play two extra road non-conference games in those tiny stadiums, they would probably have to cut a few varsity sports. Is that fair to the other athletes?
I would still, very seriously speaking, rather have the "old" format of all the normal bowls with their conference tie-ins and the like, all played on New Year's Day, than the current BCS system. I'd just rather have it be completely open to debate (the "mythical national championship" as it were) and subject just to the voting than to have some system in place like the current one that pretends to be a solution. The "plus-one" concept added on top of it is indeed intriguing to me as a next step to consider.
Other than the above, I'd favor a 16-team playoff with as much effort as possible to preserve bowl-type structure.
"I'm virtually free to do whatever I want, but I try to remember so is everybody else..." - Todd Snider
Seriously?
There are many schools in the State of Ohio alone, supported by taxpayer dollars the same as OSU, who manage to field a full athletic department and comply with Title IX without access to the moneymaking machine that is OSU football. I'm sure the College of Columbus would manage to do just fine if they were forced to take their show on the road every so often -- it's not like "The Shoe" won't sell out if they want to raise ticket prices $5 per seat to compensate for a little lost revenue from two home gates.
But I won't waste a single tear over the financial ledger of a school that rakes in the kind of alumni dollars and ticket sales the was OSU does. It'd be good for college football to see some of these behemoth programs take their show on the road every so often -- hell, even if it is a "neutral site" game at the large local venue instead of the on-campus facility.
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Ohio State's basketball budget is bigger than UC's football budget.
I think you guys will be just fine.
All models are wrong. Some of them are useful.
That's just b/c of economies of scale.
However, they don't support an athletic department near the size of tOSU. And how is forcing Ohio State to raise ticket prices fair to their fans? It is already near impossible to see an Ohio State game, and the only way the less privileged or less fanatic get to go to a game is if the Bucks play a lesser non-conference opponent early in the season before the students get back. Less home games = even more demand for Ohio State football tickets...
It'd be good? How? So non-behemoth fans can be happy or 40K/50K fans get denied entrance b/c there are not enough seats? The MAC schools, the Bearcats and others choose to play at Columbus. The biggest reason is money. OSU and their fans bring the money to the table and the other schools benefit greatly from that. The tears will be shed from those who miss out on their big payday every 3 to 5 years. Don't blame the Ohio States, the USCs, the Floridas. Don't blame the NCAA. It is all about money. The money for the behemoths and the schools who choose to play at the behemoths. And money trumps all... playoffs, opinions of smaller school fans, etc.
You get your neutral sites every year. It is called the Bowl Games. But just for the sake of argument... lets say OSU played UC at a neutral site for a regular season clash. This site is called Paul Brown Stadium (if that is really neutral?). We have 65,000 seats vs. 105,000 seats. So we have a difference of 40,000. Lets say the average ticket price is $50/ticket. Now we have an initial revenue difference of $2,000,000. Now lets go further into it. Concessions, parking fees, merchandise, etc. Who gets most of this revenue? Seems like a lot will go to Hamilton County and not the two schools.
The NCAA is too smart for that. I understand that non-behemoth fans don't like it, but rest assured that the leaders/educators of their fav non-behemoth schools love it. They hope that the behemoths will invite them to visit the behemoth stadium. They choose to call the behemoth AD and persuade that AD to schedule them... and cry all the way to the bank when the game is over. Supply and demand. If they refuse to come, then the behemoth will be forced to go elsewhere to play. The demand is always there and will always be there to collect that behemoth money.
Econ 101. Behemoths and non-behemoths both offer it to their students. The S&D and money make for easy Econ 101 stuff in this argument.
Name me on top tier college football program that does what you claim they "should" do?
You're making an argument you'd laugh at if you were the one having to make those decisions. No one in their right mind is going to make that kind of economic decision in the interest of perceived fairness. The people making decisions have a responsibility to the univeristy first, not the be "fair" to smaller schools. So sure, "they'd be fine", but that's a pretty misguided rationale for doing something not in their economic best interest. Afterall, plenty of folks here would be "just fine" if they donated 30% of their salary to a good cause. They might have to buy a less expensive car, or live in a smaller place, but they could by just fine.
I think folks making these arguments know they're not compelling and that they're driven mostly by their dislike for the "College of Columbus". Let's be honest about that. This isn't an OSU thing, it's the environment of big time college football. So why single them out? It's a systemic problem that incentivizes all big programs to do it.
Grape works as a soda. Sort of as a gum. I wonder why it doesn't work as a pie. Grape pie? There's no grape pie. - Larry David
Ohio State's athletic department is not supported by any state funds whatsoever. It's a separate business. Every dollar that flows in directly effects scholarships in other areas. It is not sent into a general pool and combined with state money. OSU's basketball budget isn't as high as many would think. Dayton and Xavier report higher budgets.
Ohio State is "taking their show on the road" to Miami, Cal, VT, Oklahoma, and Tennessee over the next decade. They've also taken it on the road to Washington (a game set a decade in advance..before they sucked), USC, NC State, and Texas in recent seasons. They're 3-1 in those games, FWIW.
Georgia, OTOH, left the state OOC this year for the first time in 48 years. OSU goes out of state, on average, once every two years. How many other programs do so as often? USC, Notre Dame, MSU, Michigan with the rivalries obviously, but who else? Not many. OSU is without a natural OOC rival like these schools (Florida/FSU, Clemson/South Carolina...so they actively schedule one big game every year.
You want to go down that path, bring facts...not OSU hatred.
Last edited by guttle11; 12-01-2008 at 11:32 PM.
OSU has the largest athletic program in America. There are more kids getting an athletic scholarship to play a sport other than football at OSU than any school in America. This is only possible by OSU, like every other big time school, scheduling 7-8 home games a year and having a massive turnout.
Raising ticket prices $5 isn't even close to covering the overall economic impact of not having a home game. There is a lot more to it than ticket sales.
Lets also not forget the visiting schools make more money by coming to Columbus than they will at any other point in the season, its not like anyone is twisting their arm to come up and collect a huge check.
The only people who seem to be really put out by the simple business sense of the whole thing are the people who just blindly hate OSU and will rail against them any chance they get. These are usually the same people who labor under the fantasy that OSU is "scared" to play their respective small school on the road.
OSU just finished a home and home with Texas, is in the middle of one with USC and has Miami and Virginia Tech waiting in the wings. Given the fact that they are only going to play 1 OOC road game a year at most, for all the reasons pointed out already, it sure doesn't look like they are trying to duck anyone to me.
I openly admit that I dislike Ohio State -- I've always been very upfront about that. I do single them as out as epitomizing everything that I don't like about big-time college football, but really you could insert any number of football-factory schools in the argument. Ohio State just seems to be the favorite around here. If I were on TigersZone.com, I'm sure I'd be railing against the University of Michigan instead.
As to your main point: no college team does it. But, I'm talking about what I think SHOULD happen in college football. Hell, I'd go a step further if I was given power to shape things and have OOC schedules determined by the NCAA or some centralized authority the way it is in all professional sports. I know none of this is ever likely to happen, just like a playoff is unlikely to happen, but that doesn't stop it from being a good idea in my mind.
And yeah, if I was in charge of Ohio State or any BCS school I'd be furious if someone tried to take scheduling control away from me. Teams like OSU make lots and lots of money by piling on home dates, especially at the start of the year. Is it good for Ohio State? Damn straight it is. There's lots of money that gets made and they're ensured extra games in a location that provides one of the best homefield advantages in all of sports. But the discussion I want to have isn't "Is this good for the school or good for the status quo" but, rather, "Is this good for college football?"
I think sending big teams on the road for a few OOC games is a good thing. OSU played 4 OOC games this year, and 3 were at home -- ditto for Penn State (4 OOC games, 3 at home), Michigan (4 OOC, 3 at home), and Michigan State (4 OOC games, 3 at home) in the Big 10. I don't think it'd be a bad thing for the sport of college football to require that half those OOC games (2) be on the road.
I think the argument "Well, you can't send Michigan" (to pick on somebody new) "to play AT Akron, they only have a 30,000 seat stadium!" is stupid. So a team plays a game at a smaller venue. So what. It's good for the sport of college football (meaning for all the 100+ D-1A programs, not just the BCS crew) to give smaller schools a chance to get excited about seeing the best of the best come to THEIR towns occasionally. Ohio University played Ohio State tough this year and gave them a nice a scare -- why would it be such a TERRIBLE thing for Ohio State to go to Ohio University for 1 game? It'd give the student body in Athens, OH a chance to get excited about a big game, certain to be televised and maybe, gasp, allow them to feel like they're actually part of the FBS (or whatever they want to call it) as more than just a tune up for Wisconsin.
I don't anticipate many people to agree with me -- and I'm OK with that. I, however, have been to lots of different college football games around the nation. Going to a non-BCS school like Tulane makes one something of a nomad since there's really nothing to root for when your alma mater plays. I've been to big games at big schools like LSU, Ohio State, West Virginia, Notre Dame, and Maryland. I've attended bowl games, conference championship games (including the upset 2001 SEC Championship). Most exciting college football game I've ever been to, though? A 35-31 upset of #9 Pittsburgh by Toledo, in Toledo, in 2003. Electric atmosphere, sold out game, fired up student body, and a field covered in students at the end of the game. Hard to find that when the only thing the big boys want to do is stay home.
It's a big world out there. My message to the Ohio States, Penn States, and Floridas of the college scene would be: go out there and explore a little bit.
Last edited by Caveat Emperor; 12-02-2008 at 12:34 AM.
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:notworthy
IMO, the current system essentially makes the rich richer.
... and that's not a good thing...
I don't think you'll find tons of people who disagree that there would be a benefit to the opposing schools, and maybe even to college football, if we saw more teams like Ohio State traveling to smaller schools to play. But you have to admit that it would be fiscally irresponsible to do it now unless they're forced to.
Grape works as a soda. Sort of as a gum. I wonder why it doesn't work as a pie. Grape pie? There's no grape pie. - Larry David
Oh naturally. They'd have to be suffering from some form of derangement to even think about changing the status quo, considering the amount of benefit (both financially and otherwise) they derive from it.
It's just fun to think about what would be best for the sport of college football as a whole, as opposed to what's best for the elite 30 or so teams in the nation.
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