LINK: How television changed college football -- and how it will again
Here's a really fascinating article by Andy Staples about how the changing role of TV in college football. It's long, but well worth your time. It's astonishing to realize how wrong-headed people were back in the '80s: "The glut is pernicious, not propitious. Unless the CFA and Big Ten and Pac-10 kiss and make up and legally curtail the number of games on TV -- a dubious prospect, considering the Supreme Court ruling and the bitterness between them -- the colleges will be left with a depressed marketplace," wrote William Taaffe in a piece that bore the headline Too Much Of A Good Thing. "There will be no money to prop up non-revenue sports such as swimming and wrestling. The big network paydays will be over, assuming the networks remain in college football at all. As Nebraska athletic director Bob Devaney says, 'I don't see any great resurgence in the next year or so. I'm not predicting colleges will go broke -- but it isn't going to be the bonanza it was.'" Um... OOPS. There's some great detail about the way TV deals have changed in the past 30 years, as well as some interesting speculation about what might be on the horizon. (SPOILER: More money.) (EDIT: If you tried it earlier and the link didn't work, please try again. It should be fixed. Thanks. -- rb)