When I was a kid — as Tapp would say, “In ancient times hundreds of years before the dawn of history” — intercollegiate athletics were actually weird. At least considering what’s going on these crazy days.
Excuse my sentimental trip to the mid-’50s for a second in the Way Back Machine.
Here’s how to find out about college football teams and players and schedules. Your dad would bring home some little pamphlet he picked up from the counter at Bonnycastle Drugs or Spangler’s Shell or the hardware store.
There will be all of the above and the results, and maybe a story or two. Sometimes wonderful little factoids in smaller print at the bottom of the page. (When you’re a budding adolescent sports addict, the threshold for the miraculous is low.)
One I remember in particular had several pages in the back with outlines of all the major stadiums. Not the seat tickets, just the shape, their rates. Which I remembered. For years I could recognize the drawing of Camp Randall.
One game a week on grainy black and white TV. Lindsey Nelson or Chris Schenkel on call. Being impatient, I would hate it if the game was late in the afternoon, and I would have to wait so long for kick-off. Except, of course, the Rose Bowl because earlier on New Year’s it would be cotton or orange.
I would sit mesmerized watching the score shows after the game. SMU vs. TCU seemed so mysterious, exotic. Where were those schools? Horned Frogs vs. Mustangs.
In these times when the landscape is changing so quickly in money. With the rich inevitably getting richer, the rest, including my beloved Louisville Cardinals, were most likely left in the dust.
The metamorphosis began in the early 80s, oddly enough in 1984 I believe, when the NCAA lost its monopoly on televising football games. Schools started doing it, and then conferences took over. Then came cable and streaming and television, which used to be rap, became a beast.
With football money driving big changes, college athletics will be a whole new thing in four or five years.
My favorite school has a better chance than not, standing outside, facing the ice cream window.
But I would hate these changes – I have to believe, or I hope I have to believe – if I were a fan of a Big 10 or SEC school. I hope I wouldn’t like the commercialization, even if the Louisville Cardinals were coveted enough by Fox or ESPN or CBS or NBC or Apple or Hulu to be invited to the party.
I feel like people who are in my neck of the woods – the heart of college hoops – don’t really realize how negatively this will affect the game we hold dearest. (Not that we’re not inconsolable enough about the blow that’s sure to land on the cardinal’s pigskin.)
We’re the kind that can’t wait for hoops season to start.*
* One thing is better than days gone by. Basketball starts in early November, instead of the first Saturday in December, and goes into April, not ending in March.
That obsession is not the same for most of the country. The sports universe generally doesn’t start paying attention to basketball until after the Super Bowl. Except maybe in HoosierLand and Tobacco Road.
I can’t help but lose hope for the future of hoops and, for my school, football.
I have no insight into what the future really holds.
The discussion about taking away ACC’s media rights is above my pay grade. I haven’t the slightest idea of the next move of the wily Greg Sankey.
I know it makes me sad. Out of sorts. Restless.
I know I can’t draw the outline of Camp Randall Stadium anymore.
