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The Daily Dose/December 4, 2008
By Gaylon Kent
The Writer's Shack
   
Notes from around the Human Experience, as Hello Larry Week continues with Kim Richards as the Column Four Foto!
RUNNING OFF AT THE MOUTH: You know, today we looked at the calendar and realized that if there were a NCAA Division I Football Championship that featured 16 teams and ended with the national championship game on New Year's Day, the opening round of these playoffs would kickoff this weekend.
Instead of this, though, we get bickering. Bickering about whether Okalahoma or Texas should be playing in the Big 12 championship game this weekend. Bickering about whether there should be a playoff or not. Bickering about whether or not there's too much bickering.
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah: But we're not going to waste your time making the case for a playoff. The only reason the BCS continues is greed. That has been plain for years.
What's enlightening - and almost funny - is how little money, on a per school basis, the BCS schools are circling the wagons for. You might think that each BCS school is raking a significant part of their football budget with their BCS money.
They aren't. Amounts differ because conferences distribute their BCS and other bowl monies to their member schools differently, and the amount the conferences get differ depending on how many of their teams play in BCS bowls, but each BCS school this year will get about $2 million.
That's It? That's it. $2 million, a fraction of a major college athletic program's budget, the biggest of which now approach or top $100 million a year.
Breakdown Segment: We did a little investigating, and, just for funsies, here's how the BCS is distributing their money this year:
Leading Off: Each BCS conference will get $18 million.
Anchors Aweigh: Army and Navy each get a token $100,000 for making their teams available for BCS consideration, even though both are usually out of it by Labor Day. The Football Championship Subdivision, formerly known as Division I-AA, is given a $1.8 million handout. This comes to a little over $15,000 a school, enough to buy new socks and jock straps and mouth guards, though it should be noted the BCS is not obliged to give them anything.
Luck Of The Irish: Notre Dame will get $1.3 million this year. We don't know why, either; they weren't very good this year. But the BCS agreement states the Irish get 1/66th of net revenues after expenses because 66 is the total number of BCS schools, including Notre Dame. Had Notre Dame qualified for a BCS bowl game - yeah, right - instead of the Fritos Bean Dip Bowl they will be going to, they would have received $4.5 million, which the amount a BCS conference receives when a second team goes to a BCS bowl game.
Oh Yeah: The non-BCS conferences (the WAC, Mountain West, Conference USA, the MAC,and Sun Belt) will divvy up $9.5 million, a tad less than $180,000 per school.
Bingo: Which is why there isn't a playoff. A playoff would be run by the NCAA, a function they are very good at, and they would insist on an equitable system of distributing money. To bring in $2 million for all 119 major college teams a playoff would have to generate, when you include expenses, over $250 million, which is more than double what the BCS will bring in this year.
When you consider what whores, not to mention pimps, the BCS is, and how their only real talent is milking every last possible dollar out of every conceivable opportunity, you have to believe they are wringing every possible dollar out of the BCS rag. If the BCS schools, especially Notre Dame, thought there would be more money in a playoff, there would be a playoff.
Now Wait A Minute: But then again, you can't tell us the NCAA Division I Football Championships wouldn't become an American classic quicker than you could say "strength of schedule". They would, and the national championship, ideally played on New Year's Day, would be the second biggest sporting event in the country behind the Super Bowl. No one would even need a deodorant in the first opening-round game before we would collectively be wondering why this hadn't been done ages ago.
And maybe a Division I playoff could make $250 million a year. ESPN just paid $150 million a year for four years to air the BCS beginning in 2011. That is $150 million a year for a mere four games (the Rose Bowl has a separate contract with ABC), only one of which, the BCS National Championship Game, means anything. We are not experts here, but you would not have a hard time convincing us the NCAA Division I Football Championships wouldn't bring in more than $150 million a year in tee vee revenue. Throw in gate receipts, corporate sponsorships and whatnot, and we have a hard time believing the NCAA Division I Football Championships would be anything less than a license to print money.
Hey, What About The Bowl System? Who cares? Nobody except ESPN and fat guys in ugly blazers care about them now, anyway, so what's the difference? The NCAA would probably hold a 16-team tournament, which would leave 52 teams that would have normally gone to bowl games looking for something to do. So let them continue to play in whatever minor bowl game that happens to amuse them. They certainly can't mean any less than they do now.
TOKEN ON THIS DATE ACTION: You would think a young men in their 20's would have more exciting things to do, even back then, but on this date in 1639 Jeremiah Horrocks, 20, and William Crabtree, 29, became the first two people to observe and record a transit of Venus, which Horrocks had been the only one to predict. A transit of Venus occurs when Venus comes between the Earth and the Sun, and occur in 243 year cycless where there will be two transits eight years apart, then a gap of 121.5 years, then two more eight years apart, then a gap of 105.5 years before repeating itself.
Dry, Technical Matter: For reasons that are beyond the scope of this column, not to mention our comprehension, these patterns change over the millennia. For example, after 2846, the pattern will be replaced by intervals of 105.5 years and 129.5 years, though the overall 243 year pattern will remain the same.
FunFact: The last transit of Venus was in June, 2004 and the next one will be in June, 2012, the last until December, 2117.
Uh, Could We Pick This Up, We're Starting To Nod Off: Horrocks also did some exciting work determining the Moon's orbit around Earth, correctly hypothesizing its orbit was elliptical and not circular. He was only 22 when he died in 1641, suddenly, from unknown causes.
Thought For The Day: Parents definitely should never kill their children...It's not bad, though, to let them know you're capable of it. - Dr. Jim Sadler
Answer To The Last Trivia Question: There wasn't one. You were given the day off. We hope you used this time for good, not evil.
Today's Stumper: Which conference has either won or been awarded the most college football national championships? - Answer next time!
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