Big East football and why it’s important to be who you are

If you follow major college sports, you’d know there’s a great deal of shifting going on. Schools are changing conferences more than ever before, often without regard for traditional rivalries or even geography. While most of these tectonic shifts have to do with the potential for increased television revenues, it’s also about positioning yourself to be amongst the haves and the have-nots.

College football at the major college level (formerly known as Division 1-A) does not have a playoff system like other sports. This means that if schools aren’t in the right conference, they lose out on massive revenues and the exposure that comes with being associated with other schools. One of the reasons that college basketball is so popular for its March Madness is because it allows minor schools from small conferences to play on the big stage with the giants for a theoretical chance at the same national championship.

The Big East conference is at the present a sixteen-team behemoth of a basketball conference. The league was founded for basketball and has always been among the better basketball leagues in the country. Anchored by eight Catholic schools that do not play FBS/1-A football and eight that do, the league retooled when it was hit by defections from Boston College, Miami (FL) and Virginia Tech who jettisoned the Big East for the Atlantic Coast Conference in 2005. The Big East responded inviting schools that allowed it form the most dominant basketball conference in college sports. The league had the record for most bids to an NCAA tournament in one year (8) in 2006, 2008 and again in 2010. Last year, they topped this netting 11 bids to the tournament. We’re talking about 16% of one conference having a shot at a national championship.

There has always been consternation between the “football” schools and the “basketball-only” schools in the league. The league is headquartered in Providence, not a football hamlet and at a school that lacks football. As the Big East faces another risk of massive defections, it is considering all kinds of options to retain its automatic qualifying status in football including inviting the U.S. Air Force Academy (in Colorado Springs), Boise State University (where it’s only east of what, Washington?) and two Texas universities among others.

The real problem? Failure to recognize a shifting marketplace and understanding how to adapt in the face of it. Leadership in the Big East were content to stand pat while other leagues were moving forward and its fractured constituents with different agendas (why would basketball-only schools care about football) and surely insider baseball that we don’t know much about; leads to a situation where the public opinion of the league falls by the day.

It doesn’t help that the Big East has continually lost its signature programs. The league could’ve been refocused itself as the best basketball league on the planet. It could’ve separated its football programs keeping a loose affiliation. It could’ve aggressively pursed merger options with the upstart Mountain West that would’ve benefited both leagues. But with automatic qualifying status, the Big East saw no reason to adapt because they were safe on the inside with the others looking outside wanting what they had. Now? They find themselves vulnerable with few options for their football league to continue with the comfort it’s had through the last decade as one of the preferred members of college football’s elite.

The lesson for you in this sports example? It’s possible to be the most dominant player on the planet and have the same relationships that benefit you in one aspect of your existence, hurt you in another. Long-term planning only goes so far. The Big East couldn’t have set aside a rainy day fund for this scenario. It was initiated by conferences with members that have more clout than the current membership. It’s not as if the league lacked assets, it’s just failed to use the advantages it had by failing to articulate a vision for itself.

Now? It’s being picked apart by other leagues. No one is knocking down the doors of lesser leagues trying to find its members and destabilize them. You can’t reign forever. At some point, your dominance will be threatened and you need to have a strategy to respond. Not crisis strategy, but a proactive that sees the landscape and assess how your organizations fits into it. At the end of the day, partnerships are voluntarily associations of people with similar goals. You need to assess those relationships.

Things change. Adapt or be left as a relic.

National signing day is a fraud

Aah yes, national signing day. Future college athletes get sized up, measured and predicted to be the next big thing for their school. What is it, you ask?

National Signing Day is always on the first Wednesday in February. It is the first day a high school senior can sign a binding National Letter of Intent for college sports.

The issues are plenty. Let’s examine them, shall we?

1. College athletes aren’t professionals. But national signing day is treated as a star-studded event where “student-athletes” are feted over for a day. Why? The unspoken story is that national signing day is the journey that gets them one step closer to the NFL or NBA. As if there wasn’t enough hypocrisy in the salaries of college coaches at the highest levels, the television contracts and so on, this joke starts with the name of it. They’re not signing a contract for money, folks. If we really wanted to celebrate something, let’s celebrate kids talking about how great an education they’re going to receive. Of course, that’s not the priority. They’re rather talk about these kids like they’re pro prospects entering the hallowed cathedrals of their sport.
2. How many of these students are going to graduate? It’s the big question that no one wants to ask, because see also “they’re going to the league,” but since we never see college tennis, fencing, swimming or other minor sports on ESPN deciding what cap to put on, I don’t really target them. I’m talking about the abysmal graduation rates of most major universities have in regards to their revenue sport student-athletes. (e.g. men’s basketball, football and sometimes, men’s hockey)Exalting these high school graduates that often times have a difficult time even qualifying to attend some of these schools, before they’ve stepped foot on campus causes a lot of the problems we see. These aren’t just students, they’re not just athletes. They’re someone else’s meal ticket. For teens that aren’t allowed to drink, might barely drive and have little way to make a living for themselves, that’s a heck of a lot of pressure to know that your mom, dad, coach, cousins, teammates and thousands of “fans” you’ve met in your life are all relying on you not to suck.
3. These kids haven’t done anything yet. Ok, so they worked hard to get to college. To get recognized and sized up by a bunch of independent people. All of these issues are interrelated and all comes back to one thing — money. Everyone knows that the people who shined in high school, don’t necessarily translate well to college. Maybe that’s why this is good for them, they get a chance to secure their skills into an education at a place they might not otherwise get to go.Is this really a healthy exercise for anybody in the grand scheme of things? I mean, when everyone has congregated in the community to wish you well on your future pro career that’s still light years away, where do you go from that if you fail? How shattered would your confidence be forever? I don’t know. But it’s akin to those dudes at the party passing out their cards, telling you how their startup is going to make them billionaires soon. There are just too many variables involved in all of this and you just don’t know how it’s gonna turn out.

Look, it’s great they’re all going on to get an education. I’m sure college will be just dandy for most of them, will afford them all sorts of connections they’d otherwise not have, friends they’ll maintain for life and skills that you couldn’t buy at Wal-Mart.

But let’s not kid ourselves into believing this all about the greater good, friends. It’s about cold, hard cash. And the ones producing it, aren’t really reaping what they sow. I can’t see how this thing goes on for another ten years in the status quo.

Or will it?