The BP Oil Disaster and College Conference Realignment: Evidence of the Need for Greater Governmental Oversight

Thursday’s announcement that the University of Colorado will move from the Big 12 Conference to the PAC 10, and the rumored move of Nebraska from the same conference to the Big 10, appear to be setting off a tsunami of conference switches that threatens to leave the landscape of college sports dramatically different from what it has been during most of the post-World War II era.

The current expansion mania is fueled largely by the financial success of the Big 10 Network and is premised on a single assumption:  the larger the football conference, the larger the potential television revenues, particularly if the added teams bring with them a large television market (like the University of Colorado and metropolitan Denver) or a strong reputation for football prowess (like the University of Nebraska).  What is being ignored are considerations regarding increased travel expenses for non-revenue sports and the continuation of traditional football rivalries.

Universities appear to be motivated solely by the desire for more television dollars and by concern for the consequences of not acting quickly.  That the public interest might not be consistent with increased university television revenues does not appear to be a consideration.  More moderate alternatives—such as creating football-only conferences that would leave existing conference structures intact for other sports—do not even appear to be on the table.

While it is fashionable to say that government has no role to play in the oversight of the sports industry, the industry itself—in both its professional and “amateur” manifestations—regularly demonstrates a seemingly unlimited capacity for short-sightedness.

Conference expansion appears likely to lead to a reduction in the number of non-revenue sports, more legal gymnastics to maintain the illusion of Title IX compliance, and the ending of traditional football rivalries, even among teams that remain in the same conference.  If the current scheduling formula of eight conference games and four non-conference games is maintained—as appears to be the plan—in a sixteen team league, teams placed in opposite divisions are likely to play each other at home only once every sixteen years rather than once every other year as is currently the case.  Such is the likely future, for example, of University of Wisconsin games with Ohio State and the University of Michigan if the Big 10 expands to 16 teams.

I am not suggesting that the Gulf Oil Disaster and NCAA Conference realignment are phenomena of the same dimensions.  Nevertheless, both illustrate the dangers of allowing purely private entities to exercise nearly complete control over matters in which there is a significant public interest.  Congress has a duty to save college football from itself.

This Post Has 4 Comments

  1. Matt Mitten

    Hmm, conference realignment is being driven by market forces, which reflect consumer preferences, yet the “public interest” is being harmed? The real question is whose interests reflect those of the “public,” and who’s in the best position to take action (or not act) consistent with the public interest?

    It seems to me that university presidents and governing boards, acting individually and/or collectively, are in the best position to make what is essentially, all things considered, an institutional business decision requiring the weighing of many factors (only some of which Professor Hylton has identified). Arguably, college football is being enhanced by the formation of new rivalries (which doesn’t necessarily mean the elimination of old ones), which is why TV dollars likely will increase from conference realignment. So why is it necessary for Congress “to save college football from itself”?

    No need for Congress to intervene absent harm to important national interests such as preserving economic competition (conference realignment seems to be consistent with a properly functioning market in which there is free entry and exit of individual firms), or limiting/denying access to intercollegiate athletics participation opportunities (vigorous enforcement of existing Title IX gender equity laws should prevent women’s sports from being cut, the increased revenues from football and super-conference TV deals likely will be more than the aggregate increased travel costs for university athletic teams, and non-revenue sports will get increased media exposure on conference TV networks as is already occurring on the Big Ten Network).

  2. Patrick Sterk

    To piggyback on Professor Mitten’s point, one of the oft-cited reasons for moving has also been the idea of academic fit; that is, the Big 12 teams which have moved conferences believe that their research opportunties will be expanded by forming closer relationships with their new conferences.

    Nebraska claims that for years it has compared itself academically to institutions such as Michigan and Wisconsin far more than Kansas State and Texas Tech, and that it looks forward to creating lasting partnerships with its new Big 10 members. The Nebraska faculty were twice polled about the move, and both times they overwhelmingly supported moving to the Big 10.

    For Colorado, the campus atmosphere in Boulder is much more akin to Berkeley than Waco or Lubbock, and there is a similar disparity between the academics of the two conferences. Colorado too is excited to move on to a new conference affiliation with numerous top-line academic schools (such as USC, UCLA, Berkeley, Stanford, and Washington).

    And as the University of Texas contemplates a move themselves, one of the reasons they are leaning strongly towards the Pac-10 instead of the Big 12 or SEC is due to academics. No matter where it ends up, Texas will make boatloads of money; of all the schools in flux, Texas is perhaps the least motivated by potential revenues. But Texas has always felt like an academic outlier in the great plains of the Big 12, and I think their faculty eagerly anticipate a move to the Pac-10/16.

    This great conference shuffle, though certainly driven by money, also does have an academic component to it, one which schools are keeping in mind. In the end, it seems that the only true casulty to this process has been the names of the college conferences: the Big 12 now has 10 schools, the Big 10 has 12 schools, and the Pac-10 has 11 schools.

  3. Gordon Hylton

    I certainly do not share Professor Mitten’s faith in market forces, particularly when the parties controlling the supposed public interest are couch potatoes armed with remote controls.

    As for Patrick Sterk’s point that conference athletic affiliation can enhance the academic opportunities of a university,I am skeptical. One hears this argument made, and while membership in the Big 10 or ACC might enhance the reputation of a school like Miami or Nebraska, I don’t see how it really affects academic opportunities. When Marquette joined the Big East, I detected no increase in opportunities to collaborate with other faculty members at existing Big East schools, nor do I feel that my abilities to collaborate with faculty at Big 10 universities (particularly Wisconsin and Northwestern) are limited by the fact that Marquette is not a member of that conference.

    In fact, no matter what Nebraska Chancellor Harvey Perlman may be saying–Perlman, incidentally, was my first year Torts teacher–the University of Nebraska does have a lot more in common with Kansas State and Texas Tech, than it does with research titans like the University of Michigan or the University of Illinois. And simply changing league labels is not going to change that any time soon.

  4. Jasmin Rouged

    It seems to me that university presidents and governing boards, acting individually and/or collectively, are in the best position to make what is essentially, all things considered, an institutional business decision requiring the weighing of many factors (only some of which Professor Hylton has identified). Arguably, college football is being enhanced by the formation of new rivalries (which doesn’t necessarily mean the elimination of old ones), which is why TV dollars likely will increase from conference realignment. So why is it necessary for Congress “to save college football from itself”?

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