Feinstein On The Brink, indeed

This fairy tale posted by John Feinstein is borderline delusional:

… Oh please. If the NCAA wanted control of football it could acquire it in about a 15-minute meeting with the BCS commissioners and presidents. Here’s how it would go:

NCAA: “We are starting a football tournament next season. We are going to sell the rights to corporate America and the TV networks the way we sell the rights to the basketball tournament.”

BCS goons: “We have the BCS. We won’t participate.”

NCAA: “No problem. You can turn down the invitation to the football tournament. By the way, any school that doesn’t participate in the football tournament can’t participate in or receive revenue from the basketball tournament.”

Now, the BCS will scream and yell and threaten legal action. Fine. To begin with, the NCAA already set this precedent years ago when it told basketball teams it had to play in the basketball tournament if invited. It’s known as the, ‘McGuire rule,’ because it was put in place after Al McGuire took Marquette to the NIT in 1970 because he thought his draw in the NCAA’s was unfair.

What’s more, the NCAA is a private organization. Membership is voluntary. It can make any rules it wants (and does) and any member has the right to drop out if it doesn’t like the rules. Aha, you say—the BCS schools will drop out and form their own organization. Not as easy as it sounds. For one thing, the basketball contract for the next 14 years is with the NCAA. And, even if they formed their own superpower tournament the magic of the tournament would be completely lost. Butler makes the NCAA Tournament a must-see event. So does Cornell. The superpowers are semi-pro teams with zero romance attached to them other than by their own fans. The BCS would be cutting off its nose to spite its face if it went rogue. The easiest and best way would be to go kicking and screaming into an incredibly lucrative—for all—football tournament.

I’m going to skip right past his total lack of understanding of US antitrust law and blow by his Cinderella infatuation to get to this one simple question:  does he honestly believe that an organization that just restructured its signature sporting event for the sole purpose of creating more broadcast revenue would leave the staggering amount of money that the football postseason already generates to the conferences as a matter of choice?

Give me a break.  Of course the NCAA wouldn’t.

I can only imagine the column he’d have written in the days before Oklahoma and Georgia challenged the NCAA’s control of football on television.  “Not as easy as it sounds”, my ass.

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Thursday morning buffet

Grab that plate, folks, and settle in.

• Before you completely brush off Alabama’s losing nine defensive starters from its championship team, you might want to take a look at what Bill Connelly’s come up with.
• Dennis Dodd boils the Big Ten vs. SEC expansion scenarios down to a showdown over who’s got the bigger penis.
• And Nick Saban thinks the SEC’s penis size is just fine, thank you.
• LSU counts the press, ushers and concession workers in its home attendance figures.  Why, exactly?
• Chip Towers sees a new attitude towards in-state recruiting from Georgia’s staff, motivated by Junior’s helicopter stunt and Tiger Prowl.  I wonder if some of it is coming instead from introducing two new members of the staff who have never recruited the state before to high school coaches.
• Good question.

“Coach Meyer knows what he’s doing.”

You ever read those stories about parents who host parties with alcohol for their teenaged kids and their friends and defend their stupidity by insisting that they’d rather have them drinking safely at home than going out to do so?

I think I’ve figured out what goes on in Gainesville, Florida.

… Wondy Pierre-Louis, a Gators cornerback from 2006-09, said Meyer instilled fear in his players about smoking marijuana and often threatened to kick players off the team in meetings and huddles.

Pierre-Louis estimates about 75 percent of the 2006 team smoked marijuana based on internal talk among players and teammates posting positive tests.

Better to smoke a little weed in the privacy of one’s own place than to wander downtown, drink, fondle a couple of strippers and get in a fight.  In public.

Especially when you know they’ve got your back.

… Many of UF’s punishments regarding drug use seem to be out of Meyer’s hands. Florida’s Substance Abuse Committee regularly tests athletes and issues a one-game suspension after two failed tests and an indefinite suspension after five failed tests.

The entire policy, however, isn’t so clear cut since Athletics Director Jeremy Foley has the power to “recommend reduction of sanctions” after a Florida athlete tests positive. Foley can review new information on a Florida-administered drug test and makes the final call on an appeal.

And they know.

… The Globe’s report on Hernandez was a shock to Pierre-Louis, who said he never knew Hernandez failed a test.

Usually word gets around on something like this, he said.

“I think every athlete gets the same suspensions, but maybe with the starters, they won’t bring the news out as much,” said Pierre-Louis about the UF coaches.

Help a DragonCon fan out.

Georgia Tech can’t find a place on campus to store the Ramblin’ Reck.  This is an engineering school – an engineering school in the South, mind you – with no one capable of figuring out a place to park a car.

My suggestion would be to put the damned thing up on blocks and stick it in some frat house’s front yard.  Feel free to help our Jacket brethren out with your own ideas in the comments.

Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

I feel for Mark Richt, who’s trying to hold together a dicey depth situation at the most important position on the field, but his insistence on the “Aaron has not won the job” line is getting amusing.  I almost expect him to keep using it should Logan Gray leave the program.