You could see this baby coming a mile away.
As fans gather in Houston this weekend to celebrate college basketball’s finest hour, college football is reeling from the aftershocks of a scandal involving the Fiesta Bowl, which has renewed questions about who should control big-time postseason football.
The N.C.A.A. operates every postseason championship except the lucrative bowl system. For nearly 100 years, the bowls have been a network of privately run fiefs working with conferences, universities, corporations and individuals to create appealing, often irrelevant matchups.
The Fiesta Bowl scandal is the latest example that the N.C.A.A. needs to take stronger control over that cottage industry, one that often operates outside its reach…
“Often operates”? More like completely.
Let’s get the easy part out of the way first: John Junker is your typical corporate sleazebag. If he did something criminal, I hope somebody goes after him for it, if for no other reason than to discourage others from pulling similar crap in the future. And if there’s some way to make Fiesta Bowl management pay a price for their lax supervision of Junker, ditto.
But speaking of lax supervision, urging that control of the bowls be brought under the aegis of the NCAA is… well, the dateline of Rhoden’s article is April 1, so maybe he’s kidding. If he’s not, he’s got a remarkably short memory. Or perhaps he sees a certain symmetric beauty in letting the same organization that allowed the Tatgate Five to play in the Sugar Bowl set all the rules on the business side of the postseason.
I don’t think I’m going very far out on a limb here to suggest that there might be a better way to address the problem.
And by the way, it’s a rule that any time Dennis Dodd signs on to a train of thought it becomes a meme on the spot. Or at least it should be.
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