Creeping soshulizm

It’s been a while since we’ve had any goobers from out West threatening a legal shakedown of the BCS since the marketplace refuses to recognize the greatness of the bottom feeders in the WAC, but it sounds like a couple of regents at Nevada may be ready to step up to the plate (h/t Graham Watson):

… With the six major conferences receiving the lion’s share of the BCS revenue, two regents expressed outrage over what they see as a funding inequity, a longtime concern among less prominent conferences, which refer to themselves as non-BCS schools.

Since the majority of Division I schools — 66 percent — are public institutions, Regents Michael Wixom and Ron Knecht said Nevada taxpayers essentially were subsidizing big-time college football programs at the expense of UNLV and UNR.

“What frustrates me is taxpayers are, in essence, funding the infrastructure of college football,” Wixom said.

Man.  And here I was thinking that’s what my cable bill was doing.

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The latest NCAA head-scratcher

How crappy is the NCAA’s call on Oregon in the Will Lyles matter?  Crappy enough that I find myself in full agreement with a Gregg Doyal column.

And if you ask me, the USC sanctions should be the starting point for Oregon. The minimum. While it’s true that an actual player (and family members) received benefits in the USC case — and received them at a value well beyond $25,000 — there’s a distinction here. It’s a distinction Oregon fans will ignore because it’s convenient, but it’s a distinction that should appall the NCAA:

At USC, the checks were written by outsiders: agents, runners, marketing reps.

At Oregon, the check was written by the Oregon football team.

See that distinction? It’s grotesque. This wasn’t some mysterious off-campus figure exerting influence. This was Chip Kelly making sure $25,000 went to the guy in Houston who says he helped steer recruits to Oregon. And Lyles had a hands-on role, too: He says he advised eventual Oregon All-American tailback LaMichael James to transfer to Arkansas for his final semester of high school to avoid Texas’ standardized test required for graduation. Then he showed Seastrunk how to use his grandmother to sign his scholarship papers, because Seastrunk’s mother wasn’t sold on Oregon.

If this goes down as it looks like it might, were I a Southern Cal administrator, I’d be furious.

Doyal thinks this comes down to not wanting to piss Phil Knight off.  Sad, if true.  I’m not sure I totally buy it, though.  It’s not like there aren’t plenty of Nike competitors who would be thrilled to step into the breach if Knight decided to create one out of spite.

Whatever the reason, it’s just another example of the inconsistency we’ve come to expect out of Emmert’s crew.  The only surprise is that we’re no longer surprised by it.

“If you took a vote of coaches, you’d probably get a two-game conference schedule.”

Behold!  Roy Kramer, voice of reason on SEC football scheduling:

“I would say they should take a hard look at nine,” former SEC Commissioner Roy Kramer said. “People don’t buy season tickets to see you play some of the nonconference teams we play. They buy season tickets to see our best teams.”

Solomon’s entire column is eminently logical.  Which is why I put the odds on the conference adopting a nine-game football schedule at about 5-1 against.