This gives a whole new meaning to “secondary violation”.

We’re descending into self-parody country with this news:

The NCAA has found what it calls “improper conduct” committed by former members of its own enforcement program during the Miami investigation, and will not deliver the long-awaited notice of allegations against the Hurricanes until an external review is completed.

Or they could just let Mark Emmert make up something as he goes along.  That’s worked for the NCAA before.

“Filling the seats will be secondary.”

It’s amusing to read Dennis Dodd’s “deary me, what can they do about it?” take on college football’s ongoing morphing from an attendance sport to a broadcast sport – hell, we geniuses at the blog here have discussed that topic for a while now – but this part isn’t funny:

The playoff games themselves are guaranteed ratings and financial winners. As mentioned, the four-team playoff has been priced at $500 million per season. Would an eight-team playoff be worth $1 billion? That’s where industry analyst say the game may reach the law of diminishing returns.

“How do you make it any bigger than it is?” Hollis said.

Finding the sweet spot where you grow the postseason just to the point where it doesn’t interfere with the value of the regular season – that’s the real trick for guys like Slive and Delany, isn’t it?  Is there anything in Dodd’s article that makes you think they’re smart enough to calibrate things that finely?  Remember, these are the same people who’ve led the way to college basketball’s regular season going in the crapper from a relevance standpoint and found that they’ve hit the ceiling on the size of the tourney field because TV won’t pay for more.

It sounds like they’ve hit the ceiling, period.

His “Four on the Floor” concept to open the 2013-14 college basketball season was scuttled in December. The logistics had been worked out — four games staggered 15 minutes part on the floor of Cowboys Stadium to replicate the NCAA tournament — but TV was the problem. Four separate networks to do the games could not be found.

I’m sure they’ll do better this time around.  At least I’m sure that’s what they’re telling themselves.

In my mind I’ve gone to Carolina.

Shorter Deke Adams:  I don’t really know the coaches on the South Carolina staff all that well, I’ve never recruited the state and my primary responsibility will be not to mess up the best player on the team with my coaching.  That’s a helluva job!

Musical palate cleanser, Saturday I go out to play edition

In honor of Michael Adams’ declaration about the weekly calendar (“I think Monday through Friday are for education, and I think Saturday is appropriate for football.”) and the fact that Georgia hasn’t played a regular-season football game on a non Saturday since Adams became president in 1997, I thought a little Allman Brothers at Fillmore East might be in order.

Mmm, so good.  Hard to believe that’s over forty years ago now.

************************************************************************************

UPDATE:  By the way, it doesn’t sound like McGarity and Adams are exactly on the same page.

Now a more realistic possibility, for Georgia at least, would be moving the Clemson game to an earlier date, say Thursday, Aug. 29, or Friday the 30^th. The Bulldogs would then get the benefit of having the college football world’s undivided attention while also enjoying an extra day or two of preparation for the Gamecocks.

“I think that would make much more sense,” McGarity said.

“You have CTE.”

Obviously, we’re a long way from a five-subject study to a definitive diagnosis, but I do wonder if Ta-Nehisi Coates is accurately seeing football’s future:

… There’s something more; presumably, if they really learn how to diagnose this, they will be able to say exactly how common it is for football players–and maybe athletes at large–to develop CTE.  This is when you start thinking about football and an existential crisis. I don’t know what the adults will do. But you tell a parent that their kid has a five percent chance of developing crippling brain damage through playing a sport, and you will see the end of Pop Warner and probably the end of high school football. Colleges would likely follow.

There’s a part of me that’s skeptical.  But that part will never sit in a doctor’s office with my child being told that a risk of serious brain injury has been diagnosed.  Nor has that part ever been a member of a family that sees a college football career as a means – maybe the only one – to a child getting a degree at least and perhaps to going on to a NFL paycheck.

If this study bears fruit, I suspect that before you’d see football’s death, you’d see an attempt made to take concrete steps to improve player safety, both with equipment changes and with rules changes.  Whether those would work would depend on how good technology would get, how serious the NCAA would be about enforcement – and how fan support would be affected by the changes.  Tough calls all around.