Nice of you to show up

So, I had a few people tell me yesterday this Chris Vannini post ($$) was right up my alley.

With each move, each round of realignment, college sports loses what made it special. Maybe it’s too late. Maybe it was already gone. But it’s clear where this is really heading, and many of the decision-makers who feel comfortable about the short term need to realize there won’t be a chair for them at the end of this road. And many fans need to remember why they fell in love with the sport in the first place.

I dunno.  Yeah, that’s all true, but a column like this would have reverberated a lot more had it been posted eight or nine years ago.  Anybody with a brain knew then why the SEC embarked on a poorly thought out expansion plan:  Mike Slive had to do something to bail his conference out from a TV deal that was perceived as inadequate and damn the consequences.  (For some bizarre reason, yesterday Slive was being lauded on social media as some sort of heroic visionary, which is ludicrous.  But that’s probably a subject for a different post.)

Greed has been running the show in college football at least as long as this blog has been around.  Yet for some reason this particular round of SEC expansion is triggering angst like Vannini’s.  Eh, big deal.

And even with that, he still manages to pull a punch with this observation:

Less than two months after the Super League collapsed, college football put a hand out for the little guy, planning a 12-team playoff with at least one guaranteed bid for a Group of 5 program. The sport’s leaders sacrificed for the benefit of the game, to keep more fan bases engaged throughout the season. Notre Dame gave up the chance for a first-round bye. The SEC agreed to change a system that already benefits them. The Power 5 agreed to a system in which more than one G5 team could make it. It was a rare moment of unity to help everyone.

By “little guys”, he doesn’t mean us fans.  You know, the ones who will be asked to pay a small fortune to follow our schools around the country as they progress through more rounds of the postseason.  We should pay no attention to the massive payouts to the schools for their “generosity”.  Or the way playoff expansion is eroding the very “regional flair, the communities, the charm and the history” of college football he lauds (correctly) as being a large part of the sport’s unique character.  Because for one shining moment, we’re supposed to believe the conferences had some sort of kumbaya breakthrough.

Folks, there is no unity.  There is only a money grubbing chase on, with alliances made and broken for the temporary advantage of the powerful.  And that shows no sign of stopping any time soon.

At least one college sports figure with his ear to the ground believes that the departure date will seem immaterial in the fullness of time, as the proposed SEC jump will be only the first in a long line of alignment shake-ups. “This is just starting,” said an AD at a Power 5 school currently unaffected by the interconference turbulence. “As soon as [NCAA president Mark] Emmert threw up his hands and sort of said, ‘The hell with it—let the conferences sort it out,’ it was like someone rang a dinner bell at the pig pen.”

Now there’s a metaphor for our times.