What The Hell Is UofM Athletics Doing?

[EastsideAl]

This is all part of the massive arms race in college football right now. A war that's been sent into overdrive after the advent of conference realignment, the BCS/playoff, and the huge TV money driving all of it. The Big 10 schools are mostly behind the SEC schools in this race, and the biggest and most profitable schools in the Big 10 feel a burning need to keep up with those southerners and darlings of ESPN.

As the Bankruptcy Guy notes, in a long-term sense this may be a big, and very expensive, race to nowhere for many of the schools involved. Interest in college football, and indeed in all sports, is slipping out there, particularly with young people. ESPN is losing ratings, and more importantly losing subscribers as cable declines. As noted in the case of Berkeley, some schools with smaller fanbases and less interest in football are sinking deep into debt to pay for this madness. Schools that came into the big conferences expecting a windfall, like Maryland and Rutgers in the Big 10, are instead finding themselves having to spend millions more than before just to try to keep up.

The endgame here is, I think, the looming possibility of a breakaway super-conference [[or two) for the most successful football programs. A sort of NFL of college football. The schools that will make up that conference stand to make billions, not only from TV, ticket sales, merchandising, etc., but also from increased alumni 'interest'. From the Big 10, Michigan and Ohio State are reasonably certain to be in such a conference, so their spending is probably quite economically rational. MSU, Wisconsin, and Penn State may be right there too. Everyone else will be a loser and is terrified of this coming to pass. Scared of missing that boat and finding their football programs essentially reduced to the MAC level, with giant half-empty stadiums, much reduced TV contracts, and alumni sitting on their money.

But it's also clear that for most schools the arms race, and this descent into fiscal insanity over football, is not sustainable and can't continue.