In 1969, the year I got into the journalism business, the major college conferences looked like this:
SEC: Auburn, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, LSU, Florida, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, Kentucky and Vanderbilt. Big Eight: Missouri, Nebraska, Colorado, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Kansas, Kansas State and Iowa State. Southwest Conference: Texas, Texas A&M, Arkansas, Texas Tech, TCU, SMU, Rice and Baylor. ACC: South Carolina, North Carolina, North Carolina State, Duke, Wake Forest, Clemson, Maryland, Virginia. Pac-8: USC, UCLA, Stanford, Oregon, Oregon State, California, Washington, Washington State.
Among the independents were Penn State, Notre Dame, Florida State, Miami, West Virginia, Georgia Tech, Army, Navy, Air Force, Pitt, Virginia Tech, Boston College, Syracuse and Southern Mississippi.
In those days, the value of being in a conference was not so much financial. Yes, there was revenue sharing, but there wasn’t that much revenue to share. The NCAA controlled television. There were strict limits on how often an individual program could be televised. There was no ESPN, no Fox. College football was televised by ABC, and that was it. There were one or two games on television every Saturday.
The main benefits of being in a conference were that it made scheduling easier, provided an opportunity to compete for championships and get exposure. Some conferences had bowl tie-ins. Travel was easier when most opponents were in nearby states.
That is almost 53 years ago, of course. That is before many if not most of those reading this were born. But for us oldsters, it doesn’t seem so long ago.
My main memory from 1969 is the death of my father. I started my first newspaper job on Oct. 5 at The Huntsville News. I took a young lady I was convinced was the love of my life to her first Iron Bowl, only to learn a few weeks later that I was not the love of her life.
I remember the arrival of Pat Sullivan and Terry Beasley on the college football scene, Connie Frederick’s electrifying fake punt, a memorable shootout between Ole Miss quarterback Archie Manning and Alabama quarterback Scott Hunter, Alabama losing to Vanderbilt, Auburn losing at LSU on a blocked extra point.
More than half a century later, here we are. The game on the field is different. The athletes are far more talented and far better trained. Off the field, the game of today bears little resemblance to the game of those days.
In those days, the SEC office consisted of commissioner Tonto Coleman, a publicist and a secretary and was housed in a downtown Birmingham hotel. I wouldn’t start to guess now how many people work in the SEC office today.
Conferences were based on geography in 1969. Nobody would have believed in those days that it was possible for the Big Ten to include teams on the West Coast or for the SEC to include teams from Texas. Nobody would have believed that the Southwest Conference would no longer exist.
The business of college football changed in 1984 when the Supreme Court took control of television from the NCAA. That started the flood of money that continues to grow to this day. And that money has led to litigation and decisions made by politicians who don’t understand the realities of the game and those eager to line their own pockets while proclaiming their support for supposedly exploited student-athletes.
There is no going back now. Money, specifically television money, is driving the sport at the highest level. That is not an altogether bad thing. Title IX created wonderful opportunities for female athletes, but providing those opportunities is expensive. Other men’s sports are money sponges, too. The cost of competition is high. But football is driving this bus.
Anyone who doesn’t see a headlong drive toward college football becoming NFL lite, a made-for-TV extravaganza, must not be paying attention.
The uniqueness of the college game – the traditions, the rivalries, the pageantry, the love of school – is fading away even faster than anyone could have imagined. Conferences will no longer be groups of institutions aligned geographically and philosophically. The game, in some form, will go on. It will lose fans who loved it because of those things that made it special and who will have little interest in whatever the game finally becomes.
What will college athletics look like 50 years from now, 20 years from now, 10 years from now, when those of us who remember the way it was are long gone? Nobody can know that answer, but I will bet it won’t be nearly as much fun as it once was.
