Teaching How Deals Are Done

Those who administer college football are depressed. They aren’t able to understand the money madness seizing the children who play the game.

With eligibility left, the kids are going over the wall to join the pros. What has happened to the student-athlete? You ask one:

“Are you interested in engineering?”

“Indeed I am. I am dying to study the power plant of a Ferrari-- my Ferrari.”

It is regrettable that undergraduates in football don’t have the healthy outlook of their university elders, who see the game as simple beauty, free from commercial pressure and general money-grubbing.

For instance, colleges today play no more than 12 games. They are playing bowl games before the season even starts--things called the Kickoff Classic and Disneyland Pigskin Classic.

A college distinguished for its football has set up a private television deal with NBC. Lesser arrangements by universities result in as many as 11 games being seen on TV on a single Saturday.

Why can’t the players comport themselves like those who run college football, detached from earthly goods, dedicated to the spirit of friendly rivalry that sportsmen seek?

New Year’s Day, you will see that the number of bowl games on television has been limited to eight.

“You will note the restraint,” university people will tell players thinking of jumping to the pros. “We easily could play 10 on New Year’s, scheduling two games between midnight and 6 in the morning.”

Originally, college football favored us with four bowls on Jan. 1--Rose, Orange, Cotton and Sugar.

It expanded to five with something known as the Sunkist Fiesta Bowl. Then, presumably on a leveraged buyout, the Florida Citrus Bowl took over the Tangerine Bowl and soon bumped New Year’s Day viewing to six games.

The Hall of Fame Bowl increased it to seven, the figure now escalating to eight with a switching of dates of the Mazda Gator Bowl.

Eight bowl games battling each other on the same day might appear as overkill, but what’s a little cannibalization among educated people?

Meantime, the Cotton Bowl has come to be called the Mobil Cotton Bowl and the Sugar Bowl the USF&G; Sugar Bowl. The Sun Bowl became the John Hancock Sun Bowl, until such time as the sponsor decided such billing was a deterrent to direct communication.

The name was changed to John Hancock Bowl.

And the universities, observing events, go along, because they are not as commercially oriented as today’s players.

Over in Tucson, they got a postseason game certified known as the Copper Bowl. Linking up with a firm that makes mouth freshener, the game became known as the Copper BreathLess Bowl, but that would change to Copper Bowl, presented by BreathLess.

Last heard from, the game was still breathing, but without its mouth-freshening sponsor.

Mind you, this is watched unblinkingly by the colleges, role models for those student-athletes who would dump their schools for a lousy $80,000 a year from the pros.

Since only one bowl game, the Rose, has fixed participants every year, the others must hoof it, entering into bloodlettings to beat out rivals for the best teams.

Rules prevent bowls from contacting teams before specified dates, and, of course, no school would fudge, accepting bids prematurely, because this would set a bum example for the players.

Watching a school that lacks integrity, a player with eligibility might be tempted to talk to a pro team in the alley about the draft.

Now, say, you play for Clemson where home sellouts are automatic. Why open with Miami when you can play Cal State Long Beach?

Same financial result.

So you wipe out Long Beach, 59-0, enhance the winning record and prepare three weeks down the line to entertain Appalachian State. Picturing George Allen, Long Beach coach, on the sideline last Saturday, you heard him mumble: “The future is 20 years ago.”

But Clemson establishes standards any admiring kid will want to emulate as he strolls the boulevard of life.