My son Cody and I enjoyed a splendid Texas autumn afternoon on Saturday while attending the University of Houston’s football game against Central Florida. But only about 13,000 other folks showed up for the highly-entertaining game in an enjoyable on-campus environment, and that’s sadly an all-too-common experience for UH.
UH is a member of Conference USA, which was formed a decade or so ago by about a dozen universities that were not offered membership in one of the Bowl Championship Series conferences. As a result of its creation by necessity rather than design, few of the C-USA members have natural rivalries with other members and virtually all of the members struggle to attract fans to their games. UH’s situation is particularly difficult because UH competes in a market that offers NFL football and two effectively local universities (A&M and Texas) that compete in a BCS conference (the Big 12) with many traditional rivals. And that does not even include the competition represented by Texas’ hugely popular high school football scene.
With that backdrop, this Vic Matheson post over at the Sports Economist is the most cogent analysis that I’ve seen in some time of the underlying instability of the present structure of big-time college football. Using Florida International University’s recent foray into major college football as an example, Matheson concludes as follows:
Big-time college athletics is an lure that many schools find difficult to resist. The reality is, however, that even revenue sports such as football and menís basketball are money losers for most programs. Certainly FIU must be rethinking their decision to step onto the football field.
Despite a storied history in intercollegiate athletics and excellent on-campus facilities, the University of Houston is facing the same problems as Florida International in attempting to finance a big-time intercollegiate athletic program without the infrastructure of a BCS conference affiliation. Moreover, virtually every other non-BCS conference university — and even a number of the universities in BCS conferences — are experiencing the same dilemma. Although a model exists for the reorganization of big-time college football and basketball into a true adjunct to the academic experience rather than minor league professional enterprises, my sense is that the current instability in the structure of college football will more likely trigger the development of three or four super conferences comprised of member institutions that are willing to pay the price — both financially and morally — to compete at the highest levels of minor league professional football and basketball.
Although such a development may be the natural evolution of big-time intercollegiate football and basketball, I can’t help but think that something valuable — such as the old Southwest Conference and UH’s intense rivalries with UT and A&M — is lost from the fabric of the most university communities as intercollegiate football and basketball mimic professional sports franchises.
13,000 fans at the Univ of Houston, how sad…in 2006. Just 17-18 years ago the Cougars sported the Heisman Trophy winner in Andre Ware.
Tom and I have discussed the developments in this post for almost as long as 16-17 years. I am not attending as many football games as I once did (at one time I think I attended 10-12 major college games a year; 20 high school games, and a couple pro games) but I have seen Univ of Iowa games, and one game at Lawrence University in Appleton WI where D-3 Lawrence defeated that gridiron power Beloit College. I do have some thoughts.
1. It does seem like the college super powers will be consolidated into 4-5 major conferences. Clearly the Big-10, the Big-12, the Pac-10, and the SEC are the tops in the football world. This year the Big East appears to be ahead of the ACC. Maybe an east coast B-East/ACC merge will be super-conference #5.
2. The driving force is money. I think that ESPN/ABC and CBS wants the consolidation. Super college team match-ups (eg Ohio State v. Texas; Notre Dame v. Michigan) are going to be far more lucrative than smaller school match-ups (eg Houston v. TCU).
3. Football money then will further seperate the haves from the have-nots. Network money, bowl money, and mandatory ‘donations’ increase the coffers of the super teams; the smaller programs will see a drop in revenue as they are not given the prime bowls, or prime TV spots.
4. The nature of the big time teams has even afffected the nation’s unversities. Simply go to a major conference campus. There will be a bright new study center (to the tune of 5-10 million) in which the ‘athletes only’ have someone do their homework for them. The athletic facilities will be new and clean, meanwhile regular students are forced into over-crowded housing, classrooms, and lecture halls.
5. The financial rewards given to a State U have subverted the universities admissions standards. Athletes with barely the requisite skills to read and write, are admitted ahead of regular students, as well as given preference in class assignments.
6. The high D-1 talent level. which is a good thing in quality of the sport, works against the smaller D-1 schools and the D1-2A, D2, and D3 programs. Those games seem relatively less attractive than the televised super power game-of-the-week. The smaller schools now serve as fodder for the large schools open schedule dates (12 games on the schedule); these schools will be pummeled in the name of a nice payoff which keeps their programs going.
Major universities are failing in several areas of their traditional mission. There isn’t the development of the regular students physical well being in these univerisities any more; the money is scant to a laughable inter-mural sports system, and and generous to the D-1 facilities and coaches salaries. (and note that this is a time when Type-2 diabetes is rampant, due to poor exercise habits)
Although major D-1 football is very entertaining, I am not seeing the inordinate emphasis placed on football super powers promoting the true mission of our major (state) universities.
The system needs an over-haul, however that will not happen.
Rather, our universities will continue hurtling toward a future of more crowded classrooms, inadequate facilities, and less physical development of the under-graduates, to promote the elite and skilled teams attractive on ESPN Game Day.
The bills will come due with the increases in diabetes, hypertension, and physical unfitness due to poor physical education among common students. The bills will come due with increasing disparity between superpowers, and schools like Houston, who may be forced to downgrade sports programs (like Drake did).
Tom
Houston has natural rivalries with all of the CUSA West Teams except UTEP. The Buyou Bucket this year was hard fought and very close game. The best thing for UH to do is to be successful with out playing the likes of TAM and UT. I remember how bad the SWC was, and see many of the same problems in the big 12 (see all of the problems Baylor!!!, TAM!!, and other Big 12 members! have had).
The game you went to this year had about a half of the rest of this season’s home games.
GRG51
I graduated from UH many years ago, and like the athletic facility improvements the school has made since joining CUSA. Even more improvements have been made to the academic facilities for the general student population along with greatly improved along with increased dorm spaces. It is now a fantastic time to be a Cougar.
Thanks,
samiam