Pac-12 punts on brunch kickoffs....this year

Good morning! I’ve got one last mailbag slot left for Friday’s newsletter, so if you’ve got a question about college football business, history, or hell, anything at all really, tweet it to me at @MattSBN or email it at [email protected]. I’m interested if any of you like these more frequent newsletters too…it’s a bit hard to tell from the data.

Let’s get after it.

No early kickoffs for the Pac-12….in 2019

The Pac-12 floated the idea of doing a few early kickoffs, either 9 or 10 AM local, so they could get a few games into that noon EST time slot, and ideally, remove them from the late-night slot. Pac-12 After Dark is fun for Twitter and for ESPN executives, but less great for fans who’d like to drive home before 3 AM, or Pac-12 fans who live east of the Mississippi river.

From Pac-12 chronicler Jon Wilner:

The idea of early kickoffs was mocked by most corners of college football internet, but not everybody hated it. Coaches at UCLA, Utah and Colorado didn’t dismiss it out of hand, and some analysts, like Wilner, also endorsed the idea.

Even if you think it’s a good plan, I just don’t see any way doing it in 2019, on such short notice, would have been practical. Schools would need time to make logistical tweaks, coaches would need to revamp their schedules, and the league would need to be very careful that they weren’t accidentally making things worse for the actual football teams, something their scheduling department has done over the last few years. Nobody wants to draw the 9 AM local game the week after playing 900 miles from campus, or coming off a short week, for example.

I imagine this will happen eventually. Doing it in Utah or Colorado, where you can kick at 10 AM local to hit the noon slot, could potentially substantially increase Pac-12 television exposure without dramatically crippling local atmosphere.

I still don’t like the idea. I think schools, especially schools in the Pac-12 that generally don’t have enormous fanbases that are quite as devout as their peers in the midwest or south, should prioritize creating an excellent on-campus experience, even if that dings TV exposure a little bit. But if the schools want to do it, and it doesn’t hurt the kids, experimenting a few times in 2020 may not be the worst thing in the world.

Of course, this means the odds that the Pac-12 accidentally knocks out a playoff contender by making them play in Salt Lake at 10 AM are roughly 100%. But that’s just how these things go.

Schools bravely refuse to pay out cost of attendance…until they do

Back in 2015, after the O’Bannon case, Power Five schools voted to allow themselves to pay out cash Cost of Attendance benefits, in addition to what athletes typically got for their scholarships. Everybody was on board but Boston College, who voted against the idea out of principle, but even the Eagles started cutting the checks.

At first, some commentators were afraid that this would even more dramatically widen the gap between the P5 “haves” and the G5 “have nots”. How could the poorest schools pay out even more cash benefits? Surely they were broke, no?

Well, by 2016, everybody but four Sun Belt schools and one Conference-USA school started paying out COA. And soon, even schools that didn’t sponsor FBS football, schools with very modestly sized athletic departments, started paying out COA, at least on some level. By 2017, over 260 D1 institutions said they had adopted COA payments.

A few schools, like James Madison and Elon, loudly protested. But as economist Andy Schwarz noted, lol, they paid up anyway.

As I’ve mentioned in several of the last newsletters, figuring out what programs can really afford what is very difficult! And it is probable that some of the dozens of schools that elected not to provide COA, like some HBCUs, simply cannot afford it. But when faced with the idea of suffering a competitive disadvantage, schools that beat their chests and proclaimed NO, NEVER…may very well find themselves quietly cutting the next round of checks.

This story reminded me of something I read on CBS last year, where Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick mused that increases in player compensation could lead to another round of conference realignment.

I wouldn’t be surprised to hear this argument resurface, especially as the discussion around amateurism and player compensation heats up after the season.

I’ll believe all of that when I see it. I’m old enough to remember when the Big Ten claimed they’d go to DIII, which lmao come onnnnnnn.

It’s one thing to claim poverty, or claim that the latest reform is simply a bridge too far. But in 150 years of college football history, there are precious few examples of any school actually deciding, “actually, this is too much, we’re out.” For every Chicago, or Penn, there are dozens and dozens more schools that crunch the numbers and decide, actually, they’d prefer to keep 55,000 fans screaming on campus, thank you very much.

Probably worth keeping in mind the next time an administrator hollers about poverty or principle. I think Schwarz is onto something.

Money talks. And bullshit walks.

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