RE: Mike Slive: Plus-one 'not necessarily in the best interests' of college football
Fortunately, they should be outvoted on the plus-one issue.
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The other conferences cannot coerce the B1G and PAC to join their playoff. The B1G and PAC will be content to just slot their champs in the Rose Bowl.
That's the thing. You can't have a playoff without those two conferences. So they have significant power because unlike the SEC, they wouldn't hesitate to return to the old bowl structure if the playoff structure isn't to their liking. The SEC really wants a playoff. There is a large faction of the B1G and PAC presidents which don't want a playoff at all.
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Thank you for making my point. It's the attitude. Let them go back to the Rose Bowl. They will become in everyone's mind what they actually are, has beens. They were great during the ore boat days, during the automotive boom, and secured championships with African American athletes from the South and Southwest during the Jim Crow days. When the SEC finally accepted African American athletes in the late 60's the turn was made. The Big 10 remained strong during the 70's and started a long slow slide that corresponds to Carter's Iranian oil crisis. In the 80's Japanese cars killed Detroit and the slide deepened. That slide continues. The automotive bailout is failing, just like the bank bailout. There isn't going to be a football bailout! The Big 10 still fields good teams and an occasional great one, but their depth, their skill positions, and their talent pools are all extremely thin. And thin they are for good reason.
You lose because you can't out-recruit the SEC and Big 12. The PAC, outside of the Trojans and Ducks (both with very recent infractions), hasn't fielded a consistant winner in years. Stanford could prove me wrong, but I doubt it. Andrew Luck will be hard to replace.
So hang on to your hubris and pull your dysfunctional "take my marbles and go home" ploy when you don't get your way and just see if we care. The only thing great you will find in Pasadena is memories.
The good reason you are so thin is because your industry is gone, your economy is strained, and your population is migrating South to find work and escape the kind of nonsense that is going on in Wisconsin between the union and government. Without your Federal grants, which you will lose to a greater congressional representation in the South in coming years, your academic standing will start to crumble as well.
As fuel prices rise, and they will now that we have reached peak oil (even in spite of the commodities downturn), your decline in revenue producing jobs will only increase the outflow of people from your region who will be escaping the high cost of heating and looking for work.
I would think West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina will continue to grow because of how attactive a temperate climate and a cheaper cost of living can be.
Football on the West coast doesn't have the culture necessary to push it. Their best teams recruit the South and Texas. So when you play that precious Rose Bowl it will be a tepid team from the PAC playing a team from the Big 10 which will be just as anachronistic and lackuster as Notre Dame has been these past 20 years.
Right now you have the cooperation and desire of the South and Southwest to make this thing work for all of us, you better act upon it. We don't need you. We would like to have you with us because it is right for the people and for college football that you be a part of this, but it is not necessary. We will be getting stronger and you will be getting weaker every year that you don't participate.
We will have more people, and more industry. We will eventually have the Federal grants that you now enjoy. The SEC is already positioning itself with more AAU schools for that purpose. And we will still have a passionate football culture with plenty of recruits to feed the frenzy. If you want those recruits you better play us. Because if you don't their mommas and daddys won't let them go to your schools, even if they wanted to.
It's time you drop this childish behavior and worked with others for a better day. I'm sure there can be a compromise if one is truly sought. But Delany's petulance wreaks of the kind of pride that resents having lost its influence. Therefore, he must be contrary to prove he is still important. That's fine for someone who is still important. It can be dealt with. But, it is needlessly pathetic and destructive for someone who is not.
There will be four, maybe five, large conferences. It would be nice if they tied our nation together and brought us all some joy in hard times. Football is after all entertainment as well as sport. When ultimatums are issued in the entertainment world it is the market that will ultimately walk away. True leaders always respect the desires of those they serve as long as those desires make good sense. After all, it was Slive a few years back that wanted a 4 team playoff. But it was an out of step and obstinate Delany that opposed it. Ultimatums are the first indication that leaders no longer serve the people, but rather their own interests. It is then that leadership needs to be replaced, whether in the South or the North.
There are ways to have champions and at large teams play. The answer is 8. If Slive, Bowlsby (Dodds), Scott, and Delany are posturing, maybe they are all together in moving toward this number, but I doubt it. If they are all puffing up to see who's dominant the losers once again will be the kids on the teams, the fans, and ultimately the game itself. Do we really want that?
If there is a separation this time between the Big10/PAC interests and that of the Big12/SEC don't look for the breach to be healed anytime soon. Football will become a Southern thing and cease to be an American institution and the real losers will be the great folks I know in those states that surround the Lakes. The folks in California will lose too, but they will just turn their interests elsewhere. And the only real winners will be those who passionately hate the sport and want to tag it with concussions and seek to ban (change) part of what has made us great as a people (teamwork to achieve goals).
So I hope these ridiculous postures on all sides will be abandoned and that the great schools of the North will once again furnish Southern and Northern athletes with a stellar education. I hope for a day when the rust is sanded down and the industry of the North is reinvented and made vigorous again. When there are only 64 - 80 institutions in an upper tier, there will be plenty of young people to fill out our teams, make us competitive, and remind us of the joy of youth while giving us hope for tomorrow.
There is nothing we can't do together, and nothing we can prevent losing if we are divided. I don't know about you, but I'm sick and tired of those who try to divide us for their own gain, whether political, or economic. If we think in terms of region we don't think broadly enough. If the North suffers America suffers. And, since Southerners are Americans, that means they will suffer too. Southerners might not suffer in football, at least not right away, but in every other way possible we will suffer for the division. But if issued an ultimatum we will resist just as stubbornly and stupidly as those opposing us. It's human nature. It's time to start doing what is right for our people, all of our people. And it's time to apply that way of thinking to all issues. How can millions of Americans watch football so passionately and miss the point of success through teamwork?
While we are divided others profit from our stratification. But, if we work together there will be plenty for all of us and our children too. If four grown men who claim to be leaders can't work out a danged playoff for a group of 18-25 year olds we are truly doomed! JR
*By the way when the players tackle with their face up and their chinstraps tightened they won't get a lot of those concussions. I suspect many of them suffered the concussions while in High School (due to poor technique) and are only re-aggrevating them in College. JR
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Mike Slive: Plus-one 'not necessarily in the best interests' of college football
