Can Rams survive losing Showdown?
Yes, Jack Graham assures me, the CSU Rams can survive without the Rocky Mountain Showdown. Yes, he says, the athletic department could soldier on without playing a 2020 football season.
That said, he also wouldn’t trade wingtips with Rams athletic director Joe Parker right now for all the jam at Lucile’s.
“I am worried. I am,” Graham, the former Rams quarterback, CSU athletic director from 2011-14 and Parker’s predecessor, stressed late last week. “I think there’s a big question out there as to whether or not there’s going to be a college football season. I would hate it if there wasn’t. But I would understand it if there wasn’t.”
This thing is bigger than Nick Saban, faster than Clemson, tougher than Ohio State. Your 2020-21 college football champion? COVID-19. Now
that the bugger’s taken out the Rose Parade, it’s gunning for the Rose Bowl next.
“College football is very different from the NFL,” Graham mused. “The NFL has a game that’s fantastic to watch on television, independent of the fans, whereas college football is pageantry.
“It’s great football, but it’s also pageantry. It’s the bands, the cheerleaders — there’s just so much more to college football.”
Imagine tailgating in masks, a minimum of two parking spaces apart. Now imagine trying to enforce that once the kegs get tapped.
“So much of it is about bringing the alums back to campus and the mission of the campus,” Graham said. “All of those things are going away.”
In April, we tried to save August. In May, we danced. In June, we raged. In July, we went right back to March.
The shiv that Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott stuck in the back of the 2020 Showdown feels more like the middle of a row of falling dominoes, as opposed to the end.
The next shoe to drop could come as soon as Friday, when college programs can begin “enhanced summer access,” including walk-throughs, meetings and film review.
The pandemic has every organized sports circuit over a barrel, but the NCAA in particular. Even if the coronavirus is rarely lethal to players, the same can’t be said of its affect on coaches, staffers and, most importantly, on boosters and fans. To put student-athletes under a bubble — or more of one — would further reinforce the notion that they aren’t just students who happen to play football, but entertainers contracted by the university for whom those entertainment services (i.e., games), are deemed essential to the revenue stream. It’s the cold, hard truth, but it’s not a truth the NCAA’S lawyers would be thrilled to defend right about now.
And yet the Rams are also likely on the hook, even without travel, for at least $16 million to $20 million in football expenses, based on their 2019 fiscal report, before dollar one comes back across the table. According to reported financials, CSU football lost $4.96 million in 2018-19. But football also accounted for $20.1 million — 36% — of the department’s $56.1 million in revenues. If it can be done safely, for Parker, any mitigating returns are better than none.
“There’s going to be a financial hit, there’s no question about it,”
Graham said. “(The Rams) have to win in football and basketball, full-stop. Particularly in football, you’ve got to get out of the Mountain West into the Big 12 or the Pac-12, to sustain the level of expense that we’ve got in the athletic department requires us to get into a Power 5 conference. And that’s what has to happen. There’s no way to make money if you’re going to be a mid-major university.”
Graham has always stumped for CSU to join the Power 5, which is why he pushed the boat out for the construction of Canvas Stadium, even as it became a bigger house, a sexier car, than the Rams could afford. Of the department’s $8.6 million in debt service, leases and rental fees reported in 2019, $8.2 million was attributed to football.
“I think what’s happening now is a result of the coronavirus, it’s irrelevant to the stadium. I really do believe that,” Graham said. “My disappointment is that we’re not winning. Let’s win, let’s get into a Power 5 conference. It’s winning. That’s the standard we need to hold ourselves to.”
If you’re the Rams, you’d love to pounce on a scheduling vacancy that just opened up in the Big 12. Or the SEC and the ACC
— two leagues in which new coach Steve Addazio has serious roots.
But you also can’t shake the feeling that the rest of the Power 5 will eventually go the same route as CU. That you’d be better off trying to schedule a home-and-home with Wyoming than chasing dates with Texas A&M or Oklahoma State.
“(Parker) is in crisis mode, as many businesses are. The athletic department at CSU is not unique,” Graham noted. “He’s going to have to do everything he can to find ways to cut spending and do everything he can to get people in the community to step up and help him finance the athletic department in the shortterm.
“Joe’s a smart guy, he’ll figure it out. He’s just got to go out and cut expenses as deep as you can cut them without losing track of what your mission is.”
If university presidents truly cared about student-athlete welfare, they wouldn’t go out of their way to cancel a 45-mile trek from Boulder to Fort Collins while simultaneously giving the rubber-stamp for the Buffs to visit Arizona and California, the COVID capitals of the West. There’s a reason Scott doesn’t travel anywhere by high horse.