Don't blame the NCAA for fractured season
Iwas chatting with an influential college football powerbroker last Saturday night, after writing my column that the cancellation of the fall football season seemed inevitable after the MidAmerican Conference's decision to move the season to spring 2021.
The power-broker didn't necessarily disagree, but he had one wish. He was hopeful that the Power 5 conferences could get together, and if this was going to eventually happen for all the leagues, they could make the decision in unison. Announce it all at once.
That, of course, is 21st century thinking. But college football is stuck in previous centuries. Think the 1700s, when this land was ruled by the Articles of Confederation. Or Medieval times, when independent city-states were the calling card of the Holy Roman Empire.
No imperial authority. No central government. Just the way the people wanted it.
And you know what happened. The Big Ten announced Tuesday that it would move college football to the spring. The Pac-12 announced the same a couple of hours later. The Big 12 followed a few hours
later by announcing it would forge ahead, same as the SEC and ACC.
Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby said in the early days of the pandemic that he expected the conference would work together. And I suppose they have. They just didn't decide together.
“We've spent a lot of time with the other conference commissioners, and I think there was some presumption that what that meant was that we were all going to be in lockstep,” Bowlsby said. “In the end, I think we all have to do what is best for our individual conferences, and we're not all similarly situated.”
It's a mess for which there is no right or wrong answer. But many blame the NCAA, for not taking a strong leadership role in the Power 5.
Many are wrong. The NCAA deserves no blame for the fractured courses taken by college football's most popular conferences.
The Power 5 conferences are aptly named. Power.
The Oklahomas and the Alabamas for decades longed for autonomy. No longer does a Slippery Rock vote cancel out a Penn State vote. No longer does a Cal StateDominguez vote cancel out a Southern Cal vote.
College football's legacy schools have autonomy. The NCAA Division I Football Oversight Committee gives the Power 5 the authority it lacked in previous decades.
The Power 5 conferences aren't likely to give up that autonomy even within the Power.
The NCAA these days basically exists for two fronts: it operates championships and it monitors eligibility (transfers, academics, recruiting). That's it.
And the Power 5 runs its own championship. So anything amiss in college football during this wacky year of 2020 is not on the NCAA.
It's on the Power 5. These leagues are the colonial states, before Alexander Hamilton's rap songs helped form the Union and produce the United States Constitution. They are loosely aligned but absolutely independent. Cooperation between each other is optional.
So we get to a year when schedules and formats are threatened, and the season itself is in upheaval, and it's a frontier independence. It's like the U.S. response to the coronavirus; we left it largely to the states.
Same with the football. Each league is operating on its own, no because there's a lack of leadership, but because that's the way each league wants it.
“Believe it or not, we actually like and respect one another,” Bowlsby said. “And other than the fact that we try and beat each other's brains out when we compete, we actually spend a lot more time collaborating than we that we do anything else. We speak very regularly. We share challenges in common.”
Bowlsby estimates the Power 5 commissioners have spoken at least six times a week since March.
“So we do we do a lot of collaboration, and we'll continue to do that,” he said.
This is not an NCAA issue. The lack of a centralized authority of college football, a leader who coalesces the leagues, is because the leagues don't want a leader. They want autonomy.
They have autonomy. They also have a 2020 season that is at best fractured.
Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at 405-760-8080 or at btramel@oklahoman.com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM-98.1. You can also view his personality page at oklahoman.com/berrytramel.