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Is This Still College Football? · Plausibly Live - The Dave Bowman Show Podcast

0:03
With your Morning News update, I'm Alex Ross. the United States
0:06
has attacked 3 Iranian oil tankers after American officials
0:10
said ballistic missiles targeted 2 U.S.
0:12
Navy warships. The ships avoided the attack and
0:14
no American personnel were injured.
0:16
Central Command says 2 Iranian tankers were disabled and 1/3
0:20
was destroyed. Iranian media reported that one
0:23
crew was evacuated without casualties.
0:25
The exchange came one day after President Trump called the six
0:28
month conflict small potatoes. The administration says the
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campaign has cost more than $37 billion.
0:35
Eighteen American service members have died.
0:38
A federal judge has extended the block on new Postal Service
0:41
requirements for mail ballots. The administration is appealing
0:44
as states begin distributing ballots for the November
0:47
midterms. Missouri has asked the Supreme
0:49
Court to reinstate congressional districts blocked by the state's
0:52
highest court. In baseball, the Athletics hit
0:55
four home runs in one inning and defeated the Mariners 7 to 6.
0:59
The NFL defending champion Seahawks open Wednesday night
1:02
against New England in a rematch of Super Bowl 60 in the EFL
1:05
Championship. Norwich City down Sheffield
1:08
United 3 to one for the On Air Across America network.
1:11
I'm Alex Ross. college football edition.
2:09
College football opening this week, really opening this week.
2:13
I guess tactically it opened a couple weeks ago, but really got
2:17
going for me this weekend because Oklahoma played and as
2:22
you know, I am a native Oklahoman, although I have a lot
2:28
of colleges I kind of follow obviously Navy Oklahoma.
2:34
It was nice to see Colorado get a big win down in Georgia
2:38
against the Ramblin wreck blocked field goal on the last
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play of the game. To win the game.
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That's that's that's exciting. Of course, the problem is I have
2:53
a hard time getting excited about it in the first week.
2:56
I have a long tradition of college football liking college
2:59
football. My dad is a big, big college
3:03
football fan. He loved college football
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probably more than he liked the NFL.
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He, of course went to college, played in the band of college
3:14
till he got. As I understand the story, he
3:19
was summarily dismissed, but I I suspect there was more to it
3:22
than that. The story goes that the school
3:26
song where he went to college was the Stars and Stripes
3:29
Forever March. And if you're a musician, you
3:32
know that the Stars and Stripes Forever March has a 33, repeats
3:37
the what we call C-section three times, and each time it builds.
3:41
And then the in the final section it goes through.
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There's a huge piccolo solo, but it's not piccolo.
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And my dad, you will not be surprised, did not learn, did
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not play piccolo. He played the sousaphone, the B
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flat bass, and it's my understanding that he transposed
4:00
the piccolo solo for sousaphone and at homecoming on the field
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he launched into that caught everybody kind of off guard.
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But it was kind of weird to me. It would be very funny, but I
4:12
suspect that it was more about his grades than that.
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But you know, it's, it's a great family story.
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Dad and I used to go to college football games, one of the first
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ones we ever went to, 197778 somewhere in there, maybe as
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late as 79, I don't remember. I think I could go look it up,
4:34
but I don't care that much. Navy came to play Air Force at
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Colorado Springs and he got me tickets to that for my birthday.
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We went and just had a grand time.
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Not only did Navy win the game 38 to nothing or something like
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that, but it was just, it was, it was such an atmosphere, such
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a even down 38 to nothing. The Air Force fans were not
4:59
letting go of things. I mean, they were the the
5:01
intersectional rivalry between the Air Force and the Navy was
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so cool. And a lot of it was just really
5:07
fun and it was interesting. Later on, I would go home from
5:11
leave on leave and we would go to football games.
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We went one year to my dad didn't necessarily like BYU, but
5:21
he really likes Steve Young. And we went and saw BYU play
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against Colorado State. And what made that game cool was
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not only did I go to that game, but while I was there, I ran
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into one of my oldest friends who was in the band at BYUI, was
5:39
in the Navy. And so we got to to reconnect
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there. So it was it was a long
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tradition of these regional rivalries, these school
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loyalties. The bands, of course, are a big
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part of my life traditions and generations of shared history.
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But opening weekend for me is I watch it, it's on the TV, it's
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on the multi view. I'm watching Alabama and East
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Carolina. Yawn.
6:04
Who else am I watching here? Texas State.
6:07
I don't even know who's in the other ones because they're all
6:10
at halftime. So I don't know who's playing,
6:13
but none of these games are really interesting.
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I mean the Colorado, the Colorado Georgia Tech game was
6:18
great. That's been it so far.
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Oklahoma yesterday defeated UTEP 51 to nothing.
6:29
Next we play Michigan, which is great.
6:32
I Michigan's one of the teams that I like because of my
6:35
submarine service, but it's a memorable game.
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It's a rematch game from last year.
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Last year they played for the first time since 1976 and
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Oklahoma won. This time they go up to the Big
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House and we'll see how that goes.
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But then after that they go back to playing New Mexico.
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I just, I just don't understand the scheduling thing.
6:58
I do understand it. I don't like it.
7:01
I don't think you should be playing down the competition
7:05
after the second week. You just shouldn't be.
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That's my that's my, one of my biggest beefs with college
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football is these teams that are playing cupcakes week 34567.
7:15
Now, I also understand that there are some scheduling issues
7:18
and maybe sometimes that's why they haven't.
7:20
But at some point we got to stop calling this a game and just
7:24
admit that it's a, you know, scheduled scrimmage that you're
7:27
paid somebody to show up for. And at least they've done away
7:30
with the BCS. So running up the score now, it
7:32
doesn't really matter. The bigger problems, of course,
7:37
in college sports and college football in general is of course
7:41
the the NIL and this destruction.
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Now for those of you who may not understand it, NIL name, image,
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likeness. This is this idea that college
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athletes should get paid to use by the by the college to use
7:53
their name, image and likeness. So for example, if you've ever
7:57
played EA Sports, you know, college football game or college
8:00
basketball game, go back a few years, all the players were
8:04
made-up names and because they didn't have the rights to use
8:08
those, now the players can sell those and be compensated for it.
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And the theory here is that the players were being basically
8:18
slaves to the universities cause the universities were making
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millions of dollars about perhaps even billions of dollars
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off of these players with the players were not being
8:27
compensated. And I, I have never agreed with
8:31
that. I, I've always thought that
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that's a ridiculous assertation. Why?
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If you're one of these athletes, you're getting a full boat
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scholarship, you're getting, you're getting, you're getting
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tradition tuition, you're getting room and board, you're
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getting tuition, you're getting meals, you're getting all this
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stuff, medical care, all of that stuff and specialized
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facilities. And you're being nationally
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exposed to the media for, for purposes of moving on at a major
9:01
program like Oklahoma. The total value of that, Imagine
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that folks, I went to ASU, Arizona State for 3/4, three
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semesters, 3 semesters online, $15,000 that I'm paying, going
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to be paying for a long time before I finally realized this
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just isn't worth it. If I'd have been a student
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athlete, I get all that for free in most cases.
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That the value of that package is so substantial.
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This idea that somehow these people were just slaves, you
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know, it's ludicrous. Regular students end up paying
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tuition, they pay fees, and you should see the fees at Arizona
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State. Some of these fees are just
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stupid. They also, by the way, regular
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students. We at Arizona State did paid
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athletic fees. We had to pay a fee that fed the
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athletic departments, not the football program, but the other
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ones to subsidize the athletic programs.
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It was a traditional bargain. It was straightforward.
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The athlete represented the university and received an
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education and extensive support in return.
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Now there was a narrow objection, which was that the
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students could not independently profit.
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The athletes could not student independently profit from
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endorsements, autographs or public identities and NIO was
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presented as a way to permit some of these outside
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opportunities. But it be quickly became
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something entirely else, a loosely disguised system of
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recruiting payments and rostered salaries.
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Compensation is now based less on the commercial use of the
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player's name, image and likeness than it is upon his
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ability, his or her ability, to win games.
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College football in particular, and basketball to a lesser
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degree, have become nothing more than professional sports.
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And because you can transfer, they basically have free agency
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now. You can go where the money is
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now. Again, if you're a good enough
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athlete, I get it, but that's not what college is for.
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And the NFL, and, and I'll be critical to the NFL here, the
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NFL wants to protect this system because basically they have
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minor league football that's free to them, doesn't cost them
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anything. And universities are now
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operating professional football programs without professional
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contracts, salary caps or any meaningful roster stability.
11:37
Your school had a good year this year.
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I mean, what if, what if Weber State, my hometown school in
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Ogden, UT, had a great season? Oh, yay.
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And we have some quarterback, we'll just call him.
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I don't know, Caleb Clemson has a fantastic year.
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You think he's going to be there next year?
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Hell no. He's going to get signed for
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millions of dollars to go to New Mexico or somewhere else.
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The old system, it's a myth that it was unpaid labor.
12:02
It was an exchange. You got education, housing,
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training and opportunity in return for representing the
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university. NIL has not merely permitted
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athletes to sell to sell autographs.
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It's transformed recruiting into basically an auction.
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The people paying the freight were often the anonymous
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students sitting in lecture halls, not on the scholarships,
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while the athletes were being cheered by 80,000 people on
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Saturday in the football stadiums, in the back, in the,
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in the basketball programs and all the other, all the other
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programs were being subsidized by that.
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It's, it's a little upsetting to me because the, the framework,
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the face of college sports and college football is going to
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change, is changing. It's it's nowhere near what it
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was. And I think in some ways it
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leads to this cupcake economy, although this has been going on
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for a long time. Oklahoma's win yesterday over
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Utah, University of Texas at El Paso, the miners, MINER.
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It's like it's like Galaxy question, are these the miners?
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No, they're not the miners. They're the miners.
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There was never any question that Oklahoma was going to win
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this game. There was never any question
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that Massachusetts was going to beat Rutgers.
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I mean, you know, that was ridiculous.
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Rutgers were so sure they were going to win that game.
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They planned a major fireworks show.
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Of course, they forgot to actually show up and play the
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game. But the bottom line is that
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Massachusetts looked at that and went, OK, you want us to come
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play you in what is essentially A scrimmage for a couple of
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$1,000,000? Sure, we're in.
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And then they went and beat them.
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UTEP did not do that to Oklahoma, but they got paid.
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So you're paying people, other schools to come and pretend to
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play a game against you. It's a scrimmage next week,
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Oklahoma play Michigan. There's history, there's
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uncertainty and there's consequence and that creates
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genuine anticipation of that game and, and there is.
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I'm excited about it. I was very excited about it last
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year. This year, maybe not so much, I
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don't know. But the last year I was really
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excited about Oklahoma playing Michigan because it hadn't
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happened since 1976 when we beat them in the Orange Bowl for the
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national championship. These mismatches continue
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because major programs want to add home games where they can
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sell tickets. Unless you're USC, University of
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Southern California, not South Carolina.
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They want these home games and coaches want manageable non
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conference victories. The athletic departments want
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the tickets, concessions and broadcast revenues and these
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smaller programs need guaranteed payments.
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The problem is that they continue this on into the
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season. Week four, week five, week 6,
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you'll see some of these major colleges playing these cupcakes
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and that pisses me off. There ought to be a limit.
15:02
OK, you want to schedule all these you want in August or the
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first week in September, fine. But once Labor Day hits, you
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ought to have to play, you know, your actual competition, UTAP,
15:15
New Mexico. These are FBS schools, which
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demonstrates how wide the economic divide has become, even
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within the highest subdivision, meaning that I, I hate the term
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FBSFCS. It's, it's stupid.
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It's Division One, division two, Division One, A1 AA is what they
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used to call it. So you have this these schools
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that aren't up to that level, but they're considered to be in
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the same division. There used to be 117 schools in
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in NCAA Division one and Division One AA.
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And now it's it's ridiculous. Now again, for the smaller
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institutions, I'm not criticizing New Mexico, I'm not
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criticizing UTEP, not criticizing UMass for them.
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Hey, this is a good deal. We're going to go, we know we're
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going to get our ass kicked unless we're Massachusetts.
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We know we're going to get beat, but we're going to have we're
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going to have fun and we're going to get paid.
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So there you go. Scoreboard says it's a
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competition, but the financial arrangement says 1 school
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purchased a home exhibition game and accepted beating them to
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meet their payroll. And that's really what it has
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come down to. Course, the problem goes way
16:25
beyond just football, doesn't it?
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American higher education in general is approaching A
16:30
demographic enrollment Cliff that's created partly by decline
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in births, but there's also other issues as well.
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I, I, I was surprised when I found that this this morning
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when I was doing some research about this idea that the birth
16:47
thing, we, we fell off a birth Cliff in, in 2008.
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I don't know if he knew that or not.
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I didn't. But apparently, because so few
16:53
babies were born in 2008 or after the 2008 recession, people
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have begun to not enroll in college.
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This the other. The bigger problem, of course,
17:05
is rising tuition, deferred building maintenances.
17:10
They're increasing Staffs, administration expenses.
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I professors got to get paid, I suppose.
17:20
Sometimes, though, you wonder why I I took classes at Arizona
17:24
State. I'm not really sure why this
17:27
person was able to teach. Not kidding.
17:31
I signed up for a class on American history, dropped it
17:35
after this conversation. Had a conversation with the IT
17:39
was America, American history basically in the 20th century.
17:43
And I had the professor say to me that the most important thing
17:47
about the Cold War was its impact on LGBTQ plus AI rights.
17:52
And I said, you know what? I don't belong here.
17:56
Goodbye. We distrust these professors.
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We college hasn't become college is no longer an intellectual and
18:07
valuable learning experience. Even if you wanted to say, well,
18:10
I'm not here to actually learn from my job, which is why I was
18:14
there. I was there to major in history,
18:16
which of course is never going to be my never going to make a
18:19
dollar from history. I'm just not.
18:21
It's just something I love. And I wanted to know.
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I wanted to hang something on my wall that says Dave's actually a
18:27
historian. And then I realized after
18:29
$15,000, I realized I don't really need that.
18:33
But but at the same time, there's this mindset that even
18:36
if you're not there to get a job, you are there to get a
18:39
broader education of things. Britannica used to publish a
18:44
thing called The Great Books of the Western World, and the first
18:46
two volumes were just a discussion about ideas, and we
18:51
used to talk about ideas. You can't find that class at
18:54
college anymore. And because of that, public
18:56
distrust of the intellectual and political culture on campus is
19:01
starting to to deal with this. Whether college remains
19:06
financially worthwhile for many students is questionable,
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especially in today's world. How many of them are?
19:13
This is social media 1010. I got my degree in philosophy,
19:17
but I'm, you know, working at Starbucks.
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Steve Martin used to joke about that back in the 70s.
19:24
These kids are going to college and they're choosing degrees
19:26
that are worthless. And whether these universities
19:30
are still providing A genuine education.
19:34
I wouldn't. I wouldn't object if, OK, you
19:37
went to college for the first two years and the only thing you
19:39
studied was these great ideas in this, in these two books.
19:42
That would be fantastic to me. I think that would be brilliant.
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What do I know about anything? Whether they still provide that
19:51
genuine education or political, ideological indoctrination is,
19:55
is questionable. Colleges continue to build
19:58
facilities. They continue to expand their
20:00
Staffs. They continue to do these things
20:04
that are causing expenses to go up and enrollment is going down.
20:09
And those expenses, because they've signed contracts and the
20:12
like, don't just go away. Some of these institutions are
20:17
covering this up with reserves, endowments, property sales or
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maybe use some additional borrowing.
20:23
Several college have closed or merged.
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I saw the other day that the college, I forget who it was
20:30
Milton College, somebody, some NFL quarterback went to Milton
20:34
College doesn't even exist anymore.
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Closed and it raises questions about whether or not FCS level
20:40
football, lower division football, division two, Division
20:43
Three can even survive. These power conference schools
20:48
possess national television contracts, enormous donor
20:51
networks. They have valuable brands.
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It's not going to hurt them. Notre Dame is not going to be in
20:57
problem, in trouble. Oklahoma's not going to be in
20:59
trouble. They're bringing me on, not
21:02
going to be in trouble. But other universities, FCS
21:05
division two, Division Three programs, they operate under
21:08
very different conditions. Weber State, is it going to
21:11
survive in a football program? They rely heavily on student
21:15
athletic fees, institutional subsidies, local donors, tuition
21:19
review and donors, you're going to be willing to send money to
21:23
your local college to, to have a program.
21:27
Now there's a lot of discussion about, you know, billionaires
21:30
being able to just walk up and write a check.
21:31
I think it was was USC or UCLA. One of the one of the LA schools
21:36
has a billion dollar donor who's just going to write checks to
21:39
pay NFLNLNIL fees so that they can just go out and recruit
21:43
A-Team and basically be the Yankees.
21:48
Rising student debts have made college basically unaffordable.
21:54
And I wish I could sit here and tell you that in in three
21:58
semesters at ASUI learned anything I did.
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I actually took one class that I really enjoyed.
22:05
It was a world history class. The professor was really in tune
22:10
with things and she actually had embraced and understood online
22:15
teaching, whereas the others had simply just adapted their their
22:20
stuff to to that she went out of her way to actually create an
22:23
online course. She was fantastic and introduced
22:26
me to ideas that still affect my show everyday.
22:29
She she taught a a section. There was a series there on on
22:36
the ideologies of Chinese Confucianism that it was like
22:43
the conversation I had with her afterwards was, look, I'm in
22:46
politics, but I'm in the political business.
22:48
And this explains why things are happening the way they are now
22:52
in China. And she was like, I'm glad you
22:54
see that I enjoyed that class, which you're going to take it
22:57
again. But the the cost of it, I'm not
23:01
sure it was worth it. Could I have learned that on my
23:04
own? Sure.
23:05
Don't know that I would have, but I could have.
23:09
Football on the other hand, is very vulnerable to these
23:13
problems that that these universities are going to have
23:16
because it's roster size, which is like 80 people, equipment,
23:20
travel, insurance, coaching staff, facility costs.
23:25
I can see schools starting to eliminate football.
23:28
Smaller schools, especially athletic programs, will drop
23:31
down from FCS to FBS or whatever it is, and on down conferences
23:37
may become more regional, certainly not in the power
23:40
schools they're trying to form all that into want.
23:43
And there will be a reduction in sports that don't produce
23:47
revenue. Women's basketball possibility,
23:53
right? They'll be mergers,
23:55
institutional closures, the formal separations between major
24:00
conference football and traditional college athletics.
24:03
Pretty soon it it'll just be the football schools and it won't be
24:06
anything else. Most schools are dependent on
24:11
college football the most. The schools that are most
24:14
dependent on college football are often the least equipped to
24:16
survive what it's becoming. College football is not facing a
24:21
single NIL program problem. It's caught between two opposing
24:25
economic realities. At the top sport is accumulating
24:29
professional level money and power.
24:32
Below that, they're becoming financially unstable and the
24:36
traditional NCAA model cannot support both.
24:41
It's just a simple fact, folks. I'll be watching Oklahoma and
24:46
Michigan play next week and and I'll care deeply about the
24:48
results. I really will.
24:49
If if Oklahoma wins, I'll be sending my my Michigan friends
24:53
some some some guff because I always do.
24:58
But somewhere between the cost of a $40 million roster, the
25:03
courtroom eligibility fights that we've seen in recent days,
25:06
the purchased 51 to nothing victory, college football's
25:09
going to have to decide whether the word college still actually
25:14
means anything. I'm not sure it does.
25:19
I'm not sure that the whole experience means anything
25:22
anymore like it used to. I'm pretty sure I don't want to
25:26
be a part of it because why bother?
25:30
But at the same time, I'll enjoy it for the time being.
25:36
But I already got a professional Football League to watch and I'm
25:42
I enjoy that. I don't need to know.
25:45
I don't know if I need an NCAA professional football system.
25:49
It's not what I signed up for. Anyway.
25:54
We'll see what happens next week when Oklahoma plays Michigan
25:57
meantime, and enjoy the rest of the games.
25:59
I'm sure they'll be fun.