I totally agree. The market, as dictated by ESPN/Di$ney and national football media, basically says only the P5 teams are worth watching nationally, consistently, and are the only $ makers (a few weeks of March Madness and College World Series aside). So let those "schools" pay their players. Let them finally just be the pro feeder system/minor leagues/whatever you want to call them that they've become. Just drop the college/amateur label for them already and thus separate them from the rest of the schools. [/QUOTE]I think it's a bit weird to use scare quotes around "schools" to describe a group of universities that includes schools like Boston College, Duke, UVA, Notre Dame, Northwestern, Michigan, Berkeley, UCLA, Texas, Vanderbilt, etc.
The reality is that G5 schools are generally less well-regarded academically. Very few are their state's flagship university, and only West Point, Annapolis, the Air Force Academy, Rice and and a few others would be considered elite, selective schools.
I get that most of the athletes in revenue generating sports at those schools are there for non-academic reasons, but the reality is that's true at G5 schools, too. Everybody wants to equate amateurism with some sort of purity, but I don't see it. Somehow the idea of talented people getting paid for their talents has become a dirty concept for a whole bunch of people. I don't get it at all. Duke is a "school" because they're very good at running a basketball program, where as Toledo -- which provides a (largely) crappy education and also does a poor job of running their athletic department is, somehow, good? All because they try very hard to but fail to make money on athletics? Weird standard.
John Calipari does an outstanding job of preparing University of Kentucky students for very lucrative careers. But because those careers are in basketball and not finance it's somehow bad?
The rest can stop trying to compete at that level in the arms race, which the market clearly shows they can't sustain anyway. Let everyone else play for the NCAA (or college or amateur) football playoffs and March Madness and CWS. Those will still garner ratings.
I mostly agree, but not on the ratings piece. Nobody cares if David beats up David. The popularity of March Madness requires a Goliath. Separating the two so fully that they no longer compete is a death knell for both groups.
For me, the obvious alternative is to just stop lionizing amateurism as some be all end all. Let athletes earn what a free and open market is willing to pay them. Will it impact competitive balance? Probably. Is there competitive balance right now? Not really. There's just a thin veneer of it.
Would people tune in for the top 8 non-P5 teams in a college football playoff for 2 or 3 weekends? I think so. And at the same time they could still watch O$U get stomped by Clemson or Alabama whoop Notre Dame in the "22U Minor League Football Championships" for example.
Do people tune in to watch the MAC Champion play the Sun Belt Champion in the [Mid-sized regional company] Bowl in [mid-sized regional city] each year? No, not really. I can see the argument that the allure of a true, single-elimination tournament might increase ratings, but I don't think the increase would be so substantial that it actually becomes popular.
[QUOTE=GraffZ06]
Either operate under a free market like the rest of the world and structure it like above, or force everyone to operate on an actual level playing field. These half measures where it's sorta/kinda/half is going to kill it all.