Commentary: College football landcape destroying 'Powerless Five'


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SALT LAKE CITY — For your information, college football is kind of a big deal around the country.

Don’t know if you’ve heard, but schools and conferences have the potential to make lots of money from their football programs, and have done so for decades. The schools use the money in a variety of ways: scholarships, facility construction, higher salaries for coaches and improved amenities for athletes. Also, a successful college program can give the university huge amounts of media exposure, helping general student recruitment.

In case you missed it, student-athletes at big-time schools aren’t happy about all of the money their universities are making and, in fact, are really upset about it. So much so, in the past year there have been lawsuits, veiled threats and attempts at unionization to advocate for the players’ interests. Athletes and media members have said how the NCAA doesn’t understand the plights of student-athletes and how the schools can’t provide enough under the rules, despite having plentiful resources.

#FBS

So, the Power Five conferences (SEC, PAC-12, Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC) are looking to change how football players are treated and want to be set apart so they can have increased autonomy in player-related issues. Some things that have been brought up include providing for the full cost of attendance, where universities increase the scholarship to provide for the traditional costs (tuition, fees, housing, etc.) but also to include the hidden costs (plane tickets home) and relaxing recruiting rules to allow for parents to join recruits on campus visits.

The Power Five have the money to do that. But what do the remaining conferences in the Football Bowl Subdivision do? How do the Powerless Five (Mountain West, American Athletic Conference, Conference USA, Sun Belt and Mid-American Conference) survive in this new era?

Quite frankly, times are already tough enough for the Powerless Five. None of those conferences have a guaranteed berth in the access bowl games (Rose, Sugar, Orange, Cotton, Fiesta and Peach), with only the highest-ranked member getting a spot in one of the bowls. Additionally, their odds of playing in the College Football Playoff are limited, as they will have to be ranked in the top four to get a spot. So, the Powerless Five are already at the discretion of the rankings, and probably have less opportunity than ever before.

With the system rapidly changing to exclude the little guy, it’s worth raising the point of how much worth there is in continuing to play for a member of the Powerless Five. I mean, the chances of a team breaking the system is getting smaller by the year, and the lower-tier conferences could be forced to continue with the status-quo while their big brothers could be able to play by different rules. At what point is being able to play in bowl games just simply not worth it?

In a way, it seems that if you’re not a member of the Power Five or Notre Dame, the motivation to continue playing in lower-level conferences won’t come from playing in high-tier bowl games; it’ll have to come from television money. Now, there are motivations for the upper tier of the Powerless Five, as several successful seasons and expanding exposure could always make a program attractive to any conferences that want to expand. But you have to be a name with a reputation in that upper tier of the Powerless Five (Boise State, BYU, Louisville) to even have a chance to break into the next level.

Some might ask why BYU is a member of the Powerless Five. The Cougars are honorary members, since they aren’t a part of a conference, but their current status firmly puts them into that category. On the outside, the fan base paints a rosy picture of the exposure an exclusive ESPN contract gives the school, and the money from it is appealing. However, the Cougars are farther away from competing for a spot in the national title conversation than ever before. They don’t even have the protection of a conference affiliation, which means their odds of making the playoff system are even lower. Independence may look rosy on the outside, but BYU coach Bronco Mendenhall’s shameless musings about Big-12 conference membership means he realizes the situation for his program is far from ideal.

Basically, the new system has created four classes in Division I football: the Haves, the Have Nots who could become Haves, the Have Nots who will never become Haves and FCS teams. Again, teams like Boise and BYU at least have the shot at mobility if the landscape changes, but there are programs that will never, ever have the shot at advancing.

But for some teams, there should a strong motivation to look at dropping down to FCS competition. For teams like Idaho and New Mexico State, who are bottom dwellers that have no hope of ever moving up into the Haves, being able to compete as a member of the Big Sky Conference with a chance at competing for a national championship would build interest for the program. Right now, they travel vast distances to play at obscure schools, with no rivalries or connections to the institutions.

As Michael Douglas’ character, Gordon Gekko, said in the movie “Wall Street,” “It’s all about bucks, kid.” Continuing to play in the FBS when you’re a Have Not that will never become a Have is a waste of time for the coaches, students and fans. Simply put, it’s about having chances at a big pot of money and being willing to put up with years of mediocrity to have one shot at it. And that style of thinking is making life tougher for a select group of programs who already have it tough and taking chances at success away from players.

Indeed, money talks, but also causes people to ask questions about themselves and their intentions. This fall, several programs will have some tough questions to ask themselves, and the first questions should revolve around why the football program exists in the first place — to win or to take money. Unfortunately, the two are not always dependent on the other.

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Jon Oglesby

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