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WAC, Mountain West Agree to BCS Table Scraps

Posted by srr50 on July 9th, 2009 under Football

Earlier this week Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah railed against the BCS, calling for the Justice Department to investigate the system for what he called a violation of antitrust laws. It was a political grandstand play, just for his home University, and none of the other members of the committee bothered to stick around and ask any questions of those who were there representing the BCS.

Meanwhile the President of Utah, along with the other members of the Moutain West and WAC decided not to challenge the system. The WAC and Mountain West Conferences voted to participate in the system and keep the BCS in place at least through 2014.

The two leagues were the only two among the 11 Division I-A conferences and Notre Dame that had not yet agreed to the lucrative new BCS deal with ESPN.

If the leagues had not signed the agreement by the Thursday afternoon deadline, their teams would not have been allowed to participate in the five BCS bowl games and would not be eligible to receive a cut of the $125 million annually that ESPN will pay to televise bowl games after the 2010 regular season.

The five non-automatic qualifying conferences divide a 9 percent share of BCS money among themselves each year. If a team from one of those conferences reaches a BCS game then the leagues get another 9 percent share. They will also find it harder to complain about a system they are a part of.

The BCS fully understands the first rule of running a cartel.

\
“Keep Your Friends Close, Keep Your Enemies Closer.”

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5 Responses

  1. What leverage can the Mountain West and WAC possibly have?

  2. They don’t.

    Which makes their acting as if they did perplexing.

  3. Mountain West was entertaining football last season, but hardly talented football. I’m sorry… what is the WAC?

  4. Captain Obvious said:

    July 10th, 2009 at 8:28 pm

    Simple. In the current system each conference is guaranteed a minimum of the pie. Even if that requires each take a little less to cut in the WAC and Mountain West they still maintain a healthy slice. If there was a true play-off what becomes of the percentage the Big East, ACC, or Big 10 look to take home?

  5. This is actually a bit bigger of a story than one might at first imagine.

    I’ve long thought that the recent BCS contract negotiations could be the push that starts the dominoes falling towards a new, super conference alignment in D1 football in particular, and D1 athletics in general.

    This band-aid will allow the New Mexico States and Utah States to hang a round a bit longer on life support.

    The financial model of Division 1 football is broken – hell, the financial model for Division 1-AA football is broken, too. How is it possible that sports as popular as D1 college athletics could end up having so many athletic departments running at a deficet? Hell, A&M averages 80,000 fans per game and our AD is running at a deficit.

    For those of you in bidness, you know that you can only run at a deficit for so long before you have to close shop.

    Something is seriously broken in D1 football and it is going to have to be fixed. To hell with the “fairness” and all that crap – I’m talking about $$$$$.

    As with so many economic issues, if the schools do not act to fix what’s broken, the system will rectify itself in a fashion that the schools may not like.

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