Big Time College Football: An Addendum

I am a happy blogger; I wrote 16 articles about big time college football starting in September and am ending my series with this addendum just after the season ended. The articles I wrote range in length from 230 words to the longest at over 1000 words with a grand total of somewhere around 8700 words; not bad.

After all of these letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs, what have I learned about big time college football? Well, I did not really answer any of the original questions from my original article but my inquiries (I won’t call it research) took me a different direction.

I learned that big time college sports, BCS Football and important I-A basketball teams make a lot of money. Besides BCS teams, most football programs throughout the country do not make much money and mainly break even (some are in the red) but the biggest and highest profile programs make millions.

I learned that big time college football is extremely important at certain schools while at others it is not. Large state research institutions usually have big time college football while private, ‘elite’ institutions vary.

I also learned that there are many articles calling for college football to change and many are calling for it to pro; including me. But I also learned that there are numerous voices, many within the status quo that do not want any type of change and justify the current system in a variety of different ways.

So what next? My next research project is going to be on higher education budgets and I am excited to see where that will lead me; but what about big time college football? Just the same old stuff and unfortunately, from what I have found, nothing will change. Florida State will try to defend their championship, the same teams will be continue to be in the top ten, another Heisman winner will have to wait a year to go pro, and the new playoff system, which is a long time coming, will solve all the controversies still outstanding in college football.