The College Football Assoication Still Rules The Game!

Winning and becoming a champion is an educational experience where groups of people adopt a common goal, make a commitment with each other (including their coaches), have intense and dedicated training sessions, and ultimately find ways to be successful during game day competitions. The journey is not a smooth transition. It is a bumpy ride full of turbulence with significant peaks and valleys.

This is the winning spirit of becoming a champion: becoming the very best that we are capable of becoming, while persevering along the way. It is this journey and experience that makes failure and the potential for loss tolerable. Knowing that by being responsible and accountable to others, our best efforts, combined with those of our teammates, grow into something far greater and more satisfying than anything we could have achieved on our own.

All of these joys, pains, and experiences are present in all levels of athletic competition, except within the ranks of NCAA Division 1-A college football. From the ranks of Pop-Warner, Little-League, Babe Ruth, middle School, high-school, Divisions I-AA, II, III and NAIA, as well as all other professional athletic entities, athletes and coaches can work together and put their hard work into creating the thrill, excitement, and possibility of achieving greatness.

In achieving the absolute success of a championship. However, given the history of college football and the methods of determining a champion in Division I-A (both past and present), this simply is not possible or achievable for the majority of participants who are involved in coaching and playing the game.

The major benchmark event which triggered this landslide of controversy during the BCS era occurred in 1976. In a bid to obtain more autonomy than the mighty NCAA decision makers were willing to grant, a group of 63 college football programs united together to form the College Football Association.

During a five year effort to negotiate its own television deal independent of the NCAA, the CFA entered into its own television agreement with NBC in 1981. The NCAA (specifically Walter Byers - President of the NCAA - and his legion of generals), was significantly threatened by this action, and purposefully and openly vowed to discipline any CFA members who entered a contractual agreement with this network.

Most CFA members backed out of this agreement in fear of retaliatory measures threatened by the NCAA, even though they won a court injunction preventing the NCAA from disciplining such schools.

While this effort never came to fruition, it did signify a desire among many universities across the country to reap a greater portion of the revenue created from this sport to combat the rising costs of operating a Division I-A championship football program.

Initially seen as a greedy group of power seekers, the CFA evolved as anything but. As the game evolved through the 1960’s, the revenue generated through television rights fee’s continued to grow. Although many people today complain about the results of the BCS dividing Division I-A schools into a class of have’s and have nots, this really began to take shape between the 1950’s and 1960’s. For the better part of two decades, during the NCAA’s meager beginnings, the elite power schools looked to the have nots, who represented the largest majority of the NCAA constituents, as nothing more than minor irritants.

In the late 1960’s this stratosphere began to change dramatically and alter the climate within the sport. On the field- the margins between the elite and the rest began to shrink. Off the field, the mistrust among administrators began to widen the cooperative efforts to improve the sport.

The Big-10 Conference was the first to enact scholarship limitations in the early 1960’s, even though this put the conference at a distinct disadvantage. The Big-10, consisting of Michigan, Ohio State and the rest, was really the Big-two at the time, but the rule reducing the signing of no more than 30 scholarships per year began to level the playing field. These particular schools dominated the conference for many years as they were the television darlings of the conference. By the early 1970’s, the Big-8, SEC and SWC (South West Conference) adopted similar limitations of no more than 45 scholarships per year.

With each passing year, the scholarship reductions began to dwindle and shrink. By 1973, “IT” started to hit the fan. Already irritated by the scholarship limitations that the majority of the smaller non power schools like Hofstra, Long Beach State, Middle-Tennessee and Eastern Oregon (for example) were demanding in an effort to 1) level the playing field, and 2) to equalize the sharing of revenue, the nation entered a national recession. This had drastic affects on higher education as there were widespread reports of financial crisis running rampant across the country.

Forced into a cost-cutting mode, the NCAA (consisting of the majority of smaller non-power schools similar to those listed above) began forcing the elite power schools to accept a national policy limiting scholarships, coaches and recruiting visits, and most importantly and equally damaging to college football, the smaller non-power schools began pushing a revenue sharing proposal that would dip into the coffers of many elite super powers . The hard feelings between the have’s and have nots started to cement themselves and have developed into a cold war mentality ever since.

According to Walter Byers, as referenced in his book, “Unsportsmanlike Conduct,” several diverse fronts and interests came together to form the CFA. Notre Dame was the critical, behind-the-scenes power player, but there were numerous money hungry schools who marched in support of this movement. As we recall, Notre Dame was silent back in 1952 when the University of Pennsylvania threatened antitrust litigation in retaliation to the original NCAA television resolution. Waiting for the radical idea to grow into a movement, the Irish athletic administration was steaming with resentment due to a minor infractions case in 1953 and on another occasion in 1971.

Although the infractions were minor, the wounds of resentment were reopened yet again when in 1979, the NCAA slapped Michigan State with a television ban, eliminating the Irish from national TV exposure in their yearly game between the two schools. The NCAA further infuriated the Irish by banning even a local sold out release in the South Bend area as well.

Tired of waiting, the Irish seized the moment by recognizing the political clout the 63 schools flying the CFA flag would bring to the table in finally ending the landslide of NCAA restraints that were beginning to mount across the countryside. Chuck Neinas, who was the Big-Eight Commissioner at the time and still resentful for losing his bid for the job of Big-Ten Commissioner, and Georgia football Coach Vince Dooley convinced Fred Davidson, President of the University of Georgia, that NCAA TV controls were keeping millions of network dollars out of the reach of big-time college football teams. Davidson soon became the CFA’s first chairman.

For years, before the NCAA was divided into three divisions, the NCAA was simply a majority of minorities who wielded strong arm and coercive tactics to achieve their objectives. The elite schools paid no attention as they enjoyed significant competitive advantages due to stock piling, bowl pay outs and an increased number of coaches available to develop players, not to mention the advantages within the poll system.

As the cost cutting mode began to develop along with the scholarship limitations, many elite schools began to feel the squeeze and suddenly felt threatened by the NCAA’s socialistic revenue sharing proposals being backed by Walter Byers legion of smaller non-power schools.

A single ant or honey-bee cannot hurt you, but if 200 hundred of them are on the attack in African Honey Bee type fashion, it can send you scurrying for cover in a hurry. The smaller schools were on the attack while the elite power schools were running for cover.

I’m sure others felt the same way because as the 1970’s came to an end cable television was racing towards critical mass, the demand from the public caused many universities to stand up and take notice. The major television networks (ABC, NBC and CBS) had dominated the college football scene since the initial television resolution in 1952, but their golden empire was under attack from the burgeoning cable platform and this mushroomed the cold war mentality between the have’s and have-nots as a civil war was brewing over the money at stake in college football.

The rich schools within the major conferences (now known as the BCS Conferences) increasingly rebelled over the sharing of revenue orchestrated by Walter Byers and the NCAA. In the Southwest Conference, the University of Texas, after losing longtime coach Darrell Royal and his loyal Athletic Director Neils Thompson to retirement, developed a campaign with the goals and objectives aimed at keeping more of its radio and television income. Gone was the high regard and brotherly love for other schools within the conference, like TCU and Rice, who had higher academic standards on their agenda.

Much of this was brought on by the incredible amount of cheating which was regularly occurring in this conference. Shortly before his retirement, Darrell Royal and Arkansas football coach Frank Broyals met with NCAA chief Walter Byers at the airport in Dallas to express their dismay for the level of cheating occurring in their own conference. Both coaches would soon retire as a result. This mind set wasn’t limited to the Southwest Conference either.

In the Big-Eight Conference, Oklahoma threatened to join another conference unless the less significant, tradition starved programs (like Kansas, Kansas State and Missouri) conceded to significant changes in the money sharing formula. At the same time, the University of Southern California in the PAC-10 boldly announced it would reexamine its membership within the Conference of Champions unless their was a dramatic shift in the way the dollars were distributed among the conference. During the Presidency of Jack Hubbard and Jim Zumberge, the mighty Trojans found it increasingly difficult to justify an equal sharing of revenue with conference members like Washington State, Oregon State and Oregon. Regional syndicates, competing with the traditional network powers began telling the college sports authorities that the NCAA television plan was barring the individual colleges from truckloads of regional advertising dollars.

As we retrace the history of this movement, this was the fissure in the sea floor causing the great tsunami as a wave of greed enveloped the traditional power schools. As the founding fathers of the CFA - Chuck Neinas of the Big-Eight Conference, Rev. Edmund Joyce of Notre Dame and Fred Davidson of Georgia - pounced upon this movement and went for the jugular as its pent-up resentments against the NCAA and Walter Byers were reaching the boiling point.

Due to the fact that the elite power structure of college football, now tabbed by history as the “College Football Association” (CFA), has now evolved into the Bowl Championship Series revolution, we will not be moving forward as far as a playoff in college football. The recent news of a Final Four beginning as soon as 2011 will be no different for College Football, as the original members of the CFA will be the only schools who manage to climb the maze known as the pre-season and in-season Harris Polls. Aren’t unionized movements a bitch in America? The same original members of the CFA will continue to dominate the national championship events. The only difference is we will have 4 CFA members instead of two!