ThE CollEgE SpoRTS

Say you are about to finish your junior year in high school, 17 years old, living in the Bay Area.

You’re a star in softball, a bigger star in the classroom, and because of both facts Stanford is interested in you.

You’re excited. Not only do you have a chance to go to a school of impeccable academic credentials, you could find yourself part of an athletic program with 134 national championships to its credit, names like Janet Evans and Tiger Woods, just to name a couple of famous alums.

So you make a verbal commitment to the Cardinal in the spring of 2023. You know that, in two years, you’ll be on the diamond facing the best in the Pac-12, which bills itself as “The Conference of Champions”.

Or at least it did.

By now you’ve likely heard that, in addition to snatching USC and UCLA, the Big Ten gobbled up Oregon and Washington, too, igniting a scramble where Arizona, Arizona State and Utah joined Colorado in bolting to the Big 12.

And a league with more than a cen tury of history and far too many great

History

Watts’ store and were captured without damage to themselves or any one. Of course it was expected that out of to large a load some must have suffered serious injury, if not death, but when the party was picked out of the wreck, it was found that beyond the fracture of a collarbone of one of the ladies, and several cuts about the head and face by several others, the injury sustained was slight. The wagon was badly smashed. The escape of all from a frightful death was wonderful.

125 Years Ago – Aug. 18, 1898

It evidently is not generally known that it is against the law to carry children on the front of a bicycle. It is a state law and the penalty runs from $1 to $500 with imprisonment. – F.E. Wilson and Atwell & Son have put in fixtures for lighting their stores with gasoline gas, furnished from the generator at Aikman & Norton’s. Wells Bros. are also about to put in this kind of light. – The two oldest men now living in the town of Cazenovia are men that never drank liquor, chewed tobacco or smoked cigars, one of them is ninetyfour years old and the other is ninety-six years old. Both of them are hale and hearty.

100 Years Ago – Aug. 16, 1923

W. L. Stevens of Cazenovia estimated 200 eggs as the difference in production between two coops of hens exhibited by

Random Thoughts

Phil Blackwell

teams and athletes to count is, in a flash, gone.

You know why it happened. The same college presidents and conference commissioners crying about the implications of athletes getting a tiny piece of the gross profits they generate experience serious FOMO and chase tens of millions more that ESPN, NBC, Fox or other media giants is willing to hand out for football Saturdays in the fall.

Just because it makes cents doesn’t mean it, you know, makes sense.

Heck, it’s doubtful that any of these power brokers looked anywhere beyond their own resumes and bottom lines in making these momentous decisions.

The welfare of athletes? The ability of fans, especially parents, other family members and friends, to travel and see games?

Again and again, those considerations were cast aside, if they were even raised. Sorry, hate to inconvenience you, but those flashy NBC promos about Big Ten games on Saturday nights are so cool, we’ve got to get a piece of it!

This is how college sports, already the Farm Bureaus at the Four-County fair in DeRuyter last week. Mr. Stevens thereby wins his choice of a certified cockerel or some certified chicks to be delivered next spring, for the actual difference between the two coops was 199 eggs. Ronald Porter of Cortland, R. D. 1 came in second with 196 eggs, and Ray Porter of Cuyler was next in line with an estimation of 207 eggs. Considerable interest was shown in this contest by those attending the fair, for a number of different people estimated on the egg-laying capacity of the four hens on exhibit. The greatest source of error came from over-estimating the two poor hens. One of these had laid but 28 eggs during the past year and the other but 57. Whereas the two good hens laid 150 and 134 respectively. Up to this spring the two poor hens had laid but one egg between them.

75 Years Ago – Aug. 19.1948

The summer meeting of the Madison County Medical Society will be held today at The Oaks, home of Dr. and Mrs. Wilton R. Joy on the shore of Cazenovia Lake. A social time will be enjoyed from 4:30 to 7 at the Joy home. Dinner will be served at the Lincklaen House and the gathering will return to The Oaks for the program. “Champlain’s Invasion of New York State and the Battle of Nichol’s Pond” will be the theme of Dr. T. Wood Clarke of Utica. Dr. Lee S. Preston will speak on “The Founding and Early Days of the Madison County Medical Society.”

CNY Retirement Showcase set for Sept. 14

This year’s CNY Retirement Showcase on Thursday, Sept. 14 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the CNY Regional Market, 2100 Park St., Syracuse. Brought to you by Community Living Advocates and Kinney Drugs.

This event is free and open to anyone planning to retire or wanting to enhance their retirement. Various representatives from all over CNY will be available to help you discover new destinations, more things to do, places to live, volunteer opportunities, travel, and entertainment to see. There will be a food truck and Power of Two will be providing live acoustic music. an environment rife with hypocrisy and inequality, can drive away even its most staunch fans, who weren’t clamoring for any of these seismic changes.

Giveaways and door prizes! For more information visit communitylivingadvocates.com/cnyretirementshowcase2023.

Whether it was football or any other sport, the college model was built on local and regional identity. Not just rooting for the alma mater, but also hating your rivals and wanting to beat them so much that it sometimes topped winning any league or national titles.

But ever since the Supreme Court, in 1984, allowed conference to negotiate their own TV contracts away from the NCAA’s control, we’ve experienced one realignment after another, every single one of them (including Syracuse going to the ACC) singularly driven by fat bottom lines even as some athletic departments continued to lose money.

If it continues, football might be better served by breaking off into its own “Super League” with all the brand names, which would be tolerable if the rest of the sports returned to a more sane, regional model that never was broken in the first place.

Of course, the big soccer clubs in Europe tried this a couple of years ago and the resulting outcry led to a quick cnyspcA pet of the week nEwTon demise. Imagine if that happened here.

Maybe it needs to. If millions of fans, turned off by all the greed and double-dealing, banded together and stayed away from stadiums come 2024 (when most of these changes take place), and executives saw the vast sea of empty seats in Tuscaloosa or Norman or Columbus, maybe they’d reconsider.

Too many great rivalries, coast to coast, have already disappeared, sacrificed at the altar of football and the “security” some talk about which really is keeping all the gold for themselves and not sharing anything with anyone else.

Now it’s entire leagues getting blown up, and with it goes the hopes and dreams of so many. A young man or woma gifted enough to play college sports should have their decision based on what they love and what is in their hearts, and never, ever have to worry about cross-country airfare or jet lag.

Phil Blackwell is sports editor at Eagle News. He can be reached at pblackwell@ eaglenewsonline.com.