Analyzing “Death To The BCS” : Chapter Five

A day after No. 2 Alabama beat No. 1 LSU in the “national championship” game and even more debate regarding the BCS and if it worked.

If you reside in Tuscaloosa and greet neighbors with a, “Roll Tide”, it’s a good day to be a college football fan – but what about LSU?

You beat Alabama in a regular season head-to-head match up, you knock off a handful of quality ranked opponents and win the SEC – the toughest conference in the game – while the Tide missed the title game and earned a day off, yet today, they’re the champs and you’re 13-1 season is ruined.

Then there’s Oklahoma State, Stanford and a handful of others left to wonder “what if?”

No playoff is on the horizon, but the system is still broken and “Death To The BCS” remains a must-read for any college football fan out there. This book is touted as ‘the definitive case against the Bowl Championship Series’ and four chapters in, is proving it’s case.

“Death To The BCS” is a an eighteen-chapter read. Last entry we focused on Chapter Four : Lies, Damn Lies, and Bowl Payouts. Next up; Chapter Five : High-Paid Blazers. Seems pretty fitting today, with all the big name bowl games getting underway.

– The current system is set up to not only pay The Cartel, but the bowl executives, who haul in outrageous salaries. Some schools stage at many as eight home games a year, yet certainly don’t pay their operations directors half a million dollars.

– Rick Baker, executive director of the Cotton Bowl, pocked $490,433 as compensation in 2007, not counting fringe benefits, transportation, travel, expense account, etc. That same year, Sugar Bowl CEO Paul Hoolahan took home $607,500 … John Junker of the Fiesta Bowl / Insight Bowl earned $457,356 … Alamo Bowl CEO Derrick Fox took in $438,044 … and the Chick-Fil-A Bowl sent $931,608 for “primary salaries” to the local chamber of commerce in Atlanta, which oversees the game.

– “Why does the executive director of the Cotton Bowl get almost half a million dollars a year to stage one-week series of events that culminate in an exhibition football game?”, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) said. “I would’ve thought they had volunteers who do most of that, and they paid the executive director $60,000 or $75,000 to answer the mail and attend chamber events.”

– Bowl expand rapidly for a reason; it’s a cush gig. There are currently thirty-five bowl games and with money always at the forefront, someone new will always want to join the gravy train.

– How difficult is it to run a bowl? Look at the 2008 Chick-Fil-A Bowl that matched a local school (Georgia Tech) with the defending national champion (Louisiana State). Anyone with minimal game-management experience could sell out the Georgia Dome for that New Year’s Eve showdown. Cushy date (December 31st), broadcast partner (ESPN) and two nearby teams that will sell reams of tickets.

– All the nonsense from The Cartel about the regular season meaning everything and needing to be guarded – the lowest-hanging fruit proved sweetest to the Chick-Fil-A Bowl folk. Bowl directors could care less about actual results. It’s about proximity and passion.

– Bowl directors and suits pocket hundreds of thousands of dollars while turning college football’s post-season into a revenue-grabbing free-for-all. That said, you can only fault them so much as they’re getting what they can from a bureaucracy that invites them to pilfer – and they’ve found a willing partner as athletic directors, who are supposed to guard their respective school’s money, get a cut of the action, too.

– Reaching a bowl game is easy. During the 2009-2010 bowl season, forty-five of the sixty-five teams from the “big six” reached a post-season bowl game (almost 70 percent) and many of those appearances were money losers, requiring schools to use conference revenue sharing to cover the loss.

“The fact we didn’t go to a bowl game the last two years means we actually made money,” said former Michigan AD Bill Martin, when looking for the silver lining in the Wolverines’ recent struggles.

– No where else in the work force could employees trick their bosses into thinking that avoiding the bottom 30 percent of their professional peer group warrants a five-figure pop. Still, Missouri AD Mike Alden receives an extra month’s pay ($23,942.92) if the Tigers reach a bowl and Arizona State AD Lisa Love pockets $13,115.38 for a bowl appearance by the Sun Devils. North Carolina’s Dick Baddour – $24,583.33 … West Virginia’s Ed Pastilong – $30,000. The list goes on.

– Ohio State spent $1.7M in travel an entertainment costs, as well as a wasted $1M on empty seats for the 2009 Fiesta Bowl – going $820,000 over the Big Ten’s expense allowance – yet AD Gene Smith still got his $54,000 bowl bonus.

Smith then went on to raise football and men’s basketball ticket prices to help offset a project revenue shortfall. Meanwhile the Fiesta Bowl rolled on, business as usual with the Buckeyes’ money.

– A huge part of the scam; lower-tier bowls only exist because athletic directors are willing to lose their employees’ money to prop the games up. There is no bowl game without the university’s open checkbook to buy tickets and they won’t sell and support other expenses – yet the ADs have persuaded their employers to handsomely reward them for going to an event that wouldn’t exist without the school.

It’s no wonder ADs rarely turn down a bowl invite, support the status quo and argue to protect the current system.

– To this date, every week during the season, bowl scouts (often cronies of the game’s executive director) scatter across the country, living a fan’s dream life. Oklahoma-Texas one week. USC-Notre Dame the next. All for free – or at least at the expense of the bowl game and university.

“I call them the March of the Entitled”, said a major college assistant athletic director, who for years has spent Friday nights throwing parties for bowl scouts. “They show up and want their ass kissed, steak and scotch. Every single weekend we have to entertain these guys. and they aren’t even scouting, they’re just here for a good time. I’ve been arguing for years we stop, but no one will.”

– The Chick-Fil-A Bowl often scouts as many as nine game a week, often sending two people (for something that could be accomplished with a DirecTV hook-up and a roomful of flat-screens.)

– The Sugar Bowl spent $272,231 on it’s selection committee in 2007, even though the choice was obvious – LSU versus Notre Dame. Two years later a rep from the lowly PapaJohns.Com Bowl was at Bryant-Denny Stadium to witness No. 3 Alabama versus No. 9 LSU, despite the fact there was literally zero chance either team would wind up in that game.

– The Cartel has a golden goose and with a playoff system, their lifestyle will get reined in. Leeching bowl executives will lose the lifestyle they love and the rich will no longer get richer. If they were forced to learn something about financial pragmatism and could no longer suck games dry without consequences, suddenly all those half-million-dollar salaries would be scrutinized.

– Next up; Chapter Six : Presidential Problem.

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