NCAA Football: Will There Be a Revolution?

John Lennon wrote a song for the band The Beatles titled "Revolution." It was his response to the Vietnam War. One wonders if college sports and athletics is on the verge of a revolution. Revolution is defined as: a sudden, complete or marked change in something.

With increasing dissonance between athletic programs and the petty, ivory tower thinking of the NCAA, and with the advent of super conferences on the near horizon, the NCAA’s days appear numbered.

Bill Livingston of the Cleveland Plain Dealer writes, “Compared to whatever bad stuff might happen to Social Security and the environment, the breakup of the NCAA isn't that momentous a deal. But it will happen, and probably in our lifetime.”

Livingston goes on to write, “The big-boy football schools will secede and form their own monopoly for sports because football is the big money-maker. They will hold their own football playoffs. Secession will be the only way to overcome the bowl lobby, so it will happen. Wheelbarrows will carry off the profits from the playoffs.”

Livingston’s article states that a 16-team playoff could generate as much as $700 million, while last year's BCS contract only generated $180 million. With the US economy on the verge of a double-dip recession and state governments making budget cuts in education, universities will look for new revenue avenues.

With the Arab Spring changing the face of the world, countries like Tunisia, Egypt and Libya installing new governments and the death of Moammar Gaddafi, who held power for 42 years in Libya, revolutions are happening all around us. When one revolution occurs, other groups that have revolutionary sentiments become emboldened.

Empowerment, belief and hope are the seed beds to change.

Why do revolutions happen? From KnowsWhy.com: “Revolutions happen because the people feel the need that the authorities’ attention must be called. Another reason why revolutions happen is because the people are evidently in dire suffering.

"With basic rights being violated along with unmet basic needs, revolutions tend to build up and continuously press on as authorities and government officials remain to be deaf and blind. Another reason why revolutions happen is because people experience severe oppression, exploitation and maltreatment that their essence of being a human has been intensely deprived from them.” 

Sound familiar? With the NCAA making multi-millions and student athletes feeling exploited by strict rules that rival common sense, the seed beds could be sown for a huge change.

The super conferences are coming and when they come, the NCAA and BCS will become obsolete. This change may not be a bad thing.

College Football will become a bigger business than ever and will be run more like Wall Street than the old NCAA regime. Livingston writes: “The competitive landscape in the future will look sort of like the American economy did before Teddy Roosevelt busted the trusts. There will be four 16-team megaconferences. With additions, they will be the old ACC, SEC, Big Ten and Pac-12.

"It will be almost impossible for a player to be ineligible, but, just in case, the Southeastern Conference, led by Auburn, will insist on each school's right to decide eligibility for players.

"The Big Ten's first move toward 16 teams will be to add Missouri and Notre Dame. West Virginia might make it too on geographic convenience. Texas can pick and choose its affiliation, but it will be wooed.

"That proposed Mountain West-Big East conglomeration will lose whatever appeal it once possessed when Boise State joins the Pac-12 and TCU becomes bedfellows with Texas A&M in the SEC.”

If the NCAA wants to survive the coming super conferences, it will have to begin to reflect more common sense in its decisions and not come across as an organization that is arrogant and out of touch.

Change is coming and inevitable.

The issue is not whether things will change but how we will change with to remain relevant. The NCAA had better brace itself.