I am old enough to remember a time when one read the sports page, one found stories about sports. In today’s world, that seems to be an antiquated thing.
Take a look at the sports headline from the July 11th edition of the Houston Chronicle:
Conference to look at all revenue sources
That’s right, the Big 12 Media Day was not focused on the student athletes (more on that later), but rather the all-mighty dollar. The conference is reportedly interested in selling naming rights to the league and possible private equity investment opportunities.
“As we build our brand, we will continue to build our business,” Yormark was quoted as saying in the story. “We will not stumble into this new era following settlement. In fact, we will be aggressive and very proactive.”
Looming on the NCAA future is an antitrust settlement that will reportable payout more than $2.7 billion in back damages and a revenue-sharing model that will pay players for the first time. It was never fair in the first place that the NCAA and its universities collected millions upon millions of dollars with the student athletes not able to collect a dime from their likeness and image while forced to wait before being allowed to transfer watching their head coaches play musical chairs landing jobs on a moment’s notice.”
So I understand why all of this is important, but still; it took 11 paragraphs before we actually got to any actual sports analysis (Utah has been picked as the preseason favorite in football by the way). Now to be fair to the Houston Chronicle, they did other stories from the Big 12 Media Day, but it was this story that had the BIG headline.
Maybe moving forward we can portal transfer these stories to the business section and leave the actual games on the sports page (now you kids get off my yard).