No Sweat
Students at Big Eight schools react to the conference's last year
Bigger conference should mean bigger bucks
W WHEN TRADITION CLASHES WITH FINANCIAL profit, the latest is more likely to win. This is what happened in the case of the Big Eight Conference.
This year will be the last one for the Big Eight, the athletic conference that has eight Midwestern universities playing each other in seven different sports.
Starting Fall 1996 for football and as soon as Spring 1996 for softball, the Big Eight will officially become the Big 12. Baylor University, University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M University, and Texas Tech University will join the current Big Eight schools, which include University of Colorado, Iowa State University, University of Kansas, Kansas State University, University of Missouri, University of Nebraska, University of Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State University.
The expanded league will split into a north-south configuration. The southern division will include the four new teams from the Southwest Conference, and Oklahoma and Oklahoma State. Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri, and Iowa State will make up the northern division.
Financial necessities are behind the
reorganization. Today, universities find themselves in tough financial situation because the cost of college athletics keeps rising.In addition,the gender-equity situation of having women's sports forced a lot of schools to redistribute money among men's and women's sports.
Since the price of tickets can be raised only to a certain amount, television is the universities' window of revenue opportunity. It is today the biggest source of hard-needed cash for university sports.
But in 1996, the $300 million deal that ABC/ESPN with the 63-member College Football Association will expire.
As a result, the extended conference decided to sign a $100 million TV contract with ABC and Liberty Sport.
The Big 12 athletic directors already have agreed to a revenue-sharing plan, which would include a championship football game between the North and South division winners starting in 1996.
"It seems to be catering more and more toward money-making," said Bruce Reid, a graduate student from Kingman in sociology at K-State.
Reactions to the change among some students at the Big Eight schools were rather cynical.
This football championship game could earn the league about $6.7 million a year, with each school getting more than $550,000. The presidents of the universities will consider this profit a part of the revenue-sharing plan.
However, according to some football fans, the outcome of the championship will be the same, whether it includes eight or 12 teams.
"Even with twelve schools, Iowa State will still lose a lot of games," said Josh Timmers, a Madison, Wisconsin graduate student at the University of Iowa. "You will still have Nebraska winning all the games."
Nevertheless, some students regret the thought of seeing the Big Eight for the last time.
"The Big Eight has always been part of the Midwest life, and now that it will be changed, you kind of lose that feeling of quaintness that has portrayed the Midwest tradition," said Michael Garner, Iola, junior.
Other people expressed their concern that universities were becoming more money-oriented and less concerned with academics.
"The football coaches will still put a lot of pressure on TAs to pass their students," said Bob Hearts, teaching assistant in rhetoric at the University of Iowa, who was visiting KU for a union conference.
But for other students, the people who are the most concerned by the change should have the last word.
"If Mason and Williams say it's OK, then it's good," said Jennifer Switzer, Wichita graduate student.
—BY HENRI BLANC
8
Homecoming
Hill • October 11, 1995