The NCAA News - News and Features

June 22, 1998

Subcommittee challenges Division I preseason football events

BY GARY T. BROWN
STAFF WRITER

Preseason exempted football contests such as the Pigskin Classic, the Kickoff Classic and the BCA Classic would become things of the past if a recommendation from the NCAA Football Certification Subcommittee gains approval within the Division I governance structure.

The subcommittee has forwarded its recommendation -- which suggests that exempted preseason football games be abolished after the 2002-03 academic year -- to the Division I Championships/Competition Cabinet for consideration at its July 7-10 meeting in Seattle.

The recommendation is a product of discussions regarding whether the purpose for the games has changed from when the first contest was established in 1983. Also integral in the discussions was the way teams were selected to participate in the events, including inconsistencies in the application of a rule prohibiting more than one team from a conference to participate in a given year.

Those discussions triggered the subcommittee's consideration of whether the exempted contests were in fact meeting their intended goals. The targeted date of 2002-03 coincides with when the television contract established by the National Association of College Directors of Athletics (NACDA), which sponsors the Pigskin and Kickoff Classics, expires.

Preseason exempted football contests were established initially as ways to generate money to fund groups with ties to college football. The Pigskin and Kickoff Classics, for example, have been central in NACDA's contributions to the American Football Coaches Association and the National Football Foundation.

But according to Ronald E. Guenther, subcommittee chair and director of athletics at the University of Illinois, Champaign, the subcommittee is concerned that the games now seem to be valued more for the income potential for participating schools.

"Any time you get into exempted games you run into the potential for abuse," he said. "We have all kinds of criteria for postseason games, but we don't have the same criteria for preseason games. We've been attempting to mirror some of the postseason criteria, but as we see more preseason games being suggested on the horizon, we're now getting into a philosophical question as to how you get into these games.

"People understand the requirement of six wins and playing your way into bowl games, but there doesn't seem to be the same logic as to how we're going about putting the preseason games together."

Guenther also said the subcommittee sees the exempted contests as a significant competitive advantage for the participating teams.

"When the first game was proposed, it was intended to highlight the game of football and it was successful," he said. "But as more of these games have been established, the subcommittee now believes we should get out of the preseason exempted football contests business primarily because of the competitive advantages of when we actually start the football season."

Fellow subcommittee member Robert W. Robinson, director of athletics at Clemson University, says despite what is perceived to be a competitive advantage, several college football coaches have expressed their concern that the games may actually jeopardize a team's chances for success.

"Many coaches say it (the games) make the season too long, that players have to report too early, that the risk of injury increases and that it affects your season if the game doesn't go well," Robinson said. "At Clemson we've turned them down three times."

In addition to those issues of infringing upon student-athlete welfare, which has been a primary subcommittee concern, Robinson also pointed to the growing number of games as a factor in the subcommittee's decision.

"There's really no limit on how many of these games there are," he said. "We started with one and now we're at four." (The Eddie Robinson Football Classic was added this year.)

"There's a feeling out there that if we don't get a handle on it now, it'll get out of control," Robinson said.

The reciprocal concern from sponsors, however, may be with the subcommittee's choice of eliminating the games as a way of reigning them in.

For Rudy Washington, executive director of the Black Coaches Association (BCA), the recommendation would strike a blow against several important initiatives.

"We would be very disappointed because it (the BCA Classic) helps fund scholarships, community-service programs and has gone a long way toward making the BCA a viable organization," he said.

"Why not establish better criteria?" asked Washington, who recently was selected as Southwestern Athletic Conference commissioner. "There's going to be a lot of discussion before this goes up the ladder. I don't think I can understand where the subcommittee is headed with this, but on the other hand I think there's going to be some very substantive conversation in relation to the exempted contests -- what their intended purpose is and if they're hitting their intended target."

Guenther said the subcommittee has discussed alternative ways for groups such as NACDA and the BCA to continue to meet their fund-raising needs without depending on an exempted contest.

"There haven't been any conclusions reached," he said. "It may be a matter of taking a look at the actual dollars available from the bowl process. We don't want to stand in the way of an organization like NACDA or the BCA, but there are so many causes and I don't know where you draw the line. We currently have four games and there have been a number of other games suggested to be looked at. The subcommittee believes that it's just not in the best interests of college football to continue to look at preseason games."

Scheduling concerns

Even the current handful of exempted events have struggled to schedule what they believe are marketable matchups. Most restrictive, sponsors claim, is the NCAA bylaw that limits conferences to one participant in a given year. With the Southeastern Conference opting not to participate in these games, the number of teams that could produce the kind of revenue necessary to make the games viable is further reduced.

In addition, the minimum criteria require the games to provide each team with $600,000 or split 60 percent of the gross receipts evenly between the two participating schools. The sponsor also has to give 25 percent of the gross receipts to a charitable organization. And, if one of the participating teams hosts the event, that school also gets an additional 10 percent. In such cases, 70 percent of the gross receipts would go to the two schools, which according to Washington, is a price only a few venues can generate.

"In order to meet that criteria, you have to get at least 50,000 fans to attend," Washington said. "The BCA researched the field and only 36 teams met that criteria of averaging 50,000 fans, and most of those schools come from the SEC, Big Ten and Pac-10."

The race to sign marquee teams was so intense last year, in fact, that the one-team-per-conference rule was disregarded and three teams from the Big Ten were allowed to participate. That prompted a request for an interpretation of the bylaw for this year, and the Division I Board of Directors subsequently waived the bylaw for the 1998 season.

The Football Certification Subcommittee has recommended that the bylaw be reinstated for 1999. If approved, the Division I Championships/Competition Cabinet will work to establish a selection process for the four exempted contests to follow in order to fill the eight slots.

That process may only be in place for the next three years, however, if the larger issue of discontinuing the games altogether gains momentum.