For those that don't feel like giving Morris the clicks:
IT DID NOT take long for members of the Power Five conferences to flex their muscles even further and begin showing the college football world that excess is never enough.
A couple of cases hit close to home.
Clemson announced plans this past week to construct a $62 million football “operations center” adjacent to its state-of-the-art, $10 million indoor practice facility that opened two years ago.
Do not feel left out, South Carolina fans. Instead of eating the final year of defensive secondary coach Grady Brown’s $320,000 contract for 2015-16, USC moved him into an administrative position, presumably at the same salary. Then it took on $750,000 in additional coaching salary by bringing in Jon Hoke from the Chicago Bears to be co-defensive coordinator alongside Lorenzo Ward and his $750,000 salary.
Despite what your parents say, money does grow on trees, at least the ones that are planted in football programs within the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC. The ink has barely dried on the contract the NCAA signed with its Power Five conference members, a deal that allows them to push football into the stratosphere, no matter the cost.
If you think UAB will be the last program to drop FBS football, you have your head in the sand. It will not be long before the likes of Tulsa, Florida Atlantic, Eastern Michigan, Wyoming and Georgia State figure out they are pitted against a stacked deck and throw up their collective hands. Heck, even some of the bottom-feeding Power Five conference programs such as Wake Forest, Kansas, Indiana, Colorado and Vanderbilt might give up the fight.
First, there will be trimming of non-revenue sports so football can remain king of all college athletics. When baseball, swimming, tennis, golf, track, wrestling and tennis programs are dropped at schools around the country, the blaming finger invariably will be pointed at Title IX. Do not be fooled. If football did not spend so excessively, all programs could operate just fine.
How excessive is the spending? The first legislation passed by the Power Five conferences came at the NCAA convention in January. Only Boston College among the power-brokers voted against raising the “cost of attendance” for every full scholarship athlete, male and female.
Now the big boys can say they are paying athletes. The five power leagues will be doling out anywhere from $2,000 to $4,000 in spending money to scholarship athletes each year. The extra cost to individual athletic programs could range from $2 million to $4 million.
Rest assured, the Power Five programs will next attempt to skirt this pesky NCAA rule that limits “full-time” assistant football coaches to nine. I can see 20 coaches, maybe more, for each program down the road.
Of course, the wealthiest have jumped into the game of excess in football, and it starts with Oregon and Alabama. Two years ago, Oregon opened a “football performance center” at a cost of $68 million. This one included a hot tub in the head coach’s office, couches made in Italy, a barbershop with utensils from Milan, a duck pond, and biometric thumbprints necessary to enter the building, according to The New York Times.
That is the new standard. Everyone else must catch up, including Clemson, which in 2009 opened the spectacular West End Zone for football operations. Dabo Swinney’s office is luxurious. So, too, are player locker rooms and lounges. Meeting spaces are top of the line, even six years later.
Nevertheless, if Clemson wants to join Alabama and Oregon among the elite in college football, it must keep expanding, keep building new facilities. The newest operation center, to be completed by the 2017 season, means football players no longer will have the annoyance of taking a tram ride from the stadium locker room to the practice fields. Instead, they can ride the rides in the new facility’s theme-park style recreation area for players.
USC did not necessarily need either new practice fields or an indoor facility, since the old one on campus was adequate enough to be used three or four times each fall. But, in college football, when your neighbor has state-of-the-art practice facilities, you need them as well.
No give up here!
