It started with a steak dinner bet for Stan Ward. The University of Oklahoma's general counsel was part of a small group of rebels ready to take on the big, bad NCAA and win. That and this report from SportsLine.com's Dennis Dodd
Or end up buying his faculty rep a juicy porterhouse.
The challenge was huge. Take college football television rights away from the NCAA. The implications ending up being bigger -- essentially wresting control of college football away from the NCAA. It was going to be a long, drawn-out struggle, but Ward and cadre of school presidents and athletic directors had had enough. The NCAA had controlled football television appearances since the early 1950s. It was a socialistic setup that guaranteed most members a shot on national television.
But the reality was only a fraction of the members ran big-time programs and, thus, drew viewers. In 1981, the Oklahoma board of regents and Georgia Athletic Association broke ranks and filed an antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA. After three years of furious court dealings, the Supreme Court handed down what has arguably been the most significant decision in college football history.
On June 27, 1984, the Supreme Court ruled that NCAA was in violation of antitrust law. Writing for majority, Justice John Paul Stevens issued the nine biggest words in the sport's history.
"... the NCAA television plan is insensitive to viewer preference."
It was 20 years ago today ... or close to it. College football owes its health and popularity -- at an all-time high, by the way -- to men like Ward. Without it, Gameday would be game day. The decision allowed Notre Dame to sign its own contract with NBC. It has made icons out of failed Indiana coaches and successful coaches into millionaires.
It made widespread distribution possible. The current ACC expansion has direct ties to the decision. Schools have banded together and conferences have reorganized as multimillion-dollar fashion shows to show networks how much they were worth. On the down side, it can be argued the decision brought about unprecedented cheating in the sport. Better players = wins = more TV = more money. Rinse, then repeat.
All from a 7-2 opinion by the high court that allowed schools to control their own television rights. A simple and logical conclusion, really, but the world of college football hasn't stopped rocking since. Twenty years later, you see the results of the epic court battle on any given Saturday.
It's a 12-, to 14-hour cycle that begins with pre-game shows and ends at midnight with the last game from the West Coast. Technology has grown with the sport. Tailgaters lug in generators and cable dishes to game sites just to be plugged in to the sport. That and this report from SportsLine.com's Dennis Dodd
"It's made billions of dollars, it's made careers for sports announcers and broadcasters," Ward said. "You talk about Reaganomics and trickle down. Whether you like Reagan or not that's the classic example of how that's trickled down throughout the entire economy.
"Without college football being televised ESPN would sure have to show a lot more fishing and bowling. "
Mostly, it benefited the common consumer. It allowed the viewer access to up to a dozen games each football Saturday when before NCAA vs. Georgia/Oklahoma there were ... maybe two.
"It popularized college football," said Chuck Neinas, the driving force behind the lawsuit as head of the now defunct College Football Association.
The exploding popularity of the sport is the essence of the issue. In 1984, the 105 I-A teams averaged 42,548 fans per game. Last year, I-A drew a record 34.3 million fans, or 44,367. And to think that the NCAA was argued stadiums would empty out if more games were on TV.
"One of the fears was that football on TV will proliferate to the point that no one will build a stadium," said Ward, now a partner in a Norman, Okla. firm. "We (Oklahoma) just added 8,000 seats. It sold the product, it marketed the product and created more of an appetite for the product.
"The legacy of the decision is 1) we're not going to allow monopolies to exist in college athletics; 2) have schools across the board profit through TV exposures; 3) we're now allowing fans to have such a great choice that they can see a lot of teams."
The problem with the NCAA model was it was too populist. The NCAA controlled both the purse strings and the appearances. For example, in 1966, the epic No. 1 Notre Dame vs. No. 2 Michigan State 10-10 tie was shown on regional television in the Midwest.
The same went for USC and Oklahoma in 1981. The two superpowers shared TV money from the game, but, in the NCAA system, if Furman and Appalachian State played the same day, they received the same amount of money.
"If you're sitting in Kansas City and your game that day was Brown and Princeton, that was it," said Neinas, whose CFA was behind Oklahoma and Georgia filing suit in 1981. "The percentage of games for the more visible schools was decreasing."
Neinas' CFA was a consortium of approximately 63 major-college football schools that banded together in 1977. It was frustrated that Wabash College had the same, equal vote as Notre Dame on the floor of the NCAA Convention when it came to deciding TV issues. It was angry that Princeton and Yale were equal television partners with Texas and USC. That and this report from SportsLine.com's Dennis Dodd
As a result of the decision, the NCAA has little control over football. It sets the playing rules, doles out penalties and certifies bowls. Other than that, the commissioners run the game, preferring a bowl-based system that paid out $173 million to the 56 teams in the 28 bowls. Twenty years ago, that figure was $32.5 million from 15 bowls. The average payout has grown from $1 million per team to $3 million.
Virtually all that money goes to the conferences and teams. None of it goes to the NCAA, which relies on its basketball tournament for more than three-fourths of its annual budget but is powerless to control football.
The Supreme Court decision coincided with the explosion of cable television to the point that over the course of a season games can be seen seven nights a week. ABC and its affiliate companies own the rights to lucrative Bowl Championship Series and to 25 of the 28 bowl games. As long the cash register keeps ringing, the system will stay in place.
"It was going to come down to the superpowers," said Ward. "Twenty teams that have historically dominated college football for the last 50 years. It hasn't really changed."
The thing was, Neinas, Ward, Oklahoma and Georgia were mostly alone in taking on the NCAA. There was a "fear of retribution" among even CFA members, Neinas said. Oklahoma was worried about "potential punitive ramifications" regarding the NCAA, according to Ward. The CFA had signed a lucrative $180 million deal with NBC in 1981. The NCAA already had threatened CFA members with NCAA penalties that included a postseason ban in all men's and women's sports.
"Even if we won," Ward said, recalling the Sooners' NCAA infractions record, "we thought, 'Hey, we're going to be on the old, proverbial poop list.'"
Ward filed in federal court in Oklahoma City. Oklahoma's ally, amazingly, was Texas. The school, somewhat of a silent partner, filed in state court. Notre Dame was a "close, closet partner" of the CFA action but didn't want it public for fear it would be perceived as money-grubbing. Perception eventually became reality when Notre Dame bolted from the CFA in 1990, essentially setting the stage for the Bowl Championship Series.
It can be argued the NCAA was never as powerful again. Then-executive director Walter Byers was used to getting his way, ruling college athletics with an iron fist. The year Byers became executive director, 1951, the NCAA began strong-arming Pennsylvania University over its football television practices. Penn, which had televised its games for 11 years, was threatened with sanctions unless it joined the NCAA's game-of-the-week package.
It took 30 more years, but eventually the membership saw through the fallacy of the plan. That and this report from SportsLine.com's Dennis Dodd
"There was nothing in the NCAA documents that said you provided the NCAA with the rights," Neinas said. "It was based upon, basically, history."
The Oklahoma-Georgia decision set somewhat of a precedent in other cases against the association. In the landmark restricted earnings antitrust case in 1999, it was ruled that the NCAA couldn't restrict the salaries of assistant coaches. Former UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian settled with the NCAA for $2.5 million, ending a longstanding dispute during which he said the association unfairly and illegally targeted him during his career.
"(The CFA suit) was bloody because when you're losing a monopoly you don't go down easy," said Ward, who deposed Byers during the case. "I don't think Rockefeller went down easily when he lost the monopoly of Standard Oil. Byers wasn't going to go down easily either."
When the sewer lid came off all those capped TV dollars, the schools and networks went wild in the streets. Networks lined up to sign their own conferences. ESPN arrived on the scene and got a piece of everyone. Today, Fox and TBS each have slice too. There was too much money to make.
Oklahoma, not Notre Dame, was actually first approached by NBC with an offer to have its own network, Ward said, but there was a hitch in the deal.
"Oklahoma was the No. 1 Nielsen-rated school for three decades," he said. "We were the one they wanted but there was a little catch. We had to get out of the Big Eight, get a more intersectional schedule. If they had old Bob Stoops at the time, he would have said, 'Fine, bring them all on.'"
For an organization that was representing the nation's biggest football powers, the CFA was surprisingly small. Neinas had a secretary and a lot of "atta boys" from schools that didn't want the NCAA to know they were supporting him. The CFA could have severely damaged the organization if it had sued for damages. Eventually, the NCAA was liable only for $1 million in legal fees.
"Just think if we had sought damages and won," said Neinas, a former Big Eight commissioner. "Under the antitrust laws they would have been (tripled)."
Ward had a small staff and willing president. Then-Oklahoma president Bill Banowsky and his regents supported the legal challenge.
Ward eventually had to bow out when the case proceeded to the Supreme Court. The suit was handed over to an outside firm. A former Harvard law school dean argued the CFA case once it reached the high court.
"It's nice," said Ward who eventually won his bet with faculty rep Dan Gibbens, "to be right once in a while." That and this report from SportsLine.com's Dennis Dodd
http://www.sportsbusinessnews.com/index.asp?story_id=30397
Or end up buying his faculty rep a juicy porterhouse.
The challenge was huge. Take college football television rights away from the NCAA. The implications ending up being bigger -- essentially wresting control of college football away from the NCAA. It was going to be a long, drawn-out struggle, but Ward and cadre of school presidents and athletic directors had had enough. The NCAA had controlled football television appearances since the early 1950s. It was a socialistic setup that guaranteed most members a shot on national television.
But the reality was only a fraction of the members ran big-time programs and, thus, drew viewers. In 1981, the Oklahoma board of regents and Georgia Athletic Association broke ranks and filed an antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA. After three years of furious court dealings, the Supreme Court handed down what has arguably been the most significant decision in college football history.
On June 27, 1984, the Supreme Court ruled that NCAA was in violation of antitrust law. Writing for majority, Justice John Paul Stevens issued the nine biggest words in the sport's history.
"... the NCAA television plan is insensitive to viewer preference."
It was 20 years ago today ... or close to it. College football owes its health and popularity -- at an all-time high, by the way -- to men like Ward. Without it, Gameday would be game day. The decision allowed Notre Dame to sign its own contract with NBC. It has made icons out of failed Indiana coaches and successful coaches into millionaires.
It made widespread distribution possible. The current ACC expansion has direct ties to the decision. Schools have banded together and conferences have reorganized as multimillion-dollar fashion shows to show networks how much they were worth. On the down side, it can be argued the decision brought about unprecedented cheating in the sport. Better players = wins = more TV = more money. Rinse, then repeat.
All from a 7-2 opinion by the high court that allowed schools to control their own television rights. A simple and logical conclusion, really, but the world of college football hasn't stopped rocking since. Twenty years later, you see the results of the epic court battle on any given Saturday.
It's a 12-, to 14-hour cycle that begins with pre-game shows and ends at midnight with the last game from the West Coast. Technology has grown with the sport. Tailgaters lug in generators and cable dishes to game sites just to be plugged in to the sport. That and this report from SportsLine.com's Dennis Dodd
"It's made billions of dollars, it's made careers for sports announcers and broadcasters," Ward said. "You talk about Reaganomics and trickle down. Whether you like Reagan or not that's the classic example of how that's trickled down throughout the entire economy.
"Without college football being televised ESPN would sure have to show a lot more fishing and bowling. "
Mostly, it benefited the common consumer. It allowed the viewer access to up to a dozen games each football Saturday when before NCAA vs. Georgia/Oklahoma there were ... maybe two.
"It popularized college football," said Chuck Neinas, the driving force behind the lawsuit as head of the now defunct College Football Association.
The exploding popularity of the sport is the essence of the issue. In 1984, the 105 I-A teams averaged 42,548 fans per game. Last year, I-A drew a record 34.3 million fans, or 44,367. And to think that the NCAA was argued stadiums would empty out if more games were on TV.
"One of the fears was that football on TV will proliferate to the point that no one will build a stadium," said Ward, now a partner in a Norman, Okla. firm. "We (Oklahoma) just added 8,000 seats. It sold the product, it marketed the product and created more of an appetite for the product.
"The legacy of the decision is 1) we're not going to allow monopolies to exist in college athletics; 2) have schools across the board profit through TV exposures; 3) we're now allowing fans to have such a great choice that they can see a lot of teams."
The problem with the NCAA model was it was too populist. The NCAA controlled both the purse strings and the appearances. For example, in 1966, the epic No. 1 Notre Dame vs. No. 2 Michigan State 10-10 tie was shown on regional television in the Midwest.
The same went for USC and Oklahoma in 1981. The two superpowers shared TV money from the game, but, in the NCAA system, if Furman and Appalachian State played the same day, they received the same amount of money.
"If you're sitting in Kansas City and your game that day was Brown and Princeton, that was it," said Neinas, whose CFA was behind Oklahoma and Georgia filing suit in 1981. "The percentage of games for the more visible schools was decreasing."
Neinas' CFA was a consortium of approximately 63 major-college football schools that banded together in 1977. It was frustrated that Wabash College had the same, equal vote as Notre Dame on the floor of the NCAA Convention when it came to deciding TV issues. It was angry that Princeton and Yale were equal television partners with Texas and USC. That and this report from SportsLine.com's Dennis Dodd
As a result of the decision, the NCAA has little control over football. It sets the playing rules, doles out penalties and certifies bowls. Other than that, the commissioners run the game, preferring a bowl-based system that paid out $173 million to the 56 teams in the 28 bowls. Twenty years ago, that figure was $32.5 million from 15 bowls. The average payout has grown from $1 million per team to $3 million.
Virtually all that money goes to the conferences and teams. None of it goes to the NCAA, which relies on its basketball tournament for more than three-fourths of its annual budget but is powerless to control football.
The Supreme Court decision coincided with the explosion of cable television to the point that over the course of a season games can be seen seven nights a week. ABC and its affiliate companies own the rights to lucrative Bowl Championship Series and to 25 of the 28 bowl games. As long the cash register keeps ringing, the system will stay in place.
"It was going to come down to the superpowers," said Ward. "Twenty teams that have historically dominated college football for the last 50 years. It hasn't really changed."
The thing was, Neinas, Ward, Oklahoma and Georgia were mostly alone in taking on the NCAA. There was a "fear of retribution" among even CFA members, Neinas said. Oklahoma was worried about "potential punitive ramifications" regarding the NCAA, according to Ward. The CFA had signed a lucrative $180 million deal with NBC in 1981. The NCAA already had threatened CFA members with NCAA penalties that included a postseason ban in all men's and women's sports.
"Even if we won," Ward said, recalling the Sooners' NCAA infractions record, "we thought, 'Hey, we're going to be on the old, proverbial poop list.'"
Ward filed in federal court in Oklahoma City. Oklahoma's ally, amazingly, was Texas. The school, somewhat of a silent partner, filed in state court. Notre Dame was a "close, closet partner" of the CFA action but didn't want it public for fear it would be perceived as money-grubbing. Perception eventually became reality when Notre Dame bolted from the CFA in 1990, essentially setting the stage for the Bowl Championship Series.
It can be argued the NCAA was never as powerful again. Then-executive director Walter Byers was used to getting his way, ruling college athletics with an iron fist. The year Byers became executive director, 1951, the NCAA began strong-arming Pennsylvania University over its football television practices. Penn, which had televised its games for 11 years, was threatened with sanctions unless it joined the NCAA's game-of-the-week package.
It took 30 more years, but eventually the membership saw through the fallacy of the plan. That and this report from SportsLine.com's Dennis Dodd
"There was nothing in the NCAA documents that said you provided the NCAA with the rights," Neinas said. "It was based upon, basically, history."
The Oklahoma-Georgia decision set somewhat of a precedent in other cases against the association. In the landmark restricted earnings antitrust case in 1999, it was ruled that the NCAA couldn't restrict the salaries of assistant coaches. Former UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian settled with the NCAA for $2.5 million, ending a longstanding dispute during which he said the association unfairly and illegally targeted him during his career.
"(The CFA suit) was bloody because when you're losing a monopoly you don't go down easy," said Ward, who deposed Byers during the case. "I don't think Rockefeller went down easily when he lost the monopoly of Standard Oil. Byers wasn't going to go down easily either."
When the sewer lid came off all those capped TV dollars, the schools and networks went wild in the streets. Networks lined up to sign their own conferences. ESPN arrived on the scene and got a piece of everyone. Today, Fox and TBS each have slice too. There was too much money to make.
Oklahoma, not Notre Dame, was actually first approached by NBC with an offer to have its own network, Ward said, but there was a hitch in the deal.
"Oklahoma was the No. 1 Nielsen-rated school for three decades," he said. "We were the one they wanted but there was a little catch. We had to get out of the Big Eight, get a more intersectional schedule. If they had old Bob Stoops at the time, he would have said, 'Fine, bring them all on.'"
For an organization that was representing the nation's biggest football powers, the CFA was surprisingly small. Neinas had a secretary and a lot of "atta boys" from schools that didn't want the NCAA to know they were supporting him. The CFA could have severely damaged the organization if it had sued for damages. Eventually, the NCAA was liable only for $1 million in legal fees.
"Just think if we had sought damages and won," said Neinas, a former Big Eight commissioner. "Under the antitrust laws they would have been (tripled)."
Ward had a small staff and willing president. Then-Oklahoma president Bill Banowsky and his regents supported the legal challenge.
Ward eventually had to bow out when the case proceeded to the Supreme Court. The suit was handed over to an outside firm. A former Harvard law school dean argued the CFA case once it reached the high court.
"It's nice," said Ward who eventually won his bet with faculty rep Dan Gibbens, "to be right once in a while." That and this report from SportsLine.com's Dennis Dodd
http://www.sportsbusinessnews.com/index.asp?story_id=30397
