Arkansas Sports 360 - ArkansasSports360.com

7/29/2011 at 10:30am

He almost had me convinced.

Mike Slive’s drastic and well-intentioned changes to college football was first met with overwhelming acceptance, then later with criticism. Now skepticism abounds when thinking about the SEC commissioner’s plan.

It is not for lack of good intentions. On the surface multi-year scholarships, an increase in scholarship funding for full cost of attendance, and raising the core GPA requirements for players out of high school to 2.5 all seem like good ideas that would make college football a little less seedy and a lot more wholesome.

The problem is, I can't see how it would ever happen.

Slive, and now most conference commissioners to follow, is essentially proposing feel good legislation that he has to figure will never actually be fully enacted in college sports. The more I thought about it, the more ridiculous all these changes started to seem. Say what you will about the all-too-often used cliche of the business of college football – it’s the best sport on the field we have (and I love the NFL, so that’s saying a lot), yet it seems too many folks spend most of their waking hours trying to massively overhaul the sport for the greater good.

College football isn’t perfect and it isn’t clean. No matter how hard anyone tries, it never will be 100-percent clean. Slive can propose all the changes in the world, at the end of the day it’s hard to imagine any will matter or be enacted. You might find them crumpled up on the floor next to the trashcan basketball hoop.

What Slive is asking college football programs to do is decrease the quality of their product for the sake of a moral platitude. He’s asking Alabama to be more like Vanderbilt. (Because that’s exactly what college football needs, more wide receivers who run 5.5 40-times. Arkansas has linemen who are faster than that.)

College football is so entertaining because coaches and programs put so much time, effort and money into making it entertaining. Slive’s proposals directly make attaining that goal more difficult. That affects the wallet of major programs and it affects your experience as a fan of college football.

If College football went back to the days when Harvard and Yale were the powerhouses of the sport, then it would also revert back to having the same amount of popularity as it did back then. Not much.

Much of what we hate about college football is also what makes it great. The SEC sets the curve on skirting the rules. Even if Slive got his way, the SEC would find a way around it. Ole Miss is the case study for over signing in college football, MSU is still at the center of a pay-for-play investigation regarding Cam Newton, and those are just the bad programs in the SEC. You could write a book on Alabama and Florida’s secondary violations, or why there is such a thing as the Fulmer Cup. Almost the second a writer penned the words, “LSU and Vanderbilt are the only SEC school to not get hit with NCAA probation under Mike Slive,” LSU got hit with violations and probation.

But LSU has a couple of national titles in the last ten years.

Most of the coaches in the conference seemed either dodgy or outright opposed to Slive’s proposed changes. Steve Spurrier spent five minutes at the podium basically saying commissioner Slive is an idiot. While most coaches gave very political answers, the filter-less Ol’ Ball Coach was open about his disdain for multi-year scholarships and raising core GPA requirements. Why? Because it makes winning harder.

It comes down to one simple issue for fans:. How would this affect your experience? Because honestly, we can all say we care about the education these players are supposedly in college to receive, but it’s about Saturdays in fall.

If your enjoyment of college football is negatively affected, you should be opposed.

Now ask yourself, does college football really need more schools like Vanderbilt? Or would you rather see Arkansas become more like Alabama, USC, Oklahoma and Ohio State? By the way, all of which have been hit with NCAA sanctions or probation and vacated wins in the last decade... along with winning national titles.

None of this is to say that Slive didn’t have the best of intentions. In an ideal world we’d love to hold athletes and football programs to the highest of academic standards, but in a practical sense none of his proposals do anything but dilute what has become an amazing sport.

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TJ Carpenter is host of The TJ Carpenter Show on The Hog Sports Radio Network from noon to 2 (listen live at HogSportsRadio.com)

Tagged: Mississippi State Bulldogs, Vanderbilt Commodores, Ole Miss Rebels, Fulmer Cup, Florida Gators, Arkansas Razorbacks, Southeastern Conference, Mike Slive, LSU Tigers, Auburn Tigers