Rumor down at the faculty club is that the PAC-12 board, which is chaired by President Schill as of July 1, will meet this Friday to discuss what to do about football. The Ivy League has already postponed or maybe cancelled it, that news is here.
Meanwhile USA Today reports that Learfield IMG College, the multimedia conglomerate that controls the marketing and sponsorship rights for the Ducks and many other universities has started delaying payments, and is threatening to activating force majeure clauses if the universities don’t renegotiate their contracts. UO’s contract with IMG, first negotiated by GC Kevin Reed in 2016, has such a clause.
And, since there’s an MOU between the Ducks and the Academic side sharing these revenues, this could cost us all:
Yeah this is a sea change at work; cancelling football would be bad in the short run, but in the longer run, provided the UO can survive, this might reshape the UO back into what is prior to 1994 when
the UO won the cotton bowl and has been ramping up ever since.
Ohio State just shut down voluntary workouts for student athletes after the latest round of COVID-19 tests came in.
UO didn’t play in the 1994 Cotton Bowl. It lost to Colorado in 1996.
I guess I meant the 1995 Rose Bowl. (loss to Penn State)
That wasn’t the point. The last major Bowl Game
the ducks were in was the 1958 Rose Bowl. At the time,
mid 90s I consider the cotton bowl to be a major bowl game.
The UO’s return to major bowl games, after 4 decades
of absence, started the spiral of athletic expenses dominating …
Big Dog – fyi the Ducks lost the ’95 Rose Bowl and the ’96 Cotton Bowl. I attended the Cotton Bowl. Howling wind and rain and Colorado panzered the duckies.
in the above I said they lost to Penn State while someone else previously mentioned the loss to Colorado. Again, the point is not that they lost, but that they played, thus sparking further investment,
Roger that Dog.
Y’all gettin schooled in sports realpolitik. It ain’t your uni Pres, AD, boosters, nor networks that determine the fate of your sports programs. It’s the advertisers that run the show. It was apparent months ago that ad budgets were being cut, forcing unis to kick back money for, at the very best, attenuated seasons. And even at that, why would a network use their resources to broadcasts games that don’t pay the cost of the crews? The P5 has been fighting a rear guard action since the unis were forced to shut down.
The real question going forward is will the loss of sponsors be a permanent situation? Basically, networks create content that draw an audience of a certain demographic profile and sell the herd to advertisers. Bada boom, bada bing, chicken wing. What if advertisers no longer want the audience college football attracts? What if fans are too broke to buy anything displayed? That would almost guarantee that ADs will be forced to eliminate massive swaths of their departments. Stanford may have realized all this, and proactively began the slashing. As one of the forgotten elements of the Sermon on The Mount so prophetically stated; “You can’t do business with poor people.”
really, your saying all this shit now? UO matters is likely needed to now designate a specific page to handle all the responses that
are likely to come to “That’s simple”
I am neither an economist nor a rational choice theorist, but I am sure that for the football players the probability of contracting COVID-19 multiplied by the lifetime negative utility of that event is quite smaller than that same number for head (and other) injuries. Many of those players doom their health the minute they elect to play D1 ball. So, why deny all of us – Oregon Ducks fans – our favorite entertainment, and the single reason to be proud of our association with the UO? Players want to play, public wants to be entertained, advertisers what it on. Why cancel or postpone? I am genuinely curious.
Like all things about COVID, it’s not strictly about the players themselves. If the players could meaningfully weigh the costs and benefits and consent without endangering anyone else, I’m with you. But consider this: how many people will each sick player infect? Neither football practice nor football games are distanced activities. If there are games, there will be gatherings to watch games, even if Autzen and the bars are empty, people will gather in homes. How many of those house gatherings will spread COVID? How many people will those people infect? How much capacity will hospitals have?
Etc. etc.
I’m with you — I love football (though I find I love the idea of football more than the actual practice these days), I will miss it this fall, and yet it’s hard for me to see a pathway where doing so doesn’t cause large harms for people who have no choice in the matter.
The players don’t want to play right now.
I’ve been on the sidelines of hundreds of sportsball events over the years as a journalist and photographer, including pigskin sports, court sports, and batted ball sports; I’ve been in locker rooms, media events, and interacted off-field with athletes countless times, and in all those exposed opportunities, I never once received a concussion from mere proximity transmission. (I’ve received two from being bowled over, but that’s to be expected when you’re getting bumped around.)
If you hole yourself in a bunker with three layers of masks, then the game can still go on. I would be very surprized if players do not want to play the game they love
This might all depend on potential loss/gain of advertising revenue in the case of football without physical fans.
Kind of like Rollerball, circa 1975
Well, check their social media if you are confused.
Yesterday, one told me he felt like he was dealing with slavery.
Last week, one told me he was doing terrible.
They are pleading to be treated like human beings.
I’m sorry the local culture demands young men of color jeopardize their health and possibly their lives for your entertainment. Don’t be surprised by their opinions, though! Black thought sounds like it would be a shock to you.
Ha..ha…ha! First, football is NOT slavery. If they feel bad then they are free to go. I guarantee there will be lines of kids excited to take their spots. Second, this has nothing to do with exploitation of kids of color. In fact, “racism” here works in the opposite direction. There are way more black kids in good ncaaf teams because they (in average of course) are faster, jump higher and hit harder than white kids. I am no economist but that is what market wants. White kids would dream about playing for those teams, but it is hard to compete with blacks. And, yes, capitalists in this country – mostly white – make money on those games. That is how capitalism works: money is the mean to make more money by making others work for money. That simple.
Go to hell.
Hell kicked I want football out – couldn’t fit in.
What would happen if we re-purposed every square foot of athletic space on this campus into learning classrooms where social distancing measures could be enforced? We could put a dome over Autzen, and McArthur Court and MKArena are good to go and heave great air flow. Then we could call ourselves a learning institution and be ready for in-person classes fall term! We could turn the new Olympic villages into the COVID recovery dorm.
Big 10 just announced conference only football games this season (and that will likely change in another few weeks)