Brooks on Books: Football and Television (Part II)

Here's another great book I didn't even know existed: "The 50-Year Seduction" by Keith Dunnavant. I found it on a library shelf while looking for something else, and, yes, I assure you, it IS about football. The subtitle is "How Television Manipulated College Football, from the Birth of the Modern NCAA to the Creation of the BCS."

As the word "manipulated" implies, Dunnavant takes a critical stance towards the relationship of the TV networks and the sport. Early on, you almost think he's gonna really just rip everyone involved a new one, as he writes about an early decision by the NCAA to prevent Penn from making its own TV deal:

It was a despicable, shameful act of thuggery, a strong-arm tactic worthy of backalley hoodlums and pulp fiction gangsters.

Dunnavant, a veteran college football journalist and previously author of a biography of Bear Bryant, uses strong language to establish how the NCAA, fearful that television would destroy attendance, exerted power it didn't really have in a manner that violated anti-trust law as well as basic American tenets in order to restrict the sport's presence on the airwaves. However, he lays out the entire history of the college game on the tube without letting his sympathies overwhelm the facts. When a group of big-time football powers break off from the NCAA's TV negotiations to form the CFA and make their own deals with the networks, Dunnavant frequently points out how much money they wound up sacrificing, at least in the short term, by creating arguably an oversaturation of the sport. He clearly recognizes their right to do so, but he relates the consequences, even the negative ones.

The real theme of Dunnavant's thorough but always compelling history is the significant effect TV money had on the game. He illustrates how the influx of dollars made the big schools beloved by the networks get even bigger. The skyrocketing rights fees collected by the universities had ramifications on every single aspect of the game, from the number of scholarships awarded to the bowl system to scheduling and the rise of the megaconferences we have today. It's all connected, and it's all directly related to television. Dunnavant does an excellent job of explaining how we got from the old "amateur" days of college football to the corporate machine we have now, a machine which revolves around the notorious BCS, a made-for-television construct which purports to decide a national champion.

Last week I read rumblings that the TV contract for the BCS games is in play again, with the NCAA possibly angling to get the package away from Fox and on more traditional gridiron broadcaster ABC. "The 50-Year Seduction" was published in 2004, but it is no less relevant today, and it's an must-read for college football fans in general as well as those with an interest in the sport's history on television.