The scales fell from my eyes on the road to re-alignment

[EduBull]

I'm posting this here because it is directly relevant to USF's conference predicament, current and future status.

Like Paul on the road to Damascus, I finally had the conversion experience over the conference re-alignment issue.  As much as I hate to admit it, college athletics isn't about college or athletics - it's about sports entertainment and big business.  "College" is just branding.  Nothing more, nothing less. 

So let's embrace it.  USF is a big school with a huge number of alumni in a major TV market.  We're not going to be successful packaging ourselves as a prestigious undergraduate or research institution.  We're "good enough" on those fronts to sit at the table, but those things are not our selling point.

So what am I trying to say?  I'm not sure exactly, other than that we should be on the leading edge of tossing off the veil of the "amateur student athlete."  Maybe USF can be a leader in building and implementing a model of player compensation, and use that as leverage for building the program.  Maybe we can be one of the schools that pushes the NCAA into a new paradigm and shows them how to do it. 

Anyway, here's a really good related article prophesying the coming apocalypse:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/10/the-shame-of-college-sports/8643/

[Who'sYourData?]

Welcome to the Dark Side.

Also known as sad reality. 

[BullFan98]

I'm posting this here because it is directly relevant to USF's conference predicament, current and future status.

Like Paul on the road to Damascus, I finally had the conversion experience over the conference re-alignment issue.  As much as I hate to admit it, college athletics isn't about college or athletics - it's about sports entertainment and big business.  "College" is just branding.  Nothing more, nothing less. 

So let's embrace it.  USF is a big school with a huge number of alumni in a major TV market.  We're not going to be successful packaging ourselves as a prestigious undergraduate or research institution.  We're "good enough" on those fronts to sit at the table, but those things are not our selling point.

So what am I trying to say?  I'm not sure exactly, other than that we should be on the leading edge of tossing off the veil of the "amateur student athlete."  Maybe USF can be a leader in building and implementing a model of player compensation, and use that as leverage for building the program.   Maybe we can be one of the schools that pushes the NCAA into a new paradigm and shows them how to do it. 

Anyway, here's a really good related article prophesying the coming apocalypse:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/10/the-shame-of-college-sports/8643/

The only shame I see is in your profile picture....yikes!