Hog Calls

Corporate takeover changing athletics

An artist's rendering of Arkansas uniforms for the 2014-15 season.
An artist's rendering of Arkansas uniforms for the 2014-15 season.

FAYETTEVILLE -- Network television pumps money into college football but drains the purpose out of it, one of the oldest active football coaches said recently.

The coach wasn't quoted regarding the apparel companies who also are among the tails wagging the college dog that this column also addresses.

Kansas State Coach Bill Snyder, the 74-year-old marvel whose first run (1989-2005) as the Wildcats' head football coach and current stint (which began in 2009) mark by far the program's most successful tenures, recently blasted colleges allowing TV to control the college game.

"I think we've sold out," Snyder told The Associated Press for a story published last week. "We're all about dollars and cents. The concept of college football no longer has any bearing on the quality of the person, the quality of students. Universities are selling themselves out."

Snyder has benefited from the "sellout." His salary approaches $3 million. That's actually underpaid given the going rate coupled with his 178-90-1 record at a football program that once was referred to as "Futility U."

Under Snyder, Kansas State plunged headlong into the athletics building boom that all the big Division I schools do in the perpetual hamster on a wheel race to keep up with the Joneses.

Still, Snyder's conscience wrestles with TV bloating the football schedule from late August to mid-January. He laments "having an office I could swim in while our professors are in a cubbyhole somewhere."

And the perpetual building boom ...

"Everybody is building Taj Mahals," Snyder said. "I hate to think a young guy would make a decision about where he's going to get an education based on what a building looks like."

Well, Nike goes one absurdity beyond. Uniform style is the recruiting essential, Nike preaches, outfitting its Oregon Ducks in a myriad of styles and colors as the trend. Many, including the University of Arkansas, dashed to follow.

Always cardinal and white, the Razorbacks added "anthracite gray" in 2012. Last spring the Razorbacks even borrowed the black of Arkansas State and four SEC rivals as a fourth color.

Invoking the economics law of diminishing returns, too many school colors means you don't have any.

But, like so many, the UA continues foisting fad over tradition. The Razorbacks' website even includes the Nike "swoosh" linking the Oregon corporation like it was a Razorbacks sport.

At least Nike hasn't informed the child of any Razorbacks coach to change clothes.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Nike e-mailed Florida State's athletic department expressing chagrin that FSU Coach Jimbo Fisher's 8-year-old son, Ethan, was pictured after a game celebrating in an Under Armour T-shirt.

"Can we please ask Jimbo to eliminate that from the son's wardrobe in the future," Nike asked in an e-mail according to the Wall Street Journal.

Covering the Razorbacks while ESPN's SEC Network gets access to what otherwise are closed practices for the media and watching the Razorbacks masquerade at Nike's whim, it seems the UA operates less like a public state university and more like a corporate subsidiary.

It's easy to imagine that those most everywhere working a longtime college beat feel similarly about the university they cover.

Sports on 08/11/2014

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