* * In college sports, it's all about the money

This article appeared in my column in the News Messenger.

I love basketball. I love ACC basketball. I love Virginia Tech basketball. But I don’t go to games any more.

One of the benefits of my membership in the Blacksburg Rotary Club is that we have a guest speaker at our meeting each week, often really good ones. Earlier today, new Virginia Tech basketball coach Buzz Williams spoke. Hired last spring, he’s been on a breathless quest to build the team into competitiveness in the nation’s toughest conference. He told us that ours was the first civic group he’d spoken to since his heralded arrival last spring. We were honored.

A flamboyant and vivacious man, he spoke about two things primarily, as I recall. First, he talked about culture and the cultural aspects he wanted to bring to the coaching staff and the team. Second, he talked about language and terminology, the ways of articulating that culture.

He readily admitted that with Tech at the bottom of the ACC for three years, there are more than a few things wrong. Generally, everything has been wrong, and it will take a while to fix it. For some fans like me, winning more games will be great, but the problem goes far beyond Tech and far beyond the ACC. The problem is systemic, and I have my doubts that it will be fixed.

The problem is that with so many other aspects of our modern society, it’s all about the money.

For several years, I was a season ticket holder. Basketball, with its speed, skill, and close-to-the-fan seating, has the potential to be a wonderfully thrilling sport. Sadly, however, the influence of money has weaned all the excitement from the game. The incessant time-outs, necessitated by the exigencies of the advertisers, cause the game to crawl to an end. A college basketball game has two 20-minute halves, yet typically takes 135 minutes overall. Paying fans in the stadium do a lot of sitting around, waiting. Sure there’s relentless, ear-splitting “music” over intercom and flying cheerleaders and give-away trinkets to distract us, but I personally just want to watch a basketball game. The last three minutes can take twenty minutes or longer, with media time-outs, called time-outs, substitution time-outs, often injury time-outs, and so forth.

We should be preparing young athletes for the decision-making that adult life demands. Yet coaches call every end-of-game play from the bench.

As bad as basketball is in this regard, football is even worse. A college game has four 15-minute quarters (60 minutes total), yet a game can often last 3-1/2 to 4 hours. And at that, the ball is actually in play for as few as 12 to 15 minutes. While the networks are busy selling us beer, pickup trucks, and insurance at home, a “referee” in red stands in solitary on the 20-yard line, awaiting signals from on high so he can let the game continue. The announcer says, “The ball is now ready for play!” Bah! The ball has been ready for play all along.

One friend says that for this reason, “I never go to the stadium for a televised game.” True, I often will tape-record a game, fast-forward through the commercials and replays (another source of interminable delays!), and watch the whole thing in less than an hour.

Another friend says, “Watch Division II or III instead.” Yeah, that’s well and good. Emory and Henry, Ferrum College, and Roanoke College, all have sports that I’m sure are free – or freer – of such maddening delays. But I didn’t go to those colleges. I went to Virginia Tech (along with most of my family) and thus have a natural affinity. It’s a shame the sport at my school has been so ruined.

The money is astronomical! Coach Williams will be paid over $3.2 million annually for coaching the men’s team. In an illustration of how the tail wags the dog, Williams’ immediate boss, new Athletic Director Witt Babcock will make $610,000 and his boss, Tech’s new President Timothy Sands will make around $800,000. Williams’ salary per game over a 30-game regular season is a jaw-dropping $76,000 per game! Fans in the audience pay minimally $40 per game to be subjected to third-class status. (Note: what does anybody in Blacksburg do with $2.3 million? Once you’ve bought the nicest house around with the first year’s salary, what then?)

I went to the new practice facility on campus later in the day. A huge lobby mural posts the language and terminology of the culture, words like passion, accountability, commitment, determination, unity, and trust. But Division I basketball programs aren’t about those things any more; they are about money.

The loss of college athletics to big-money interests is one of those death-by-a-thousand-cuts things, where the demise of the sport from the spectator’s standpoint has happened inexorably over recent decades. Finally, it became more than I could bear.