thetandd.com/sports/bowl-vs-playoffs-no-easy-solution-for-scsu/article_96bd2874-9953-11e4-8cd6-87bd55e1400d.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitterEveryone’s favorite four-letter sports network needs more bowl games to fill lucrative holiday time slots. The Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference needs to find a way to generate fresh revenue for its cash-strapped member schools.
Seems like a match made in heaven right? Well ... about that.
Like most things, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. While there’s no denying that the chance to compete for an NCAA National Championship carries a lot of weight when it comes to the credibility of a school’s football program, there’s also no getting around the problem with the FCS Playoffs: the almighty dollar.
That’s why when the news broke a few days after Christmas that the MEAC appeared ready to press forward with a plan to divorce itself from the playoffs in favor of an ESPN-funded bowl game pitting the MEAC’s champion against the top team from the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) in a made-for-television postseason event, many Bulldog fans were angered. And rightfully so.
When the Bulldogs finally earned that playoff bid that had eluded them for the better part of two decades in 2008, it was a defining moment for the program. If not for a bad snap on the turf in chilly Boone, N.C., S.C. State might have even pulled the upset of the playoffs that year.
The bid touched off one of the most successful periods in the school’s storied football history. S.C. State won the MEAC and made the playoffs via the conference’s automatic bid in 2009 and 2010. To date, it’s one of the best three-year runs the Bulldogs have ever seen.
S.C. State was back in the playoffs in 2013, splitting the MEAC title and earning a rare at-large bid from the conference to host the first postseason game at Oliver C. Dawson Stadium in 32 years.
The Bulldogs lost 30-20 to Furman that day, another leg of an inexplicably bad playoff streak for the MEAC. When MEAC representative Morgan State lost at Richmond in the opening round of this year’s playoffs, that gave MEAC schools a 6-28 record in the tournament. No conference representative has won a game in the playoffs since 1999, an 0-for-17 drought.
Not enough pie
The Bulldogs’ 2013 trip to the playoffs wasn’t a win on the field or at the gate. The date of the game fell on major college football’s rivalry weekend, and the bulk of the state’s football consumers had their efforts and dollars fixated 40 miles away in Columbia, the site of another instate matchup that just happened to be the second-highest combined ranking South Carolina-Clemson game in history. The weather was poor, overcast skies with temperatures hovering in the 40s for most of the day.
As a result, one of the biggest games in the history of S.C. State’s football program drew just 4,871 fans. When you factor in the NCAA’s cut of the proceeds (about 75 percent), a $30,000 bid the school had to submit just for the honor of hosting and gameday overhead (officials, concession workers etc.), it’s hard to imagine the 2013 FCS Playoffs were good for business when it comes to the Bulldogs’ football finances.
Schools that travel for playoffs games usually do so at a loss, which was likely the case for S.C. State’s other recent playoff trips.
The dirtiest little secret about the FCS Playoffs? For all the prestige of competing for a national championship, there’s little financial incentive for the schools that participate, at least not enough after the playoff pie is finally carved up.
Why else would the FCS’ two most storied programs, Appalachian State and Georgia Southern, opt to leave for the Sun Belt? Greener pastures, in more ways than one. Both programs could be in line to receive conference bowl payouts next year.
Cash vs. credibility
Make no mistake, a bowl game between Historically Black Colleges and Universities is destined to fail. Actually, it already has, a couple times. The now-defunct Heritage Bowl, successor to the equally defunct Pelican Bowl, pitted the champions of the MEAC against the champions of the SWAC from 1991-1999. Despite often outdrawing some of its larger Division I counterparts in attendance, the game was canned after the MEAC began sending its second-place team when it gained automatic playoff qualifier status in 1996.
The prestige of the chance to win an NCAA championship meant the conference needed to send its best team to the playoffs.
The newly concocted bowl game would return the game to its roots, a champion-vs.-champion scenario, a supposed true Black National Championship game.
The only problem is the concept of a separate national champion for HBCUs should have already died of natural causes. The days of segregation in college football went the way of the dropkick long ago.
Oh, did I mention ESPN is expected to pay each conference $1 million for its participation? For the MEAC, that’s likely more than enough incentive to give the old HBCU bowl game concept another college try.
The simple fact is, and this is likely what angers many Bulldog fans, a dissociation from the playoffs takes some shine off S.C. State’s program. It just does, because it gives the perception that the MEAC is giving up on the postseason playoff concept for competitive and financial reasons.
And that means the same instate schools the Bulldogs often recruit against, the Furmans, Woffords and Charleston Southerns of the world, now have a ready-made recruiting pitch to sway prospects away from Orangeburg.
Could the MEAC have it both ways? A bowl game and an at-large playoff representative? Yes, but not likely. If the FCS Playoffs Selection Committee has proven anything in the past, it’s that the MEAC often doesn’t command enough respect for at-large bids.
The solution
There’s simply no cut-and-dried answer to what has become the MEAC’s conundrum. The climate of college football dictates that the rich will get richer. In the days of the four-team playoff at the FBS level, coveted “money games” for FCS level schools are becoming harder and harder to come by, a victim of the need for a better strength of schedule.
Many of the MEAC’s member schools, S.C. State included, have limited resources, so from a purely financial standpoint, a million of ESPN’s dollars probably looks pretty good right now.
A bowl game undoubtedly would be a big change, but is it one motivated purely by dollars and cents?
Then again, could the bowl game eventually turn out to be an example of forward thinking via an old concept? After all, what happens when more FCS teams bail on the playoffs for the mid-major Division I concept?
Again, there’s simply no easy answer.
Here’s what we do know: change, like it or not, is coming.
Brantley Strickland is the sports editor for The Times and Democrat. Reach him at bstrickland@timesanddemocrat.com or 803-533-5553. Follow him on Twitter at @tanddsports.