USC, UCLA 2 Big Ten & Big Pro Fish Bowl?

USC & UCLA joining the Big Ten (ND next?) to chase its almighty bucks is the last straw. Esp, coming on the heels of NCAA allowing its so-called student-athletes to sell their bodies to sponsors ends all pretense of them being amateurs.

As the WSJ says, “The Pac-12 stalwarts’ planned defection is the latest move in a college sports shake-up driven by schools’ desire to secure ever-bigger payouts from rich conferences.”

But, let’s not just point the finger at the greedy NCAA, schools and players. They’re being lured in snake-like fashion by the media titans. The WSJ put it this way: “The shift is [only] the latest example of prominent universities moving to ever-richer athletic conferences, attracted by ever-rising broadcast-rights contracts for football [and basketball] games. College football [as well as b-ball’s March Madness] has long been popular, but the value of premium content that people watch live has skyrocketed in an era of splintering audiences and cable-TV cord-cutting.” The end result? We’ll be watching the Trojans & Packers as if they are all in the same “pro” fish bowl.

Davd Soul