By Rick Stanton
Let’s get a couple of things settled right from the get-go. I bleed purple and gold. And to my three detractors who think I should stick to advertising topics—this IS about the influence of broadcast revenues, and the damage it can do.
On Saturday, Sept. 7, my beloved Huskies coughed up a hairball at home against the Cal Bears. S*&% happens. It’s a football game for God’s sake, and no one died. I think-hope.
But I’m not sure. Because the game ended on Sunday morning—after a 7:30pm kick-off and a three-hour weather delay—and long after I gave up and went to bed.
I thought to myself, well, they’ll postpone this game and figure out a way to make it up down the road. Why put the kids at physical risk, right?
The fact that they began play again around 10:30 is a shameful example of why PAC12 commissioner Larry Scott should be fired by the collective athletic directors and school presidents. This game was the last straw.
Scott’s inability to understand that college football is more than just broadcast revenue is appalling. And his shameless pursuit of said revenue puts young athletes, most of whom will never play football again after college, in harm’s way.
Both Cal and the UW have somewhere between 60 and 70 active players. So, after playing the better part of a quarter, they were rounded up and sent to the locker room to escape the thunder, lightning, rain and even hail.
If you’ve ever played any sport, that kind of break in the action means once-warmed-up athletes are now in various degrees of tight-as-a-drum. And who knows what kind of mental state a three-hour break does to one’s concentration and motivation.
This game should have been postponed. Where was Plan B? How hard would it have been to figure something out?
And back to that 7:30pm start. Ridiculous. I had season tickets to Husky football for nearly 40 years. I gave up four 50-yard-line seats because of the inane start times, many of which you didn’t know for sure until a week before the game.
College football is not a night time event. They call it “Game Day” for a reason. Besides the strain it puts on the coaching staffs and athletes, it gives knuckle heads seven more hours to get really hammered. Imagine how many drunks there were at 7:30 Saturday night and then re-imagine how many more there were at 10:30.
The Cal-UW game was a microcosm of everything that’s wrong with PAC-12 football and Larry Scott’s “leadership.” [Be sure to read the second link below.]
This was a farce and Scott needs to go. Today. The money from whatever advertising revenues are being generated (or lost) is not worth destroying a tradition and putting young people at risk.
