If Ebenezer Scrooge were around haranguing and humbugging this holiday season, he would have referred to this as "The Ghost of Big East Past."
Officially, the name of the game played Friday night at the Citrus Bowl was the Russell Athletic Bowl. Unofficially, it was the Big East Exodus Bowl.
In a city where the hometown university — UCF — can't wait to join the crumbling Big East next year, the two bowl participants Friday night — Virginia Tech and Rutgers — couldn't wait to get out. Virginia Tech started the mass egression a decade ago by bolting for the ACC; Rutgers, along with Maryland, bailed a month ago for the Big Ten. The more things change; the more they remain the same.
In the words of that famous college football analyst Ben "Beano" Franklin: "Nothing is certain in life except death, taxes and Big East defections."
For the record, Virginia Tech beat Rutgers Tech 13-10 in a painfully mundane overtime game that featured a bowl-record 21 punts and likely made the announced crowd of 48,127 want to jump off the fiscal cliff. Even more dreary than the game itself is the fact that Rutgers coach Kyle Flood — a man whose program is benefitting tremendously by the insanely haywire system of conference realignment — doesn't necessarily like where college football is headed.
Even though his program will enjoy a huge revenue windfall because of its stunning invitation to join the Big Ten in 2014, Flood realizes the current trend is not what college football was meant to be.
"In a perfect world, college football is always best when it's regional, " Flood said. "The fan bases would be able to travel to away games and get home the same day without a lot of cost to families. That would be utopia so to speak, but it's not the reality of college football."
Flood is absolutely right. Fans and families are of little concern to the college presidents and conference commissioners who are in charge of a sport that has nobody in charge. They don't care about the fans who actually attend games. If they did, they wouldn't play on Tuesday nights, Wednesday nights and Thursday nights just to appease their television partners. In today's college football world, the TV product is all that matters.
Rivalries that have been played for generations are being disbanded. Perfectly good geographic conferences are being ruined. History and heritage is being trashed in the mad scramble for the almighty TV dollar.
Boise State is in the Big East and Missouri is in the SEC. And does anything scream "Big Ten Football!" like a Rutgers team from Piscataway, N.J.?
The Scarlet Knights weren't invited into the league because they have a great football program that excites fans in the Big Ten but because they are located in a monster TV market that excites the suits in the Big Ten. Adding Rutgers and Maryland will allow the conference to strong-arm cable companies along the East Coast to add the Big Ten Network.
According to a recent report in the Sports Business Journal, the conference is initially considering keeping Rutgers and Maryland off its own Big Ten Network in an effort to get local cable companies to place the network on their basic tiers.
Currently, the Big Ten Network is available in the home markets of Maryland and Rutgers, but it's located on the optional sports tiers, which charges subscribers about 15 cents a month. If the Big Ten Network is added to the basic package, the Big Ten gets 80 cents per month per subscriber.
The Business Journal did the math and figured out that, "For every 1 million cable subscribers in those markets — subscribers, not people actually watching the Big Ten Network, just those with cable — the Big Ten will make an additional $650,000 a month, or $7.8 million a year."
Now multiply that 7.8 million by 10 — a rough estimation of the approximate 10 million cable subscribers in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, New York City and New Jersey markets. That equals $78 million a year into Big Ten coffers just by adding Rutgers and Maryland.
It's no wonder when I asked iconic Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer if he like where his sport is headed, he just shrugged and said, "I don't think I've got a choice."
Florida State legend Bobby Bowden saw this bastardization of the game coming long before anyone else. It was decades ago when Bowden was asked about the power and influence TV networks have on college football.
"When they ask me to kick off at 2 o'clock," Bobby cracked, "I ask them, 'a.m. or p.m.?' "
mbianchi@tribune.com. Follow him on Twitter @BianchiWrites. Listen to his radio show every weekday from 6 to 9 a.m. on 740 AM.
