College Football Powers Are Canceling Games. Small Programs Are Feeling the Pain. - The Wall Street Journal

With the Big Ten’s decision to cancel non-conference games, Penn State won’t play Kent State to open the season.

Photo: Chris Knight/Associated Press

By

Rachel Bachman

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• @Bachscore
• Rachel.Bachman@wsj.com

and

Laine Higgins

• Biography
• @lainehiggins17
• laine.higgins@wsj.com

Updated July 11, 2020 10:24 am ET

The Big Ten and Pac-12 conferences’ cancellation of nonconference football games for the coming season brought two realities into sharp relief.

First, the top level of the sport, the Football Bowl Subdivision, is essentially a freewheeling collective of powerful conferences only minimally controlled by the NCAA. Second, the money-strapped conferences in the bottom half of FBS are now at the mercy of the nation’s wealthiest leagues, known as the Power 5.

As the coronavirus pandemic wreaks havoc on this fall’s football season, programs in lower leagues have already taken hits and are bracing for more cancellations of lucrative games against big-name opponents. Independent schools that are not aligned with any conference are also being jolted: Brigham Young had five football games canceled by the end of Friday.

The cancellations hit especially hard at athletic departments already facing budget cuts due to the pandemic.

“It’s every league for themselves right now,” said Bob Moosbrugger, athletic director at Bowling Green. The Falcons lost the two most prominent opponents on their schedule on Thursday: the Big Ten’s Ohio State and Illinois.

Those programs were set to pay Bowling Green a total of $2.2 million to travel to their stadiums, money that now won’t make it into the Falcons’ planned $24 million athletics budget for the coming year.

Even if Bowling Green finds a team or two to fill the holes in its schedule, the games won’t be worth nearly as much. The paycheck for a visiting team is tied to what the host team can generate, and likely social-distancing precautions at events during the pandemic will reduce it—if fans are allowed at all.

“Schools I’ve talked to, their stadiums can only be at 25-50% capacity, so it’s not like they’re going to offer the same money as they were at capacity,” Moosbrugger said.

Bowling Green lost the two most prominent opponents on their schedule: Ohio State and Illinois.

Photo: Jay LaPrete/Associated Press

All that schools like Bowling Green can do is wait for decisions from the rest of the Power 5—the Atlantic Coast Conference, Southeastern Conference and Big 12—which have said they would announce scheduling decisions later this month. That’s in part because of the unique organizing structure of college football, solidified in the wake of a decades-old legal decision.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1984 that the NCAA couldn’t place limits on the number of games top-division football programs decided to have broadcast on TV. That allowed big-college football control of its postseason and scheduling, with minimal requirements from the NCAA.

So while the NCAA controls events like college basketball’s March Madness, its primary cash cow, it doesn’t have the same power over college football. The Power 5 consolidated its position in 2014, when the NCAA Division I board of directors voted to give those conferences the ability to write many of their own rules.

“We’ve got to work together on this,” Moosbrugger said. “We’ve got to unite and we have to have a united leadership, which, unfortunately right now, we probably do not have.”

The financial stratification within even the 130 programs in college football’s top division leaves lower-tier programs reliant on schools in the major conferences for key sources of revenue.

Although billions of dollars flow annually through college sports, each athletic department essentially operates as a nonprofit that spends what it generates each year. That formula means something very different for Texas and Ohio State, which are party to huge TV contracts and boast $200 million in annual athletic revenue, and schools in lower-earning conferences whose school athletics budgets are as little as one-tenth that size.

Kent State, in Kent, Ohio, plays football in the Mid-American Conference and relies on football games against prominent programs to prop up its 19-team athletic department. The school was in the process of cutting its $30 million annual athletics budget by 20% because of the pandemic when the Big Ten made its announcement.

The move means the Golden Flashes won’t play at Penn State to kick off the season. If the SEC also were to cancel nonconference games, Kent State would lose appearances at Kentucky and Alabama. Kent State stood to make a reported $5 million for all three of those contests.

The picture is similarly dire for Bowling Green and the five other universities who were scheduled to play two games against Big Ten teams. Other schools affected are Ball State, Central Michigan and Northern Illinois in the MAC, and football independents BYU and Connecticut.

BYU’s game against Utah has been canceled.

Photo: Rick Bowmer/Associated Press

BYU was dealt another blow Friday when the Pac-12 canceled its nonconference schedule, including the Cougars’ rivalry game with Utah, and games against Arizona State and Stanford. In the span of 24 hours, BYU lost almost half of its 2020 season. Officials there said Friday morning that they were evaluating options, but did not respond to requests for additional comment after the Pac-12’s decision.

The suddenness of the Big Ten’s decision took some by surprise. Arkansas State athletics officials said there were “no conversations” between the school and Michigan, which were scheduled to play Sept. 19 in Ann Arbor, Mich., before the game was scrapped Thursday.

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Write to Rachel Bachman at rachel.bachman@wsj.com and Laine Higgins at laine.higgins@wsj.com

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