College Football Ban Debate

Neither of them wanted to discuss the fact that football supports the non-revenue producing sports, or that at least one university did give $10,000,000 to academics this year.

The site of the debate did not help the final outcome. NYU. C’mon! AND 4,000 blows to the head in 4 years at college. Really? That cannot be right.

Hook ’em, Horns!

Was any real purpose served by this exercise in wasting time? I didn’t think so. Ban college football??? Whoever thought up the idea to debate THAT obviously needs a life, and more to do in it.

Whoever was in charge of this thing could have made it interesting and informative discussion around some critical issues facing college football over the next few decades.

Have a debate on compensating athletes - bring in angles from the true value of a free college education (or, even more relevant, a college education vs. none at all for many players), a breakdown of the sources and uses of CFB revenues including their support of non-rev sports, the hurdles of workman’s comp/Title IX in implementing any kind of compensation system, and the like. Lots of tasty economics for someone like Gladwell to dive into here.

Have a debate on CTE and what we know about it - what is the average CFB player putting at risk by signing up for a four-year career of high-impact collisions? What does science tell us about the risks of a college football career relative to a pro career from a CTE standpoint? What advances in monitoring and mitigation technology have been made in the last decades, what would be the costs of rolling them out across CFB and how does that stack up against the magnitude of CFB revenues? Should CFB expect leadership from the NFL in this regard, or does it devolve on the NCAA or conferences or individual schools to push things forward?

Highlight issues like this, debate the importance of action and try to come to a consensus on actionable elements that can be driven forward and create some positive outcomes on these things. Don’t wrap the whole piece up in a stupid, grandstanding title that automatically turns off most of your potentially interested audience and creates a mission that is both utterly irrelevant and inactionable - “Well gee, the guys saying get rid of college football sounded better, so how do we start abolishing it? Hurrrrrrrrr!”

So damn stupid.