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From our partner site, vt.fanfoc.us:

Link to Baltimore Sun article about Justin Harper.

I never noticed until this year how many articles are written about rookie WR’s in the NFL. It seems like every year I’m struggling to find news about VT alum in training camps – but this year I come across an article about Harper, Royal or Morgan every other day.

Anyways – I didn’t realize Harper was getting so many reps with the offense during OTA’s – according to this article he took Demetrius Williams’s spot while he was sidelined with an Achilles tendon injury. The ravens view Justin as an ideal red zone target but he’s hoping to show he can make a play anywhere on the field. Best of luck to you Justin making an impact in the NFL

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Originally posted on our partner site, VT.Fanfoc.us:

Well I’m not sure what type of chance he will have to win this award if he ends up splitting time with Tmobile but according to the award’s official website – Sean Glennon was just added to the 2008 Johnny Unitas Golden Arm preseason watch list (awarded to the most outstanding senior quarterback).

“The winner of the Golden Arm Award is recognized not only for his athletic accomplishments, but also for his character, citizenship, scholastic achievement, leadership qualities, and athletic abilities,” says John Unitas, Jr., President of the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Educational Foundation, Inc. The Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award bears the name of the man many refer to as the finest quarterback ever to play the game of football.

Good luck Sean! You win that award we win the ACC!

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A number of us have been talking about (read: bashing) three congressmen who are suggesting that the BCS system is illegal. This blog post started as a response to that thread and spiraled into some strange dissertation. I believe that there are three motivations for bringing this motion before the Justice Department:

1. Money for non-BCS conferences – to quote congressman Abercrombie the matter is worthy of federal review because college football is big business with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake – “It’s money. That’s what this is all about”
2. The three congressmen believe (as do I) that the BCS system is a bad way of determining a national champion
3. Posturing for re-election votes

On paper – the reason the congressmen are recommending a playoff system to the DOJ is the “millions of dollars” at stake. The congressmen can’t say they are only doing this to win favor with the fans of Hawaii, Boise State and Georgia (from their home states) and obviously congress isn’t in the business of determining the best way to crown the next national champion. …but does a playoff put money in the pockets of non-BCS conferences?

How does the current BCS payout?

This is not exactly this simple – but here are the basic revenue numbers from the BCS agreement:

• $17 million paid to each BCS conference (ACC, Big East, Big 10, Big 12, PAC 10 and SEC champions).
• Any BCS conference placing a second team in one of the BCS bowls receives an additional $4.5 million
• Notre Dame fee = $4.5 million if they play in a BCS game or $1.3 million “for its participation in the BCS arrangement”
• $9 million goes to the non-BCS leagues (C-USA, WAC, Mountain West, Sun Belt, MAC) to split. If a member of one of those leagues plays in a BCS game the conferences as a whole receive an additional $9 million (approximately two thirds of which goes to the conference of the team).

It’s up to the conferences to figure out how to distribute the money they get from the BCS each year. For example the Big 10, ACC and PAC 10 split bowl revenue evenly among all teams, while the Big East and WAC use a tiered reward system (the teams that play get more cash). I’m not going to get into these details here as the congressmen aren’t challenging the financial responsibility of the individual conferences – they just want more money in the non-BCS conferences pockets.

So how much money have the conferences made in BCS revenues over the first 10 years of the agreement? Note: All the figures below do not including expenses which can reach $2 million per appearance for some teams.

• Big Ten: $206 million (17 appearances | $20.6 million avg per year)
• SEC: $188 million (15 appearances | $18.8 million avg per year)
• Big 12: $183.5 million (14 appearances | $18.4 million avg per year)
• PAC 10: $179 million (12 appearances | $17.9 million avg per year)
• ACC/Big East: $170 million (10 appearances | $17 million avg per year)
• WAC: $26.9 million (2 appearances / $2.7 million avg per year)
• Mountain West: $22.5 million (1 appearance / $2.2 million avg per year)
• Notre Dame: $19.4 million (2 appearances / $1.9 million avg per year)
• Conf USA/Sun Belt/MAC: $18 million (0 appearances / $1.8 million avg per year)

Obviously a huge discrepancy between the BCS conferences and the non-BCS conferences – and one can see why the congressmen are so upset! One thing to note: the non-BCS conference numbers aren’t quite this bad as these are pre-expense figures. If you are C-USA or Notre Dame – it’s pretty nice to just cash a check each year sitting on your proverbial couch with no expenses to deduct. All the teams who actually go and play the game have millions of dollars of expenses that come out of these figures.

How would a playoff system payout?

For sake of argument assume the BCS instated a 16-team (4 week – 15 game) playoff system for the 2008 season with no conference tie-ins (basically a football version of March Madness starting at the Sweet 16). Never mind the logistical nightmares of shipping players and fans back and forth for four weeks of games – but assume that at the end of every regular season an unbiased committee was tasked with seeding the top 16 teams in division 1A football. Then the normal $170 million in BCS payouts would be divided between all 16 teams equally – so each conference gets a $10.6 million check for each team it sends to the playoffs.

So I went back and found the top 16 teams in the coaches and AP polls (before the bowl games) for each of the last 10 years – here is how many teams each conference would have sent to the playoffs (and the conference payouts for this new tourney format):

• SEC: 32 teams ($328.6 million | $32.9 million avg per year)
• Big 12: 30 teams ($318 million | $31.8 million avg per year)
• Big Ten: 25 teams ($265 million | $26.5 million avg per year)
• PAC 10: 21 teams ($222.6 million | $22.2 million avg per year)
• ACC: 20 teams ($212 million | $21.2 million avg per year)
• Big East: 14 teams ($148.4 million | $14.8 million avg per year)
• Notre Dame: 4 appearances ($42.4 million | $4.2 million avg per year)
• Mountain West/WAC: 3 teams each ($31.8 million each | $3.1 million avg per year)
• C-USA: 2 teams ($21.2 million | $2.1 million avg per year)
• MAC: 1 team ($10.6 million | $1.1 million avg per year)
• Sun Belt: $0

Things don’t get better for the non-BCS conferences – they get worse! In fact a playoff system that rewards the top 16 teams every year is a really good way for the BCS conferences to make more money than they do now – a lot more money. The Mountain West and WAC would have made more money overall but that money would have only come in 3 out of the 10 years. The others are either breaking even or losing money. Think how angry the Sun Belt teams are – they went from cashing a $1.8 million dollar check every year to $0.

What about automatic conference tie ins?

The only strategy that would begin to level the playing field would be if all 11 conferences got one automatic bid to the tournament – then the non-BCS conferences would be guaranteed a $10.6 million payday every year. However I ran the numbers and the top BCS conferences (Big Ten/SEC) would still be making more than $15 million on average per year. The current BCS system has resulted in relative stability in the football world so if you’re worried about conference realignment this is not the plan for you. Finally the idea of leaving top 10 teams out of the BCS tournament (in 2007 Georgia, Missouri, Kansas, Arizona State, Florida among others) and instead taking the 2007 7-5 Florida Atlantic Owls (ranked outside the top 50) is laughable.

The BCS isn’t the problem

Finally, the financial BCS argument becomes even more irrelevant if you look at the operating athletic budgets of some of the schools in question. Let’s take three notable schools – Ohio State (tops in overall sports revenue in 2006), Virginia Tech (because they are awesome) and Boise State (who had a good budget year in 2006 after appearing in the sugar bowl). Here are very high level budget numbers for each school’s athletic department from July 2006 through June 2007:

Ohio State (Full time under graduates: 34,982)

• Total football revenue: $59.1 million / Total football expenses: $32.5
• Total athletics revenue: $109.4 million / Total athletics expenses: $109.2
• Total 2006 bowl payouts: $2 million
• Percent BCS revenues in total athletic budget: 1.8%

Virginia Tech (Full time under graduates: 21,473)

• Total football revenue: $40.6 million / Total football expenses: $26.2
• Total athletics revenue: $65.5 million / Total athletics expenses: $55.9
• Total 2006 bowl payouts: $1.8 million
• Percent BCS revenues in total athletic budget: 2.7%

Boise State (Full time under graduates: 10,811)

• Total football revenue: $12.1 million / Total football expenses: $8.6
• Total athletics revenue: $22.3 million / Total athletics expenses: $21.7
• Total 2006 bowl payouts: $2 million
• Percent BCS revenues in total athletic budget: 8.9%

Sure the bowl money Boise State made in 2006 was probably a nice boost to their budget – but if you’re blaming the BCS for the differences in athletic budgets, you’re treating a symptom and not a problem. We are talking about apples, oranges and mangos here – even if Boise was awarded $2 million from the BCS each year (approximately what it took home after expenses from its Sugar Bowl appearance) it doesn’t even begin to make up the $40 million gap to VT (let alone the 5x increase necessary to catch Ohio State).

Blame the BCS? I’m sure it sounds good to voters and taxpayers but the differences between the BCS schools and non-BCS schools are not as simple as yearly BCS payouts. These are problems in differences in marketing, school size, ticket sales, merchandising and TV contracts. If we spread out the BCS money and award $1.5 million to each of the division 1A football schools every year does that mean that 52 new mammoth stadiums will pop up around the country and hordes of San Jose State, North Texas, New Mexico and Eastern Michigan fans will flock to the stadiums every week?

So let’s review our initial reasons for getting the DOJ involved:

1. Money – not valid
2. The BCS is broken – not a job for the DOJ (although I’ll take this if you want)
3. Posturing for votes

Well it looks like #3 is the only reason left – making it seem like these three congressmen are spending a lot of our time and money looking for reelection votes

Let me know what you think on vt.FanFoc.us!

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There is finally some good news on the injury front! Tyrod Taylor sounds like he’s going to be just fine. Tyrod practiced yesterday and today so you can re-pack the car for Saturday as Frank Beamer and Mike O’Cain both think he will play in the spring game this weekend.

Also in the article by Randy King of the Roanoke Times is mention of a player that has really impressed me (and obviously the coaches too) this spring: Mr. Dorian Porch. While I suspected that he was going to play his way into the starting rover role this spring, I didn’t realize he was almost drafted by the Arizona Diamondbacks in the second round out of high school. It appears the Hokie nation owes Mrs. Porch a big “thank you” as she talked Dorian out of the draft because she wanted him to get an education.

Keep up with the Hokies here and at VT.Fanfoc.us!

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