Please don't forget to write a
strong but POLITE email to Harris at robinharris@ivyleaguesports.com and CC her deputy Carolyn Campbell-McGovern carolyn@ivyleaguesports.com to make sure our voices are heard.
Watching Columbia compete this
past weekend in the NCAA baseball regional was an amazing experience.
The Lions played competitively in
all three games against the best scholarship-laden programs in the country.
The 13-inning win over New Mexico
on Saturday night may have been the best moment in Columbia sports in a decade.
Congratulations to super Coach Brett Boretti and the entire team for what was
an outstanding year.
Of course, what happened this
weekend only strengthens my argument and everyone’s argument for allowing our
Ivy football champions to participate in the FCS playoffs.
This past weekend was thrilling
for the fans, earned Columbia and the Ivies valuable nationwide exposure, and
was the proper reward and recognition for the players’ efforts. Denying that to
the football teams because of some bogus reasons, including the, “this won’t increase
our fan base” excuse is insulting and silly.
Focusing on just the quotes that
Ivy Executive Director Robin Harris DOES admit to saying to the Harvard Crimson, I want to clarify something important
that she and many others got wrong.
Here, again is the key quote:
“I think
our fans care about Ivy League football,” she said. “Rivalry games are going to
draw the most fans [to] a given game, and whether or not a team is going on to
the FCS playoffs, I don’t think is going to [have an] impact.”
There’s a lot wrong with this
statement, but I want to focus on a technical mistake Harris made because it’s
something I deal with every day as an executive producer of TV news.
There are two ways to improve TV
ratings: 1) Get more NEW people to watch your show and 2) Get your EXISTING
viewers to watch your show LONGER.
Both of those things increase
ratings an equal amount. A viewer deciding to up his time watching your show
from 15 to 30 minutes counts the same as TWO separate new people watching for
two different 15 minute “quarters.”
And that’s a key point Harris and
the others need to understand about the Ivy fan base.
If our champions would be allowed
to play in the FCS playoffs, it may not create a bunch of new fans out of the
blue, but it WOULD encourage a lot of fans to come to and watch MORE games.
They would be more likely to attend a game where their team has a shot to win
the title or play the spoiler for another team seeking to get the title and the
FCS playoff ticket. Of course, the champions’ fans would watch and go to the
FCS playoff game. And in a 10 game season, even just one added game would
represent a 10% increase in fan attendance and interest. There have been a few
Penn and Harvard teams over the last 15 years that I am very certain would have
won at least ONE FCS playoff game had they been given the chance. So, in those
cases, that would have been a 20% increase.
And don’t tell me that Harris and
the League don’t want more exposure. They worked hard to get this new deal with
the NBC Sports Network. They’ve streamlined the online subscription process to
get more games to existing fans. And they’ve split the MVP/Bushnell Cup award
in two, made the nomination process public, and put together a web-streamed
live award presentation event for
the winners.
But again, the real reason to
make a big deal about this is to make sure what the fans and players want is
not misrepresented in public again.
So let’s be clear:
The fans want FCS playoffs, the
players want FCS playoffs, and the most influential football alumni want FCS
playoffs.
Harris and the Ivy presidents
should either make this happen or at least do us the courtesy of being honest
and admitting that they are opposing what nearly 100% of their supposed
constituency want.
21 comments:
Jake, Why are you so sure that Ivy fans and players want post-season football? Unlike baseball and basketball, football takes a tremendous toll on players. They get beat up physically. They put in more time than athletes in any other sport. The injury risk is higher. And players are unlikely to reveal how they really feel about post season football for fear of being deemed as not sufficiently macho. With all due respect, I would be surprised Jake if any player to whom you might speak ex cathedral would be willing to say ten games is enough.
Excuse the typo. Should be ex cathedra.
That's one Hell of a macho conspiracy.
Rest assured, the fans and players all want this.
In fact, even all the protective MOMS of the players I've spoken to are all for this.
I think that post season is excessive. What makes the Ivies special is that they have perspective on sports vs athletics. That's what makes Columbia's run in baseball, Harvard's runs in basketball and Yale's win in hockey an extraordinary achievement. Otherwise Ivies are just another set of schools which have completely lost touch with what the purpose of college is for. The emphasis on post season championships just showcases that many schools are pre-professioial sports factories. It is a small miracle that any student athlete can get any homework done in the already unbelievable grueling schedule, especially since .03 per cent will succeed professionally. Let the kids be competitive, have fun, and have the last laugh when they knock off the big time schools once in awhile, and make fools of their programs which are so tilted to exploiting their students. This is one of the longest standing debates in American history, but it worth discussing once again.
I agree with Oldlion.
Jake, Where are your supporters?
I agree that the ten week FB season is enough.
Here we are on your blog as the verified WORST FB team in the Ivy League calling for more games.
Don't get me wrong,bro. I want to win as much as anyone who posts here, but I don't agree with your arguments for prolonging the season thru finals and winter break. These guys work hard enough!
As a former Spec sports writer from the 50s, avid follower of various teams, SideLion subscriber, I don't want post-season FB.
I don't want post-season, and I predict it won't happen,too. Jake is confusing support among some fans for the comparatively minor role football has within the entire university. There may well be a majority among one set of stakeholders, but most alumni, faculty, and university officials would probably be opposed. Although you may want to count the votes just among the fans, their vote alone is unlikely to be decisive.
I'm also among the anti-playoff types. Looking at the roster of teams in the playoffs, I don't think I'd be interested in games against most of them, it stretches the season out too long, etc. Heck, I'd even cut the BCS bowls back to four. Those mediocre TV games in front of empty stadiums can go as far as I'm concerned.
I used to be anti-playoff. Colgate's run to the 2003 National Championship game changed my mind. If they can do it, no reason why an Ivy team can't be competitive. And please-- spare me the "physical toll" nonsense. I can guarantee to you that everyone on those rosters would LOVE to play another game.
I am surprised by these comments. Every other Ivy champion is allowed to compete in playoffs. Football should be no different. It's a tremendous reward for the league champion to compete in an NCAA tournament and it provides great visibility to our league.
The academic arguments don't hold water. The Ivy champion participates in the NCAA men's soccer tournament, which must be the most academically unfriendly tournament of all, with a championship game last year on December 9. And the Ivy soccer champ is a lot more likely to advance deep into the NCAA playoffs than our football champ would be.
Does the Old Lion (and Robin Harris)really believe that soccer players can handle the academic stress of December games but football players can't?
Basketball is also more demanding of the players time-wise than football, with practice starting in October and the season running thru mid-March for the league champion. That's five months! Yet the basketball players seem to manage their academic load. Football is a three month season with no overlap with finals and a training camp that takes place mostly before school starts. To allow one team to play an extra week or two would generate great attention for our league with academic repercussions that are milder than either soccer or basketball face.
I agree that post-season play will increase attendance but only because current fans, myself among them, will be attending more games. I doubt whether post-season play would attract many new fans. There are only two realistic sources of new fans: alumni in Metro NYC who attended games as undergrads and current students. In a master's thesis published last year entitled "Critical Success Factors: What Makes an Ivy League Football Champion", Jacob Silverman, a grad student at Penn, points out that 88% of attendees at Ivy games consist of alumni who attended games as undergrads. Although I don't believe that separate attendance figures for students are even kept, I get the impression that the numbers of students attending games have been abysmal for many years. I just don't think that there's an untapped reservoir of Metro NYC alumni who attended as games as undergrads. As far as attracting more current students is concerned, I suspect that with the exception of students who are actually on the football team, there are very few Columbia undergrads who have even so much as watched football being played on TV before they arrived on campus. Post-season play is not likely to have any effect whatsoever on students for whom football is an unknown experience.
By the way, Mr. Silverman's "critical success factors" are "task interdependence, outcome interdependence, and potency to achieve group effectiveness". I believe that Mr. Silverman has a point. I recall that while watching last year's shellacking at Harvard, I thought to myself, "Where the Hell is the group effectiveness?"
I find these comments a little surprising. It is a well known fact that the players want this. It is a slap in the face that all FCS conference champions except for the Ivy league are granted bids to the tournament. Also, we are forgetting one key aspect: Recruiting. It is much more enticing to a recruit to be able to play in the tournament. Just as many mid-major basketball programs sell themselves as teams who make it to the tournament, Ivy league teams would be able to do the same. The level of competition would increase, which is what everyone should strive for.
I'm not against FCS playoffs. The argument of treating football equitably with all 37 other Ivy sports is a reasonable and compelling one.
But I'm not jumping up and down about it, either. If we Ivy fans and alumni get playoffs, the tangible effect will be minimal.
And as a Columbia fan, the impact on us will probably be negative. Top recruits will have even more incentive to choose Penn or Harvard. Over the past dozen years, only Princeton and Brown (once each) would have ever gone to the playoffs rather than Penn or Harvard.
To summarize, we're kidding ourselves if we think playoffs will make any more than a miniscule effect on the fan or player experience. And it may actually hurt, not help, league parity.
Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, Yale.
This is what Ivy League football is about.
Tod Howard Hawks 66 CC
Assuming there's a television contract for a post-season, what will the cost of putting on the games?
No sport takes as physical a toll on players as FB. So many end up on the bench recuperating from injuries near the end of the current schedule. The Lions are good examples.
It amazes me that so many people seem to speak authoritatively about what the players and the coaches really want. If there were a confidential players and coaches' poll I am not at all confident that there would be a majority in favor of extending the season. There isn't a sport in the world which takes as much out of a player both physically and mentally as football. Let these young men celebrate Thanksgiving each year by letting their bodies heal. Football is different.
Sounds like Tod wants a seven game intramural schedule.
oldlion: I think some of the people who say that the players would want to extend the season are speaking from their own personal experiences as players. I know that I am.
The Ivy Presidents won't even approve an 11th game, which the coaches have been clamoring for for years, why would the let teams play in the playoffs which extend into finals? Hell, they won't even let women's soccer and volleyball report 1 week after everyone in the country, creating huge disadvantage for those programs. The Ivy mindset amongst the presidents as it pertains to athletics will keep holding athletics back.
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