The Pac-12 is likely to be competing in its last March Madness, as realignment has pushed 10 of its schools to other conferences. What led the most decorated conference in the NCAA to dissolve so quickly?
This surprising development arguably dates back to a decades-old court decision. As the NCAA prepared for its tournament regional basketball semifinals in March 1984, the Supreme Court heard opening arguments in a case, NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, that would change how Americans watch college sports.
After the court’s ruling, there were no limits on how much college football could be broadcast on TV, which previously was restricted to a maximum of six nationally broadcast games every two years. The regionally focused conferences of the NCAA would become a national business, driven by television money from football. As a professor of critical sports studies, I see the court ruling’s influence today with the downfall of the Pac-12.
A history of televised college sports
Even during TV’s experimental era of the 1930s, college sports were an attraction. The first televised college football game was broadcast in 1939. By 1950, a few schools, including the University of Pennsylvania and Notre Dame, had signed deals to air their football games regionally.
But that changed in 1951, when the NCAA took control of football television rights – and, in an effort to protect attendance at games, attempted to eliminate live TV broadcasts. Some universities, unsurprisingly, weren’t thrilled with the news. Penn told the association it would continue airing games, but gave up when it was threatened with sanctions.
The NCAA eventually relented later that year, allowing sold-out games to be shown on TV. That led to the first coast-to-coast broadcast of a live sporting event, when Duke visited the University of Pittsburgh for a football game in September 1951.
By 1952, the NCAA allowed one national game to be broadcast each week, and in 1953, it allowed NBC to provide “panorama” coverage of regional games. In 1955, the NCAA acquiesced to pressure from conferences, including the Big Ten, and increased the availability of regional games, offering one national game for eight weeks and regional games the other five weeks of the season.
Throughout this time, the bowl games – such as the Rose Bowl, which started in 1902 as part of a holiday festival – remained independent of the NCAA’s policy. The exposure from these games proved to university administrators that televised college sports could be lucrative and boost applications.
The Pac-12 is likely to be competing in its last March Madness, as realignment has pushed 10 of its schools to other conferences. What led the most decorated conference in the NCAA to dissolve so quickly?
This surprising development arguably dates back to a decades-old court decision. As the NCAA prepared for its tournament regional basketball semifinals in March 1984, the Supreme Court heard opening arguments in a case, NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, that would change how Americans watch college sports.
After the court’s ruling, there were no limits on how much college football could be broadcast on TV, which previously was restricted to a maximum of six nationally broadcast games every two years. The regionally focused conferences of the NCAA would become a national business, driven by television money from football. As a professor of critical sports studies, I see the court ruling’s influence today with the downfall of the Pac-12.
A history of televised college sports
Even during TV’s experimental era of the 1930s, college sports were an attraction. The first televised college football game was broadcast in 1939. By 1950, a few schools, including the University of Pennsylvania and Notre Dame, had signed deals to air their football games regionally.
A Johnson & Johnson subsidiary filed for bankruptcy for a third time on Friday as the healthcare giant seeks to advance an approximately $10 billion proposed settlement
A roaring rally in U.S. stocks will face a gauntlet of economic data, looming political uncertainty and a corporate earnings test in coming weeks as investors
Cardinal Health on Friday agreed to acquire community cancer center operator Integrated Oncology Network for $1.12 billion in cash, marking its expansion into cancer care.