How television changed college football -- and how it will again

They had taken their fight for liberation all the way to the Supreme Court and won. So why, less than five months after the nation's highest court had ruled in NCAA vs. the University of Oklahoma Board of Regents that the NCAA's restrictive football television package violated federal antitrust laws, did almost everyone in the college football business feel they had lost? Consider the following paragraph from an Oct. 15, 1984 Sports Illustrated story on a dip in college football ratings despite a spike in college football telecasts.

"The glut is pernicious, not propitious. Unless the CFA and Big Ten and Pac-10 kiss and make up and legally curtail the number of games on TV -- a dubious prospect, considering the Supreme Court ruling and the bitterness between them -- the colleges will be left with a depressed marketplace," wrote William Taaffe in a piece that bore the headline Too Much Of A Good Thing. "There will be no money to prop up non-revenue sports such as swimming and wrestling. The big network paydays will be over, assuming the networks remain in college football at all. As Nebraska athletic director Bob Devaney says, 'I don't see any great resurgence in the next year or so. I'm not predicting colleges will go broke -- but it isn't going to be the bonanza it was.'"

Whoops.

Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/writers/andy_staples/08/05/tv-college-football/index.html#ixzz22nGRO8e5