OT/TIL/CSB: 1984 anti-trust suit against NCAA
I was talking to an attorney friend of mine this morning about the upcoming football season, and he mentioned off-hand that he done research for a Supreme Court case shortly after he started working at his first firm, which was the anti-trust suit that was launched against the NCAA by Oklahoma University and UGA.
This was a bit before my time, so I'd never heard about it, but the Wikipedia article is pretty good. At the time, the NCAA only allowed only one game to be broadcast on TV on Saturdays, and a given team could only appear once per season. The Supreme Court ruled that the NCAAs actions constituted a restraint of trade, and prevented them from placing this restriction on member schools. So, he is partially responsible for allowing us to get to see every Michigan game on Saturdays. I made sure to shake his hand for his great service to humanity.
/CSB
August 25th, 2016 at 11:36 AM ^
August 25th, 2016 at 11:43 AM ^
August 25th, 2016 at 11:47 AM ^
You see, there was this thing called a TV antenna, which we used to get about 13 channels if we were lucky... And this thing called a radio...
It was a magical, analog time.
August 25th, 2016 at 11:59 AM ^
Grandpa, tell us the story again about when you couldn't watch the football game on your iPad.
August 25th, 2016 at 12:15 PM ^
My 6 year-old son once found a 35mm negative of some old photographs and asked me what it was. I explained to him that digital photographs are a fairly recent phenomenon and that just 15 years ago, people used to "store" pictures on something called film and dropped the film off to be developed in a lab. He smiled and nodded, but otherwise looked at me like I was insane.
August 25th, 2016 at 12:18 PM ^
August 25th, 2016 at 1:33 PM ^
When we were cleaning out the basement this spring, my kids came across a cache of old Sega Genesis games (I still have my console) and asked what they were.
"What are these, Dad?"
"Those are video games."
"That's not true. They aren't on a disc."
When I showed them the Sega console and said that, like Nintendo (I still have an NES too, but stored away), you had to buy cartridges and insert them into a slot in order to play the game, for a few seconds, they were in awe....then I think they went right back to thinking that was lame and who would buy such a thing. I felt old.
August 25th, 2016 at 12:20 PM ^
After you finish your space chores.
August 25th, 2016 at 12:44 PM ^
August 25th, 2016 at 1:04 PM ^
August 25th, 2016 at 12:25 PM ^
August 25th, 2016 at 12:36 PM ^
Nope, it was Memphis in '95, not Miami. The Memphis game was broadcast later that night on tape delay--I remember listening to the game live on the radio. According to the wiki gods, Miami was on PASS.
August 25th, 2016 at 12:41 PM ^
August 25th, 2016 at 12:43 PM ^
Well, even if that's the criteria you're going for, Miami was televised, and live at that.
The Memphis game was not. It was shown later that night. Ergo, you had to listen to the game on the radio.
August 25th, 2016 at 12:55 PM ^
August 25th, 2016 at 12:58 PM ^
August 25th, 2016 at 1:05 PM ^
August 25th, 2016 at 12:58 PM ^
And if you watched it later that night, you got to hear color commentary from George Perles, who had just resigned from MSU.
Nick Saban was in his first year at East Lansing.
August 25th, 2016 at 1:15 PM ^
August 25th, 2016 at 1:26 PM ^
August 25th, 2016 at 2:11 PM ^
--- with the product being college football games to be broadcast on TV --- than buyers.
The sellers were (1) the Big Ten, (2) the Pac-10, and (3) everybody else, who decided to negotiate together as part of a group called the College Football Association (CFA).
The theoretical buyers were ABC, CBS and NBC. That was about it. ESPN was then still at the kiddy table. TBS (then WTBS) was actually more powerful than ESPN then, but even they were a relative minor player in TV sports broadcasting.
NBC wasn't buying college football in the 80s. CBS bought the Big Ten and Pac-10 packages, ABC bought the CFA package, each broadcast 2-3 games (many regionally, not nationally) per Saturday, and that was it.
That was the environment, and why even teams like Michigan would only be on TV ~4 times/year in the back half of the 80s. Notre Dame splintering from the CFA and signing with NBC was a HUGE thing when it happened in 1990.
That got more college football on TV, and then things really took off toward the mid-90s with the introduction of ESPN2 and FOX getting involved in TV sports. FOX didn't telecast college football until very recently, but CBS likely doesn't sign their big TV contract with the SEC (which began in 1996) if FOX hadn't bought the NFL rights to NFC games (CBS had that contract) in 1994.
August 25th, 2016 at 12:03 PM ^
August 25th, 2016 at 3:10 PM ^
listening to those games on the radio, that was special
August 25th, 2016 at 12:04 PM ^
August 25th, 2016 at 12:07 PM ^
August 25th, 2016 at 2:22 PM ^
as one game a week and each team could only appear once a season. I know that they allowed for multiple games per weekend because I can recall going to OU-Nebraska in Norman with ABC cameras all over the place and then coming home to watch USC-UCLA on ABC at night. Also I think the rule was 3 appearances per team per season, plus a bowl game.
August 25th, 2016 at 2:48 PM ^
I was wondering about that, because my recollection was twice per season plus the bowl game.
And if you got put on probation, that meant a TV ban, no matter where you were playing--weren't all those Michigan State games in the late 70s-early 80s not on TV because of Sparty's probation?
August 25th, 2016 at 3:48 PM ^
My friend actually mentioned the two-games thing, but from my reading about it after that discussion, I think that was because they had started the College Football Association to act independently of the NCAA. They set it up to allow additional games to be broadcast, the NCAA didn't like that and threatened to penalize the schools who participated, which was what precipitated the lawsuit. That said, this is all happening prior to my emergence as a corporeal being circa 1983, so I don't really know.
August 25th, 2016 at 2:46 PM ^
If you're interested in the process by which college football got to TV, how TV changed the college football landscape, etc., there's a really great book called The Fifty Year Seduction which outlines the early history in pretty great detail. And it's like a penny on Amazon right now.
