Jay Bilas: 'Zero credibility in the doomsday predictions by NCAA'

Jay Bilas, the ESPN analyst, has long tried to avoid using the word hypocrisy in reference to college athletics because it sounds incendiary. But now, amid this summer realignment wildfire?

“Now you can’t avoid it – it’s impossible,” Bilas told On3. “When people say, ‘Well, this is about student-athlete welfare and all that’ – I’m not saying that’s not on the list of priorities. But that is not No. 1. And education is not No. 1. Nobody can say that with a straight face – nobody.”

ACC presidents are on the cusp of formally voting on inviting Dallas-based SMU and Bay Area-based Stanford and California to their predominantly East Coast league because it could yield an extra $50-60 million in annual revenue. It would benefit existing schools financially and perhaps allay concerns from the league’s marquee brands, Florida State and Clemson, about falling too far behind the super conferences in TV rights dollars.

It would benefit the newcomers because each is playing the long game. They are so eager to reap long-term financial benefits of College Football Playoff revenue and secure a coveted seat on a Power Four train that they are willing to forgo a large percentage of – or all – initial broadcast rights revenue, and willing to fly their athletes cross-country for league games. 

The whole ballgame is about maximizing revenue and ensuring competitive long-term sustainability.

“That’s why Florida State’s complaining; they are looking at the ACC going, ‘Wait a minute, we’re behind the SEC and Big Ten now,'” Jay Bilas said. “The Pac-12 schools went, ‘Wait a minute, we’re talking about taking less money in our next contract from a streaming service, like, we’ve got to get the heck out of here.’ I don’t think any of the presidents wanted to do that [and leave]. But they looked at the market going, ‘Look, we’re a market competitor here. This dictates we have to go.'”

Nothing wrong with that – but stop pretending TV dollars aren’t the driving force. 

When Maryland moved from the ACC to the Big Ten, Bilas said, a Maryland Board of Trustees member told him, “No reasonable businessperson could have turned down the Big Ten.”

“So, I don’t blame these individual schools for doing what they are doing,” Jay Bilas said. “But don’t do that and then give me the standard NCAA rhetoric. Because it’s clear it’s not true.”

Jay Bilas: Congress is ‘their only hope’

The NCAA has a lot of high-minded rhetorical principles, Jay Bilas said. But when you match the stated rhetoric to the actions of NCAA members, he said, “they bear zero resemblance to one another. Zero. Then this same group is going to step before Congress and use that high-minded rhetoric to try to get federal legislation to continue to violate federal antitrust law. If anyone buys that, that’s on them. 

“That is the biggest Brooklyn Bridge I’ve ever seen.”

Bilas said anyone who read the Alston v. NCAA case, and the concurring opinion by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, knows – “It’s over. The only savior for the NCAA in limiting athletes going forward is going to be Congress. They can’t do it themselves. They know it. And that [Congress] is their only hope.”

The athletes making the long flights will not receive a dime of the TV rights deals that drove the realignment decisions. A growing number of industry leaders, including Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh on Monday, say that needs to change. 

And the NCAA‘s long-espoused notion that America will stop watching college athletics if and when players are paid flies in the face of reality.

“They told us, ‘As soon as players are paid, that’ll kill the goose that laid the golden egg because people aren’t going to watch’ – as if people tuned in for amateurism,” Jay Bilas said. “They do not. There is zero credibility in the doomsday predictions by the NCAA.”