Friday, August 9, 2002 Updated: August 10, 2:21 PM ET
Best of times, worst of Oregon's Times Square billboard
By Adrian Wojnarowski Special to ESPN.com
As the University of Oregon makes a move for that coveted breast-feeding
and lobby-security demographic with its Sunday, 2 a.m. ET, telecasts of Ducks
football games on the YES Network this fall, school officials insist the
bigger-than-life billboard of wide receiver Keenan Howry towers over Broadway as a "vehicle to introduce the arrangement" to its Eastern audience.
Oregon hits Broadway this year with a billboard of Ducks receiver Keenan Howry overlooking Times Square.
So, yes, the school paid $250,000 for the massive image on Broadway, visible
for blocks beyond the bright lights of the big city. All this
investment into programming assured of losing to test patterns in the
ratings, all this with the words, "We're Back ... Oregon Football," on the
signage.
These Ducks aren't strange. They're simply shameless.
This preening has nothing to do with Oregon's debut on Steinbrenner's State
Run Television -- a privilege for which they paid $50,000 to get on air; just
like Joey Harrington slapped on the side of a building near Madison Square
Garden for $250,000 a year had nothing to do with Heisman hype a season ago.
This is Oregon raising the ante on the Arms Race, transforming itself into a
national billboard for college football excesses. Ultimately, why does
Oregon's inferiority complex demand they do this?
Just to show the nation they can.
To what heights are these schools willing to senselessly squander money,
validating perceptions that these are merely football factories with no
legitimate connection to the university itself? How high is the spending
going in college football? Stand on Broadway at 47th Street, tilt your neck
back and see for yourself: It threatens to stretch all the way to the high
heavens.
Do you wonder why supporters of Title IX get so angry when they're blamed
for schools dropping minor men's programs? Do you wonder why academics just
threw their hands in the air when classroom buildings are rotting? Oregon
officials will tell you these ads were financed out of boosters' generosity,
but listen: If school officials wanted $550,000 to endow post-graduate
scholarship for football players, they would've asked for it. They didn't.
They wanted to do this unapologetic flexing for America's eyes. They wanted
to escalate the needless, wild spending of college football, full speed ahead
as the sport spirals toward its Sodom and Gomorrah.
Out of nowhere, the Ducks have turned into a perennial power. It should
be understood that Mike Bellotti is one of the nation's best coaches, a man
constructing a national program without a hint of impropriety. Yet, it isn't
his X's and O's and recruiting charm that have elevated Oregon to
unprecedented glory. He's been the beneficiary of an ambitious administration
determined to reach the multimillion-dollar payouts of the Bowl Championship System and windfall of booster donations that come with the spoils of football glory.
Not long ago, Oregon completed construction of an indoor practice
facility for football, costing $15 million. Now they're expanding the
school's football stadium. They want 12,000 extra seats and 32 luxury boxes.
All that costs is $90 million. Oregon wouldn't let Bellotti leave for USC in
the past, nor lately Notre Dame. The school threw money at him, just like
the big boys do, pushing his package well beyond $1.5 million a year.
Oregon isn't alone. Across America, universities are rapidly raising the
salaries to keep and lure top coaches, increasing budgets and staffing.
They're expanding the number of seats and luxury boxes in their stadiums,
constructing opulent practice facilities, weight rooms, dining halls and
locker rooms.
Across America, everyone wants to go for it now. Join the Arms Race of the
BCS, or be left behind.
"The fear is many institutions are writing checks with their mouths that
the body can't cash," one Division I athletic director said. "Football
coaches are dictating incredible expenditures with the rationale that they
need it for recruiting the best players. They're a lot like 8-year-olds in
the sandbox, telling mommy and daddy they can't go on unless they get the toy
the kid next door has.
"Well, the bills are going to come due for a lot of things, and a lot of
us think this sport is destined to financially implode."
So when Bellotti seethed over the Ducks getting passed over for the national
championship game last season, comparing the BCS to "cancer," it should've
surprised no one that the face of University of Oregon football had lost his
perspective.
Just take a stroll past the Broadway billboard on an afternoon this fall, Keenan
Howry's 52-foot-by-173-foot image, and you'll understand how it could happen. Just
turn on your television to the Ducks games between the Yankeeography on Mel
Hall and the Victoria Principal infomercial and see for yourself. The nouveau
riche of college football have come to the big city, flashing wads of cash
and screaming over the honking horns and sirens of Times Square, "LOOK AT
US!"
Even way up high, they sure do sound like that crazy man promising the end of
the world down on the street.
Adrian Wojnarowski is a columnist for The Record (Northern N.J.) and a
regular contributor to ESPN.com. He can be reached at ESPNWoj@aol.com.
