Larno said:
Many of you are too young to remember but up until 1984 the NCAA controlled all college football TV games. This meant that there were only a handful of games on Saturday, some national and some regional. Then the Supreme Court ruled against this monopoly, and now we have essentially every game on TV. For not that many years now it's been possible to watch every Cal football game on TV if you had the right subscriptions. But before that we might get a handful of games, or less. Try having to listen to Starkey for years to follow any Cal away game (I didn't, just checked in once in a while for the score. And having to wait a long time for him to say it). Yes, it was convenient to know that every home game was going to be at 12:30 or 1:00. But I would gladly give that up to have every single game, home and away, available on TV. Since I started watching Cal games in 1964 there are countless away games I would have loved to see on TV. I'll watch any time, any day.
The tradeoff wasn't worth it.
Back in 1984, I could go to every home game as a 3 year old and have a blast with all my mom and dad's college buddies.
Now I rarely take my kids to games. The screeching of the PA stadium ads cause them to have a miserable time. The cost is absurd because TV money inflated costs so much that TV money would never be enough for schools that now had national brand reach.
My dad's group of 20 people's season tickets then ensured that if anyone dropped out (or died) there was enough people to grab someone else to reload the group. During Tedford they discouraged large groups and then broke them up. Now I can go to games alone, drag my poor kids to a horrid experience or... ? And the kicker is TV money DIRECTLY destroyed every rivalry and tradition outside the Big Game that Cal had.
I went to Idaho and thought I would give the ATO a shot. $210? I went to Auburn and paid $150 for the same seats, including a $50 service fee to gametime.
TV ruined Cal football from the fan experience to price to the demand that we pay coaches millions, to now paying players and letting gymnasts make money on Instagram.
Everything about college football, and college athletics in general, went to **** with the cash TV money brought and the hell that lust for money created.
I would GLADLY listen to the radio for 30 minutes waiting to hear a score than take the TV any time hellscape that we ended up with.