College GameDay goes old school

It has absolutely nothing to do with the inaugural College Football Playoff. The last time either team claimed a national championship, Calvin Coolidge was president. It’s supposedly a rivalry game, but the favorite has won the last seven matchups and has home field advantage. The game won’t be broadcast on ESPN or any of the national networks but rather on a network-affiliated channel only available with certain cable packages. I could not name a single player on either team’s roster.

And yet, I’d argue the most interesting college football game this weekend is the one steeped in so much tradition that the game is known simply across college football as The Game.

Harvard vs. Yale.

Though Michigan and Ohio State might claim a trademark on the nickname “The Game,” the Harvard-Yale game truly is one of the classic rivalries in football. The programs, both founded in the 1870s, are two of the oldest in the entire sport, and Saturday will mark the 131st meeting between the two — Yale holds a 65-57-8 series lead. Though the last win was in 1927, during Coolidge’s second term, they’ve claimed 34 national championships, with Yale claiming 27 and Harvard claiming seven.

I was a little surprised to see ESPN announce that it would film this week’s edition of College GameDay on campus at Harvard. In fact, I was hopeful the set of the college football prediction show would come to Pasadena this weekend for the USC-UCLA game so I could spend my Saturday morning trying to get on TV. But the move by ESPN actually makes a lot sense, and it will provide a glimpse into a side of college football that honestly doesn’t make as much sense — or should I say cents? — compared to the football I’m used to watching.

For how exciting the season has been, this weekend actually looks like it will be relatively quiet in Division I-FBS college football, at least on paper. The Saturday slate features only two matchups between two ranked teams in the AP Poll — No. 24 USC at No. 11 UCLA and No. 15 Arizona at No. 20 Utah — and those four teams aren’t really in the discussion for a spot in the playoff. All the teams that are could hypothetically lose to their unranked opponent, but most of them play at home, so an upset wouldn’t even elicit the field storming of the week. With no games jumping out as guaranteed heavyweight barnburners or particularly probable upset chances, it makes sense for ESPN to go for a more unusual setting for College GameDay.

This year’s edition of The Game will also be particularly exciting as it will be crucial for the Ivy League championship. Harvard leads the conference with a 6-0 record to go along with a 9-0 overall record, but Yale, 8-1 overall and 5-1 in conference, could claim a share of the title with a win.

But what I’m most interested to see is the atmosphere of an Ivy League game, and really just any Division I-FCS game. It’s fascinating to me how little revenue programs make in that division, and yet schools still pledge the resources to field those teams.

The Ivy League doesn’t have its own TV network. When the Ivy League most recently renewed a two-year deal with NBC Sports Network, the deal required NBC to broadcast a minimum of six but no more than 10 football games a year on the network’s cable affiliate channel, not the actual national network. The league did not disclose the deal’s value. The Pac-12, on the other hand, does have its own network, and projected that each school in the conference would make $25 to $30 million per year from the conference’s media rights deal with national networks like ESPN and Fox.

Now, a school like Harvard certainly doesn’t have a shortage of money. Bloomberg recently reported that the school’s endowment is $36.4 billion. I can’t even comprehend what that means, and adding an extra $30 million from a TV deal would be less than a 0.1 percent increase in that fund.

It’s interesting to note, however, that Ivy League schools don’t give any athletic scholarships; only academic scholarships are given to those who qualify for financial aid. The NCAA Division I-FBS football model gets a lot of criticism for exploiting athletes by only compensating football players in scholarships, and this is a topic worth its own column. But the system gives 85 student athletes — insert NCAA sanctions joke and excuse for any performance shortcomings due to depth here — from 128 schools competing in Division I-FBS football full-ride scholarships to four-year universities. That’s an opportunity for over 10,000 football players in any given year to study at an elite academic institution for free, an opportunity many of them would not be able to afford without the scholarship.

The other common misconception among NCAA critics is that the revenue made from the mega TV deals all ends up in the pockets of university administrators and NCAA organizers. Not just the NCAA, but every school in the NCAA, is a nonprofit institution. It’s important to distinguish that this revenue is not profit because the revenue goes towards funding non-revenue sports in universities and providing other student athletes with the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to play college sports.

Now, of course, the money invested into a Division I-FBS football program only becomes revenue if the team wins often enough to sell tickets and get people to watch on TV. It’s a business decision with different answers for different universities. I have no idea what Prairie View A&M’s athletic budget looks like, but my guess is that the Panthers are doing just fine in Division I-FCS and that their athletic director would be delusional to think they run with the big boys. Harvard would, of course, have to find a conference to compete in — the ACC would make the most geographic sense — and that would be the biggest hurdle. But if Harvard wanted to be good at football, my guess is it would find a way to be good at football. Stanford provides a great model. Whether or not that would be worth the investment and change in image is an existential crisis regarding the value of college sports and college as a whole that I cannot answer for Harvard — I didn’t even bother applying there. But it’s something I find really interesting, and I hope ESPN discusses the possibility on Saturday.

I have high expectations for some hilariously witty signs and posters from students on set at Harvard during the GameDay filming. My perception of the student body at Harvard is still marred somewhat by The Social Network, but I’ve developed a much softer spot for the school since my older brother Chris was accepted there. I hope Lee Corso picks the Crimson to win, not because I’m invested in the result at all, but because the Crimson isn’t a real mascot and I’d be curious to see how Corso goes about wearing this nonexistent mascot on his head. And as I joked with Chris, I hope one team records a sack of the other team’s quarterback in the endzone so we can finally determine which of the two universities is really a “safety” school.

I don’t mean to undermine the significance of the USC-UCLA game. Somehow, the Trojans can still win the Pac-12 with a victory over the Bruins and one Arizona State loss. But the best is yet to come from that rivalry, and I look forward to when College GameDay comes to town the next time both of those teams are legitimately fighting for a playoff spot.

For this week, it’s all about the Ivies in college football. The matchup might feel as relevant as the Calvin Coolidge administration — did he do anything as president? — but it’s worthwhile for a sport that has changed so much in the last decade and will change even more in years to come to take a look at its old-school roots.

Luke Holthouse is a sophomore majoring in broadcast and digital journalism and policy, planning and development. His column, “Holthouse Party,” runs Wednesdays.