Bill Snyder: College football has sold itself out to the highest bidder

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"Well, and I’ve expressed my feelings about this on numerous occasions. I can’t tell you I have the answers, but we all have opinions. It’s my feeling that we have exploited college football — college athletics in general and college football, in particular.

“You know, we speak all the time about the welfare of the student-athlete and indeed that is not what has evolved as the most important thing. It’s been strictly about winning and dollars. Maybe dollars first and then winning second, or vice versa. But you know, I think we’ve sold out to the dollars and cents.

“We’ve sold out to TV, and if I were in the TV market or in that field I’m sure we’d want to promote all that we could for our TV business, but you think about games being played for money, that’s the intent of it, you play for money, so we’re playing games on — you pick the night of the week.

“Virtually, I think there are one or two nights we don’t play college football and when you think about a team picking up and traveling, if we have to go halfway across the country and play Thursday night, for instance, you miss Wednesday classes, you miss Thursday classes you probably miss — if they schedule you as a night game, which is what’s going to happen on Thursdays, then you’re going to miss all or a vast majority of Friday classes, and we don’t think anything about that because it brings in money.

“Then we’ve spent countless millions and millions and millions of dollars on so many things. I mean, we all have nice facilities, and we’re all grateful for the people who invest the money to do that, but to me, it kind of sends a little different message, as well. It’s a message that says the dollars and cents are more important than anything else, more important than the value system that you’re trying to impart on young people in your program. There are a lot of things that enter into it, but it’s changed dramatically over the years.”

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