Henry Iba's prophecy: Lack of "biscuits" could ruin college athletics
Published: 9/28/2012 9:26 AM
Last Modified: 9/28/2012 9:26 AM
In doing research for a story on the evolution of Oklahoma State football, I stumbled across some interesting comments from former OSU basketball coach and athletic director Henry Iba. The comments didn’t necessarily fit the story I’m writing for Saturday’s paper, so I’ll repeat them in this blog.
In 1970, Iba told the Tulsa World that he never woke up at night worrying about how the Cowboys basketball team was going to get the ball in the bucket. But his “other” job kept him awake plenty of nights because he worried about how OSU was going to pay the bills.
“My training was that a man paid his bills and didn’t spend for something he didn’t have the money for,” Iba said. “I remember when our budget was $300,000 a year. I remember when it went to $700,000, and sometimes we had trouble. Then I thought I would go crazy the first year it was $1,000,000.”
Iba said the budget “keeps going up” and he said that scared him.
“It has reached the point where a school can not get by on gate receipts alone,” Iba said. “People in athletics must be careful in the coming years. They could ruin athletics. There may not be enough biscuits to go around.”
Not enough biscuits to go around? The BBT -- Big Biscuit Theory -- changed college sports into a business to such a degree that no one should pretend that it’s anything else. In pursuit of more and more $$$, colleges have played musical chairs in regard to conference affiliation and sold their souls to television networks, allowing TV folks to schedule college football games on weekdays and set kickoff times for Saturday night games that end on Sunday.
I could give more examples, but the bottom line is this: Iba didn’t like where college sports was headed when he made those comments 42 years ago. He was right to be concerned.
Written by
Jimmie Tramel
Sports Writer
