The Golden Goose Needs A Checkup — And The Schooner Stays Home

The Golden Goose is not dead yet.

But it needs an appointment at the Mayo Clinic, and the specialist keeps rescheduling.

Some say the SEC is killing college football. Others say ESPN is in bed with the SEC. Still others say the SEC is what makes college football worth watching.

Who’s right? There’s enough truth in all three to get everybody subpoenaed.

My diagnosis: The SEC isn’t killing the sport. But the people getting rich off it ought to quit confusing a healthy bank account with a healthy patient.

One exam needs a stethoscope. The other just needs an accountant who works Saturdays.

Count the eyeballs before you count the mourners

Through Week 8, games on ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox and ESPN averaged 3.3 million viewers, down 6 percent from 3.5 million a year ago. NBC and CBS were down double digits. Fox was the only network that didn’t bleed.

That’s a warning light, not a death certificate.

There’s also a wrinkle: Nielsen changed its measuring stick. Since September 2025 it’s been counting 45 million smart-TV households along with the old panel, and that alone produced a 7.5 percent baseline lift. Last season’s celebrated 11 percent growth was partly football and partly a better census. You can’t put taller heels on the drum major and announce the whole band grew.

Still, 22 games drew 10 million viewers last season against eight two years earlier. Those weren’t imaginary customers. The question is whether the sport can keep them without making Saturdays so aggravating that viewers switch to something less stressful — like arguing with their insurance company.

The SEC’s patient is eating well

While the rest of the neighborhood checks the thermostat, the SEC is turning up the air conditioning. SEC-controlled games averaged 5.3 million viewers, slightly ahead of last year. The Big Ten was at 3.6 million and down 10 percent. The Big 12, by the way, was up 9 percent — so this isn’t the SEC flourishing while everyone else sinks.

Then came Florida-Georgia. About 7.1 million watched on ABC, tops for Week 9. Ohio State-USC drew 6.6 million.

Minnesota-Indiana, 4.9. Miami-North Carolina, 4.6.

So no, Florida isn’t killing the ratings. Georgia merely tried to kill Florida’s afternoon, and America stayed to watch the Gators do it through a welder’s mask.

That’s the SEC’s argument in one uncomfortable photograph: these games draw even when one team does all the drawing and the other is looking for an eraser.

In bed? There’s a contract on the nightstand

As for ESPN being in bed with the SEC — fellas, this isn’t a secret romance.

They sent out a press release. ESPN owns the SEC’s television rights, wants its investment to succeed, and has a megaphone that can be heard from Gainesville to the space station.

That’s not proof the rankings are fixed. It’s a very good reason the committee should explain itself in plain English, so fans don’t have to consult a conspiracy podcast.

Florida supplies this week’s exhibit: 5-3 and No. 24 in the first Playoff rankings. A critic sees SEC favoritism. A Gator sees a brutal schedule. The committee owes both of them a better explanation than “trust us.”

What fans are really saying

The complaints sound contradictory until you listen closely. Fans want meaningful games, but they also want their team alive after losing one.

They want continuity, but they want a new quarterback via the portal by Thursday. They want players treated fairly, but they flinch when the starting lineup resembles the departure board at Hartsfield-Jackson.

That’s not hypocrisy. That’s being in love with something that keeps changing the terms of the relationship.

Here’s my suspicion: the sport’s most dangerous opponent isn’t the SEC, the portal or the playoff.

It’s exhaustion.

A touchdown. A commercial. A kickoff. Another commercial. At some point the football starts looking like an interruption in a pharmaceutical convention.

Give the fans heavyweight fights and they still show up — top-10 matchups are up 6 percent. It’s the four-hour hearings on who gets the last Playoff invitation that put them to sleep.

Saturday night in the Swamp

Which brings us to Oklahoma’s first visit to Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, and the unhappy news that the Sooner Schooner will not be attending.

The Schooner, for the unfamiliar, is a covered wagon pulled by two ponies named Boomer and Sooner. It performs at home games in Norman, select special events, and the Red River Rivalry in Dallas — where, in a triumph of Cotton Bowl logistics, it doesn’t actually run on the field. Road trips to Gainesville are not on the itinerary.

This is a shame, because Florida fans have been looking forward to seeing it.

And let’s be honest: even if the Schooner did travel, it couldn’t get out of the shop in time. Not after the wreck of a season Brent Venables has had — a campaign so battered that the only thing keeping it out of the impound lot is the win over Texas. When your season is a write-off, you don’t send the wagon. You send the tow truck.

The Sooners arrive at 4-4, which in Norman these days is known as “rebuilding” and everywhere else is known as “4-4.”

Florida, 5-3 after the head-knocking from Georgia, has a chance to walk in the back door of bowl eligibility with a sixth win. No, that isn’t where Florida once measured success. There was a time when six victories meant checking how many Saturdays were left, not checking postseason travel arrangements. But progress is measured from where you stand, not from where the championship photographs hang.

And Saturday, one of the men responsible for those photographs comes home.

Urban Meyer enters the Ring of Honor at the end of the first quarter, recognized for the 2006 and 2008 national championships. I talked to Urban this week — he’s excited. He told me there had been chances before, but this was the time.

He proudly told me, “You know, Nicki, my oldest daughter, lived with us, and I have six grandkids now. And I just found out she’s going to bring two of the oldest ones to the game on Saturday as a surprise.

“I used to always tell our players that this was my goal really at every job, especially a job like Florida, when I was there, but also every other program that the former players that you see most often are the players from the national championship team under coach Spurrier.

“James Bates, etc. That whole team, you saw a lot of them. “And then there'd be time in history where you just wouldn't see many former players come around. And the reality is they never really won that championship.

“I got to see so many of coach Spurrier's players because they would love to come back and see their name on the walls, see...and show their kids, and someday show their grandchildren.

“And I would tell our players that all the time. “It’s kind of funny. I get those text messages from our players now that they can't wait to bring their their son, their daughter, their wife back and, and experience what they did.”

There’s a certain poetry in Meyer’s name going up while Oklahoma is in the building. His second national championship came at the Sooners’ expense. Somewhere in Norman, they know that, and it’s one more reason the Schooner stayed home.

Back to the Golden Goose

College football doesn’t need an obituary. It needs people in charge who understand that loyalty is not an inexhaustible natural resource.

Give fans games worth watching. Preserve connections worth caring about. Leave enough football between the commercials that people remember why they turned the set on.

The Golden Goose can still recover. Just don’t let the television executives handle the appointment. They’ll make the exam last four hours, sell naming rights to the thermometer, and put the goose in a prime-time window against the World Series.

Photo: Spatms, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons