This Column Brought To You By The Folks At …

You don’t need a bunch of suits sitting around talking to tell you collegiate athletics is up to its Swoosh-covered heart in commercialization.

Although if one of the suits is Keith Jackson, he can certainly help you articulate your disgust.

Like most of us, Mr. College Football flopped into his easy chair last Jan. 2 to watch Nebraska prove itself to be the baddest outfit to come down the pike since “no contest” became a plea instead of a point spread. The Cornhuskers were mussing up Steve Spurrier’s hair in what used to be called the Fiesta Bowl, but which for $15 million had been sold down a river of salsa to a popular snack food.

And we mean sold. They didn’t paint the logo on the game ball, but that’s all they missed.

If Jackson is the voice of college football, he can also sound like its conscience when he insists, “I don’t want to see it destroyed or sold out or abused.

“And my degree of feeling of what I saw - and I turned it off at halftime - was that there had better never be a sack of Tostitos in my house.”

Whoa, Nellie. We’ll assume Miz Jackson has amended her grocery list.

Now, when he’s in the booth for ABC, Jackson doesn’t delude himself that his network feeds viewers a diet of public service announcements during timeouts. Somebody has to pay the freight and the freight gets heavier by the year, which is one of the reasons Jackson convened this year’s Edward R. Murrow Symposium at his alma mater Tuesday night.

To palaver the business of collegiate sports and television, Jackson invited a heavyweight panel to Beasley Coliseum on the Washington State campus: outgoing ABC Sports president Dennis Swanson, former Michigan athletic director Don Canham, WSU president Sam Smith and Bill Battle, the former Tennessee football coach who’s now CEO of Collegiate Licensing, a company which grossed about $2.5 billion in royalties last year from selling you the Cougars hat you wear while mowing the lawn.

They had a lot to talk about. Some of what they had to say decried the rampant commercialization they’ve all, to some extent, been a party to.

In an afternoon sit-down, for instance, the topic briefly turned to Nike and the damnable Swoosh now tattooed on college uniforms in a show of marketing force that must have the old preppie alligator people welling up in envy.

Maybe apparel money at some schools is keeping lacrosse alive and the track team in spikes. Nobody can read a bottom line better than Canham, but he still claimed “the Nike thing is a disgrace to me.”

More than a disgrace, though, it could eventually be counterproductive, too.

“If Nike can get all that exposure from the major universities (on uniforms),” noted Swanson, “they’re not going to need to buy television time - and that impacts our ability to pay rights. And what’s the next logical extension? If you’re going to put one logo on there, what’s to stop you from putting a half dozen on?

“Pretty soon, you’re going to look like a race car.”

So it’s an aesthetic question. And a fiscal question. And a moral one.

The collegiate athletic people still like to think they’re part of the educational mission, but more and more they’re walking a tightrope between the entertainment demands of their audiences and financing equal opportunity. More and more, the corporate community has been asked to help - the same companies who buy the same exposure in professional arenas.

So what happens when Joe College sees the corporate support, the TV cash and gate receipts go to pay Shawn Kemp’s $6 million dollar salary - but that his own sweat is only worth room, board, books, tuition and fees?

It scares the college administrator to death.

“If players strike - for a salary or 200 bucks a month or whatever - the public would turn off just like that,” said Canham. “People see the college athlete as an amateur and as soon as that illusion disappears, the loyalty will disappear, too.”

Hmm. That may be more persuasive to the disgruntled quarterback who packs the stadium but doesn’t have 10 bucks for a pizza than telling him the money he brings in has to fund women’s crew.

Easier still would be to persuade him to participate in a national playoff.

This figures to be something of a last stand for the NCAA’s powerful Presidents Commission, which Smith now chairs. Oh, other structural and academic issues certainly remain, but even the WSU president acknowledges nothing will galvanize public debate more than a football playoff. And nothing is a larger potential revenue stream.

And yet Swanson - the man with the money - wonders whether colleges can afford to take it.

“Clearly, there is upside revenue potential,” he said, “but you can argue if we need more revenue. At what price?

“The root of most of the problems that exist in college athletics today is money and greed - whether it’s dealing with agents or overaggressive alumni creating recruiting infractions or elimination of sports. It’s all money driven.”

College administrators had better chew on that the next time they’re offered a Tostito.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review