By Ed McGranahan.

By Will Vandervort.

By Ed McGranahan

That blurb on the CBS Sports site about the ACC, Big 12 and Big East possibly exploring an affiliation for marketing and TV led me to the column by Dennis Dodd about the college football saturation.

The two topics aren’t mutually exclusive because they’re about the economics of college sports, an area I probed with Dan Radakovich during our recent discussion about the state of the athletic department at Clemson.

Radakovich was as candid in broad strokes without revealing any secrets. Coincidentally – or not — some of his thoughts on conference affiliation, the ACC’s interest in a league TV network and a point on the rivalry with South Carolina were all addressed in those two stories on CBS.

Asked what his gut told him, Radakovich chuckled. “My gut has been wrong so often on many of those things lately that I don’t trust my gut anymore.”

On the first issue, we are in relative agreement. Since the NCAA refuses to dump the bowl model, rather than another reshuffling of leagues to maximize revenue through football, the next step would be a national college football league, probably with a playoff similar to the FCS, Division II and III models with all but the championship games at the home of higher-seeded teams.

Bowls in current form are relics. Coaches love them because they provide three extra weeks of practice. Players like the perks and gifts and the game if it’s in a sexy city against a really sexy opponent. Would you rather have beaten Northern Illinois in Miami, Louisville in New Orleans or LSU in Atlanta?

One of Dodd’s points was that, TV ratings aside, most bowls aren’t attractive enough to sell tickets. And, he said, there’s no relative correlation of TV ratings and tickets. Alabama-Notre Dame was a hot ticket, but by halftime most folks had switched to Duck Dynasty.

There are too many occasions when ticket sales are taken for granted. Dodd mentioned that there were empty seats at the Alabama-Auburn game. During our conversation, Radakovich brought it up when we discussed the South Carolina rivalry, particularly as it pertains to football.

Clemson-Carolina currently sits on the schedule within a week of the ACC and SEC championship games, not an ideal situation for two ambitious programs. Parenthetically it has been suggested that moving the game forward in the schedules would be a sound decision. After all, once upon a time it was always in October during State Fair week.

Another suggestion was making it the first game of the season. Radakovich, who spent a piece of his career in Columbia, was very aware of the issue. And he’s heard the argument that it’s a matter of tradition.

“Beginning, middle, end of the year? I think it would be intriguing at the right time to discuss all of those possibilities,” he said. “It’s just not as easy as Coach Howard and Rex Enright getting together and saying, ‘When are we going to play?’ There are a few more people involved now.

“There’s that fine line between tradition and habit,” he said. “Is it a habit to be at the end of the year or is it a tradition for it to be at the end of the year? With ever-changing television arrangements and the things we must do to gather fans to attend games, we should never take it for granted that it will always be a sellout in Columbia or Clemson.

“We have to know as athletic administrators that our fans are becoming much more sophisticated and we have to make sure that we are adding value to everything that we’re doing as it relates to selling tickets.”

Clemson’s new athletic director recalled those moments during his years on the staff at USC when he and baseball coach Ray Tanner would commiserate over the challenges they faced. When Tanner walked in the door at Carolina, Radakovich had been on Mike McGee’s staff about a year.

“We would sit down for a half an hour in the afternoon and bitch at one another,” Radakovich said. “We would feel really good afterwards.”

Radakovich won’t be insensitive to the constituencies, and their relationship should become useful because the rivalry, particularly in football, is “an important, critical piece of our year.”

And when he was wearing garnet and black, “it was never good.”

“No one likes to lose to its rival,” he said. “Having been around and in locker rooms that have been victorious and in locker rooms that have been on the losing end, it matters. It matters a lot.”