Enough was enough. The television network was getting a spectacle, a shiny bauble with which to lure both eyeballs and advertisers. The school was getting a payday, a hefty holiday stocking stuffer. And the players? Nothing. Nothing but a few more weeks of practice, battered pads and helmets, bodies too, of running and hitting and aching, a draining coda to a long, tough season. All for the opportunity to play middling mid-December college football in cloudy Philadelphia, where the sideline palm trees were imported -- and the 22-degree temperatures were not.

"I still remember running out on the field," says former Syracuse linebacker David Meggyesy. "They had brought in the palms because we were playing against Miami. It was cold as hell, wind blowing, snow, and I’m thinking, 'God, those poor trees.'"

Like a frosted palm frond, Meggyesy felt out of his element. So did many of his teammates. In fact, when Syracuse first agreed to participate in the 1961 Liberty Bowl, a made-for-television matchup featuring star Orangemen runner Ernie Davis (at right) and gifted Miami quarterback George Mira, the linebacker's reaction was typical: since the coaches and administrators accepted the invitation, maybe they should play the game. Disgruntled, the Syracuse players held a special meeting. No coaches allowed. The assembled college athletes had more questions than answers. Why are we even playing in this game? What is it about? Who is ultimately benefiting? The seniors talked boycott. A decision was made. If the team had to play – and in a second-rate icebox bowl nobody had ever heard of, to boot -- the players should at least get something in return. Say, wristwatches. Nice ones. Like the nice wristwatches given out at the major bowls, the Orange and the Rose. And so, the team met with coach Ben Schwartzwalder.

We want watches, they said. Or else we won't play.

A half-century later, their message is more relevant than ever.

Monday night's BCS title game was many things: A 21-0 victory for Alabama; a vindication of Nick Saban's sweep-the-leg coaching style; an entirely unnecessary excuse to party on Bourbon Street. Mostly, though, the contest was a missed opportunity. A wasted chance to bring about change. To hit big-time college sports where they hurt. To strike a decisive blow against a bloated, corrupt, morally bankrupt and downright un-American system that Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Taylor Branch has charitably likened to a modern-day plantation. And all it would have taken was players from Alabama and LSU to link arms, walk to the 50-yard line, sit down on the SuperDome turf and say the following:

We want fairness. We want a say. Or else we won't play.

The economic status quo in BCS-level college athletics -- management makes the rules and reaps the profits; labor has minimal rights, compensation and recompense -- is untenable. Deplorable. Hopeless, really, in the long run, given that the money involved keeps growing and the resulting inequity becomes more and more obvious. Two years ago, Sugar Bowl CEO Paul Hoolahan -- a man who creates little value beyond capably filling an ugly yellow blazer -- earned a reported salary of $593,718.

Meanwhile, a skilled performer like LSU's Tyrann Mathieu -- whom people actually want to watch on television, and are willing to sit through endless advertisements to do so -- gets a scholarship worth a tenth of that amount. Oh, and if Mathieu tried to capitalize on his actual market value -- perhaps by selling T-shirts – he would be punished for both his entrepreneurial hustle and for violating the tenets of amateurism, the classic Greek philosophy of this pie is all mine, enjoy the crumbs, sucker.

But I digress.

Things fall apart. The NCAA as we know it cannot hold on indefinitely, any more than Hosni Mubarak could hold on in Egypt. Everyone knows this. Problem is, the system isn't falling apart fast enough. It's stubborn and entrenched. Which makes sense. After all, if you were a college sports powerbroker -- a conference commissioner, a university president, a megabucks coach -- why would you want anything to change? You make the money. You call the shots. In a neat bit of cognitive dissonance -- the same trick practiced by economic overlords everywhere, once known as the White Man's Burden -- you probably have convinced yourself that the great and noble cause of having college football and basketball players work for almost free as living, breathing brand marketing brochures is somehow righteous. We're doing this for education and the love of the game -- oh, wow, you want to give me a million bucks to wear this shoe company lapel pin? In short, you have no incentive to change, and every incentive to keep on keepin' on.