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Pretty much every debate over who should play for the national title, every argument about the staggering amounts of money, every angry tirade about how college football is nothing like what it used to be, traces back to a man who saw a lot of this coming, then made it happen — Roy Kramer.

Kramer, the one-time national championship-winning head coach at Central Michigan University (1967-77) who became an athletic director at Vanderbilt, then, eventually, commissioner of the Southeastern Conference where he reshaped an industry to reflect the billion-dollar business it would become, died Thursday. He was 96. The SEC said he died in Vonore, Tennessee.

“Roy Kramer set the standard and raised the bar in intercollegiate athletes,” CMU athletic dir

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