Wednesday, June 9, 2010
CLEARLY, THERE ARE NOT MANY MATH MAJORS INVOLVED:Following this whole college conference shuffling thing from a distance, how confusing is it if the Big 10 suddenly has 12 teams, and, assuming it continues to exist, the Big 12 would be looking for a 12th? (And isn't the logical move for the Big 12, assuming only Nebraska leaves, to move Oklahoma State to the North Division and slot TCU in the South?)
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The Big XII is going to be looking for a lot more than that unless Notre Dame makes the Big 10 a twelve-team league. If they don't, look for the Big 10 to add five schools -- Nebraska, Missouri, Pitt, Rutgers and Syracuse would be my guess, and then you'll see other parts of the Big XII bolt for the Pac 10, largely a Texas bloc but also Colorado possibly as well.
ReplyDeleteYeah, orangebloods.com, who's owned this story, has it pretty much as a done deal that Texas/A&M/Texas Tech/Oklahoma/Ok State/CU are all bound for the Pac 10, with the conference beginning play in 2012.
ReplyDeleteWith my understanding that Texas legislators may try to press Baylor into that instead of CU.
ReplyDeleteHeard the same thing but most recent reports were that: a) Cal, among unnamed others, balked at a religious institution joining the conference (it's the same reason BYU was never considered a viable option) and b) CU has already started the process of 'opting out' of the Big XII, with an invite already in hand.
ReplyDeleteUT and A&M are meeting tomorrow to assure they are on the same page and that could change things (again) but, at least for now, it seems like CU is #6.
No part of Texas drains into the Pacific. Thank you, no. Hawaii? Boise State? Fresno State? San Jose State? Utah? There's at least a hydrological connection worth noting.
ReplyDeleteWTF? Seriously?
ReplyDeleteFor reals. 16-team mega conferences will happen.
ReplyDeleteThis is heartbreakingly awful. One of the great things about the Pac-10 is that everyone plays everyone. Another one of the great things about the Pac-10 is that it doesn't involve the Big XII.
ReplyDeleteIf they just put the new teams into a Pac-10 South division, plus maybe Arizona and Arizona State, I don't exactly see what the added benefit is, other than a championship game against the winner of the old Pac-8. I'm not saying there isn't a benefit, because clearly they've thought about this.
ReplyDelete<span>I don't exactly see what the added benefit is, other than a championship game against the winner of the old Pac-8. </span>
ReplyDeleteSurprise - it's money. The teams in a PAC-16 would get $10 million more a year from TV than the Big XII or PAC-10 teams ever did.
I guess it's too late to say it, but please, please, please leave the Pac-10 alone. Although my alma mater (along with the one up the road 110 miles) joining created the 10, we don't need no stinkin' Texas football in the mix.
ReplyDelete--Goes off to the corner to sulk and wonder now how many more years til we can actually make it to the Rose Bowl--
Now, as a former resident of Texas, I'm well aware of the wacky things Texas legislators can do, but how exactly would Texas legislators have the power to get Baylor into the conference? Baylor isn't exactly an alluring prospect for any conference, given its record of (at best) mediocrity and its less than huge/devoted fan base beyond the immediate Dallas/Ft. Worth/Waco area. CU makes a whole lot more sense for the Pac-10 geographically and otherwise.
ReplyDeleteOf course, I still miss the old Southwest Conference.
Leave the Pac-10 alone? The Pac-10 isn't being meddled with; it's doing the meddling.
ReplyDeleteOh, yeah. I thought that TPE's post above was awesome, but geography plays so little in this. It's all about the money and being jealous of the big $$$ wandering its way to the SEC.
ReplyDeleteOn a totally different note. I have really enjoyed the mix of posts on the blog recently. A bit of sports, some TV, some music, some random stuff, the spelling bee, etc. It's been a lot of fun. [Deep thought du jour.]
ReplyDeleteI get that the conferences would each get more money, but would each school? The question is not whether the Pac-10 TV money would be greater, but whether each school's share of the Pac-10 TV money would be greater than without expansion. It's possible that Texas (and to a lesser extent Oklahoma, which is on the same level competitively but not in terms of followers) is subsidizing so much of the Big 12 that it will bleed less by joining a conference that has USC and UCLA, but I don't know that you solve that problem by bringing in Colorado, Tech, A&M, and OK State with them, and then putting them in a league that has its own thin markets. It pains me to say it, but the Oregon and Washington schools, plus ASU, probably are beneficiaries of the shared wealth in either the present or future constitution.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny -- I'm too young to actually remember the Pac-8, but I very distinctly remember Arizona and ASU being brand new, and to this day I think of them as junior members.
ReplyDeleteA&M has a huge and very devoted fan base spread throughout Texas in particular, even though it's sited in a city without a huge non-A&M presence. 10K+ Aggies graduate a year, and Aggies love Aggie football in particular.
ReplyDelete<span>I get that the conferences would each get more money, but would each school?</span>
ReplyDeleteYes. It's been reported that the proposed Pac-16 would provide $20 million a year in TV money to each team. Pac-10 teams currently get between $8 million and $10 million a year per school; Big XII schools get a bit less.
Larry Scott is either going to deliver a Pac 16 (or whatever) network or a record-breaking deal with Fox. As Ramar notes, the invitations are supposed to contain a guarantee of $20 million per year from any proposed TV deal per school.
ReplyDeleteAnd it makes sense. With the proposed expansion, you'd have 7 of the top 20 TV markets in the country (Dallas, Houston, and Denver joining LA, Bay Area, Phoenix, and Seattle), not even including Portland.
So, from a Pac 10 perspective, you're adding 3 big markets plus a good national draw in Oklahoma.
From a Big XII perspective, you're leaving a conference with the other division of Ames, Columbia, Lincoln, Manhattan, and Lawrence for LA, Seattle, the Bay Area (and, yes, Corvalis, Eugene, and Pullman) not to mention adding Phoenix (and to a far lesser, but I'm biased as an Arizona alum, Tucson) to your own division.
Like I'm supposed to care about a Texas A&M v. Washington State game? Absent specific Cal-preferring post season implications I cannot think of any variation required over my preferences (i.e., Cal over Washington over Washington State over Arizona over Arizona State over Oregon State over UCLA over USC over Oregon over Stanford). I'd be curious to see, setting aside private schools USC and Stanford, how much further afield these nominal Pac +6 teams recruit than do the public Pac-10 schools. Even in Cal's best recent seasons, it's hard to find more than a handful of guys from outside California. I assume (and allow for) a bit more leeway with teams other than UCLA, given smaller populations, but even Oregon is pretty-heavily Oregon-raised.
ReplyDeleteOld school Jayhawk chiming in here. How does any of this make sense? It's all money, I know, but since when does it make sense for Nebraska or Mizzou (!!!) to join the Big 10. As a lifelong Chicagoan, I've heard about acadmic standards (blah, blah, blah). How do either of those schools fit in with the U of I or Northwestern? It's all BS in search of the mighty dollar,
ReplyDeleteThere are allegedly means through which Austin legislators can tell the Pac-10 that if they want Texas, they need to take Baylor along with the other Texas schools.
ReplyDeleteHere's the thing--basically, seems like the new Pac-10 division is basically going to be the old Big 12 South plus or minus a team or two, which will continue to play each other (and the UT-OU and UT-A&M games aren't going anywhere, as they're classic football rivalries).
ReplyDeleteI'm actually surprised the SEC hasn't decided to play ball and try and poach UT, OU, A&M, and Tech. Reshuffle a little bit and you've got UT, OU, A&M, Tech, MS State, Ole Miss, LSU, and Arkansas in a SEC Western Division. That's a pretty damn alluring conference on its own. (That, of course, leads to ACC, Big 10, and Pac-10 all expanding in different ways, and, to some extent, a defacto playoff system.)
I've been a Big 8, then Big 12 fan all my life. I feel like this is Mom and Dad telling me they're breaking up. (OK, maybe not that bad.) But still, this is what I know. It'll be weird to have the school my parents went to, Kansas State, be lost in limbo compared to the school I went to, Oklahoma, being in the catbird's seat.
ReplyDeleteAs far as I understand it, Missouri's as good as gone. They have been the most active in trying to get out of the Big 12 and have ruffled some feathers. So all the other schools have turned their attention to Nebraska. Yes, the Big 12 could replace Nebraska with TCU, but they can't really replace both Nebraska and Mizzou, who they don't actually expect to stay around. As for the schools leaving for the Pac-10 (Consider a new name of the Big West?), it IS about the money. It's really that simple.
Here are the other catches: Oklahoma and Oklahoma State are a package deal, and you can't take Texas without Texas Tech and A&M, and you might as well take the Oklahoma schools with them, since OU won't let Texas go that easily. A new "Big West" TV deal would be much more lucrative, you'd trade Arizona and Ariz. State for the Big 12 North schools, and you'd get maybe one or two trips a year to the west coast.
The people who truly are losing out are Iowa State, Baylor and Kansas State. Kansas will likely end up somewhere nice because of their fancy basketball program, and they may pull K-State with them. As for Iowa State and Baylor and possibly K-State? Good luck in the Mountain West or Conference USA or wherever else you end up.
After following this closely, I think I've gone the gamut of the five stages of mourning, and I'm already in acceptance. I understand it, but I'm pretty sure I don't like it.
I'm a little confused on how that works--I don't know that a Texas state law can prevent the Pac-10 from offering only to certain schools. (It could, however, prevent UT from accepting an offer unless conditions are met, and having UT in your conference is, to quote Rod Blagojevich (or Joe Biden), a "big f***in deal!") I don't get why they'd need to protect Tech and A&M, both of whom aren't quite on the level of UT, but who will land with UT anyway for rivalry reasons if nothing else.
ReplyDeleteI saw where Georgia coach Mark Richt was being questioned about it.
ReplyDeleteMy guess is that the SEC is weighing whatever options it has, but it already has a very lucrative TV contract and attractive, money-producing championship game. I also have to wonder if the SEC will factor in whether there is any benefit to increasing the likelihood of SEC teams cannibalizing each other's win-loss records---SEC teams have a habit of, say, Florida taking a win from Auburn, who takes a win from Alabama, who takes a win from Florida. A couple of times, that's risked the SEC not making the title game, even though they may have one of the best teams in terms of talent and strength-of-schedule.
I'm generally not in favor of these changes. However, if it leads to the destruction of the NCAA, I might get on board.
ReplyDelete[/ears turning red at MA comparing this to divorce and mourning; still wearing my homemade black-on-black Sonics shirt to the gym at least once a week because it puts me in the properly homicidal state of mind]
ReplyDeleteI guess that's a fair response. I'm sorry to dredge up bad memories and our lengthy debates of the era (My argument remains that OKC is a great place and great people for a major league team, but Clay is an arsehole of epic proportions). And I apologize for making the divorce metaphor. That goes a bit far. But still: The college football landscape I've ever known is breaking up. This just gives me further reason to hate Nebraska.
ReplyDeleteThis could work if and only if the rump big 12 takes in the best of the mountain west, WAC, and CUSA teams. Let's say the Big 12 loses Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, OU, OKS, CU, Nebraska, and Mizzou. That leaves Iowa State, K-State, Kansas, and Baylor. They then add Utah, BYU, Boise State, University of Idaho, Fresno State, TCU(!), University of Houston, and Rice to get to 12. That's enough for a playoff, and this league would be competitive enough. Could also throw in C-State, Utah State, SMU, and maybe New Mexico or whatever to make for a decent 16 team conference, though probably not as strong as the Pac-16, Big-16 (nee Big-10), or the SEC. (I think Big-10 adds 5 teams: Mizzou, Nebraska, Pitt, Syracuse, and either ND/Louisville/Cincinnati).
ReplyDeleteThe conference that's really getting screwed is the Big East for football, assuming they lose Syracuse, Pitt, and maybe one other. I could see a few joining the ACC or going down to C-USA. This would be good, since the Big East never worked for me as a football conference.
And the first domino is Colorado. http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/news/story?id=5271438
ReplyDeleteGreat pre-emptive move by Colorado, who risked being left out under the "Texas legislature" thread above.
This will change shortly, but at this moment the Pac-10, Big Ten and Big XII each have eleven schools.
ReplyDeleteColorado has always seemed like it should be a Pac-10 team. It seems more like the Pac-10 in every way than the Arizona schools -- size, rough academic quality, style of football play, uniforms, recruiting territories, quality of revenue sports, quality of non-revenue sports, general feel of surrounding location, length of flight to get there.
ReplyDeleteI'm just glad none of these stories include kicking Northwestern out of the Big 10. While it's no fun to frequently be the league doormat in many sports, I'd rather be a doormat than a mid-major.
ReplyDeleteBut does something come along to be Colorado's obvious end-of-the-season rival? The Pac-10 schools are set up nicely, with 5 specific rivalries (almost) always played on the same weekend. Does Colorado even have a current rival now?
ReplyDeleteActually, I always thought that was the reason why Colorado never joined the Pac-10 -- nobody to dance with the last week of the season. The current rivalries are so natural and so ingrained -- it seems like a part of Pac-10 culture. The structure of a Pac-10 season: regular season, Apple Cup (or Big Game, or whatever they call it in Oregon or Arizona; I don't think there's a name for it in LA), then Rose Bowl (or, if you're 6-5 on the season, Aloha Bowl).
ReplyDeleteI will consider this the college football version of killing Mr. Eko for no apparent reason.
ReplyDeleteSee, this is just one of the pluses of the SEC. We can do whatever the hell we want to our conference structure without our name making it look like we can't count.
ReplyDeleteThe Atlantic 10, however, is standing strong at 14.
ReplyDeleteWow--apparently, it's getting ugly, with UT wanting to go to the Pac-10 and A&M wanting to go to the SEC. Also, article provides an explanation for what exactly the very big stick they're wielding to try and force Baylor and Tech in.
ReplyDeleteOur local Austin paper reported that R.C. Slocum (former A&M coach and current advisor to A&M president) said, "Any decision A&M makes will be based purely on its financial impact, and not on more intangible elements, like preserving traditions and rivalries." The locals are losing it over the possibility of the UT/A&M rivalry being gone. What would everyone do with their Thanksgiving?? :-)
ReplyDeleteThe article also gives a little insight into the oddities of Texas politics and the ties to football. It's true, it's a bizarre state but I love it!
http://www.statesman.com/news/texas/texas-texas-a-m-discuss-big-12-future-739278.html
**why in the heck didn't I think to come here to discuss this yesterday, this thread is awesome - rich with information and varied opinions, not something I found anywhere else**
ReplyDeleteAs a WSU alum, I'm on board for the Pac-16 because of the money, and the belief that in order to compete effectively, we'll have to leverage the additional funding more efficiently than those in other markets. Not all that different from today. In thinking about the experience of the students in Pullman, it doesn't sound like a whole lot changes. We're frequently underdogs, but the potential for major upsets and Cinderella stories only increases for schools like WSU, and those magical occassions would be even sweeter with some more conference heavyweights.