camel at sea

Dennis Dodd reported something along those lines a couple weeks ago. The downside of that for the B1G is the threat that concept poses to existing B1G members. Purdue, Northwestern, Rutgers, etc., are not going to want to introduce the idea that schools should be paid what they are worth. Once implemented with the west coast schools, it could easily be turned around on them later. At some point, Oregon would point out that they are more valuable than ____ and should be paid like it. So... I could see the B1G and its expansion targets threading the needle by structuring a phase-in financial period for those expansion schools in such a way that the money works for everyone else. They'd eventually have to pay the new schools equal shares but they could punt that decision a decade or more and make it a problem for the next rights deal.

If a lot of the value of independence, for them, is the flexibility that gives them to be "national," then the Big Ten being a coast to coast conference might change the calculus for the Irish. We'll see. The money, built-in rivalry games, and the OTA exposure is probably the best ND could hope for, too.

Well, if we can rule ND out for now, then either they're looking at 10 conference games, or maybe that Dennis Dodd report a couple weeks ago about adding Cal / Stanford / Oregon / Washington (but not at full shares) has some validity. If they wait to sign the deal before expanding, they can justify full shares for SC/UCLA and partial shares, or lengthy phase-in shares, for the expansion schools. I'm sure that the Big Ten presidents would love to come up with a way to make adding Stanford, Cal, and Washington viable. https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/big-ten-evaluating-cal-oregon-stanford-and-washington-from-pac-12-as-further-expansion-considered/

I wonder if there's something brewing beneath the surface with additional Big Ten expansion. Maybe they've got ND on the hook.

My guess is that it happened as stated in the resignation letter (which is why current players are backing him up) but while most of the team didn't care, one or two guys (or a staff member who heard it) did care and they reported it up the chain to the university. Once that happened, and it got to the diversity board / HR types, Gundy was done. Even if an official review basically exonerates him, he can't coach a room where at least one of the guys there thinks he's a racist. It's toxic for recruiting, too.

Nobody in the Big 12 is going to be making enough media rights money to have a shot at being a "giant." In UH's case, they probably need like 20 straight years of consistently competing for a conference title / expanded playoff spot to draw the donor/ticket/suite money they'd need to compete at a more elite level.

Not exactly sure why I'm getting a shout-out here. My take on UH is that they'll be a competitive Big 12 football program, that they'll draw better at the gate against better opponents (like... consistently filling up TDECU), and that they've got a shot to elevate their men's basketball program up another level. When Herman was there, they did pretty well on TV, locally, but they haven't replicated those numbers since.

If his story isn't pretty near the entire truth, it's going to piss off some guys in that locker room (rightly so) and they're going to get the truth out. My guess is that it's essentially the truth of what happened.

UCF will be an interesting Big 12 program. They've got the resources to win big in the Big 12. And if the status quo mostly holds, they're going to be making similar media money as FSU and Miami.

Houston and UCF are both additions that can win the Big 12 from time to time in football. They probably won't ever recruit Top 10 classes or legitimately compete for national titles. So their ceilings are pretty similar to the ceilings at Baylor and Oklahoma State. BYU and Cincinnati are pretty much the same. The Big 12's brand is going to be built around its parity and its competitiveness in football and their elite play on the basketball court. I think their additions mostly fit well.

Yeah, no doubt. As a fan, it would be a lot of fun. Utah-BYU as a rivalry game would be great for the conference... but Utah vs. just about anyone in the Big 12 would be fun. Utah and most of the new Big 12 are punch-above-their-weight programs that actually care about winning. I'd watch the heck out of Mike Gundy visiting Salt Lake City for a late kick on Saturday night. My guess is that with no blue blood at the top of the heap, tamping down realistic expectations, that whole group of schools would/will get even more competitive.

I don't know if people care about the '84 natty, but I think most casual fans recognize BYU's helmet right away when they see it on the TV screen. Their national brand is relatively good. If you go back about 50 years, they've won almost 70% of their games, been ranked a lot, etc.

Utah is going to have to play its realignment hand really carefully. Their fans over-value their football program's place in the national pecking order and they're extremely prideful about not wanting to join a league where BYU is a member. Their fans are susceptible to "we might get a Big Ten invite" PR stuff, which will make the selling of practical decision-making hard on their admins. That said... if they play things in the wrong way, they're in G5 oblivion. If Zona and CU join the Big 12 next year, and Utah rides it out in the PAC, they might not have an acceptable landing spot if or when Oregon and Washington leave. Ten years from now, or whenever it all goes down, the Big 12 might decide ASU and SDSU make the most sense as #15/#16 and Utah could be left behind.

It's nice to see this pretty obvious PR campaign by alleged journalists being called out by a national writer.

If I'm at Arizona and/or Utah, then I'm the most nervous about signing on with the PAC. Of the "Four Corners" schools, they bring the least to the table in terms of markets and they are most likely to get left out if this conversation has to happen again in a few years. Utah in particular has to worry about BYU already being in the conference. That said, from the Big 12 side of things, 1) Zona is either 1A or 1B in the PAC on the hardwood and would definitely add to the Big 12's hoops reputation, 2) Utah is the best remaining PAC football program other than Oregon and would provide another really competitive program to the slate, 3) those two are both AAU, and 4) those two in the boat would give the Big 12 a solid amount of late Saturday night kickoff inventory. So if they're both willing to come, you take both, and you're really excited about it. Colorado might feel safe riding things out in the PAC, thinking they'd be the first Big 12 choice from the PAC in a few years if or when Oregon/Washington do eventually leave. That's still a gamble on their part, though. If you play it out that way, and the Big 12 takes Zona and Utah, then the PAC could add SDSU + 1, remain at 10, and the PAC doesn't lose that much financially while probably then having an easier time finding agreement on unequal revenue distribution. Or depending on how things go, you can let them go to the ACC at that time in exchange for a hefty buyout.

It's worth pointing out that the Big 12 was paid on the 12 for 10 deal, for just a year. The 13 year deal signed by the conference in 2012 was negotiated with ten teams and it was signed after TCU/WVU were in the boat. There's this kind of long-running CR narrative that the Big 12 has been paid 12 for 10 for the last 13 years.

The PAC media PR guys are admitting that even with Oregon and Washington in the fold, they'll make less per-school in their next rights deal than the Big 12 schools will make, and they're admitting that PAC schools attend less well than those in the Big 12, but the argument is that the Big 12 won't be far enough ahead to poach anyone. They're acting like that's a much stronger position than it really is. If Arizona and Utah read those tea leaves, and stay where they are, then good luck to them. They're betting big that either 1) Oregon/Washington won't ever be able to leave, or 2) the Big 12 will always have a spot for them down the road. That seems like a particularly big gamble at Utah with the Big 12 already having a flag planted in that state. The Big 12 has been talking about adding Boise / going to 14 since the ink dried on the AAC additions. Boise just announced earlier in the summer some gigantic facilities upgrades are on the way. If the PAC options dry up, then the Big 12 could go ahead with the original plan. Boise would provide the Big 12's next media deal with another Big 12 option for late-kicks on Saturday night. They're a solid TV / football brand. They've been competitive in men's basketball (20+ wins in 8 of last 10 years including 27 and MWC champs last year.) They'd accept a prolonged phase-in period without rocking the boat.

The primary problem in 2010 was that the Big 12's media partners were lowballing the conference. They wanted a destabilized Big 12 so that they could move NU to the Big Ten and A&M to the SEC. It's not a coincidence that FOX didn't find the money for the Big 12's Tier 2 deal until after the Huskers were gone. FOX needed to get what it wanted for the Big Ten, first. https://www.foxnews.com/sports/big-12-fox-sports-reach-tv-agreement The Big 12's leverage wasn't very good because there weren't a lot of potential buyers for selling their Tier 2 rights package. The next year, Disney did basically the same thing for the SEC. There's no doubt they were the hidden hand pulling the strings on aggy's move to the SEC. It wasn't a hard sales pitch for them but it doesn't happen if Disney doesn't want it. If you're going back in time to hypothetically save the Big 12, you have to have a scenario where the Big 12 starts a linear network and has one of those companies backing it. If so, then they would have helped the Big 12 expand to maximize the value of that network.

It's fun to imagine an alternative universe where the Huskers stay in 2010 and the Big Ten settles for Missouri. A ten team Big 12 with Texas, OU, Nebraska, A&M, and two fewer middle weights to dilute payouts could have been very financially formidable on a "per team" basis.

Yep. The Texas and Oklahoma relationship was the inverse of the Nebraska and Oklahoma relationship. OU brass respects Texas brass behind the scenes, and the two sides work well together, even while the two sides hate each other on the field. The leadership at OU and NU didn't like each other, even in the latter days of the Big 8, even though there's this perception that the two fanbases have great respect for each other. In fact, a lot of the old Big 8 didn't particularly like NU's leadership. That played a role in NU getting outvoted on contentious issues in the early days of the Big 12.

Nobody had any reason to believe in '96, when the Big 12 started, that KSU was going to have staying power. They'd been putrid for decades prior to Snyder. KU is essentially the same story, with their Glen Mason era bump, and they have returned to awfulness more than once since then. The North didn't have three brands to match up with the three bigger brands in the south. The North division only had two. That was the problem.

Yeah. Tennessee's stature when the SEC expanded to 12 is the point. Bama - Tennessee Auburn - Georgia LSU - Florida Each of the "Big 6" had a peer school as a cross-division rival so they were able to put together balanced schedules. That couldn't work in the Big 12 1.0. If Bama is playing Kentucky annually I guarantee Auburn and LSU would have had a bigger problem with their set-up. As it was, LSU complained a lot about being stuck with Florida.

OU didn't want to saddle itself with the most difficult conference slate every year. At the time, playing Nebraska, Texas, and A&M annually would have done that. Hypothetically, you could have set up Texas or A&M with an annual game against the Buffs - who were elite when the Big 12 was formed - and that might have helped OU with the Huskers. But that still left one of those two without a "peer" North division school as a cross-division opponent. Texas and OU weren't going to sign on for CU and Nebraska, annually, while A&M played a pre-Pinkel Mizzou. KSU hadn't shaken off their historical stink, ISU and Mizzou were both terrible at the time, and KU wasn't a good enough program to be the annual opponent of Texas or A&M. The SEC's cross-division slate always worked because they had a "Big 6." The two divisions could be balanced, with balanced schedules. The Big 12 1.0 need another heavy-ish hitter in the North. The best option out there for that was BYU (which was rolling and had a recent-ish NC and Heisman winner) but it would have meant being a 14 team league.

In both '88 and '89, the Pigs finished with one regular season loss and the loss each year was by 4 points or less. The '88 game that they lost was by 2, on the road against the Miami Hurricanes. Otherwise they play for a national title that year. It's crazy how the SEC move (and how badly it went at first) has completely erased the memory of how they used to be viewed nationally. From 1960-1989, they were legitimately a Top 15 program and they played in a bunch of major bowl games.