camel at sea

Regardless of what they say publicly, I don't think Clemson and FSU go to the major trouble of getting out of the GOR without some backchannel conversations with either the B1G or SEC telling them that they have a landing spot if they succeed. The company that makes the most sense as the intermediary for those conversations is ESPN, which points to their landing spot being in the SEC. ESPN would have to look like they have clean hands in all of this, though, so you'd need some legal theater. If those two leave, the ACC is in the new Big 12's situation. Nobody else has enough value to move into the B1G or SEC. They'd be in that fall of 2021 space that the Big 12 was in, where schools like KU and ISU were talking themselves into believing they had a Big Ten invite but that wouldn't last long. I think it would play out the same way. After a few months, Tobacco Road would have a hand on the reigns of the ACC, they'd be making Big 12-ish money, and they'd probably settle in and be happy.

Beggars can't be choosers. If you're going to actually try to get the Texas TV market, to any meaningful degree ever, then you need a large public university to pair with the two small private ones. UTSA is by far the best option on the board to fill that role. You're basically making a bet that the UT system will build them up in the areas outside of competitive football, and it's a good bet long term. In the short term, where the media rights are concerned, Traylor has them playing good football, in a good TV market.

The rich private schools from the AAC would pay the AAC exit fee to affiliate with Stanford/Cal - provided that those two actually commit to rebuilding the PAC. If you get those AAC schools on board, then it buys the PAC a bridge year to wait on the MWC schools who can't do the $34M buyout. It's messy but it's doable. After a year as the PAC-8 or whatever, they could add in whatever MWC programs that they want. The end product would be the 5th best conference in the country. Its champion would usually play in the expanded CFP. The big struggle would be with Apple over whether or not to add schools like Fresno or Boise, to boost interest. I'd guess Apple wins the argument as they'd hold the purse strings and the alternative would be even worse. You could make something like this work: WSU, OrSU, Stanford, Cal, Fresno St, SDSU, Boise Tulane, Rice, UTSA, SMU, AFA, CSU, Wyoming

So if the CalFord to ACC stuff is done, the next move for the PAC4 is either 1) merging with the MWC, or 2) an AAC raid and an Apple+ media del. They could park on 8 members for a year and then fill out the roster with MWC teams when the buyout number drops. I'd guess that the Bay Area schools prefer the second option. There's some value in the "Pac" brand and they'd want to keep its history, NCAA credits, etc. If Apple can promise better money than the AAC, then I think they could get SMU, Rice, and Tulane relatively easily. The tug-of-war between the academic people in the Bay Area, and Apple, over which other MWC/AAC schools get invited later would be really fascinating. SDSU and Colorado State seem like safe bets, but would Apple twist their arm enough to make them invite Boise or Fresno St?

I remember a couple years ago, there were rumors that TCU was getting a look from the Big Ten because ND allegedly wanted its home conference to have a presence in CA, TX, and FL. This rumor seems like a rehash of that one. The travel logistics of SMU, Cal, and Stanford in the ACC - even if it's just football only - are ridiculous. I could be talked into the idea of Cal and Stanford getting a scheduling agreement for football with the ACC, maybe even with stipulations that they both get annual games with the Irish, but I can't see how full membership would be viable without adding more western schools, too, and I don't know which schools that could be or how they'd justify their invites financially. Just for fun, though: Northeast: BC, Cuse, Pitt, L-Ville, ND MidAtl: UVA, VT, UNC, NC St, Duke SE: Wake, GT, Clemson, FSU, Miami West: Stanford, Cal, SMU, Rice, Tulane You wouldn't actually have divisions (though you probably would have a geography-based scheduling model) but I grouped it this way to visualize it better. The western additions are largely garbage so you'd have to get some kind of serious proof of commitment from Stanford and Cal, to actually try hard at football, before you brought them on.

If they lose FSU, they probably need to add a FL flag, too, for the ACCN subs. They could pick up USF/SMU as full members, Cal/Stanford as partial members in football only. That would (maybe not coincidentally) create opportunities for ND to play the national schedule it covets while remaining in the ACC.

Michigan vs. Michigan State is a good TV matchup, MSU would pitch a fit if it wasn't played, and I'd guess you'd see a lot of disgruntlement from some politicos if it's not an annual game. The Big 10 has already demonstrated that it's going to prioritize preserving rivalry games above setting up a clean scheduling model. There's plenty of room to preserve annual rivalry games and produce a lot of good TV matchups for the over-the-air media partners. Adding Oregon helped with that. My guess is that SC is going to be playing the Bruins, Huskies, and Ducks every year. All three of those are good TV games and there's some history there that's marketable.

100% The thing that makes it even crazier to me is that Cal (under Tedford) was drawing 60K+ crowds and playing Top 25 football. It's like the success of the football program embarrassed the admin, so they kneecapped it.

Iowa was one of the schools with 3 protected rivalry games in the new format: Nebraska, Minnesota, Wisconsin

Yeah. Is Michigan giving up an annual game with Michigan State or Ohio State? There are something like 3 Big Ten West schools that consider Iowa an important annual game. There's just no clean way to format the schedule so they'll do it in a convoluted way instead (which is what they have already announced, prior to adding UO and UW.)

Yeah... I think we could see some horse trading between conferences sometime soon, especially if FSU/Clemson end up moving to the SEC. Maybe Stanford/Cal are part of it.

It's hard to see how this works for either side, unless it's to set up a scheduling agreement for both as independents in football. They could then join the WCC together for all other sports.

I doubt the B1G ends up with a clean schedule model. Michigan can't go to a 1-8-8 model bc they are going to want to play MSU and tOSU each year. I bet they keep and expand the convoluted system they just installed, with each school having a different number of permanent rivals, depending on their situation. The two overriding concerns will be protecting the rivalry games that matter, and making certain that the over-the-air TV partners get as good a slate as possible. I'd guess a distant third will be rotation through the conference slate. The upshot of that is that it likely reduces the number of times any one PAC addition might play Maryland or Rutgers to once a decade (those games are bad for travel, and not great for TV.)

I was curious, so I pulled up the stats from stassen.com to see what Clemson looked like from 1980-2009 (three decades before Dabo got the full-time job.) In that span, Clemson had the 17th best record in the country, and three losing seasons total. Their mediocre eras are still pretty good. They've had 12 straight ten+ win seasons at this point so I'd guess their donors who are used to all the winning will spend the cash to make sure it continues. Their school is a short drive from Atlanta, so they mostly just need to keep local kids close to home to be good. I think their worst case scenario is to be another version of Auburn.

I think that's on the table, but it just depends on how things fall. If the ACC loses ND, FSU, Clemson, UNC, and UVA, the other 10 full members could decide to stick together - like the Irate8 did. They'd have a pretty good roster: VT, Miami, Pitt, Lville, NC State, GT, etc. Decent to good (but not elite) football. Elite brand names in men's basketball.

The 3-6 model would work well to preserve regionality and to cycle through the league quickly. But it wouldn't do as well as the two division model to curb cross-country travel. I'm sure the PAC schools don't want to visit the big 12's eastern wing, and vice versa. BY might be better off with a scheduling model that has ASU going to Morgantown once per decade instead of once every 4 years.

They make sense there given their history with the AAC schools. A two-division model pretty much requires that two Texas schools be in each division, so that everyone has a game in the state annually for recruiting purposes. So it probably comes down to which TX schools insist upon being together. West: UU, BYU, UA, ASU, CU, OSU, ____, ____ East: WVU, UC, UCF, ISU, KSU, KU, _____, ____

Big 12 looking at setting up divisions to help with travel (esp for Olympics) https://footballscoop.com/news/big-12-ad-hints-conference-may-adopt-divisions-to-manage-16-team-alignment

The Big Ten allegedly would, too, but 1) I get the impression both like being kings of that castle, and 2) neither adds much to the football slate of either conference. If FSU and Clemson both paid out $100M+ each to the ACC, to leave, I think UNC/UVA would accept the pay bump and ride out the ACC deal making Big 12-ish money.

I don't know how we get from point A to point B, but I would guess we'll see FSU and Clemson in the SEC sometime in the next couple of years. Those are the squeaky wheels with the best options. Both would be better monetized in the SEC. ESPN owns both the ACC and SEC deals so they can facilitate the move. Strategically, I think the TV side is working toward making more of the best content without destroying inventory volume. The TV partners obviously want more games that draw 5M+ viewers. But they don't want to get rid of the vast amount of 600K-2M viewership games. Live audiences are very valuable, so those games are valuable, too. You can point at the new Big 12 as an example of what the goal might be. The Big 12 will have a bunch of schools that care about athletics and ton of parity. It will thus have a bunch of great games. The ACC is fundamentally less interesting than it might otherwise be because it's got Clemson and FSU so far out in front of everyone else for most of the last couple of decades. But it's not too hard to imagine an ACC without those two, looking a lot like the new Big 12 - elite in basketball, with a ton of competitive parity in football.

In hindsight, it's easy to see that Oregon and Washington knew this was coming. The vetting and details were already done. That's why Phil Knight stopped chirping about realignment a year ago. The B1G dragged this out an entire unnecessary extra year so that they could tell themselves that the Big 12 is the one who really killed the PAC, or that the PAC killed itself. McMurphy should win some awards for his coverage of this realignment cycle.

The problem is they've got to convince several schools to pay a $34M buyout to leave the MWC and they can't guarantee a big media deal to any school who makes that choice. Maybe Apple will still pay well above the MWC payout if the rebuilt PAC goes all-in, but that remains to be seen.

The Big 12 is a couple moves from being able to rebrand as the Border Conference or the SWC.

I think the 3/6/6 model would work pretty well in the Big 12 with the 4C schools. Utah: BYU, Colorado, OK St BYU: Utah, Arizona, TCU ASU: Arizona, Colorado, Tech Arizona: ASU, BYU, UH Colorado: Utah, ASU, Baylor ISU: WVU, KSU, KU KSU: ISU, KU, OK St KU: KSU, Cincy, ISU OK St: Tech, KSU, Utah Tech: ASU, OK St, TCU TCU: Tech, Baylor, BYU Baylor: TCU, UH, Colorado UH: Baylor, UCF, Arizona WVU: Cincy, UCF, ISU Cincy: WVU, UCF, KU UCF: WVU, Cincy, UH