camel at sea

It was always implied that BYU overplayed its negotiation hand with the Big 12 and it's hard to believe that the Sunday thing was a dealbreaker by itself because it's a pretty easy workaround. Maybe somebody with a better memory of that than me can say what happened. Either way, everything was a lot smoother between both sides a decade later.

Yeah, the Utes are really similar to K-State (~51K avg.) from an attendance standpoint. They are growing, though, and SLC is a pretty good market without an NFL team. Their program is probably not at its ceiling yet. My impression of Utah is that their fans/admins have a higher opinion of themselves than is merited. From the Big 12 side of things, maybe you want them to take a walk in the desert for a few years so that they can come back to the table later in a better frame of mind. Back in 2011, nearly all of the insiders from the Big 12 said the same type of things about BYU. Allegedly BYU was so difficult to work with that the conference changed directions and looked at WVU. BYU is a lot more "happy to be here" now. But if you get a chance to take them now, you probably do.

The Big 12 is going to produce a few teams, nearly every single year, with good records. That's just a function of conference scheduling. Those teams will be ranked. When they play each other, they're going to draw an audience. The American conference has done that fairly often over the last few years and the new Big 12 is much better than the American. Ranked Big 12 games > ranked PAC games because people in Texas and Oklahoma care about college football more than people on the west coast.

In 2022, OSU's game with K-State had 3.38M viewers. The TCU game had 2.14M viewers. The Baylor game had 2.41M viewers. OSU-Tech had 1.63M viewers on FS1 at 3:30 opposite the SEC game of the week. There were some dumpster fire totals in there, too, but they were in bad windows (FS1/ESPNU) mostly. https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/college-football-tv-ratings The Big 12 should be in pretty good shape going forward. Football is a regional sport, with regional audience mostly,, and the Big 12 is located in a rabid CFB territory.

And yet probably 2M people would tune in to watch, especially now that UT and OU won't be occupying all the better timeslots. Until Texans and Okies care less about CFB, the new Big 12 will be fine. It's gonna be the junior varsity version of "it just means more."

Ralphie belongs on the Great Plains.

Eh, this coming year with TCU coming off a title game, 4 new schools getting their one and only shots against UT/OU, and the UT/OU exit tour, I'd guess the Big 12 will get a lot of games with some national appeal. You can almost pencil in 4M+ viewers for Bedlam (even if both teams suck) right now. After UT and OU exit, the "national draw" games will just be those games between schools who are ranked. Their good games will have CFP implications. If a few programs establish themselves at the top of the conference, somewhat consistently, then whoever those programs are will see some brand growth and the national interest that comes with that.

The problem was that they weren't perceived as the silver medalist in Texas anymore. aggy was considered (competitively) one of the big dogs of the conference when it formed, but they were mediocre within the league for almost their entire run in it. RC couldn't keep up with Mack or Stoops or Leach. The Pirate owned them for his decade in Lubbock. Mike Gundy had four wins in a row against them when they exited. I remember reading that one of aggy's admins said their brand was pretty indistinguishable from Tech's at the time that they left for the SEC. You could make a pretty good argument that one of the Big 12's most destabilizing forces was that it's lower middle class beat its lower upper class too often. NU, CU, and aggy all entered the conference nationally dominant and all left on long runs of relative mediocrity.

Yeah. It's not like the Big East isn't a great basketball conference in its own right. They've got way more history there, and the travel is significantly better, too.

The ACC might be in the early stages of their own WAC/MWC style break-up. The biggest issue for the ACC is that they've got a LOT of football dead weight. If they dropped their four worst programs, the per-game value of what is left goes up quite a bit. They wouldn't just lose bad games, a 10 team round robin of would create more good match-ups, more often.

I'd guess that the primary goal is getting FSU north of Big 12 payouts (i.e. UCF payouts) - even if they're only a couple million in front.

The closer we get to the end of cable, the less UNC is worth to a conference media deal. They're basically Kansas if they can't point toward "in-state subs" tied to cable.

A relatively sensible path forward: 1. Big 12 takes the 4C (maybe they get spooked by the ACC implosion talk) 2. Big Ten adds Oregon/Washington after the 4C move 3. SEC adds FSU/Clemson at some point 4. ACC - now stable b/c nobody wants the rest of their membership - adds Big 12's eastern flank 5. Big 12 adds more from out west. The Big Ten and SEC are both at 18. The Big 12 and ACC are both around 16. It's not perfect, but it's pretty rivalry-friendly. Other than the B1G's western schools (their long-time Rose Bowl partners), the geography of each conference makes sense. We don't have any giant football brands sharing a conference with small brands anymore (easier media rights negotiations going forward, more stable intra-conference dynamics, etc.)

If the ACC is only down two schools, I think they'd not only hold off any attempts by the Big 12 to poach from them, they'd be in good position to poach from the Big 12. The ACC would still have Miami, VaTech, UNC, Duke, Pitt, etc. I think if that group of schools called WVU, Cincy, and/or UCF, any of them would come running provided the money was even close to similar. Travel, rivalries, and academics would all be better for them in the ACC. On the flip side, I don't think the Big 12 would be all that broken up to see them go (especially if all three were to go together.) In addition to collecting some buyout money, that would remove travel headaches and allow for some more cohesive conference branding. The Big 12 could also at that point add more western schools if it wanted.

The article you posted from thespun basically agreed with my take. The low seed upsets do well in the early round games and the Tourney people like those upsets. People want to see blue bloods from the regional final onward. The mix of both is what makes the tourney great. This past year's Final Four is a weird thing to draw conclusions from. There were 3 Cinderellas and the title game was a blowout. The title game being a blowout played into its low number as much as the teams in the game. If you try to professionalize something that is beloved precisely because it's not professional, you're going to turn a ratings juggernaut into an expanded conference tournament that far fewer people care about.

I think it's going to come down to how much of the ACC is left by the B1G and SEC. If there are still 8-10 schools in the ACC, then the three eastern Big 12 schools would probably join up with them. If the ACC ends up smaller than that, then the Big 12 would probably just absorb more eastern schools. It's hard for me to see how most of the ACC would be additive to either the SEC or B1G. Even FSU and Clemson would probably be middle of the pack or lower with respect to AD value in the SEC. Everyone else certainly would. How is adding to the middle additive for everyone? If the SEC sort of defensively grabbed the Noles and Tigers, and stopped at 18, is Miami valuable enough to split the Big Ten pie into another slice? I think it's very questionable. Same with UNC. UVA, Duke, Georgia Tech would all definitely not be additive to athletics.

Generally speaking, casual fans and gamblers want to see the big upsets on the first weekend, but they want to see bluebloods or near bluebloods in the regional final and onward. The big danger of cutting out the non-power conference programs is that you lose the appeal of the current tourney's opening weekend. March Madness - as currently constructed - works. In addition, you can't make a 60+ team tourney work from a pool of about 80-90 schools. The tourney loses a lot of value if you reduce the field down to 32. That's a notably smaller slate of games.

For the long-time CR followers, Genetics56 is one and the same as NebFaninWi. The board owner over at DirtBurglars banned her for trolling / creating multiple accounts, and he said her posts were coming from Chicago (with the implication being that she worked for the Big Ten.) Either way, she appears to be part of some kind of pro Big Ten internet spin operation, either officially or unofficially. None of that means the stuff in the twitter thread is inaccurate. But there may be some ulterior motives for putting that narrative out there.

The connected B1G media guys didn't know about SC/UCLA/Nebraska/Rutgers/Maryland ahead of time. I'm not sure how much weight to put into their collective insight. McMurphy isn't the only guy pushing the Oregon/Washington to Big Ten talk. Dennis Dodd said something similar recently for CBS, as did Connor Morrissette for SI. The PAC PR people are arguing that the media leaks are being organized by Endeavor Media. If so, then the question is whether Endeavor is working for the Big 12, the Big Ten, another media entity, or maybe all of the above. I know initially FOX was putting the 4C to Big 12 stuff out there via Joel Klatt. FOX isn't bidding on the PAC rights, and hasn't been for a while, so I think it's at least possible that the reason is a preference at FOX to see the PAC broken up. It makes sense to me that the B1G Presidents would rather not have the PAC's blood on its hands. If the 4C jump, then they won't - even if they provide a landing spot or Oregon and Washington in that aftermath. I think there are plenty of reasons for SC/UCLA and especially the B1G West schools to not want the Ducks and Huskies in the B1G as recruiting competition. But maybe there's a way to make scheduling / travel more palatable by including those two and that is viewed as a sufficient offset. I don't know.

Eh, I'm not so sure. They need to be in a conference for Olympics, either way. Putting together a football indie schedule as an indie would be very challenging, given the unknowns with scheduling in other conferences moving forward. The path of least resistance is to keep the PAC going, but to place a heavy emphasis on academic quality of the expansion candidates. That cuts in favor of Rice and Tulane getting invited. SDSU, Colorado State, and SMU all appear to be acceptable given that there have been a lot of PAC trial balloons about all three. From there's it's just a question of how to fill out the roster. If it were me in their shoes, I'd end up here: West: WaSU, OrSU, Stanford, Cal, SDSU, Hawaii (football only) East: Wyo, CSU, Air Force, SMU, Rice, Tulane That's a good amount of inventory for a streaming partner, in multiple time zones. The West division should be pretty familiar-feeling for the old guard PAC schools. The East is academically pretty solid (maybe you flip one or two of those for someone else, depending on priorities.) I think you'd have a good shot to land Gonzaga as an everything-but-football member to boost men's basketball.

At some point though, probably relatively soon, one of the 4C will jump ship. The lingering issue of a media rights deal (or not having one) will force the issue. Continued delay over the lack of an acceptable rights deal will mean an unbearable risk of being left behind. Oregon and Washington can make certain that no deal is ever acceptable until one of their comrades finally leaves. I think Oregon would be making more noise right now if they didn't have a good spot lined up. The PAC won't die, though. because there will not be a spot for everyone. For some period of time, Stanford, Cal, Oregon State, and Washington State (maybe Utah, too) will stick together, sign whatever deal they can, and poach the MWC and AAC. The PAC will be the fifth best conference after weakening the MWC and AAC even further. Its champion will always be in the CFP.

Yep. TCU just signed eight blue chippers in the '23 cycle. The recruits all knew that Texas and OU are joining the SEC and they signed to play in Ft. Worth anyway. Their portal class was full of SEC guys, too. If they're at or near the top of the Big 12 going forward, they'll sign really good players. Between the location, the facilities, NIL, and the recent history, Toad has a lot to sell. Baylor will be similar when they get motivated to play the game more aggressively. Deion will land 5 stars. BYU will land the occasional 5 star Mormon. The Big 12 move will be big for them in that respect. The Big 12's current membership has been successful in building solid programs through evals, development, and great schematics. Those schools have been putting a good product on the field for years without great recruiting classes. Realignment won't change much for them.

If ESPN is out as a primary PAC 12 partner (per Dennis Dodd report last week) then that could be the final straw for CU or Arizona.

The Frogs just had 8 guys drafted. The year before Baylor had 6 and Cincinnati had 9. The Big 12 will just have to have one or two squads like those each year. If that happens, whoever ends up at the top of the league will belong on the field with everyone but the top of the SEC. That's doable. In the long run, it might even end up a positive for the conference, from a perception standpoint, if the school with the NFL talent in a given year rotates through the league.

If the Big 12 adds an odd number of PAC schools, ESPN's preference would probably be to add another western school ("Big 12 After Dark" requires inventory.) SDSU football has averaged about 9 wins per over the last decade. Their hoops program just played for a national title. They're among the better academic options from the G5, out west. Their enrollment is north of 30K. Their TV market is top 20 nationally. They have a brand new football stadium. The new adds from the PAC would almost certainly want continued recruiting / alumni exposure in CA, if that's an option. Obviously SDSU doesn't make sense on their own. But they make plenty of sense as a #16 if the Big 12 adds CU, UA, and ASU first.