Trojan Man

Yep, if we're going the anecdote route I know people who reacted the same way when the Rams left LA. But that move didn't kill NFL fandom in LA the same way cutting fanbases out of the top level of CFB will kill CFB fandom in their region and among their fanbases. In the years between LA losing the Rams and LA getting the Rams back I still remember seeing tons of NFL fans at sports bars on Sundays to watch NFL games. People still talked about the NFL a lot and followed it closely. The pissed off Rams fans who swore off the NFL after they left town were a minority. That won't happen with CFB if you cut out every fanbase the networks deem undesirable because CFB is a much more regional sport. If anything that would boost NFL ratings because that's an outlet for the excluded fanbases to continue getting their football fix, the reverse of what happened with you and DFW Horn. It's promising CFB's decision makers seem to recognize this at the moment, but I worry greed will eventually change their minds.

The Premiere League is a professional league, which is an inaccurate comparison with CFB. The NFL would be a more accurate comparison. Professional fandom is more malleable than college fandom for a couple reasons. Pro sports are more national than college sports so you don't need a local team to feel invested and people tend to have a deeper connection with college teams, making it harder to abandon them or choose a new one to follow (nobody has a framed piece of paper that says "University of Dallas Cowboys" in their office). When the Rams left LA some of their fans quit watching the NFL but most of them adopted a new team. There are tons of Cowboys/Packers/Steelers fans around LA and not all of them are from Texas/Wisconsin/Pennsylvania. In the 20 years between the Rams leaving and the Rams returning NFL fandom stayed strong in LA despite not having a local team because it's a far more national product than CFB. If USC and UCLA dropped football or never joined the B1G and were relegated to some lesser level of competition while the B1G/SEC went on to make their own league and playoff only playing each other you would not see that same sort of B1G/SEC adoption in LA like there was for the NFL. College sports in LA would end up like college sports in NYC, where none of the natives give a shit. Why would smaller fanbases like Purdue's handle being kicked out of the party any differently? Like I said, you can cast off one small fanbase and survive. You cast off every fanbase after the biggest 24-32 in the sport and that adds up to a big chunk of viewers who will no longer consume your product. As for those awesome matchups every week, they won't feel so awesome when even the best teams have at least 2-3 losses every year because they replaced all the games they typically win 95% of the time with stiffer competition while the teams that currently win 8-10 games become 4-6 win programs and take a reputation hit. No more 11-0 Michigan vs 11-0 Ohio State or 12-0 Georgia vs 11-1 Alabama (last year's SEC CCG) after you replace the bottom half of each team's schedule with top 25ish teams. This is where the chiefs need the indians. The indians eat losses and inflate records for the chiefs, the indians get paid to be a punching bag that dreams about the once in a generation dream season where they become a power, the chiefs feel good about winning 10-12 games, the indians tune in to watch the chiefs play each other.

LSU plays the traditional SEC week 12 cupcake (UAB), their Tennessee Quality Loss tm gets murdered by unranked South Carolina, their Ole Miss Quality Win tm gets blown out by unranked Arkansas and they move up a spot to 5th. I'm sure the committee is itching to put LSU in the top 4 to replace the loser of Ohio State/Michigan after they get a hard fought SECSECSEC road win over 4-8 A&M this weekend.

If we're digging up past results to inform this year's decisions lets revisit how Ohio State's defense fared against Pac 12 offenses in 2021. Ohio State gave up a combined 80 points and 495 rushing yards in their two games against Pac 12 teams last year. Turns out it's harder to play defense against teams that aim to score more than 17 points a game and are led by QBs who can throw the ball farther than 10 yards, both of which are rarities in the B1G. Who knows how good the defense for Ohio State or Michigan really is this year since the best QB either one has played so far is Sean Clifford. He wouldn't be a top 5 QB in the Pac 12 (Williams, Penix, Nix, DTR and de Laura are all better). The B1G is terrible this year and whoever loses next week between Michigan/Ohio State should not be considered for the CFP at all unless there is chaos everywhere else. The middle and bottom of the B1G this year is atrocious. If Michigan and Ohio State played their letdown games against middling Big 12 or Pac 12 teams yesterday instead of Illinois and Maryland they would have lost. The analogous teams in the standings are Baylor and Washington State, both of whom are better than Illinois and Maryland. This is the point I was getting at comparing TCU's schedule to Ohio State's/Michigan's. The B1G schedule is stronger at the very top. TCU doesn't play any one opponent who will match Ohio State or Michigan. The Big 12 schedule is stronger week to week, meaning there are more risks to slip up on TCU's schedule. TCU's last place conference opponent beat the probable B1G West champion and 80% of Big 12 teams are bowl-eligible compared to 64% of B1G teams (71% if Michigan State upsets Penn State).

Conference strength fluctuates year to year, don't be intentionally obtuse. In 2021 the Pac 12 was a complete joke, in 2022 it's undergoing a renaissance.

For a playoff hopeful, Ohio State's and Michigan's schedules are easier than TCU's. It's the exact same thing teams like Cincinnati and UCF get dinged for when they go undefeated. Playing 9-10 garbage teams with zero hope of beating you where you only have to get up for a couple games per year is easier than playing 9-10 scrappy teams that can beat anyone on any given Saturday, even if none of them are top 5 teams. If I was tasked with comparing TCU to Michigan/Ohio State in front of the committee I'd point out the last place Big 12 team won on the road over the probable B1G West champion (Iowa State over Iowa) as proof there are no bye weeks in the Big 12 like there are in the B1G when you play anybody not named Michigan, Ohio State or Penn State. Michigan State falling off a cliff and the West being a joke has really hurt the B1G this year. Michigan canceling their series with UCLA so they can play 3 high schools also needs to be held against them by the committee, that kind of pussy behavior is bad for the sport. As for the Domers my main concern is a hangover effect for USC following the dramatic win last night. If USC shows up ready to play they should win. Offensively Notre Dame is inferior to UCLA. Defensively they have feasted on some real horrid offenses, and I'm including Clemson in that because Uiagalelei is a bust. They haven't played a passing game worth a shit since September. Playing against Caleb Williams and his receivers will be a different ballgame than what they have seen in their current winning streak against Boston College, Navy, Clemson, Syracuse and UNLV.

Sark was mediocre in the Pac 12 long before he was mediocre in the Big 12, remember where he earned his nickname? Arizona and Cal went down as one score games but USC kept them both at arm's length. It never once felt like they had a chance to win and each game ended with USC kneeling deep in offensive territory. Also Arizona has a pretty good QB as anyone who watched them knock off UCLA last week saw, they aren't a Colorado-level team. USC also played those two games with several key injuries on both sides of the ball. Oregon State, Utah and UCLA are the only toss up games USC has played where either team could have won.

Why would it? The biggest games would still be played yearly and you'd play everyone else 2/4 years. I don't see how Ohio State replacing games against Maryland and Rutgers with games against Iowa and USC is an existential threat to the B1G. Ohio State fans would like that, USC fans would like that, Maryland fans would like that, Rutgers fans would like that. Iowa fans (all fans of current B1G West teams really) might not like it because going divisionless means they no longer get a welfare spot in the CCG, but I don't think they'll get much sympathy from B1G East fanbases that had to be better than Ohio State to make the CCG and they can always fix that by getting better. There were only 3 teams in the Pac 12 I gave a shit about playing yearly (Cal, Stanford, UCLA) and 95% of USC fans would agree those are the Pac 12 games they wanted the most. I really wouldn't have cared what scheduling format was used as long as USC still got to play those games I really cared about and I suspect most fans feel the same way about their team's big games. This might eventually happen but it would be terrible for the sport. The chiefs need some indians just as much as the indians need the chiefs. You can jettison Purdue and survive. But if you jettison a few dozen Purdue-level programs that adds up to a huge ratings hit. Those fans won't adopt Ohio State or Georgia or Notre Dame as their new team. They'll just say "Fuck it" and quit watching. Even if Purdue never makes the CFP a lot of their fans are still going to watch CFP games, especially those involving other B1G teams, because just having a shot gives them the dream of making it someday and connects their team to what's happening on the field. To the credit of whoever makes decisions in CFB they got this right with the proposal for CFP expansion. 6 conference champion autobids gives the left behind ACC and Big 12 and Pac 12 fans a reason to keep watching and feel invested, instead of feeling like they're playing a totally different sport than what the B1G and SEC are playing and like there's no point in caring. 6 at large bids also makes it more likely for the second tier B1G and SEC teams to make the CFP instead of being the Georgia/Alabama/Ohio State/Clemson/Oklahoma circle jerk the 4 team playoff has been.

Jilted Pac 12 refs decided to insert themselves into the game and gift Utah 14 points with a pair of the most bullshit RTP flags I've ever seen to extend drives that were stopped (one negated a pick, one negated what would have been a punt on 4th and long). Even Huard and the rules guy Fox brings in for reviews said they were terrible calls. That first RTP really fucked USC. If it wasn't called it would have been USC ball up 14-0 in a dead stadium with a chance to blow the game open. Instead Utah makes it 14-7 a couple plays later and just like that their stadium and their sideline wake up. Oregon State is ranked and a tough place to play. USC is the only road team to win there since 2020. Oregon, Utah and Washington all lost their most recent game at Oregon State. Anyways, USC/UCLA will be decided by whoever protects the ball better and which defense can turn a few of the opposing team's drives into field goals instead of touchdowns. Charbonnet worries me, but I don't see UCLA's secondary slowing down Caleb Williams and his receivers. USC's best LB was injured at Utah and he should be back today which is huge. USC has zero depth at that position so the dropoff from the starters to the backups is dramatic.

It hasn't been officially confirmed but it's 99.99% chance B1G is going divisionless in 2024, when USC and UCLA join. They decided to keep the division format for 2023 because they didn't want to use 3 different formats in 3 straight years (divisions in 2022, divisionless 14 teams in 2023, divisionless 16 teams in 2024). I think this is the only way to do things once conferences get this big. With divisions and 16 teams you would go way too long in between playing teams in the other division. That already happens in the 14 team/8 conference game SEC, where A&M and Georgia have only played once since A&M joined. The networks aren't paying out huge contracts to broadcast games like Ohio State/USC and Alabama/Georgia once every 5 years while getting garbage like Ohio State/Rutgers and Georgia/Vanderbilt every single year. Divisionless conferences giving us more peer vs peer games and fewer glorified scrimmages will be a win for everybody. As long as they pick all the right games to preserve as the 3 permanent rivals the only downside I see is the potential for ties but I think there will be enough H2H games between contenders to sort it out naturally 9/10 times. With playoff expansion that drawback is greatly diminished because the #3 B1G/SEC team is probably still in the CFP even if they get screwed by the tiebreaker.

One of those conference games will probably be replaced with a newcomer. Not sure how much more exciting it is for you to host Cincinnati or UCF instead of Kansas but at the very least it's something different.

The best part about all this was Saturday tweeting that the Raiders look horrible shortly before the Colts hired him, then beating them a few days later.

Describing USC and UCLA as mouths to feed, lol. That's like the rest of Bon Jovi's band calling Bon Jovi a mouth to feed.

Worrying about the Big 12 fucking with the number of home games you'll have the next couple years is just paranoia. They're not going to do anything that would give Texas or Oklahoma cause to argue in court they should be allowed to leave early without penalties due to the conference having a materially harmful impact on their revenue, like giving you only 3 conference home games. You may not like where your road games are located, and you may not like how they're scheduled such as playing a night game at BYU the week before Thanksgiving, but you will get all the home games you're owed and all the revenue that comes with them Also, keep in mind that other schools sell recruits on playing games in Austin and Norman so there is additional motivation for other Big 12 schools to request road games vs Texas and Oklahoma before you leave.

Mandel was cheerfully writing the Big 12's eulogy after the Texas/Oklahoma to SEC news broke and would have been happier than a pig in shit if the Pac 12 finished off the Big 12 by poaching Oklahoma State and Texas Tech around that time while leaving the rest of the Big 12 dead in a ditch. I don't remember much talk of "strength in numbers" and regret over the least desirable Big 12 teams getting relegated to a midmajor conference when it looked like the Pac 12 could kill the Big 12. Now that the tables have turned he thinks this competition is stupid and wants the Big 12 leftovers and the Pac 12 leftovers to sit around the campfire singing Kumbaya and jerking each other off, no more of this mean poaching business. He's normally a pretty good CFB writer but he is unbearable on this topic. What would be stupid is for the Big 12, who clearly has the upper hand, to take on all of the Pac 12's deadweight and baggage when they're in an excellent position to cherry pick only the best available programs and let the others fall to the MWC. Not the Big 12's problem to worry about or subsidize Oregon State and Washington State and Cal, just like it wasn't the Pac 12's problem to worry about or subsidize Kansas State and Baylor and Iowa State in August 2021.

Kliavkoff is a fucking moron. Every USC fan I know is excited to leave for the B1G, and that excitement isn't just about money. I'd still want to leave the Pac 12 even if all conferences had similar payouts. As I described earlier the goals and values and profiles of USC compared to the rest of the Pac 12 are too different to work together. Decades of those differences pushing in opposite directions have created a very bitter environment that makes cooperation next to impossible. There is a bit of truth to UCLA's fanbase grumbling about the move to the B1G but saying he has "yet to talk to anyone in the USC community who is in favor of the move" is an outright lie. Anyone affiliated with USC who doesn't like the move to the B1G is an extreme outlier. If you want propaganda and spin to be effective it needs enough truth to murky the water because we can all see when Pinocchio's nose grows. https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/34883645/pac-12-commissioner-says-fans-not-favor-usc-ucla-move

A lot. From a big dog perspective, it sucks being in a conference without peers. USC was responsible for a third of the Pac 12's media value. That's insane. Nobody wants to be the only horse pulling the cart, especially when all the passengers in the cart insist on being paid the exact same as you and treated by the conference as if they're equally important as the horse while constantly spewing vitriol at you and treating you like shit. They use their voting numbers to make sure their interests are always taken care of while yours are always ignored. I don't want to get into too much of a sidebar about specifics but the Pacific Northwest schools were especially bad about this and the issues they pushed for always came at the expense of the California schools, especially USC and UCLA. This is the root cause of the resentment and bitterness between USC and the rest of the Pac 12. These two groups just fundamentally don't have the same interests and goals and motivations because they are too different. In the B1G this problem will not exist. Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State are also major revenue generators as opposed to USC doing all of the Pac 12's heavy lifting so that's 4 horses pulling the cart instead of 1. In the next tier of substantial contributors you have Wisconsin, Michigan State, Iowa, Nebraska and UCLA. In the Pac 12 that next tier was just Oregon, Washington and UCLA. Even the freeloaders in the B1G will be more tolerable since they still have things like academics or basketball or passionate fanbases going for them. The Pac 12's dregs have absolutely nothing redeemable in their favor. Swapping Oregon State and Washington State for Northwestern and Indiana is a big upgrade in the dregs department. Bottom line is USC gained nothing from its affiliation with the Pac 12 while the rest of the Pac 12 majorly benefited from being affiliated with USC. It was an uneven, one way relationship. In the B1G USC will finally experience what it's like to be in a conference that is a rising tide instead of a bucket of crabs.

I know why it couldn't have worked out, but I think if the original Big 12 had managed to overcome their drama and stick together they would be poaching USC and UCLA and Washington and Oregon right about now. That conference would go toe to toe with the B1G and SEC in terms of ratings and media deals and prestige. It would have been nice to have a third super conference made up entirely of teams west of the Mississippi instead of ceding all power to the Midwest and Southeast. There are fans who still don't acknowledge Penn State and Arkansas and South Carolina as "real" B1G/SEC schools. USC and Texas will never be fully seen by the rest of their respective conferences as a true B1G/SEC institution, a stark contrast to having some kind of Big 12/Pac 12 hybrid where USC and Texas (and Oklahoma too I suppose) are the clear top dogs.

That's fair. To avoid further derailing the thread I won't nitpick down into the rabbit hole. I'll end my tangent by saying the one and only time I came close to throwing down at any sporting event was with a white Fresno State fan back in 2005 and he started it 😆 Asshole threw a football at me unprovoked while I wasn't looking and drilled me in the back with it while I was walking past his tailgate, shouted "Throw it back, faggot!" at me then got in my face when I chucked it as hard as I could in the opposite direction and told him to fuck off back to Fresno.

Absolutely remarkable the Big 12 will Mr. Magoo their way into the 3rd place "best of the rest" conference after how many times they have been poached and left for dead in the last few rounds of realignment. I'm glad it's playing out like that. I think Big 12 games are a lot more fun to watch and generally feature higher quality football than ACC and Pac 12 games. It also seems like every Big 12 school gives a fuck about winning and does their best to field a competitive team as opposed to a good amount of ACC and Pac 12 athletic departments who are happy to just do the bare minimum required to get the conference payout and could care less about their record, so it's nice to see them get rewarded for doing their best. $60M total per year is nothing to sneeze at, even if it pales in comparison to what the B1G and SEC will earn. That's more than enough to build top notch facilities and retain good coaches and have a healthy budget for recruiting and support staffs. After the playoff expands I'd expect the Big 12 to get at least one at large berth most years and even two at large berths some years. I think boiling the sport down to two conferences would be terrible for the overall health of CFB despite my school having a seat at the winners' table, so the existence of a third respectable conference is a great outcome in my opinion.

What exactly is racist about noticing that the same people who turn soccer stadiums into war zones in Mexico can sometimes get a little too rowdy at football stadiums in America? I'm not sure what the thumbnail for this video will look like since it says age-restricted and only available on YouTube but it's from a riot between opposing fanbases in the middle of a Mexican soccer game earlier this year where 17 people died. Anything going on at NFL stadiums is pretty fucking tame compared to that. Just FYI for anyone itching to rattle out a furious reply, Guerrero is part of my name and I almost certainly spend more time around Mexicans than you do.

Also a completely different game when Pac 12 refs decide to throw baby shit soft roughing the passer flags to extend two Utah drives that were stopped, especially when they don't use that same Tom Brady standard when Caleb Williams gets hit a tenth of a second after the ball leaves his hand. Those trash calls, which were denounced by the announcers and Blandino, gifted 14 points to Utah. The first one canceled out an interception in the endzone that would have resulted in USC ball up 14-0 with all the momentum and a chance to blow the game open. Instead it became 14-7, the crowd wakes up and Utah is right back in the game. Honorable mention to the back to back targeting flags they threw on USC in the 4th quarter. They were both overturned upon review, but Pac 12 refs soiling their diapers any time they see a big hit is a major reason why nobody in this conference bothers to play defense. Pac 12 refs hate the fact contact exists in a contact sport. I'd happily trade ref crews with Texas for the remainder of the time our teams are stuck in our lame duck conferences. At least then we could rest easy knowing any shit calls are just garden variety incompetence instead of outright malevolence from a spurned conference that desperately wants anyone but us to win trophies on our way to bigger and better things.

We're a long way off from 20-24 team conferences, long enough that it's useless to try to predict what that landscape will look like. That won't happen until we're closer to the end of the ACC's GOR. The B1G and SEC are waiting on that for their next feeding frenzy. In the meantime I just don't see everyone else dying off once the B1G and SEC expand to 16 teams. There are some hard limits money cannot change, namely scholarship numbers and playing time. Texas won't be able to put more than 11 players on the field at a time and offer Oklahoma State's entire class in addition to their own class once they replace the Big 12 patch on their jersey with the SEC patch. And it's not like Oklahoma State and Texas were drinking from the same well for the last 25 years anyways. They picked over the next best recruits in Oklahoma and Texas after Oklahoma and Texas took the best available and they'll keep doing so after realignment. They've built competitive rosters using that strategy. It won't be invalidated just because Oklahoma and Texas, who have always had financial advantages over Oklahoma State for as long as they have fielded football teams, will have an even bigger financial advantage in a few years. If the last decade taught you and I anything it's that throwing more and more money at a struggling football program doesn't necessarily fix it. Even if annual NIL salaries blur the line between scholarship players and walk on players not all players will want to ride the bench for a B1G/SEC program when they can be The Guy at an ACC or Big 12 or Pac 12 program and still get developed for the NFL. There will still be good coaches outside the B1G and SEC, which is a bigger ingredient for success than money. We also have to keep in mind recruits are kids. They won't have the same understanding us adults do who have been following the sport longer than they have been alive of how things can change in college football. As an example, USC lost a very important 2022 LB recruit to Stanford because he didn't understand head coaches could be fired so he was upset when Helton lost his job. He knew nothing about Oklahoma/Riley so he had no idea how much of an upgrade that would be or how accomplished USC's new coach was. Some recruits will make conference affiliation a huge deal, some won't care or won't understand. Then there's the playoff. For both recruiting and fan interest the new playoff format guaranteeing 6 conference champion slots is a huge lifeline for schools outside the B1G/SEC. November games with playoff implications in the post-UT/OU Big 12 will draw eyeballs.

I wouldn't trust any B1G expansion rumors. There were zero whispers or leaks about USC/UCLA joining. No insider knew that was happening before it was announced. I'd expect any further expansion to be similarly tight-lipped. I'm not so sure about that. The Baylor/Oklahoma State CCG last year did pretty well in ratings. Oklahoma State/TCU this weekend will be another data point for how much attention leftover Big 12 teams can get in a big game, though going up head to head with Alabama/Tennessee is rough.

A lot of reviews seem to be for stupid shit neither coach cares about like a 2 yard pass on 1st and 10 or scenarios that never get overturned. How often do you see a 3 minute stoppage to review the spot on a 4th and 1 QB sneak or goal line handoff only to end up with "The call on the field stands" because the ball and the ballcarrier totally disappear in the mass of humanity at the LOS? That play hasn't been overturned the first 1000 times it was reviewed, no need to keep reviewing it. The booth being allowed to stop the game to review for targeting that wasn't flagged on the field is pure chickenshit. Refs are taught to err on the side of caution with targeting and let replay sort it out. If they don't think what happened was targeting some asshole in the booth shouldn't be allowed to stop the game for 5 minutes to break down the previous play like it's the Zapruder film. I'm not shaking my fist at anything. I've attended 3 CFB games so far this year. I'll go to at least 2 more, maybe 3 or 4. I'm just pointing out it's inaccurate to say "Those assholes at ESPN and Fox and the conference HQ are the reason we have to sit through a dozen commercial breaks every game" like some people claim. They're just doing what the schools asked them to do. The money in the massive new contracts that have everyone in the B1G and SEC jumping for joy isn't materializing out of thin air. I'm the kind of weirdo who travels to go to games in new places that don't even involve my team so I've seen how different types of programs all over the country maintain their atmosphere while the game is dragged out by commercial breaks. This will vary depending on personal taste but generally the breaks feel shorter and less inconvenient to me at places that do things to remind me I'm at a CFB game during the dead time as opposed to places that fill the breaks with ads and piped-in club music. Stuff like band/cheerleader performances, team-specific traditions and cheers, silly competitions between students on the field trying to win a year's supply of burgers from some restaurant in town, commemorations for other teams or past players or notable alumni, that kind of thing gets my attention instead of watching Mr. Redshirt's commercial timer on the field tick down.