Realignment talk not going away

[utee94 15903]

20 minutes ago, SwanderedTalent said:

ah, I call bullshit on that article

It's really not even worth pointing out how many errors and issues there are with it.  

[Saint Austin 745]

2 hours ago, utee94 said:

It's really not even worth pointing out how many errors and issues there are with it.  

No kidding. Four of those schools... possibly. But A&M? No way they had any interest in going to the Big Ten.

[Al_4_ISU 12549]

2 hours ago, SwanderedTalent said:

ah, I call bullshit on that article

It's 100% Nebraska propaganda to say "look!  They were doing it too!"

Lee Barfknecht wrote it for Christ's sake.

Edited July 18, 2019 by Al_4_ISU

[utee94 15903]

3 minutes ago, Al_4_ISU said:

It's 100% Nebraska propaganda to say "look!  They were doing it too!"

Lee Barfknecht wrote it for Christ's sake.

Exactly.  The B1G had no interest in all of those schools-- they had interest in Nebraska.   And they'd already worked out the backroom deals BEFORE they ever bothered to announce their intent to expand in December 2009.  Does anyone actually think Delaney would risk the fallout from a "bad" expansion search?  Of course not.  He already had Nebraska in the bag before the announcement.

Oh, but it's all Texas' fault.  I forgot about that bit.

[Al_4_ISU 12549]

16 minutes ago, utee94 said:

Exactly.  The B1G had no interest in all of those schools-- they had interest in Nebraska.   And they'd already worked out the backroom deals BEFORE they ever bothered to announce their intent to expand in December 2009.  Does anyone actually think Delaney would risk the fallout from a "bad" expansion search?  Of course not.  He already had Nebraska in the bag before the announcement.

Oh, but it's all Texas' fault.  I forgot about that bit.

They're the only schools that fit Big 10 academic requirements (well, not sure OU does) excluding UT and OU.  It was just a plausible list of schools that in the Big 12 that fit Big 10 criteria.  Us and KU would have definitely been interested (from a self-preservation stand point; I don't know a single ISU fan that would rather be in the Big 10 if the Big 12 is a viable option), but neither of us offered what the Big 10 wanted in 2010 - new big markets.  We gave them literally nothing in terms of markets (already having Iowa).

Edited July 18, 2019 by Al_4_ISU

[ztejas 43777]

5 hours ago, PilotsError said:

Fuck whoever threw up the bat signal.

I'll flog myself.

[DFW Horn 6521]

1 hour ago, Al_4_ISU said:

It's 100% Nebraska propaganda to say "look!  They were doing it too!"

Lee Barfknecht wrote it for Christ's sake.

All four defectors are full of shit, pointing fingers.

Nebraska and Mizzou were much better off in the Big 12. Both effectively cut off their recruiting pipelines to TX.

['stache 21928]

I completely believe that that group at least made a few calls to try and make that move. OU in particular under David Boren really wanted to join the Big 10 as part of his desperate attempt to make OU seem stronger academically (which it turns out included fraud in reporting to US News). You can find several articles on this through Google. But the Big 10 also wanted east coast markets, so they weren't going to load up on Big 12 teams. They always wanted Rutgers and Maryland to "enter" the NYC and D.C. markets.

[SwanderedTalent 5761]

44 minutes ago, 'stache said:

I completely believe that that group at least made a few calls to try and make that move.

you think those five schools colluded to try to torpedo the Big 12 and join the Big Ten

['stache 21928]

19 minutes ago, SwanderedTalent said:

you think those five schools colluded to try to torpedo the Big 12 and join the Big Ten

I don't know about "collusion" but yes I can believe there were discussions among these 5 about this possibility, maybe not in a smoke filled room, and maybe not all at the same time, but maybe one on one about the possibility,  though it likely never went beyond a few individual conversations. It could have been as simple as Boren proposing this and talking to some of those school presidents one on one about the possibility.

[DFW Horn 6521]

5 hours ago, SwanderedTalent said:

ah, I call bullshit on that article

Me too.

aggy was always infatuated with the SEC and wanted to bail with Arky back in '91.

[Al_4_ISU 12549]

Us and Kansas were in extreme peril, and I wouldn't be surprised if we reached out.  But there was no way in hell given the landscape in those days that either of us were worthwhile additions to the Big 10.  There was an old "insider" board on CycloneFanatic in those days, and some people with proven connections kept saying that if everything went to hell, we might be in better shape than people thought, and they kept hinting at Big 10 conversations, but at the end of the day I can't see it going very far for obvious reasons.

Boren seemed to be infatuated with academic prestige, and I wouldn't be surprised if he put something out there, but was likely rejected by others within OU, and they don't fit the Big 10 profile anyhow.

Aggy never had a lick of interest in the Big 10.  No way in hell.

None of this ever got past a couple of casual phone calls in all likelihood.  The only thing OU seriously looked at was the Pac, we know Aggy was working the SEC, and I think KU and us were just praying like hell things didn't go nuclear.

Edited July 18, 2019 by Al_4_ISU

[notre dame joe 198]

6 hours ago, Al_4_ISU said:

Us and Kansas were in extreme peril, and I wouldn't be surprised if we reached out.  But there was no way in hell given the landscape in those days that either of us were worthwhile additions to the Big 10.  There was an old "insider" board on CycloneFanatic in those days, and some people with proven connections kept saying that if everything went to hell, we might be in better shape than people thought, and they kept hinting at Big 10 conversations, but at the end of the day I can't see it going very far for obvious reasons.

Boren seemed to be infatuated with academic prestige, and I wouldn't be surprised if he put something out there, but was likely rejected by others within OU, and they don't fit the Big 10 profile anyhow.

Aggy never had a lick of interest in the Big 10.  No way in hell.

None of this ever got past a couple of casual phone calls in all likelihood.  The only thing OU seriously looked at was the Pac, we know Aggy was working the SEC, and I think KU and us were just praying like hell things didn't go nuclear.

I am legitimately curious if those 'planned to' articles actually start with one guy musing in once in a room, or if they are 100% fiction.

[kopp0e 1135]

7 hours ago, Al_4_ISU said:

Us and Kansas were in extreme peril, and I wouldn't be surprised if we reached out. 

The only thing OU seriously looked at was the Pac, we know Aggy was working the SEC, and I think KU and us were just praying like hell things didn't go nuclear.

Kansas actually had a "shot" at taking the aggy spot for #16 in the planned PAC16 deal with Oklahoma/ Oklahoma State/ Texas/ Texas Tech...
For what it's worth, I am more than happy to share a conference with the Cyclones, as the fanbase is beyond loyal & a great academic brand...

[Ace000087 18]

5 hours ago, kopp0e said:

Kansas actually had a "shot" at taking the aggy spot for #16 in the planned PAC16 deal with Oklahoma/ Oklahoma State/ Texas/ Texas Tech...
For what it's worth, I am more than happy to share a conference with the Cyclones, as the fanbase is beyond loyal & a great academic brand...

I think it goes without saying that Al and I want what is best for ISU, and that the Big12 is where we belong. 

If shit did hit the fan and the Big12 exploded, B1G would be most Cyclone fans preference if they could work out a deal. 

PAC16 would probably be preference #2, then ACC as #3.  Anything other than that would probably not be a good thing for ISU athletics.

[SwanderedTalent 5761]

18 hours ago, 'stache said:

I don't know about "collusion" but yes I can believe there were discussions among these 5 about this possibility

So, two things.

One , the article explicitly alleges the schools were acting in collusion, that their response to the fictional scenario in which Texas up and decided unilaterally "we're going to the Pac-10 and taking these five schools with us" was "let's get together and call the Big Ten". You may not have realized that, if you didn't read the article, and I wouldn't blame you if you didn't because it's a four-year-old handful of horseshit sticking to the Omaha World-Herald's website (GETTIN DEM CLICKS). But that's the premise of the article, and when you say you "completely believe the group made" phone calls, as worded, that implies you agree with the premise that these 5 schools acted in concert. 

Two, I will say with some certainty the idea of Texas A&M to the Big Ten has never been seriously studied by anyone involved, because if it had, we would have already read numerous "sources say" articles written by Liucci-esque Aggie keyboard mashers on the Internet about how A&M could "easily" have gone to the Big Ten because "A&M was the Big Ten's primary target!!!!" and bragging about how A&M spurned the Big Ten for the SEC. The very lack of those types of articles is proof it didn't happen.

A&M is the kind of institution that gets a Mormon on the doorstep and turns around and brags about how it almost won the Publisher's Clearinghouse sweepstakes. 

[DFW Horn 6521]

47 minutes ago, SwanderedTalent said:

A&M is the kind of institution that gets a Mormon on the doorstep and turns around and brags about how it almost won the Publisher's Clearinghouse sweepstakes. 

Lulz...that's allsome

[Sock Drawer 214]

On 7/15/2019 at 12:59 PM, clapclapclap said:

The only thing Memphis would bring is "Touchdown in the land of the Delta blues, in the middle of the pouring rain!" references.

Probably not worth it.

It's "Touched down," but I think your version is more apropos.

[Sock Drawer 214]

23 hours ago, Saint Austin said:

No kidding. Four of those schools... possibly. But A&M? No way they had any interest in going to the Big Ten.

No way the Big Ten had any interest in a cow school in a little bitty shithole is more like it. 

[kopp0e 1135]

Hmm... Maybe B1G needs Oklahoma & Texas (in athletic balance) more than most in Great Lakes region are willing to admit..?

 

[Thiefery 5041]

2 hours ago, kopp0e said:

Hmm... Maybe B1G needs Oklahoma & Texas (in athletic balance) more than most in Great Lakes region are willing to admit..?

 

They are thinking about shaking up the divisions.. Texas and Oklahoma aren't going there, there is no need to. 

[satyanash 14931]

An omnibus series of articles on conference realignment is coming from The Athletic: https://theathletic.com/tag/realignment-revisited/

 

Edited July 22, 2019 by satyanash

[TXs 226]

I wish people would stop FUDing on us merging with the PAC. We're not fucking flying to the west coast to play conference games. 

[TheFlagship 466]

The Athletic article today was great. A good reminder that not only did Texas hold all the cards in 2010, but we essentially control the future of college athletics when the Big 12 grant of rights expire in 2025. Thankfully, Steve Patterson will not be the AD.

[Machinator 32099]

Stewart Mandel: Realignment Revisited: Introducing The Athletic’s series on the legacy and impact of mass conference shuffling

As the Big East’s commissioner for 19 years, Mike Tranghese saw his share of conference realignment, whether adding programs (in the early 1990s, when the conference first began competing in football) or losing them (starting in 2003, when Miami and Virginia Tech bolted for the ACC).

But the events that played out in the years immediately following his retirement in 2009 surpassed any before them in the realm of absurdity.

“I look back and I see things I still can’t believe,” he said. “Someone would have to explain to me — and talk until they’re blue in the face — and I still can’t see why Rutgers and Maryland are in the Big Ten.”

The Big Ten set off the entire three-plus years of chaos that followed when, on Dec. 15, 2009, its Council of Presidents/Chancellors put out a press release announcing they had authorized commissioner Jim Delany to begin evaluating potential expansion candidates “over the next 12 to 18 months.”

“We thought being upfront and transparent would be good,” Delany recalled last month. “We found out that the negative about doing it that way is it put every (school) in play, and it created a lot of uncertainty.”

By the time that conference plucked Nebraska in June 2010, all hell had broken loose. The Pac-10, led by new commissioner Larry Scott, made a bold attempt to steal Texas, Oklahoma and four other Big 12 schools. Texas A&M began flirting with the SEC, which it joined a year later. And the Mountain West lifted Boise State from the WAC, the first step toward that league folding its football operations entirely two years later.   

Oliver Luck, now the CEO of the new XFL, began his job as West Virginia’s athletic director the same summer all of this was going down. A year later, he would help move the Mountaineers from the Big East to the Big 12.

“It was an unusual era, and I found myself right in the middle of it,” he said. “And I kept saying to myself: There are no rules to this game. There’s no higher source that you can appeal to. There’s no judge. … it was a little bit of like being a kid again with a free-for-all.“

All told, between 2010-13, every FBS football conference would add or lose members. A dozen current Power 5 schools and nearly 40 percent of all FBS programs (49 of 130) have changed conference affiliations since the start of the decade. Century-old rivalries splintered, conference commissioners lost their jobs, tens of millions of dollars in lawsuits were filed and settled and billions of dollars in television contracts traded hands.

And all along the way, millions of riveted fans breathlessly refreshed their favorite message board or Twitter feed in search of the latest news and rumors related to realignment. Even the people whose livelihoods were being directly affected found themselves desperately trying to find out the latest.

“I’d like to write a book some day,” said former TCU AD Chris Del Conte (now at Texas), whose school moved from the Mountain West to the Big East to the Big 12 in the span of 11 months. “There’s a (report) that these six schools are going to go to the Pac-12. There was, what Is the Big 12 doing? It was just chaotic, and no one really knew factually what was going on.”

TCU wasn’t alone in leaving a conference before it ever played a game. As crazy as it sounds today, there was actually a time when Boise State and San Diego State — yes, San Diego State — accepted invites to the Big East only to wind up staying in the Mountain West when their new league (later rebranded as the American Athletic Conference) further crumbled.

And those were just the developments that played out in public. Behind the scenes, the considerable stakes for the affected schools coupled with the ubiquitous fear of getting “left behind” led ostensibly intelligent people to engage in often irrational behavior.

In the fall of 2011, with Louisville and West Virginia competing for a coveted Big 12 invite, U.S. Senators Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) and Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) got into a shouting match on the chamber floor over their respective lobbying efforts. Months after the conference chose the Mountaineers, McConnell lobbied a rival candidate to take on Manchin in the 2012 primaries.

When then-interim Big 12 commissioner Chuck Neinas delivered the bad news to the Senate Majority leader, “I said, Senator, I’m doing what’s best for the conference, because I’m not running for reelection.”

The ripple effects of just one school deciding to change conferences could be astounding. When Missouri decided to leave the Big 12 for the SEC on just nine months’ notice, Neinas and others tried to convince the school to put off its departure for another year to ease the transition. He organized a conference call that included representatives from five other potentially affected conferences — the SEC, ACC, Big East, Mountain West and Conference USA.

The school went ahead and left anyway, $12.4 million exit fee be damned.

WAC commissioner Karl Benson had a particularly painful experience with realignment. While driving his daughter from Denver to Los Angeles to move her into college at USC, Benson stopped in Las Vegas to have breakfast with then-UNLV AD Jim Livengood and sell him on returning his school to the WAC. The league believed it had a deal in place for BYU, which was going independent in football, to host its other sports teams. Shortly after leaving his daughter’s new dorm the following evening, Fresno State and Nevada informed Benson they were leaving his league for the Mountain West.

“In my SUV I had a coat and tie,” said Benson, who recently retired after seven years as the Sun Belt’s commissioner. “I was supposed to be driving back from Southern California to Provo to make the announcement that BYU was joining.” Instead, the WAC folded as a football league two years later.

Little could the Big Ten have known when it sent out that press release that it would inadvertently lead to a world where Syracuse plays annual football games against Clemson while Pittsburgh no longer plays rival West Virginia. Or, more pertinent to Delany, that Rutgers now sits in the same division as Ohio State.

“When we went from 11 to 12 (with Nebraska), we thought that would be it. We thought that we’d be best off at 12,” Delany said. “And then the world changed.”

And left us here, in this somewhat awkward world where three of the five power conferences sit at 14 teams while another only has 10. Which leads to inevitable, never-ending speculation as to what the next wave of conference shuffling might look like.

In a special four-day series this week, The Athletic will inject readers with a new jolt of realignment mania. Our writers will tell forgotten or previously untold stories from the chaotic events of earlier this decade and examine the ramifications several of those decisions are having today.

What exactly happened over those two fateful weeks in June 2010 when it sure looked like Texas and five other Big 12 schools were about to head west and form the sport’s first true superconference? David Ubben talked to many of the key players, including Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott and then-Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe.

Nebraska’s 2011 move to the Big Ten arguably set off all the shuffling that followed. Mitch Sherman examines the legacy of that decision for Nebraska athletics today.

Will steadfast independent Notre Dame ever allow football to join all of its other programs in the newly emboldened ACC? Longtime Irish beat writer Pete Sampson provides a unique perspective.

Max Olson delivers a behind-the-scenes account of how West Virginia’s leaders deftly steered the school out of the sinking Big East and into the Big 12.

We look back at two of this century’s earlier realignment trendsetters, Miami (by Manny Navarro) and Virginia Tech (Andy Bitter). We crown the most recent wave’s biggest winner, TCU (by Ubben). And Matt Fortuna delivers a postmortem on its biggest loser — Connecticut football.

Speaking of which …

The planning and reporting for this series began long before last month’s news that the Huskies would be leaving the American to return to their Big East roots for basketball, leaving football to fend for itself as an independent. It does not appear there will be any immediate ripple effect from UConn’s move, but the fact that new realignment news abruptly dropped in the middle of preparing a retrospective on realignment reinforced exactly why we’re doing this: The subject never truly goes away.

As such, I’ll be returning later this week to write about several possible scenarios for further realignment that industry insiders could foresee playing out as various conferences’ TV rights come up for negotiation in the next three-to-five years. Some would be modest and incremental, others more radical.

To read all of our Realignment Revisited stories — as well as all of our writers’ great daily college football features and analysis, as well as The Athletic’s ever-growing coverage of every major professional sports team — subscribe for 40 percent off by visiting theathletic.com/cfbexpansion.

Contributing: Dana O’Neil, Nicole Auerbach and Max Olson

[Machinator 32099]

(David Ubben) The superconference that wasn’t: How the Pac-16 plan changed college sports

Larry Scott was sitting in an Oklahoma City airport lounge, waiting to board a plane. He was in the midst of a tour of multiple Big 12 campuses when he glanced at the television and saw a breaking news report.

Pac-10 commissioner Larry Scott is in Oklahoma City as we speak, on his way to pitch multiple Big 12 schools in person on the prospect of forming the Pac-16.

He couldn’t help but look over his shoulder.

“That was a bit of an eerie feeling,” Scott told The Athletic.

He joked with a few other members of the Pac-10’s traveling faction to break the tension.

“It was like we were on an episode of ‘America’s Most Wanted’ or characters in ‘The Fugitive,’ ” he said. “That was uncomfortable to see so much scrutiny and focus on where we were, who we were talking to, a lot of rumors circulating. … I learned a lot about how easy it is to track someone. That was not something I welcomed, but I realized it goes with the territory. It’s a reflection of the passion and intensity of feeling people have around these issues and their importance.

“It was eye-opening.”

So, too, was Scott’s plan.

In the summer of 2010, conference realignment monopolized the conversation across college sports. Scott had been in charge of the Pac-10 for less than a year when he embarked on a bold plan to raid the Big 12 and build a superconference.

Creating the Pac-16 would have decimated the Big 12, which formed in 1994 when Texas, Texas A&M, Baylor and Texas Tech left the Southwest Conference and joined the Big 8. The Big 12 had less than two decades of history but boasted four of college football’s biggest brands in the Longhorns, Aggies, Oklahoma and Nebraska.

Scott aimed to invite Texas, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech and Colorado, making his league the biggest conference in college sports.

“There was a lot of momentum, a lot of excitement about it,” then-Baylor athletic director Ian McCaw said. “It would have become an absolute superpower.”

It also would have devastated the Big 12’s leftovers.

For those with a road to an invite, the Pac-16 offered an intriguing proposition. It piqued the interest of everyone who might find their university inside the diamond-encrusted fences Scott described for prospective new members. Texas and Oklahoma could stay at the top of big-time football, and their campuses could begin rubbing elbows with academic elites like Stanford, Cal and UCLA.

“There were a lot of moving parts. It was an uncomfortable time,” then-Texas athletic director DeLoss Dodds said. “We had some campus pressure to go to the Pac-10. They had destination cities like San Francisco and Seattle.”

As Texas mulled a decision that would shape the future of college sports, nearly every campus across the Pac-10 dealt with discord between athletic departments and university administrators. The rest of the Big 12 launched political battles.

Baylor, Kansas, Kansas State and Iowa State took to calling themselves the Faithful Four. A study conducted by Baylor that summer projected the university would lose at least $20 million annually in revenue if the Big 12 disintegrated, and that didn’t account for decreases in future ticket sales or fundraising.

Nebraska, a fit in the Big Ten, thought about its own departure from the Big 12, which had turned more Texan than athletic director Tom Osborne preferred. Texas A&M yearned to break free from its century-long, three-legged race with Texas. Missouri’s flirtation with multiple conferences sowed distrust throughout the Big 12’s membership while the entire conference flirted with implosion.

“It was chaos,” said reporter Chip Brown, now a columnist for Horns247.com.

Texas held the keys to unlocking anarchy across the country. Though Texas’ ultimate choice was inaction, its time spent deliberating changed the future of college sports.

Almost a decade later, every conference in America still feels the ripples.

In December 2009, the Big Ten threw college sports into upheaval with one sentence, stirring up dust that wouldn’t settle for almost three years.

“The (Council of Presidents/Chancellors) believes that the timing is right for the conference to once again conduct a thorough evaluation of options for conference structure and expansion,” read a statement released by the Big Ten.

Two weeks later, Missouri governor Jay Nixon made Big Ten expansion a relevant issue in Big 12 country. He also made everyone in the conference keep one eye on the nearest exit, just in case they needed it.

“I’m not going to say anything bad about the Big 12, but when you compare Oklahoma State to Northwestern, when you compare Texas Tech to Wisconsin, I mean, you begin looking at educational possibilities that are worth looking at,” Nixon said at the time. “If they want to talk, we should talk, and we should listen.”

In truth, Nebraska’s football history made it a more attractive candidate for the Big Ten, outweighing Missouri’s ability to deliver the Kansas City and St. Louis television markets for the already lucrative Big Ten Network. It had launched in 2007 and immediately delivered a still-growing windfall of cash.

Meanwhile, Scott resigned as the CEO of the Women’s Tennis Association in March 2009 and signed on as the commissioner of the Pac-10 that July, replacing the retired Tom Hansen. Early in his tenure, he made his way to all 10 of his conference’s campuses for what he called a “listening tour.”

“As part of that process, expansion as a possibility came up,” Scott said. “We were very focused on how we were going to achieve the best results possible with our upcoming television negotiations.”

That meant likely adding a championship game. Scott was also set on following the Big Ten’s lead and launching a Pac-10 Network. He believed a Pac-10 with a larger footprint and additional big football brands would command far more money, both in selling rights to broadcast games and in achieving distribution for the network.

In Scott’s retelling, the Pac-10 concurrently explored a 12-team and a 16-model, but only one prompted a media frenzy.

“As we analyzed it, we realized it could lead to nationally moving toward four 16-team conferences or something like that,” Scott said.

Scott and the Pac-10 weren’t the only ones who forecasted that kind of response. The idea prompted fears at campuses nationwide.

“We certainly heard that,” Scott said. “We heard all kinds of opinions (laughs) from some that thought it was a blueprint for the future of college sports and we’d be ahead of the game. And from others that thought it would not be a positive step and have lots of unintended consequences. That was part of our due diligence. It was good to hear. That was healthy for us.”

When Scott laid out the specific 16-member plan to his membership, he described the response as positive. That was largely true at the CEO level full of university presidents and chancellors. They would be making the decision on any invitations. But within the league’s group of athletic directors, the response was far different.

For smaller athletic departments like Washington State, there was concern about being lost in the shuffle competitively in a 16-team league. Like the Big 12, the Pac-12 didn’t operate under equal revenue sharing, and the Cougars had already been living with budget gaps between programs like their own and those in bigger markets like Los Angeles.

“I was at the table, and as I recall, it was not a direction we were real excited to go,” said then-Washington State athletic director Bill Moos, who now occupies the same job at Nebraska. “Among the ADs, it was heavily in favor of not going to 16.”

Presidents and chancellors on both sides were excited about the academic and revenue potential of a 16-team merger, but the realities within athletic departments gave pause among those whose sole responsibilities lie within athletics.

“You’re putting them on airplanes coming against the sun after volleyball, basketball. Half their games would have been on the West Coast,” Dodds said. “That would have absolutely killed our kids to get home at 6 a.m. and then have to go to class.”

Scott continued his pursuit of the 16-team model, quietly making overtures to prospective future members in the Big 12 and selling them on the same vision he believed in. Rumors of instability in the Big 12 began to get louder, but most of the national conversation centered more around the threat of Missouri and/or Nebraska joining the Big Ten.

Texas was the summer’s biggest and most crucial prize, and the Pac-10 also zeroed in on Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech and Colorado. Texas A&M was a potential partner, but SEC membership was something many university power brokers had coveted for decades, as was a split from rival Texas.

Still, Texas A&M entertained early discussions from the Pac-10.

The Big 12 moved its 2010 spring meetings from their usual spot in Colorado Springs to the Intercontinental Hotel in Kansas City. For four days that June, administrators from the 12 members filed in and out of tense sessions with no promises from any of the schools fielding overtures from other conferences. Dozens of media showed up at the hotel, a departure from the usual sparse attendance at the event.

Dan Beebe had joined the conference in 2003, leaving his post as Ohio Valley Conference commissioner to become Kevin Weiberg’s deputy. During his tenure as commissioner, Weiberg, who declined an interview request for this story, pitched the idea of a Big 12 Network to membership. It fell on deaf ears. He left the conference in 2007 and served as vice president of the Big Ten Network, which grew into a rousing success.

Beebe replaced Weiberg as commissioner. He made early attempts to introduce equal revenue sharing and a grant of rights that would prevent members from leaving the conference.

“They decided not to do that. Had we done it then, we could have kept the whole 12 together,” Beebe said. “I was Kevin’s deputy and I had to get everybody to play nice in the sandbox together. I think I might have overestimated my ability to do that.”

Beebe and Scott had sat in a meeting room in May 2010 with leaders of all 22 of their institutions and discussed teaming up with to combine their media rights, agreeing to a nonconference scheduling plan in at least the revenue sports and shopping the package to the highest bidder. That deal never materialized, and the Big 12 remained vulnerable during a period of transformation.

The Big 12 was under siege from both the Big Ten and the Pac-10, while Texas A&M’s interest in the SEC was among the most poorly kept secrets in the conference. There was little Beebe could do. He hadn’t been able to pass any of his ideas, and his conference’s most powerful schools insisted on committing to their own independence rather than handcuffing themselves to their brethren.

On June 3, the afternoon of the third day of Big 12 meetings, one report changed everything. Chip Brown, then of Orangebloods.com, posted a story that would define the week and further sow distrust within the room.

According to his report, the Pac-10 planned to invite Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Colorado, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State to form the Pac-16. Texas A&M, he wrote in his initial story, was a wild card.

For the next two weeks, Brown became the center of college football media, all from his kids’ playroom.

“I had just had my daughter, I was still married then and I remember telling my then-wife, ‘I need you to pretend like I’m at Wimbledon. And rely on your mom for help,’ ” Brown said.

He began the summer with three reliable sources. A few weeks later, that number ballooned to more than a dozen. He worked his way through calls every day, but by the time he finished, the situation changed enough to necessitate another round of calls and another attempt to secure an update.

“I just remember trading information with various officials in the Big 12 and outside the Big 12 to find out what was going on,” Brown said. “Once people knew I had information to trade, I was making and getting calls, and then it’s basically, ‘I’ll tell you what I know if you tell me what, you know.’ ”

Brown barely ate. In the two weeks between his initial report and Texas’ final decision, he lost 12 pounds. He said Orangebloods grew from 9,000 paid subscribers to 11,000. Brown, who joined Orangebloods in 2008 after a decade at the Dallas Morning News, became a mainstay on ESPN’s “College Football Live” and “SportsCenter.”

His first bombshell report changed the dynamic inside the room at the Big 12’s annual meetings as word spread that the rumors of half the conference eyeing a westward departure were true.

Meetings on June 3 were scheduled to end at 5 p.m., with Beebe and another representative set to answer questions from a crush of media lining the halls of the hotel. Meetings didn’t break until well after 6 p.m. When the doors finally opened, Beebe made a break for the elevator, taking no questions.

Big 12 meetings wrapped on June 4, and nervous, desperate politicking ruled the next two weeks. Nebraska president Harvey Perlman left Kansas City and didn’t hear what he needed to hear to assure the Huskers’ security in the future of the Big 12. There was no doubt what Nebraska’s focus was next.

“It causes my stomach to be unsettled thinking back to how I felt on some of those days,” McCaw said.

During the week, panic and intrigue swallowed up the Big 12’s home office in Irving, Texas, too, as employees wondered if they would still have jobs. Rob Carolla, who worked as director of communications at the Big 12 from 2004-17, had just had his first child and was in the midst of purchasing a home.

He’d peer through the shades of the office’s windows and see television trucks camped out in the parking lot.

“Everyone was cordial,” Carolla said. “But you had to remind (reporters), like, ‘Hey, if the commissioner comes out, feel free to talk to him. But leave the receptionist alone if she’s walking to her car.’ That was hard for the office.”

The creation of the Pac-16 hinged on Texas’ decision. Those who wanted the Longhorns tried to convince them by any means necessary.

Beebe sought to take increased revenue off the list of reasons to leave, so he got the rest of the Big 12 to promise that Texas, Oklahoma and Texas A&M could all make at least $20 million in television revenue annually in future years. Beebe pitched the idea to the remaining membership with a simple explanation: Whatever money each school would be forced to give up in this deal would pale in comparison to what they’d involuntarily lose if the league’s cash cows elected to graze elsewhere.

He believed the rest of the conference wouldn’t be forced to sacrifice a cent after the next round of television negotiations with partners ESPN and FOX was complete.

The Big 12’s annual meetings had come and gone with no firm commitments from any of the most coveted schools. Over the next two weeks, Scott began to make campus visits to further sell his vision.

Scott and Weiberg visited College Station, where, unlike his other stops, he found a cool reception and minimal interest in joining the conference. The meetings with the Aggies were far shorter than those on the other five campuses as he made a tour through Oklahoma and Texas. Most crucial of those visits was Scott’s arrival in Austin. He met with Dodds, women’s athletic director Chris Plonsky and president Bill Powers, who died last March.

“He laid it out for us,” Dodds said.

As Scott made his pitches, the so-called Faithful Four were working on both saving the Big 12 and a swift contingency plan if they were the only ones left. Administrators from all four schools met at a Kansas City steakhouse a week or so after Big 12 meetings.

“I have some fond memories of us kind of bonding together in that time,” McCaw said.

New Baylor president Ken Starr made a name for himself during the Bill Clinton impeachment scandal in 1998. He leveraged that name recognition to help rally Texas politicians who either held an affinity for Baylor or for the Bears’ plight, believing that a Pac-16 would be bad for the state.

“I don’t want to speak for Larry Scott, but in my opinion, the Pac-10 really underestimated the political machine in the state of Texas,” Carolla said. “When those four schools got their political people involved, things started moving.”

There was a precedent. In 2003, the ACC explored expansion and initially planned to make Syracuse one of its new members. Odd voting blocs put the University of Virginia in a rare position as the most powerful swing vote. Virginia governor Mark Warner sprung into action, flexing his political muscle and stating both privately and publicly that UVa president John Casteen could only support a plan for expansion that included Virginia Tech. That plan worked.

The Faithful Four tried to follow that blueprint, making calls to powerful alums and politicians to apply political pressure for schools in Texas to keep the Big 12 together.

“The university president is going to be influenced by the political powers that be,” Carolla said. “Saying, ‘Hey, you’re not going anywhere. It’s going to damage the rest of us.’ They do things like threaten funding for universities.”

Beebe also composed a paper called “The Case for the Big 12” and distributed it to members mulling a decision. It laid out his promises and why the Big 12 was best for each school, the conference itself and college sports as a whole.

“We would start each day with a call with our regents and senior administration and all those that were kind of lobbying to keep the conference together,” McCaw said. “So we had those calls early in the morning. And then we’d have a recap call late every night. We were working 16 hour days on the phone and doing everything we could to keep the Big 12 together. It was an all-day, all-night effort for weeks.”

Outsiders like Mountain West members Utah and TCU watched the proceedings and found themselves with opposite rooting interests. Utah knew a Pac-16 would not include it, but a Pac-12 would be a close call. TCU knew it would be among the first in line to join with the Faithful Four if status quo in the Big 12 crumbled.

Information was at a premium, and misinformation was rampant.

“Our energy was put into action of hopefully being part of a Pac-12,” said then-Utah athletic director Chris Hill said. “But everybody involved was keeping their cards so close to the vest.”

On June 10, one week after the Big 12 meetings, Colorado accepted an offer to join the Pac-12, bringing the Buffaloes closer to their alumni base in California and ending their status as the lone Big 12 member in the Mountain Time Zone. The next day, Nebraska officially accepted an invitation to join the Big Ten, saying its new conference had stability “that the Big 12 simply cannot offer.”

With Colorado and Nebraska gone, the Big 12 was down to 10 members. Beebe arranged meetings and received assurances from ESPN and FOX that they would promise to honor the current financial figure for the Big 12’s media rights, despite the losses of Nebraska and Colorado, which trimmed inventory.

Additionally, Big 12 schools still retained their Tier 3 media rights, giving them one football game, a handful of basketball games and their non-revenue sports to try to command as much as possible from a media partner or monetize the games themselves. Texas had been toying with the idea of launching its own network. That assurance would allow it to pursue one, whereas doing so in a Pac-16 that had plans to launch a conference network would be far more difficult, if not impossible.

Texas hosted TCU in a three-game baseball NCAA Super Regional a week after Big 12 meetings wrapped. During the Saturday game, ESPN’s commentators discussed a possible future in the Pac-10 as cameras focused on Dodds huddled in his suite with Plonsky and Mack Brown, then the football coach.

The next day, on June 13, Scott visited Austin.

“We made (our decision) before he came here, but we heard him out and let him know after that meeting it was something we couldn’t do or wouldn’t do,” Dodds said. “I’m sure it was something he’d have liked to pull off, but it was not in the cards.”

The certainty Dodds speaks with now was not the case for everyone on Texas’ campus. The university’s board of regents was set to meet the following Tuesday, June 15, and those “campus pressures” were still pushing Dodds and Powers to make a move.

“It was very intense,” Scott said. “There’s ebbs and flows. There’s things moving fast then moving slow. Things working, like they’ve got momentum in one direction, and then moves in another direction.”

At around 7 p.m. that Sunday night, conversations with sources led Chip Brown to believe the Pac-16 was imminent. A little after 10 p.m., that had changed.

“I came upon one of my best sources, who said, ‘Things are changing.’ And I’m like, ‘What do you mean?’ And the response was, ‘This may not happen after all’. And so then I started going down that path,” Brown said. “And sure enough, that was the sentiment I was getting from a couple other places and felt strongly enough that I could report it.”

Brown slept only a couple hours and posted a story that morning that reported Texas’ plans to stiff-arm Scott and commit to the Big 12 long-term. However, ESPN’s Joe Schad published a story and went on TV saying there was no chance the Big 12 could be saved, that Beebe’s plan had failed and the Pac-16 was on the way to becoming a reality.

“There were many key decision-makers within the Big 12 who told me then and have told me since that they believed the Big 12’s future as a conference was in serious jeopardy at that time,” Schad said in a statement. “For many reasons, including that it’s not in the best interest of college athletes to be members of unwieldy superconferences with exhausting travel schedules, I’m glad it didn’t happen.”

Brown panicked. The night before, everything had changed in just a couple hours. Had it happened again?

“(Schad) is on the end of the TV partner, and they’re very involved,” Brown said. “I immediately got on the phone and was lucky enough to get the reassurance from my sources that that it was not happening, that the Big 12 would survive. And I just stuck with it.”

Texas was, indeed, committing to the territory it already knew, rather than blazing a new trail out west. The Big 12, despite an inaccurate name, would live on as a 10-member conference.

McCaw spent the previous evening sick to his stomach when he got the same initial intel that Brown and Schad had received. Then his phone rang. It was Beebe.

“He said, ‘We think this thing is going to unravel and we’ll be able to put this together again. How do we take this fragile state and rebuild?’ DeLoss and (Oklahoma AD) Joe (Castiglione) were great leaders in that,” McCaw said.

The next morning, Powers and Dodds called Beebe with a simple message from Texas: We’re in. The following Wednesday, Utah accepted the Pac-10’s invitation for membership, joining Colorado to form what is now the Pac-12.

“We were always working on parallel paths. We were always developing multiple options at the same time,” Scott said. “That’s why we were able to make the decision pretty quickly when some of the options narrowed.”

Even almost a decade later, the saga leaves one giant, lingering, complicated question: Why?

Why didn’t Texas want to step into a brave new world and be credited with building a bridge to the West Coast and becoming a founding member of what could have been the first of college sports’ possibly inevitable drift toward four 16-team superconferences?

That depends on who you ask. The official word from Dodds is student-athlete welfare.

“Bottom line, every time we met as a staff and talked about our kids having half of their competition on the West Coast and being on airplanes all the time, we just felt like that wasn’t the right thing,” Dodds said. “I never got to the point where I thought (the Pac-16) was the right move. We had staff meetings with 10 or 12 people in a room. We started every meeting by asking, how would this affect the kids? And the end result was just not good.”

Texas desired to launch the Longhorn Network and did so a year later, in August 2011. The Longhorn Network as it exists today wouldn’t have been possible in a Pac-10 where the league eventually pooled its Tier 3 rights and launched the Pac-12 Networks in August 2012.

“Oh, it was definitely a sticking point,” Scott said of Texas’ plans to launch the Longhorn Network. “I don’t believe it was an insurmountable sticking point.”

Texas had an eye toward monetizing its Tier 3 rights independently, but even Dodds admits he had no idea his athletic department could command the type of money it did. Texas signed a 20-year contract worth $300 million from ESPN in 2011 to launch the network, which still earns Texas $15 million annually, almost twice what any other school in the Big 12 earns on its Tier 3 rights. Oklahoma is second, and its Tier 3 agreement with Fox brings in a reported $8-10 million annually.

Dodds’ thought the first time he saw ESPN’s offer?

“I thought we’d better sign it as quickly as we could,” he said, though he downplays its role in Texas’ decision not to join the Pac-10.

The Longhorn Network hasn’t grown into the recruiting Death Star some forecasted when the project was in its earliest stages, but it has allowed Texas to earn a $15 million annual paycheck arrived on top of the $38.8 million in television revenue the Big 12 distributed to its 10 members. The Big 12 is the only major conference that allows members to monetize their Tier 3 rights independently.

As long as that Longhorn Network contract exists and the money pours onto the Forty Acres, Texas has little incentive to consider finding a new conference home. But ask around, and other reasons that might have contributed to Texas’ decision to stay surface.

“I knew that (travel) was something DeLoss and Chris Plonsky took seriously, but candidly, Texas’ institutional ego, which is substantial, got in the way a bit as well,” McCaw said. “Texas had enjoyed the ability to have a dominant position and a great deal of power and control in the Big 12 as they deserved, based on their accomplishments and their resources. But it was very clear that if they joined the Pac-16, they were not going to be able to demonstrate the same level of control in that conference. I think that’s where the institutional ego became a sticking point.

“It certainly tested some of the friendships among the ADs and the presidents.”

Texas A&M’s exit to the SEC after the 2011 season turned one of college football’s greatest rivalries into a frustrating cold war, but the Aggies’ decision to join the SEC has largely shouldered the blame for the rivalry’s end, despite back-and-forth grandstanding on both sides about continuing the rivalry at some point.

“I think at the end of the day, Texas did not want to be seen as the reason that the hundred-year rivalry with Texas A&M was coming to an end,” Brown said. “(Dodds) knew that even if Texas A&M was going to the SEC, Texas would be blamed because they would be making the first move. And at the end of the day, I don’t think DeLoss wanted that. He sacrificed for that rivalry and for history and tradition of college football in college athletics, and then it all ripped apart anyway.”

Of course, there’s another theory.

“DeLoss Dodds, very close friend, told me he was never interested in going to the Pac-12; it was all inspired by the conference,” said Chuck Neinas, a former Big 8 commissioner who stepped in as Big 12 interim commissioner in 2011.

So why take deliberations as far as Texas did and put the Big 12 in as much peril as the conference found itself in that summer of 2010?

“He got the Longhorn Network,” Neinas said.

Regardless of all the possible reasons, Texas’ decision was bound to alter the course of college sports.

The entire saga exposed the lack of trust within the Big 12 and the harm that unequal revenue sharing can have on a conference. The Big 12 finally adopted equal revenue sharing in 2011, and the Pac-12 followed suit in 2012 as it launched the Pac-12 Network. The Big 12 schools also agreed to a 13-year grant of rights as part of the television deal it signed in 2012. That agreement prevents any member from earning any money on media rights outside the Big 12 through 2025 and effectively prevents any defections.

Before Texas A&M officially accepted an SEC invite in September 2011, Scott again made overtures to Texas and Oklahoma.

“I don’t think OU is going to be a wallflower when all is said and done,” then-Oklahoma president David Boren said the day before the 2011 football season began.

The quote angered Missouri, which had stayed in the Big 12 that year after an invitation to the Big Ten or SEC never materialized. To Mizzou, it sounded like a threat and kept the Tigers from feeling secure in a still-shaky Big 12 that had no contractual guarantees that it would remain an alliance beyond just the few remaining years on the current television contract.

That November, Missouri accepted an invitation to follow Texas A&M to the SEC. The Big 12 returned to its current 10-member configuration by inviting West Virginia and TCU to join the conference in October.

By then, Oklahoma had pushed out Beebe as commissioner, turning to Neinas to guide the league into its new era. Representatives from Oklahoma declined to be interviewed for this story.

“Boren acted like Oklahoma could go to the Pac-10 without Texas. They couldn’t do that, but he felt like he wanted to show Oklahoma had enough power to have the commissioner removed and then they’d stay,” Beebe said. “And that was how it ended for me there.”

But the superconference era of college sports never arrived.

“Whoever said there were going to be four 16-institutions conferences was wrong. A lot of people, a lot of pundits suggested that,” Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany said. “But it’s also true to say that consolidation was happening, and it was probably related to competitiveness, media and recruitment.”

There might not be 16, but the SEC, Big Ten and ACC all have 14 members.

Texas A&M and Missouri aren’t in the SEC if Scott doesn’t push to make the Pac-16 a reality and expose the distrust that marked much of the Big 12’s existence. Nebraska likely doesn’t leave its flawed-but-comfortable home and historic Big 8 rivalries for the Big Ten if the Pac-10 didn’t threaten the Big 12’s very existence. TCU is likely stuck living on the outskirts of the sport alongside UCF and Boise State if the Big 12 didn’t stumble into life as an eight-member league and pursue expansion. West Virginia’s fate could have gone any number of directions.

Conferences have grown and consolidated, from six major conferences to five as the Big East ceased to exist in football and remaining programs formed the American Athletic Conference. The Pac-10’s pursuits in the summer of 2010 were only the latest chapter in the never-ending story of realignment in college sports.

And though it was the most disruptive chapter of the modern era, it likely won’t be the last one.

“Sometimes, you may come up with a blueprint or a model for the future that’s just not possible at that time,” Scott said. “But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth exploring and going for it. And you know, at a different time in the future, it may come back around in a different way.”

Contributing: Nicole Auerbach, Stewart Mandel

['stache 21928]

Fuck Jay Nixon.

[notre dame joe 198]

Is the Athletic going to sit there while Delaney respins the tale that they took Maryland because the BUG 'felt threatened' by . . . the University of Pittsburgh. 

[utee94 15903]

10 hours ago, TheFlagship said:

The Athletic article today was great. A good reminder that not only did Texas hold all the cards in 2010, but we essentially control the future of college athletics when the Big 12 grant of rights expire in 2025. Thankfully, Steve Patterson will not be the AD.

There's really no reason why the GOR expiration will be some milestone or catalyst for realignment.  If Texas wanted out of the B12 today, it would be nothing more than a negotiation, same as the "exit penalty" clauses that preceded it.  

The truth is that Texas is in the B12 because the administration in 2009, 2010, and 2011 wanted Texas to remain in the B12.  Years later in 2019, the chancellor, president, AD, and head football coach are all different.  It's possible that the current Powers That Be feel differently.  I don't see any real indications that they do, and due to the changing landscape of the revenue models for college athletics there's more reason now than ever, to stand pat where we are.  But IF the Powers That Be at Texas decided tomorrow that the B12 wasn't the right conference for Texas, the GOR certainly wouldn't stop Texas from making a move. 

 

[notre dame joe 198]

16 hours ago, utee94 said:

There's really no reason why the GOR expiration will be some milestone or catalyst for realignment.  If Texas wanted out of the B12 today, it would be nothing more than a negotiation, same as the "exit penalty" clauses that preceded it.  

The truth is that Texas is in the B12 because the administration in 2009, 2010, and 2011 wanted Texas to remain in the B12.  Years later in 2019, the chancellor, president, AD, and head football coach are all different.  It's possible that the current Powers That Be feel differently.  I don't see any real indications that they do, and due to the changing landscape of the revenue models for college athletics there's more reason now than ever, to stand pat where we are.  But IF the Powers That Be at Texas decided tomorrow that the B12 wasn't the right conference for Texas, the GOR certainly wouldn't stop Texas from making a move. 

 

That reminds me when NBC fired the Fox Blondie for saying something un PC, the NBC pres said he wasn't interested in a full buyout.  A few months of lawyering and NBC had to buy her out with interest.

[SwanderedTalent 5761]

16 hours ago, utee94 said:

There's really no reason why the GOR expiration will be some milestone or catalyst for realignment.  If Texas wanted out of the B12 today, it would be nothing more than a negotiation, same as the "exit penalty" clauses that preceded it.  

The truth is that Texas is in the B12 because the administration in 2009, 2010, and 2011 wanted Texas to remain in the B12.  Years later in 2019, the chancellor, president, AD, and head football coach are all different.  It's possible that the current Powers That Be feel differently.  I don't see any real indications that they do, and due to the changing landscape of the revenue models for college athletics there's more reason now than ever, to stand pat where we are.  But IF the Powers That Be at Texas decided tomorrow that the B12 wasn't the right conference for Texas, the GOR certainly wouldn't stop Texas from making a move. 

 

100% correct.

I think the far bigger catalyst for the next round of realignment discussions is going to be the Pac-12's ongoing struggles. They are so far behind the ACC, B1G, SEC, and B12 that they might feel compelled to act. Desperation doesn't lend itself to wise business decisions, but assuming I am right that the TV carriers (including streaming platforms) are going to make decisions based on content quality rather than the total number of passive TV households in a geographic footprint, that leads to the question of what the Pac-12's options are to try to get on the same footing as the other four P5 conferences (or surpass one or more of them). 

[LTbear 4173]

2 hours ago, SwanderedTalent said:

100% correct.

I think the far bigger catalyst for the next round of realignment discussions is going to be the Pac-12's ongoing struggles. They are so far behind the ACC, B1G, SEC, and B12 that they might feel compelled to act. Desperation doesn't lend itself to wise business decisions, but assuming I am right that the TV carriers (including streaming platforms) are going to make decisions based on content quality rather than the total number of passive TV households in a geographic footprint, that leads to the question of what the Pac-12's options are to try to get on the same footing as the other four P5 conferences (or surpass one or more of them). 

Will they? Besides that brief window right after the PAC became the PAC-12 and renegotiated their TV deals ahead of every else, they've historically always been significantly behind in media revenue.

[SwanderedTalent 5761]

7 minutes ago, LTbear said:

Will they? Besides that brief window right after the PAC became the PAC-12 and renegotiated their TV deals ahead of every else, they've historically always been significantly behind in media revenue.

I said might-- I don't know and neither does anyone else. I don't think the PAC is just going to accept that they have to have a diminished revenue position compared to the other conferences, though-- especially not the Big 12. 

[LTbear 4173]

Just now, SwanderedTalent said:

I said might-- I don't know and neither does anyone else. I don't think the PAC is just going to accept that they have to have a diminished revenue position compared to the other conferences, though-- especially not the Big 12. 

It will of course depend on how far behind they fall, but they - I think - only aim to remain within a reasonable distance. How their equity sale idea goes in this coming year may have a big impact on their decisions.

[utee94 15903]

2 hours ago, notre dame joe said:

That reminds me when NBC fired the Fox Blondie for saying something un PC, the NBC pres said he wasn't interested in a full buyout.  A few months of lawyering and NBC had to buy her out with interest.

Sounds like you might be surprised at just how quickly a shool could move out from under a Grant of Rights.  Regardless, I didn't say it would necessarily be inexpensive, simply that it could be done- and I'll add with ease-- by a school with the resources that The University of Texas commands.

But I also said, that I don't see any indications that the current administration wants to make any moves at all.  In fact it's quite the opposite, Texas appears wholely committed to standing pat in the B12-- as has been the case throughout Realignment, despite the childish taunts and insults to the contrary from deserter programs like Nebraska and Texas A&M.  The proof is in the pudding, clearly Texas has never WANTED to leave the B12, because at any point Texas COULD have left the B12, and in every instance, chose not to.  The same can certainly not be said about Nebraska or Texas A&M (or Colorado or Missouri I guess, but I honestly can't say I've really noticed either of those two schools' absence from the B12.  They just never registerered as conference mates).

 

[clapclapclap 9000]

Quote

The Big 12 had less than two decades of history but boasted four of college football’s biggest brands in the Longhorns, Aggies, Oklahoma and Nebraska.

[satyanash 14931]

Wow.

 

[LTbear 4173]

oops wrong thread 

Edited July 24, 2019 by LTbear

[LTbear 4173]

Nm

Edited July 24, 2019 by LTbear
Oops

[LTbear 4173]

20 minutes ago, satyanash said:

Wow.

 

That's awesome 

[Aqua Buddha 14671]

22 minutes ago, satyanash said:

Wow.

 

Meanwhile, Louisville had Rick Petrino and Bobby Petrino coaching in an AD funded by the Papa John's guy.

[notre dame joe 198]

2 hours ago, Aqua Buddha said:

Meanwhile, Louisville had Rick Petrino and Bobby Petrino coaching in an AD funded by the Papa John's guy.

Wonder what the ACC meetings are like now in re expansion.

['stache 21928]

3 minutes ago, notre dame joe said:

Wonder what the ACC meetings are like now in re expansion.

The sounds of a leprechaun being slurped, I presume.

[DFW Horn 6521]

3 hours ago, satyanash said:

Wow.

 

Fuck 'em both.

Neither are a Big 12 fit unless y'all wanted a hillbilly state school to replace Arky.

[Al_4_ISU 12549]

 

The Pac 12 is considering 9AM kickoffs.

What a shit show.

 

[satyanash 14931]

Fantastic article looking at the future of realignment post-2025.

 

[Valmy77 13456]

I am sure it is lovely, but I have to subscribe to read it.

How many of those scenarios have a ten team Big 12 remaining intact?

[Machinator 32099]

5 minutes ago, Valmy77 said:

I am sure it is lovely, but I have to subscribe to read it.

How many of those scenarios have a ten team Big 12 remaining intact?

 

Ask nearly any active college administrator to predict the next wave of conference realignment and you’ll get a predictably measured answer — as in, there’s not going to be one.

“The answer used to be (expansion) is on the backburner,” said SEC commissioner Greg Sankey. “My answer now is it’s been placed into the kitchen cupboard. It’s not even on the stove.”

“Whoever said there were going to be four 16-institutions conferences was wrong,” said Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany. “ … I think (the conferences) are pretty stable.”

When it comes to realignment, history reminds us that things never stay stable for too long.

Since 1990, the longest college football has gone without at least one major conference reconfiguration was the six years between 2005 (when the recently raided Big East brought in reinforcements Louisville, Cincinnati and USF) and 2011 (when Nebraska joined the Big Ten, and Utah and Colorado spawned the Pac-12).

If we consider the most recent benchmark to be 2014 — the year Rutgers and Maryland entered the Big Ten and Louisville joined the ACC — then the six-year mark is fast approaching. This time, things should stay calm for at least a couple of years beyond that, what with all five of the power conferences currently locked into Grant of Rights agreements. That’s where schools surrender their individual TV rights so that the conference can negotiate deals on their behalf.

But several key dates loom not far beyond that. The Big Ten’s contracts with ESPN and FOX come up in 2023, followed by the Pac-12’s in 2024 and the Big 12’s in 2025. The latter two leagues’ Grant of Rights agreements expire in conjunction with their TV deals. Also of note, the College Football Playoff’s current contract runs through the 2025 season, by which point many believe there will be some sort of expanded field.

If there’s going to be a major conference shakeup, it’s likely to coincide with that 2023-25 window.

Most power figures within college athletics won’t speculate publicly, because they know any comment could spark a frenzy. But outside experts who study sports business and media rights believe the next round of movement is inevitable, and could be even more dramatic than the last.

“The impediments to realignment are diminishing,” said Jeff Nelson, president of Navigate Research, a sports marketing firm that has worked with conferences like the Big 12, Big Ten and Pac-12. “ … Conferences won’t be as geographically restricted in a media landscape that continues to unwind with mobile and streaming consumption surging.”

“You used to talk about geographic footprints,” said Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby. “It’s really almost an electronic footprint now. You can be any place. Notwithstanding the travel challenges, you could have Hawaii.”

The driving factor behind every recent realignment shuffle was television revenue — which has soared ever and ever higher as live events became a premium for broadcasters. When Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College joined the ACC in 2004-05, the league celebrated a new deal with ABC/ESPN worth $37 million a year. By 2017-18, the now 15-school league’s TV value had spiked all the way to $280 million annually. As recently as 2016, the Big Ten was making around $100 million a year from ABC/ESPN for its Tier 1 rights. Its current deal with FOX and ESPN nets an average $440 million annually.

For years, the prevailing thought was this bubble would eventually pop. Today, there’s no sign of that. Instead, the emerging interest of streaming services like Amazon, Netflix, Hulu and a few only now about to launch have conferences drooling over the prospect of new players driving up prices come their next negotiations.

“When you see an organization like Disney invest billions on streaming (content) — they’re in it to stay,” said Bowlsby, whose conference recently struck an extensive deal with streaming service ESPN+. “You see the Amazons getting in, and you see a long list of others you suspect might be players down the road. The good news for us is there’s likely to be a dense bidding environment.”

All of which leads to speculation that come the next round of negotiations, schools and conferences will want to put themselves in the best possible position to attract the highest possible bids. The Big Ten, SEC and ACC, with their conference networks and long-term Grant of Rights deals, may feel they’re plenty attractive as is. But the Big 12, still sitting at 10 teams, and the Pac-12, currently lagging behind the others in revenue and on-field success, may be more restless.

And in a brave, new world with innovative media companies and potentially a new generation of conference commissioners (Delany, the Big Ten’s boss of 30 years, is retiring Jan. 1, 2020), the next wave might be more radical than one or two conferences adding a couple more schools. Especially as forces both internally and externally continue pushing the NCAA to loosen its rules around athletes earning a share of those lucrative rights fees.

“Legal developments started (conference expansion), and legal developments will continue to influence it,” said David Carter, executive director of the USC Sports Business Institute. “What might happen is something new.”

“I don’t think it’s going to be tectonic, one conference exploding into another,” said prominent sports TV consultant Chris Bevilacqua. “But it could be more of a commercial partnership of conferences that follows the trend of what’s going on in the whole world across a variety of maturing industries — which is consolidation.”

“Consolidation” could take on any number of forms. No one can possibly predict today exactly what a new landscape might look like come 2026, but we can at least explore potential scenarios. Below, we’ll examine five of them — from least to most radical.

Scheduling alliances
In December 2011, the Big Ten and Pac-12 — longtime partners of sorts due to their unique Rose Bowl arrangement — announced an ambitious new venture akin to basketball’s ACC-Big Ten Challenge. All 12 schools in each league would play an annual game against one of their counterparts.

Seven months later, they called it off. It turned out a handful of Pac-12 programs like USC were not on board. The Trojans already play Notre Dame every year.

“It seemed like it would be expansion without expansion,” said Delany. “We were happy (with it). It didn’t happen.”

Perhaps that alliance was impractical and unrealistic. Or, perhaps it was simply an idea ahead of its time.

With schools increasingly concerned about declining attendance, and with the College Football Playoff selection committee placing an emphasis on schedule strength, major programs of late have been beefing up their future non-conference schedules. This year alone, Alabama announced home-and-homes with Notre Dame and Texas, Georgia with Oklahoma and Florida State, among others.

Interestingly, though, those matchups don’t necessarily add value to any television contract, because the networks don’t know precisely which games they’re getting until the spring before the season starts. Plus, schools back out of games all the time. When bidding on a conference’s TV rights, networks only know they’re getting those schools’ home games — opponents TBD.

What if two or more conferences carved out a separate deal for their non-conference games with a network, guaranteeing that Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State would all face USC, UCLA and Oregon over an X-year span?

It’s a modest but potentially lucrative strategy.

The Big 12 and/or Pac-12 expand
The very first topic Bowlsby got asked about at his Big 12 Media Days press conference last week? Realignment.

“That would be the seventh year in a row we have been asked that question first, so congratulations – you are setting records,” he joked. And then of course: “We have had no expansion discussion at any level.”

But he’ll likely keep getting asked that question every year for the simple reason that his 10-team conference is smaller than everybody else’s. The league’s presidents and ADs continually insist they’re happy with the more compact model. They prefer playing a round-robin conference schedule. And most importantly, each school received a league-record $38.8 million this year, not far behind the SEC’s $43.1 million. (The Big Ten towers over both at $54 million.)

And yet, it was only three years ago that the conference paraded nearly a dozen expansion candidates through Dallas for de facto auditions, before league presidents ultimately decided to remain at 10. Come the next TV contract in 2025, they might be wise to reevaluate that decision. Various metrics show that several top Group of 5 programs could potentially add more value to the conference’s media rights than a few of its current schools do currently.

For example, UCF boasts a larger social media following (a loose proxy for fan engagement) than Baylor, Texas Tech, TCU and Kansas State. Not to mention its football team has elevated its brand considerably by playing in three BCS or New Year’s Six bowls over the past six seasons.

Meanwhile, BYU has more living alumni than any Big 12 member but Texas. Houston sits in a larger TV market than all but TCU.

“The money is there,” said A.J. Maestas, Navigate’s founder and CEO. “But money is not the top driver for these institutions. The top decision-makers are the university presidents, and they are the leaders of a non-profit institution, where athletics is roughly 2-3 percent of their overall budget. Splitting up historical and geographic rivalries, the academic relationships of the schools they associate with — there is a long list of factors that are incredibly difficult hurdles even though they’re not all-important to the business of sports.”

Case in point, it’s widely believed that backlash from LGBT advocacy groups in 2016 over policies in BYU’s Honor Code scared away some Big 12 presidents from potentially inviting the school. Not to mention the Big 12 has traditionally been reactive, not proactive, when it comes to realignment. In its 23-year history, the league has never added new members without losing others first.

By contrast, the Pac-12 under commissioner Larry Scott has a track record of doing things unconventionally, albeit not always to its benefit. (Opting to launch the Pac-12 Network without an established TV partner has largely backfired.) In an effort to close its widening revenue gap with the other Power 5 conferences, the league is currently soliciting bids from private equity partners in hopes of raising $750 million in exchange for a stake in the league.

Scott attempted to annex half the Big 12 in 2010. Come 2023, he or a potential successor may want to make another ambitious push. And that league would be more likely to target fellow Power 5 institutions than Group of 5 candidates. The conference has not shown even feint interest to this point in the likes of Boise State or San Diego State.

Knowing that, the Big 12 might be smart to strike first instead. It’s no secret there’s been internal strife within the Pac-12 the past several years. Would Arizona State and Arizona be tempted by what currently seems like the less dysfunctional conference? Could Colorado be lured back?

“It only takes one conference to decide it would rather be the lion than the lamb,” said Nelson, “and if everyone knows that, there’s motivation to be proactive rather than reactive.”

Bluebloods go independent
If we acknowledge that USC, for example, generates more TV revenue for the Pac-12 than any of the other members, it’s worth asking the question: Why not keep the money for itself? If you were creating the sport from scratch, without decades-old pre-existing relationships as a starting point, would the Trojans still be playing Oregon State and Washington State regularly? Would Oklahoma be playing Iowa State and Kansas every year?

Why not do it like Notre Dame — play a few annual rivals (in the Irish’s case, USC, Stanford, Michigan and Navy) but otherwise cycle through brand-name foes like Georgia, Clemson and Florida State. Especially if a school with national appeal could, theoretically, cut out the middleman and broker its own deals with big media and tech companies?

“You could ask the question whether individual institutions have the brand nationally to go it on their own,” said Bowlsby. “There might be some possibility for pursuing that that from a technological standpoint.”

It might raise some eyebrows to hear Bowlsby of all people throw out that scenario given two of his conference’s own members, Texas and Oklahoma, may be the best-suited to do it. It’s no secret the Red River rivals essentially hold the Big 12’s entire existence in their hands. They were the linchpins in Scott’s 2010 attempt to create the Pac-16, after which Texas and ESPN launched the Longhorn Network and then-Oklahoma president David Boren declared, “I don’t think OU is going to be a wallflower when all is said and done.”

When the Big 12 made its recent $40 million ESPN+ deal, which includes hundreds of live events, eight of the 10 schools surrendered their Tier 3 rights, including one non-conference football game each that schools previously aired regionally or on pay-per-view. Texas (which has LHN) and Oklahoma (Fox Sports’ Sooner Sports TV package) were notably exempt.

“Texas already tried a variation of (independence),” said Carter, “which maybe was met with mixed results because they did it too early, before all these (media) trends took hold.”

“ … Right now you’re trying to broker entire conferences,” he said. “If you took away that business model, maybe Amazon might want to do USC and Boise State, but they say no to Colorado State. Maybe it’s, people who subscribe to Netflix are in the Southwest, so we only want USC, UCLA, San Diego State and the Arizona schools. Or they may say, we’ve had trouble penetrating the Northeast, so we just want Syracuse and UConn.”

All that being said, more schools going independent would run reverse to the forces behind 25 years of realignment. In 1990, there were 26 Division I-A schools competing as independents, including powers like Penn State, Florida State and Miami. Today, there are just six, of which all but Notre Dame and Army are essentially doing it due to lack of a better option. (BYU went independent in 2011 when the Mountain West lost Utah and TCU.)

Notre Dame, with its national cachet, has proven the rare exception that can still put together a schedule of mostly Power 5 foes, though now its partial membership in the ACC guarantees it five ACC opponents a year. It’s also been an independent its entire history. Could a Texas or Oklahoma pull it off? Or would potential opponents’ dance cards already be full come October and November?

“USC used to talk a lot, ‘Oh we may just think about going independent,’ ” said Bowlsby, who served as Stanford’s AD from 2006-12. “And I said to (former USC AD) Mike Garrett: ‘Hey, knock yourself out. Try and put a schedule together in football and basketball.’ Because none of us are going to play them.”

A Power 5 coalition
The ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, SEC and Notre Dame collectively earn about $2 billion a year in regular-season and postseason TV revenue. That’s a lot of dough. And yet, it still lags behind the NBA’s $2.7 billion annual haul, despite the fact polling shows college football is a far more popular sport. And though the NFL, with its $8 billion annual revenue, is the unquestioned king of TV sports, the disparity probably should not be four times as much.

Excluding the NFL, college football accounted for six of the 11 most-watched sporting events in 2018.

“If you look at the affinity ratings for the sport and then associated revenue, they’re still not getting what they should relative to the NFL and the NBA,” said Navigate’s Maestas. “That’s because their system is disjointed. It’s not as behind as it used to be, but they’re leaving money on the table by fragmenting their rights.”

In other words, the 65 schools across those five conferences would probably rake in far more if they were able to sell one collectively negotiated TV package. Media companies would only get one shot at landing any major college football properties, thus driving up demand.

“I absolutely believe it will happen. It has to happen,” former Oregon AD and major donor Pat Kilkenny recently told CBSSports.com about a similar idea for a 100-school collective. He cited mounting athletic department deficits. “With the digital age that we’re in and the way people get their media and people like Larry Scott and Bob Bowlsby will make it happen.”

The Power 5 leagues banding together to sell their football TV rights would not necessarily endanger their respective conference networks. They all air far more studio programming, basketball games and Olympic sports events than they do football games. That limited inventory could either be held back from a larger collective deal or folded into it.

Nor would it necessarily require those schools to “break away” from the NCAA, as many have theorized as a possibility ever since the five major conferences and Notre Dame were granted “autonomy” in 2014 to propose and approve their own NCAA legislation in areas like cost of attendance, insurance benefits and paying for families’ travel to events.

The reality is, Ohio State, Alabama and the rest of the bluebloods still depend on their 300-plus Division I colleagues for several reasons, most notably to preserve the $19.6 billion enterprise known as March Madness. In 2016, the NCAA extended its contract with CBS and Turner to air its signature basketball tournament through 2032. It’s not going anywhere. And in many other sports, programs far outside the Power 5 — think Minnesota-Duluth hockey or Coastal Carolina baseball — rank among the top competitors in the country.

But by forming a football collective, the Power 5 schools could not only consolidate their media rights but standardize scheduling, perhaps even achieving Nick Saban’s dream of P5 schools playing exclusively against other P5 schools. Imagine the ratings for the sport in September if there were no more Penn State-Idaho or Arkansas-Portland State season openers.

“If (the Power 5) could all get on the same page, they could create a superconference with balanced scheduling,” said Maestas. “Right now it’s like each division of the NFL negotiating its own TV contract in competition with one another. The centralized control and timing of NFL rights gives them leverage and selling power.”

Group of 5 schools would unquestionably be harmed by it, given many of them depend on the big paydays from guarantee games to help fund their athletic departments. But the reality is, most of those schools’ TV values are a fraction of the Power 5 schools. The AAC recently celebrated a new deal that pays its schools around $7 million a year. Purdue, just by being a member of the Big Ten, makes more than four times that.

“To think about putting such a complex media rights agreement that would incorporate 65 schools — my own opinion is that will be looked at seriously in the future,” said recently retired Sun Belt commissioner Karl Benson.

However, before forming what would plainly be a financially driven collaboration, he believes colleges first need to get clarity over what the future of athlete compensation might look like. Both the state of California and a U.S. congressman are pushing bills that would allow athletes to profit off their name, image and likeness, and the NCAA for the first time is actively exploring the issue.

There’s another considerable impediment to his scenario. Because the conferences have always operated independently of each other, their existing TV contracts don’t synch up. Yes, the Big Ten, Big 12 and Pac-12’s deals with ESPN and FOX as well as the SEC’s with CBS all come up between 2023-25, but the SEC and ACC’s deals with ESPN (which both include their conference networks) both run for a decade beyond that — the SEC’s in 2034, the ACC’s in 2036.

Unless ESPN can be incentivized to fold the latter two leagues’ rights into a larger package, a Power 5 collective might not be possible until a still-distant realignment wave that doesn’t come until after this next one.

The College Football Premier League
Traditionally, we think of the delineation between the “haves” and “have-nots” in college sports as the Power 5 and everybody else. In reality, there’s arguably as big or bigger a divide within those five conferences themselves.

According to USA Today’s database, Texas, the highest-grossing athletic department in the country, generated $214 million in revenue in 2016-17. Fourteen others made at least $140 million. On the flip side, 21 Power 5 public schools made less than $100 million, with the lowest, Washington State, making barely more ($64 million) than Group of 5 schools like Cincinnati ($60 million).

And that’s despite earning the same roughly $31 million share of Pac-12 revenue as other conference schools like USC and Washington, whose brands unquestionably generate higher television value.

“There are a substantial number of bottom feeders in the Power 5 conferences where, if not for the notoriety of their conferences, would really struggle,” said Carter.

From a purely business standpoint, the most profitable move the biggest brand-name programs could make is to divorce themselves from the lower-tier brands in their own conferences that they are essentially subsidizing. Break off from the NCAA — in football only — and form a Premier League of sorts with the bluebloods from the other power conferences.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if somewhere down the road, there would be hay made about a football-only organization that was outside of the NCAA entirely but under the umbrella of the five current (power) conferences,” said Benson. “What would it take to pull something like that off? There’s a lot of moving pieces to ever get there, but it wouldn’t surprise me if one day the names of the universities would still be on the uniforms, but it might be a different set of rules.”

I first proposed this concept three years ago, as it became apparent both that a small handful of schools would likely dominate the College Football Playoff (so far just 10 programs have accounted for 20 berths over five seasons) and that the traditional linear cable model was rapidly unwinding (ESPN has lost around 15 percent of its TV subscribers since 2011).

“Whereas the last round of realignment was driven by inventory — bundle together as many schools from as many markets as possible to command the highest possible subscriber fees — the next round will be more about content,” I wrote at the time.

Well, how’s this for enticing content: Picture an exclusive league of the 24-32 most recognizable programs — Alabama, Clemson, Oklahoma, et al. — competing only against each other in what would unquestionably become the most valuable U.S. sports property outside of the NFL.

One media analyst suggested that a property where Ohio State played all 12 of its games against similarly high-profile programs, rather than a schedule that this year includes FAU, Cincinnati, Miami (Ohio), Northwestern, Maryland and Rutgers, the Buckeyes’ games alone would be worth exponentially more than they are when folded into the Big Ten’s package.

And to top it off, this new league would become the exclusive feeder league to an expanded, eight-team CFP, which is not under the purview of the NCAA and is only bound by its current arrangements for another six years.

“All of a sudden, like the NFL, you end up with some configuration of 32 major teams that have a season that culminates in a ‘real’ playoff structure with no controversy and nonsense,” said Carter. “That might make some sense.”

To be clear, if schools ever went this route, they would be forming a de facto professional league only loosely connected to the universities themselves. Without the NCAA affiliation, there would be no way to justify treating the athletes as amateurs. And that would come with its own set of complications.

Would a sizeable portion of the public be turned off by this wholly commercialized version of the sport? Would the athletes become full-fledged employees, complete with employer taxes and worker’s compensation rights? Would they still count toward universities’ Title IX requirements?

“It sounds interesting to look at,” said Carter, “but then you start to peel back the layers, and while still possibly attainable, there would be a lot of pushback.”

And as enticing as all those dollar signs might be, would college presidents ever be fully on board with such a drastic change? Would college football still be college football if Notre Dame never plays Navy and USC and UCLA no longer play Stanford and Cal?

Actually … we kind of know the answer already. Texas no longer plays Texas A&M, Oklahoma-Nebraska is no longer a rivalry, and yet the sport’s popularity has not waned.

Whatever the next big shuffle, it will likely be just as jolting, disruptive and controversial as the ones before it. The only certainty about realignment is there will always be more of it.

“Right now, things seem pretty calm,” said Delany. “They’re calm until they’re not calm.”

Contributing: Nicole Auerbach, Max Olson

[Valmy77 13456]

Well all of those suck. Well alright the scheduling alliance thing might be ok.

BYU is just never joining the Big 12. Good for them with all their not-dead alumni though.

Edited July 25, 2019 by Valmy77

[joeycovers 397]

2 hours ago, Al_4_ISU said:

 

The Pac 12 is considering 9AM kickoffs.

What a shit show.

 

That would suck for my own selfish reasons of having less CFB to watch in the midnight hours.