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Realignment talk not going away

The Tower

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Posted by Sandbagging Steve,

How many teams will be left when the dust settles in a few years? I think there's a way for all the teams to still have some involvement. I will explain that at the end of this list. Here's my list of the top 32 programs and a list if it goes to 48. There's some debate if it goes to 48, but not much debate if it stops at 32. I guess one could debate Arizona State, but that's about it. The top 32 at least come close to carrying their own weight. Everyone below that line is losing money for t

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Aggy should abstain so the vote is 13-0 and then we can then brand it on their dog.

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Sbbruin

Sbbruin 21829

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7 minutes ago, bullet said:

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sports/aztecs/story/2023-08-05/san-diego-state-sdsu-mountain-west-pac-12-conference-realignment-merger-oregon-state-washington-cal-stanford

MWC-Pac merger discussion

Interesting idea to dissolve the MWC to eliminate the exit fees.  Create something like the PWC.  Shouldn’t really be power 5, but a fun conference.  I’d watch late on a Saturday.

1 minute ago, DixonHur said:

Guess they should have taken Texas and OU when they had the chance.  

Go fuck yourself PAC-12

Why you gotta be so harsh bruh?

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DixonHur

DixonHur 11295

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11 minutes ago, Sbbruin said:

Why you gotta be so harsh bruh?

Sorry, I guess I'm just bitter, because I wanted Texas in the PAC-12.  Football aside, I'd rather Texas be associated with schools, like Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA and even USC, as opposed to Alabama, Mississippi...and basically anyone that isn't Vanderbilt.

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gatormarc

gatormarc 911

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8 minutes ago, DixonHur said:

Sorry, I guess I'm just bitter, because I wanted Texas in the PAC-12.  Football aside, I'd rather Texas be associated with schools, like Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA and even USC, as opposed to Alabama, Mississippi...and basically anyone that isn't Vanderbilt.

Well, fuck you too then.

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Upgrayedd

Upgrayedd 5810

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28 minutes ago, DixonHur said:

Sorry, I guess I'm just bitter, because I wanted Texas in the PAC-12.  Football aside, I'd rather Texas be associated with schools, like Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA and even USC, as opposed to Alabama, Mississippi...and basically anyone that isn't Vanderbilt.

Gonna be one of the greatest what ifs 

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TKthunder2

TKthunder2 4985

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1 hour ago, bullet said:

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sports/aztecs/story/2023-08-05/san-diego-state-sdsu-mountain-west-pac-12-conference-realignment-merger-oregon-state-washington-cal-stanford

MWC-Pac merger discussion

Cutting SJSU and their barely 20k seat stadium makes sense if you’re partnering with Cal/Stanford who are already in the Bay Area.

Not sure I understand the logic of cutting Hawaii’s fb only membership but I guess if it doesn’t bring in money then it makes sense.

I am a little puzzled with them listing Nevada as one to cut. Who did they piss off? You keep New Mexico, Wyoming, and Utah State but dump Nevada. Must be more to that story.

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DFW Horn

DFW Horn 6123

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10 hours ago, billfromlaketravis said:

Tech in the West is automatic. But yes, it gets tricky with Baylor and TCU. 

Ft. Worth is "where the West begins", plus they have MWC history with the others.

UH & BU in the East, TCU & Tech in the West. Why not pods/protected rivalries for football, divisions for everything else?

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Dnaguy

Dnaguy 11920

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11 hours ago, camel at sea said:

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

 

10 hours ago, Sbbruin said:

3-6 is 3 fixed games yearly and 6 rotational games I’m assuming?

For scheduling, you just make it work for each sport you're dealing with IMO.

The 3-6 model makes too much sense for a 16 league model in football. But I could see them just do a 1 rival + 8 game slate too. Football is relatively easy travel compared to other sports.

In basketball, you can broaden that to 4 or 5 rivals. They get a home-and-home every year. So the conference slate would come out to 19 or 20 game schedule.

In Baseball & Softball, you could go to a 7 series schedule (21 total league schedule)  in, right? They're be 14 teams that play baseball so you can easily do a 1-6 or 5-2 model that has you playing all teams home and away in 4 years and keeping 1 or 5 rival teams on your schedule every year.

Olympic gets hairy in that I have no idea how they schedule or who plays what.

 

Edit: Softball would have 10 teams total. Playing all conference folks would be possible but unlikely. So you'd likely get a rival you play every year and play another 6 of the 8 remaining schools. 

 

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Chopper

Chopper 17230

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9 hours ago, TKthunder2 said:

Cutting SJSU and their barely 20k seat stadium makes sense if you’re partnering with Cal/Stanford who are already in the Bay Area.

Not sure I understand the logic of cutting Hawaii’s fb only membership but I guess if it doesn’t bring in money then it makes sense.

I am a little puzzled with them listing Nevada as one to cut. Who did they piss off? You keep New Mexico, Wyoming, and Utah State but dump Nevada. Must be more to that story.

The image of Tree traveling to Laramie is absolutely hilarious.

Though just 60 miles south in Fort Collins they'd probably have a red carpet rolled out for 'em.

 

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Francisco 2.0

Francisco 2.0 32389

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Finally, some solid numbers on what the Pac-12 was presented.  And Kilavkoff may have misled the presidents as recently as late July that a second partner was coming.

 

https://theathletic.com/4752583/2023/08/05/pac12-apple-tv-deal-college-football-realignment/

 

Quote

For 13 months, Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff publicly and privately expressed confidence that his league would receive a new media rights deal valuable enough to ensure its members stick together past 2024, the year USCand UCLA debut in the Big Ten.

The morning of Aug. 1, Kliavkoff finally presented the presidents and athletic directors a concrete offer. It was not what they’d been expecting to hear.

 

Quote

According to three people with knowledge of the terms, Apple offered the members a five-year deal with an annual base rate of $23 million per school (a subsequent counteroffer lifted it to $25 million), with incentives based on projected subscribers to a Pac-12 streaming product akin to Apple’s MLS League Pass.

At 1.7 million subscribers, the per-school payout would match the $31.7 million average that Big 12 schools will reportedly receive from ESPN and Fox beginning in 2025. But Kliavkoff encouraged the room to think much bigger — at 5 million subscribers, the schools would eclipse $50 million per year, closer to the deep-pocketed SEC and Big Ten than the ACC or Big 12.

 

Quote

The league also had an opt-out clause after three years if the deal didn’t reach a specific revenue target.

But there were no guarantees whether Apple would simulcast certain games on a linear network, as it does with Fox for MLS, in which case conference games would reach a much smaller universe than other major conferences. ESPN currently has 75 million subscribers, far more than the most optimistic projections for a Pac-12 product on Apple+.

 

Spoiler

Kliavkoff updated the 10 presidents throughout the negotiations, so neither Apple’s involvement or a streaming-heavy deal came as a surprise; the New York Post first reported the possibility in February. However, three participants said they’d been expecting to be presented with a second, more traditional option as well. Just as Kliavkoff and others had told reporters at the league’s Media Day on July 21, they were under the impression a new major player had emerged in the last six weeks.

But that deal, which involved multiple partners, fell apart at the 11th hour, shortly before the presidents’ self-imposed July 31 deadline for bidders to finalize their offers.

“(The Apple deal) was not the deal that we had been discussing just days before, and it was not going to secure (our future),” Washington president Ana Mari Cauce told reporters Saturday. “When you have a deal that people are saying one of the best aspects of it is, ‘you can get out in (three) years,’ that tells you a lot.”

Even despite the underwhelming offer, at least several ADs went to bed Thursday believing they had a deal. Though Arizona and Utah had already applied for Big 12 membership, an Arizona board of regents meeting Thursday night ended with ASU president Michael Crow still unwilling to leave, and he and Arizona president Robert Robbins had pledged for their schools to remain together. If they stayed, Utah would, too.

“We were the stalwarts fighting for the Pac-12 until the last ditch,” Crow told reporters Saturday. He described the Apple deal as “a technological 23rd century Star Trek thing with really unbelievable capability that ASU was very interested in.”

Exiting that Thursday night regents meeting, there was enough uncertainty about the intentions of Arizona and Arizona State that the Big 12 entered Friday morning wondering whether its plan had fallen apart and the Pac-12 would survive, which might’ve forced the conference to move on and explore adding UConn as its 14th member.

“Late Thursday night, we were like, ‘Man, I don’t know if this is going to happen,’” one person familiar with the Big 12’s discussions said. “We went into Friday morning knowing there was a very real possibility that the Pac-12 was going to stay together as is.”

Meanwhile, the Big Ten, with a boost from media partner Fox, had hastily put together offers Thursday for Oregon and Washington in which they would join at a half share of the other 16 members (including USC and UCLA), at a rate only slightly higher than the Big 12’s $31.7 million. Deep into Thursday night and early Friday morning, Oregon was still torn whether to accept it, according to two people with knowledge of the deliberations. The Athletic reported early Friday that the discussions had lost momentum overnight.

“The mountain schools and Oregon and Washington didn’t want to have to do this,” said a person outside the Pac-12 conference briefed on the schools’ discussions. “They wanted it to be true that they could hit those (Apple) numbers. They wanted to be out west with those travel partners.

“They didn’t want to be in the Big Ten with a bad deal and those crazy travel details. Even at that time (Thursday night), it could have been held together, but that’s a lot to process in a short time. And that $50 million figure they thought they could hit on the high end, that wasn’t realistic.”

When the presidents reconvened at 7 a.m. PT Friday, Oregon and Washington’s presidents informed the group of their Big Ten intentions, and the rest of the league quickly unraveled from there.

“Once Oregon and Washington decided to go to the Big Ten, the conference was no longer viable,” said Crow, who said he met with the Big 12 for the first time at 10:30 a.m. PT Friday. “You can’t be in a non-viable position for more than a few hours in our minds, so we resolved that.”

The Big Ten officially announced Oregon and Washington at 3:25 p.m. PT. The Big 12 announced Arizona, Arizona State and Utah three hours later. That left Cal, Stanford, Oregon State and Washington State as the only remaining Pac-12 members by night’s end.

“I’m furious,” Oregon State AD Scott Barnes told The Oregonian. “… We were literally hours away from a deal that everybody could embrace.”

 

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Tex Long

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Posted (edited)

Someone theorized - and was right, I think - that Kliavkoff saw the writing on the wall, and was just stringing things out as long as possible to keep his paychecks coming. Either that, or he's one of the dumbest motherfuckers any of us have ever seen...

 

EDIT to add: either way, no surprises for most of us.

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DFW Horn

DFW Horn 6123

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2 minutes ago, Tex Long said:

Someone theorized - and was right, I think - that Kliavkoff saw the writing on the wall, and was just stringing things out as long as possible to keep his paychecks coming. Either that, or he's one of the dumbest motherfuckers any of us have ever seen...

 

EDIT to add: either way, no surprises for most of us.

How the PAC's leadership allowed Klownkoff to string them along past their media days is ridiculous. But, they were conned by Champagne Larry for years, so I guess it's not too surprising. Fuck 'em - they got what they deserved.

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redswingline

redswingline 1057

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Posted (edited)
On 6/30/2022 at 10:56 PM, RoyalBevo21 said:

Because you're basically firing your salesmen that have half the accounts your top tier guys have yet pay them the same salary. You're now cutting out the overhead and giving your top guys a raise. 

Revenue is about growth and dropping markets is the opposite of that. If you cut out 16 markets (48 down to 32) you will lose revenue and income. The money just doesn't transfer from the old 'accounts' to existing accounts. The sales are lost.

 

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Magus Ossis

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What must be accounted is to what degree having a conference school in a given region/ state/ market/ city delivers viewership and interest. SE Texas and Houston metro are bigger both geographically and by population than many states. This “state” of “around Houston” is not delivered by Rice and not very well by Houston. More people there would tune in to see LSU or Texas by quite a margin. How many people in Phoenix would rather watch Bama or tOSU than ASU? As more people cut cable, the geography of the audience may well slide significantly further behind the brand name of the school on TV. Cities and states don’t watch games— fans do. ESPN/SEC maximizes viewers by maximizing the strength of its brand, both in reality and in perception. 

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Dnaguy

Dnaguy 11920

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1 hour ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

Finally, some solid numbers on what the Pac-12 was presented.  And Kilavkoff may have misled the presidents as recently as late July that a second partner was coming.

 

https://theathletic.com/4752583/2023/08/05/pac12-apple-tv-deal-college-football-realignment/

 

 

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Kliavkoff updated the 10 presidents throughout the negotiations, so neither Apple’s involvement or a streaming-heavy deal came as a surprise; the New York Post first reported the possibility in February. However, three participants said they’d been expecting to be presented with a second, more traditional option as well. Just as Kliavkoff and others had told reporters at the league’s Media Day on July 21, they were under the impression a new major player had emerged in the last six weeks.

But that deal, which involved multiple partners, fell apart at the 11th hour, shortly before the presidents’ self-imposed July 31 deadline for bidders to finalize their offers.

“(The Apple deal) was not the deal that we had been discussing just days before, and it was not going to secure (our future),” Washington president Ana Mari Cauce told reporters Saturday. “When you have a deal that people are saying one of the best aspects of it is, ‘you can get out in (three) years,’ that tells you a lot.”

Even despite the underwhelming offer, at least several ADs went to bed Thursday believing they had a deal. Though Arizona and Utah had already applied for Big 12 membership, an Arizona board of regents meeting Thursday night ended with ASU president Michael Crow still unwilling to leave, and he and Arizona president Robert Robbins had pledged for their schools to remain together. If they stayed, Utah would, too.

“We were the stalwarts fighting for the Pac-12 until the last ditch,” Crow told reporters Saturday. He described the Apple deal as “a technological 23rd century Star Trek thing with really unbelievable capability that ASU was very interested in.”

Exiting that Thursday night regents meeting, there was enough uncertainty about the intentions of Arizona and Arizona State that the Big 12 entered Friday morning wondering whether its plan had fallen apart and the Pac-12 would survive, which might’ve forced the conference to move on and explore adding UConn as its 14th member.

“Late Thursday night, we were like, ‘Man, I don’t know if this is going to happen,’” one person familiar with the Big 12’s discussions said. “We went into Friday morning knowing there was a very real possibility that the Pac-12 was going to stay together as is.”

Meanwhile, the Big Ten, with a boost from media partner Fox, had hastily put together offers Thursday for Oregon and Washington in which they would join at a half share of the other 16 members (including USC and UCLA), at a rate only slightly higher than the Big 12’s $31.7 million. Deep into Thursday night and early Friday morning, Oregon was still torn whether to accept it, according to two people with knowledge of the deliberations. The Athletic reported early Friday that the discussions had lost momentum overnight.

“The mountain schools and Oregon and Washington didn’t want to have to do this,” said a person outside the Pac-12 conference briefed on the schools’ discussions. “They wanted it to be true that they could hit those (Apple) numbers. They wanted to be out west with those travel partners.

“They didn’t want to be in the Big Ten with a bad deal and those crazy travel details. Even at that time (Thursday night), it could have been held together, but that’s a lot to process in a short time. And that $50 million figure they thought they could hit on the high end, that wasn’t realistic.”

When the presidents reconvened at 7 a.m. PT Friday, Oregon and Washington’s presidents informed the group of their Big Ten intentions, and the rest of the league quickly unraveled from there.

“Once Oregon and Washington decided to go to the Big Ten, the conference was no longer viable,” said Crow, who said he met with the Big 12 for the first time at 10:30 a.m. PT Friday. “You can’t be in a non-viable position for more than a few hours in our minds, so we resolved that.”

The Big Ten officially announced Oregon and Washington at 3:25 p.m. PT. The Big 12 announced Arizona, Arizona State and Utah three hours later. That left Cal, Stanford, Oregon State and Washington State as the only remaining Pac-12 members by night’s end.

“I’m furious,” Oregon State AD Scott Barnes told The Oregonian. “… We were literally hours away from a deal that everybody could embrace.”

 

 

7 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

 

 

 

 

The NFL Sunday ticket only having 2.4 mm subscribers is a great benchmark.

 

My guess is that the Pac12 wouldn't have been able to get even close to that. $100 for a full season or so on top of what people are already paying for likely cable or ESPN+ or the youttubeTV, etc.

 

They may. MAY have gotten to 1 mil. And probably through shanagans like Tmobile offering free Pac12 with a phone plan.

Edited by Dnaguy
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Josef Pwag

Josef Pwag 1738

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2 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

“When you have a deal that people are saying one of the best aspects of it is, ‘you can get out in (three) years,’ that tells you a lot.”

How did the Pac presidents stop themselves from laughing out loud at Kliavkoff when he was presenting this deal? 

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locodos

locodos 5387

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Posted
5 minutes ago, DaysOff said:

New Big10 > New SEC  and it's not even close. Can we jump before next year? Always hated the idea of being in the Confederacy conference.

tumblr_mew0tzxPbU1qfvtk0.gif

So I'm not sure what type of history they're teaching down in Texas.  Mizzou might be the only member to be free of those stains...  and just barely.

Quote

The role of the University of Missouri-Columbia in the American military began in 1862, during the Civil War. Missouri was a border state, and Columbia was a town that had many citizens of southern ancestry, so the university area fell under the eye of the federal government. On January 2, 1862, a group of Missouri volunteers known as "Merrill's Horse" arrived in Columbia. The troops pitched tents on the campus and garrisoned the school. Academic Hall, the former administrative building that burned down in 1892, was used to house soldiers. The troops also interned Confederate prisoners in the main library on the third floor.

 

Academic Hall, pre-1885
Academic Hall, pre-1885.
(University Archives, C:0/3/8)

 

The Civil War had other detrimental effects on the university, as well. Classes were suspended for 10 months, in part because of troop occupation, and also because the university became short staffed. Only one staff member, however, chairman of the math department, Edward T. Fristoe, joined the Confederacy. Students joining one side or the other in the war cut enrollment from 112 in 1860 to just 40 during the war. After the Union troops left the university in 1865, the curators filed a claim against the federal government for damages incurred by the troops during occupation. Horses and wagons ruined the grounds, holes were cut in walls and floors by prisoners trying to escape, books from the library were used for fires, and over 100,000 specimens in mineral and fossil cabinets were reportedly damaged. It was also reported that Union soldiers found a box of blank diplomas and held their own commencement, awarding themselves university degrees. The claim was settled in 1915, with the University of Missouri receiving $7,450 for the damage claims. Over half of the settlement went to litigation fees, so the university actually received $3,383.33. The award was used to build the north gateway of Francis Quadrangle, located at 8th and Elm.

 

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thunderlounge

thunderlounge 7815

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28 minutes ago, Dnaguy said:

The NFL Sunday ticket only having 2.4 mm subscribers is a great # benchmark against.


Maybe. With Sunday ticket you’re targeting fans that aren’t getting the games they want in-market, which is a much smaller pool of potential fans since most can see the team(s) they want on a linear network. 
 

With the pac/apple thing, you wouldn’t see ANY of those teams on linear. So if someone wanted to watch their team, they would have no choice.

The flip side of that is how many pac fans would actually give a fuck and pony up for it when their tv ratings are mostly an afterthought?

That is the real issue. The interest just isn’t strong enough for the portion of their demographics that could (and would) pony up for such a package. Even worse if they also have to subscribe to apple+, but I haven’t yet seen that was also a thing.

I think they might, and that’s a shaky might at that, have been able to get close to the bottom number of 1.7M. However that would have definitely had to have some type of additional input, such as mentioned, like a t-mobile “free with plan” or other such deal somewhere.

Either way it was a shit position, and completely self-induced due to the smug, elitist attitude of a few. Funny thing about wanting something really bad, sometimes you actually get it.

 

 

1 hour ago, Tex Long said:

Someone theorized - and was right, I think - that Kliavkoff saw the writing on the wall, and was just stringing things out as long as possible to keep his paychecks coming. Either that, or he's one of the dumbest motherfuckers any of us have ever seen...

 

EDIT to add: either way, no surprises for most of us.


Definitely agree here. He had to have seen the writing on the wall. Even Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles could see that shit.

He knew exactly what he was doing. Not just an attempt at saving (or at least extending) his paycheck. He thought if he could wait it out long enough that the members would be in such a bind that if they only had a short time to decide on and sign a deal that it would somehow keep the wheels on the bus.

We can see this by his finally presenting a deal with numbers and all the beginning of last week.

Funny part is that the offer was only good through that Friday.

”Here’s the deal, we have to sign by Friday or it’s gone.”

You’re telling me that apple made an offer and said you only have 4 or 5 days to sign?

I don’t think so.

To be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised for their to be action against the clown at some point down the road.

Not because he fucked up his job, but because he willingly tried to manipulate members and willingly put them in a position where he (falsely) assumed they would have no choice.

Guess he should have done some reading along the way, but too late now. 

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Francisco 2.0

Francisco 2.0 32389

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https://defector.com/the-market-made-a-meal-out-of-the-pac-12

 

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George Kliavkoff surely knew the job was dangerous when he took it. He just never fully realized what it's like when the job ends. The men in charge of your larger failing concerns escape by golden parachute as often as not, but that’s not how it works for college sports commissioners who miss their moment. In that case, the flaming bag of the dog's business is surgically grafted to your hand.

As of today, Kliavkoff is the commissioner of the Pac-Nothing Conference, supervising nothing and directing it nowhere. He was the earnest business school graduate who thought that buying a paint factory was a grand idea and didn't stop to notice the flames billowing out the windows. If he can be said to be running anything, now, it can be divided between what is already ash and what very soon will be.

 

Quote

You might think that Tony Petitti and Brett Yormark, two of the three guys who now own college sports, would spare a thought for Kliavkoff as they pulled his kidneys through his nostrils in the name of "we didn't want Greg Sankey to do it first." There’s no evidence of this; fresh meat is still just meat in the final analysis. Petitti is the commissioner of the Big 10-In-Base-18 Conference, and Yormark is the commissioner of the Big 12 Plus A Thirty-Three Percent Markup. Sankey is capo di tutti capi and head of the Corleone Fam . . . err, Commissioner of the Southeastern Conference. Among the mega-conferences, the SEC has the longest tenure with its present membership unchanged at 178 days, dating back to when Texas and Oklahoma bumped up their departures from the Big 12 to next year.

 

 

Quote

In classic college sports fashion, they're all just doin' bidness. It’s the kind of bidness the Pac-12 couldn't do, because the Pac-12 didn't know how to sell a television package back when television was not yet the property of the retiree class. That's a thing to remember, too, when handing out the blame for how the conference representing big-time college sports in one of the nation’s more prominent time zones came apart— the Pac-12 was lousy and even borderline incompetent at selling itself, the customer base for those sales was dwindling by the year, and the time for action came and went without any. The conference’s schools budgeted for windfall money they didn't get, then bailed because they knew a losing hand when they'd drawn it for themselves. Which brings us back to Kliavkoff’s flaming bag. He's the one who grabbed it, passed a couple of potential dumping sites that didn’t seem quite right, and eventually the flames hit his sleeves too.

 

 

Spoiler

A lot of people got got in this latest burst of acquisitiveness by people who are used to eating and not tipping. But Sankey, Yormark, and Petitti (and before him Kevin Warren) were hired by school presidents who wanted them to do whatever they could to bring just this sort of moment to pass. The idea was to corner the market—any market, so long as it was willing to be cornered. And so they did. Standing on necks is just part of the deal.

To the extent that these things still matter, these are urban and coastal necks being trod upon. College sports is an economic powerhouse in the Southeast and Midwest, not so much on the coasts, and there is an unmistakably satisfying symbolism in the biggest sports powers on the West Coast being forced to abandon their history for a new life as second-class citizens. Plus, the four Pac-12 schools that bolted their own geographic homes to play on the coast (Colorado, Arizona, Arizona State, and Utah) are now back where they were. That disrespect of traditional borders and longstanding definitions of the word “coast” started when the Pac-8 seized Arizona and Arizona State 46 years ago, and the Pac-10 later tried to grab Texas and Oklahoma before settling for Colorado and Utah, so some of this new churn feels like revenge with a side of fries from the Big 12 side. That is not the only reason why the Pac-12 was shredded, and maybe not even a major reason. But it definitely matters.

Let’s be clear that this is not some tortured ballad for the way things used to be. The way things used to be, in college sports and elsewhere, was just as foul if not worse; the prime acronym atop all this, NCAA, is a four-letter explanation for why college sports has chosen this new hellscape. Theirs was the status quo that everyone could agree upon until they all realized the ostensibly supreme authority was just a middleman. The NCAA was a narcoleptic mall cop who'd been given a pistol—and live bullets—to keep the shoplifters in line and chase kids off the property. That left plenty of room for mischief, but it was also only ever going to be mistaken for actual authority for so long. What has replaced that antique style of commerce is organized looting, only faster and less polite than that makes it sound.

There are lots of villains here, no heroes and only unimportant and unnoticed victims. Like fans who need to pretend that "at Rutgers" is a fun road trip. Like college traditions and archrivalries, now being shed by its supposed caretakers. Like the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day, a building once used as a cathedral that’s now a Kroger's that's only open eight Saturdays a year. Like athletes' dreams of glory, shrunken by the smaller sliver of opportunity afforded them. Like the idea of a national entertainment industry gone regional because its actual reach is shrinking, which now feels either quaint, stupid, quaintly stupid, or stupidly quaint. Or all four, if you don't mind redundancy for effect.

At this point, the question arises—how did the perfectly contained and contiguous Pac-12 become such an economic sinkhole? The pros came in long ago and redefined the markets in Seattle (three teams) and the Bay Area (six teams) and Los Angeles (eight) and Phoenix and Denver (four each). Larry Scott, the former Pac-12 commissioner who saw the future and vomited contemptuously every time he had a chance to be part of it, didn't do this alone. He just cut the brake line because he wasn't a dealmaker like the other conference commissioners; they politely humored his preposterous incompetence until they could raid the joint. In fact, Scott is a success story by the modern definition—by getting fired in the nick of time (i.e., before the million-ton craphammer hits), Scott got the golden parachute and Kliavkoff got that bag we talked about earlier.

On the other hand, there will be some comfort for hidebound college traditionalists in knowing that this new model won't hold either. The mega-conferences will become as smug and bloated as the NCAA was a decade ago; as such, their next set of victims won't know the moment when they have transitioned from predator to prey. They think that being in the tent offers safety, but the only things that matter in the new model are the ability to generate money and be strong enough to demand more. The parties that will eat them in the future are in the tent with them now.

America is addicted to old things—the new ones require a flexibility of thought that this country doesn't possess in practice and deeply distrusts even in theory. And so you should not be surprised when the new power brokers form their own version of the NCAA, just with different small fry to punish and different athletes to provide the work without recompense. For all the chaos and change, that is the one thing that everyone in this industry still believes—that athletes are just strategically shaved bears whose lot it is to work the carny circuit until newer and younger bears come in. A bigger worldview, and all this big business, depends upon that belief.

So no, this isn't better at all. What these bosses have made is a college sports empire run by and for scorpions, grandees, and online spammers. But it isdifferent, and today's winners have made a model that will collapse after they've availed themselves of Scott's escape plan and gone off to be senior consultants for EatWhatYouCan'tSteal.com or network executives. They’ll leave nothing sustainable behind, but they’ll leave rich and unconcerned that what's in the rearview mirror as they drive off is a storm of lava, roofing nails, and ossified horseshit. And then at some point shortly thereafter they'll retire and die, and have to apologize to Hell for lowering the value of the real estate when they get there.

 

 

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billfromlaketravis

billfromlaketravis 11448

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The Cover 3 guys pointed out the current CFP contract is only for 2 years. They’re confident the 6 auto bids will go away, and for good reason. 
 

The AAC and MWC champions getting a bye/home game over Big 12, SEC, Big Ten, and ACC schools is some bullshit. But hey, they all signed the contract. That said UAB hosting Bama would be funny.

SMU or UTSA hosting Texas, not so funny. 

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Uncle Nate

Uncle Nate 2097

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2 minutes ago, billfromlaketravis said:

The Cover 3 guys pointed out the current CFP contract is only for 2 years. They’re confident the 6 auto bids will go away, and for good reason. 
 

The AAC and MWC champions getting a bye/home game over Big 12, SEC, Big Ten, and ACC schools is some bullshit. But hey, they all signed the contract. That said UAB hosting Bama would be funny.

SMU or UTSA hosting Texas, not so funny. 

Oh contraire…that would be fucking hilarious. 

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USC Traveler

USC Traveler 488

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2 hours ago, DFW Horn said:

How the PAC's leadership allowed Klownkoff to string them along past their media days is ridiculous. But, they were conned by Champagne Larry for years, so I guess it's not too surprising. Fuck 'em - they got what they deserved.

"Sorry guys, that deal with all the new tv partners that I talked about at media days fell apart right before this meeting, but we have a great deal with Apple!"🤣

Has there ever been a more gullible, clueless group than the past 13 years worth of PAC Presidents ?

Klownkoff and Champagne Larry found the one group of people dumb enough to buy their bs, all the while thinking they were the smartest guys in the room.

That Michael Crow press conference speaks for itself.  What a buffoon.  He and Ed Ray (OSU) were Scott's biggest enablers.

Those clowns, along with the rest who backed Scott and rejected bringing in UT, OU and the gang b/c of LHN were the people who killed the PAC.  

USC and UCLA wanted to do it even with LHN, but all the other schools were so opposed to unequal revenue for Tier 3 that they dug their own graves.

You also had a bunch of schools who thought they'd never get to the Rose Bowl again if the PAC had USC, UT and OU in it.  How'd that work out ?

I feel sorry for Stanford, Cal, WSU and OSU fans, but not the institutions.  UT would have been in the PAC a long time ago if it wasn't for Stanford.

Fuck all of them.  They definitely got what they deserved.

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