Tag: Oklahoma to Pac-12

Conference Realignment Chaos: It’s On Like Donkey Kong

On By Frank the TankIn Big East, Big Ten, College Basketball, College Football, Sports985 Comments

There’s obviously tons of conference realignment news out there from a lot of different fronts, so let’s get right to it (and I’ll warn you ahead of time that I’ll be jumping around a bit):

(1) ACC officially adds Syracuse and Pitt – I don’t know if adding Syracuse and Pitt alone makes financial sense for the ACC, but it’s a great move from a cultural fit standpoint.  Neither Syracuse nor Pitt were likely going to receive Big Ten invites, so it made sense for them to jump at the chance to move to the more stable ACC.  (Personally, I’ve long been a proponent of Syracuse receiving a Big Ten invite and thought that if Pitt could just trade locations with Rutgers, they would’ve been invited to the Big Ten many years ago.  Alas, the Big Ten is looking for football grand slams, which I’ll get to later on.)  This might not be a great football move on paper, yet from a market and academic standpoint, it still makes the ACC stronger than where they were a couple of days ago.

(2) Is 14 (not 16) the new 12? – With the Pac-16 looking like it might come to fruition (Oklahoma seems to be steamrolling over there) and speculation turning to the ACC supposedly not being done and planning to move up to a 16-school league (with candidates like Texas, Notre Dame, Rutgers and UConn being thrown around), the argument is that we are on the precipice of the full-fledged superconference era.

Call me skeptical right now.  The Pac-12 is on the verge of going up to 16 with both Texas and Oklahoma, which certainly justifies an expansion to 16.  For the Big Ten, ACC and SEC, though, there isn’t quite as compelling of a financial argument to move beyond 14 (or even 12 in the case of the Big Ten) simply for the sake of getting to 16… unless we see Notre Dame join one of them.  I’ll have more on that in a moment.  Otherwise, there’s just not enough firepower available for spots 15 or 16 in these leagues to justify large-scale expansion.

Regardless, there are a bunch of schools in the Big East and Big 12 (i.e. Rutgers, UConn, Louisville, maybe West Virginia, maybe Kansas, etc.) that are better off either with as little change as possible (i.e. Texas deciding to stay in the Big 12, which makes that a more palatable destination) or full-fledged realignment Armageddon with 4 16-school superconferences (of which those schools would presumably be in the “top 64” to be included).  What’s NOT good for them is a “tweener” superconference era of 14-school leagues, as they’ll likely end up in a league with Big East and Big 12 retreads without any football kings.

(3) What should the Big Ten do? – Since I’m a Big Ten guy, lots of people have been asking me what Jim Delany should be doing right now.  My unequivocal response: ABSOLUTELY NOTHING UNLESS NOTRE DAME AND/OR TEXAS WANT TO JOIN.  The Big Ten has a tight-knit conference with a national TV network, huge fan bases, great academics and four football kings (Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State and Nebraska).  There is absolutely no reason to have Big Ten expansion without Notre Dame (and/or the much less likely Texas) involved.  If the Irish come calling, then my feeling is that the Big Ten would look to add Rutgers to provide a direct New York City market presence (even though I believe UConn has the better overall athletic department).  The Big Ten seems to like Rutgers but not enough to add without Notre Dame.  With the amount of money that the Big Ten is splitting already, the standard is massively high.  Speaking of the Irish…

(4) Notre Dame has to start thinking again – Let’s be clear about one thing: from a pure football perspective, Notre Dame will never be forced to give up independence.  As long as the BCS exists, it’s going to deal with Notre Dame on favorable terms.  When BYU can get a multi-year multi-million dollar TV contract from ESPN, it shows that Notre Dame is not within one iota of being in danger of losing its NBC contract (or having someone else like ESPN pick it up instead).  TV networks and bowls will always want Notre Dame while power schools such as Michigan and USC will continue to schedule the Domers no matter what.

The irony is that the main way to get Notre Dame to join a conference has nothing to do with football.  My reader M pointed out a blog post that I wrote back in June 2010 that could almost be written verbatim again today (Pac-16 on the horizon, Texas A&M going to the SEC and the Big East in danger).  In that blog post, I referenced a source that had knowledge of the Big East conference agreement, which states that in the event the league loses 2 football members, the football and non-football sides can split and maintain their respective revenue distributions (i.e. NCAA Tournament credits).  At that time, what I was told was that the Catholic members were actually the ones looking to opt for a split in the event of the loss of any members.

It’s unclear whether there’s the same understanding now, but either way, Notre Dame’s overall athletic department has progressed to the point where a league with only the BE Catholic schools wouldn’t be satisfactory for a program of the size that’s in South Bend.  Basketball would be fine, but it’s everything else that would be a large problem.  While Notre Dame’s alumni base might be willing to throw all non-football sports under the bus in the sake of football independence, Jack Swarbrick and the rest of the leadership at the school aren’t going to have the same perspective as they have to weigh the interests of a whole lot more student-athletes.  Like Texas, Notre Dame was in the position of having its cake and eating it, too, with football independence coupled with a BCS-level league for non-football sports.  Now, it’s probably going to have to give up one or the other, and considering that Notre Dame was on the verge of joining the Big Ten in 2003 when the remaining Big East schools were much more attractive than whose in place now, it’s an indicator that independence is in danger.  It would be great if the ACC could offer them non-football membership outlined in my last post, yet that seems extremely unlikely now.  Granted, independence is still an institutional identity issue for the school more than a money issue (which is contrary to what a lot of college football fans believe), so you never know where the Irish might come out on this.

One thing to note (and I’ll have to give credit to one of the Northwestern posters on a Purple Book Cat thread on Wildcatreport.com for pointing this out, but I can’t find the link right now): keep a close eye on what Notre Dame is doing (or not doing) with respect to hockey conference membership.  The college hockey world experienced its own Conference Realignment Armageddon this past summer after the formation of the Big Ten hockey conference and a new league that siphoned off many of the best of the remaining WCHA and CCHA programs.  Notre Dame, though, hasn’t announced a single thing about joining a different hockey league even though everyone else had done so a couple of months ago.  If you see Notre Dame announcing that it’s joining the Hockey East next week, it’s probably a pretty good indicator that the Irish aren’t joining the Big Ten.  However, the longer that Notre Dame doesn’t say anything about hockey, the more likely it means the Big Ten is a viable option.  Consider the Notre Dame hockey program the college football realignment canary in the coal mine.

(5) Mergers and Acquisitions – A couple of mergers might be on the horizon to create even more mega-conferences.  CBS Sports is reporting that the remaining Big 12 and Big East football schools are exploring a potential merger.  This makes sense in a number of ways since as long as the Big East and Big 12 are existence, they will have BCS AQ bids through 2013.

Someone that had worked with a conference office told me a couple of weeks ago that a merger between the Big 12 and Big East would be a smart move for the leftover schools.  A conference merger actually occurred in 1991, where the American South Conference merged with a wounded Sun Belt Conference that was on the verge of collapse after losing nearly all of its members.  Why did the American South step in to save the Sun Belt?  It’s because in the event of a merger, it meant that the Sun Belt wouldn’t dissolve and therefore, the NCAA ensured that the new merged league (which would decide to keep the Sun Belt name) would retain all of the NCAA Tournament credits of the departed schools.  In the cases of both the Big 12 and Big East, there’s an even stronger incentive for both conferences to avoid dissolution in order to preserve the NCAA Tournament credits of the schools that left their respective leagues (which are actually quite substantial with schools like Syracuse and Pitt involved) along with AQ status for football.  At the same time, the SEC, Pac-12 and ACC all have fairly strong incentives to see a merger occur as it lowers their potential legal exposure from schools such as Baylor and Iowa State that might otherwise be left out of the AQ level.

On the non-AQ front, the Mountain West and Conference USA are considering a football-only merger in an attempt to procure BCS AQ status.  It will be interesting to see whether a mega-league would be persuasive to the BCS powers-that-be on that front since the issue has largely been about the weakness in the bottom halves of those 2 conferences, which won’t go away (and might even be exacerbated) with a merger.

(6) The Geography of Conference Realignment – Finally, as a political junkie, one of my favorite analysts out there is Nate Silver of the FiveThirtyEight blog.  So, I was ecstatic to see him post a massive analysis of college conference realignment to determine the different values of various schools.  I actually wrote about the CommonCensus Sports Map Project several years ago (prior to when most of you had stumbled onto this blog) that Silver used in his posting and had noticed at the time that the SEC schools were largely underrepresented in the college football fan numbers.  Regardless, both the Nate Silver piece and the CommonCensus Sports Maps provide a starting point and an incredible amount of data points to examine for anyone interested in how fans of sports teams are distributed by market.

Over 1500 words about the latest in conference realignment and I’ve barely talked about Texas.  Don’t worry – I’ll be writing much more about the Longhorns soon.  Until then, enjoy the hourly changes in the rumor mill.

(Follow Frank the Tank’s Slant on Twitter @frankthetank111 and Facebook)

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Conference Realignment: If I Was Richer, I’d Still Be With Ya

On By Frank the TankIn Big East, Big Ten, Sports844 Comments

It’s been a crazy couple of days to say the least.  We saw the SEC vote to conditionally accept Texas A&M, Baylor and a bunch of other Big 12 schools holding up the A&M move by refusing to sign some legal waivers, rumors stating the Pac-12 doesn’t really want to expand but will still add Oklahoma and Oklahoma State, Texas and Notre Dame are heading to the Big Ten, and the Big East may pick up some Big 12 leftovers, and now it may be all for naught with the Big 12 possibly being saved (in part by BYU).  So, by the time you read this post, it might be completely outdated with how fast the news and rumor mill has been churning.  Anyway, I have few thoughts on the latest developments:

1. Can’t blame Baylor (and others) for legal stance – As a lawyer, if I was representing any institution in this scenario, whether it’s Baylor, Iowa State or Texas, there’s NFW that I’d let it sign a blanket waiver of legal rights to the SEC and if such institution wanted to proceed, I’d insist upon some type of considerable payment in return.  A waiver of this nature wouldn’t be enforceable without some type of consideration from SEC, anyway.

In the case of Baylor, there might literally be no amount of consideration outside of the preservation of the Big 12 itself (as long-term AQ status trumps short-term monetary payoffs) that could justify signing that waiver.  Whether Baylor actually has a case with respect to tortious interference against the SEC isn’t really relevant here.  At face value, this type of case is probably a loser.  The Big East attempted to sue the ACC on similar grounds back in 2003 and ultimately settled for $5 million total, which is effectively pocket change that wouldn’t even cover 50% of one year of conference TV revenue for just one Big 12 school.  However, Mike Slive would know that insisting upon a waiver of legal rights would cause an allergic reaction among Big 12 members as a legal principle.  I don’t think much of Dan Ponzi Beebe, but he was correct in his statement that it’s unprecedented for a raiding conference to ask for waivers of legal rights from those left behind in the raided conference.  It doesn’t make sense for the SEC to do this from a practical standpoint unless they have some other motives outside of the legal realm (which we’ll get to in a moment).  That being said…

2. Can’t blame Texas A&M for being volcanically pissed off – As a business man, I have a hard time seeing the value in attempting to keep around a school that clearly doesn’t want to be there.  As long as Texas A&M pays all of the exit fees that it has agreed to with the Big 12 (which by all accounts it plans to do), then the Aggies should be free to go as they please.  Whether Oklahoma or others might leave after the Aggies (thereby dissolving the Big 12) shouldn’t be the problem of Texas A&M or the SEC.  It’s in the best interests of everyone within the Big 12 to move on as quickly as possible.  Now, I believe that Aggies have some misplaced anger toward Baylor in the sense that the SEC is the entity that is requesting something that no other Big 12 school (unless it’s heading out the door for the West Coast) would reasonably sign.  Which gets to the next point…

3. SEC isn’t doing this for purely legal reasons – As I’ve done several times before on this blog, I’ll point to Mr. SEC, who I believe had a spot-on commentary on the SEC’s true motives in asking for these waivers: Mike Slive wants to see if he can cause Larry Scott and the Pac-12 to act first.  Personally, I doubt Slive will win this particular game of chicken since, by all accounts, the Pac-12 is only going to act if A&M moves first.  Still, it doesn’t really hurt the SEC to attempt this tactic, where the conference can just wait awhile and then decide to proceed with expansion without the Big 12 waivers.

4. Big Ten looking to form the “Fuck You, Pay Me” Conference? – The famous Purple Book Cat of the WildcatReport.com resurfaced last night with the following rumor: the Big Ten is looking to add Notre Dame and Texas with a bevy of conditions, including folding the Longhorn Network into a “BTN2”.  The proposed solution to the “LHN problem” actually makes some sense, although I don’t quite understand the issues that the Big Ten would have regarding ESPN supposedly pushing the UT-to-the-Pac-12 angle (as the channel actually has a much closer and wider-ranging relationship with the Big Ten compared to the Pac-12).  Chip Brown of Orangebloods separately stated the following, as well:

An outside the box option would be something like a conference such as the Big Ten allowing Texas to join the league and only make money off of LHN and not share revenue from the Big Ten Network. File that one away.

Should any of us really be giving this idea any credence?  Probably not.  I don’t see how the Big Ten is going to provide special arrangements to Texas when Jim Delany spent a TON of capital in convincing power schools like Michigan and Ohio State to sign up for the Big Ten Network instead of forming their own individual networks.

At the same time, if there’s any truth to the notion of Notre Dame joining a conference, I have faith that it will be smoked out by the school’s alumni base long before a decision is made.  They’re on a 24/7/365 Independence Watch over there, so this isn’t a matter that’s going to get agreed upon in a backroom at least as far as South Bend is concerned.

Regardless, assuming that no one knows what they’re talking about on anything regarding conference realignment (which is true), we can at least play along and put together a B1G 16 Fuck You, Pay Me Conference pod setup with, say, Syracuse and Rutgers (PURELY for discussion purposes – substitute Missouri, Pitt, Maryland, Boston College, or anyone else if it makes you feel better) in addition to UT and ND with each school having a protected cross-division rival (in parentheses):

NORTH
Michigan (Ohio State)
Michigan State (Rutgers)
Notre Dame (Texas)
Purdue (Indiana)

EAST
Ohio State (Michigan)
Penn State (Nebraska)
Rutgers (Michigan State)
Syracuse (Minnesota)

SOUTH
Texas (Notre Dame)
Illinois (Iowa)
Northwestern (Wisconsin)
Indiana (Purdue)

WEST
Nebraska (Penn State)
Iowa (Illinois)
Wisconsin (Northwestern)
Minnesota (Syracuse)

If the Big Ten has an 8-game conference schedule as proposed in the Purple Book Cat scenario, that means each school would play its 3 podmates annually plus 1 cross-division rival and then rotate through the other pods each year on an NFL-style basis.  From a Notre Dame perspective (who is really the one that needs to get pleased even more than Texas), this setup keeps their 3 traditional Big Ten rivals, secures an annual game with Texas, and then allows them to still schedule USC and Navy home-and-home in the non-conference schedule.  That’s about as close as you can get to a national schedule for Notre Dame while preserving the maximum number of rivals within the confines of a conference.  While that’s likely never going to be enough for the independent-minded Notre Dame alums (as independence is really an identity issue for that school as opposed to a financial stance), I doubt the Irish could get much better from a pure scheduling standpoint.

Anyway, this is all a hypothetical… like everything else in conference realignment.

(Follow Frank the Tank’s Slant on Twitter @frankthetank111 and Facebook)

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Texas Longhorns: Going to California (Again)?

On By Frank the TankIn Big East, Big Ten, College Basketball, College Football, Sports902 Comments

When it comes to choosing a conference, the University of Texas has a choice: does it want the nicest house in Compton or an average house in Beverly Hills?

The former is what it would have if it chooses to stick around the Big 12 to keep the Longhorn Network in a Big 12 that definitely won’t have Texas A&M, very likely won’t have Oklahoma and, by extension, Oklahoma State, and possibly won’t have Missouri, either.  UT could continue to be the richest person in the neighborhood by a mile and control the local scene.  Of course, the issue is that everyone in the area that has scrounged up enough of a down-payment is moving out to nicer places.  The latter is what it would own if it becomes an equal TV revenue sharing partner in the Pac-12 (or for that matter, the Big Ten or SEC).  In that case, UT would be another rich guy in a whole town full of rich guys, but it also won’t have to worry about the value of the house going down.

It’s a fundamental question about what UT wants/needs to be.  The Big 12 as saved last summer was really UT’s dream scenario: they essentially were earning independent-type TV money in a conference with their primary regional rivals.  Now that one of their rivals (A&M) might be headed out the door as early as tomorrow and their other main rival (OU) has all but declared it’s heading west to the Pac-12, is the Longhorn Network (which hasn’t even been on the air for a week) more important than UT’s conference?  Larry Scott knows, just like Jim Delany and Mike Slive, that equal revenue sharing is a primary tenet of strong conference unity, so he’s not going to let UT have a separate TV deal when the schools in California like USC have already given up unequal shares in the new monster Pac-12 TV contracts.

Now, I consider Bill Powers (UT president) and Deloss Dodds (UT athletic director) to be smart men.  The Longhorn athletic department didn’t become the wealthiest in the country (even before any LHN cash started coming) by accident.  They likely thought that they controlled all of the cards, where as long as UT stayed in the Big 12, the other big guns of OU and A&M would, too.  I certainly thought that way.  While it wasn’t a surprise to find that the Big 12 wasn’t long for this world, I didn’t believe that it would be killed off only a year after its Summer 2010 stay of execution.

I can’t blame UT for going out and getting the LHN deal.  Any other school that had that type of leverage would’ve done the same thing.  However, I also can’t blame either A&M or OU for looking out for their own interests.  Most people here know me as the guy that wrote about the possibility of Texas going to the Big Ten last year, and as much as I’d still love to see that happen in many ways, there’s really no better conference deal out there for UT than a Pac-16 that includes Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Texas Tech.  Neither the Big Ten nor SEC would ever grant spots to OSU and Tech and even if they’re not outright political requirements for OU and UT, they ensure that the two power schools won’t be complete geographic outliers.

At this point, I can’t see how OU could rationally stay in the Big 12 (particularly after OU president David Boren’s explicit statement of no-confidence in the conference).  (Note that rationality doesn’t always apply in conference decisions.)  The Pac-12 would certainly be willing to take them and OSU without having Texas schools coming along, as the Sooner are a top 10 college football brand.  It’s the LHN that makes what UT will ultimately decide difficult to predict.  There’s just no way that channel could continue to exist within the confines of the Pac-12 (at least as a UT-branded entity).  UT is going to have a really nice house no matter where it lives.  What will be instructive is whether it wants the nicest house on the block or a better neighborhood.  The Longhorns may not be able to have both.

(Follow Frank the Tank’s Slant on Twitter @frankthetank111 and Facebook)

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