There is peace in the valley–for now
They got it right.
It’s not often you can say that in college athletics because usually when there is a winner in the sports world there is a loser or multiple losers. But in the case of conference expansion, the powers that be in college football put their heads together and got this one right.
As a result, there were a lot of conference commissioners who spent last night breathing a sigh of relief and smoking a victory cigar. That’s what happens when you dodge a bullet that could have ripped a huge hole into the body and heart of college football as we know it.
When Texas announced last night that it would stay and thus hold the 10-team Big 12 together, it allowed the sport to step back from the brink of what could have been a fundamental change in college football as we know it. Some of it would have been good but most of it would have taken on the feel of a shotgun marriage for financial expediency and survival. There would have been some winners but some proud schools with great athletics traditions–we’re talking about you, Kansas–could have been severely damaged.
You have to understand that if all of the dominoes had fallen into place, we could have had two of the six BCS equity conferences (Big East, Big 12) simply put out of the football business. That would have been an ugly and heartbreaking thing to watch for all of us who love college football.
But in the deal that was crafted yesterday, nobody got everything they wanted but just about everybody got something they wanted. That’s the classic definition of a good deal. Let’s run down the conference scorecard this morning:
Big 12: Yeah, they only have 10 teams now that Nebraska has bolted to the Big Ten and Colorado has gone to the Pac-10 (11). That was a good move for both schools. Nebraska wasn’t happy in the Big 12 and will get a big pay raise. Colorado more identifed with the West Coast and will have a chance to compete in football now that the flagship program in the Pac Ten (USC) has been significantly damaged by the choppy waters of the NCAA Committee on Infractions.
You say the Big 12 loses its championship game? Yeah, but you need to know that the coaches in that league are thrilled. They never liked the game and now the winner of the Texas-Oklahoma game can pretty much punch their ticket to a BCS bowl. And the loser has a chance to get into the a big bowl as well. Texas used its considerable muscle to get the payday it wanted. Same for OU and Texas A&M, who used its flirtation with the SEC to make sure that the Longhorns didn’t big foot them on the finances of the new deal. Those three schools were big winners and the other seven schools in the league will get less money. But those schools, particularly Kansas and Missouri, won’t say a word. They are glad to still have a home.
And the Big 12 is not going to add two teams to get back to 12. This is the deal they wanted.
PAC-11: You have to give new Commissioner Larry Scott credit. Because his conference is rarely seen on national television in prime time, he knew he needed to do something bold. So he swung for the fences and tried to create the Pac-16. It would have been a brilliant move and would have sparked a huge bidding war between ESPN and FOX for the television package. But at the end of the day Texas got what it wanted to stay put.
The Pac-11 will add another team, probably Utah from the Mountain West. But remember that I said this: Keep an eye on Scott. He is a very smart guy. Despite the sanctions against USC, he is going to make the Pac-11 a force again.
SEC: The SEC never, ever wanted to expand but commissioner Mike Slive had to have a plan in pace in case his hand was forced. That is why he reportedly (it was never confirmed by his office) went to Texas A&M on Saturday to lay out the SEC case for the Aggies. I believe Texas A&M would have seriously considered splitting with Texas had all of those Big 12 teams moved West. But when the plan was put into place to keep the Big 12 together, A&M was staying put as long as the financials made sense.
So the SEC got what it wanted. It didn’t have to do anything. The conference still has 14 years left on its TV contract with CBS and ESPN. The SEC has won four straight BCS national championships and Alabama will be your preseason No. 1. Life is good. You don’t mess with Happy.
ACC: Breathing much easier today. There was concern that if the SEC felt it had to expand, it might look to strengthen its Southeastern footprint at the expense of the ACC. Everybody in the ACC was publicly expressing their loyalty to the league.
Based on some calls I got yesterday, trust me when I tell you that if the SEC had added Texas A&M and was looking for a 14th team, it would have gotten very interesting for the Atlantic Coast Conference.
But a note for those who were floating Duke and North Carolina as possible candidates for the SEC: I don’t have the word skills to fully explain how wrong that was. Duke and Carolina were the holdout votes for the LAST ACC expansion. They don’t like having 12 teams now. They sure weren’t going to join a 14 or 16 team SEC.
Big East: The Big East was vulnerable to getting at least three teams poached by the Big Ten and could have been forced to break up, scattering teams like Connecticut, Louisville, West Virgnia, Cincinnati, and South Florida to the wind. As a football conference the Big East lives to fight another day.
Mountain West: Added Boise State, and that’s a good thing. The MWC may lose Utah to the Pac-11 and that’s a bad thing. It also had a chance to draft those cast adrift if the Big 12 had broken up and that sweepstakes could have included Kansas. So the Mountain West didn’t win and it will survive the loss of Utah. The league is on the way to being an automatic BCS qualifier in 2012. Now the Pac-11 could get frisky again and try to take BYU as well, but for a lot of reasons I don’t see that happening.
The Big Ten: I saved the best for last. The Big Ten didn’t get the monster fish it wanted (Notre Dame) but it did get Nebraska and all of its football tradition. Nebraska is in a small TV market (115) so it’s not a home run when it comes to increasing subscriptions to the Big Ten Network. But the Big Ten can now have a conference championship game on the first Saturday in December if it choses to do so. And it will be huge.
I don’t discount the possibility that commissioner Jim Delany will someday invoke the nuclear option and go to 16 teams. But I think that is less likely right now.
After college football came so close to major upheaval and the possible destruction of two conferences, if Delany jumps back into the fray again and disrupts the peace, he will be portrayed as Gordon Gekko, the amoral financier from “Wall Street” who saw life as a zero sum game and himself as the ultimate winner. Too many people have worked too hard in the past five days to basically save college football from itself.
Today college football is at peace and Delany reads the tea leaves as well as anybody. The Big Ten stays at 12–for now.
So it’s been quite a ride, boys and girls. Of course when the next television contract comes up for negotiation, we’ll probably be having these conversations again. But for now, I’m anxious to start talking about football once more. I’ve had just about all of the high finance that I can stand.
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307 comments Add your comment
Atlanta Gator 3IML
June 15th, 2010
9:19 pm
5IML—-
I was surprised and not happy to see Bama lose to Utah, but in terms of ugly, humiliating and embarrassing, no, the 2009 Sugar Bowl does not even begin to compare to the 1996 Fiasco Bowl. The Gators had their collective head crushed by the Huskers. Your 1991 Fiesta Bowl was much more comparable in terms of the humiliation factor.
Atlanta Gator
June 15th, 2010
9:23 pm
Beast—-
Yeah, and the Huskers probably would have been back in 1996, but for the fact that most of their team came down with the flu the week before the Big XII title game and they managed to get upset by a lesser Longhorns team. That just confirmed Tom Osborne’s disenchantment with the whole idea of the Big XII title game.
5IML
June 15th, 2010
9:26 pm
The 1991 Fiesta Bowl was during my freshman year at BAMA. A few of my friends were on the team and said they were out drinking and partying into the wee hours of the morning before the game. They (coaches and players) didn’t take Louisville seriously, and we (coaches, players, administrators, students, and fans) got embarrassed.
Dostoyevskiy
June 15th, 2010
9:27 pm
Atlanta Gator, I agree, I shouldn’t take for granite that those teams you mentioned would not do what would be in their best interests. But I happen to believe that it woud be in their overall best interests (particularly because their perceived academic status) to remain in the ACC. I believe Clemson University would not leave the ACC. They too, are a part of the family from the very beginning. Md enjoys a slightly differenrent cultural orientation, and the “family” feeling may not be there, but their long history and their desire to remain among basketball’s elite, would, in my opinion, also bind them to the ACC forever.
Atlanta Gator
June 15th, 2010
9:41 pm
Fyodor—-
I know a lot of Clemson alumni here in Atlanta, and they don’t seem to view the ACC as much more than a necessary evil and seem to find the academic, ahem, pretensions of the Tobacco Road schools to be, well, a little pretentious. On the other side, I can tell you that there was no family love for Clemson to be felt during my time as an undergraduate in Charlottesville, nor when I lived in Alexandria or Asheville. Sure, that’s anecdotal and not exactly a scientific survey . . . . I might also add that UVa alumni generally find Duke folks to be the most obnoxious on the planet, including, I might add, the entire SEC. The vanity of close differences, I suppose.
Atlanta Gator
June 15th, 2010
9:46 pm
Good word play, BTW—-”take for granite.” Probably, only works in writing because most people wouldn’t catch it when spoken.
sec
June 15th, 2010
10:04 pm
dost,
Get a grip. The acc can keep their family. no one here in the sec really cares to have them in our family.
sec
June 15th, 2010
10:09 pm
Greenville, Winston-Salem, fayetteville, NC. do these towns have more professionals and NASA engineers than say an sec city like Huntsville, Al aka space city, USA. I think not. Have they sent more astronauts into space than Auburn? No and a resounding no at that.
Doo dah- Doo dah
June 15th, 2010
10:16 pm
An SEC city like Huntsville Al?????? You’re breaking up pal . I think the Triangle will hold it’s own with lots of progressive job hubs. Not too many SEC cities that are big on the professional screens.
Pete
June 15th, 2010
10:20 pm
Some contrarian views on conference expansion, etc.
1. REDUCE rather than ENLARGE conferences. Any conference that is too big for round robin play (everyone plays everyone) is too big. Determine the conference champ by regular season play, even if it’s a tie. Send Vandy to the Big 10 and Arkansas to the Big 12 when another vacancy occurs.
2. Having separate divisions within conferences necessarily results in unbalanced schedules; championship games are (a) sometimes rematches of regular season games, (b) can become trap games, or (c) complete mismatches. Their existence is actually another strike against working out a viable playoff system someday.
3. The appeal of College football is different, and should be, from pro ball. Rivalries are based on history, in state rivalry or natural border wars. As somebody once said, “nobody ever went to the University of the Rams”.
4. There’s already plenty of money in football (figure 85,000 X $75 per ticket and existing TV income). Please don’t make the mistake of thinking that this Golden Goose can’t be killed (or badly winged) by greed.
sec
June 15th, 2010
10:27 pm
Doo dah,
Huntsville has more engineers per capita for cities of 100k or more than any other city in the US. It is tied to NASA the same way that disney world is tied to Orlando. Only a fool like you wouldn’t know that. WDE.
Atlanta Gator
June 15th, 2010
10:29 pm
Pete—-
I generally agree, but nobody gets to exile Vanderbilt to the Big Ten (Dozen). As a traditionalist, you must recognize and appreciate that Vandy’s football history is longer and richer than every SEC school not named Alabama. (Look it up, if you don’t believe me.) Granted, Vandy’s been a little down on their luck for the last four to seven decades, but the history is there.
Atlanta Gator
June 15th, 2010
10:33 pm
As for SEC professional cities, shall I dare state the obvious—-Atlanta? I don’t think there is any ACC city that compares. It’s the crossroads of the South, and that includes almost every ACC and SEC school, and is usually the home of the largest clusters of ACC and SEC alumni outside the home states of their respective alma maters. But, hey, little Charlotte’s kind neat, too.
= )
Doo dah- Doo dah
June 15th, 2010
10:34 pm
Huntsville is not an SEC city.
Doo dah- Doo dah
June 15th, 2010
10:36 pm
Atlanta is a mixed bag but hardly an SEC city since there is no SEC school here.
Atlanta Gator
June 15th, 2010
10:47 pm
Doo dah- Doo dah—-
Do you live here? Good God, man. There is not a more SEC city on the planet. It’s a college football town, not a basketball town. Pro sports are an afterthought. Georgia Tech is here, but it’s a curiosity. Get out a drive around on a Saturday. You can find more Gators banners than Tech banners, and with 12,500 alumni here, Florida is only the third largest alumni group here after Georgia and Auburn. This is the biggest career destination outside of their home states for every SEC school other than Arkansas. This the SEC core, the mecca of Southern football, and every December pilgrimages are made, offerings are given, and honor is paid.
Not an SEC city? Don’t be silly.
Atlanta Gator
June 15th, 2010
10:48 pm
“Camptown Races,” what?
Delbert D.
June 15th, 2010
10:58 pm
Pete – Good thinking, but for economy of scale, there needs to be more teams than 8 as a single conference. I grew up in the days when 2 or 3 games were televised on Saturday, and you had to choose between ones that played at the same time. Too many separate conferences for individual media rights negotiation, and the costs to the networks would decrease the money available to the schools. Now, for even better economy of scale, if 4 conferences go to 16, that’s a national playoff of 64 schools. One division of a particular conference may dominate for a period, but at least there is an Elite Eight of division winners. The teams that are eliminated in regular season play, well, maybe next year. The 4 conference champions are the Final 4.
The other 50-plus schools? They get a chance for bowls, along with the non-division winners in the major conferences. This is the only BCS-busting scenario I see.
Delbert D.
June 15th, 2010
11:00 pm
Atlanta Gator – Right on with the SEC destination city. I just jumped in for a quick read, and I’ve got to go.
Paul in RDU
June 15th, 2010
11:07 pm
AG – The UVA alumni find the Duke folks the most obnoxious on the planet? You never met anyone from Chapel Hill or is it that you not like rich kids from NJ and NY??? As an outsider here in the Triangle, I prefer the NCSU fans, with WF next and Duke barely ahead of the whine and cheese crowd.
Tide Rising
June 15th, 2010
11:14 pm
Just checking back. Huntsville and Atlanta are not SEC cities? Good Lord what is this guy talking about?
Don’t know a lot about Huntsville except that it is a high technology and engineering city. It does have a lot to do with the space program and from what I know everyone I met from there is generally a Bama, AU, or UT fan.
I have a friend from high school who was a engineering grad from AU. He works at Teledyne Brown in Huntsville and I remember catching up with him years ago at Christmas. He was in charge of plotting the orbital course of the space shuttle. Pretty cool stuff and from the way he talked dang most of the city was engineers and a lot of the tech companies were somehow affiliated with the space program. Did not know that they did so much for the space program from Huntsville but apparently they do and I know this man is not a BSer.
Atlanta not an sec city and not a technology center? Please. Atlanta has lost an obscene amount of tech and software jobs in particular over the last couple years.
Paul in RDU
June 15th, 2010
11:19 pm
Speaking of Clemson going to the SEC (and Clemson is a fine school). If CU did that it would raise the median academic rankings of both the SEC and the ACC at the same time – you can look it up.
Atlanta Gator
June 15th, 2010
11:23 pm
TR—-
One of my Florida fraternity brothers was an aerospace engineering major, and one of the two or three smartest people I’ve ever met. He’s a rocket scientist, literally. Got his Ph.D., and now he’s a senior division head in NASA’s manned spaceflight program. Those Gator engineers get around.
Atlanta Gator
June 15th, 2010
11:26 pm
Paul in RDU—-
Okay, wise guy, that’s an old joke. Please specify, median or average?
In any event, we could always use another land-grant school in the SEC. They just need to tone down that whole Pitchfork Ben Tillman thing.
Tide Rising
June 15th, 2010
11:28 pm
Paul in RDU,
Had a good friend that went to Duke. One of the most laid back and coolest people I know. He didn’t like it there though. I got the impression he didn’t like the people at Duke. I also dated a girl from Duke during college over the summer. Very obnoxious about Duke basketball and this was way back before they even won a national title. Hard to believe but they’re worse than Bama fans are regarding football. I enjoyed booting that girl to the curb.
Lately I had a girlfriend from Wake and got to know several of her Wake friends. I like the Wake people. Good folks. Her girlfriend also a Wake grad dated Chuck Oliver so I met Chuck a couple times when he went out with us. He’s a nice enough guy in person but the funny thing about his girlfriend is that she was just as much a duke bball fan as a Wake fan. Matter of fact her family had some kind of connection to Duke bball and so the team manager or Coach K’s daughter(can’t remember which) got her a real Duke bball warmup suit the kind that only the players get. You can’t buy them period so that was pretty cool. So when Dost talks about them kind of being one big family up there in North Carolina even with their little family squabblings I think I know what he’s talking about from what I’ve seen. They certainly do seem like one big family culturally and as far as academics go anyway.
Tide Rising
June 15th, 2010
11:31 pm
AG,
Same thing with my AU bud. He also is literally a rocket scientist. I told him that must be a great pickup line if he’s at a bar but he told me it doesn’t count as much in Huntsville cause everyone else is also a scientist or engineer.
Paul in RDU
June 15th, 2010
11:34 pm
AG – Please re-read my post – I specified median
Atlanta Gator
June 15th, 2010
11:34 pm
When I first moved to Atlanta, the way I originally heard that old saw was that so-and-so of suspect intelligence moved from Georgia to Alabama and the average IQ of both states rose.
Tide Rising
June 15th, 2010
11:35 pm
AG,
We won’t exchange names of these 2 fellas but its a small world and I would not be in the least surprised if they knew each other, knew of each other, or had worked together in some capacity at NASA. Been years since I saw my friend and I don’t know if he earned his phd and all that but a mutual friend that he see much more frequently told me that he is the #2 guy at NASA now. I doubt if he was talking about NASA period though. I think he was just talking about the NASA dept. that he worked at or the division of Teledyne brown that works with NASA. In any event that’s some pretty cool stuff.
Tide Rising
June 15th, 2010
11:39 pm
AG,
“When I first moved to Atlanta, the way I originally heard that old saw was that so-and-so of suspect intelligence moved from Georgia to Alabama and the average IQ of both states rose.”
And to think I thought I had heard all the jokes about Alabama from Georgia folks.
Paul in RDU
June 15th, 2010
11:40 pm
TR – The son of some close friends of mine is a Duke alum (undergrad and PhD – I went to his dissertation defense a month or so ago). He’s a great guy as are his folks, but the general Duke student b’ball fan makes the ALA f’ball fans look modest. Funny thing about them is they’ll camp out for days for a Duke game in Cameron, but at Wallace Wade you can get tickets on the 50, 10 rows back below face (at least I did)
Atlanta Gator
June 15th, 2010
11:42 pm
Don’t feel bad, you should hear the effing jorts jokes I have to put up with. I mean, what the hell is a jort anyway?
Paul in RDU
June 15th, 2010
11:43 pm
TR – I agree with you on the Wake fans – they are good folks.
BTW – There are still a couple of old restaurants in Wake Forest painted in the school colors even though the school moved to W-S over 50 years ago for the RJR money.
Tide Rising
June 15th, 2010
11:48 pm
Paul,
Yes. I would maybe agree that they can be even more rabid about their bball then we are about football. Just not on as big a scale though. They have a few thousand crazies who will camp out for bball tickets but we’ll have near 100k show up for a meaningless spring scrimmage. If we had to camp out for tickets to football I’m certain we’ld have a tent city around Tuscaloosa as well.
Wallace Wade? Hope Duke people realize what a fine man this guy was.
Tide Rising
June 15th, 2010
11:52 pm
paul,
My Wake girlfriend finally explained what the Steely Dan song “deacon blues” was all about. Believe or not I never made the connection that they(Steely Dan) were Wake students in their earlier days and I never got the connection about them lamenting the deacons 20 something game losing streak in the early 70s. Hence the song about deacon blues losing and wanting to be like the winners in the world-they call Alabama the crimson tide.
Tide Rising
June 15th, 2010
11:54 pm
AG,
If it makes you feel better I’ve never heard a bama or even an AU fan reference the term jorts when referring to Florida fans. I think that’s just a Georgia thing.
Paul in RDU
June 15th, 2010
11:55 pm
TR – If you have the opportunity this year, you should come up to Duke for the ALA game. Although small by SEC standards, the stadium is a great place to view a game with not a bad seat in the house – heck it even held a Rose Bowl. Cameron is right next to Wallace Wade and the Duke Chapel and Gardens are not far away. It’s a beautiful campus and the Duke fans are hospitable for football (not so much for b’ball).
Atlanta Gator
June 15th, 2010
11:57 pm
Paul in RDU—-
Were you a liberal arts major?
Clemson is the ninth-ranked school of 12 in the ACC. Georgia Tech is the sixth-ranked school at 35th among all national universities. Hypothetically, if Clemson were to move to another, more football-oriented Southern athletic conference, that would leave eleven schools in the ACC, with Georgia Tech as the sixth school of eleven. It would appear that the median ranking (i.e. the one defining the 50th percentile), as defined by the sixth school of 11 or 12, would not change appreciably by Clemson’s departure.
Now, if you really meant say mean, rather than median, Clemson’s hypothetical departure might have some more meaningful mathematical movement.
(?)
Tide Rising
June 16th, 2010
12:03 am
Paul,
That’s a good suggestion and now that I think about it I will probably do it. Don’t know why but the thought of heading up there just never occurred to me. I was planning on going up to Penn State next year. I went there in the 87 to see Bama play. Penn state is a great experience.
I’ve only been to the research triangle area a couple times and not long enough to really see anything. I am kind of surprised I haven’t been there more since I’ve had several girlfriends who went to college up there- Wake, Duke, Elon, Washington and Lee, and a couple girls I worked with from UVA and some guys I knew from UNC. That’s a good idea and I think I’m going to go ahead and do it. May get my ex Wake girlfriend to go since we are still good friends.Never did see the chapel at Duke.
I could stop by and pay homage to wallace wade as I’ve no doubt some of us bama fans would like to do.
Tide Rising
June 16th, 2010
12:05 am
AG and Paul,
good blogging with you guys. I’m out till manana.
Paul in RDU
June 16th, 2010
12:06 am
AG – I am not a liberal arts major, but you appear to be one. The median is the one in the middle – 50% above and 50% below. (BTW – this applies if you have an even or an odd number of schools). SInce Clemson is below the median in the ACC, by leaving they will raise the median in the ACC. Since their ranking is higher than the median in the SEC, by joining the SEC they will raise the median.
Paul in RDU
June 16th, 2010
12:07 am
Dang TR – WF, Elon, Duke and W&L – Looks like you like rich girls from private schools
Paul in RDU
June 16th, 2010
12:13 am
Au revoir mes enfants – A demain
Atlanta Gator
June 16th, 2010
12:18 am
First bachelor’s was English and government (UVa); second bachelor’s was economics with a rather heavy dose of math and statistics (UF). That was complemented by a master’s in economics, followed by two professional degrees.
The point being that Georgia Tech, as the sixth school, defines the median in either an 11 or 12-team ACC, and thus the median will not change with the departure of a single below-the-median data point. The mean, as you know, is just the average, and will be altered by the addition or subtraction of any data point that does not exactly equal the pre-existing mean.
Space Mt
June 16th, 2010
12:23 am
I could almost see conferences contracting b/c the title games for the Big 12 and the ACC aren’t the big money makers they wished they would be. A title game really hurts a conference in my opinion. For example, say you have two one loss teams meet in a title game. One has to lose so one goes on to a BCS bowl and the other would most certainly fall to a lesser bowl. But if they both finish the season as co-champs then both could go to a BCS bowl. And if one team goes it has to split the money with 11 other schools!! Big Ten has done on a few occassions so I don’t know why they choose to get to 12 for a title game. I think the conferences should put pressure the NCAA to allow a title game for 10 members if anything. Twelve teams is almost too big for a conference and it doesn’t allow for a potential home and away for basketball either. But I can deal with 12 while anything bigger may virtually break up rivalries, cause a loss of interest and increases in travelling expenses due to long road trips, and loss of class time for players!!!
Paul in RDU
June 16th, 2010
12:34 am
AG – You need to brush up on your statistics – in a 12 team league the median is in between school #6 and school #7. In an 11 team league, the median is school #6. It does change when Clemson leaves.
BTW – Bachelors in Natural Sciences (Cambridge) PhD Chem (GT).
SEC # 2
June 16th, 2010
12:50 am
Don’t ever confuse Mr. Football with Mr. SEC Football.
Greensboro, Georgia
June 16th, 2010
3:08 am
——————————————–
……NESBITT for HEISMAN……
——————————————–
Best of Atlanta
June 16th, 2010
5:43 am
QB Joshua Nisbitt led the Jackets to the ACC Championship and had 28 touchdowns.
Best of Atlanta
June 16th, 2010
5:44 am
Nesbett