Are you excited about the upcoming college football season and what unfolds on the field? Well too damn bad, sit down and read about more conference realignment talk. Today on the latest edition of Five Wide Fullbacks it’s all conference moving speculation.
1) If there is a breaking point for college sports–and college football fans and media specifically–regarding conference realignment it may have come this past week. Have we finally reached a tipping point as consumers?
Yes and no. Remember when Rutgers accepted an invitation to the Big Ten in late 2012 to begin membership in 2014? It was such a big deal! Funny, confusing, slightly dumb, maybe a lot dumb, but that was something massive for the sport (along with Maryland’s move) that we could chew on for a long time. Now, we are days away from like 70% of the country (seemingly!) having moved conferences over the last decade.
Many of these moves are obvious (if we look solely at money which drives this train) but it’s all done in this herky-jerky manner and sometimes without warning.
It’s all been way too haphazard and no one has the attention span to keep up with the drama anymore. Or, maybe no one wants to be tasked with keeping up with it anymore. As I write this, as many as five Power 5 programs are drying ink on new contracts in a different league. It sucks as now is the time to focus on actual football and our Patrician Slack has been dominated by conference realignment news for several days with many of us lamenting how tiresome it is now.
As Notre Dame fans, it feels like watching some of your core friends and their friends constantly dating new people and having to endlessly hear stories about whether or not this new couple is going to get married. Maybe we need transfer portal windows for conferences? Go ahead and do this in April and not August, thanks guys.
2) Has the Big Ten always been the bad guy in all of this?
Whoever the people were who invented the television are to be blamed. Or just humanity’s need for greed. Notre Dame was being televised in the late 1940’s and we can really trace things back to the CFA coalition in the 1970’s that began the process of pooling teams’ television power together. We may have gone about it differently, but a little old team in South Bend then showed the way with the NBC deal in 1991.
I really think the expansion of FBS isn’t talked about enough in this discussion. Back in 1960, there were 113 teams in the top-flight of college football and 31 of those programs are no longer playing at this level. Things might be better if this sport was reduced in size but somehow we’ve added 51 additional teams to FBS across 7 decades. They just keep coming and everyone wants more money, even the tiny schools, who really are no less guilty than the Oregon’s and Arizona’s of the world chasing multi-millions.
You could argue FBS should really be around 60 to 70 teams, and maybe even 40-50 teams. In the world of have’s and have not’s we are just seeing this process play out in a staggered, then accelerated and bizarre fashion.
3) What the heck is going to become of the Pac-12 Conference?
The winningest athletic department in modern history, your Stanford Cardinal, are now left in the dark along with California, Oregon State, and Washington State. They could be absorbed into the ACC, but that does virtually nothing for the ACC except add unnecessary costs. Surely, no one in the ACC is excited by this plan. These remaining Pac-4 (!) programs could try to go independent in football (and maybe some other sports) while latching on to the West Coast Conference or something.
He knew.
They’ll have about 15 to 18 months to figure something out!
Becoming a part of the Mountain West truly isn’t the worst outcome, I have to admit. I bet these schools will eventually make peace with that reality. Stanford cares less about men’s basketball and football and might still attract elite athletes who are looking for a west coast-centric experience. I’m not sure they’ll be that too broken up about things–and they have the cache to probably go independent in many areas anyway. Sadly, the Beavers, Golden Bears, and Cougars are destined to be second-tier programs now officially. It sucks for them but can we say it’s bad for the rest of the country?
4) There’s been an awful lot of saber rattling by Florida State in recent years/months/weeks/days about their desire to leave the ACC. Can this conference actually stick together?
I get the sense that Notre Dame feels comfortable that the ACC is going to last in its current form. We’re at the point now where the Big Ten and SEC would really have to covet the likes of Florida State, Clemson, Miami, North Carolina, or a couple others in the league and thus far it doesn’t seem like either conference are too bothered keeping them away. I really don’t think the SEC needs any of those schools. At some point, maybe the Big Ten would want to reach into the southeast of the country, we’ll see.
FSU wants out to…somewhere else.
Florida State is just being Florida State right now and getting frustrated at not being invited to these bigger parties. UNC athletic director Bubba Cunningham said this week:
“I don’t think it’s good for our league for them to be out there barking like that. I’d rather see them be a good member of the league, support the league and if they have to make a decision, then so be it. Pay for the exit fee, wait for your grant of rights that you’ve given and then in 2036, when those rights return to you, do whatever you want.”
FSU just needs to calm down. They keep saying that the grant of rights won’t keep them from moving and are even exploring the options of becoming the first collegiate athletics program in the country to attract private equity investment like a European soccer club. It’ll take two to tango and who wants the Seminoles right now?
5) Suddenly, people around the country are coming around to this whole independent Notre Dame football thing. Will the Irish be safe in the near to medium-term future?
It’s weird because we haven’t really heard a ton coming out of Notre Dame, or Jack Swarbrick, specifically about the ACC in any detail. I would imagine that is intentional as any comments either very pro or very negative aren’t going to be helpful. Think of it as being the anti-Florida State in this sense. Notre Dame traditionally prefers to move in silence. Still Swarbrick has been adamant that a split is coming in how schools treat their athletes but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll be broken up like this via conference.
Playoff access was this bogeyman until very recently when the 12-team system alleviated a lot of those problems for Notre Dame. We’re really down to 3 separate but also very connected issues remaining for the Irish:
- The pending new deal with NBC (we won’t pretend it will be with anyone else)
- Secured home for Olympic sports
- Competitive (enough) schedules for true playoff access and relevance
I think Notre Dame will have a lot of patience in all 3 areas. Meaning, they will put up with a revenue deficit compared to their peers, they will put up with a sub-par league for basketball, lacrosse, or baseball, and they will grit their teeth with weaker schedules for several years in football. I don’t see a scenario where Notre Dame proactively leaves the current setup without going through a lot of “pain” in these 3 areas, especially if we consider that if it gets bad enough, either the Big Ten or SEC would still welcome the Irish if we picked up the phone. Something that perhaps Florida State cannot bank on today.
The scheduling for football is going to be really interesting. How sure are we that USC will want to continue the annual series? I think as time passes they will be less inclined. The Navy game is still out there but does nothing but fill a slot for a weaker program which now it’s looking like Stanford is going to be filling, too. Stanford very much needs Notre Dame but not the other way around, necessarily.
The one thing Notre Dame also has going for it (in terms of football scheduling) is that the larger these conferences grow the less cohesive they become, they less they’ll all play each other, which keeps the door open to many of them seeing the strengths of putting a high profile game against the Irish on their schedule. We would hope that is how things shake out with USC.
We’ve talked about it in the writers’ Slack, but ND’s best way to avoid B1G membership, if they choose to avoid it, is probably some sort of alliance with the SEC. The SEC (and ESPN) likely wouldn’t want ND to go to the only other big conference and I could see the parties getting creative and figuring something out if it came to it.
But that being said, conference membership means nothing at this point, the big two might as well change their names to NFC College and AFC College and be done with it.
Both the Big 12 and SEC have made pseudo-public comments that they would welcome a scheduling arrangement with Notre Dame if something happened the the ACC. I don’t see scheduling as ever being a significant leverage point for the B1G against ND.
Just get weird with it. Big Ten adds Memphis as a full time member and ND with a special scheduling arrangement. Create 5 4-team pods. ND plays its 3 pod-mates yearly, plus USC, plus 2 other rotating teams.
Pod 1: Rutgers, Maryland, PSU, OSU
Pod 2: Michigan, MSU, ND, Purdue
Pod 3: IU, Memphis, Illinois, Northwestern
Pod 4: Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska
Pod 5: PAC 4
Every Pod plays itself every year, plus each school that has a non-pod rival can be guaranteed to play that rivalry each year (i.e. OSU-Michigan, IU-Purdue, etc.). ND plays its 4 Big Ten rivals every year.
You just suggested a 6 game conference schedule, though.
Either 4 pods of 5 teams, or five pods of four. Either way, getting to 20 makes the most sense in this new craziness.
I think in your setup you play your entire pod, plus one protected rivalry, plus one team from each pod every year rotating so you play every team at least every four years.
That’s eight conference games a season, and you play every team at least once in every player’s (theoretical) four year career.
Just to keep going, for conference tournaments, the top two teams from each pod get automatic bids (10 teams), next best two teams get wild card bids (up to twelve automatic bids), remaining eight teams have play in games, so you have a 16 team tourney after the play-in games, a reward for winning your pod, wild card spots, all the fun stuff of MLB and NFL tournaments.
ETA on my thought below, you could easily have two protected rivalries in the Big Ten to get up to 9 conference games. And the expanded tournament makes it easier to schedule marquee OOC games.
I agree with you on the conference membership meaning nothing. Instead of NFC/AFC I think the current situation is more akin to the AFL/NFL and we’re going to see a merger between the B1G and the SEC at the next B1G media deal since it expires first where they will swallow up the SEC and the larger markets of the Big 12 and the ACC.
If everyone thinks it sucks to not be invited to the party (the Pac-4), wait until Iowa, Indiana, Ole Miss, South Carolina, Miss State are kicked out. The only thing I’m unsure of is how many schools are they going to have in the league. Is it 32, is it 40? I tend to believe it won’t be anymore than 40 and more likely it’s 32. I also think once Phil Knight is dead, Oregon is getting kicked to the curb. His reach and power with Nike having apparel deals with everyone is what is keeping them relevant and I think that ends when he dies and Nike moves HQ’s.
All in all, interesting times. As for ND, Jack screwed them into a long term deal with the GoR with the ACC. It’s likely going to be fine assuming they want to be in the NFL lite, probably need to make sure they continue to have success over the next 13 years as their fan base gets older.
The new Playoff format is certainly going to die before ever happening, correct? The SEC and Big Ten aren’t going to give another spot to a G5 conference champion.
That’s going to be do or die time for ND. Can we still hold onto playoff access in whatever new format comes out? Or will the BIG/SEC attempt to lock us out?
Yeah, they are going to make changes to that right quick.
Contracts like that cannot be broken without a mutual agreement. What prevents FSU or other ACC teams from bolting the ACC is a two page contract while the CPF probably at least exceeds fifty or more pages. The lawsuit FSU v ACC would run into the millions. The CFP contract went through various levels of lawyers at Notre Dame to assure that. So, you can be content there is no chance of that.
Funny. I thought the addition of Oregon & UW made the B1G a more attractive spot for ND to end up. I feel like the general consensus around these parts is ND will end up in a conference some time in the nearish/mid future. Of the, now, 4 viable landing spots, I like the scheduling potential of the B1G the most. The “less cohesive they become” seems like that’s one of the best things going for ND. I’m getting sick of watching ND play Wake Forest/Duke/Syracuse every other year. In a larger B1G, there would be more marquee matchups to have (OSU/PSU/UO/USC/UM) and second tier games (Wash/Wisconsin [gonna need a UW trophy to settle things], Iowa, Nebraska, UCLA – from a recruiting standpoint) a few protected rivalries (MSU & Purdue) and some schools that ND should play with more regularity but don’t (IU, U of I, Minnesota). ACC right now offers 1.5 marquee teams every few years and a sometimes rival in BC. Presumably if ND were to join, they’d come in with a 20th team, which would probably be a more marquee team or Stanford. (Additionally, there can only be so many good teams in a conference – L’s are going to start to accumulate quickly in the new SEC – Texas, Alabama, LSU, Oklahoma, Georgia and Florida can’t all go 12-0. We’re going to have to do some soul searching when a 9-3 regular season team ends up winning the national championship but ends up beating each of their 3 regular season losses in the playoffs. Tangential point here is a bigger conference is “better” for {insert team}, if we accept that consolidation of conferences is inevitable.) We just saw what happened with UO & UW holding their inside out pockets in front of the B1G offices and the B1G throwing them some crumbs, so why would ND want to wait until it gets to that point with conference consolidation to be over a barrel and getting pennies to the dollar versus a Rutgers or an Illinois? If it’s just the pride of staying independent as long as possible, there’s probably lots of other stuff we also disagree on. ND could attempt to be proactive and find the best worst conference to join, and might even have some leverage on who else joins with to get to 20 (or 24) – I don’t think there’s great arguments to be had for a full time BXII+IV, SEC or ACC membership. A 20 team B1G could do 4 pods of 5 teams, where the pod plays itself and 1 other pod every year for 9 conference games (and could do 1 each from the remaining pods to get to 11 conference games if scheduling OOC becomes much mire difficult) Obvious downside here is a Home & Home cycle of 6 years for the non-pod teams and 9 years between home games for that same cycle. I have more rambles, but I’m also trying to help my son beat the water… Read more »
I largely don’t disagree.
This guy gets it. Should start a blog.
There’s some BIG koolaid to be had here. Join or become irrelevant, eh?
Not at all what was said, but you do you.
Perhaps I misunderstood? I made my points about ND committing to independence in football for the next decade. The only factor that may change that equation is the dissolution of the ACC.
None of what you quoted suggested I thought ND was heading towards irrelevance. I’m just saying better to be proactive about conferences rather than be in an Oregon/ Wash situation which needing a landing spot in order to maintain relevance.
So ND is relevant as long as they proactively join a conference, preferably the BiG, before “getting pennies to the dollar versus a Rutgers or an Illinois”.
I imagine that should we want we’d get a premium deal in a heartbeat with the BIG. An indication of our valuation is in the ND escalator clause in the BIG’s media contract with their three media partners with a “specific” dollar amount.
Oregon instead of having a price agreed on beforehand as with ND, all sides will have to figure out how much the Ducks (and Huskies) are worth.
Is that why you said;
While the BIG’s media deal contract’s clause on ND’s valuation is fixed at this time and would not go lower, it could in the future be increased based on football successes like our appearances in the CFP to attract the Irish.
ND joining the conference then would trigger a new CFP format and may well destabilize the ACC all of which would further benefit the BIG in indirect ways.
I still think UW and Oregon are relevant programs, they’re just getting 50% of what every other B1G program is getting, including USC and UCLA because they had no leverage. My point is the writing seems to be on the wall, ND can either cling to quasi-independence for another 12 years and then hope everything has remained exactly the same as it is today, or create the least-worst conference to land in. Sunset games on the Puget Sound, Autzen Stadium and the Rose Bowl are certainly better than the Carrier Dome & wherever Duke and Wake play.
Some thoughts…
The ACC probably stays together for a while (famous last words!) and has the GOR protecting everything for now.
The new NBC deal could be tripling to $60 million per year for Notre Dame.
Things should be fine for the near term.
If a FSU and/or Clemson breaks away from the ACC then it’s time to re-asses. Notre Dame is still in an okay spot because they should still be making competitive money with the setup in the ACC–and if they don’t and the NBC deal is a huge stinker–jumping to the Big Ten certainly will be very good financially.
It feels a lot different than Oregon/Washington who were facing a reported $20 million per year deal with Apple and even at their 50% share in the Big Ten will be making $10 million more per year than the Pac-12 deal that never will be.
I think I’m with you more on the scheduling though. I’m not too worried about the money aspect but I am concerned that B1G teams will avoid ND and if we see even 1 or 2 ACC teams leave things could be looking dire.
I have this feeling someday we’re going to be faced with really terrible ACC-centric schedules, we’ll drag our feet for 3 or 4 years because technically we have playoff access, but it’ll do some damage to the program and the groundswell to join the B1G will be too great.
I don’t think Navy + Stanford + 7 or 8 ACC teams with maaaybe one huge matchup per year is something that can’t happen pretty easily with how things are trending. Some years our top game might be against 9-3 Pitt or something.
From my understanding there is no way for the ACC to break apart until the end GOR is over. Florida State doesn’t even have the money to keep their NC winning coach, they don’t have the coffers to pay everyone off to get out.
From a scheduling standpoint I can see the B1G start to try and blackball ND, but I think there will be enough juice in the Big12, SEC, and ACC to make it appealing. Heck look at Clemson, they had terrible ACC schedules for the last 8 years and used it to be in the top 5 consistently and win a couple of Nattys or FSU in the 90’s. Yeah not fun for fans or ND’s traditional scheduling but could mean more top 5 seasons which is what the talent and tv cares about. Not like they rewarded ND with lots of money in the late 90’s early 2000’s for scheduling Mich, MSU, Purdue the first 3-4 weeks and they were 2–2 after the first month.
The Big12 will still have a top 10 team or so every year, same with the ACC. Plus a SEC second tier team in Auburn, Florida, Tennessee gets you a strong enough schedule. And Fox/NBC will want ND to play one of the B1G teams cause the execs can’t help themselves when it comes to money. I say all of this in the near term of the next decade.
Florida State isn’t going anywhere in the near term. If they were, they wouldn’t be having a public tantrum about it, they’d just leave without telling anyone until the deal was through.
I’ve never quite understood what “irrelevant” means when applied to ND. Relevant to what, or to whom? It’s certainly relevant to me.
Anywho, I don’t think ND needs to or should rush into B1G membership. The ACC GOR buys us time, and I’m pretty confident that we can get into the Super B1G without lifting a finger. But to answer what I think you’re asking — yes, I do think ND will eventually need to join the SuperB1G if we want to fill out schedules with games that fans and NBC find compelling. However, if we’re OK with a steady diet of North Carolina and northeastern basketball schools, then we can just stay in the ACC for as long as it exists.
Hey, the ACC grant of rights runs into the 2030s, at which point I don’t know if we’ll have colleges, much less college sports.
There are some things I guess i don’t get. why do illinois, rutgers, maryland keep approving these additional teams? In what way does it benefit them?
Second, what is to keep the big ten from relegating rutgers, northwestern, etc? Like why do they continue to get to be at the table when they bring nothing.
In general, I hate this, all so much. I was going to post yesterday on the weekly update that no on one hates their fans quite like nd admin, between under armour, the nbc announcing duo, all the stuff they refuse to do to triple down on winning a national championship, but man the people who run college sports REALLY don’t care about their fans. At least nd admin seems to have some principles about independence
As I said in my diatribe above, conferences need bad teams, otherwise good teams become bad teams.
Also, I don’t think getting rid of a conference member is a simple majority vote, much like adding in a new member isn’t (I think). Had a school ever been kicked out of a conference just for being shitty at sports?
Temple was kicked out of the Big East after the 2004 season!
Good pull. Looking into that a bit more, it seems like Temple had several issues going against it which doesn’t necessarily apply now – lack of adequate facilities, lack of attendance, being a football only member, and getting near unanimous voting for expulsion. I don’t think this is happening at Rutgers, Illinois, Indiana, etc.
Growing up in Chicagoland, the rumor was that the Big 10 threatened to kick Northwestern to the curb in the early 90s if they didn’t try to get their act together
Lots of conflicting thoughts here.
The B1G has been the most destructive and duplicitous organization in college football over the past 5-10 years, and ND’s 100-year history with them goes without saying. I hate the idea of joining the B1G, even a Super B1G that doesn’t look much like the Big 2/Little 8 of the 20th Century….
But that’s going to be ND’s best option if we want remotely interesting football schedules. The SEC is a non-starter. The ACC is, well, the ACC, and will survive only as long as it takes Florida State’s lawyers to find a way out. The Big XII is a collection of far-flung teams we have nothing to do with. What it comes down to is this — do we want to play Wake Forest, UNC, and Syracuse every year, or Southern Cal, Michigan State, and UCLA? That’s a no-brainer, and NBC has already made most of the decision for us. Remember that our incoming AD is an NBC exec.
All of this really, really sucks. That said, it proved that ND was right all along — stay away from conferences; they are the bane of the sport.
How long until the new west coast teams realize that the Big 10 is and always has been run primarily for the benefit of Ohio State and Michigan?
Yesterday! Apparently SC didn’t want Oregon and Washington in the conference.
Six of those original Pac 8 (PCC) teams had played each other since the 1910s with the LA teams joining in the ’20s about as long as Ohio State has been in the BIG.
Chip Kelly has said college football should become like the NFL with geographical divisions, which would preserve those rivalries and starting new ones. But lucrative media money drives realignment.
I suppose there is some interest in a Notre Dame schedule that includes NW, Indiana, Purdue, Illinois annually with maybe Iowa, Nebraska and Minnesota. But I’d rather stick with ours. UCLA can end up playing them if the BIG tells them to. That doesn’t sound like an upgrade from a Pac 12 schedule.
FWIW, Charlie Weis played schedules that were pretty close to what a SuperB1G schedule would look like. In 2006/2007:
Penn State
Michigan
Michigan State
Purdue
UCLA
SC
Add three more games, and you’re there.
I agree we can dismiss the Chicken Littles who really don’t understand the value of independence for ND football and the importance of maintaining a national identity with the wherewithal of a $11 billion endowment with the ability to fund raise to more than make up for any differences in media contracts. Independence is in ND’s DNA and unlike any other university committed to national schedules.
“No (other) school has ever played in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York in the same year. We’ve done it nine times,” Swarbrick said. “We play in more NFL stadia than anyone else. We play in California every year. We play in New York or somewhere close almost every year. We are able to use our flexibility every year to continue that level of a national schedule. We will play in Las Vegas this year. We open next year in Ireland. We play in Green Bay in ’26.”
We don’t need the BIG or the SEC but will continue to schedule them selectively over the next decade. Few universities provide the experience and value of roommates/hallmates/classmates from around the country and international, which is something all alumni including Swarbrick, Bevaqua and former ACC Commissioner, Bubba Cunningham, understand. Football independence confirms that commitment to the student interaction and alumni connections. Stanford may have all of that, but the hurdles they face to attain what Notre Dame has are formidable.
The contract with the ACC provides stability for them and but also to some extent to ND football in scheduling those five games. In an era of expansion/contraction the pressure to find home and home partners for those five games may well have become acute. With our place in the CFP, a home for our Olympic sports and a forthcoming media contract, Notre Dame can watch college football separate into the haves and the have nots
I know it’s supposed to a point in ND’s favor, but this still comes across as the icky consultant-speak bullshit that got college football in this mess in the first place.
I dunno, I think that’s a pretty good selling point for ND, particularly when you consider that Georgia, Bama, and Michigan barely even leave their back yards. This season, Georgia will travel the fewest total miles of any FBS team.
That could be because they’re twats, not because they’re in a conference. Correlation, not causation.
Uh….all right? I think the point was that ND’s annual nationwide schedule is unique.
Uhhh…But it won’t be once USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington link up with the B1G.
I dunno about that. Michigan, for example, will camp out at home for 3 OOC games, play most of their B1G games in the midwest, and then play one or two west coast games.
How is that different than a Notre Dame schedule with a Shamrock Series game in Chicago or Indianapolis? 6+1 home games, a road trip to California and most of the other games in VA/NC?
The difference is that ND is essentially guaranteed to play in every region of the country every year, whereas that is not guaranteed or even possible for a SuperB1G team. ND plays at least once in the south every year; B1G teams do not and will not travel south.
USC/UCLA/UO/UW will have 6-7 home games each to fill, let’s say that’s 4-6 conference games (assuming there are still OOC games to play). That’s conservatively 16-24 West Coast games annually.
ND hasn’t played in Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Louisiana, or Mississippi in ages ( I know they play AR & AL in future years – assuming schedules stay thr same)
Also, NW could play a road game at USC/UCLA and Rutgers in the first year of the new B1G and they’ll have accomplished the same “feat”
Well if Northwestern does that and the team travels across state lines, that ends up making it a federal crime.
For the full interview; Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick: ‘I could argue that our independence has never been more valuable than it is right now’
aww yeah who else is excited for the last season of college football
It will end as it began: With Rutgers winning half of a national championship.
Rutgers, the alpha and omega of college football.
Oregon and Washington will reportedly receive only $30 million each in Big Ten revenue distribution during their first year in the conference, with that number growing by $1 million each year through the length of the Big Ten’s current media rights deal. They could have gotten that from the Big 12 without those travel costs. Ouch! Would the BIG even offer any of the remaining Pac teams that much?
(Apple offered only $20 million per year in their bid for the Pac 12 media deal with existing members at that time. Four schools have exited since.)
USC and UCLA will become full members of the BIG in 2024.
Florida State appears to be the only ACC member willing to go the complicated and expensive route of breaking the grants of rights. Miami has backed away. Clemson has not said anything. Bubba Cunningham, ND alum and current AD at UNC,said UNC hs no intention of leaving the ACC and making FSU’s alternatives clear:
Some estimates have the costs for FSU leaving are up to $500 million, which includes the $120 million exit fee and a prolonged lawsuit through federal courts with no guarantee of winning. The ACC is incorporated as a 501c3 in Delaware.
FSU is exploring working with J.P. Morgan along a professional sports model.
Maybe they could talk to the NFL or the USFL to become a minor league team until 2036.
August 15th is the deadline for FSU to notify the ACC effective for the 2024 season.
One would think that with so many stakeholders, the contract for the CFP covers all contingencies and is virtually “ironclad” and ND attorneys have made sure is thoroughly protective of ND’s rights.
Should Notre Dame ever think along those lines, the Board of Trustees chairman, John Brennan, is the ex-CEO of the Vanguard Group and could help.
Having just read through these many comments, I am reminded of why I dearly love this site. Informed, polite, and cogent points exchanged on a consistent basis.
I do share my fellow “veteran” Cardinal Baseball’s frustration — none of this seems to make any sense at all.
That said — can anyone please talk about the impact of these hypertrophied swollen coast to coast “conferences” on non-football sports, especially the Olympic sports? On the face of it, how can any of this be justifed? Don’t the students nation-wide still… go to school?
Door to Door on the road from NIU’s Huskie Stadium in DeKalb to University of Akron’s stadium is 6 hours and 28 minutes. Not sure if MAC football teams fly to road games – I assume they do for games against University of Buffalo – mostly bus trips, presumably, for everything else. For certain, other sports – softball, soccer, cross country, golf – travel by bus for almost every event. A flight from Sea-Tac (UW) to Newark (Rutgers) is 5h 20m. A discussion of time-zone skipping is certainly well warranted, but I don’t think 18-22 year olds are known for their consistent and healthy sleep schedules, regardless. Additionally, I’d probably prefer doing my homework on a flight versus a bus any day (and sleeping). I’d also guess that a chartered flight would allow for more travel capacity, allowing for more tutors/academic support staff that a charter bus.
Yeah tell that to the tennis team when they have to go to Penn State (3 hours from any decent sized airport) in the middle of the week.
Tell them what? B1G teams have been travelling to PSU for 30+ years. I don’t think Minnesota’s tennis team is taking a bus from Minneapolis to Happy Valley.
Also, I assume Happy Valley has an airport that the football team uses, so the same runway could be used for other folks, too.
I think eventually football will be fully cleaved from Olympic sports just because it’s such a money maker and fundamentally a different beast than the others (save maybe men’s bball but men’s bball still isn’t nearly the same level). I do think eventually the SEC and B1G end up at an NFL/AFL type level, hoarding the powerful enough programs til we end up with something like a 48-64 team league. It really ends up being a rearrangement of college football as a true minor league system to the nfl, especially since players are getting paid more and more out front. At that point, the NCAA or some replacement of it can manage the Olympic sports and football is something separate.
I more or less agree – except won’t it be a lot harder for teams/conferences to get money for those other sports? Don’t they package them all together in their tv rights deals?
Ah, yeah that sounds right. Who knows how the financial calculus will play out, I just think it probably ends up being most lucrative consolidating down to the 48-64 teams and only having them play each other (much more valuable than playing MAC and FCS schools). That money probably more than makes up for what eg ESPN and the Big Ten Network pay schools for volleyball and such. And by the time this all plays out, who the heck know what networks and streaming and all those things will even look like.
I doubt the MWC will take any more schools unless the media contract is renegotiated since it would dilute the share current ones get. With a G5 school guaranteed a spot in the CFP, why would any of them accept a Pac school that could diminish chances of appearing?
Then there were four as Arizona State and Utah applied for B12 membership. That makes geographical and scheduling sense.
As for the new BIG teams, the sports where multiple games, a full weekend or conference tournaments are required such as baseball, softball or basketball will be the toughest on student-athletes.
What would be best for them would be an arrangement for those teams to be part of the B12. But they went for full membership. I don’t think the BIG will expand on the West Coast further to partially ease that burden. I don’t see Stanford with their student-athletes having to handle strenuous case loads considering such travel even if they were offered BIG membership.
The remaining four Pac teams must be considering scheduling challenges in replacing five conference games, if they stay together. (Subtract one for OSU nd WSU if rivalry games are maintained.) The real possibility of losing the revenue from a media contract is a punch in the gut.
If the Big 12 wants northern Cal exposure and picks up Stanford and Cal, Oregon State and Washington State suffer a de facto relegation with impacts on recruiting and picking up transfers.
Were there any 2024 stanford commits that we were in on that we’d really want? Umeh is a top 100 player per On3 on the DL is their highest rated recruit. But they also have a few top 300 edge recruits.
I can’t imagine that this does not sink the stanford football program. Long-term that might also benefit us since even lately it seems there might have been a guy or two we would have wanted but didn’t get from them.
Stanford and Cal are both in a tough position. I can see Or St and Wash St going to the mountain west and fitting in pretty well, Stanford would see the Mt West as a drop in their academic ideals, and Cal is so over extended on their budget, their athletic department could never live with a Mt West GoR payment.
Stanford could go the BYU route and try being independent for awhile. Ultimately though, I think their football program is going to be a perennial bottom dweller into the foreseeable future.
I imagine there’s some penance due for the California Board of Regents approving UCLA’s membership in the BIG. Attracting or keeping football coaches for the four remaining Pac teams will be difficult. Utah should be an immediate contender for the B12 championship and a Playoff berth as well as exposure to Texas high school recruiting.
Me last week when this all went down: at least now we can ditch playing Stanford
Breaking news this afternoon: the ACC is exploring adding Cal and Stanford.
Sorry everyone, I jinxed this. This is on me
lol
though it’s hard to imagine the ACC is going to add them. Not only because they are so far but also because who’s going to pay them? Schools in the ACC want to give up part of their share for those two schools???
I think the ACC has a pro rata clause for P5 adds like the Big 12 did, and they could probably get Cal and Stanford to take a smaller share, which would beef up the till for the others (a little).
This is all academic of course since hahaha no way is the ACC actually going to do this. Now to take a big sip of my drink and check Twitter-
https://twitter.com/Brett_McMurphy/status/1689020917895106560?t=qql48YGaMXOVl_HN9kzNzw&s=19
What are we even doing here
https://twitter.com/LarryWilliamsTI/status/1689376957228527616?t=Ll9wzHuceRb2d5He1zQ6iw&s=19
I think ND has a vested interest in seeing the ACC survive.
Pretty sure that adding two west coast schools who are bad at football, one of which is broke and the other has a problem with famous alumni committing massive fraud, is not going to help the ACC in any way.
The best part is how angry everyone else is that ND is a full voting member despite not being a football member. Like, y’all know we’re a member in basically every other sport right? Hilarious
Among Power Five football teams rivalries, Oregon-Oregon State is the fourth oldest. I don’t think there’s another state with its top – and only – two FBS programs so intertwined among residents. Parents, children, cousins, spouses may have gone to one or the other, but root for each other’s schools except for the rivalry game. No more. Oregon cold-cocked the Beavers at a vulnerable time fiscally and left them hanging.
‘Worst possible news at the worst possible time’: Oregon State athletics faces uncertain future, growing debt including stadium remodel
With no good and immediate answers, cutbacks loom and people will lose their jobs. The community of Corvallis and Oregon rely on the benefits of major conference membership and its long history.
The on-filed product has never been better. The coaches Preseason Poll ranks Oregon State as the eighteenth best team nationally. Only three BIG teams (Ohio St, Michigan, Penn St) are ranked ahead of them with Wisconsin just behind OSU. Four Pac teams are ranked ahead of the Beavers. Oregon State is expected to be better than eleven BIG teams.
Oregon State athletic director Scott Barnes said: “I’m furious because it puts this university in harm’s way and our student athletes in harm’s way. There’s some damage done that we’re going to have to mitigate.”
Cain slew Abel out of burning jealousy not cold calculated greed.
All I know is, I hope the new EA game has modifiable conferences, because I’m going back to the good old days of the Big 10, Big 8, Pac 10, SWC, Big East, and a few major independents
Live look at EA trying to re-code all these conferences through next summer…