By Franz Beard
A few thoughts to jump start your Tuesday morning:
WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT
1. Greg Sankey is still the smartest guy in the room and holds all the cards: Forget all this talk about how the Big Ten has pulled even with the SEC. The only thing that’s even is the Big Ten now has 16 teams and so does the SEC. The SEC is still the strongest and most powerful name in college sports and the additions of Texas and Oklahoma will move the SEC needle far more than the Big Ten’s additions of Southern Cal and UCLA.
It should be noted that Sankey’s 16-team Southeastern Conference has a nice geographic fit to it and while football is the cash cow, Texas and Oklahoma will make an already strong SEC even stronger in several other sports. About the only sport the new Big Ten will be appreciably stronger than the SEC is women’s volleyball where Southern Cal and UCLA add to Minnesota, Penn State, Nebraska and Wisconsin. Texas and Oklahoma already have natural built-in rivals in the SEC. Meanwhile, I’m still trying to figure out how Rutgers and Maryland fit into the Big Ten and now Southern Cal and UCLA have joined the league. From a purely logistical standpoint, the new Big Ten is going to be a nightmare for the bean counters.
There is this widespread notion that Greg Sankey and Kevin Warren are staring each other down like a pair of gunslingers in Dodge City, each one waiting for the other to fire an expansion bullet. We’re warned that the era of the super conferences has dawned and perhaps the doom and gloomers making the dire prediction that college sports as we know them are officially gone forever are right.
But what happens if the SEC chooses to hold at 16? From a scheduling standpoint, a 16-team league is easy. In football you play nine games with three permanent opponents and the other 12 teams are played home and home at least once every four years. You simply double up in basketball where the SEC plays an 18-game conference schedule. Baseball? It’s a 30-game schedule, you go five permanent opponents, the other ten are played home and home at least once every four years.
Does the SEC really need to add more teams? Sankey already has a ginormous contract with ESPN already in hand, one that will be torn up and rewritten once Texas and Oklahoma are released to join the SEC, in all probability for 2024 since that’s when Southern Cal and UCLA join the Big Ten. Sankey is already the most powerful man in all of college sports. He doesn’t have to expand the SEC to prove it.
2. Adding Southern Cal and UCLA was Kevin Warren’s attempt to prove he’s as smart as Greg Sankey: All the Big Ten people are patting Kevin on the back now for pulling off such a coup but while it may have made sense for the Big Ten, it doesn’t make Warren or the Big Ten the equal of Greg Sankey or the SEC. When the expanded Big Ten has won some national championships in football (three since 1990; the SEC has won 16 … since 2000 the SEC has won 13, the Big Ten 2) then everyone can talk about the brilliance of Kevin Warren.
There is this silly notion that just because Chicago is the headquarters of the Big Ten and that the league is in the New York (Rutgers), DC (Maryland) and now LA markets that it will dominate football ratings on Saturday. Just because the Big Ten will have a big contract with Fox and it’s in those four huge markets doesn’t mean people would prefer to watch Big Ten football over the ABC game of the week at 3:30 … which will be the SEC. There are far more matchups in the SEC that will move the needle.
3. The same Big 12 that was unglued by losing Texas and Oklahoma is now the third most powerful conference: Within hours of the announcement that Southern Cal and UCLA were going to the Big Ten, Arizona, Arizona State, Utah and Colorado had called the Big 12 begging to join. The move actually makes plenty of sense in that it would give Utah its natural rival (BYU) just a few miles away, Colorado used to be in the Big Eight and then the Big 12, and Arizona and Arizona State have never really fit in all that well with the intellectual brie and chardonnay snooties who make up the Pac-12. They are ham and beans kind of schools and the Big 12 is a ham and beans kind of league. It’s a far better fit for these four to bolt for the Big 12 than it is for Texas Tech, TCU, Baylor, Oklahoma State, Kansas and Kansas State to depart for the Pac-12. A 16-team Big 12 is going to get more TV sets tuned in to their football games than they will in the Pac-12.
This could be one serious basketball league. Kansas and Baylor have won the last two national championships. Texas Tech made the Final Four in 2019. Arizona was a No. 1 seed this year. The football won’t be bad, either. Houston could make the College Football this year. Cincinnati made it last season and had eight NFL draft picks. Baylor is going to be really, really good and nobody but nobody wants to play Utah and BYU.
Because the Big 12 is going to release Texas and Oklahoma with some help from the SEC and ESPN, it’s going to get a nice TV contract. Adding the four Pac-12 schools will mean it gets a nicer contract than the Pac-12 can offer.
4. The ACC and Pac-12 are essentially screwed forever: We start with the obvious here. Jim Phillips (ACC commish) and George Kliavkoff (Pac-12) are officially the two dumbest conference commissioners in history. Phillips has a league tethered to a media rights contract that runs through 2036 that ESPN won’t renegotiate. He desperately needs Notre Dame to join his league but Notre Dame didn’t get to be Notre Dame by doing dumb things and joining the ACC would be dumber than dumb. Kliavkoff just lost Southern Cal and UCLA to the Big Ten and he’s got Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah ready to sign divorce papers plus Washington and Oregon are begging the Big Ten to join. He can raid the Big 12 for Kansas, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, TCU, Baylor and Texas Tech but why would they leave? He can add San Diego State and UNLV but the needle doesn’t move and the academics at Stanford and Cal will go into apoplexy.
Now here is what officially makes Phillips and Kliavkoff dumber than amoebas: Had they voted to expand the College Football Playoff to 12 teams, they would have had hundreds of millions of dollars each year to distribute to their member schools and they wouldn’t be faced with impending disaster.
5. Notre Dame to the Big Ten is not a given; in fact it might not happen: If there is further expansion, Notre Dame will have to abandon independence to join a conference. Notre Dame to the Big Ten is being tossed around like it’s close to a done deal, but despite the rhetoric Notre Dame is the one that holds the cards here, not the Big Ten. There are options.
Notre Dame to the ACC would provide the lifeline the ACC desperately needs. Notre Dame would certainly cause ESPN or another network to raise the financial stakes, but it won’t be anything close to SEC or Big Ten money. With the exception of Clemson, most of those five yearly contracted games against ACC opponents are like scheduling games with the Group of Five or, heaven forbid, D1AA teams. Notre Dame could get a more competitive game with North Dakota State than it could with Duke or Georgia Tech.
Some folks on the left coast who would take their brains out and play with them if they could have floated the idea that Notre Dame, because of its high academic standards, would be willing to join Stanford and the other snooty we’re smarter than you institutions in what’s left of the Pac-12. $19 million is why it won’t happen. That was the payout last year to Pac-12 schools. With Southern Cal and UCLA gone, that might seem like a lot and there is no media contract in sight. Notre Dame to the left coast won’t happen.
Big Ten. Great geographic fit. You’ve got Michigan, Indiana, Purdue, Illinois and Northwestern all within a three-hour drive. A lot of good academics to match Notre Dame’s. A big media contract on its way. So why isn’t Notre Dame parked outside Kevin Warren’s office, pen in hand, ready to sign the contract to join the Big Ten? Well, for one thing, Notre Dame could have joined the Big Ten on several occasions and didn’t because of old wounds dating back to the Knute Rockne days. Secondly, and probably more relevant today, it’s Kevin Warren.
Last summer, do you remember Greg Sankey and the 12-team College Playoff proposal, the one Kevin Warren and his buddies in “The Alliance” torpedoed? Well, Jack Swarbrick, the Notre Dame AD helped write that. He’s one of Greg Sankey’s buddies. That playoff proposal would have saved the Pac-12, the ACC and would have made Notre Dame more than enough money to remain independent, which it really and truly wants.
So now, here is Kevin Warren, asking Notre Dame to do a bygones be bygones, let your greed blind your distaste for me agreement to join the Big Ten. Maybe Notre Dame caves, but I’m not sure that will happen, not with CBS and streaming services like Apple TV, Hulu and Amazon out there that could ensure its independence with a mega deal that could dwarf the deal with NBC.
WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING ABOUT THE NEW COLLEGE FOOTBALL WORLD ORDER
John Feinstein, The Washington Post
Two things jumped out at me from the statements, one word and one phrase. The word was “values,” with USC and UCLA claiming they will join the Rich Sixteen because they share “values” with the already-rich 14. And then there was the time-honored phrase that should cause anyone hearing or reading it to hold on tight to their wallets: “Student-athletes.”
At least when Maryland abandoned the ACC to join the Big Ten, the school’s leadership was honest, admitting it was broke and needed the television money the Big Ten was offering. Yes, there was also the same garbage about “sharing values,” but no one was denying that the bottom line was the bottom line.
Dan Wetzel, Yahoo Sports
The playoff plan wasn’t just fair, it was a gift to all of college athletics. Meanwhile, it took less than six months for the Big Ten to immolate the Alliance by backstabbing the Pac-12 for its Los Angeles schools.
A big playoff with lots of guaranteed room for everyone and a long-term, multi-billion dollar contract was there for the taking … Yet the ACC and Pac-12 said no. Less than six months later, reality has hit. College football is on the brink … They have only themselves to blame for this.
ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Over the weekend, a good friend texted that the last thing he wants to see in college sports are two super leagues of 20-24 teams each. “It will be just like the NFL and I gave up on the NFL a long time ago,” he wrote. “In the NFL you go 10-7 and you get in the playoffs. I’m not ready for college sports to have playoffs with 7-5 teams making it and that’s what we’ll get when we go to super leagues.”
I can’t disagree with him. The more teams we add to the SEC, for example, the more likely it is that we wind up with conference champs that have two, three or four losses. Maybe I’m too stuck in my ways, but I’m not ready for that. I still like the idea of a conference champ and a national champ that is either unbeaten or with a single loss. Super conferences more than likely will put an end to that notion.
A few thoughts to jump start your Tuesday morning:
WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT
1. Greg Sankey is still the smartest guy in the room and holds all the cards: Forget all this talk about how the Big Ten has pulled even with the SEC. The only thing that’s even is the Big Ten now has 16 teams and so does the SEC. The SEC is still the strongest and most powerful name in college sports and the additions of Texas and Oklahoma will move the SEC needle far more than the Big Ten’s additions of Southern Cal and UCLA.
It should be noted that Sankey’s 16-team Southeastern Conference has a nice geographic fit to it and while football is the cash cow, Texas and Oklahoma will make an already strong SEC even stronger in several other sports. About the only sport the new Big Ten will be appreciably stronger than the SEC is women’s volleyball where Southern Cal and UCLA add to Minnesota, Penn State, Nebraska and Wisconsin. Texas and Oklahoma already have natural built-in rivals in the SEC. Meanwhile, I’m still trying to figure out how Rutgers and Maryland fit into the Big Ten and now Southern Cal and UCLA have joined the league. From a purely logistical standpoint, the new Big Ten is going to be a nightmare for the bean counters.
There is this widespread notion that Greg Sankey and Kevin Warren are staring each other down like a pair of gunslingers in Dodge City, each one waiting for the other to fire an expansion bullet. We’re warned that the era of the super conferences has dawned and perhaps the doom and gloomers making the dire prediction that college sports as we know them are officially gone forever are right.
But what happens if the SEC chooses to hold at 16? From a scheduling standpoint, a 16-team league is easy. In football you play nine games with three permanent opponents and the other 12 teams are played home and home at least once every four years. You simply double up in basketball where the SEC plays an 18-game conference schedule. Baseball? It’s a 30-game schedule, you go five permanent opponents, the other ten are played home and home at least once every four years.
Does the SEC really need to add more teams? Sankey already has a ginormous contract with ESPN already in hand, one that will be torn up and rewritten once Texas and Oklahoma are released to join the SEC, in all probability for 2024 since that’s when Southern Cal and UCLA join the Big Ten. Sankey is already the most powerful man in all of college sports. He doesn’t have to expand the SEC to prove it.
2. Adding Southern Cal and UCLA was Kevin Warren’s attempt to prove he’s as smart as Greg Sankey: All the Big Ten people are patting Kevin on the back now for pulling off such a coup but while it may have made sense for the Big Ten, it doesn’t make Warren or the Big Ten the equal of Greg Sankey or the SEC. When the expanded Big Ten has won some national championships in football (three since 1990; the SEC has won 16 … since 2000 the SEC has won 13, the Big Ten 2) then everyone can talk about the brilliance of Kevin Warren.
There is this silly notion that just because Chicago is the headquarters of the Big Ten and that the league is in the New York (Rutgers), DC (Maryland) and now LA markets that it will dominate football ratings on Saturday. Just because the Big Ten will have a big contract with Fox and it’s in those four huge markets doesn’t mean people would prefer to watch Big Ten football over the ABC game of the week at 3:30 … which will be the SEC. There are far more matchups in the SEC that will move the needle.
3. The same Big 12 that was unglued by losing Texas and Oklahoma is now the third most powerful conference: Within hours of the announcement that Southern Cal and UCLA were going to the Big Ten, Arizona, Arizona State, Utah and Colorado had called the Big 12 begging to join. The move actually makes plenty of sense in that it would give Utah its natural rival (BYU) just a few miles away, Colorado used to be in the Big Eight and then the Big 12, and Arizona and Arizona State have never really fit in all that well with the intellectual brie and chardonnay snooties who make up the Pac-12. They are ham and beans kind of schools and the Big 12 is a ham and beans kind of league. It’s a far better fit for these four to bolt for the Big 12 than it is for Texas Tech, TCU, Baylor, Oklahoma State, Kansas and Kansas State to depart for the Pac-12. A 16-team Big 12 is going to get more TV sets tuned in to their football games than they will in the Pac-12.
This could be one serious basketball league. Kansas and Baylor have won the last two national championships. Texas Tech made the Final Four in 2019. Arizona was a No. 1 seed this year. The football won’t be bad, either. Houston could make the College Football this year. Cincinnati made it last season and had eight NFL draft picks. Baylor is going to be really, really good and nobody but nobody wants to play Utah and BYU.
Because the Big 12 is going to release Texas and Oklahoma with some help from the SEC and ESPN, it’s going to get a nice TV contract. Adding the four Pac-12 schools will mean it gets a nicer contract than the Pac-12 can offer.
4. The ACC and Pac-12 are essentially screwed forever: We start with the obvious here. Jim Phillips (ACC commish) and George Kliavkoff (Pac-12) are officially the two dumbest conference commissioners in history. Phillips has a league tethered to a media rights contract that runs through 2036 that ESPN won’t renegotiate. He desperately needs Notre Dame to join his league but Notre Dame didn’t get to be Notre Dame by doing dumb things and joining the ACC would be dumber than dumb. Kliavkoff just lost Southern Cal and UCLA to the Big Ten and he’s got Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah ready to sign divorce papers plus Washington and Oregon are begging the Big Ten to join. He can raid the Big 12 for Kansas, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, TCU, Baylor and Texas Tech but why would they leave? He can add San Diego State and UNLV but the needle doesn’t move and the academics at Stanford and Cal will go into apoplexy.
Now here is what officially makes Phillips and Kliavkoff dumber than amoebas: Had they voted to expand the College Football Playoff to 12 teams, they would have had hundreds of millions of dollars each year to distribute to their member schools and they wouldn’t be faced with impending disaster.
5. Notre Dame to the Big Ten is not a given; in fact it might not happen: If there is further expansion, Notre Dame will have to abandon independence to join a conference. Notre Dame to the Big Ten is being tossed around like it’s close to a done deal, but despite the rhetoric Notre Dame is the one that holds the cards here, not the Big Ten. There are options.
Notre Dame to the ACC would provide the lifeline the ACC desperately needs. Notre Dame would certainly cause ESPN or another network to raise the financial stakes, but it won’t be anything close to SEC or Big Ten money. With the exception of Clemson, most of those five yearly contracted games against ACC opponents are like scheduling games with the Group of Five or, heaven forbid, D1AA teams. Notre Dame could get a more competitive game with North Dakota State than it could with Duke or Georgia Tech.
Some folks on the left coast who would take their brains out and play with them if they could have floated the idea that Notre Dame, because of its high academic standards, would be willing to join Stanford and the other snooty we’re smarter than you institutions in what’s left of the Pac-12. $19 million is why it won’t happen. That was the payout last year to Pac-12 schools. With Southern Cal and UCLA gone, that might seem like a lot and there is no media contract in sight. Notre Dame to the left coast won’t happen.
Big Ten. Great geographic fit. You’ve got Michigan, Indiana, Purdue, Illinois and Northwestern all within a three-hour drive. A lot of good academics to match Notre Dame’s. A big media contract on its way. So why isn’t Notre Dame parked outside Kevin Warren’s office, pen in hand, ready to sign the contract to join the Big Ten? Well, for one thing, Notre Dame could have joined the Big Ten on several occasions and didn’t because of old wounds dating back to the Knute Rockne days. Secondly, and probably more relevant today, it’s Kevin Warren.
Last summer, do you remember Greg Sankey and the 12-team College Playoff proposal, the one Kevin Warren and his buddies in “The Alliance” torpedoed? Well, Jack Swarbrick, the Notre Dame AD helped write that. He’s one of Greg Sankey’s buddies. That playoff proposal would have saved the Pac-12, the ACC and would have made Notre Dame more than enough money to remain independent, which it really and truly wants.
So now, here is Kevin Warren, asking Notre Dame to do a bygones be bygones, let your greed blind your distaste for me agreement to join the Big Ten. Maybe Notre Dame caves, but I’m not sure that will happen, not with CBS and streaming services like Apple TV, Hulu and Amazon out there that could ensure its independence with a mega deal that could dwarf the deal with NBC.
WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING ABOUT THE NEW COLLEGE FOOTBALL WORLD ORDER
John Feinstein, The Washington Post
Two things jumped out at me from the statements, one word and one phrase. The word was “values,” with USC and UCLA claiming they will join the Rich Sixteen because they share “values” with the already-rich 14. And then there was the time-honored phrase that should cause anyone hearing or reading it to hold on tight to their wallets: “Student-athletes.”
At least when Maryland abandoned the ACC to join the Big Ten, the school’s leadership was honest, admitting it was broke and needed the television money the Big Ten was offering. Yes, there was also the same garbage about “sharing values,” but no one was denying that the bottom line was the bottom line.
Dan Wetzel, Yahoo Sports
The playoff plan wasn’t just fair, it was a gift to all of college athletics. Meanwhile, it took less than six months for the Big Ten to immolate the Alliance by backstabbing the Pac-12 for its Los Angeles schools.
A big playoff with lots of guaranteed room for everyone and a long-term, multi-billion dollar contract was there for the taking … Yet the ACC and Pac-12 said no. Less than six months later, reality has hit. College football is on the brink … They have only themselves to blame for this.
ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Over the weekend, a good friend texted that the last thing he wants to see in college sports are two super leagues of 20-24 teams each. “It will be just like the NFL and I gave up on the NFL a long time ago,” he wrote. “In the NFL you go 10-7 and you get in the playoffs. I’m not ready for college sports to have playoffs with 7-5 teams making it and that’s what we’ll get when we go to super leagues.”
I can’t disagree with him. The more teams we add to the SEC, for example, the more likely it is that we wind up with conference champs that have two, three or four losses. Maybe I’m too stuck in my ways, but I’m not ready for that. I still like the idea of a conference champ and a national champ that is either unbeaten or with a single loss. Super conferences more than likely will put an end to that notion.
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