Texas is THE big fish and other rules of college football Radical Superconference Realignment
American Football, BCS, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, Bowls, Conference USA, ESPN, NCAA, Nebraska, Notre Dame, Pac-10, Playoff, Rose Bowl, SEC, Television, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Christian, Texas Tech, WAC, college football, conference realignment, scheduling, sports â posted by tim stephens on February, 12 2010 5:56 PM
The news that Texas, according to the
Lawrence World-Journal, has had discussions with the Big Ten should be viewed as
potential landscape-changing news. So much so, that almost immediately, Nebraska athletic director
Tom Osborne told the
Lincoln Star-Journal that his school
would listen to a phone call.Nebraska would be a coup, a big fish to land. But Texas is not just abig fish in The Great Conference Fishing Expedition of 2010. TheLonghorns are THE big fish.
Independent Notre Dame could join a conference and it would rock theboat. Likewise for Nebraska making a move. But Texas leaving the Big12? That has the potential to sink it, and drag a conference â or twoor three â into the NCAAâs forgotten seas. The Big Ten is unlikely tobe the only conference to cast toward Austin. Will the Longhorns takethe bait?
As we get watch the lines and wait for wiggles and jiggles, letâs remember some very important rules about Radical Superconference Realignment:
1)Itâs all about the money.
2)Forget every bit of âconventional wisdomâ about conference size, rivalries, etc., you think you know.
3)If your team isnât already in one of the big conferences, you canstop worrying and just start watching. You are either pining for aconference that is not going to exist soon, one that wonât be what youthink it will be, or you are never getting invited to the party,period. Gameâs already lost.
4)If your school is not drawing 70,000 or more to your football gamesand people donât particularly care to watch it on TV, you could bejoining those to whom Rule No. 3 applies.
5)When in doubt, see Rule No. 1.
Letâs start with Rule No. 1, and letâs all agree on a few things that are clearly established.
A)Thereâs a
wide gap between the haves and have-nots in Division I-A sports.
B)Thereâs a wide revenue gap between the conferences themselves.
C)There is a substantial â and a rapidly growing â revenue gap between the BCS conferences.
D)Television revenue fuels the massive expansion of college athletics budgets, and not everybody can keep up.
E)Some schools are worth a whole lot more to TV than others.
F)Even the richest athletic programs need more money, and while aplayoff system might generate billions, the big schools are more concerned with protecting the regular season and bowls â and not sharing the wealth with the schools that donât generate it.
Now we move to Rule No. 2, and this tricky conventional wisdom. Such as:
âConferences larger than 12 would have too many mouths to feed. It wonât work.
Answer: Yeah, it wonât work if you are the WAC. Nobody willthrow Powerball-style TV dollars at the WAC. But for the right groupingof schools rich with TV cache, the windfall could be unlike anything wehave ever seen. The best-positioned major conferences â those who haveor are attempting to secure their own networks or have billions ofdollars coming to them from existing ones â will be looking tostrengthen the depth of their weekly TV lineups. The networks whoâll bepaying the freight would actually prefer the consolidation. For theright teams, 14 or 16 could besignificantly better than 12.
âIt doesnât make geographic sense.
Answer: Yeah, maybe if you are talking about mid-majors. Themega schools in play here will scoff at your map. If the right shiftshappen, the major conference are likely to expand beyond 12, and theywill have geographically sensible DIVISIONS. Think two mini-made-for-TVconferences under one umbrella locking down a large swath of television sets.
âNotre Dame would never join a conference.
Answer: Sure about that? Notre Dameâs TV deal will pay the Irishabout $10 million per year. Sounds great. All that prime time exposure,too. Ah, but wonder how the Irish feel when
Northwesternâsannual cut off the Big Ten deal more than doubles Notre Dameâs TV pot?Besides, Notre Dame is not the key to this whole realignment thing.Texas is. The Longhorns are, right now, the biggest brand in collegesports. Their TV power, marketability and overwhelming strength at thetop of the Big 12 means they hold the fate of the Big Ten, Pac-10, Big12 â and perhaps even the Big East, ACC and SEC â in their hands. IfTexas goes anywhere, the Big 12 is swimming in chum and the othersharks are scrambling to gobble up the pieces.
âThe schedules would be a mess.
Answer: Nah, not much different than now. 14- or 16-team superconferences will likely play 9-game conference football schedules. Sixor seven division games, and one or twocrossover games. Not muchdifferent than now. That still leaves three games to schedule othertraditional rivals or money games. The Big East has proven a 16-teamleague works just fine in basketball and in other sports.
âThese power schools wonât want to beat up each other. It will kill them in the BCS.
Answer: Who says there will even BE a BCS when this reaches itsconclusion? Or if there is, it wonât radically change things.Superconferences based on mega television deals only ENHANCE the valueof the regular season. Rather than spur playoff push â which couldhappen certainly, â it might actually strengthen the BCS with fewerconferences requiring automatic bids. The regular-season and conferencechampionship games become even bigger.
âBut what about the NCAAbasketball tournament? No way these leagues merge up. Theyâll just costthemselves NCAA Tournament bids.
Answer: Really? Tell that to Big East basketball. Anddidnât I just read something about
expanding the NCAA Tournament? Hmmmâ¦. Wonder why anyone might possibly want it set upso that any BCS conference team with a decent record makes the field?
âThe conferences wouldnât eliminate other conferences.
Answer: Southwest Conference, please come to the white courtesyphone. The Metro and Great Midwest conferences would like a word withyou.
âTexas would never leave the Big 12.
Answer: Right. Like it would never blow up the SWC. Or explore going to the Pac-10 or Big Ten way back when (itdid). Or be in a conference without rival Oklahoma (gee, seems likethey managed that one fine for years), or leave behind Texas A&M(Texas was more than willing to do that previously before politiciansgot involved). And travel miles? Please. That wonât even be aconsideration. Besides, see the point about geography. If Texas goes,it probably will be bringing along a few high-rolling friends for tohelp fill out a division.
Rule No. 3: If youâre not in now, youâre probably not getting in.
If the power conferences â and more importantly, the TVnetworks â saw value in any teams not currently in the BCS conferencepower structure, those teams would already be in it. The truth of thematter is that there are no teams outside the current BCS conferenceswho can add to the money pot. Any realignment scenarios that mentionany non-BCS team as a likely candidate are grounded in wishful thinkingbut not much reality.
Oh, perhaps a couple might get in simply to balance divisions orfill a particular regional gap in TV markets, depending on how thedominoes fall. Thatâs you, Utah and perhaps BYU. Thatâs you, TCU.Thatâs probably not you, Boise State. Only if you get lucky with theway things break, UCF. Everybody else? Better just focus on the mirrorinstead of that pie in the sky. The goal of true RadicalSuperconference Realignment will not be to ADD teams. It will be toconsolidate the power and SHED the financial weak links.
Just because youâre in a BCS league doesnât mean you will stay in one. This is rule No. 4.
If realignment feeding frenzy comes, there are no guaranteesall conferences currently in the BCS will stay there, or even if theywill exist at all, or even if the BCS as we think we know it willexist. The Pac-10 and Big Ten easily could do a number of the Big 12,which suffers from the same top-heavy structural flaws that helped takedown the Southwest Conference. In fact, itâs in the Pac-10âs and BigTenâs interest to carve up the heartlandâs power base and leave thescraps (hello Baylor, Iowa State, Kansas State and Texas Tech) for theMountain West or WAC to clean up.
The same rules apply to the Big East, where a half-dozen wannabesfrom Conference USA are getting all gussied up to join ⦠um â¦Conference USA?
It is in the ACCâs vital interest to kill off whatâs left of the BigEast as a marketable football entity through expansion into thenortheast, and that needis reciprocal. The Big East teams need the ACCjust as much, and they especially needthe former Big East teamsresiding there now. The only way those schools can generate the kind oftelevision dollars to compete with the Big Ten and SEC is to truly bethe Atlantic Coast Conference from New York to Miami.Translation: Ifit happens, bye-bye, Big East football. Whatever is left of the Big 12after that leagueâs top tier bolts can reunite with some of their oldSWC castoffs, whoâll know just how they feel. Cincinnati, Louisvilleand South Florida? Youmighthave to hello to your little (old) C-USAfriends.
And the SEC? Do you
really think they will sit by and watch the other leagues make a big money grab?
Which brings us back to Rule No. 5. The money â¦
Money is the driving force behind decades of incrementalchange in college sports. Conferences have been changing from the timecollege men first put on sweaters and kicked around a pig bladder. Theevolution has accelerated in the age of television, leading us to aperfect storm of economic factors that could bring about massiverealignment across the landscape. It has been foretold for decades, andlaid out as manifest destiny as soon as Georgia and Oklahoma wontelevision independence for college sports via the Supreme Court in1984.
The only thing stopping the inevitable cartel cannibalism has beenthe fact that college presidents didnât have the courage to make themoves â to go
all in. Oh, and the money. It hasnât been quite the right time, and the dollars not quite right. But the day may soon arrive when the dollars cannot be ignored,and even the politicians cannot stand in the way. Perhaps thepresidents will again explore the options and take the conservativeapproach of past expansionist periods. A move here, a move there, andweâre done for a while, until the next ripple. Maybe. History says thatwill be the case.But if they conclude otherwise â and they arecertainly going to hear otherwise from the networks and theirconference commissioners âthen America will be stunned at how quicklythe dawn of the superconferences arrives.
The lines will be cast. If Texas bites, weâre all going to need a bigger boat.