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June 15, 2010

College Football Expansion: the dust finally clears

Filed under: football — Tags: big 10, big 12, conference expansion, Nebraska, pac-10, texas — Jonathan Lee @ 10:55 am

so after weeks of speculation about this Pac-16 megaconference, it turns out…nothing drastic will happen. it was nice to daydream this past couple of weeks about what could have been, but in the end, I always believed this was too drastic a change that the chances of this happening was pretty unrealistic.

in the end, the University of Texas decided to stay in the Big 12 of only 10 teams. on a side note, the Big 10 has 12 teams now…go figure.

a recap of what’s happened…

1) Nebraska left the Big 12 to go to the Big 10.
2) Colorado left the Big 12 to go to the Pac 10
3) Boise State left the WAC to go to the Mountain West Conference

All along, Texas kept placing the possible downfall of the Big 12 on Nebraska and Colorado for deciding to leave. However throughout this entire ordeal, it was always Texas that was the biggest key to keeping the conference intact. In the end, yes it was Texas’s decision, and they finally decided to stay.

Why? Money, money, money. All along, I’ve always said its been about the money.

By staying, the Longhorns have re-negotiated their contracts to make an estimated $20-$25 million a year, as opposed to $10-$15 million before. They have also been allowed to create their own tv network that will bring in $3-$5 million a year. On top of that, Texas will keep the buyout penalty that Colorado and Nebraska have to pay for leaving the Big 12.

Another reason to have doubted the expansion rumors to the Pac-10 was the fact that Texas has always been the “alpha male” in its conference. If it had joined the Pac-10, it would have had to compete with equally strong schools such as USC, UCLA, and Stanford (who have won the Director’s Cup for the past 15+ years as the country’s top athletic program). No one in the Big 12 dares to put up a fight with Texas and they just bow down to their presence. On the contrary, there are many schools in the Pac-10 that would put up a fight with Texas.

The ramifications of everything…

1) The Big 10 gets what it has always wanted…Nebraska so they can hold a conference championship game. Ideally they would have wanted Notre Dame, but Nebraska has always been there #2 choice.

2) The Big 12 might turn out stronger with this change. Nebraska and Colorado never really offered much lately to the Big 12 in terms of football or basketball, and with the departure of these two, the Big 12 can now play in a single division. Before they had played in two very, very competitively unbalanced divisions, with the South composed of Oklahoma, Texas, Oklahoma State, and Texas Tech, and the North composed of teams like Nebraska, Missouri Kansas State, and Iowa State in the other. How unfair were these divisions? The South has won 10/14 championship games, including the last 6.

3) The Pac-10 has to be the biggest loser here. Yeah they were able to bring in Colorado, but they definitely struck out trying to bring the entire Big 12 south to the conference. They are still one team short of a championship conference game, and will have to go back to the drawing board to see who to invite. All guesses will be the University of Utah Utes.

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June 11, 2010

College Football Expansion: Let The Domino Effect Begin

Filed under: football — Tags: bcs, big 10, big 12, Boise State, college football expansion, Colorado, Mountain West, Nebraska, pac-10 — Jonathan Lee @ 4:00 pm

Rumors this entire week have been swirling about what’s going to happen with regards to the Big 10, Big 12, and Pac-10 in the future.

Well in the past 24 hours, two major players made their first move, and now its time to see how the dominoes fall. In a completely unrelated move, another football powerhouse made it huge move.

Here the main things you need to know…

1) Last night, the University of Colorado officially accepted an offer to the join the Pac-10, which I guess will be the Pac-11 right now. Like I mentioned yesterday in a previous post, the Pac-10 had always targeted Colorado because Denver is a significant TV market.

2) Today, the University of Nebraska officially accepted an offer to leave the Big-12 and head to the Big-10 (I’m not sure what they’ll be called. After Penn State joined the conference, they’ve had 11 schools…and were still called the Big-10).

3) Boise State, the nation’s best mid-major conference team (not part of the Pac-10, Big East, ACC, SEC, Big 10 or Big 12), made a move to leave the weak Western Athletic Conference and join the relatively strong Mountain West Conference.

What does this all mean and what’s going to happen moving forward?

1) The Big 12 is officially down to 10 teams, two teams short of what’s required to host a conference championship game. It’s highly unlikely that the Big 12 is going to be able to survive for now, and its more and more likely that Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State will follow Colorado and join the Pac-10 to form the Pac-16.

2) With the Big-12 collapsing, there was talk about what to do with their BCS bid. Since the Pac-16 would be powerful, there was even talk about giving two bids to the conference, one each for each division winner, which I think is a terrible idea.

With Boise State joining the Mountain West Conference, I say the MWC gets an automatic BCS bid. If Boise State was in the MWC last season, the MWCwould have had 4 teams ranked in the top 25: Boise State, TCU, Brigham Young, and Utah.

Year after year, these teams continue to show that they have the ability to compete with the major conferences. It’s about time that we reward them.

3) Basketball and small markets get screwed.

This expansion has always been about money, and unfortunately the basketball schools (Kansas) and the small market schools (Baylor) get screwed.

For a program that has such a rich history like Kansas with regards to basketball, it’s kind of sad to see them without a major conference to play in. However, I believe this “homelessness” will be short-lived as the Big-East (a power conference in basketball already) will come along and invite them.

June 9, 2010

Pac-10 Expansion rumors heat up

Filed under: football — Tags: big 10, big 12, college football, expansion, pac-10 — Jonathan Lee @ 8:16 pm

Two days ago, I had written a post regarding the Big 10 and Pac 10 expansion situation, and it seems that things are moving along ahead for a major shakeup.

Some recent developments…

1) It seems that Nebraska will most likely move to the Big 10, as reported by ESPN here.

2) The Pac-10 is in the process of sending invites to 6 Big 12 schools: Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and Colorado.

There actually has been a lot of talk recently about who the Pac-10 should invite, Colorado or Baylor. A very prominent Baylor supporter even emailed Baylor alumni in the Texas Legislature to see if they could somehow work to package Baylor with their three fellow Texas schools. If Baylor isnt brought along to the Pac-10, they’re screwed and their sports teams will take a huge blow.

Like I mentioned in my previous post, it all comes down to money and television contracts. The Pac-10 decided to take Colorado because Denver (No 16 in the nation) is a much bigger TV market than Waco, Texas.

3) A report in the NYTimes says that the officials from Texas and Texas A&M will meet to try to salvage the Big 12 Conference.

It’s going to be an exciting next couple of days…that’s for sure!

How will the Pac-16 affect the college football season?

1) There would be two divisions: probably the West and the East. The East would have all the new teams + University of Arizona and Arizona State. The West would consist of the remaining 8 teams from the “Pac-10”
2) Currently in the Pac-10, each team plays all other 9 teams once and 3 other non-conference teams to make up a 12 game schedule.

In the new format, I envision each team playing a 7+2+3 format, 7 teams in their own division, 2 teams in the other division, and 3 non-conference opponents. Furthermore, that would also mean that a) One team would only play a member of the other division once every 4 years and b) they would host this opponent once every 8 years.

3) The winner of each division would play a 13th game in the conference championship.

How will the Pac-16 affect the basketball season?

The Pac-16 would probably just follow the system used by the Big East, which also has 16 teams. Team in the Pac-16 would still play an 18 game regular season. Currently, teams play all 9 other teams, home and away. In the Pac-16, each team would play each other once, and then play 3 of the teams twice. The Big East pairs up teams based on regional proximity and rivalries. For example, the University of Pittsburgh and West Virginia are always paired up because of their deep rivalry.

I can envision the following breakdown of 4 regions where the teams play each other twice.

a) The Oregon/Washington schools: University of Oregon, Oregon State, University of Washington, Washington State
b) The California schools: Stanford, California, UCLA, USC
c) The Texas schools + Colorado: Texas, Texas Tech, Texas A&M, Colorado
d) The Oklahoma and Arizona schools: University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, University of Arizona, Arizona State.

June 7, 2010

Understanding the Collegiate Conference Realignment fiasco

Filed under: football — Tags: big 10, big 12, college football, conference realignment, ncaa, pac-10 — Jonathan Lee @ 10:35 pm

Over the past couple weeks, there has been great talk about a reshuffling among the major collegiate conferences in sports, mainly within the Big 10 (Michigan, Ohio State, Illinois, etc), Big 12 (Texas, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, Kansas, etc), and Pac-10 (Stanford, Cal, UCLA, USC, etc). What’s going on and what does it mean for the future of college sports?

All of this is happening because of three related issues: a football conference championship, television contracts, and unequal revenue sharing. It’s a domino effect that ultimately comes down to money.

Realignment because of football? Really? Yes. Football. While basketball and baseball are popular collegiate sports, nothing compares to the cash cow that is football. In the 2008-09 school year, athletic departments from the ACC, Pac-10, Big 12, Big 10 and SEC brought in a combined $3.9 billion. The football departments of these schools alone brought in $1.9 billion. Nearly half the revenue schools bring in comes from football alone. So yes football is king.

Let’s go through this domino effect of events.

1) The Big 10 wants a football conference championship

The NCAA says that a conference needs 12 teams to hold a conference championship. A conference would have two divisions of 6+ teams, and the winner of each division would play in a final championship game.

What’s so great about the conference championship? More money. The Southeastern Conference (SEC) brings in another $15 million for having one extra game.

Three out of the 6 major conferences host a conference championship game: the SEC, ACC, and Big 12. The ACC was previously a 9 team conference until 2004, when they poached Miami, Virginia Tech, and Boston College from the Big East to get to a 12 team conference.

The Big-10 needs one more team to reach 12, and they have famously gone after Notre Dame many times. However, Notre Dame still wants to stay as an Independent. Now, they’ve decided to go after Nebraska and Missouri, two very strong football programs, who are also very geographically close to the rest of the Big 10 teams.

2) Why would Nebraska or Missouri even want to leave the Big 12 for the Big 10?

Again. money. Nebraska and Missouri would get more money in the Big 10 than in the Big 12.

Why? The Big 10 has equal revenue sharing, while the Big 12 gives more money to the teams that bring in the most. In 2007, Texas and Oklahoma made $10 million each, while Missouri and Nebraska got $9 million. Every team in the Big 10 received over $22 million.

Also, the Big 10 famously has their own tv network/contract that generated $204 million in revenue last year that is split between all 11 teams. Neither the Big 12 or Pac 10 has their own tv network/contract.

3) If Missouri or Nebraska leaves, Texas, Oklahoma, and the rest of the Big 12 will leave

If Missouri or Nebraska leaves, the Big 12 will be down to either 10 or 11 teams, which means the league will not have a conference championship.

Therefore, teams like Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas A&M, and Texas Tech will be stranded and left out to dry. They have to either

a) Try to convince Nebraska and Missouri to stay
b) Bring in teams to replace them
c) Find another conference

4) The Pac-10 wants exactly what the Big 12 wants/has: conference tournament and a tv network/contract

Like the Big 12, the Pac-10 wants a conference tournament. They currently have 10 teams and need two extra teams to reach 12. For the past year, there has been a lot of speculation about what the Pac-10 would do. One likely possibility was to target Utah and BYU (Pac-10 wants schools in geographic pairs: Stanford/Cal, USC/UCLA, and Arizona, Washington, and Oregon (university of and state).

However, the reason why the Pac-10 wants a conference tournament is to bring in more revenue and to use it as an attractive centerpiece in their desire to get a lucrative tv contract. A lot of people dismissed the Utah/BYU possibility because they didnt believe the Salt Lake City, Utah area was a large enough marketplace and that BYU/Utah weren’t attractive enough to get a lucrative contract.

Couple the Pac-10’s desire to expand with the uncertainty going on in the Big 12, and you got yourself a potentially explosive situation.

The Pac-10 knows that its highly likely that either Nebraska or Missouri will bolt for the Big 10, and they know that Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and either Baylor or Colorado or ripe for pickings. The Pac-10 presidents have told the Pac-10 commissioner, Larry Scott, that he can do whatever he wants for expansion, and rumors have it that he will soon send out invitations to all of these schools to create a Pac-16 mega-conference.

5) More domino effects…

a) What happens to the BCS? What will happens to the automatic bids? Who will get bids?

b) What happens to Kansas and Kansas State? They will be the only two teams left from the Big 12, and I can see them being taken in by the Big East…which will make the Big East the ultimate basketball power conference. Kansas, UConn, Pittsburgh, West Virginia, Georgetown, Lousiville, Syracuse. Best basketball conference ever.

6) What do I think will happen?

The outcome of this is really hard to predict, because it seems that the Big-10 and Pac-10 are being very serious and aggressive in their pursuit of teams.

Honestly, I really cant see all 6 teams leaving the Big-12 and heading to the Pac-10 to form a megaconference. I think this is way too big of a move to be done in a short amount of time, and I believe the ramifications of this move are just too big to fathom. I just dont believe that this will be feasible.

We’ll find out soon what happens. It all depends on what Nebraska or Missouri want to do. If they stay, we keep our status quo. Else, we’re going to get a shakeup in college athletics.

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