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Conference Realignment Rumors

Discussion in 'Football: NFL, College, High School' started by Rocketman95, Aug 16, 2011.

  1. Brando2101

    Brando2101 Contributing Member

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    They would absolutely add BYU before Boise. Boise is a worthless program financially.

    I think the big 12 likes their chances pushing an undefeated team into the playoffs rather than trying to beef up a 1 loss team with a conference championship win. Under no circumstance will a big 12 team that goes undefeated in the conference not make the playoff.
     
  2. ln3012

    ln3012 Member

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    that's how i see it as well
     
  3. A_3PO

    A_3PO Member

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    Wasn't this discussed a couple of years ago and there was a problem with BYU being a religious school (or something like that)?

    There was also some reluctance from BYU's standpoint. Now they probably have regrets about missing an opportunity when the door was open.
     
  4. Brando2101

    Brando2101 Contributing Member

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    I think it was because BYU can't play games on Sunday.
     
  5. J.R.

    J.R. Member

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  6. jdh008

    jdh008 Member

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    Not sure I'm ready for another round of conference realignment rumors. If it's anything like the last round, it will eclipse even the college coaching carousel in terms of wild speculation.
     
  7. Brando2101

    Brando2101 Contributing Member

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    HIGHLY skeptical of the report. Man if the AAC loses Cincy they will just almost become the Conference USA East. UCONN and South Florida will be the last teams they have that's pre-2013 membership.


    Idk. Would have much rather had Louisville or (obviously) Florida St and Clemson. At least Cincy is pretty successful in the AAC in football and Memphis is a good pickup.


    This would mean that UT now has a ton of non conference slots opening up. It's going to be an infinite amount of pressure to try to get A&M to cancel some of their game congrats to renew the rivalry.
     
  8. Bob Barker 007

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    Repped. Though the Big 12 does not want Boise.
     
  9. Beavis Stiffler

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    Did the Big 12 know they were doing this before both TCU and Baylor were snubbed out of the CFP?

    This is a desperate attempt from the Big 12 to add those teams just to get a conference championship game.
     
  10. Brando2101

    Brando2101 Contributing Member

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    UCONN is leaving the AAC and returning to the Big East in every sport except Football and Hockey.
     
  11. MadMax

    MadMax Contributing Member

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    maybe they can finally win now...cause the AAC handed them their ass.
     
  12. Brando2101

    Brando2101 Contributing Member

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    They've been to half of all the AAC basketball championships and that is the sport they care about. That's why they are going to the big east.
     
  13. MadMax

    MadMax Contributing Member

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    Since 2014 (with AAC membership was as presently constructed except for Wichita State), UConn hasn't finished better than tied for 5th in conference in basketball. UConn hasn't been UConn since they moved to the AAC, and they've gotten progressively worse. Perhaps moving to the Big East will help, but I don't think it moves the needle enough for them until they hire the right coach.
     
  14. DonnyMost

    DonnyMost not wrong
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    Can't say I'm all that upset to see them go.

    Last 5 years of UConn Mens BB


    20-15 (10-8)
    25-11 (11-7)
    16-17 (9-9)
    14-18 (7-11)
    16-17 (6-12)

    Last 5 years of UConn FB

    2-10 (1-7)
    6-7 (4-4)
    3-9 (1-7)
    3-9 (2-6)
    1-11 (0-8)

    UConn fans have more interest in the Big East, and that's understandable due to their history, but this move is basically putting a tourniquet around their FB program in the hopes of saving their failing basketball program. Good luck with that.

    I'm interested to see if we stay at 11 or can make a partnership with BYU or Army work.
     
  15. DonnyMost

    DonnyMost not wrong
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    Good news this morning from the Chron.

    https://www.houstonchronicle.com/sp...-will-be-picky-in-adding-another-14057439.php

    TL;DR - UConn was not part of the "renegotiation clause" that included UH, UCF, USF, Memphis, and Cincinnati. So, the AAC can stay at 11 teams while increasing the per school payout. The problem with that is how it will affect scheduling, etc, and the conference may need to seek a waiver for their CCG. But hey, I'm glad we're not being forced to add UAB at gun point. Even though having these two mascots on the same field at the same time would be amazing.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
    MadMax likes this.
  16. gucci888

    gucci888 Contributing Member

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    Interesting comments from USC's new AD. They're locked in until 2024 but I'm making overtures to USC, Utah and the Arizona schools if I'm the Big 12. Coincidentally our deal is up around the same time and have to think adding the LA market would be a huge bargaining chip, not to mention good additions from a purely sports perspective.

     
    Brando2101 likes this.
  17. J.R.

    J.R. Member

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    Staples: Now’s the time, Big 12, to go after the Pac-12’s biggest and best

    The people in charge have changed. The landscape has changed. But two interviews given in the past week by USC’s athletic director have made one thing abundantly clear. If the Big 12 wants to pull a Count of Monte Cristo and gut the league that tried to sentence it to college sports purgatory 10 years ago, it’s going to have the chance.

    And given the opportunity, it absolutely should do it.

    Last week, Ryan Abraham of 247Sports asked new USC AD Mike Bohn during a podcast interview whether the Trojans would be willing to consider independence or joining another conference. “I think right now, and (Pac-12 commissioner) Larry (Scott) would agree with this, everything’s on the table,” Bohn replied.

    Spoiler alert: Larry absolutely would not agree with this.

    Dennis Dodd of CBSSports.com then called Bohn and asked him to clarify. Bohn said that USC is “aligned” with the Pac-12. He also said this:

    “There’s no talk of (leaving), but guess what? If it was on the table, we would certainly explore that. But I’ve got to be careful. The league is really tender.

    “The context that I was talking about was whether it was league TV stuff, creative pieces with any other type of deliverable, it has to be on the table. Guess what? If that helps (the league) understand the importance of what our campuses are going through, so be it.”

    Those words could not be reassuring to the people at Pac-12 headquarters. Nor should they be surprising. The leaders of Pac-12 schools, especially the ones such as USC that provide the league’s drawing power, grow more frustrated with each passing day as they fall farther behind the Big Ten and SEC.

    A new media rights deal is coming for the Pac-12, but not until after the Big Ten and SEC make new deals that will allow them to continue to dwarf the Pac-12’s revenue-generating capacity. Short of making people suddenly care about Cal football the way Auburn or Iowa fans feel about their teams, there isn’t much anyone in the Pac-12 can do to change the league’s trajectory.

    But what if there was another way? What if there was a league that had the capacity to take on the Pac-12’s biggest earners and create a new entity that could get closer to those numbers the Big Ten and SEC can generate? And what if that league already had a financial setup designed to appeal to programs whose leaders are sick of subsidizing conference members whose brands aren’t nearly as strong?

    Well, there is such a league.

    The Big 12.

    Between now and when the Pac-12’s media rights deal — and accompanying Grant of Rights agreement — runs out in spring 2024, the Big 12 needs to invite USC, UCLA, Oregon, Washington, Arizona and Arizona State. The Big 12 needs to do to the Pac-12 what the Pac-12 tried to do 10 years ago to the Big 12. It needs to do it unapologetically. If we learned anything from the previous rounds of conference realignment, this is a kill-or-be-killed business. The Pac-12 took its shot in 2010 and missed. The Big 12 can secure its long-term survival by ensuring it doesn’t.

    Before we lay out the blueprint for future conference realignment intrigue, let’s travel back 10 years. The Pac-10 and Big 12, looking to strengthen their upcoming media rights deals, had held some preliminary talks about a potential scheduling alliance. Scott, the new Pac-10 commissioner who had come to the league from the Women’s Tennis Association, thought much bigger. He realized that if he could pry Texas, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech and Colorado away from the Big 12, his league could sign an obscenely rich media rights deal and create a conference network that essentially would print money. Just imagine it: Texas, USC, Oklahoma, Oregon and Texas A&M under one umbrella.

    Scott nearly pulled it off, too. Unfortunately for him, he got outmaneuvered by a more experienced college sports operator named DeLoss Dodds. Dodds, the longtime athletic director at Texas, went down the road with the Pac-10 while simultaneously remaining engaged with Big 12 leadership. The endgame for Texas was the best possible deal — for Texas. The Pac-10 crew thought the deal was done. Scott and his team visited campuses, ready to welcome the new members to the fold. Just before the Pac-10 group left College Station to head to Austin, Texas A&M regent Jim Wilson asked Scott what he planned to do when Texas asked to create its own network. Scott replied that such an option wasn’t on the table.

    Except that’s exactly what Texas wanted. Instead of finalizing a deal, Texas officials asked if they could join the Pac-10 and still start their own cable network. The entire Pac-10 plan was contingent upon all the schools pooling their third-tier rights to create a conference network, and the deal fell apart. The first Big 12 Missile Crisis ended without total destruction, and Texas got its chance to create the channel we now know as the Longhorn Network.

    The Pac-10’s incursion came as Nebraska was leaving for the Big Ten. Colorado used the drama as a chance to leap from the Big 12 to the Pac-12, where it appeared to be a better cultural fit. The Big 12 managed to stay together, but the creation of the Longhorn Network the following year was the last straw for Texas A&M, which left for the SEC. Missouri, which also had been looking to leave, quickly followed suit. The Big 12 was completely destabilized and seemed in danger of becoming like the Big East, which had started this century as a peer of the Power 5 leagues and wound up getting split into a basketball-only league (the Big East) and a middle-class all-sports league (the American Athletic Conference) after the ACC took what it needed to ensure its own survival.
     
  18. J.R.

    J.R. Member

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    For several years, the Big 12 was a laughingstock. Its attempts to regain its footing were lampooned. Some of this was justified. Paying a consultant to use two years of College Football Playoff data to guide longterm strategy was the equivalent of lighting money on fire, and the upshot of that was a dog-and-pony-show audition process that made schools such as UCF and Cincinnati think they had a chance to join a Power 5 league when the truth was the 10 existing members weren’t going to take on another mouth to feed unless that new member could guarantee the existing members made the same or more money.

    Meanwhile, the leagues that had agreed to even media rights revenue splits across the board enjoyed the stability the Big 12 sought. But while all those other leagues were pointing and laughing at the Big 12, the Big 12 members were cutting individual deals for their third-tier rights that made them quite content from a revenue standpoint and left them competitive with the ACC and more comfortable than Pac-12 members. Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby, who was Stanford’s athletic director when the Pac-10 tried to raid the Big 12, steered the league out of an existential crisis and into calm waters.

    Last year, the Big 12 distributed an average of $38.8 million per school. The average distribution by the Pac-12 for the 2017-18 school year was $31.3 million per school. In the same fiscal year, the Big 12’s full distributions ranged from $33.6 million to $36.6 million. But that doesn’t paint the entire picture.

    Because Big 12 schools can sell their third-tier rights individually, they can make millions more. Texas makes about $15 million a year from the Longhorn Network. Oklahoma makes about $7 million a year for its third-tier deal. Pac-12 schools’ third-tier rights are bundled to program the Pac-12 Network. That money is included in the conference revenue figure. Jon Wilner of the Bay Area News Group reported last year that the per-school contribution from the network in 2018 came out to about $2.7 million.

    Now it is Scott’s league that faces the existential crisis. And the drivers for realignment have changed. It makes no sense for the Big Ten or SEC to expand again. There is no one other than Texas and Oklahoma that either league would want, and Texas and Oklahoma seem content being the primary muscle in the Big 12. Meanwhile, cord-cutting has rendered territory acquisition for the sake of higher cable network subscriber fees, the raison d’etre for the last round of realignment, a fool’s errand. If there is another major round of realignment — and the move being suggested here probably is the only inciting action that would inspire another round — it will be driven by brand names that can draw viewers from across the country.

    USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington fit that description. Arizona and Arizona State, meanwhile, are a geographic fit for the league in a fast-growing state that could make the territory valuable for football recruiting and for brand purposes. USC especially would appreciate the ability to negotiate a separate third-tier deal. The Trojan Network might not command as much as the Longhorn Network, but it would bring USC a hell of a lot more money than the Pac-12 Network does. Meanwhile, the Trojans’ new conference would be headquartered in quite reasonable confines in Irving, Texas, instead of bleeding money paying for space in pricy San Francisco.

    Should Oregon and/or Washington protest that they can’t come without Oregon State and/or Washington State, Big 12 officials can simply say “Fine. Then stay where you are.” They could stay content at 14, or they could look in a different direction — perhaps toward UCF and Cincinnati — to create a truly nationwide league. (In sports other than football and basketball, teams could be grouped geographically to limit extreme travel.) They also could approach Stanford and Cal. An association with such academic powerhouses likely would appeal to the other Big 12 presidents. The problem is that neither could draw the kind of interest Oregon and Washington would. USC is the big prize here, but all of these schools could benefit from an association with Texas and Oklahoma. ESPN and Fox would be willing to pay big money for that league.

    This could be met with serious resistance from Pac-12 schools that don’t get invited. Remember, Baylor fought Texas A&M’s exit from the Big 12 out of fear that the league would collapse and didn’t stand down until it was clear the Bears would remain in a power conference. That likely would happen again. But if all this takes place within the vicinity of the expiration of the Pac-12’s current deal, there might not be much anyone could do.

    The popular notion back in 2010 was that if one power league expanded to 16, all the surviving ones also would. I doubt that would happen in this case. The Big Ten and SEC would have no reason to do it. The ACC would happily take Notre Dame football to create a 15th full member — and if that happened might grab a 16th member — but the Fighting Irish have made it abundantly clear that they wish to remain independent in football.

    A portion of USC’s fan base is pushing for independence or a partnership with football rival Notre Dame, but the Trojans might be better off joining forces with the Longhorns and Sooners. Just as Scott intended 10 years ago, but in a completely different way.

    If the members of the Big 12 want to get aggressive about their future — and perhaps exact a little vengeance — they’ll consider this plan. It could create an immediate payday followed by decades of stability for a league that nearly imploded 10 years ago. Meanwhile, we’d get USC-Oklahoma and Oregon-Texas as conference games.

    And if the leaders of the Big 12 decide to take this advice and form a raiding party, I only have one request:

    They have to call it the Big 16.
     
    raining threes likes this.
  19. Ziggy

    Ziggy QUEEN ANON

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    Logistics aside, Big12/Pac12 combo would be LEGIT.
     
  20. Buck Turgidson

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    This is just an uneducated opinion. Yeah, **** Baylor and all, but Drayton has dropped so much money into their athletic program and facilities that they're not going anywhere.

    eta: unless they're talking about the other Pac12 schools, in which case I'm an idiot
     

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