OT: More Big XII Expansion Info
Sports talk radio in ACC country is referencing a report in Orange Bloods that the Big XII has had informal discussions with Florida State, Miami, Clemson and VA Tech.
It's way too early to take it seriously but it's a little more "confirmed" than reports we saw over the weekend.
Texas doesn't want to share...and the location has to come into play at some point.
Also, the acting Big XII commish said yesterday that 14 is out of the question and his buddies at the ACC and SEC or having cold feet about going to 14. He thinks 10-12 is the right number.
The only way they go to 14 is if Notre Dame joins as an all-sports member and asks them to do it.
The ACC and SEC have already gone to 14, it's way too late for cold feet.
Also, I'm fairly confident that location no longer plays much -- if any -- role in conference realignment.
Location doesn't matter for football, because they can still make money. But for all other sports it does.
What will stop this is the threat of antitrust legislation from the smaller conferences and schools. In SuperConference Armageddon the big boys will start cherry picking preferred schools until 4 relevant conferences are left, then dictate their own terms for a playoff (the Rose Bowl and SEC whatever bowl could wind up being perpetual semifinals). That's when the little boys sue.
A small Texas hang up is small change in the grander scale. The Sec, B1G, PAC, and Big 12 could mutually agree to just have the winners of their bowls play each other every year and simultaneously invite all the best leftover teams to their conferences and this would all be over by mid-summer. (You don't have to call this a national championship, everyone would know. Every team on the outside that got an invite would take it immediately or risk permanent second-class status). Lawsuits are the big thing keeping that from happening.
I understand how antitrust works in the business world (eg. Microsoft, AT&T buying T-Mobile) but am very naive on how antitrust applies to "non-profit" college sports. Could someone please help clarify?
Seriously ignorant,
indywolverine
I am not a lawyer, but.....there isn't really a lot of precedent. The only time I can think of where antitrust law was applied was when the owners of the NIT sued the NCAA on the grounds that it was monopolistic to force schools that were selected to the NCAA tournament to play in that tournament and not be able to choose the NIT. The solution was for the NCAA to buy the NIT (that is, pay $55 million of shut-up-and-go-away money) thus creating an even more monopolistic situation than before.
So there really isn't a lot of useful historical data there.
If I remember from my skooling, antitrust law's primary objective is to protect the interest of consumers. Often this also results in smaller competitors being protected, but that's at most a secondary objective, if not just a byproduct.
Not clear who the consumers would be in this case. If it's student athletes of smaller schools, I don't see them being harmed. Sure they may miss out on a free Disneyworld vacation, but that's not the point.
Hopefully an MGoLawyer will provide some clarity.
Texas doesn't want to share...and the location has to come into play at some point.
Also, the acting Big XII commish said yesterday that 14 is out of the question and his buddies at the ACC and SEC or having cold feet about going to 14. He thinks 10-12 is the right number.
The only way they go to 14 is if Notre Dame joins as an all-sports member and asks them to do it.
Sports talk radio referencing OrangeBloods is like the perfect storm of illfounded rumormongering. The only way it could get any better is if they did so with a Bleacher Report editor as a guest.
FWIW....the radio host even made a disclaimer about Orange Bloods and the reliability of past information. However, he specifically mentioned that Chip Brown had more credibility than most.
It's not hard to believe that discussions have taken place. Actual activity toward a transition is a different story but I don't have any trouble believing that schools are starting to explore their options. It's a nervous time for the ACC.
This is not good for Syracuse and UCONN. They left the Big East and ruined all of their great rivalries in basketball, just to join the ACC to be more profitable in football. But now, the ACC seems to be unraveling and Cuse' and UCONN are back to where they started in football, and now not in the toughest basketball conference arguably year in and year out.
Pitt, not UConn.
Also: there is nothing that can happen to the ACC that is worse than what happened / is happening to the Big East.
yeah... up until now, it's all made some sense. Nebraska to the B1G? Fine. The mountain schools to the Pac-10? Fine. Texas A&M and Mizzou to the SEC? Sure. Cuse and Pitt to the ACC? Yeah, why not? But all this Big East and Big 12 stuff is really fucking absurd.
In Superconference Armageddon it wouldn't surprise me of the B1G looked that way, but taking both would be tough; I think the B1G would make a play for UNC and Duke first. Seriously.
I really don't know if this can be considered the case. It might. Truth is, if you advanced that theory on a UVA message board the general feeling would be "we hope you're right but we're not convinced the legislature won't fuck us."** Different governor, eight years ago, etc.
**There would also be the vocal minority that says "I don't care if we're left behind as long as VT gets the hell out."
I think if it came to the point where the ACC was completely nuked, then yes, it's more than possible VT and UVA could go separate ways as long as both found a home.
But I don't get why people think the B1G would do this. Honestly, it would be a dilution of the product. "Getting the DC area into the BTN" is not worth it. For the Big Ten, it's ND + anyone, or don't bother.
Besides, I don't want to be in the Big Ten. If that happened I'd go kicking and screaming. I like our baseball program, and I also like not having U-M and OSU going into high schools in Virginia and pulling whoever they like and having UVA deal with the scraps. We are not going to get a reciprocal benefit in Ohio.
but if the B1G follows the academics and major sports thread, UNC and UVA are good gets. Duke is a little more iffy on the sports side, but I guess hoops might make the case. The research dollars between UNC and Duke though stack up nicely with the B1G. (Assuming here UVA is similar, but maybe not. Georgia Tech is the best engineering school in the ACC no? They have better football and hoops than UVA. But Michigan may have a Willis Ward problem.)
My other assumption is, if this happened, ND's hand is forced and they go Big 12 or B1G.
I am not sold on any NY / New England market school -- maybe BC. But none of them wield the research dollar power UNC or Duke do.
I sure would love having more B1G games to go to within driving distance. Would be tough on hoops, baseball, and LAX though.
Bottom line, being from Northern Virginia, and living in RTP, UNC, Duke, and UVA are the academic schools of choice in the east.
VT will NOT go to the BigXII. The SEC lusts after them. Why sleep with a 7 when a 10 is gazing your way and giving the $%*! me eyes?
Ihave no clue why people keep wanting UNC and Duke...They offer horrendous football with the tradeoff being great bball of course but that is barely a factor as football is all that matters...Also, why do we keep looking south ? Our roots are as a northern conference why taint it with mediocre southern schools just to get to 14...
Hockey is our 3rd revenue sport...And i doubt lax will ever out profit hockey even though im a huge lax fan (i live on Long Island)...
Other than Texas and ND, North Carolina is the crown jewel in realignment. They are a national brand in a growing state. I live in the West and you see a ton of UNC gear here as you do anywhere because they have a national following. On top of that, they are good in EVERYTHING else.
As far as football, the potential is there if the school wants to put the money and resources into it. 25 years ago, Florida had never won an SEC title. I don't think UNC football has THAT potential (North Carolina isn't Florida as a recruiting state), but they CAN be a top 15 program.
They are the best fit for the B1G outside of ND.
I think that North Carolina has a reasonable chance of getting to Top 25 level in football on a consistent basis. They have a 60k-ish seat stadium with upgraded facilities. They have a national "brand". They were willing to spend $2.5MM per year on the failed Butch Davis experiment.
I don't have the exact numbers but they've probably put 5-6 players in the first two rounds of the NFL draft over the past two seasons. That's solid by any standard other than Alabama. Players will play for UNC. It's just a matter of being consistent about it.
Duke and NC Chapel Hill are both in the AAU, which may make them attractive to the B1G.
That said, the B1G should be a Great Lakes/Upper Midwest conference because....well, dammit, I just prefer it that way.
/searing logic
I'm not old or grouchy, and I'm totally with you. At some point you have to stand for the culture of your conference, not just economics.
and academic reputation.
Which northern schools do you propose will stack up?
How about top research Universities....public additions would fit in well in the COC and the B1G (UVA and UNC) where private institutions with great research interests (Duke) would complement Northwestern nicely...
Not even mentioning the obvious footprint additions in locations with positive population trends.
UVA is actually quite good in a number of sports (LX). That and being the highest ranked Public University (I know, I know) is attractive.
is that basically as it stands, UVA and UNC lose a lot of their in-state footall talent to other schools that seem to put more of an emphasis on football, because they are not seen as football schools. It's why Indiana can't keep its good football players around. However, if they jumped to a top to bottom better football conference than the ACC, with large alumni bases in their area (for example, I know the DC area gets lots of Michigan and Penn State alumni), then more people will attend the games and have interest in the sport, which would make it easier to keep their more talented kids in the state.
The more i think about it, the more I think that VaTech is the most desirable, realistic football team in the ACC as a potential B1G expansion target.
Sugar bowl attendance excluded, they have a passionate fan base, a decent academic school, would help with putting B1G in basic cable in the DC/MD/NoVa region, and are not smoking craters of a football program such as what Randy Edsall is creatin in College Park.
let the pieces fall where they may
I think Missouri and Texas A&M would fit in well in the Big XII. That would put them at 12 again, with the additions of WVU and TCU, and reduce the SEC to a more manageable 12. Wait, what?
This actually makes sense.
A few years down the road, some of these conferences are going to look around and see how just how good their alignments were before they started F'ing with them.
What's so magical about the number 16? Why does it seem inevitable that there will be 4 16-team conferences?
It's more of a fan's dream than anything else. Fans like symmetry. But in reality, there are not 16 more schools to cram into the Big Ten, Pac-12, Big 12 and SEC. They just don't exist. There may be four "super-conferences", but they won't be of 16 teams. Maybe the SEC and Big 12 go up to 16, those conferences seem like they act before thinking. But the Big Ten won't go up unless it's worth it. And the Pac 12 has nobody reasonably in their footprint to add. If they can't pull in Texas, it's not happening out west.
This is an excellent point. For all the talk of super conferences, I've never heard a plausible scenario, since the Big XII teams pledged their media rights to the conference, of who the Pac 12 would possible add to get to 16. Every plausible school is already in one of the major conferences, and I don't see any scenario in which the Pac 12 would be interested in BYU or Boise.
There may be 63 schools currently in the big five conferences (+ notre dame), but you and I know that many of them wouldn't be super conference worthy if not for the fact that they weren't already in one of those conferences. Each conference has them: Big Ten - Northwestern, Purdue (?); ACC - Wake Forrest, Boston College, Duke (?), Syracuse(?), Pitt(?); SEC: Vanderbilt, Mississippi State; Big 12: Kansas, Kansas State, Baylor, TCU (?); Pac 12: Washington State, Oregon State(?), Stanford (?).
I think we agree on the larger point, super conferences will kill off one of the existing conferences, and the only schools from that dead conference that get picked up will have something to offer.