More Conference Realignment Rumors
Michigan 247 beat writer, Zach Shaw, just retweeted another blue checkmark that I'm not familiar with (Braden Keith) that said:
"North Carolina, Florida State, Clemson, and Virginia are all negotiating to join the SEC. ESPN is trying to void their TV deal with the ACC."
If this is true and does happen I would say its only a matter of time before Notre Dame joins the Big 10.
ND and who else? I think that opens the door to Washington, Oregon, and someone else...
Stanford
Would have liked the Big to go after UVA, but I guess the move is west.
Surprised Virginia wants to go to SEC. Always considered them a public ivy like ourselves and Cal. Would think they’d want to hang w the better academics.
Stanford
I don't think Washington and Oregon is being talked about anywhere outside of here and their blogs. ND is the big prize and if they want Stanford, then come on down Stanford.
I think the reason people are bringing up Washington and Oregon is that obviously they are schools with a history of success. But more than that I think people also realize that it seems a little absurd to have 2 schools in the conference be all by themselves 1500 miles away from everyone else. To make the entire thing sane you're probably going to need to add at least 1 or 2 more schools out west
I agree that this is part of the logic. But, I think a lot of us have some east coast / midwest lack of understanding of west coast geography. Sure, Oregon and Washington are closer to LA than Michigan is to LA, but they are both really far from LA. When it's all a 1.5 hour plus plane ride, does an extra hour on the plane make that much of a difference?
I think it's more about time zones than distance of travel. Because yes, it's still a two hour flight which isn't that different than the four hour flight to the Midwest but changing two or three zones makes the travel quite a bit harder and it also makes viewing more difficult for each fanbase.
Like, it won't be good for TV to have the West Coast teams play noon ET games (fewer viewers at 9am PT) and it won't make sense to ever have the West Coast teams host a night game with an ET team (too few viewers at 11pm ET). So having more teams in the same time zone playing each other provides more schedule flexibility.
I disagree. The 2.5 hr plane ride to SoCal from SeaTac and no time change and always nonstop vs. 5-6 hrs LAX to Happy Valley with at least one stop and a 3 hr time change, it's night and day.
UW, UO and Stanford, plus USC and UCLA allows 4 teams to play 2 west coast opponents each basketball weekend, while one team travels East to play, or hosts two Big Ten teams on the left shore.
I'm excited with the opportunity to get this done and finally be done with the ND independent in football bullshit. The first time we played them and the last time we played them, and the majority of the games in between, we were the Victors! Bring on the whiny lil' Leprechaun!
Time zones and lay overs are good points that I hadn't really considered. Fair enough.
Pretty sure these teams charter direct flights so I don't think layovers are a thing for them, but time zones are.
Football, yes would charter. Basketball probably as well.
It’s all those other teams that don’t charter flights are going to fly commercial. This the need for more west coast teams.
Sure, but those sports were going to die for UCLA and USC anyway if they didn't do this deal. It's just not sustainable under any model to have the revenue sports subsidize the others so heavily.
Even if one is flying direct --- something like LAX-DTW takes up a huge chunk of the clock.
One can board the plane at 7 AM PT in LA and it's already 3 PM ET when you're leaving the grounds of DTW. In the winter, that means boarding the plane w/ the sun only on the horizon, and leaving DTW with the sunlight already fading!
Flying east to west is definitely better than the opposite.
Yes, again, the time change is the killer. But again, with a charter, you're on and off the plane much quicker than the boarding and security process plus baggage claim that commercial flights require. So it's a four hour flight plus a little bit more on departure and landing that has to happen for a one hour flight, ie the fixed costs.
The marginal difference between flying to Ann Arbor (remember, these charters fly out of and into Willow Run, not DTW) from LA vs going to Seattle from LA is only about 2-2.5 hours.
Washington makes more sense than Oregon given they're a pretty high academic research university
The Seattle Times is pushing for the Big Ten.
Oregon can't join unless they give us Dante Moore
Not that it matters, but this would probably push him even more to Oregon assuming they join league play in 2024. Get to play all his road games closer to family and friends. I mean family that does not move to Nike's world headquaters for new jobs that they are clearly qualified for and probably would have gotten anyway.
I think there's still a Nike store in downtown Detroit. They can all be assistant managers making six figures.
UNC but not Duke? Hmmm …
Q: What is Duke without Coach K?
A: Wake Forest
No one cares if UNC/Duke is an OOC game. People will still watch.
Except worse at football
"Wake Forest" Now you are just being mean.
This probably doesn't belong here, but it's a question I've had.
I’ve heard a lot of people saying it doesn’t make sense to bring in Washington or Oregon or others. It’d probably be similar for the SEC. Hypothetically, if Oregon or similar could show they could bring 70MM to the conference and everyone else is getting 100MM on average, would it make sense for them to have their agreement be for 70% of the rest of the members’ share? Just so they aren’t in a mid American conference? Then maybe a booster/s could supplement the rest. If they dropped to whatever the level below the B1G and SEC will be, it seems they would probably die a slow death since people would slowly stop caring about them outside of Oregon.
I think Dante Moore will enjoy Alaska Airlines flights to Boise, Reno, etc.
That kind of deal is what killed the big 12. Nobody wants to be a second class citizen
Is it? Seems like Texas and OU leaving killed the big 12 and they were the ones getting sweetheart deals, right?
What killed the Big 12 is that not enough people wanted to watch Iowa St. or Kansas St. or Baylor or Texas Tech play football such that even with those sweetheart deals, Texas and OU were still overly subsidizing.
These leftover B12 teams were more happy being second class citizens than they will be in a mid-major conference.
Initially Nebraska & Colorado left the Big12 because of Texas. Then Missouri & Texas A&M left the Big12 because of Texas. Then Texas & Oklahoma left the Big12 because it sucked.
Brilliance.
Saw today that ND has never won a BCS or NY6 game. That is pretty crazy.
They are winning the recruiting this year and lose big games, again.
I believe it has been 30 years since ND won a major bowl game.
Not that I'm happy about it, but neither has Michigan. NY6 has been in place since 2014 - losses in the Orange, Peach and BCS Semifinal since. Before that, Michigan did win the 2012 Sugar Bowl.
Sugar Bowl was during the BCS area. ND is something like 0-for CFP, BCS and Bowl Alliance eras.
Orange Bowl in '99 was a BCS game too.
Though you're correct that the 1999 Orange Bowl was a BCS game, Michigan didn't play in it. Michigan (and Tom Brady) won the 2000 Orange Bowl against Bama. I know bc I was there.
And I know bc of the Internet.
Just kidding. I was there too. I have never been to the Internet dot com.
Basically the conferences are trying to recreate the now defunct North/South Shrine game of my yourh on a permanent basis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North%E2%80%93South_Shrine_Game
Bring back the Blue vs Gray game!!
i would also accept the East/West Bowl
It's basically going to be a Civil War re-enactment when all is said and done. The difference now is the South wants to exorbitantly pay the people doing the work and the North does not.
If that happens, would the Big Ten have any interest in the remainders? I'm guessing no unless one of them (a la Stanford) is an important "rival" of ND.
I haven't seen the TV numbers for Duke, Georgia Tech, or Miami. Are they any better than Oregon or Washington (which apparently aren't appealing at the moment)? I can see where Pitt and Syracuse would make some sense geographically but that's obviously not important now.
Virginia Tech would be a great Big Ten addition. Sleeping football power. Academically Purdue of the East. Enormous fan draw in DC. And .... can probably also get Georgia Tech. Also an academic power and a shot deep into SEC territory.
Depends how important AAU status is. It seems to matter to the Big 10 (with the exception of ND). Virginia hasn't, Va Tech doesn't.
I lived in DC for half a decade. People barely cared about college football at all (compared to NFL) and pretty much no one I met ever mentioned VA Tech.
Blacksburg to DC is about the same distance as Ann Arbor to Indianapolis. I saw about the same amount of Va Tech hats in the DMV as Colts hats in A2.
My experience in the DC area, there is far more VT interest than Maryland interest. And VT is a long hike away. VT and Penn State seem to be the two biggest regional football interests.
Interesting no Miami. It seems Miami wants Big10 "affiation".
Which Miami? The one in Ohio would make more sense, especially academically.
Miami FL's enrollment is all kids from NJ who couldn't get into Duke.
And Duke's enrollment is all kids from NJ who couldn't get into Princeton.
The B1G already has the lucrative NJ cable market all locked up with Rutgers, so we don't need either of them.