ESPN: "All eyes on 2023 for conference realignment"
"Why 2023? It starts with expiring TV contracts. The ACC and SEC both have long-term media grant-of-rights agreements, running through 2035-36 and 2033-34, respectively. But the other three Power 5 conferences have agreements ending roughly around the same time (the SEC's Tier 1 deal with CBS runs through 2023-24). The Big Ten last summer opted for a shorter agreement with Fox and ESPN, which runs through 2022-23. The Pac-12 deal expires after the 2023-24 sports year, and the Big 12's ends the following year."
Lots of reasons
For one, OU and Texas would likely be in the BIG10 West, so we wouldn't see them often. Having OU and Texas in the conference brings Michigan more revenue, more opportunities for big wins. OU and Texas provide a lot more than just football as well. Texas is one of the best academic schools in the nation while OU has won four national championships this year alone (Men's and Women's Gym, Men's Golf, Softball) and were in the basketball Final Four as recent as 2016.
Bringing in Texas, a school that is literally as far from Michigan as possible while remaining in the contiguous United States, would be awful for the team from a travel perspective.
Austin and Denver are about equally far from Ann Arbor. So, any school west of Denver is farther away. So, there are actually quit few schools in the contiguous US that are literally farther away.
Takes about 3 hours to fly to Austin and a little less than 2 to get to St Paul and Iowa City on non-stop commercial (not sure about Lincoln because there are no non-stops). So, sure it would be longer, but when you add the time to get to/from the airport to the actual flight it doesn't really seem like it would be that much worse than trips they already take.
I made this point one of the last times a realignment conversation was brought up, but I don't think Texas is what any Michigan fan should want unless the conference becomes significantly smaller, (such as eliminate Maryland, Rutgers, Nebraska and add Texas).
Right now, they would be in the other division, which means we are only guaranteed to play them once every 4 years. Simply looking at the recruiting angle of things, we could go play in Austin as little as once every 8 years. That seems like it would not have even the slightest impact on recruiting potential, but still gives us another tough opponent in a championship game setting to win the Big 10. Strictly from a football point of view, I don't see a huge benefit.
Now, if we wanted to drop Rutgers and pick up say, Georgia Tech (who fits the academic standards and seems like it would be a nice fit), where we could play in Georgia every other year and Partridge could simply skip the hotel and spend the night at whatever Georgian 5*'s house he is likely to sign that year, then I am all for it!
Since we'll have just won our sixth consecutive national championship, bumping up the league's image.
NEW IDEA:
We follow the soccer model and have a Big Ten top division and lower division.
TOP DIVISION:
- Michigan*, Ohio State*, PSU, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Iowa, and... let's just say Northwesten (* indicates permenant members)
SECOND DIVISION:
- The rest
Winner of the Second division gets promoted to top division each year. Winner of Top division gets auto bid to the playoff.
Or... we could just boot Rutgers once ND realizes they are kidding themselves with the ACC>
I tihnk Brian of MGoBlog was writing about the relegation years ago without the caveat of permenant members.
I absolutely love the relegation system, let's just get rid of conferences all together, take the top 4 teams (bluebloods) of each conference to start and go from there:
Current top division: Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, Wisconsin, Alabama, LSU, Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, Texas, Oklahoma State, West Virginia, USC, UCLA, Oregon, Stanford, Clemson, Florida State, Notre Dame, Virginia Tech
Current middle division: Louisville, North Carolina, Pittsburgh, Miami, Iowa, Michigan State, Nebraska, Northwestern, Tennessee, Auburn, Texas A&M, South Carolina, TCU, Baylor, Texas Tech, Utah, Washington, Washington State, California, Colorado.
Current low division: Iowa State, Kansas, Arizona State, Arizona,Oregon State, Maryland, Indiana, Minnesota, Illinois, NC State, Georgia Tech, Syracuse, Duke, Arkansas, Miss St, Ole Miss, Missouri, Virginia, Kentucky, Boise State,
Bottom feeders: Rutgers, Purdue, Boston College, Wake Forest, Vandy, Army, Air Force, 3 American Rep, 2 C-USA Rep, 2 Mac Rep., 2 Mountain West Rep, 2 Sun Belt Rep, BYU, UMass,
That's how it starts and then the top 3 teams of each division moves up, the bottom 3 move down, and so on. Play something like 2 games against each of the other divisions, and 6 against your own.
Well, OK, "permanent" probably wouldn't really mean permanent and we'd just scrap the whole thing in a decade anyway. But anybody that thinks they know what the football landscape will look like 50 years from now is crazy.
Thirty years ago Oregon had what might have been the worst football program in the country, per wikipedia it was "siphoning money away from the successful basketball program" and cutting into the school's track budget.
Fifty years ago Indiana and Purdue were the two best teams in the Big Ten (and in the case of Purdue this wasn't a one-year flash in the pan), Michigan had had only one conference title in 17 years, Wyoming was in the Sugar Bowl, and Kansas was the football power in that state while K-State was in the middle of six decades of unrivaled futility.
Seventy years ago Florida State was a women's college.
80 or 90 years ago Minnesota would have been a lock for a permanent spot.
110 years ago, Case and Oberlin were the dominant powers in Ohio and we'd have been locking Chicago into the top group.
You heard it here first.
So far on this thread, I have seen recommendations for 3 teams to be "kicked out" of the conference.
Here's the problem: there is no mechanism for kicking teams out of the conference, other than for repeated major malfeasance. You can't kick Rutgers out, you can't kick Maryland out, you can't even kick Penn State out. They are in the Big Ten now, they will be in until one or the other stops existing.
The only way to kick Rutgers out would be for all of the other teams to leave the Big Ten and form a new conference. Which I have maintained is something that Michigan and Ohio State should consider--withdraw from the Big Ten along with some other major programs, possibly invite a few major programs from other conferences, and create a smaller (say 10-team) super-conference.
https://otfyl.com/2015/10/30/flashback-friday-temple-gets-kicked-out-the-big-east/
Now, they were football only so it was a little easier, but they still got kicked essentially for sucking. It's not impossible that if Rutgers continues to be deadweight and the TV contract bubble bursts, that the B1G might not ask itself why exactly they're in the club
(1) The Big Ten sees itself as a permanent entity; I don't know that the Big East ever did. Whatever the reason, they had different Constitutions. The Big Ten can only kick schools out for rules violations or for not paying their dues (which is, needless to say, obsolete: the Big Ten pays its members, rather than the other way around).
(2) "Associate Members" might be different in the Big Ten as well--I think Johns Hopkins lax and Notre Dame hockey might be in the conference on some sort of contract, rather than as a country-club-style full membership like the other 14 Big Ten schools.
If other major teams are cool to this idea, Michigan and Ohio State could just invite MSU, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Northwestern, Illinois, Indiana, and Purdue to form a new conference instead. Might even work.
I'm with you on 7 of those 8--the traditional schools. Several of the new members, such as Penn State, Nebraska, Michigan State, and even Maryland, all have an argument for being that 10th team.
Keep it original!
Rutgers should seriously consider leaving. The longer they stay, the worse they will get. After they get their asses kicked week in and week out, year after year, their recruiting will only get worse leading to more ass-kickings. It's a vicious cycle for them and they need to consider moving to another conference where their athletes can compete with a chance to win. Perhaps the AAC, CUSA or MAC would be a good fit for them.
Or, they make the right hire and their coach convinces some of their sizeable in-state talent to come to Piscataway. Their athletic department is a clown show at the moment, but they could get it together - someday.
They're going to be bad for a while and it's going to be several years before they really benefit from the B1G's financial weight (which, regardless of where rights fees go, will remain a fact of life relative to other conferences with less marketability).
But once they have full B1G money coming in they don't need to be better than Michigan and Ohio State to start being competitive; they just need to be better than significant parts of the ACC and the lower rungs of the B1G and so on. All it takes, as you say, is the right coach.
I have a hard time seeing that happening. Not saying it can't but almost saying it can't. There are too many great schools with rich tradition not far away that will continue to be dream schools for many of NJ's best. If they were to get a coach that could possibly turn it around, I think it would lead to that coach being the next Tom Herman. Rutgers is just one of those schools that is not and will never be a destination job. Their greatest success was under Schiano and he leveraged that into an NFL gig in which he was way under qualified for.
Schiano being a lousy NFL coach has nothing to do with this but whenever I can take a shot at him I will. As a Tampa Bay Buc fan, I don't much care for Schiano and his schtick.
Except for the part about "greatest success," because they'd never had any.
Given enough time, anything's possible. Maybe all they really need is one fabulously wealthy alum who doesn't care about anything but business and sports.
Why would we want Pitt so bad? I would rather steal Syracuse from the ACC than Pitt. That would give the B1G a much more legit claim/foothold in the NY market than Rutgers...
where would Sparty get their 3rd win from then?
Everyone is thinking too "regular" with Pitt. This is the big one -- where the conferences as they have traditionally been known are gone and we get teamed-up with likes of Texas, Oklahoma, and more. The Mega-Conferences are coming eventually.
This guy gets it.
I think realignment is going to less of a reshuffling and more of restructuring.
It's going to depend highly on whether or not the big schools get on board with paying revenue sport athletes. I eventually want to see the BigTen, SEC, ACC/Big East, and Pac12/Big12 megaconferences at 16 teams each.
Anyone outside of this will be left to scramble to find a new place to play.
I don't think people realize how incredibly far away Texas is. Austin is 20 hours from Ann Arbor. Not exactly a weekend road trip. Pittsburgh is just 4 hours away.
But there are a lot of Michigan alumni and displaced Michiganders living in the Dallas area. Dallas is a three hour drive to both Norman and Austin. Super reasonable to get a large turnout in those away games.
Agree. When people start talking about super conferences and complete realignment where the true powers all come together into a couple divisions of one conference, then you're just playing NFL-lite. 9-3 becomes a great season, 6-6 becomes a reasonable year, and 3-9 is something that just happens now and then rather than a complete abomination. The regionalism and unique draw of college football, apart from the football actually being played on the field, will wither and die. When that happens, college football really becomes just minor leage football. And we've all seen the level of support for second level professional sports in this country.
Second level professional sports teams don't have huge alumni fanbases. There's a lot of pearl clutching about pro sports and amateurism but I don't see how that affects what most alum fans like me love about the game, tailgating and mobbing to the big game with my friends. That will always remain so long as there are college sports.
This is already about money (I saw no amateurism talk in that article lol) and I agree that the next phase of realignment may be the harbringer of the end of football amateurism. The big schools should leave the NCAA and form their own conferences/organization that pay athletes right now, but the next money grab may be what does it. Then we can turn on the MONEY CANNON AND WIN FOREVER...or do just fine with Harbaugh however it works out.
But second level pro sports can be located in huge metropolitan areas with similar levels of sports fans to the numbers of large alumni fanbases. I also think you're kidding yourself if you think alumni fanbases make up even half of the support for big time college programs. What keeps them interested in a team that goes anywhere between 3-9 and 9-3 every year while playing an inferior brand of football in a "super" conference?
I don't think it's clutching at pearls to be concerned that the more you dilute what separated college sports from professional sports (and I'm not talking about additional compensation for the players), the less success college sports will have. College football is local rivalries, road trips, traditions, accessability to players/coaches that builds a community connection, etc. You start taking those out, one-by-one, pretty soon you're left with just another entertainment product competing for your attention.
I think it is inevitable that the Big 10 makes a run at Oklahoma and someone else from the Big 12 whether that be Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma State (hopefully not them). All of this lines up with the TV timelines, and I know Oklahoma wants their Nebraska bros back and that David Boren would welcome the academic association with the Big 10.
We already play Wisconsin once a decade. Nebraska-OU is no more. Missouri-KU is no more. etc etc etc. We've done enough damage in the name of the almighty dollar
Best scenario: Michigan leaves the Big Ten and becomes an independent. It schedules nine body bags and MSU, Notre Dame, and OSU. By this time, the TV contract bubble will have already burst, so nobody needs to be in a conference any longer. Michigan can then play nobody to benefit on the horrible voting system. When the Committee actually puts an incentive on scheduling, Michigan can increase its SOS.
Best Scenario: Play everybody, beat everybody.
are 2 of the 3 of Texas, OU, ND
From both an athletic stand point and a financial stand point. If we care about academics, then OU is the odd man out of these three.
Bring back Chicago
#Getoffmylawn
When TV runs college football.
College football is just as great as it always is.
I know we see TV as the big horrible baddie, but we have more access than ever to games. Younger days, I was subjected to whatever the big name game was on ABC or CBS. Now, you can basically access whatever game you would like, and sometimes different viewing angles.
Alright, you're way off in parts of this thread and your last sentence here is odd in a curmudgeonly humorous way, but I totally agree with you on this.
Local fans willing to pay for cable haven't had to miss a Michigan game in over 20 years. Every one of them is on television. I watched significant portions of several Michigan seasons in California while only rarely ever paying for cable. I see every game in Minnesota. Big game in the SEC? I can watch it. Big game in the Pac 12? I can watch it. Boring Thursday evening in? There's a decent college game to watch then, too.
I think the B1G is too big, but being a sports fan right now is fantastic, because we can see what we want to see.
For letting me know I am way off in this thread about my opinions.
I was winding up a snarky response here, but reading my post, I think your response to me is warranted. My post opening (to agree!) was jerk stuff. I apologize.
We are all adults here lol. At least I would like to think so.
I see a double edged sword with the role of TV and college sports.
Yes, I agree, I have not missed a Michigan game in 20+ years living in Texas and Minnesota. I love that.
I don't like:
1) Longer games as networks shove in more and more commercials to pay for the large contracts they are paying. Then, wanting to change the fundamental rules in an effort to speed games up instead of cutting back the commercials.
2) Networks influencing the when and were of games being played. There is no shortage of channels to show games. People can flip between channels by simply talking to their remote. Why do we need to see if games on Friday night are ok just to make sure people can watch Purdue play. Put them on ESPN 8 "The Ocho" at noon on Saturday. You will get the same viewing audience as being on ESPNNews at 8:00 on Friday night. What gets killed on a Friday night is the tailgating and the ability to even make it to a game for many of the fans.