WTKA Roundtable 7/22/2021: Low-Rent Rendezvous
Things discussed:
- HAIL TO THE VICTORS 2021 is HAPPENING: Let’s get this funded today!
- Oklahoma and Texas to the SEC?
- Who leaked it? Mizzou and A&M possibly, since they seem to be hard no’s.
- Are there two other No’s in the SEC? Florida/Georgia don’t want Bama in the East perhaps?
- Seth’s plan: If Texas & Oklahoma go to the SEC the Big Ten’s only play is to combine with the Pac-12, rotate cross-country games, and play your pods every year, then play a championship at the Rose Bowl. Big Ten can send Nebraska to the West to even things out (and restore Nebraska-Colorado).
- Craig: What about Toronto? We…can’t argue against it.
- Duke? Their lawyers can get them out of the ACC.
- Should academics/AAU membership play a role in Oklahoma to Big Ten? Seth: Hell no. That’s a legacy from the early 1900s when certain schools like Notre Dame had professional teams of players who weren’t enrolled at the school.
- Seth talks about the Ticket Watch column from yesterday.
[Hit the JUMP for the player, and video and stuff]
You can catch the entire episode on Michigan Insider's podcast stream.
Segment two is available here. You can also watch the video here:
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Wisconsin’s a cult of beer and cheese; we can handle that. Texas A&M is just a cult.
The best explanation I have found for Oklahoma and Texas' interest in the SEC has nothing to do with the SEC and everything to do with the Big 12's upcoming media rights negotiations. Those deals expire in 2023 or 2024. Oklahoma and Texas have some gripes about their Fox coverage. Additionally, the preliminary discussions about renewing and renegotiating those rights have not moved forward to Oklahoma and Texas' satisfaction.
Petitioning the SEC for membership and leaking the request makes sense if Oklahoma and Texas want to apply pressure to their current media partners for a better deal. Fox may be more willing to talk about a new deal if faced with the prospect of losing some major eyeball draws.
Man....This constant conference realignment shit is reason number 248 why I'm starting to really dislike college football
“That’s a legacy from the early 1900s when certain schools like Notre Dame had professional teams of players who weren’t enrolled at the school.”
With NIL, we’re about to come full circle.
I love that the round table has continued all summer. Nice to have some content to listen to from one of my favorite groups of Michigan people.
I am finding it funnier and funnier each week with how little Brian wants to say. It is mostly exasperated sighs and sounds that sort of translate to "I don't want to be here talking about this."
He wasn’t even on the round table this week. There’s something going on with Brian and Seth has said to leave it be.
FYI, I’ve known Brian since 1998 when we were on ComCo together. I was a performer and he was a writer. He was/is a damn good writer. But he’s also super passionate about his craft which gets him emotionally involved. I hope whatever he’s dealing with can be done so in a meaningful way for him. I look forward to seeing him back.
Seth sneered at the idea that Big Ten university presidents with their fancy, hifalootin' interests in academics would have the major role in deciding whether or not the conference expanded, saying that If rich UM donors clamor for non-AAU member Oklahoma for sports reasons, then that's what will happen and the presidents will knuckle under, presumably yielding the decision to athletic directors.
"He is also annoyed that Big Ten athletic directors were not consulted by conference presidents as to the advisability of inviting Penn State into the league.
“Penn State coming into the league was a shock to all of us,” Schembechler said Tuesday. “It kind of tells you of the prestige and position of athletic directors."
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-12-27-sp-1065-story.html
I am not saying it's impossible that the BIG presidents will change their stance on AAU membership, but those who claim they will should provide some evidence it's going to happen in order for their claims to be taken seriously.
Should academics/AAU membership play a role in Oklahoma to Big Ten? Seth: Hell no. That’s a legacy from the early 1900s when certain schools like Notre Dame had professional teams of players who weren’t enrolled at the school.
Still don't get this fatuous line of reasoning. History ended in the early 1900s?
And if the wish here is to get rid of the requirement that players be actual students, don't worry -- that change is coming, too -- at least in the SEC (which will become the pro league and probably wind up taking in Ohio and Clemson before the dust settles. Only wild cards will be USC, Oregon, the U, and Michigan, and I'd fully expect Michigan to say thanks, but no thanks.)
The only constant in life is change, but the death of college football -- my favorite sport for a long-ass time -- is a very unfortunate and sad change. It remains completely puzzling why a Michigan football blog would have agitated for said death for so long.
Maybe because it cares about fairness?
Yeah, why should the Poli Sci professors get paid when it's the students who have to do all the homework and they don't get paid? Very unfair.
Your analogy makes no sense. Political science professors create value by offering instruction that (presumably) attracts students who pay tuition. Those students do not produce value for Michigan. They are consumers, like the fans sitting in the stands or watching the broadcast.
When the counter to your claim is that "Michigan students don't produce value for Michigan" it's fair to say you're in a pretty solid spot. If they don't "produce value," then why are academic scholarships given out, why are students recruited for academics, and why is there an Admissions Committee?
And of course, the analogy is meant to get at the fatuous notion that because the instructor (the football coach) gets paid, the instructor's pupils (the football players) should be paid. There's nothing remotely "unfair" about an educational institution paying instructors but not students --- even when significant work is demanded of the students.
I went to Michigan. The professors all got paid. They made me do a bunch of homework and read a bunch of stuff and take a bunch of tests and I didn't get paid a dime. In fact, I paid Michigan to have a bunch of work demanded of me.(*) Nothing "unfair" about that in the least.
(*) For the vast majority of my fellow students who were football players, the exact opposite was true. Michigan paid them.
The homework you did didn't generate revenue for the university. The football players playing on Saturdays does generate revenue.
For someone who uses the word fatuous, your arguments are pretty stupid!
Actually, it does. Michigan's academic brand is having a smart student body and having a smart student body attracts would-be students and top professors. Being a good student and going to Michigan therefore adds value and revenue for Michigan.
Fatuous double post.
Your strawman has burst into flames. No one has argued that players should get paid solely because the coaches get paid. I want players to get paid because their labor produces value for Michigan. Coaches' salaries are evidence of that value.
By your logic, professional athletes should work for free as well. After all, they are just pupils of the coaches on the sidelines too.
Except they don't provide "labor" to the school anymore than the students doing homework do. That's kind of ... you know ... the point.
And no, my logic isn't that Lions and Packers players are pupils of the coaches; my logic is that the Lions and Packers don't run educational institutions and extracurricular activities ancillary to that institution. (*) They're pure businesses.
(*) Michigan runs a lot of extracurricular activities, not just football and not just sports. There's nothing "unfair" about not paying students on the Debate Club or Glee Club, either.
How aren't Michigan players providing labor to Michigan?
The same way students doing homework aren't providing labor to Michigan. The same way people in the chess club or the golf team or the debate club or the glee club aren't providing labor to Michigan. The people doing homework or joining the chess club or the debate club are working to be sure and there's some money involved to be sure, and Michigan is benefitting from their work to be sure, but that doesn't make it the same as a pure economic transaction on behalf of a purely for-profit business. The differences between the two make all the analytical difference.
You haven't answered my question. The only explanation you have provided is that no economic transactions occur between Michigan and its players. But those transactions cannot occur under the current rules. Ultimately, you only made a tautological argument that Michigan players do not provide labor to Michigan because they cannot provide labor to Michigan.
Happy to answer it again. If the football team provides "labor" to Michigan, then so too do students doing their homework, and people on the chess team, debate team, and glee club. If people want to say undergrads at the Grad Library who slip and fall and get a concussion have a valid workers comp claim against the university, I'll be fine concluding that football players are laborers too. (And even that doesn't mean they should be paid -- work/study participants often aren't, interns often aren't, etc.) But obviously no one wants to conclude that, because it's nuts.
Doing work at the behest of someone else, even required work at the behest of a U employee does not make you "labor." That's the principle and the faulty premise.(*) Poli Sci students do that, and no one sane would call them "labor." (And the claim that Michigan gets no value out of that work, or the structure of a professor instructing students to do work remains inaccurate. It's the very thing academic Michigan sells. In many instances it pays for it.)
(*) One of many. Another is "the players do the same thing the Lions players do and the Lions players are labor therefore Michigan players are labor."
You're right. Doing work at the behest of a third party does not necessarily constitute labor.
Doing work at the behest of the behest of a third party for the purpose of creating economic value does. If you want to insist that the purpose of college football is not to create economic value, then we are at a fundamental impasse.
The Poli Sci student fits your test in every detail. She creates economic value for the university with her study and for the professor who teaches her. A professor who couldn't get her students to work wouldn't have a job for very long. A college with a bunch of students who never did homework wouldn't be in "business" very long and certainly not in business at the M level.
College football creates economic value. Agreed. But that's not its ultimate or first purpose. To the extent that's gotten out of control at a handful of institutions, the answer is reining them in closer to the proper purpose, not killing the enterprise. Every time the NCAA proposed a reining, like with the Condi Rice committee work, the internet scoffed at them. No good.
When I worked at UofM as a GSRA, I got paid because I generated something of economic value. Homework is not something that people will buy in a free market. Your argument is specious at best, bordering on being disingenuous.
Michigan buys homework in a "free market," thus academic scholarships. Thus recruiting academic high achievers. Thus the Admissions Committee.
All this stuff should have been thought about and considered before joining in the weird internet crusade to kill college football. There's nothing unfair about not paying participants in extracurricular activities -- and in fact they are paid in scholarships.
Fun stuff. However, I do disagree with Seth about ditching the AAU/academic component of the Big Ten.
Conference realignment sounds like high stakes musical chairs that Big 10 presidents won't play until it is too late. This is definitely a situation where you need to be proactive and beat the SEC to the desirable teams or run the risk of standing on principle and the Big 10 could end up having as little clout as the Group of 5.
Seth - what would be your preference: adding OU and Texas, or combining the Pac 12 and Big10 as you mentioned?
Combining the Big Ten and Pac Ten can still be done after so add Texas and Oklahoma then invite the Pac.
It was funny listening to a guy who audibly can't control his saliva/phlegm talk about how backward the south is.
Whiteboard shots are fun to mess around with.
Love Craig’s assessment of future real estate values - I’ve been thinking that way for a couple years now. If only MI could facilitate fresh water going from the lakes to houses without poisonous metals.
Still count me in as a northern Michigan speculator
As long as the Great Lake states continue to hold strong on not letting water pipelines being built to connect to the Southwest…
Interesting take on the University of Toronto. Simon Frazer in British Columbia plays D2. So there is precedent Where they would play would be an issue. The most likely venue capacity would be about 30,000.
Their total downtown campus enrollment is over 60,000 and approaches 100,000 overall.
They would have to build the football program from scratch. It might take their BOT some convincing but money helps. 4 down football is very popular but the Buffalo Bills in Toronto was a failed experiment. A true home town team might be different.
Basketball and hockey would be good to go though.
Pac12 makes sense. That way, night road games will become afternoon away games and the likelihood of winning those goes up. Also, if no one watches, do they really happen?
Wow.
I ordered the HTTV yesterday for the first time ever, and today I get mentioned in the title of the Roundtable.
I didn't even pay extra for a spicy hot take.
I was definitely thinking about you. Keep up the good work.
The idea of a Pac-10/Big 10 mega-conference is intriguing, particularly the idea of having a conference championship in Pasadena in December. Although I don't think it would work well in basketball & other sports (or academics/research, for that matter). Is it possible to have a combined conference for football purposes, and otherwise keep the conferences separate?
By the way, great job Seth on getting out the HTTV. I'm looking forward to my copy! :)
Also have to say I'm a skeptical of Craig's argument of that an ACC school can cite "unconscionability" to void their contact with the ACC. The Williams v. Walker-Thomas Furniture case that Craig mentioned (which every law student reads in their 1st-year Contracts class) involved a low-income individual who had his furniture repossessed because he couldn't afford the usurious monthly installments. Very different scenario from a school like like UNC or Duke trying to argue they weren't sophisticated enough to understand the deal they were signing with the ACC.
Fair point. Very different. Especially since the adhesive aspects aren't present. But is a contract that waives rights this massive conscionable? Well, perhaps.
Brian added just a little less content to this round table than last week.
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