SIAP: Per The Athletic, Jim Delany has been advising multiple conferences behind the scenes about expansion
August 11th, 2021 at 1:19 PM ^
Don't have a subscription, so I can't read it. When you say "multiple conferences", does that mean B1G and possible expansion to other conferences, or are you also talking about SEC and the moves they've been making?
August 11th, 2021 at 1:22 PM ^
Per the free section of the article:
“The former Big Ten commissioner has been in talks with the commissioners of at least the ACC and Pac-12 in recent weeks, sources told The Athletic.“
August 11th, 2021 at 1:41 PM ^
I wonder if he has talked to them about his 2 other areas of expertise.....
August 11th, 2021 at 2:12 PM ^
If we're being honest with ourselves, most of us are also experts in these two areas. Although I am not much of a comedian.
August 11th, 2021 at 2:18 PM ^
Tell a man a joke, he'll laugh one time. Teach a man to masturbate...
August 11th, 2021 at 2:20 PM ^
....and he becomes a sketch pad artist....
August 11th, 2021 at 2:23 PM ^
The Blockhams With Dicks approves of this message.
August 11th, 2021 at 2:16 PM ^
Every time I see Delany I get this feeling I've seen him somewhere before his stint in the B1G, and then it hits me . !!
August 11th, 2021 at 2:30 PM ^
Kind of feels like a conflict of interest to be talking to two conferences that may be competing over the same schools or risk being poached from by a shared conference. In a zero sum game of conference realignment talking to multiple parties feels like an issue
August 11th, 2021 at 2:54 PM ^
What exactly would be his conflict? He isn't employed by anyone.
August 11th, 2021 at 1:22 PM ^
He's going to get the B1G to try to reel in Temple and Lehigh.
August 11th, 2021 at 1:40 PM ^
Why not go big and get Shippensburg and West Chester also
August 11th, 2021 at 1:42 PM ^
Don't be ridiculous. There's no way they'd make that deal without Slippery Rock.
August 11th, 2021 at 2:45 PM ^
Bring in Pittsburg State. They are Gorillas and the B1G has been severely lacking gorillas since its inception. Plus, they're in Kansas and we all know we HAVE to corner that Kansas media market.
August 11th, 2021 at 1:27 PM ^
Lockdown Temple, Towson, and George Washington and BIG will dominate the eastern media markets.
August 11th, 2021 at 1:27 PM ^
The article basically doesn't say much except that Delany has found a way to get paid by the Big Ten, ACC and Pac 12 all at the same time. I hate Delany, but the man has always known how to line his own pockets.
August 11th, 2021 at 1:54 PM ^
Everything he does is for the money, which I guess applies to almost everything nowadays. I’m vehemently against conference realignments and teams leaving one and joining another. Conferences should be fixed at a certain number, and all schools within said conference should have to be within a certain distance of another. This new mega conference trend is going to make things worse for the fans while making the conference get richer with their tv deals. We have plenty of solid teams in our conference for all sports. I look forward to just about all of the games because of the tradition. I really don’t care to have our schedule watered down with other teams. I know most probably don’t agree but isn’t even our historical and competitive conference schedule important anymore?
August 11th, 2021 at 3:29 PM ^
College football would be vastly better if we returned to the way things were in 1992: the Big Ten and the PAC 10 both had ten teams, the Big Eight, SWC, and Big East still existed, and Penn State was an independent.
August 11th, 2021 at 4:19 PM ^
I'd settle for big shoulder pads.
August 11th, 2021 at 10:11 PM ^
And Michigan was winning the Big Ten on a regular basis, and our QBs would be ranked above those of 75% of our opponents as opposed to below 75%.
At least we've got an elite basketball program again.
August 11th, 2021 at 1:28 PM ^
The identification of "bold moves" as "good" is one of the more insane things about our current culture.
August 11th, 2021 at 2:09 PM ^
I hear you. The safe and conservative route is always best. It's almost like we'd learn from past mistakes and realize that bold moves are stupid. I mean, look at just some of the examples:
Columbus' desire to seek a new route to India
McArthur's landing at Inchon
The purchase of Alaska (aka Seward's Folly)
Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat
The decision to send humans to space
Gandhi's and MLK's belief in peaceful resistance when confronted with violence
...
August 11th, 2021 at 2:27 PM ^
"Absolutely! The bold choice is always the right choice," said George Custer. "Don't you agree, Donner Party?"
"Mbsoutley!"
"Hey, don't talk with your mouth full."
August 11th, 2021 at 2:41 PM ^
Yep. Bold moves can, and often do, fail. But when they succeed, and even when they fail in some cases, they can change the course of history.
August 11th, 2021 at 2:48 PM ^
I've always said Jim Delany is a lot like Rosa Parks and Mahatma Gandhi.
August 11th, 2021 at 4:04 PM ^
To take an argument about bold sometimes being problematic and countering with risk-averse always being the best is a smooth rhetorical technique. Great examples, though full of confirmation bias.
All the YOLOs on Wallstreet bets provide a nice counter example to bold
It seems like the answer to merits of bold vs. risk-averse would be: it depends.
August 11th, 2021 at 6:57 PM ^
is a smooth rhetorical technique
If you think that's smooth, just wait until I really blow your mind with my use of The Sweeping Unfalsifiable Claim. It's my latest trick and something I've been working on perfecting for a while. ?
August 11th, 2021 at 11:11 PM ^
I’ll cheers to that
August 11th, 2021 at 4:08 PM ^
Or we can look at the bold move of this particular gentleman in this particular area. Which was adding Maryland and Rutgers to the Big Ten, which basically no one likes and we want to kick them out.
August 11th, 2021 at 7:06 PM ^
I'm fine with Maryland. Let's not forget that they beat the new jewel of the SEC (Texas) two years in a row.
August 11th, 2021 at 2:46 PM ^
The Wright Brothers should have stayed on the god damn ground where they belonged!
August 11th, 2021 at 1:32 PM ^
It is pretty bold to turn college football into the NFL, complete with an NFC and AFC in two super conferences, and nothing else left, with traditional rivalries meaning nothing. That's a pretty familiar product, since it's already happening on Sundays. It's bold, and equally uninteresting. I won't be watching that much.
August 11th, 2021 at 2:34 PM ^
The NFL is a pretty interesting product since its the most watched product in the US. Rivalries, very much exist, in a AFC/NFC type setup you would very much wind up with 'divisions' in which traditional rivalries would exist, one could even create something like an 10 team division in which every team played every other team to move onto a playoff, against the winners of other divisions.
August 11th, 2021 at 8:08 PM ^
I could be wrong, but I thought a significant portion of that viewership is due to gambling, both traditional and fantasy leagues. I mean, the Super Bowl is the most watched event outside of the World Cup (and maybe the Cricket championships--hello, India and its 1.3b people) and probably 75%+ of that audience could give a rat's ass about football. It's an excuse to party and watch expensive productions in 30- and 60-second short films that sell beer, cars, etc.
August 12th, 2021 at 8:34 AM ^
Something being popular doesn't make it interesting. Many college football fans, myself included, don't watch the NFL. And you've just underscored my point by talking about how it could be like the NFL. What made college football interesting, was that it wasn't like the NFL. It wasn't a formulaic corporate product. Now, every year, it's edging more and more toward looking exactly like the NFL, with all the tertiary conferences and teams just looking like a collateral high school league. If it were up to me, I'd bring back the old bowl games and their affiliations, and get rid of a playoff. There was nothing wrong with people arguing about who was #1.
August 11th, 2021 at 1:38 PM ^
I wonder what approach he feels will best serve Ohio State.
August 11th, 2021 at 3:38 PM ^
Wondering what his OSU “NIL” package looks like.
August 11th, 2021 at 5:34 PM ^
I'm guessing it's short and goes something like, "whatever the hell you want."
August 11th, 2021 at 1:40 PM ^
I'm not a fan of the pointy haired boss, but he had the gravity to walk into a room and command attention for whatever he was thinking. He could lead that room even when the SEC was also present. Kevin Warren? Not so much...
The B1G will be left behind when it comes to TV revenue/viewership, conference prestige/power, croots, and everything else. It will cling to dated thoughts of AAU membership, fair play, and noon kicks.
August 11th, 2021 at 1:53 PM ^
"Kevin Warren? Not so much..." Indeed...
August 11th, 2021 at 2:25 PM ^
Stop picking on Warren...he's still working on the Iowa State and Kansas deal.
Damn we're screwed.
August 11th, 2021 at 2:48 PM ^
He's not Pensky material.
August 11th, 2021 at 3:41 PM ^
He transferred the contents of the file into this accordion-style folder.
August 11th, 2021 at 1:55 PM ^
Say what you want about him, but maybe Texas and Oklahoma would be coming here rather than the SEC if he were still running things. He was never weak.
August 11th, 2021 at 2:31 PM ^
Texas has been an option for almost a decade, but he fell in love with the DC/NYC markets. Not sure why he didn't make a play for Rutgers, MD, TX and OK.
August 11th, 2021 at 2:37 PM ^
I think Longhorn Network needed to fail (did it fail or do poorly?) before Texas realized they wanted to jump ship.
August 11th, 2021 at 2:54 PM ^
Before ESPN told Texas the Longhorn Network was done soon, more precisely.
And yeah, my assumption would be that if Delaney was still around he would have had the contacts down there to know about this happening long before it broke, and make one heck of a sales pitch for the Big 10 over the SEC for Tex/OK.
That doesn't mean that Warren didn't know too. We don't know what has been going on behind closed doors, but it sure does look like he was caught asleep at the wheel. Again.
I see no reason to give him any more slack than people gave Delaney. Unless people are judging him differently for reasons of their own.
August 11th, 2021 at 4:52 PM ^
We had a shot before there was a Longhorn Network. This article details conversations that happened in 2010: LINK
Oklahoma vs. Wisconsin; Nebraska vs. Texas A&M; Iowa vs. Iowa State; Minnesota vs. Kansas.
Unfortunately, it’s not happening. But there was a time when grouping those eight schools into one division of a 16-team Big Ten was discussed at high administrative levels by members of both leagues.
And...
The feedback from Big Ten school officials was positive, both sources said. The sticking point was devising a revenue-sharing plan to satisfy all. It would have taken at least three to four years for that many incoming schools to hit the financial payoffs sought for moving.
August 11th, 2021 at 2:08 PM ^
I wouldn't exactly call adding Rutgers a bold move. I call it a dumb move.
August 11th, 2021 at 2:30 PM ^
Oh yeah, like when we started landing 5 stars out of New Jersey. What the hell were they thinking?