quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I don't understand what you are saying.

A bad joke, I think, implying that in order to be eligible to play in the NFL you have to have at least one felony conviction on your record.

Thank you.

ND Should have joined the BIG 10. Still angry about that
^^^^^^^^
Not me. We have killed enough tradition already. ACC has a HUGE exit fee and ND has the very lucrative NBC tv contract.

There was a great opinion piece in the Star Tribune about what is lost in terms of tradition and history by the conference switching.

According to a 2009 Sports Illustrated article, 35% of National Football League (NFL) players are either bankrupt or are under financial stress within two years of retirement…” – Wikipedia. These aren’t great odds for some of the famous faces, past and present, to grace the football fields of our favorite teams

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
According to a 2009 Sports Illustrated article, 35% of National Football League (NFL) players are either bankrupt or are under financial stress within two years of retirement…”

wonder what percentage have CTE. The word coverup comes to mind.

Arizona may soon be heading east.

Dennis Dodd of CBS Sports is reporting the Big 12 Conference is “involved in deep discussions” to add as many as six schools from the Pac-12, including Arizona.

The Wildcats, along with ASU, Colorado and Utah, were “mentioned specifically as the teams being targeted by the Big 12,” per Dodd, with Oregon and Washington also possible targets. Also being considered is a complete merger of the Big 12 and Pac-12, he wrote.

The impetus to move was brought on by last week’s surprise departures of UCLA and USC from the Pac-12 to the Big Ten beginning with the 2024-25 athletic season.

The Big 12 is set to add four new schools to its league in 2023, the byproduct of Oklahoma and Texas on tap to leave for the SEC in 2025. Among those new additions is BYU, so adding other schools to the west would give the league travel partners.

Also joining the Big 12 next year is Cincinnati, Houston and UCF. The other current league members are Baylor, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Oklahoma, TCU, Texas Tech and West Virginia.

Arizona has been in the Pac-12 since 1978, having moved over from the Western Athletic Conference that year along with ASU. Colorado and Utah joined the league in 2011, with Colorado coming from the Big 12 and Utah from the Mountain West.

https://www.azdesertswarm.com/...TIkuLWURMGWB32iX7jAk

quote:

Also being considered is a complete merger of the Big 12 and Pac-12, he wrote.

That would be the better move, all of those schools remaining are not big brand programs, some have their strengths but, not as an entire athletic departments like those who departed for the SEC/B10.
Many of these departments will have to cut the total number of programs, and of course they'll be cries of Title-IX compliance; Stanford I believe has one of the largest number of athletic programs in the entire country with 24-sports, California has 23-sports.

quote:

Originally posted by Expert308:

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I don't understand what you are saying.

A bad joke, I think, implying that in order to be eligible to play in the NFL you have to have at least one felony conviction on your record.

Yup.

I’ve been saying that between the Big XII and the Pac 12, only one will go forward as a viable conference after the moves by the SEC and B1G. I think the Big XII is better positioned and the post by gw3791 seems to confirm that. Since money is driving everything, it makes no sense to just merge the two conferences, unless, they follow the model proposed by Joel Klatt and divide the combined conference into two “levels,” an upper and lower division, with a difference in monetary distribution between the two—along with the ability to move between the two.

The more likely scenario, IMO, the Big XII picks up the 6 programs mentioned. The others…well, I don’t know. I think Oregon and Washington to the Big 10 is their pipe dream. B1G wants ND, they don’t want to dilute the tv money by taking in too many schools (same with Big XII).

Due to a deal ND already has in place with the ACC, they are contractually obligated for their football program to join the ACC if they are to sign with a conference before 2036. So a deal with the B1G or the SEC is really the pipe dream, at least anytime in the next 14 years. And right now, ND's football contract already brings to them container ships full of cash without any need of relying on a conference membership as a crutch.

As for Orygun and Wash-a-ton, yeah they may indeed prefer the B1G over the Big 12. But a pipe dream? The B1G conference actually is in the best position to absorb more members since a new TV deal is currently in the works, something that the SEC can't really offer since they're already in a deal that has another decade or so to go. The Big 12 also has a 10-year deal in place with ESPN that will start in 2024. For any merger or cherry picking of the Pac 12 to happen, they would have to go back and try to renegotiate that deal, and I dunno if that's something that Disney (ESPN's master) would do.

If the B1G were playing it cagey and really wants to financially overpower the SEC, they should be the ones looking at a merger with the Pac 12, where the entry of the schools into their league could be phased over a period of years, and with their pending new TV contract scheduled and scaled to reflect those increases over the same time frame. They could even try to cherry pick other conferences like the ACC (The 'U', anyone?) or even the Big 12, if they have a TV deal that allows for the contract to expand as the conference expands.

The B1G has the power now if they play this right; it'll be interesting to see if the major media networks bow down to it.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
Having to play a certain number of ACC teams every year is bad enough. With the exception of Clemson and a few others there is not much competition.

The original ACC (7 + UVA = 8) was primarily a mid-Atlantic basketball conference. Football was a joke for its first 18 years, until 1971. What it has become today boggles my mind, as a 1960s alumnus of an ACC university.

This looks to be the most viable solution:
24-team B10, 4 6-team divisions, maintains rivalries and practical geography, while including schools that maintain the standards of the B10
B1G Endgame speculation

And now only 4 teams remain...

-Washington State
-Oregon State
-Stanford
-Cal Berkley.

https://slate.com/culture/2023...ig-ten-football.html

The Pac-12 Conference, which started in 1915 as the Pacific Coast Conference and donned a bunch of names over a successful century of Western teams playing games with each other, is dead.

After USC and UCLA exited for the Big Ten last summer, and after Colorado headed for the Big 12 last month, the conference took on additional water on Friday: Oregon and Washington, the Pac-12’s biggest remaining fish, joined their Los Angeles counterparts in the Big Ten.

The Big 12 Conference is now also adding Arizona, Arizona State, and Utah, news that broke just minutes after the Pacific Northwest schools decided to join the Midwest. The future is deeply murky for the biggest schools left in the Pac-12 now, Stanford and Cal in the Bay Area.

And it looks only grim for two of the quirkiest and most fun programs in college football: Oregon State and Washington State, who are losing their blood rivals (Oregon and Washington) to another league but aren’t getting the call to decamp themselves.

The specifics will fall into place in the days ahead. The big picture is already a bleak one.

Wow! Gonna be a very different landscape with Washington, Oregon, UCLA, and USC.

Need to add Yoder Dame and Stanford.

I do not see ND joining any time soon. They have their brand and cherish their independence. The NBC contract I believe runs through 2025. I am angry that the traditions and rivalries are being destroyed. ND USC rivalry goes back decades as does the Navy rivalry.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
I am angry that the traditions and rivalries are being destroyed.

Yup, money over tradition. In this case the moves mean more TV eyes on screens for these teams who moved, and therefore more money.

Obviously, more seismic moves are in the offing. I think WSU and Oregon State hold their noses and join the Mountain West Conference—what else are they going to do? Cal and Stanford are harder to predict. Do they declare themselves “independents” for the near future until they find a place to land, or do they go to the MWC too? I don’t know.

I might add: if the 4 remaining PAC-12 schools should all join the MWC, can the conference make a legitimate case to become a BCS football conference?

Lots of talk revolving around FSU and whether or not they sit tight in the ACC. SEC? B1G?

I don’t like all this, but it’s the world we’re living in.

^^^^
Football is driving the seismic change in amateur college sports. However, let’s be honest, there are a lot of schools in the P5 (P4) that have not had a consistent quality football team since before the advent of the BCS and do not have P5 caliber programs. Their seat at the table is nothing more than an accident of birth so to speak and they don’t deserve to be there. For football, I’m looking at you Duke, Northwestern, Iowa State, Kansas, WVU, Baylor, Arizona State, Stanford, etc., etc., etc.

If football was really about seeing the best programs play in bowl games and for a national championship, you would have relegation like you see in soccer in Europe but that will never happen.

As for the the remnants of the PAC-12, Oregon State and Washington State have not performed as well or better than many Mountain West schools and certainly have performed worse than the Suds and Spuds, Utah State, Nevada, and even arguably San Jose State. OSU and WSU are also peer academic institutions for USU, UNLV, CSU, UNM, etc. They would be better off in the MWC.

Stanford and California have dumpster fire football programs. Stanford has the best Olympic sports athletic department in the country, but no body cares about Olympic sports for the most part.

The MWC should extend an offer to OSU and WSU and if Cal and Stanford ask to come, let them. However, from what I am reading, the PAC-4 is trying to poach the “top” MWC and AAC schools to keep their conference alive. If they get defections, the new conference is simply a new MWC/AAC conference, nothing more, nothing less.

Why anyone would join a new PAC-12 conference that couldn’t get a legitimate media deal before U$C and U$LA left is beyond me. That university presidents think they will get a great deal joining the PAC-4 after the wishy-washy deal they got when Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Utah, and the AZ schools were still there, is even more amazing. But egos and the belief you deserve a seat at the illusory AAA minor league football conference table that is certainly coming, consumes all common sense.

In order to bring true amateurism back to college sports (football especially), the IRS should start treating the big boys’ programs for what they are, for profit minor league football teams. They should start taxing all revenue, tax the players for all payments, including payments in kind such as housing, training, food tables, uniforms, etc. Donors should also no longer be able to claim a tax write-off to their favorite school if it benefits the athletic department directly or indirectly or if you get any preference related to the athlete if department if you donate to an academic department. If we were to be even more honest, the IRS should go back as many years as they are allowed to by law, amend tax returns for donors, charge penalties and stop the nonsense that you donated to a non-profit. University’s should also be required to pay back taxes or truly go to an amateur model.

And no, the PAC-4 is not a P5 conference despite who they might add (if they do) but there are also schools in the B12, B10, SEC, and ACC that are not as well. And arguably, year in and year out, there are schools in the MWC and AAC that have a P5 quality football team. So what should happen? If we won’t do relegation, we should at least have a true playoff (similar to March Madness) at the end of the year and see what happens. NIL and the transfer rules need to be fixed by Congress as well.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BB61,

quote:

Originally posted by BB61:
^^^^
Football is driving the seismic change in amateur college sports. However, let’s be honest, there are a lot of schools in the P5 (P4) that have not had a consistent quality football team since before the advent of the BCS and do not have P5 caliber programs. Their seat at the table is nothing more than an accident of birth so to speak and they don’t deserve to be there. For football, I’m looking at you Duke, Northwestern, Iowa State, Kansas, WVU, Baylor, Arizona State, Stanford, etc., etc., etc.

If football was really about seeing the best programs play in bowl games and for a national championship, you would have relegation like you see in soccer in Europe but that will never happen.

As for the the remnants of the PAC-12, Oregon State and Washington State have not performed as well or better than many Mountain West schools

like you said, football. But, There are something like 12 men's sports and 12 women's sports in the portfolio. Basketball has a life of it's own, but baseball, wrestling, swimming, volleyball and the rest (non football/basketball) seem to be getting the shaft here.

Air travel is routine, but the regional aspect of a conference seems to be going away. Those non-football/basketball students who are actually trying to "study" while competing in a sport will really be hurting. Not to mention added costs associated with all this non-regional travel for the more minor sports that don't get TV coverage.

somewhere there is the person who got the swimming scholarship who is now faced with nationwide travel to compete.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
I do not see ND joining any time soon. They have their brand and cherish their independence. The NBC contract I believe runs through 2025. I am angry that the traditions and rivalries are being destroyed. ND USC rivalry goes back decades as does the Navy rivalry.

I think some things need to die.

The ND-Navy “rivalry” being one of them. Apart from a few games in the 50’s and the a few in the mid 00’s, it’s a warmup game for ND. Seriously? All it does it pit semi professional players against midshipmen. The weigh disparity alone on the offensive line is just stupid.