College Football 2019/20

[ursus arctos]

That may be true at Northwestern (hough there is the fact that many journalists who went to Medill are more invested in it being an elite academic institution than they are it having a top football team), but that particular ecosystem just doesn't exist at Cal (or, I think, Rice).

Individual columnists have also lost a lot of power they had even ten years ago, due to the decimation of local newspapers.

Vanderbilt is more complicated, as is Stanford, though I would posit that that that tier of schools is going to be more exposed to the effects of parents refusing to let their kids play because of the neurological risks,

[caja-dglh]

Northwestern never made it too far in their football pursuit. Their Ladies Lacrosse team got more coverage locally outside of live broadcast. If they had made more progress, sooner - maybe it would be a problem. They were already a make-up team in the Big 10 and that will now be permanent (worse than IU even).

[Hot Pepsi]

Northwestern and Vanderbilt are getting huge checks from their conferences’ TV deals. They aren’t contributing much to deserve that. It’s just an historical accident.

Now that those conferences have an unwieldy number of teams, the members that draw most of the viewers might want to get rid of the ones that aren’t pulling their weight.

Cal and Stanford must have a contingent of donors and alums that care a lot about football, because if they didn’t, they’d have given up a long time ago.

[ursus arctos]

They still matter to a small group of big-time insurance types of Irish heritage.

But that really isn't a lot of people and their reach is increasingly limited.

And now that their golden boy has crashed and burned they may well take their money elsewhere.

[Hot Pepsi]

I wonder if Northwestern would be better off asking the Bears to borrow their new stadium (or their current one) rather than to spend $800m on a 30k seat one. They probably couldn't fill it most games, but maybe for Michigan, Ohio State or Illinois, they could get 50k.

I took a look at the Pac12 attendance numbers and I'm not really sure what I expected but I was sort of astonished by the gap between them and what I'm accustomed to seeing in the B1G or SEC. It's not good or bad, necessarily, its just different. I always thought football on the west coast was comparable or bigger than football in the midwest.

One surprise was that Colorado - pre Coach Prime - actually drew ok compared to the rest of the Pac12.

[ursus arctos]

Yes

The disparity between the Big Two and the Pac 12 has grown massively over the last quarter century

[Cal Alamein]

I was just in Ft. Collins and the consensus from the small number of people I talked to was disgust that a new stadium was built for the Colorado State football team.

[ursus arctos]

Their penultimate coaching selection was also a complete and expensive disaster

[Hot Pepsi]

I was just in Ft. Collins and the consensus from the small number of people I talked to was disgust that a new stadium was built for the Colorado State football team.

I found this. It was controversial.
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com...108-story.html

Colorado State trying to become a national football power is like Leyton Orient aspiring to be in the Champions League. Nothing against Leyton Orient, but trying to achieve such an unrealistic goal would more likely lead to misery and bankruptcy than glory and wealth.

Universities need the same advice we give to 14-year-old girls - Be the best version of who you already are, rather than trying to be like the kids that seem to be cooler.

The lack of imagination among university leaders in this area is staggering. They look at Oregon or Ohio State and Alabama and see how football has helped their national profile and alumni outreach and think "we could be that!"

But it's almost certain that they can't be that because Oregon and Ohio State and Alabama and about 30 others are already that and are not going to give up their place at the table. And the table is very small and perhaps getting smaller. The gap between the haves and have-lesses is not likely to close any time soon because it's driven by TV dollars.

[Cal Alamein]

Interesting.

The way people were talking about it I assumed the stadium was BRAND NEW and about to host its first game and not already 6 years old.

[Hot Pepsi]

I’ve found that COVID has dramatically distorted our sense of time.

CSU only has five men’s NCAA sports. Not even skiing. For what they’re blowing on football, they could build national contenders in lacrosse and/or hockey.

[Cal Alamein]

Universities need the same advice we give to 14-year-old girls - Be the best version of who you already are, rather than trying to be like the kids that seem to be cooler.

As someone who works w/ 11-14 yr. olds, Bravo!

Back to the MWC, our nearby university football team, UNM, truly truly stinks and is a total waste of many many millions of dollars. There's a small group of supporters but it gets less and less each year.

[Incandenza]

I assume there is a book being written about how badly the Pac-12 handled expansion and their TV deal and is pretty much on death's door.

https://twitter.com/Brett_McMurphy/status/1687503777392205824

[ursus arctos]

Finally a chance for Cal.

I think they might be able to handle Davis, Sac State abd Cal Poly every now and then

[Hot Pepsi]

The Pac12 is basically no more.

The other part of this is that it looks extremely likely that Arizona is going to follow Colorado into the Big12 (In CU's case, back to the Big12). Arizona State and Utah have also been invited. If Oregon and Washington are leaving the Pac12 - or perhaps, even if they weren't - then ASU and Utah pretty much have to make that move, I'd think. And it makes a lot of sense for Utah, because they'd be in the same league as BYU.

So that leaves Oregon State and Washington State pretty well fucked. They might have to really think about what their football aspirations ought to be. Maybe they'd be better off playing Eastern Washington and Idaho, although that will not go down well with their fanbase such as it is. They could try to get into whatever is left of the Mountain West and play SDSU and Air Force.

Then there's Cal and Stanford. I can imagine a world where either of both of those universities decide to just stop playing football altogether, but it will take a while to get to that realization.

I read - and I believe it - that some of the university presidents in the Big10 pushed to get Cal and Stanford, but the athletics people pushed for Oregon and Washington.*

Because, with all due respect to Cal and Stanford, they won't bring as many TV eyeballs as Oregon and Washington. And this is a winner-take-most arms race and they can't afford to get too sentimental about it. You don't get to be a big university president without being able to understand that.

If the total numbers weren't a factor, I'm sure the Big10 would still love to add Cal and Stanford too, if it could, especially if bringing in Stanford would help lure Notre Dame.

But I'm not sure how a 20 team (or 22 team or whatever the fuck) conference can work. If there are that many teams, it's pretty much impossible for anyone to play anything like a balanced league schedule.

So I guess we're headed to a world where conferences are just loose affiliations of schools under a common TV deal, rather than a particular league. That's not necessarily bad.


*It's a typical douchebag hot The-Athletic-comments-section take to say "You think they care about academics? They only care about football money. Hahahahha."

But the presidents of the Big10 university really do care about the Big10 as a...ugh...sorry... brand that applies to the whole university. They want Big10 to mean something positive well-beyond sports. Washington definitely fits the bill, I think. Not so sure about Oregon, but they can make that work.

For example, in every single article about how much Penn State costs or where it ranks in this or that field, the benchmarks mentioned are always the rest of the Big10 (and then Temple and Pitt because they're the other major state-related schools in PA).

[ursus arctos]

https://twitter.com/bonaguraespn/status/1687299441898975232?s=61&t=xvOireV8JOIS_CpbTtDBow]

[Hot Pepsi]

What "bar" did Oklahoma and Texas not clear?

[ursus arctos]

Who knows?

It's Larry Scott, the worst Conference CEO in the history of college sport

[Incandenza]

https://twitter.com/Scharf_gen5/status/1687161025274265600

[Hot Pepsi]

Who knows?

It's Larry Scott, the worst Conference CEO in the history of college sport

Previously, Mike Tranghese, the commissioner who inadvertently destroyed the BigEast by making it a football conference was thought to own that title, but I think that was just the violence inherent in the system.

[ursus arctos]

There can only be one

[Hot Pepsi]

https://twitter.com/Scharf_gen5/status/1687161025274265600

That is kind of what is happening except the Big10 is able to just take the parts it wants.

It reminds me a little of the founding of the NHL. Four of the owners in the NHA wanted to get rid of Eddie Livingstone, who owned the Toronto team, and was shady. But they noticed their constitution didn't have a system for voting somebody out. But it did allow them to dissolve their league and start a new one. So the close the NHA and started the NHL and added a new team in Toronto.

[ursus arctos]

At least he was shady

This is redrawing the HOA boundaries to get the clay tennis courts while shedding the people who complained about dues and suggested that principles were more important than "street appeal".

[Hot Pepsi]

That is a remarkably specific analogy.

[ursus arctos]

https://twitter.com/brett_mcmurphy/status/1687584468716892160?s=61&t=xvOireV8JOIS_CpbTtDBow