College Football 2019/20

[Hot Pepsi]

It really is the fault of the Pac12 leadership and maybe just math and geography. Even with USC and UCLA, the Pac12 wasn’t worth as much for TV.

So USC and UCLA looked at their budget and realized they could not stay in the Pac12 without cutting sports and/or ambition. Tradition is nice, but it’s not worth that much.

The reporting I read said they were going to leave now regardless. They contacted the B1G. So the B1G had to decide if they wanted to benefit from that or let a rival league and TV deal benefit from that. There was no version where they could have said no just to be gracious to the Pac12.

Once that happened, all of this became inevitable. With the Apple TV Pac12 TV deal on the table, it would have been irresponsible for any of those university presidents to choose to stay.

[Hot Pepsi]

Here’s a good summary of how the P12 blew it.
https://trojanswire.usatoday.com/lis...-12-ceo-group/

[ursus arctos]

Solid piece

Particularly in holding the presidents to account

[Hot Pepsi]

There’s a lot of blame to go around.
.
But to a large extent, the problem is that the Pac12 just isn’t as valuable to TV as the SEC or B1G for a variety of reasons.

If the Pac12 had stayed how it was, the gap in TV money would have just grown. It would be irresponsible for the presidents of USC, UCLA etc to just accept that as the cost of keeping the traditional Pac10 together just for old time sake.


I was reminded that the original PCC, a predecessor to the Pac8, had Montana and Idaho. I’m sure when they left that people railed about “greed” and how college football was ruined.

I’m sure people said the same when Penn State stopped playing Penn, Lehigh, and Bucknell.

College football is always dying and never dies.

[Hot Pepsi]

Shocker

[caja-dglh]

It is just as well college sports isn’t a business so players can’t get compensated else you might see it shoe classic business / anti-trust problems.

[Cal Alamein]

Netflix's latest UNTOLD is about Johnny Football... focused much more on growing up, high school and college. Pretty much skimmed over pro years and his current situation.

Worth watching - hard to believe his A&M time was only 10-11 yrs ago, seems much longer.

[Hot Pepsi]

It is just as well college sports isn’t a business so players can’t get compensated else you might see it shoe classic business / anti-trust problems.

A lot of money moves through it and a few of the coaches get rich, but it’s not a business in the sense that it makes a profit that shareholders take.

The whole “this is just about money” is the lazy sports-radio blowhard line that keeps being repeated. Along with “public money for stadiums pays for itself.” I hate to generalize, but the majority of sportswriters in this country are lazy and, perhaps, not that bright.

Most football programs lose money and the ones that do just put it into their other sports - after paying coaches and building facilities. That’s a lousy business model.

Because, unlike a business, this isn’t really about money. It’s about winning and the supposed PR and donation benefits the school gets from that. They’re never really forced to prove that it offers those benefits because that’s arguing from an unknown counterfactual and because rich boosters don’t care about facts and figures. They just want to lord it over their country club buddies when their alma mater wins.

But winning requires coaches and facilities that recruits like. That costs a lot of money, especially because there is nobody in charge of the whole thing and nothing to stop the arms race.

And the best way for them to get money is through football tv rights. So here we are.

It’s very similar to European football in this way. There’s no way to create a draft or a salary cap. At least football has halfass financial fair play. College football doesn’t have that. Most programs are stealing a few hundred dollars in student fees from every student on campus.

So what is happening now in college football is just the beginning of the “lets do a superleague” stage of the evolution, more or less.

An actual college football superleague, apart from the NCAA, would actually make more sense. It would stop all this chaos and make it easier to pay the players. It would also let the other sports form leagues that make sense for them.

The problem with that is that there are about 130 FBS teams and only about 30 really belong in the top flight. As we’re seeing now with the Pac4, the moneymakers cannot afford to continue to subsidize the non-moneymakers if it means they cannot stay nationally competitive.

That’s what those bigger Pac12 programs had to decide. “Do we want to be nationally relevant in football and other sports or do we want to stick with tradition for it’s own sake, probably lose a lot of money, and have to cut sports.” There really isn’t a choice there.

But that is a very tough pill to swallow for the Washington States of the world. Their “natural” position in sports is more like that of Idaho than Washington. Nobody wants to find that out.


As for the players being paid. Especially now that NIL is fucking everything up, it would make sense for everyone involved to pay the players five or six digits a year on top of their scholarship. That will further exacerbate the gap between the rich and the poor, but it’s inevitable.

However, probably the only way for that to happen at all, let alone happen in a way that is remotely equitable, is for the players to have a union.

The courts have not been favorable to that.

And the players haven’t really tried very hard. I don’t have a ton of sympathy for them when they aren’t willing to agitate at all for it. There was one small attempt at Northwestern, but I don’t know if that was even popular at Northwestern. (Northwestern is having some issues).

I suspect that’s because the bulk of football players, especially white ones, have adopted the Trumpian ideology that the point of life is to make as much money as you can, but never sacrifice anything at all for people who aren’t part of your clan. (or Klan, as the case may be).


As you can tell, I think about this a lot. It’s an important local topic.

[Hot Pepsi]

Netflix's latest UNTOLD is about Johnny Football... focused much more on growing up, high school and college. Pretty much skimmed over pro years and his current situation.

Worth watching - hard to believe his A&M time was only 10-11 yrs ago, seems much longer.

I’m glad he’s doing better.

In sort of related news, Chad Kelly, the talented-but-troubled nephew of Jim Kelly, is now doing well as the QB for the Argonauts. So that’s encouraging.

[ursus arctos]

I actually think that Cal and Stanford could play an important role in this, because they each genuinely care more about sports other than football.

A gridiron Superleague, with other schools playing in G5 level regional conferences and other sports back in the "old" conferences would be better for just about everyone (including Wazzu, though it will take years for them to accept that).

[Cal Alamein]

I’m glad he’s doing better.

He was such a stud in the most ordinary looking body.

Was a bit bummed that there was no footage from Manziel's CFL and Indoor Football career.

[Hot Pepsi]

I actually think that Cal and Stanford could play an important role in this, because they each genuinely care more about sports other than football.

A gridiron Superleague, with other schools playing in G5 level regional conferences and other sports back in the "old" conferences would be better for just about everyone (including Wazzu, though it will take years for them to accept that).

From afar, I’ve gotten the sense that there’s a disconnect at those schools between a handful of pro-football boosters and the football-skeptics. The pro-football boosters are egged on by the media.

W&M was a bit like that. The official position of the athletic department is that football, mens and women's basketball are the sports that matter most because —- collect underpants —— profit.

Football does ok for that level, but it costs so much. Neither basketball team has ever made the NCAA tournament. And so what if they do? They’re in a mid-major conference in a small town.

Why not just focus on sports that might actually win something and make the campus community proud? Soccer, for example. They don’t have men’s lacrosse but they did and they could.





The downside to every sport having it’s own league is that it will make it harder to be on TV.

The Big Ten Network has been a big success and put all kinds of sports on TV to a potentially wide-reaching audience.

The B1G didn’t form a men’s hockey league just because Penn State gave them enough teams to do it. They did it to take advantage of the BTN. It’s worked out for everyone but Minnesota, which already had a good tv deal.

Same with forming a lacrosse league by adding Hopkins and wrestling and volleyball get excellent coverage they wouldn’t get otherwise. That’s definitely raised the profile of those sports, at least within the relevant fan communities.

Most B1G sports, including mens basketball, didn’t bother having a conference tournament until they had a place to show it. That’s money and exposure.

Hockey has one-sport leagues and a lot of their games are on TV, but it’s usually either just local, only on the internet, or on ESPN+ with low production values. And that’s hockey, which is relatively popular. Most regional soccer-only leagues, for example, would not get much exposure.

We’ll see how it goes. If players and coaches struggle with the cross-country travel, this will all change.

For now, a simple-ish solution would be for the B1G and the BigXII to combine for the sake of other sports where most schools have a team. Then they could create three “pods” - western, central and eastern, that each had 11 or 12 teams. Or 6 pods of five or 6. Teams would just play other teams in their pod plus just one or two against others and then the top finishers could potentially meet in a post-season tournament.

Or they could do it like track and swimming do it where there really isn’t a regular conference season. Teams just go to events in their region or do dual meets vs whomever is available and just come together for the conference championships.

Not sure that works for match-based sports, though.

[Hot Pepsi]

He was such a stud in the most ordinary looking body.

Was a bit bummed that there was no footage from Manziel's CFL and Indoor Football career.

Didn’t he play in that “fan-run arena league?”

[ursus arctos]

I'm obviously closer to Cal, but I really don't think that is true at Berkeley.

The whole kerfuffle over the training facility (which including the eco-protestors living in trees) were its last gasp as a meaningful movement.

Stanford may be somewhat different, but what they really care about are non-revenue sports that produce Olympians, and the benefit from freeing up 30-40 places in each class woyld have that admissions and development people salivating.

It is a very different millieu then even places like Michigsn, Virginia or Texas. Which is evident I the absence of torches and pitchforks now.

I don't think you get a league for every sport. I think you get leagues for everything other than gridiron (and maybe men's hoops) that look a lot like the "old" conferences. There is already a lot of griping from softball players and the like from the forner Pac 12 schools as how much midweek travel they will have while still taking school seriously. The much greater cost/difficulty for family and friends to go to away gwnes ithose sports is also very much a thing.

[Hot Pepsi]

My B1G-Big12 combo plan would end up looking a lot like the old days. You’d have essentially the old Pac12, the western part of the old B1G and then an eastern league that kind of looks like Penn State’s old non-revenue sport schedules, including Cincinnati and West Virginia. Plus UCF. But they’d be a helpful addition for softball and baseball, because that could be a conference game in March.


Presumably, the softball players won’t travel much in the middle of the week. Softball and baseball usually play local games in the week and conference games on the weekend.

They’ll sort it out. Or come up with a new plan. Because this issue is handing the SEC another recruiting advantage.

But it’s not feasible, as some have suggested, that UCLA, USC etc. would stay in the Pac12 just to save the softball team some long travel. If they had taken Apple’s offer, they probably couldn’t afford to have a softball team. (That’s rhetorical. They’d cut something else first before softball).


The football forces at Cal and Stanford may be in retreat, or defeated, now. You’re more up to date.

But both schools threatened to kill a bunch of sports not that lo ago. In the case of Stanford in particular, there was some loose talk that it was a ploy to put more money into football. And I saw a few rants from Bay Area sports guys who are mad that Cal and Stanford don’t support football. Like it’s a character flaw. (eye-roll emoji)

Ideally, the end of the Pac12 would simply end the last shred of the delusion that they will ever matter in football again and they can just focus on other sports they are good at. As Oscar Wilde did not say, “Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.”

But without the free money from a conference TV deal, how will they support all those other sports? Can they rely entirely on boosters? Again, it wasn’t too long ago when both schools cried poverty and wanted to cut sports - including successful ones like Stanford men’s volleyball.

I also wonder how much longer “producing Olympians” will matter. It certainly wouldn’t matter to me, but I don’t have a vote.

[ursus arctos]

If you are Stanford, the short and long term "return" from "producing Olympians" is several times that of having a P5 football team.

MIT funds as many caraity sports as any instution inthe country. It can be done.

[Hot Pepsi]

If you are Stanford, the short and long term "return" from "producing Olympians" is several times that of having a P5 football team.

MIT funds as many caraity sports as any instution inthe country. It can be done.

I suppose Stanford can claim the Olympics matter just because they say they matter. That seems to be the Silicon Valley motto.

And that is, after all, the dominant American attitude toward the Olympics. Every four years, lots of people suddenly become experts in track, swimming, figure skating, etc, and then they get almost no coverage or interest whatsoever the other three years with the occasional outlier like Mikaela Shiffrin or Michael Phelps (neither of whom, notably, competed in college).

MIT is D3. That’s much, much cheaper. No scholarships. The coaches are not expensive. The facilities don’t have to be too fancy. Especially at MIT. Nobody is going to not go to MIT because the locker rooms aren’t ideal. And the expectations for success are generally modest.

[ursus arctos]

Stanford only gives need based scholarships.

Prowess in Olympic sports is attractive to them inbtge sane way that success in the International Linguistic Olympiad is.

You can't help where you grew up, but it really bears no relation to the way Berkeley or Palo Alto think about their teams.

Gridiron is more central to Williams.

That said, they are also very clearly massive outliers when one looks at the country as a whole.

Gridiron is more central to Williams.

[Hot Pepsi]

I didn’t know that about Stanford. Of course, they could probably afford to just not charge tuition at all. Their endowment is $36bn.

I’m very cynical about the cult of excellence for it’s own sake and turning every area of human creativity and enjoyment into a competition.

Perhaps because I am not excellent and don’t have patience or interest to practice the same thing for 10,000 hours.

I’m unclear on whether or not water polo and volleyball (especially men’s) are genuinely popular in California or they just happen to play it because they can. On TV, they rarely show the crowd.

[ursus arctos]

They don't do real numbers either in person or on-line/screen

[Hot Pepsi]

I see.

Well, now water polo will be on the Big Ten Network. Maybe it will catch the nation’s imagination. Like jai alai.

[ursus arctos]

I was wondering about that.

I'm not sure that even Oregon or Washington have varsity teams.

The California schools always play in outdoor pools, which is going to be a challenge for the BIG.

It is a good illustration of how dumb the whole thing is outside of football.

I guess that another possibility is that sports like that will break out of the NCAA entirely, like rowing.

[Hot Pepsi]

Michigan has women's water polo. But I think that, even if they added Stanford and Cal, that would bring them up to 5.

There will not be a B1G water polo league unless there are at least 6 teams. Reaching 6 does not require conferences to form a league, that is just the minimum needed for the NCAA to award the league a postseason berth.

But the BTN will occasionally show B1G schools in sports that don’t have a B1G league, like men’s volleyball and women's hockey.


I looked up “water polo attendance.” I found that Stanford’s facility seats 2,500, which is the biggest. That sounds miserable. In my experience, watching an event in a crowded pool is like sitting in a sauna. Or maybe they can open the windows.

Edit: Stanford’s pool is outdoors. So not an issue. I figured it would be too cold in winter for that.

I also discovered that Serbia got 16-18k (accounts varied) for the world championships. They are into it.

[ursus arctos]

They are massively into it, as is Croatia, Hungary and Italy

They use both indoor and outdoor pools.

The outdoor pools in California can be heated.

I imagine Nebraska, Wisconsin and PSU women's volleyball are excited about the LA schools.

Nebrasks already gets ridiculous crowds.

[Hot Pepsi]

The B1G women's volleyball league is already extremely competitive and has the best average attendance by far. This will make it moreso.

Nebraska gets about 8k for women's volleyball. Their crappy men's basketball team gets 15k. Their trashfire football team continues to draw crowds that most programs can only dream about. They show up for everything in Lincoln.