I'm gonna go ahead and start this in response to Andy's post in the sports media thread, been a few years since we even had an active Penn State thread.
Just got off the phone with someone who believes this eventually leads to two megaconferences — the Big Ten and SEC — with 20 or more members apiece.
— Nicole Auerbach ( @NicoleAuerbach ) June 30, 2022
Jun '22
Aug '23
Maybe all those conferences that balked on the 12-team playoff proposal that guaranteed spots to the top 6 conference champions should reassess.
We are headed towards Super Bowl II - SEC vs Big 10. Everybody else can play in the Crypto.com bowl.
I don't especially like it - at this point I'd happily go back to bowls and polls - but it's probably the right thing. A new Division 1 (lower than the super conferences and higher than FCS) for the teams who get left out and God help us, maybe a few schools that even re-think the role of athletics entirely. And then the super conference drops all pretense of being anything other than professional (of course the universities still shouldn't be in that business, but...)
It would also still be better if one or two teams from that left-out level got to be in the playoff but there would not be Cinderellas going very far.
The other flaw is there will still be teams grandfathered into the Big 10 and SEC that have no business being in the super-conference.
The power of a brand over actually success. Boy it's gonna be tricky. Probably Oregon and Washington bring OSU and WSU with them into a super-conference but if it's driven entirely by football the latter two schools are still a tough sell. The Utah/Colorado and Arizona teams - which are both new to the Pac 12 relatively speaking (decades apart) probably get stuck with the left-out Big 12 schools.
I don't know if these logical state pairs (Oregon/OSU etc.) will last. The SEC will want more media markets. One Arizona school and Colorado would give them Phoenix and Denver. Nike might want to make Oregon a free agent.
I think this ends with 4-6 West Coast teams in the Big Ten and the SEC moving West (while grabbing Clemson if they can).
The political pressure will be huge to keep those state schools together. And Nike is pretty entwined with Oregon State too. But the power of money and TV may prevail. Texas politicians made sure Baylor and Texas Tech were still with UT and A&M the first time. They didn't this time. But until now all these teams were still at the same level. This would be a much bigger drop-off.
Does Colorado or Arizona State even get good ratings? Granted, if they are playing Ohio State or Alabama everyone's happy.
Turning to basketball, UCLA & USC moving into a conference with multiple Eastern Time Zone schools would probably be the green light Gonzaga needs to move into the Big "East".
Yes, unless they upgrade their football somehow. People have been saying for years Gonzaga belongs in the Big East if not for geography.
Yeah it will be wild to see what this does to the NCAA basketball tournament too. Do you give a 20-team Big 10 four auto-bids, or do they just get 14 teams into thing regardless? But other than that issue, the basketball conferences that don't have D1 football shouldn't be affected too much.
Unless, of course, this kills the NCAA as an entity and the conferences start running basketball too.
Yeah I suppose it's possible that once the existing FBS schools sort through the wreckage they will try and get FCS schools to come on, rather than vice-versa. I mean, Temple would be just fine as an FCS school, and Nova would be irrelevant as an FBS school.
I don't know what is going to happen. Part of the appeal of the NCAA basketball tournament is the David defeats Golliath moments it has every year and I suspect the big boy schools who control the NCAA don't want to completely get rid of that. What I likely see is that all non-P5 at-large and automatic bid teams will be forced to play play-in games before going to the P5-dominated field of 64,.
That is probably not unreasonable. Nobody believes the small schools can win the thing, they just want that first weekend and the occasional Sweet 16.
Here's one first hint/rumor
Big 12 Source:
— Marc Fiscarelli ( @MarcFiscHoops ) June 30, 2022
In the wake of USC and UCLA to the Big 10 rumors, Kansas University has had talks internally to try to make a push to join the Big East as soon as 2025, presumably going independent in football.
Would be a very large domino.
I am no Nostradamos, but I can see the SEC wanting a piece of the Pacific Time Zone action and poaching Arizona, ACC gets raided with both the Big Ten and SEC trying to take the cream of its crop and UNC possibly being a part of a bidding war between the two.
Well I guess this could also be our (likely fairly quiet) Penn State season thread. They play Thursday night.
I think this was the last college football topic.
After Colorado last week went back to the big 12 we now have Oregon and Washington to the Big 10 (18!). Likely moves of Arizona, Arizona St., and Utah also to the Big 12 (16!).
4 teams will be left in the Pac-12: Cal, Stanford, Washington State, Oregon State. Guessing they might merge with the Mountain West and call it a day. Pretty sad state of affairs.
It's getting so that just making four conferences might make more sense East West, Central, Mountain...
Or better yet eliminating the farce of College Football completely and just create semi-pro leagues. When I was young (70s) they at least pretended that they were going for an education, remember when they announced the players majors at the start of games? Now, there is not even the slightest pretense that these guys care about (or get) a college education. It would probably be impossible with the schedules for the football players and practices.
Has any big 5 conference important player been held out of a game because of his grades in the last 20 years? Believe it or not, it did actually once happen.
Just get rid of the pretend students. If they want an education, they should get a scholarship for that purpose, but stop making them take Basket Weaving or History of Shoe Laces. Eliminate all academic rules if you are going to keep college sports, but frankly I would completely end college football as calling them students is VERY similar to WWE Wrestling. (At least at the top end programs)
