How the Big 12 Staying Together Saved Student-Athletes

Full Conference Realignment Could Help Boise State

Part of the allure and the appeal of college athletics has always been the aggrandized ideal of amateurism: that these young men and women are competing on the playing field for love of school and self and little else.  The problem with this notion has long been that athletics departments, by and large, operate in exactly the same way that professional teams’ front offices do, the main difference being that they pay their players substantially less.

The potential to move to four super-conferences would have allowed the major bowl contenders to effectively lock out any of the annual mid-major protestations by incorporating a few of the high-mid-majors into their business makes perfect strategic sense for the powers that be.

It would allow major football schools to maintain a stranglehold on the most important games of the season in perpetuity.  It would allow them an easier road to establishing a playoff, a move long-desired by fans nationwide, while stripping the playoff of its real goal: establishing some means by which a mid-major could win (or almost win, a la Butler) a national title.  To do this, though, some major conference was going to have to lose out.

The Red River Shootout is Front and Center For Big 12 Football

And so it began, with the Big Ten hinting that it was looking to expand to the 12 teams necessary to hold a championship game to drive up its already massive television money.  The hints were always designed to entice Notre Dame into the fold, who have long needed a conference to be a part of, but have also long ignored that fact because of their deal with NBC and sense of tradition.

Missouri was first to take up the bait announcing that they would happily bolt to the Big Ten if given an invite, even though athletically they have next to nothing to offer a conference.  And that’s not just me the Kansas fan talking.

They’ve never won a major sporting title, have fans that are notoriously bad travelers, and have little in the sense of tradition.  Academically, they probably would have fit the Big Ten mold but little else was there to be gained if they took on Mizzou.

Once it became clear that the Irish were not going to take the bait, Nebraska was tapped as the next best option. Of all the possible outcomes of college sports realignment, this one made the most sense. Nebraska was always a more Big 10-oriented school culturally, and Nebraska fit the requirements for what they wanted: a traditional football school that is also an AAU university.

Nebraska was never  happy in the Big 12 because they never liked playing second fiddle to Texas, even though in every sense other than a historical one (and even then) they are.  But the move made sense for them, and got them into a situation that has all of their fans excited and few teams in the Big 12 really upset.

The Big Ten had made their plans known for a while, and if Notre Dame had done the sane and honorable thing and just joined the damn Big Ten like everyone wanted them to none of this would have happened.

With USC Facing Huge Sanctions, The Pac 10 Needed To Have More To Show For Its Raid On The Big 12

There should be many, many more problems with the way the Pac-10 went about their business. The Pac-10 clearly has been jealous of the tv network deal the Big Ten was able to construct and the money that came from that.

They hired a former promoter from the World Tennis Association to be their commissioner, and it’s clear that he has little understanding of or regard for the needs of college athletes.

Taking Colorado was always more about trying to get a foothold in the Denver media market than about “school fit” or any of the other buzzwords that they used. Even more laughable was the staff at CU saying that they felt their academic interests were more in line with the likes of Cal and Stanford, when they’re not even top dog in the Big 12.

In all reality, as someone with no love lost for either the Pac 10 or Colorado and their RPI-killing basketball program, is that when the numbers come back to project what the next TV deal will bring in, it will be glaringly obvious just how little CU means to the Denver media market.  KU has as strong a hold there as CU does and unless the Pac 10 is also including the Broncos in their expansion Denver isn’t going to make or break that market.

The Pac 10 clearly bought into this idea that the four super-conferences were going to be the way of the future and that now was the time to strike to try to take the Texas schools into the fold. The problem with this was twofold: first, it’s based on the idea that given the existing TV deals and the revenue they create, reducing the number of competing conferences means more money for everyone.

What this fails to account for is it is not really the TV networks that must compete to land conference media contracts, it’s the conferences that need to have a good enough product to attract those dollars. If you’re a TV executive paying $600 million for contracts with three conferences, why are you going to spend $300 million on 2 conferences, if you feel you could still get that contract for $250?

It doesn’t make sense, and it amounts to a lesser return for the schools involved if they can’t get substantially more money instead of the marginally more they’re likely to get. Few institutions have the athletics department revenue to absorb the huge cost of starting up its own TV network like Texas can and the TV networks can survive without having the Pac-10 on their TV dial, the Pac 10 can’t survive without being on the TV dial, and therefore Disney/ABC/ESPN and Fox have all the leverage.

The last little bit annoys me the most and that is that little, if any, consideration seems to have been given to student athletes in all of this. A student from Houston who comes to Lawrence to play football already doesn’t get to see much of his family aside from a few weeks in the summer and whenever he goes down to play a game in or around Houston. Maybe his family can make it up to Lawrence for a few games during the year, maybe they can’t.  That’s the cost of getting a “free” college education.

If The Conferences Truly Realign, This Becomes a Thing Of the Past

As it is, there’s already a lot of talk about how student athletes don’t really spend enough time in the classroom because of their travel schedule in existing regional conferences.

If you take that same student and now you’re regularly sending him to Seattle, Eugene, Berkeley, LA, and Phoenix, in my view you’re essentially turning that student into an online college graduate.

For all of the money the NCAA spends on “most of our student athletes are gonna go pro in something other than sports” ads, you’re spending an awful lot of energy discrediting the degree of just about any one of your students who puts their athletic involvement on their resume.

In the end, though, sanity ruled the day and our Spring of brinksmanship passed without any real damaging changes.

The Big Ten got what it wanted and got a 12th like-minded institution to join the fold. The Pac 10 got its just comeuppance and one could argue got worse as a conference (from a dollars standpoint) by adding two B-list departments in Utah and Colorado that have made little to no impact to ad-revenue projections for the conference.

That and USC’s death penalty, have actually put the conference in a situation where without championship game each school would be making less than they were before they expanded.

And the Big 12 rumbles along, many unhappy constituents but in the best possible situation for this part of the country: two teams that will regularly compete for football titles in OU and UT in a way that will hurt both schools less, with the best basketball conference in the country, and with everyone’s RPI taking a few less hits from playing Nebraska and Colorado.

And best of all, student-athletes will continue to be spread only as thin as they already are, instead of being asked to take on a professional athlete’s schedule for a college administrative staff member’s salary.

Everyone who deserved to win did, and those that deserved to lose did. It’s the best you could ask from the sports world.