Report: Washington, Oregon to B1G
Following a series of alternating “it’s happening” and “it’s not happening” reports over the past 24 hours, it seems likely at this point that, yes, it is capital-H Happening. The era of the Super-Conference is formally upon us.
Oregon and Washington informed Pac-12 presidents earlier that they plan to accept an invitation from the Big Ten, sources tell me and @DanWetzel. An invitation from the Big Ten is expected soon. https://t.co/KhebqNamPV
— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) August 4, 2023
This move will reportedly take effect for the 2024 season. As in the season immediately after the season we’re about to play. So those ‘24-‘25 schedules? Throw ‘em out. We gotta start over.
It also goes without saying that the Pac-12, a 108-year-old stalwart of college athletics, is functionally dead. They were mostly dead 24 hours ago, as this move was the comes on the heels of Colorado departing for the Big 12, Arizona and Arizona State flirting with the Big 12, and Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff announcing an Apple TV-centric media rights deal that was underwhelming by today’s standards. But today, they are all the way dead.
The remaining question is what happens to the scraps. The Arizona schools may end up in the Big 12 after all, and may bring their Four Corners buddy Utah. There has been suggestions that the Big Ten or Eighteen or Whatever might be interested in Cal and/or Stanford. Oregon State and Washington State… uh… please come to HR, and bring your badge and keys with you.
This may not be a universal opinion, but… man, this sucks.
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maybe relegation! wouldn't that be awesome....
I don’t think the Big Ten will jettison schools that have been a part of it from the start, or at least 70 years. That would be a dramatic shift in values. I don’t think the presidents would want to be seen as so venal and disloyal. Plus, every conference needs some bottom feeders.
Fans getting in a lather of 20 team conferences with 10 blue bloods dont know what they are getting into. Its reasonable to think your blue blood team MAY win a conference championship once a decade or two.
Is this irony?
I think if we've learned anything over the last decade of conference realignment is that money has the biggest seat at the table. I think Big Ten institutions would jettison Iowa or Purdue in a heartbeat if it meant the possibility of doubling yearly revenue.
Coherence team additions are a bit like wages - they're sticky. They go up, but they really don't go down.
Conferences have always added teams, but when has a conference ever kicked a team out?
Don't need to. The Big Boys who the network who pays for all this down the road will just leave the Big 10/SEC/ACC and join a new league. That'll be how the premier league comes about and it's basically a certainty that happens. The only question is who will pay for it, Fox/Disney/Someone else (lets just say the Saudis).
Nobody is going to kick Purdue out of the Big 10. Instead, Michigan/Ohio State/USC/Penn State/Notre Dame will have probably joined the Big 10 by then will just leave the conference and join Alabama/Georgia/Texas/Oklahoma and whoever the TV network who pays for all this decides is worthy to form a new national league. You're kidding yourself if you think this ends any other way.
Seth and Brian raised this on the Roundtable, but the biggest precedent being set last night might be that UDub and Oregon are taking a less than full share to join. If not all schools in the conference are created equal, then one could well see an eventual financial relegation for the schools that bring less value to the TV contracts. That could have huge implications down the road.
I mean, Maryland/Rutgers didn't get a full share either for a few years. I think they only just recently started getting full member shares within the last few years. I can't speak for Nebraska because they were certainly in a much better bargaining position, but withholding full share of TV money for new members has been a pretty common thing for a lot of schools joining new leagues in realignment.
Maybe the PAC and ACC should combine forces.
To become a Super PACC?
PACtlantic
they just wouldn't be allowed to coördinate with...
...aw hell they aren't real coordinated to begin with
Speaking of combining, as I posted elsewhere, I hadn't realized—or had forgotten—that a deal was in place a decade ago for a Big 10 / Pac 12 partnership but the Pac 12 backed out at the last moment.
After that, the Big 10 added Maryland and Rutgers.
Yes, as much as it sucks for the PAC they made a LONG string of consecutively poor decisions that ultimately left them where they are today.
I wonder if this means that the Apple Cup is effectively DOA.
I can't imagine that. Most years it's the only college football game anybody in Washington cares about. They could play it in September (like UK-Louisville or games between the Florida schools are often done), or do like UGA-GTech and somehow finagle a rivalry week OOC game. But the Apple Cup must go on!
Friday of Thanksgiving weekend is just such a tradition though - it's a huge deal out here (probably more so for Wa St then UW).
Agreed. I have great respect for those in-state rivalries. They may not appear relevant nationally, but Apple Cup & Civil War are rivalries that must continue.
*platypus game, but hell yes
I assume they'll still play it; Clemson-South Carolina still play every year, as do UGa-GT. Pitt-WVU are trying to renew that rivalry, and I think KU-Mizzou are bring back their Border War. I'm sure it'll be wonky for a while but that's worth it for both sides to schedule as an OOC game, if nothing else.
I think there will be a lot of political pressure by Oregon and Washington's state legislatures to force those games to continue. Washington already said they're going to "do whatever they can" to keep the Wazzu game on the schedule. I imagine if they try to stop playing it they'll get forced to play it by the sounds of things.
So will the logo close the g in B1G to make it look like B18?
Maybe the Big Ten could show off its nerdly academic assets and say it’s using base 18.
I always admired the hidden 11 after we added Penn State, and assumed the current B1G was begging for a B16. B18 is very do-able to still come across as the number 10. I’m sure there’s a logo ready that make the one also look like a two, not unlike how there’s US flag designs ready with more stars.
Keep the graphic irons hot. Will need a Big 20 soon enough.
This is decidedly unfun. It's absolutely dreadful news for fans of the former PAC #, but on a larger scale it sucks for fans of any persuasion. Almost literally the only people who benefit from this arrangement are TV executives.
I don't know, as a Washington resident I'm excited that Michigan will be coming out to Seattle on a more regular basis
So what I mean by "sucks for all fans" is: Right now the Big Ten are the ones doing the raiding. Soon the SEC will be picking up schools. Maybe the Big 12 will grab a couple in order to keep up. It's an arms race and it's not very fun to watch soulless conference realignment based on TV contracts rather than geography/history.
Matt Hinton had a twitter post that sums it up - can't post the link but to paraphase: "I used to think it was one of its charms that CFB didn't have a top down entity controlling everything. But killing a popular west coast league and making them satellites of other more popular leagues is a failure of vision and leadership. We'll all get used to it and they'll make money, but what an astounding arrogance and failure to understand what makes the sport popular."
And yet TV ratings will go up. Raback it.
The Pac-12 only have themselves to blame. They made an absolutely dreadful hire in Larry Scott at a time of conference upheaval. Leadership matters.
And by regular basis, you mean... (quick math of an 18 team conference, 9 conference games a year, assuming 2 must-play rivalries each year, so, rotating 15 teams a year for at most 7 games, flopping home and home)... once every four years. I mean, sure, you got that to look forward to.
By the time the B1G and SEC have completed their super conferences, I would expect 10-11 conference games with OOC essentially being an exhibition
It promises all the joy and anticipation of looking over the menu at Applebee's.
Perfect analogy. Corporatization vibes.
You’re simply pushing customers into something they never asked for. Or want. Or need. You just got bigger and somehow more boring.
With 20 conference teams and protected rivalries, how often do you think it will be? Once every 5 years if we don’t go back to divisions, maybe once every 10 if we do?
the best solution is to grab Cal and Stanford and form two ten team divisions and play round robin plus a crossover. They should be the original ten members in one division and the new ten in the other, since geography is now meaningless. Solid division balance, preserves existing rivalries, allows Penn State to seem more like an independent by playing teams that were in 5 different conferences in 1990. Also means we don’t have to play Rutgers every year. basically, it’s the Big Ten-PAC 10 alliance, but with just the good teams (and Rutgers).
I don't think this is worth it for the Michigan visit once every 4-5 years. An 18-team league (assuming Big Ten stays at 18) is going to be so unwieldy. What schedule model they decide to move forward with is going to determine a lot. Does the Big Ten move to go to 10 conference games? It would be hard to get schools to potentially give up that 8th home game in many years though.
It’s easier to give up a home game when the revenue from a home game is a drop in the bucket.
With the money the big conferences/programs will be bringing in from TV money, tickets should be $10.
Michigan has 17 teams to play home and away. There are 34 combinations.
At Washington is one of those 34 combinations. Also we were always a phone call and handshake away from playing at Washington in any given season.
TV executives and all the people who benefit from these rich athletic departments burning cash to hide their enormous profits. Lots and lots of unnecessary AD staffers being supported by this stuff.
In the mean time, where do you think ticket prices are going? Big time college athletics is totally blinded by short term profits at the expense of tradition and loyalty. It's sad to watch it unfold year by year
Fantastic post that nailed it!
I mean, I don’t hear the school presidents or ADs screaming and yelling about how awful this is. They want the money grab as much as anyone else. And the consolidation means more bargaining power with the TV networks to get the best deal. They’ll be some TV executives stuck with the PAC whatever and ACC.
This for surely does suck, F it all
I posted this in the other thread but I'll put it here now as well.
I agree it sucks to see long-term rivalries go by the wayside and conferences disappear, but college football has been shifting around conferences for decades. The SEC came out of the old Southern Conference, the Big 12 came from the Big 8, which came from the Big 7, that coming from the Big 6. The Big East got eaten up by the ACC, the Big 10, and various other smaller conferences. The Pac-12 was the Pac-10 and before that the Pac-8, and each time they brought on more schools mostly for money and exposure.
So yeah, I'm not happy about these changes but they also aren't historically uncommon nor are they likely to be the end of them. College sports will just keep evolving and hopefully we as fans at least get some interesting games out of them and (I hope) more of this money gets filtered down to the athletes who are far more directly affected. But the idea that this is somehow a unique example of money and influence beating out "tradition" and the like isn't really true.
In hindsight I think those conference changes from the past were 'tremors' and now we're experiencing full-on earthquakes. Some of those tremors felt bigger when they occurred but most everyone landed on their feet, more shaken than truly hurt. UT and OU to the SEC was maybe a 5.0 quake, USC and UCLA to the B1G was an 8.5 quake, and they both presaged the proverbial big one which happened today.
I have some personal ties to UW and UO so I was sort of looking forward to them potentially joining the B1G. But as I've immersed myself in reading and listening to insiders talk about the angles and issues this week, and now that UW and UO will actually be joining the B1G, I am sad.
As Brian and others have said and written, there are WSU/OSU (ntOSU) fans out there, not to mention Cal and Stanford fans, who are getting left to fend for themselves and/or to die out there. Yes I know, it's the laws of economic 'nature' doing their thing and obviously it's not truly the death knell for college football writ large.
But I for one am not looking forward to the top 40-50 teams forming some sort of super conference/NFL lite type outfit in the years to come. I mostly don't watch the NFL bc it's bland and boring and most teams finish within a game or two of 8-8 each season, and so I have a hard time getting excited for that.
IMHO those of us who are passionate and long time college football fans are losing something really important today, even if at some point in the past it became all but inevitable.
I think the comparisons to NFL lite aren't fair because college football isn't like the NFL in a number of key ways. There's a cap designed to stop dynasties from remaining strong, while college sports have both a less costly transfer portal plus eligibility limits that naturally force predictable-ish turnover that teams can plan for. But recruiting allows teams to refuel/reload much easier than being tied down by costly contracts, and due to differences in talent teams are inclined to do different things schematically and, at least in my eyes, produce a more diverse and interesting series of styles. That's changing a bit as the NFL adopts a lot of CFB's concepts, but pragmatically with only 32 NFL teams you are going to wind up using similar styles and playbooks because you're picking up players and losing them all the time both in the offseason and during the year. So you need that continuity and shared terminology. CFB has less player movement outside of prescribed windows that give you a lot of lead time to learn new systems.
And most of college football finishes within a game or two of .500; the Big 10 had 9 of their 14 teams finished within 2 games of 6-6 last year.
I was never sentimental about college rivalries and the like, so I'm probably atypical amongst college football fans. I never gave a shit about playing Notre Dame, and if they moved MSU off the schedule and OSU around I wouldn't care. This just feels like a natural evolution of the sport and while I'm sure there will be teams left in the cold I also presume they'll figure it all out in the end, and schools will figure out new partnerships to make it all work.
If Bama-Auburn, UM-OSU, ND-USC, OKL-TEX dont mean much to you im guessing college football feels even more like NFL lite. I dont watch all these game but Im excited for these fan bases to have something like this to enjoy. Its some amazing stuff to watch and enjoy.
Those games mean a lot but they also aren't going anywhere AFAIK. But instead of UM's non-East games being against Nebraska, Iowa, and Purdue there's a chance they'll be against an Oregon or a USC. Or they won't have to play freaking IU and Rutgers every season.
I'm not saying that I love expansion and contraction of leagues but this also isn't new and I guess I'm sort of no longer surprised it keeps happening.
Well put
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