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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I don't see how this keeps feeling like one conference with 18 or more teams. I liked the scheduling ideas they just put out of playing each team every other year, but that's not going to work with more than 16
I was trying to explain this to my wife, a california girl who went to a cal state affiliated school and only went to HS football games because sometimes her friends made her. I basically told her last year, SoCal schools left the west coast league and joined the midwest league. I explained her the biggest NW schools did the same this year. Her response,
Her: "They're leaving the Bay Area schools behind? Why?"
Me: "I dunno, they don't make enough money or something on football."
Her: "Man, tech really must be going through a crunch."
Our schedule just became way more interesting. The novelty of playing these new programs drives way more interest versus any existing B1G West school, Rutger and Maryland.
I’d much rather see a 10-11 game conference schedule versus the recent lackluster non-conference schedules.
The new 12-team playoff format takes so much pressure off of having a perfect season. B1G teams will be better prepared to compete for a national championship with the upgrade in conference competition.
August 6th, 2023 at 10:21 AM ^
If they stayed at nine conference games, each team would get only one annual protected rivalry game and then alternating eight of the remaining teams, if it somehow works out.
10 games (five home, five away) probably makes the most sense in terms of a balanced conference schedule. But then virtually every team in the conference will want to add at least two more home games, so that means zero games against teams from other P5 teams in the regular season.
And we've barely started to deal with the evolution of NIL into a formalized labor agreement. That will be far more difficult.
It's sad that the short-sightedness of TV-deal chasing led to the (I think) temporary destruction of a storied major conference before the inevitable football/NCAA divorce.
I hope that regional conferences can re-form for the non-revenue sports at some time in the relatively near future.
What makes sense for college football makes no sense for any other sport. And yet the massive football tail is wagging the college sports dog because television.
Any predictions on how many more hours Kliavkoff gets to keep his job? I think resignation by Monday.
TV money is drying up because TV is dying and streaming is a disaster, so there's not enough to go around to keep 5-6 conferences well fed and happy. It's just going to keep consolidating as there becomes less and less TV money for everyone.
Wouldn't be surprised if in 10 years the best of the SEC and B1G leave their leagues to start a College Football Premier League together once they get tired of splitting revenues with the Illinois and South Carolinas of the world. This whole SEC v. B1G world with two conferences last as long as Fox and ESPN both stay in the rights business, we may look up in 10 years and there's just going to be one rights buyer who ends up reshuffling things into the Premier League format. God knows who that'll be, probably an ESPN sold off to the Saudis.
This sucks.
Agreed, comrade.
My understanding of the TV contract is that the BIG promised the networks a certain number of marquee matchups in exchange for a ton of money. And by adding more teams I'd assume the number of these marquee games goes up. The networks paid for USC-Michigan and USC-OSU, for example. So the schedule will have to acommodate this. Competitive balance will probably need to be thrown out to make this happen since the traditionally "best" teams also happen to be the most-watched teams. So Michigan, OSU and PSU's schedules will probably be more difficult than Indiana's every year. But divisions where Michigan and USC play once per decade unless they both reach the title game aren't going to fly. It's gonna have to involve some regular matchups between teams that are not necessarily rivals just to make the networks happy.
So no more Texas home and home I take it?
Shit! You’re right. Damn, I was looking forward to that.
This absolutely sucks. I had difficulty accepting 14 teams as a “conference.” At 18, it is no longer a conference. It’s a league. Might as well go to 2 divisions and play everyone in your division once with one crossover game to be determined by the standings after you play the other 8. Just remove the conference championship game and call it “round robin weekend” or something with 1 vs 1, 2 vs 2, etc. That gets you to 9 conference games for each team. And then fill out your non conference schedule by playing teams from the other division that you may only see once a decade.
The NFL has 16 team conferences and 4-team divisions. But I don’t like the NFL model. Having to play the Packers, Vikings and Bears twice a season gets boring.
Getting stuck in a division with MSU and OSU would have some drawbacks. But with 18 teams, we can’t even have balanced divisions within the conference. It’s a clusterfuck that’s still untangling.
Once we added USC and UCLA, I thought we needed more west coast teams so I'm all for this. We're basically setting up East and West divisions and calling them the B1G. NCAA getting less relevant by the day.
If it also means playing fewer cupcakes to start the season, I'm all for that too.
Nah, I think doing any divisions is a mistake. Just have open scheduling and have the top two records go to Pasadena for a Big 10 title game at this point. It's not like anyone gives a crap about the Rose Bowl anymore.
August 6th, 2023 at 10:28 AM ^
If it also means playing fewer cupcakes to start the season, I'm all for that too.
Unlikely. The greater the number of conference games, the more athletic departments will insist that the remaining games be home games, usually of the one-off variety rather than home-and-home games, and most P5 opponents will not agree to single away games, especially when the home teams control the TV rights as well.
For football, I’m honestly hopeful that we expand to 20 teams and have a Big 10 East and West that essentially play as two separate conferences. That would indirectly put us back where we started.
And for basketball… do we just tell the NCAA that we’ll let them know when we are done with our tournament and they can have the winner of their’s just come play our champ?
Now it sucks? Not sure how 18 sucks more than 16, but it's sucked for me since they added PSU and stopped playing all the other teams in the Big (actually) 10.
Starting with the PSU add it's all been about money. The student part of student-athlete and actual football fan experience has declined, unless you go to football games to be deafened by music and seizured by nonstop flashing lights.
Thank you for reading this week's installment of BornInA2 Yells at Clouds.
If they're not next on the docket, I imagine FSU officials are gnashing their teeth. In the end I guess it's about the associations that you bring, but I was never a fan of Nike, and have zero connection to Washington. Whatever? Most years this puts two more wins on USC's calendar? Maybe Oregon helps lift the B1G track profile? That's all I got (shrugs).
I'm not looking forward to west coast start times for games in the future. I feel like this will especially effect basketball with plenty of 10pm est starts in our future.
I have a kid who goes to Oregon State so I think this sucks. It is destroying a rivalry that the Beavs won last year with a program that was going somewhere. Now, they are locked out of any chance to rise and will end up in the Mountain West. They will only play their biggest game . . . ???
I hate that the Big Ten is the one who fired this shot and is generally working with the SEC to kill the great tradition that is college football.
/Yeah. Go ahead and get off my M-Fing lawn!
Nobody put a gun to USC and UCLA's head—they could have turned down the BIG invite in order to preserve the PAC.
The "leaders" at USC and UCLA made their decision to bail on the PAC for one reason only: cash. Everything else—the athletes, the fans, the traditions—was expendable.
Ok. You’re right. They are equally to blame too. The Big Ten sold out its tradition years ago. I still don’t like it.
August 6th, 2023 at 10:36 AM ^
Please correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't it USC and UCLA that got together and approached the B1G first, which the B1G then approved and formally offered an invitation?
Not sure of who approached whom in the Washington/Oregon case, but the fact that they are taking 50% shares tells that it's likely that they were likely the ones doing the asking.
In the end I guess it's about the associations that you bring, but I was never a fan of Nike, and have zero connection to Washington. Whatever? Most years this puts two more wins on USC's calendar? Maybe Oregon helps lift the B1G track profile? That's all I got (shrugs). Guess I'm one of those wierdos who really is interested in the impacts on other sports, though. . .
Well, at least Washington will get their return home game against us now....
The Big 10 dealt the death blow when they took USC/UCLA. This was just playing out the string. I think this will ultimately be absolutely horrible for college sports but there's no use crying over it now, shoulda emptied the tear ducts last year.
Anyway, I think the league should strongly consider moving the Big 10 championship to Pasadena. With playoff expansion, the Rose Bowl as we knew it is dead, but I think making Pasadena the Big 10 title site would be a way to continue tradition the best it can.
In the context of a conference that has already added USC and UCLA, I think this is good expansion that actually makes a lot of sense.
In the context of the college football I grew up with dying a slow death, it's another nail in the coffin. I wish we still played Minnesota every year and I wish the winner of the conference still went to the Rose Bowl to play the winner of the now-dead Pac-12. I wish we had just kept the old Bowl System and then added a national championship game between whoever is ranked #1 and #2 after all that was said and done. But of course we needed to get rid of all the idiosyncrasies and turn college football into NFL Junior.
Yeah but a lot of guys in suits think "what if we made the college football into 'the NFL but everyones not as good'" and they've never been wrong before!
The reason most often given for a championship game was to get a decisive champion...which hasn't happened with a four team playoff and won't with twelve. Or even 68 (NCAAB). Because a big chunk of sports fans love to argue.
So aside from playing more games (some of which are now total throw-aways, either against competition as stiff as damp toilet paper or where the best players sit because the games are pointless), but I sure don't experience it as more fun.
The ultimate issue is that the powers that be think the arguing is bad but the reality is that the arguing is fun and a big part of why we are so invested in the sport.
It won't ever happen, but I wish they would bring back the old bowl games with a +1 national championship game.
August 6th, 2023 at 10:44 AM ^
Hell, I wish all conference were a maximum of 8 or 9 teams, meaning a round-robin conference schedule and then four or five non-conference games, at least two of which were against other power conference teams. Followed up traditional bowls.
Then argue until the following September which team REALLY most to be ranked #1.
Those days are never coming back, but we can dreams, can't we?
The reason conference title games exist is to have more game inventory to sell to TV networks. The Big 10 title game ain't going away.
Payton Pritchard—that dude was the truth
Forget football, I'm super excited to watch games on this court!
/s
Wonder whether those late-afternoon shadows play havoc with shooting. Oh, wait.
I’ve watched a very few games played on that court. Even just watching on television it was headache inducing every time.
I've been an advocate of FSU, for selfish reasons--my wife teaches there, and a lot of fellow faculty think that it would help prize school politics out of the hands of Ron DeSantis.
But what if Stanford and Cal come to get the B1G to 20? Prestigious schools, which some of us care about, and a full (almost?) West Coast cadre? I'm not among those who think every school has to be a football powerhouse. Stanford would likely help boost the level of play in a host of other sports.
EDIT: Seeing that that's what the school presidents are pushing for. I thought that they were the ultimate arbiters?
Cal and Stanford make sense, and now that the precedent has been set that UDub and Oregon took less than a full share to join, IMHO it’s just a matter of time.
But I assume the prior post was sarcastic about the university presidents running the show. Of course they are [pats hand] — right after they get approval for the sleepover from Mom and Dad TV execs.
I get your point. But somewhere I read that the presidents had final say, not ADs. Which--if word is that they are pushing for admission of Cal and Stanford with FOX pushing back, might seem to indicate that. Clearly, money is in the driver seat. But--honestly--that doesn't have to mean that Stanford and Cal just suck football eggs forever. Stanford has beaucoups of money, and could be required to invest more in their football as condition of entry (for example). Teams rise and fall as powers.
So there's now a non zero chance Cal isn't playing football after 2025 or so. Either the Big 10 throws a lifeline to the two NorCal nerd schools or I genuinely think Cal drops the sport and turns the stadium into dorms.
Stanford and Cal would be more likely to just drop levels to go full Ivy IMO.
The MWC and Pac kinda have to combine once the remaining best programs are poached huh? It'd still be the 5th best conference probably.
I'm just so grossed out by how Big 10 officials handled all this. "Oh we don't want to kill the Pac 12" bitch you shot 'em in the stomach a year ago. What are you talking about "we don't want blood on our hands." Even if that was true, you don't want to kill em but you'll rob their grave if someone else does, gee, how noble! But even that's full of shit because the Big 10 and Fox 100% murdered the Pac 12 to death and to sit and pretend they drives me insane.
The ACC will tell you "we killed Big East football and we'd do it again." The SEC makes no bones about what it did to the Big 12. Big 10 needs to stop pretending they're a bunch of warrior poets and own it.
August 6th, 2023 at 10:18 PM ^
Hmm, who approached who? If B1G doesn’t take USC/UCLA then Big 12 does. USC & UCLA mortally wounded the PAC-12. Then their commissioner’s best TV deal killed it.
On the bright side at least someday the sun will implode.
I agree this sucks my man, but I sure did laugh at the Oregon State and Washington come to HR part. Can't wait for Opponent Watch to come!
Agree with BiSB, this sucks, it was inevitable but it sucks.
August 4th, 2023 at 10:32 PM ^
Add Stanford and cal. 20 teams
PAC 10 division
BIG 10 division
conference champ game at the Rose Bowl
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