Washington and Oregon to Join the Big Ten
Looks like we finally have confirmation that they'll be joining in 2024. My understanding is that McMurphy has been a pretty solid source on realignment.
https://www.actionnetwork.com/ncaaf/oregon-washington-join-big-ten-leave-pac-12
August 4th, 2023 at 12:56 PM ^
I'm just ready for it all to be over.
Might take a break, but it won’t be over until the ACC drama is resolved…likely with their demise in 2036.
It's not ending any time soon. The ACC is barely being held together. And the Big 12 - while not dead - is going to have schools be tempted by SEC or Big 10 money if they come calling. It's not ending till the SEC and Big 10 have both gobbled up every team that can 'add value'
It's not over...not even close.
Your move SEC.
August 4th, 2023 at 12:57 PM ^
But are they though?
EDIT: Apparently yes? It's front page official.
August 4th, 2023 at 12:58 PM ^
Welp.
This was basically inevitable after the UCLA/USC move, but the protracted time frame has been painful for a lot of people.
The passionate defense of people like Washington State fans has been meaningful to me. There's some late game on tv from the middle of nowhere in Pullman or Corvallis but there are thousands of screaming fans there cheering for a .500 team that won't ever sniff the playoff. That's really cool. We lose something here.
However, this sort of thing is also inevitable. College football's enormous popularity, the harsh revolution of streaming video and cable, all of it. As soon as major conference teams started switching to new conferences this was always going to be the outcome.
I don't like it. I also don't hate the people that saw the arms race and said, "we want to be on the winning side, not the losing side." It's bad for the sport but good for a few programs like ours.
This sort of change is hardly limited to college football, of course. Just feels more here. Because it's such a wonderful sport.
All fair points, but like I said yesterday, Idaho and Montana were in the old/ancient version of the Pac-X/PCC and at some point they were left on the sideline with no one to dance with. OSU and WSU are closer to Idaho and Montana than they are to USC/UCLA.
This leaves the P12 with 7 teams now and UA has all but announced their move to the B12. ASU and Utah will follow quickly and at that point the conference cannot qualify for NCAA playoofs with fewer than 6 (IIRC, getting to 6 was the catalyst for B10 hockey to exist). No, no relevant to football but is relevant to literally every other sport.
Although the presidents of the B10 would love to see Stanford and Cal join, I don't see the ADs and the media partners allowing that. 1) too much diultion of $$ obviously and 2) the P12 was obviously hollow to the core from a leadership perspective. I don't think you want a big piece of a self-destructed conference to join and have a plurality voting block. 3) relatedly, expansion too far and so fast would strain relationships. We already know USC isn't too happy with UO joining and I'm not sure UW and/or UO will be too thrilled taking their 50% share for too long. How many current members are not thrilled with 18, given that 16 was so new? Does Maryland really want to play/travel to USC, UCLA, UW, UO and UM/PSU/PSU/Neb?
Maryland can leave if they don’t like it, but I do feel for their athletes who have to do all that travel.
Why not just take Stanford? Such a high quality athletics program and academically a great fit for the upper tier BIG.
B/c no one wants to watch them play any of those sports.
American pro sports operating like a cartel has its advantages. I hate the argument that big college sports are becoming like the pros, when there's far more team and player movement and far less regulations in college. There are terrible relocations in the pros (A's moving to Vegas), but there's obviously no precedent for a conference which anchors a big part of the country dying on the whims of TV executives.
Yeah, college football is losing what made it special, what inspired the passion that's the closest we have to the devotion soccer inspires worldwide. It's the rivalries built over 100+ years of competitions through generations--it's that love often passed down from parents to children. It's The Game, the World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party, the Red River Shootout, and, yes, the Apple Cup. It's the way a single loss mid-season could be catastrophic, or a win against a rival could turn a shitty season into a glorious one. It's bowl games meaning something because it was a reward for success that any team could aspire to. It's heartbreaking watching schools destroy that in chasing the almighty dollar. I wish there was a magic reset button somewhere that took us back to college football's sweet spot in terms of conference alignment--the late 90s to the early aughts--leave PSU in the Big Ten since that does feel right, and we can have FSU, Miami, and VT in the ACC (BC...you just don't belong there). Keep OU, UT, and CU in the Big 12. Gameday is a trim 2 hours, Lee Corso is as sharp as a tack. And Keith Jackson announces all the games (though I do love Gus Johnson).
Don't be naive. It's always been about money and it always will be.
I'm not naive. For fans missing out, it was never about the money and never will be.
I, of course, have wonderful memories of that era, as do many of us. But, of course, modernity causes us to forget some of the challenges that came with it. For example, my dad was at a work conference the day of the UM-PSU game in 1997, and while my mom and I were watching Brian Griese outrun the entire Jerry Sandusky defense he was stuck watching Missouri-Nebraska and getting updates from us on the phone. The BCS became the standard way to determine national title game participants and seasons when it made the clear right choice were less frequent than seasons that were embroiled in controversy (the great Pete Carroll USC teams of that era *never played* an elite title-contending SEC team). For every USC-Texas Rose Bowl you'd get an undeserving Florida State chosen over a Miami team it lost to, or an undefeated Auburn left out, or an Oklahoma or Nebraska team backing in after utter thrashings at the hands of Kansas State and Colorado respectively.
Still, there was something special there that we don't have. The comfort I take is that, let's face it, college football is REALLY great and even stuff like this can't kill it. It's not a binary system; there is something missing, but you just can't invalidate the entirety of what makes something wonderful in a pen stroke.
If there's a hope that someone might someday put the brakes on all of this before it goes too far, it's that there's some precedent for it across the pond: The power teams in European soccer have explored breaking away into a superleague for a couple of decades, and those attempts have been utterly quashed by, among other sources, their own constituencies. The sport still has a lot of issues, but there is a limit past which people are unwilling to tread.
College football was messier then, but the messiness is what made it fun. I argued that before the BCS was a thing when people were arguing for playoffs to make it more like the pro game. Again, I'm just talking conference alignment. I'm all for NIL and freer transfer allowances. And all that being said, come September, I'll again spend Saturdays watching 12+ hours of college football.
You do realize the 90s got there through decades of realignment and teams chasing the almighty dollar right? That’s the just pinnacle likely because it’s when you were a kid or in college
I was in my early 30s in the late 90s--I've been a fan of college football since the late 70s. I understand the forces of realignment over time. I supported the realignment that got us to that point. Change is inevitable, but, to me, that was the sweet spot. That's all I'm saying there.
One of the things about soccer around the world is it isn't the "franchise" system familiar in North American pro sports. Their soccer teams were/are more akin to college sports - large sporting clubs that professionalized and developed large, passionate fanbases.
The more CFB values markets and branding, the more it turns into the pros and the less it becomes like its community roots that ties it to people everywhere. Sure pro sports here have parity they don't in those soccer leagues, but upsets and Cinderella's are only possible when you have that disparity. And the community nature of worldwide soccer and college sports is what allows that disparity and I'll say that passion.
Born and raised in Farmington Hills, mom is UM alum, dad EMU alum, and I grew up going to the Big House. Moved to Washington in 1998 and decided to go to WSU as they have a top tier hospitality program.
I love Michigan , I love my Cougs , and today is just soul crushing. I’m headed to the WSU / Wisconsin game come September 9th and will close my eyes and dream/pretend that WSU is in the Big Ten (or whatever it will be called) and this is a regular season game. But it won’t be and Cougs will be left out to dry and the ripple effects of this will devastate all WSU athletics, and in-turn the whole institution.
Cougs travel. Cougs turn on the TV as ratings show. Why can’t we join Big 12? Cougs will go to Mountain West to die. And i would rather go full independent vs that.
this is sad, it was inevitable, but just heart wrenching.
The WSU flags at every Gameday location shoot has become one of the great random college football traditions. I mean, it's not Bama or Notre Dame. Washington State.
Tough day.
I mean, you gotta love that...
Is that going away? It’s not like Washington state or Oregon state are canceling football. Tcu and smu didn’t just stop having football fans attend games when the southwest conference died. People feel an affinity for Washington state because we grew up with Washington state flags on game day and played them in the 97 rose bowl.
Oregon states place in the college football universe is essentially unchanged in terms of the likelihood they win a national championship in the next two decades. It objectively sucks for those fanbases but no more than it sucked for the smu fan base or the tcu fanbase or the fanbase of any non power conference team currently. I don’t know why I should particularly care more about Washington state than any other program. People are clinging to a past that never existed. I personally will find playing Oregon and Washington on a rotating basis more interesting than Indiana every year and Illinois and northwestern on a regular basis
"Its good for us"
That is what I was told when Rutgers replaced Minnesota on our yearly schedule almost 10 years ago. Im not so sure.
If we had our original 9 teams next season with Texas and 2 cream puffs Id be happy as hell. But the bottom line is 27 more admins make a pay check because this millions has to go somewhere and discounting tickets aint it. Weve been duped if you ask me. Rutgers being added has soured me for sure though. Penn st, Nebraska, USC, Ucla, Washington, Oregon have been fine additions for sure but we would still be making a boatload with our original 10 and UM, OSU would have an auto bid to the 12 team playoffs (even more so than now).
August 4th, 2023 at 12:59 PM ^
RIP PAC-12.
Hope they don’t schedule games at 11PM when west teams play the east.
There's going to need to be some amount of give and take on scheduling. The west coast four (WC4) won't want to play at noon Eastern time any more than the current membership of the conference want anything to do with 10 or 11pm kickoffs. The only games in those late night time slots should be when any of the WC4 play each other.
Hearing Arizona and Utah are expected to bolt for the Big 12 very soon as well. Expected, but still. It's goin' down for real now...
What's remarkable is how long it took for all of this to happen. These schools really tried.
It's crazy to me a group of schools from a power conference wanted to stay together but couldn't.
It's crazy to me this group of schools couldn't get a solid TV deal - based on everything we know about markets and eyeballs and all the rest. No they're not the big ten or SEC but they are mostly football schools, and have a couple of very popular programs in some of the biggest markets.
Before this I thought the Big 12 had a hyped but janky lineup - but getting the four corners immediately ups their caliber in football and basketball. Well 3 of the 4. Colorado hasn't mattered for as long as Nebraska, and mattered less when they did.
Larry Scott and Kliavkoff really screwed this up. They were hired by Pac12 presidents too. Still, this failure is hard to believe when looking at the underlying situation of these schools and the fact that they, apparently, really wanted to stick together.
Go Beavs. EDIT: And forever go blue. But I'm a fan of Michigan, don't really care for "the big ten," whatever that name even means anymore.
I think they just go out manuevered. In a vacuum their football games have value to the networks, but when Fox, NBC, CBS, and ABC all go big on B1G, SEC, and Big 12, there isn't a whole lot left in the budget to pay the Pac 12. They lost out by process of elimination.
Which is on GK, right? If I remember right the Pac12 was on the market before the Big12, around the same time as the Big Ten, and waited to test the waters of the open market?
Similarly, Larry Scott's Pac12 Network was seen as a risk but a major achievement - fully owned and operated by the league, unlike the BTN, and way more control than the SEC and ACC had - but ultimately he couldnt get carriage and it had literally a dozen regional channels that were all stuck on premium tiers so nobody could watch it.
When the Big East failed, I thought the constituent schools mostly ended up all right - mostly in the ACC, except for Rutgers(!) and WVU :(. In the Pac12, the "winners" at Oregon and Washington are in a WVU situation (but with more money), the 4 corners are in a better stiuation but apparently 3/4 didn't want to go, and the 4 left behinds are screwed as much as UConn, USF and Temple - but unlike those 3, they all have pretty good football programs. Yes, even Cal.
This is sadder than the old Southwest falling apart. I was a child then, but now I know how fans of SMU and TCU must have felt. And this is almost entirely a product of corporate mismanagment, not management of the football programs.
Great point on it being sadder than the demise of the SWC (*Sure, We Cheat!).
That conference deserved to be caved. The PAC didn't, other than due to a combination of awful leadership plus a few factors they had no control over.
Deserved due to incompetence vs deserved due to blatant cheating makes no difference.
That's a damning narrative if true: The PAC-12 could have signed a deal, instead they waited to go to open market hoping for a better payday, then the BIG 12 jumped ahead and signed a deal first, and the result was major networks without sufficient budget for another major deal.
A real failure of risk assessment.
Upside - marginally more money in their new deal. Helpful, but not game-changing.
Downside risk - no (livable) deal with a major network. Conference-killing.
The asymmetry in that risk matrix was everything here, and PAC-12 leadership failed to see it.
Big East football was always an uneasy partnership because of the mix of schools. It started as a basketball conference, and adding football and bringing in Miami, WVU, and VT created a Frankenstein's monster of a thing that was destined to implode.
For sure but with most conference implosions, a lot of the schools and relationships and rivals stay together. There was lots of pain, financial blowback and nerves - but Big East football is mostly now just a wing of the ACC (poor damn WVU). The closest parallel to what we're seeing here - with the Pac12 becoming satellites of the Big Ten, Big 12 and presumably the Mountain West - is the old Southwest Conference. With Arkansas going to the SEC a generation before UT and A&M, and TCU, UH, SMU and Rice being left behind for that same generation. And with all due respect to SMU and TCU - storied programs with great success - they're budget is a bit different than Stanford's. Cal and the NW "states" maybe compare pretty well to UH. Obviously Rice was dead in FB well before the breakup. Nevertheless, this is pretty different isn't it?
One potential angle I hadn't considered - is FOX overpaying for rights to shut out a nascent competitor in Apple?
That is a really interesting thought. I'd love to read actual facts about it, but I don't imagine we'll get such an inside story publicly. Thanks for sharing.
Can anyone FOIA this?
The money is just so big. And so meaningful for competitive purposes; Brian and Seth complain about rich guys getting rich, and a few do, but mostly this is larger entities acting in their self-interest.
A USC that believes it should be, as it has been historically, nationally competitive, in the second-biggest market in the country, but is chained to a conference that forces it to endure 8-figure deficits every year compared to its peer athletic departments. That's tough, but it also makes it hard to compete for athletes, which means they might not stay competitive, which means their constituency (including the donors who provide a lot of their other operating income) are anxious to get back up to par, or they might experience a significant and irrevocable contraction.
So they bolt. If the B1G hadn't taken them, they'd probably have chased the SEC, and so the B1G said, "sure."
It's an arms race. There are winners and there are losers.
Even with that, the schools left behind valiantly tried to make it work. Even Oregon, with its Nike money, wanted to stay. But the PAC had trouble making TV money before the LA schools left (which is why they left) and they absolutely failed afterward. Honestly, there had to be *something* they could have put together better than what they had.
It's circumstances but it's also failure of execution. On a scale that couldn't be larger.
Michigan will never play in a Rose Bowl game against a Pac team again. That's really something.
This year will be the last Rose Bowl with any semblance to the past.
Frankly, it already lost that awhile ago. When our third-best team is playing in Pasadena, it's not the Rose Bowl it once was.
Even with the rain, last year's Rose Bowl was a true Rose Bowl in my mind - two top ten teams battling it out to ring in the New Year. the OSU-Utah game before that felt right as well. The Rose Bowl will be fine - it's the granddaddy of them all and still one of the few bowl games that actually justifies a trip just for the bowl itself, independent of the game and the team.
They'll be all right.
The next 16 years will feel like the last 16 years.
You mean I'm gonna have to start drinking at 9am soon?
You don't already? Amateur
I assume you meant "start drinking my 5th or 6th beer at 9am soon."
This is ass, my dude
I view today as a sad day.
I admit I supported USCLA to the B1G. A bold move on the expansion front, pick up 2 brand name schools in a huge area that has lots of B1G expatriate fans.
But today is the wholesale collapse and death of the West's most powerful athletic conference. And for what? So the B1G can make even more $$$ selling a contract to ESPN for a few more 10:30 PM football games? So Arizona/ASU/Utah can play a bunch of schools in the Great Plains and Midwest, where there's no historic or cultural connection?
The (sigh) inevitable progression of college football to an NFL model. The problem is that it totally disregards the value of the regional model and traditional rivalries that has been a product differentiating feature (and in my view, a clear advantage) of college football relative to the NFL.
I guess the one little bit of solace I have here, as a transplant to California who didn't really want to leave the Midwest (don't worry I love it here now) - it's nice that in college sports, the power lies in the middle of the country as opposed to the coasts. The Northeast and the West Coast matter very little in college sports.
I typically don't like playing regions off of each other - we are one country, and college sports is a national thing with a lot of regionalism in it and that's what made it wonderful. But if it has to be run out of one place over the other, when so much else gets run out of NY, LA, and Texas, it's kinda ok that this is run out of Chicago and Atlanta (but really the smaller college towns around them) instead.
I am definitely feeling sad tho.