(01-12-2014 12:28 AM)USAFMEDIC Wrote:  I am still laughing my butt off about their miscalculations too. Don't take care of the lady and she will always find someone else. We found Mr SEC...

If anyone dodged a bigger expansion bullet than Louisville, it had to be Missouri. If either had got what they wanted when it all started, both would have been stuck in conferences that were poor cultural fits.

As it worked out both ended up with conference homes in perfect situations. Congrats to Missouri on all their success in The SEC. My only hope is Louisville can step into The ACC next fall and be just as competitive.
CJ

I think it's ALL about TV markets. BTN is already in St. Louis. And Kansas City isn't a big enough market to warrant adding Mizzou to the Big Ten.

A bigger slice of Maryland...and medium slice of DC...is what the league got out of UMD.
A bigger slice of New Jersey...and a small slice of NYC...is what the league got out of Rutgers.

The one "miscalculation" was that I don't think Delany predicted the ACC or the Big 12 temporary stability. I think he assumed--as most of us did--that the whole landscape was pushing towards four super-conferences. And in that scenario, the Big Ten would have been perfectly poised to take 2 more prime teams (Kansas/OU in the West? UNC/UVA in the East?).

“If those requirements were lifted, it gives you much more flexibility in how you schedule,” Swofford said. “I’m a proponent of the conferences having the autonomy to determine how they do those things.”

ACC officials will meet later this month, and will also continue to discuss whether the league will play eight or nine conference games, along with possible scheduling alignments with other conferences, but Swofford said nothing would change for the 2014 season.

“Any change to that, if it were to come, would be after the 2014 season,” Swofford said.

The ACC championship game’s partnership with the city of Charlotte, N.C., came to an end this season, but Swofford said the conference has been “very pleased” with the location, and the ACC is in “ongoing discussions” with Charlotte about the future.
Tags:ACC, John Swofford

Scheduling alignments with other conferences?
We may be moving past 4 "super conferences" and even beyond 3X20 as some on this board speculate to 2 "marketing associations" that may consist of 32 to 36 teams.

(01-12-2014 07:52 AM)XLance Wrote:  “If those requirements were lifted, it gives you much more flexibility in how you schedule,” Swofford said. “I’m a proponent of the conferences having the autonomy to determine how they do those things.”

ACC officials will meet later this month, and will also continue to discuss whether the league will play eight or nine conference games, along with possible scheduling alignments with other conferences, but Swofford said nothing would change for the 2014 season.

“Any change to that, if it were to come, would be after the 2014 season,” Swofford said.

The ACC championship game’s partnership with the city of Charlotte, N.C., came to an end this season, but Swofford said the conference has been “very pleased” with the location, and the ACC is in “ongoing discussions” with Charlotte about the future.
Tags:ACC, John Swofford

Scheduling alignments with other conferences?
We may be moving past 4 "super conferences" and even beyond 3X20 as some on this board speculate to 2 "marketing associations" that may consist of 32 to 36 teams.

That's a potential outcome. But a lot will depend on what happens out West as to whether that potentiality develops legs or not.

(01-12-2014 05:58 AM)CardinalJim Wrote:  The idea that FSU wants to join The SEC is a product of WVU bloggers wet dreams. In 1991 FSU had the opportunity to join The SEC and turned it down. Instead FSU joined The ACC. Bobby Bowden once said it was like "having to choose from between caviar and ribs." On the Tim Brando on Thursday Bobby said: The reason FSU joined The ACC was it was an "easier path to the National Title."

Carry on with your outlandish theories why this happened or didn't. Mulder and Scully will be along shortly to investigate.
CJ

You do realize that the cigarette smoking man now works in long range planning at ESPN?

I don't give a damn what the Big Ten does now since they finally gave up chasing Notre Dame around.

Good luck to them and adios.

(01-12-2014 06:51 AM)allthatyoucantleavebehind Wrote:  I think it's ALL about TV markets. BTN is already in St. Louis.

Really? How? With Mizzou, the BTN would be getting 8 to 9 times more per subscriber.

The Big Ten should have gone for Missouri and Kansas when it added Nebraska. The SEC would have then been stuck choosing between West Virginia or Kansas State for #14.

This would have cut the Big 12 down to the following:

Iowa State
Oklahoma
Oklahoma State
Texas
Texas Tech
Baylor

It may have been easier for the Pac 10 to have gone for the kill with the Big 12 down six schools. The Pac 10 could have even bought out most of UT's share of the Longhorn Network, effectively making it the Pac 16 Network.

The alternative would have been a de facto merger with the football side of the Big East:

XII West - Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas, Texas Tech, Baylor, TCU, Iowa State
XII East - Connecticut, Rutgers, West Virginia, Louisville, Cincinnati, USF, UCF

When Rutgers heads to the B1G and Louisville to the ACC, the XII can respond by adding Temple and Memphis, or simply staying at 12 and moving Iowa State to the East.

I dont see why Rutgers or Maryland can't be better than Louisville .

Rutgers has done well in the Big East and they have good recruiting grounds.
The right coach and playing PSU and OSU and the like will help recruiting.


Maryland has potential and Under Armor money especially DC basketball recruits . Getting out of a North Carolina dominated conference should help .

The only add that is obviously better long term is A&M for the SEC .
PITT, Louisville, Syracuse, Missouri = Rutgers and Maryland in long term potential .

(01-11-2014 10:10 PM)SeaBlue Wrote:  Rule #1 seems to be:

- If you would like an invite, don't have your governor publically solicit said invite (as Missouri's did).

I think Delany's bosses back on campus were extremely uncomfortable with the situation.

Delany did acknowledge that going public with the intention to add a new member was a mistake on his/B1G's part.

Totally agreed.

There's a good article out there talking about how the Nebraska move happened. Perlman and then PSU president Graham Spanier had worked with each other before, and Graham lobbied pretty hard for UNL. Nebraska also capitalized on that Missouri-Notre Dame-Pitt-Rutgers rumor, as during the Big XII meetings that eventually produced the defections, the Big XII schools HAMMERED Missouri, while Nebraska wasn't nearly as pressured (even though it was really UC, UT, and UNL having the deep talks). In the midst of all of that, Nebraska made the phone calls it needed to.

Missouri may have been close to joining the Big Ten...I think they just couldn't proverbially "hold their drink" to the liking of other Big Ten presidents, not really having the ice-cold composure to keep decorum and handle matters "the Big Ten way." And when the governor spoke about Missouri's entitlement...that just about did it.

For a long time, this used to be about Midwest vs. Great Plains "culture." I'd take Nebraska over Missouri to this day based on how often Nebraska and the Big Ten nearly came to be over the last century. Do people just forget that Nebraska was considered for one of the ten schools? And as a replacement for Chicago (that went to Michigan State)? And during the 90's as the Big XII was trying to iron out details?

I don't think it was a bad idea taking Maryland and Rutgers over Missouri, though. UMD and RU are bigger schools, and the region is populated with Big Ten school alumni. I don't consider the door closed on Missouri, though. And, I don't care how many feathers it ruffles, the majority of the Missouri faculty, administrators, and Board/Regents would endorse another push for membership.

What is this I am seeing, some rationality seeping into this thread?

(01-12-2014 06:51 AM)allthatyoucantleavebehind Wrote:  I think it's ALL about TV markets. BTN is already in St. Louis. And Kansas City isn't a big enough market to warrant adding Mizzou to the Big Ten.

A bigger slice of Maryland...and medium slice of DC...is what the league got out of UMD.
A bigger slice of New Jersey...and a small slice of NYC...is what the league got out of Rutgers.

The one "miscalculation" was that I don't think Delany predicted the ACC or the Big 12 temporary stability. I think he assumed--as most of us did--that the whole landscape was pushing towards four super-conferences. And in that scenario, the Big Ten would have been perfectly poised to take 2 more prime teams (Kansas/OU in the West? UNC/UVA in the East?).

"I think it's ALL about TV markets. BTN is alreadIy in St. Louis. And Kansas City isn't a big enough market to warrant adding Mizzou to the Big Ten."
And I guess Lincoln Nebraska is? More people live in KC Metro than all of Nebraska. Nice job there B1G in landing that lucrative market.

Nebraska has a substantial number of alumni in places like Denver and Phoenix - it certainly has helped BTN by adding a national brand. Kansas City is also heavily fractured by professional sports interests (Royals, Chiefs) and the University of Kansas, just down the road in Lawrence. For that matter, I'm sure Nebraska (along with Iowa and Illinois) have a good alumni presence in Kansas City.

(01-12-2014 08:46 AM)JRsec Wrote:  You do realize that the cigarette smoking man now works in long range planning at ESPN?

Now that you mention it, I do remember the Dude or McHver tweeting that last year.
CJ

I think tv market theory is woefully overhyped by the media and has been a much smaller factor in P5 movement than is reported. The G5 moves have clearly been market oriented for the most part.

People forget that the biggest player in this game is ESPN and ESPN derives far more revenue from subscriptions than charges to advertisers for viewers.

Nebraska is far more valuable to ESPN than say Mizzou. More people are passionate about Cornhusker football and they live across a wide swath of America and would mount larger campaigns to cable and satellite were they unable to see Nebraska football.

BTN of course wants to be in large STATES (not markets) where they can command a higher subscription fee but they also want to fill in the gaps and be on in non-Big 10 markets even if the rate is lower. If you want to recruit outside the league footprint you need TV access to recruits. National fan base programs are essential to that.

The SEC, ACC, and Pac-12 networks are only effective if they have schools who command enough interest to gain access outside the footprint.

The AAC took a market driven approach and ended up with a deal well under their expectations. CUSA took a clear market driven approach and we will see in a couple years whether it worked when their deal renews.

(01-12-2014 01:42 PM)CardinalJim Wrote:  

(01-12-2014 08:46 AM)JRsec Wrote:  You do realize that the cigarette smoking man now works in long range planning at ESPN?

Now that you mention it, I do remember the Dude or McHver tweeting that last year.
CJ

It's all been predetermined by the Majestic 12. Realignment is the last piece of a very carefully planned attack on the psyche to convince you that you have no say and no control over what is to come. You've lost your political voice to influence peddling, you've lost your freedom to express yourself to political correctness, you've lost your privacy to homeland security, you've even lost your right to anonymity to technology's ability to recognize and identify your face in a crowd, but none of that got your attention. Only now that even the sports teams of your favorite school are subject to being uprooted and relocated is the public beginning to see that the truth is out there somewhere, but no one is reporting it. They are here. They have soft heads. And they want to end football as we know it. Of course I'm speaking of the cell phone generation. But shh! They are listening and don't trust anyone over 40. That's why they are going after our late life health care with committees to decide whether or not our treatment is cost effective.

(01-11-2014 09:36 PM)Dr. Isaly von Yinzer Wrote:  I think they panicked when the ACC added Notre Dame and I also think they made some BIG TIME blunders in their approach. Only time will tell if I'm right but I'm pretty confident on this one. Had they taken Florida State and Georgia Tech, the ACC would have been dead as a door nail which would have meant more money in the long term for the other four power leagues.

By instead taking arguably one of the league's most expendable schools in Maryland and an AAC school (Rutgers) they spared the ACC and I believe they will most likely live to regret that potentially ENORMOUS mistake.

Ummm taking a state's second most popular schools is the ACC's job? Which, my dear doctor, the ACC did robustly during the past expansion. But no, taking those second schools is not a strategy conducive to staying on top. It's a strategy conducive to survival. For some leagues, survival is all they have. The B1G wants more, and gets more.

But I do agree with the parts of your post not infected with the desperate hope that the B1G will fail. Nebraska over Missouri was a mistake I think, and not a mistake the B1G needed to make, because Missouri was desperate to get in. Missouri: a largeish state; an AAU member. Nebraska: an emptyish state, kicked out of the AAU (and the B1G had to have known they were getting the boot.) But oh hey, Nebraska won some titles in the 90s! Whoopty poop. Stale cable ratings are no reason to let in a school that doesn't fit your institutional profile anymore. And now you're stuck with them and their miles upon miles of empty cornfields and the hope they'll be relevant before their ratings completely disintegrate. Meanwhile Missouri looks like they're having way more fun in the SEC, gor bless 'em.

(01-13-2014 03:09 AM)justinslot Wrote:  

(01-11-2014 09:36 PM)Dr. Isaly von Yinzer Wrote:  I think they panicked when the ACC added Notre Dame and I also think they made some BIG TIME blunders in their approach. Only time will tell if I'm right but I'm pretty confident on this one. Had they taken Florida State and Georgia Tech, the ACC would have been dead as a door nail which would have meant more money in the long term for the other four power leagues.

By instead taking arguably one of the league's most expendable schools in Maryland and an AAC school (Rutgers) they spared the ACC and I believe they will most likely live to regret that potentially ENORMOUS mistake.

Ummm taking a state's second most popular schools is the ACC's job? Which, my dear doctor, the ACC did robustly during the past expansion. But no, taking those second schools is not a strategy conducive to staying on top. It's a strategy conducive to survival. For some leagues, survival is all they have. The B1G wants more, and gets more.

But I do agree with the parts of your post not infected with the desperate hope that the B1G will fail. Nebraska over Missouri was a mistake I think, and not a mistake the B1G needed to make, because Missouri was desperate to get in. Missouri: a largeish state; an AAU member. Nebraska: an emptyish state, kicked out of the AAU (and the B1G had to have known they were getting the boot.) But oh hey, Nebraska won some titles in the 90s! Whoopty poop. Stale cable ratings are no reason to let in a school that doesn't fit your institutional profile anymore. And now you're stuck with them and their miles upon miles of empty cornfields and the hope they'll be relevant before their ratings completely disintegrate. Meanwhile Missouri looks like they're having way more fun in the SEC, gor bless 'em.

Welcome to The Big Ten. Enjoy all the folks who literally lose their mind and all rationality when it comes to their thoughts on The Big Ten.

Even a smart guy like Yinzer loses it. Thinking that The Big Ten's mission in realignment was the destruction of another conference? That type of mentality must have been born through the years of ACC and Big East interaction. More personal projection issues, projecting that way of thinking onto others that have no reason or desire to think or operate in that way.

The destruction of the ACC was not the goal. Maryland wanted in, Rutgers wanted in, both were on the list and approved. Time to move forward and see how it goes. The folks who are already claiming it was a terrible move are just showing this crazy desire of theirs, that you speak of, to see The Big Ten fail. It is such simplistic thinking to think that such is possible.

Are you sure that wasn't the goal? You should read Gordon Gee's comments shortly before he was canned by Ohio State

http://college-football.si.com/2013/05/3...&eref=sihp

Excerpts:

• 6:05: “The blocking strategy is that we simply have now put the ACC in an almost no-win position. So who do they immediately go to? Louisville. They may think about Cincinnati. They may think about Connecticut. But they’ve lost their foothold in that middle part of the area, in that middle part of the Atlantic coast.”

• 9:14: “I think the Big Ten needs to be predatory and positive rather than waiting for other people to take away from them. Very candidly, I think we made a mistake. Because thought about adding Missouri and Kansas at the time. There was not a great deal of enthusiasm about that. I think we should have done that at the time. So we would have had Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas and then moved into that other area. I think, by the way, that that can still happen.”

• 9:42: “I also think this. This is a high possibility. If the ACC continues to struggle, and Florida State goes off to the SEC or something like that, and Clemson moves in a different direction, all of a sudden Virginia and Duke, which are very similar institutions to — and North Carolina — which are very similar institutions to the Big Ten, there is a real possibility that we may end up having that kind of T which goes south. And I could see them joining us. And I could see them having a real interest in joining us.”


Gee knows that if those schools left the ACC it would end the league.

(01-13-2014 08:21 AM)jaminandjachin Wrote:  Are you sure that wasn't the goal? You should read Gordon Gee's comments shortly before he was canned by Ohio State

Gordon likes to pontificate as if he is speaking for a greater power (his conference).

With new members looking like this:

-1 independent
-1 from the Big 12
-1 from the former Big East
-1 from the ACC

I think you can see a softer side of B1G there.