RE: What Do You WANT To Happen In Realignment?
Swarbrick a respected man in the College Football World tells you he thinks everyone will be oriented around two spheres, the SEC and the Big 10.
The board meets those remarks with a good deal of denial.
The Nebraska president tells us that more expansion is coming within a couple of years.
The board meets those remarks with some speculation and some denial.
People are weary of change, but that's not going to stop it.
Texas and Oklahoma moved, USC and UCLA moved, people were shocked and then went right back into denial that indeed, sweeping changes were coming.
If the Big 10 and SEC held some top-secret high-level discussions and decided to divide the rest of the PAC 12 and ACC up so that each would have 24 schools, I promise you it wouldn't look like anything we would want. Compromise would have to be involved in that process and nobody would be 100% satisfied with a compromise decision reached by agreement of 32 presidents and 2 commissioners. Even if the compromise was done among just the two commissioners it would not be as fan friendly as most would want.
Let me make this clear, I am not denying that it is quite possible such a compromise has been struck, I'm just stating that it is likely something to which I might say, "Yeah I would have taken those 3, but who in the hell picked the other 5?"
And all of it presupposes that the other schools are ready to move.
And what is really, really strange here is that I firmly believe this is true. Normally I'd say it is one thing for us to believe the SEC and Big 10 just divided out and agreed upon who goes where, but it is wholly another to say "and all the schools will go along."
Maybe California, Oregon, Stanford and Washington just needed to know that there was no way they were remaining in control before they committed, because the slow play of the PAC 12 contract seems to have been a factor in which FOX and ESPN passivity was the persuading factor of the reality of the situation. Because, concomitantly with that little drama the Magnificent 7 suddenly arise, and it is far more obvious to me that those 7 had some assurances before they hung their bacon out in public to defy the survival of a conference if radical changes to the finances weren't forthcoming, finances which had to be practical or an immediate way of making a difference.
Now the remarks by Carter alluding to Alberts, and tossing out yet another Super 2 projection, should be taken with the gravity of the concept that made them.
Are we going to continue to deny that the ACC GOR could be rendered moot as a deterrent to such a move. Are we going to continue to pretend that there isn't a hidden honeypot to pay for it, or desire to do it, or a necessity to consolidate beyond athletics?
This is that moment when you are standing at the beach and all the water gets sucked back a mile into the ocean. Are you going to stand there and gawk at the sight and say, "Golly, I've never seen that before, I want to get some shots with my cell phone!" Or, are you going to run like hell for the highest ground you can find because your brain, like that of all the intelligent animals around you, yells danger!
I've stated that the only reason giants move is because they are tall enough to see something that scares them on the horizon. Texas, Oklahoma, UCLA, USC are four such giants. You'd have to be completely obtuse not to grasp the significance of those 4 moving and in doing so abandoning structures they helped to build.
Well now you have some big names inside the industry of College sports and College academia telling you what they see coming, it's just about here, and we are still talking P5?
I believe what I see happening around me and it's coming, likely by 2025, and much of it has little to do with football, and a lot to do with other things happening within our environment of population, its trends, finances, its projections, and the move to the SEC and Big 10 is the higher ground for surviving the tsunami of change rolling our way.
Put up your cell phones and haul ass! Your mental absorption of events has most of you paralyzed. It's real and the signs have been with us for some time now. I think the prevailing attitudes among college presidents and ADs isn't SEC or Big 10, but rather is their room in the lifeboat for me? Two of the three lifeboats will be those massive inflatable totally enclosed buoy like modern survival boats, and the other will be open air and will have oars. But all will be looking for one of the three. And I don't think those jumping on last will care which boat they are in.
I've thought that the Big 10 and SEC would make particular selections in gamesmanship to get this done. That may be in error. Now I think the networks are looking at markets and reach and branding and what they are willing to pay to have, and the conferences will have a little input, but mostly the structure will decide for us. So, what the final alignment looks like might be a good game for the board to play out and I'm sure we will make our best guesses, but I'm not counting on anyone being totally happy with the outcome, especially if it comes more from networks more than from presidents and commissioners.
I thought Kansas was a stretch and Colorado was a fanciful idea to spur discussion, I could have a coyote ugly moment the day things are settled!
(This post was last modified: 05-21-2023 11:15 AM by JRsec.)
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