(07-20-2023 03:03 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote: (07-20-2023 05:54 AM)esayem Wrote: (07-20-2023 12:26 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote: It wouldn’t have mattered.
A lot of people keep forgetting that the Tier 1 TV contracts for the Big Ten, SEC, ACC, Pac-12 and Big 12 were all around the same amount even into the 2010s. Generally speaking, the highest paid conference for Tier 1 rights was whoever had the most recently signed contract. (Case in point: the Pac-12 contract that’s about to expire was the largest college sports contract in history when it was signed and that came *after* the Big Ten added Nebraska and the SEC added A&M and Mizzou.)
The true financial game changer was the BTN for the Big Ten. That created so much value *outside* of the Tier 1 rights that it totally changed how we looked at who had the most power in conference realignment. This would have applied even if Florida State and Miami won 10 BCS titles on a row between them for the ACC.
I’m a large believer in the “course correction theory” in hypothetical retroactive time travel in conference realignment (popularized in LOST). That is, even if we go back and try to change some decision point in realignment history (e.g. Miami performs better in the ACC, the old Big East adds Penn State, etc.), the universe would course correct itself and we would still end up with the same conferences that we have today. (This is distinct from the Butterfly Effect theory of time travel, as seen in the original Back to the Future, where even the slightest change to the past could have monumental effects on the future.)
Had the ACC added Virginia Tech and South Carolina when Georgia Tech was brought in, I don't think the SEC would be in South Carolina, they would have Florida State.
If the Big Ten added Notre Dame instead of succumbing to anti-Catholic sentiment, would ND still be Independent?
So no, I totally disagree and those are just two examples.
Anti-Catholic sentiment is a crude misrepresentation of the situation. 100-110 years ago, Notre Dame was not the fine institution it is today. They had far lower academic standards compared to the Big 10 and there was a legitimate concern that the Irish, if admitted to the Big 10, would run rough shod against the rest of the league using athletes that would never have qualified academically at places like Northwestern, Chicago, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
If we’re going to characterize the Big 10 as backwards and anti-Catholic, remind me again what year it was that UNC integrated?
Nice whitewash attempt regarding that noted racist and religious bigot, Michigan's Fielding Yost:
"
A committee commissioned by the University of Michigan president has recommended that the school remove Fielding H. Yost’s name from its ice hockey arena, citing a history of racial issues involving the former football coach and athletic director.
An eight-person panel of university historians recently made the “unanimous” preliminary recommendation after a year-long review of Yost, who worked at Michigan in a high-profile capacity from 1901 to 1941."
https://www.mlive.com/wolverines/2021/05...arena.html
As far as Notre Dame and Catholics, Yost despised them both:
"Among Yost’s distinctions is one not uncommon to America at the turn of the century, and unrelated to football.
Fielding Yost was noted for being anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant.
Now, this is worth noting for the obvious reason that Notre Dame is a Catholic university. Their football team meanwhile was coached by Knute Rockne from 1918-1930. Rockne, who was born in Norway, was an image of everything Yost held personal prejudices against. He was an immigrant coach with Catholic players.
This was all the base of a feud between the two men that lasted past Yost’s coaching days and into his administrative career at Michigan.
Of course, the two had never met on the field to coach against one another. They never met when Rockne was a player either. Instead, after Notre Dame beat Michigan for the first time in 1909 (making the series record Michigan 9 Notre Dame 1), Yost called off the 1910 game.
Fielding Yost would claim, without any basis, that two of Notre Dame’s players should be ineligible. He refused to put Notre Dame on the schedule. Likely, this wasn’t due to ineligible players, but Yost’s personal humiliation losing to Notre Dame.
Whatever the reason that Yost held, he took his hatred of Notre Dame to heart. He refused to schedule Notre Dame both as a coach and as an administrator. The two programs wouldn’t play again until 1940."
https://slapthesign.com/2020/05/10/notre...ding-yost/
"
Notre Dame immediately applied for admission – and was rejected – because as Murray Sperber points out in Shake Down the Thunder, the member schools claimed that the “university division was not large or serious enough and also because of its vague player eligibility rules.”
In response, Notre Dame revised its player eligibility requirements to match those in the Western Conference, and after the conference accepted Indiana and Iowa in 1908, applied again – and was rejected again. This rejection frustrated Fr. Thomas Crumley, chairman of the Notre Dame Athletic Board, who according to Sperber said “it had been fought on theological rather than athletic grounds.”
Fresh off the latest rejection, Notre Dame faced Fielding Yost and Michigan in 1909, having never beaten the Wolverines, losing the first eight contests by a combined score of 121-10. Notre Dame had been shut out in six of those eight contests, but game number nine went a different way.
The Irish were coached by Frank “Shorty” Longman, a former star under Yost earlier in the decade, and Notre Dame shocked Michigan 11-3.
In the postgame recap, the Detroit Free Press bestowed the first use of the Fighting Irish moniker on Notre Dame, as the article described how “eleven fighting Irishmen wrecked the Yost machine [that] afternoon.”
Rather than being congratulatory, Yost revealed his true character in the events following the game – with full support of the University of Michigan. John Kryk describes in the book Natural Enemies that immediately after the game Yost insulted star Irish halfback Red Miller, and in subsequent months left all Notre Dame players off his all-Western ballot and publicly advocated against Notre Dame being named 1909 national champions.
He also publicly criticized the Notre Dame for playing ineligible players – a charge flatly denied by Notre Dame that was found to be untrue (though upon investigation Michigan was found to have an ineligible player, which was quite an embarrassment for the university). The crux of the dispute centered around Notre Dame allowing freshmen and seniors to play, which many other schools did and the university had resumed allowing after being rejected for conference admission in 1908. But this practice was not allowed in the Western Conference.
Lastly, Yost was instrumental in the entire Western Conference boycotting Notre Dame, which Kryk hypothesizes was to “show the Conference that the Catholics were the real dregs of athletic society, not Michigan,” as Michigan itself had its share of scandals and embarrassing moments in the first decade of the 1900s, and though a Western Conference academic member in 1909, had competed as an independent in football.
The Western Conference boycott left Notre Dame at a crossroads, as it significantly damaged the reputation of the university across the country, making it difficult to maintain football relevancy. Notre Dame did not lose a game in 1911 or 1912, but the schedule consisted of Ohio Northern, St. Viator, Butler, Loyola of Chicago, Pittsburgh, St. Bonaventure, Wabash, Marquette, Adrian, Morris Harvey, and St. Louis.
The time in exile resulted in two changes at Notre Dame. First, the fan base became more hardened then ever in its independence, but second, the Notre Dame Faculty Board decided to institute and enforce the Western Conference’s eligibility rules (again) and brought in Jesse Harper as football coach and athletic director. The decision to adopt the standard eligibility rules loosened the boycott everywhere except Ann Arbor.
Rather than relying on the Western Conference ever again, Harper and Notre Dame embraced the newfound independent spirit and embarked on a national schedule, playing Penn State, Texas, and most notably, Army in 1913. Notre Dame shocked the nation in the Army game, and reports from the day note that quarterback Gus Dorais and wide receiver Knute Rockne were unstoppable through the air, demonstrating what a great equalizer the forward pass could be, resulting in a 35-13 victory over Army that put Notre Dame football on the map for good.
Though Yost could never convince his fellow Big Ten members to stop playing the Irish in football again, he did succeed in blocking one final Notre Dame attempt to join the Big Ten in 1926. Again, Sperber’s Shake Down the Thunder describes how Yost (and Amos Alonzo Stagg from Chicago) fed a steady diet of unsubstantiated rumors to the press that hardened opposition to the Notre Dame bid. When Notre Dame was officially rejected, the faculty secretary, Professor J.E. McCarthy shook hands with the Michigan faculty rep, with whom he commented he “engaged but for a moment in a hand clasp of hatred and glare of defiance.”
The third rejection from the Big Ten finally led the university to realize what its fan base and alumni already had – three decades of dismissal, hostility, prejudice and rejection had steeled the Irish independent spirit and forced Notre Dame to become the only national program in college football, as letters written in 1926 to the Notre Dame administration from fans and alumni arguing in favor of independence and against Big Ten membership attest. "
https://www.si.com/college/notredame/foo...resentment
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Where would be had the post-expansion ACC not slumped?
