What if Pitt is available in a few years w no interest from sec/big ten? Va Tech?
Would you still be happy to have UConn/ucf? Genuinely asking because as in the wind as ISU has been we’ve never been geographically isolated.
Realignment Megathread (All The Moves)
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What if Pitt is available in a few years w no interest from sec/big ten? Va Tech?
Would you still be happy to have UConn/ucf? Genuinely asking because as in the wind as ISU has been we’ve never been geographically isolated.
It was a longshot a few years ago with Texas and Oklahoma in the conference. Now, not a chance.
He is stating it incorrectly. It won’t be who we drop, the contract entanglements and lawsuit’s won’t be worth it. It would be what new conference will be formed, and then who do we invite.
It is the natural evolution of almost everything. Look at friend groups or text chains. You don’t intentionally outright drop someone. You form a new group. I am not a paranoid person, but I can see where people could become that way.
I was perusing some P12 message boards.
100% agree on WSU and OSU. I feel terrible for them. There were a couple WSU folks holding out hope for a B12 invite, but most had resigned to going to the Mountain West. Some had looked on the bright side that the MWC would be composed of more peer institutions which would allow them to be more competitive.
CU fan base was 10/70/20. 10% like the idea of going back to the Big 12 like the good old days. 70% would be very unhappy to go back to the B12, but understand there might not be a better option.
20% are completely delusional and believe Coach Prime will get them in the B10 or SEC. To the point they’re getting ticked off at their AD for not doing “everything possible” to get into one of those conferences. It’s actually kind of scary to see how dependent that fan base is on Coach Prime, who think he is the only one who has CU’s best interests in mind. It could be a real meltdown if he wins 3 games this year.
They'll be even more heartbroken when he takes an SEC job in 3 years if he is successful
We could see schools pushed out because of greed by elite media value programs.
But if student-athletes become employees we could see voluntary attrition. Private academically elite schools like Vanderbilt, Duke, Wake and Boston College might not want to invest at the highest levels. Heck a lot of public schools might not either.
The business model of college athletics is broke. Whether we are talking Texas($240M) or Iowa State($110M) every dollar of revenue is spent. And spending more doesn't guarantee more wins in in FB, MBB, WBB- the sports that generate the revenue.
It wouldn't surprise me if some schools get off the greed train. Could we see caps on AD spending by sport? Could we see athletes/employees be paid a fair wage (aka $20/hour) + tuition, lodging & food + NIL + Medical Insurance stipend.
If Texas, Alabama, Ohio State, etc want to pay $50/hour plus more lucrative benefits that's their choice.
Compensation and benefit levels determined at a conference level. If a school cheats at the 2nd tier- death penalty.
WSU fits current MWC footprint geographically more than old pac even. One or both Montana schools fit there too as an option. Still it sucks but at least their fans would have more close drivable games.
Still I’m sure it totally sucks. The MAC wouldn’t make me happy even if ISU were in Ohio or Michigan surrounded by all the teams.
ISU could have ended up in the MWC in a previous doomsday scenario but never the MAC. The MWC is light years ahead of the MAC in every way, shape and form.
Agree, I just meant geography can be nice but it isn’t king. The old big eight is kind of laughably convenient compared to where most conferences are heading.
I spent time driving around Washington the past few years, it takes forever to drive anywhere because there isn’t a straight road to be found, eastern Washington is really isolated. I doubt people in Pullman have ever road tripped much to Pac rivals. Looking at the map they’d at least have more quick road trips for locals/students.
Maybe a salary cap somehow saves college athletics in this bizarro world.
But I'm still in the camp where greed wins and wins again. The conferences start to cut the lower media earners. More for the top. The rest fall to a Big 12 level.
College athletics kind of suck now.
I made the drive from Spokane, WA to Moscow, ID once, pretty late at night in the dead of winter. Yes, isolated and dark and snowy and not fun at all.
And if the sport gets fractured everybody will lose in the end and the same levels of money won’t be there.
The one thing that keeps it as a huge business is having fans from every state and 60 plus schools watch games of schools in their division.
So it’s a little less an argument if greed vs leaving money on the table, it’s more like destroying the industry to make as much money as possible in the next 10 years or so.
If coaches are going to continue to make $5-10 mil a year, ADs demand a staff of 150 people, and everyone demands the facility buildup continues, then the short-term squeeze is going to continue.
I went to Pullman once to visit a friend of mine from ISU. It is the most remote P5 Campus I have been to in person, and I have been to Auburn and Penn State too.
So, we went to lunch in Moscow, ID before driving around the Palouse and stopped at a rodeo somewhere out there in Eastern Washington.
Didn't get to go to a game though. Just took a peek @ Martin Stadium though the gate. Enjoyed the WSU Museum of Art though!
Good luck with that.
Conferences that need a 75% vote in order to get any serious business done aren't going to suddenly start casting some schools aside on the whim of 2-3 schools.
In 2010, at the beginning of the Big 12 missile crisis, there were rumors that there was a group of 6 teams (CU, OU, OSU, UT, TAMU, and TTU) that were minutes away from going to the Pac 10. This was confirmed by OU's Joe Castiglione a few years later.
If we build a hypothetical where that move happened, how would the landscape be different? The PAC is now at 16 teams, and Utah never gets it's call up.
The remaining 6 Big 12 teams would all be on their own to look for new homes, so let's assume Nebraska gets it's Big 10 invite, BUT Mizzou isn't immediately invited to the SEC since A&M isn't available. The Big 10 also goes ahead and adds Maryland and Rutgers to get into the NYC and DC media markets. So the Big 10 is the same as it is currently, while the SEC is still at their pre-2010 membership.
The ACC is at 11 teams with Maryland out, so they raid the Big East, adding Pitt, Syracuse, and West Virginia, while ND joins as a non-FB member. The ACC holds at 14 in hopes that ND will join as a full member.
This leaves us with the remnants of the Big 12 and Big East. The remaining 5 Big 12 schools join up with Louisville, Cinci, and USF from the Big East. Along with that they invite UCF, Houston, TCU, SMU, Utah, and BYU.
This would have been a better case scenario. If the SEC or Big 10 has decided to invite KU and Mizzou, that would have left ISU, KSU, and Baylor on the outside looking in. With the way things turned out in reality, the Cyclones have benefitted immensely and aren't likely to be on the outside.
Pushed out is probably the wrong phrasing. They'll just leave and start their own thing.
I feel college sports has lost its way. It should probably be expected because it's a reflection of the consumer world we live in. More money, means more... happiness, wins, bigger car, bigger house, etc.
As a fan, I would value my ISU sport experience just as much if our athletic department budget was $50M and our peers would have similar budgets. Coaches wouldn't make $5M a year, football teams wouldn't have a team of 30+ analysts or quality control people. Athletes wouldn't have the same facilities or training table- but I don't think the fan experience would decline.
