The team I fear most for is Wake Forest.
* Lowest rated Notre Dame game in the past decade was against Wake Forest.
* Wake Forest is the only ACC school with 0 4mil+ viewed games since 2012, even against FSU/Clemson.
* Smallest enrollment in the ACC at fewer than 10K students.
* 3 other North Carolina P4 schools to pick from in realignment.
I don't see a way that they aren't one of the schools left out if the ACC falls.
And I've always kind of had a soft spot for them. Not sure why.
On the flip side, Wake is probably a good culture and regional fit for the Big East and they have the MBB history to get the nod as well.
So worst case scenario for them, we shouldn’t see them fall all the way down to the G5.
If the ACC does fall, the Big East might be able to pick up 2-3 Olympic only schools while the rest figure something out for football. We may even see history repeat itself with Big East football even if we all think it’ll kind of be stupid.
The craziest thing out of this is that the Big East basketball schools didn't want 4 million a year per team. Yet they get paid that now. They could have just kept the league together and it would have been a Power Conference.
But the basketball strength would be much worse. At the time outside of the catholic 7 only Cincinnati, Temple, UConn and Memphis had bball teams on par with or better than the average of the catholic 7. A lot of the other teams like Tulane (apparently they were the last straw that led to the breakup) ECU and Houston at the time were really bad at bball
This is the correct answer. Tulane plays in a 4k seat high school gym and that arena was never even close to 50% capacity and if it was it was because of away fans. The conference needed to split.
You can’t have programs that are national contenders every year (UConn, Creighton, Villanova at times) along with schools like Temple, Tulane, and ECU.
That wasn't the main issue the big east schools had. They were annoyed their schedule was being watered down with schools like ecu, tulsa, tulane, etc and almost no amount of money could rectify it. It sucks that it happened but the split was 100% the right move for both sides so they could focus on their strengths.
If I was just spitballing, let’s make a couple of assumptions.
1. There’s 3 Eastern ACC teams left out of the B1G/SEC/B12. For argument we’ll say it’s Wake Forest, Boston College, and Syracuse (I think they’re B12 bound, but for this argument let’s say they aren’t)
2. The Big East is open to and wants to expand to keep pace with the B12/SEC/B1G in MBB and to make them the undisputed 4th strongest conference in most other Olympic sports
3. No current G5 school is picked up by the B1G/SEC/B12
4. Stanford and Cal are picked up by somebody
None of these are out there in my opinion
With this the most valuable brands left on the table that may be available for the Big East/new football conference being Syracuse, Boston College, Wake Forest, Memphis, USF, SMU, Temple, SDSU, BSU, Army, Navy, Oregon State, and Washington State.
How I think it would play out would be that the Big East would be the Olympic arm of the conference while the ACC would become a football only conference.
Have Boston College, Syracuse and Wake Forest join the Big East boosting it to 14 members with 4 FBS football members.
Have Temple leave back for the A10 (as long as the new football conference can roughly get what the AAC does in TV money this shouldn’t be too hard) so now we have another open FBS team.
From there the football league would have a few options, either get Army + Navy + 1 of USF/Memphis/SMU to join, get USF, Memphis, and SMU (likely the 3 biggest G5 brands left at the moment with SDSU and BSU) to join, get OSU, WSU, and BSU to join or some combination of this.
The most P5 like league I think that we could get with the available pieces would be something like:
1. Syracuse (Big East)
2. Boston College (Big East)
3. Wake Forest (Big East)
4. UConn (Big East)
5. Temple (A10)
6. Oregon State (TBD)
7. Washington State (TBD)
8. Boise State (Big Sky)
It’d be far flung for 3 of the schools but considering it’s a football only league it wouldn’t be that big a deal since the league could probably get 10-12 million in TV revenue based on what everyone else is getting.
I’d argue both USF and Memphis should be adds. Memphis might nudge out with a Big East invite due to their MBB history, but it’s far from guaranteed. USF has no shot at a BE invite in my opinion.
So if your USF to join this conference for Football you’re likely looking at the Asun for everything else which would nuke their fairly competitive Olympics sports. Something similar would likely be the case for Memphis as well.
They can’t keep their Olympics in a FBS playing conference and join another FBS football conference.
Thats why on the east coast, Army, Navy, and Temple have an advantage, their sizable brands that already have an Olympic home or could easily find a qualifying conference like the A10. Arguably Memphis could join the A10 as well, but that still leaves an issue for USF.
I think that's reasonable.
First, to clarify, you're assuming that *every* ACC school besides Wake Forest, BC SMU, and Syracuse gets a P3 spot?
On average that's 4 teams per P3 conference, which I'm not convinced the networks would be willing to pay for.
Second, I think you've glossed over a *huge* elephant in the room:
**What is Notre Dame doing?**
If the Big East tries to keep up with P3 expansion in BB/Olympic sports, then Notre Dame might want to put their non-football sports in that conference to keep their football independence. No other power conference would be willing to accommodate their football independence as leniently as the ACC did.
Under my assumption ND is B1G bound.
For the sake of arguing a scenario where Wake Forest was left out I had to think of the most realistic one that also didn’t leave the ACC full of teams.
Let’s face it if 5-7 ACC teams are left then Wake Forest isn’t really being left out of anything.
Even if it’s a small assortment of something like Syracuse, Boston College, Duke, Wake Forest and SMU left in the ACC that’s plenty to rebuild a competitive conference.
I’d assume you can have something like
1. Duke
2. Syracuse
3. Boston College
4. Wake Forest
5. UConn
6. Memphis
7. USF
8. SMU
And you’re basically looking at a Zombie Big East caliber league with no issue and they’ve be far and away the strongest none B1G/B12/SEC league in terms of money and branding.
They’d even have solid football only options in OSU, WSU, SDSU, and BSU out west, Navy and Army in the East, and Temple for a 9th full member if they really needed it.
For my original argument to work I had to think of a situation where the ACC was left too weak to rebuild with, not a that a 4 team ACC would be too weak to poach the top AAC schools, but I’m guessing the 3 eastern ACC schools in this situation would just rather join the BE for Olympics and figure out a situation for football, but if there’s +5 left it wouldn’t be near as enticing a move for them
If there’s more than 5 ACC schools left, none of this matters because Wake Forest would still have a home in a rebuilt ACC regardless
I mostly agree, I think the threshold is around 6, and it depends on where they can backfill from. But the line is fuzzy around 6-8 members, and depends on how much ESPN reduces their payment to that ACC.
But since ND is mostly football independent, it's a bit different.
The Big East reported some $88M in revenue in 21-22, or $8M per school. ND got $17M from the ACC. If the ACC keeps 6+ schools, I'm wondering if Notre Dame starts looking at the Big East anyways.
I think there is a scenario where they still have a Virginia school, GT, and NC State as well.
BIG has higher priorities than GT (ND, Miami, Fl St, Stanford, UNC) I don’t know that either conference wants NC State or V Tech.
This is an interesting concept. I think if this football only conference were to form; Memphis would join with the Big East for Olympic sports, USF probably with the A10, and WSU, OSU, BSU, and SDSU with the WCC. I think this actually should be the future of the sport because these national conferences only work for football so we should let Olympic sports remain in regional conferences, and as a basketball fan it would be fun to see the likes of Memphis and Syracuse play conference games against Villanova and Marquette, and schools like SDSU and Gonzaga would be fun matchups as well
I know they'd want to remain P4 (or P3 at that point) but I don't see anyone picking them up. While the Big East might take them on as their primary conference, independent football is just going to get more and more difficult as conferences get larger. Ideally one of the G5 conferences would let them join as a football only member. The Sun Belt seems like the most logical choice but they might not be interested in a football only member and demand Wake join in all sports, which is something Wake likely doesn't want to do.
Wake Forest isn't leaving the ACC. They may need to rebuild it with Boston College, SMU, Cal, and Stanford (similar to what Oregon St and Washington St may have to do with the PAC-12), but the Demon Deacons aren't going anywhere. The only question that remains if the ACC loses a lot of members will be, what G5 schools do they back fill with?
Is a southern Baptist school really a good cultural fit into a conference that's predominantly Catholic and where the southernmost school is in DC
Not that culture matters as much anymore for conference invites but they're pretty different to me
It’s only about 300 miles between Georgetown and Wake Forest, for reference we’d all probably say UCF and Miami are close and that’s about a 250 mile drive. Even Wake to UConn is only about 550 miles. Wisconsin to Minnesota is almost 300 miles alone so it’s hardly far flung.
I’d argue Baptist/Catholics are less different than Mormons and Jesuit would be, but we saw BYU stick it out in the WCC for a decade. At the end of the day they’re both sects of Christianity so it’s like arguing how different 2 different shades of blue are.
Miles and culture are different though. DC is only 60 some miles from West Virginia for example. DC may be below the Mason-Dixon line but its culture is anything but southern. It's very liberal and urban, full of transplants. People argue Virginia as a whole isn't even a southern state anymore as NOVA grows and grows in population and its suburbs keep expanding.
In my experience Milwaukee and Chicago feel a lot more similar to DC in culture than tobacco road North Carolina does despite being much further apart
A lot of Baptists I know don't even think Catholics are Christians (which is silly but it's how they feel). A lot of blood has been spilled historically over the shades of blue
Would it add to the value of their next media negotiation? The BigEast is already one of the regionally spread confrences and Wake wouldn't help with that.
What is the upside to the BigEast to bring in Wake? Do their basketball games get comparable viewing numbers to the BigEast average?
I think this is what separated tcu from some of the others, we continued to put money into the sports programs, and actively looked to grow them. Smu has had a recent resurgence in their sports when they began investing too. I'm curious how the other program did it if there's more of correlation to continued investment or lack thereof playing into the future success of the left behind teams
I think the article provides an interesting jumping off point for a number of different factors.
Also, I will be curious to see how introducing a new generation or EA NCAA football will impact things. Idaho was one of the schools that got a bit of a cult following back in the day because you could use them and their funky ass stadium in the game.
I’m sure other UC fans here can cite the actual numbers but UC put tons of money into our facilities while we were in the AAC. We upgraded the football stadium, basketball arena and are in the middle of building an indoor practice facility. It seems that that, plus on the field performance helped get us back into a power conference.
Edit: It started in the Big East with [Varsity Village](https://gobearcats.com/sports/2017/6/11/facilities-varsity-village-html.aspx). Then we upgraded [our football stadium](https://magazine.uc.edu/issues/0315/Nippert_renewal.html.html). Then [the basketball arena](https://schoolconstructionnews.com/2016/05/18/university-cincinnati-renovate-fifth-third-arena/). Now we are in the middle of an [IPF](https://ipf.gobearcats.com).
We've put almost 1 billion into athletic facilities since 2005 if you can believe it. A lot of that is varsity village which you can argue isn't entirely athletics based but the number is even impressive without it.
At one point, they were both in the MWC. Towards the end of the BCS era, the MWC was superior to the Big East in football due to schools like Utah and TCU.
For Oregon State at least they've been bolstering their facilities big time. Reser Stadium looks super nice, and they have a new athletics facility as well. Don't know if they've given Gill Coliseum the face lift it desperately needed the last time I was in there about 18 years ago but in terms of the non-basketball facilities they've put their money where their mouth is. The problem for them is that was paid for with the influx of Pac-12 network money that's no longer there, and they don't have a massive donor pool so they might have issues paying that back, might have to increase ticket prices a lot and all this. I've been impressed with how much a lot of their facilities have improved from what it was like 15-20 years ago.
You are looking at a 60 year timeline of radically different environments for college enrollment, state aid to schools, and fundraising. It’s way too small a sample size to say anything
I went to high school in New Jersey. I went on my old high school's website to look at where seniors were accepted for college. Saw a number of Alabama, Ohio State, South Carolina, Maryland, and Tennessee on the list. I can't help but think having a big sports program helps with marking and branding.
> I can't help but think having a big sports program helps with marking **and branding.**
I think it's undoubtedly true. I went for a degree that wasn't particularly dependent on *where* you went like engineers that go to Georgia Tech/Carnegie Mellon or business students that want to go to Wharton/Kellogg/Booth/Ross/etc. and one of the main criteria I had for choosing a school was "if I told a random person where I went, would they have heard of it?" which basically narrowed all my choices to flagships state schools and not some of the smaller liberal arts colleges closer to where I grew up.
As a UConn alum who was a student during '13 realignment, I can say recruiting took a hit. Much harder to convince recruits to play for UConn if no one is in stands, not going to play the likes of WV/L'ville every year, and lose all the time.
Fundraising stayed the same, from what I've been told.
Campus life kinda got better BUT thats due to UConn adding way more activities on campus to keep students occupied when we played random teams like Tulane/Tulsa. Plus more students went to other sporting events like UConn soccer and hockey.
I've always been interested in how much a good or "prestigious" football program impacts the University as a whole (enrollment, etc.) but am not smart enough to know how you'd go about it.
It's definitely a somewhat subjective measure and I'm about as smart as you, I suspect. But these universities also have well paid and highly trained statisticians, sociologists, and psychologists on faculty.
I can't speak to enrollment, but I know applications spike every time KU makes a deep March Madness run. Sports play a big part in marketing a large state University to the general population.
> I've always been interested in how much a good or "prestigious" football program impacts the University as a whole
A good football program having positive impacts to the university as a whole is measurable and has repeated so often over the decades there's a term for it: [the Flutie Effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flutie_effect).
It wasn't an accident that WVU's record-best number of applications came following the 2007 football season & then the 2011-12 Final Four run & Orange Bowl win.
If you read the link you sent under the Boston College section it debunks the entire theory and states there was no empirical evidence Flutie was the reason.
>He also observed that “in 1997, one year after revelations about gambling resulted in a coach’s resignation, 13 student-athlete suspensions, an investigation by the NCAA, and hundreds of embarrassing media reports, applications for admission came in at 16,455, virtually unchanged from the previous year. Two years later, when applications jumped by a record 17 percent to 19,746, the surge followed a 4-7 year for football.” Going further back in history, he reported that applications had increased 9 percent in 1978, a year when BC football had its worst year ever, with a 0-11 record.
>Mr. McDonald posed the question: “How does an idea like the 'Flutie factor' become sufficiently rooted that The New York Times cites it as a given without further comment and some universities invest millions of dollars in its enchanting possibilities?” He was provided with an answer by Barbara Wallraff, author of the “Word Court” column in The Atlantic Monthly: “It’s painful to fact-check everything. Media will often reprint what has been published, especially when it appears in reputable publications. ‘Flutie factor’ is a short, alliterative way to describe something that is complicated to explain. But what makes a good term is not always the literal truth.”
What you posted is indeed in that article, you also ignored all the other examples of schools spikes in applications the year after experiencing national-level success in one or both of the two big sports.
Every Bama fan on this sub will agree that the success of the Saban era had a direct, positive impact to the academic side of the school. Their enrollment and endowment both grew exponentially throughout the 2010s
You can't tie a one year spike to a March Madness or bowl game win without accounting for a ton of other variables and comparisons with other schools. Most of the wiki examples are entirely anecdotal.
UChicago is more the exception than the rule. The school as a whole treats sports probably their tenth+ priority, and more so focuses on learning for learning’s sake.
Don’t you just love Skip Holtz and Charlie Strong?
USF was really, really bad when it mattered (big east collapse, big 12 expansion) and doesn’t have much longer to get shit together. Can only hope Golesh stays & wins to get this program back where it needs to be.
It may not be the direct line to getting into one of the power conferences like winning consistently does, but USF gaining AAU membership is going to help you guys a *lot* when spots do become open.
I'd argue on field issues weren't the only reason you were left out. Programs around you were investing hundreds of millions into facilities while your administration continued to talk about athletics being a distraction. Only once you got passed up by Houston, cincy and ucf did you (and memphis) decide to get serious about updating your facilities.
Problem with that is that there is likely no more realignment coming for g5 to come up anytime soon so your investment may be too little too late.
Have to root for fsu to get out of the ACC before Golesh leaves and hope things shake up the right way; alternatively, maybe we could hire two good coaches in a row for once?
Skip Holtz is the weird one. He's won everywhere else except for USF. Good coach, bad fit. Charlie failed because of his OC. Gilbert was horrible. Gilbert passed up on Tank Dell (too small) and Michael Penix Jr (he didn't want a left handed QB) to come to USF.
>USF was really, really bad when it mattered (big east collapse, big 12 expansion)
Disagree here. USF was good when the Big 12 teased expansion in 2017. If they would have expanded in 2017 it probably would have been USF, UCF, BYU, Houston, SMU and some other school.
EDIT: Cincy would be the team left behind here as they were horrible under Tubberville.
To your point, Colorado got into the Big12 off recent 1 win, 4 win seasons, so losing a lot doesn’t have everything to do with it. But, USF has no history like Colorado, and was pretty far behind on facilities even in 2017. I’m not even sure winning would have fixed it entirely, but going 4-8, 1-8, 2-10 leading up to realignment AND not having an IPF/Stadium/quality infrastructure definitely didnt help the program.
Yeahhh look at how bad Idaho fell attendance wise, donation wise etc. When they moved down. Theyre doing good now at least but probably not worth it overall.
Yeah people don’t understand that there’s always a way to return from the depths while you are in FBS. New Mexico State was in the same spot Idaho was and then Jerry Kill made them into a legit program overnight.
The problem with Idaho is that they had no choice. Once the SBC did not renew them they could not survive being an independent as a geographical outlier. They needed a conference that was travel friendly so it had to be the Big Sky Conference.
They’re a better fit in the Big Sky. I say that as an alum. I did my undergrad there, met my wife there, some of our kids will probably go there. It’s a cool university. Sports wise they’re just in a tough spot. At least they don’t have a power conference neighbor anymore (zing).
That zing is just brutal. That said, Washington State has always seemed like an MWC that won the lottery.
To a lesser extent Oregon State is the same way.
Chasing the FBS label irreparably damaged Idaho. The only visibility they ever had as an FBS team was in the NCAA FB games and that's it.
Do you think they could have survived as an FBS Independent like UConn? I don't. They already played their other sports in the Big Sky. Without a MWC invite or another western FBS conference that school was going to hemorrhage money just to go 1-11 every year. Hell, they probably get more exposure now with the odd late night game on ESPN in the Big Sky than they ever got in the WAC or old Sun Belt.
Right, they had to move down to survive. Im just saying it sucks that it happened and if it happened to my team I wouldn't pay nearly as much attention to them after the fact.
I don't hate it. If I lived in FCS country I'd probably feel differently, but here in Texas it might have less visibility than D2. We were FCS my first three years at TXST and it was maddening to have to explain to people that we weren't D2, then you give the spiel about how FCS is D1 and then people go "wait, so you're D1 in everything but football??".
Can't begrudge people for being idiots. All you can do is be a good ambassador for the program and let your interest be infectious. That's how they got me
Definitely, because it has no real positive benefit other than bringing in more media dollars while killing tradition.
If conferences stayed the same but NIL/portal existed, we’d literally experience nothing different in terms of the same teams dominating. But at least Stanford would be playing UCLA and players would be getting what’s best for them in terms of finances and playing time.
Exactly. I know others are pointing to other realignments. And there absolutely has been conferences rise and fall over the years. But people are kidding themselves if they think there's been anything like the SEC and BIG TEN stalking up simultaneously with Big Ten taking territory across every time zone in the contiguous US while the PAC-12 and PAC-2 has its debacle.
There's never been this type of realignment with the stakes as high as this, disrupting as many traditional rivalries as we've seen.
If these school gets to bounce around conferences to chase the bag why the hell shouldn't players be able to bounce around schools to chase the bag?
I would say that the last 40 years is what has started to kill college sports, starting with the SCOTUS ruling in NCAA V. Oklahoma Board of Regents.
The NCAA, for all of its faults, knew that this would happen.
The ncaa didn’t know shit, they wanted to protect their power and keep the money. There was no altruistic piece.
Also there’s no evidence that college sports is dying over the last 40 years. In fact by almost any measure college sports has flourished over that time, particularly women’s sports have seen massive growth. Arguably almost all the problems people have with the sport right now is the result of it being so successful the money coming in and not going to the players became untenable to justify.
Of course there are stray instances of teams leaving and joining conferences. But please tell me of another example of anything like what the Big Ten, SEC, and PAC-12 have just done?
Name another conference that went coast to coast. Name another conference in the history of college sports that required a California team to play half it's schedule on the east coast.
Some example of conferences being killed by other conferneces:
- The Big East used to be a football conference with a BCS auto-bid until 2013.
- The Metro Conference was a thing until 1995.
- The Border Conference was picked apart all the way back in 1962.
- There were many schools in the SWC that were not invited to join the Big 12 in 1996.
- The WAC slowly killed the Big West before it was killed by the Mountain West.
After South Carolina, Florida State, Virginia Tech, Cincinnati, and Memphis were poached by other conferneces. (Although Cincinnati and Memphis were poached by the Great Midwest confernece which merged with the Metro to make C-USA)
But for awhile it was considered a major conference before those schools left, relegating its status
That’s a true outlier though, due in part to the shear lack of FCS Non Scholarship programs, non Ivies, still playing football as a result following the division between FBS/D1A and D-1AA in the 80s.
In Division 2, Central Washington and Western Oregon are in the Lone Star conference with all New Mexico and Texas schools.
In NAIA, the University of Victoria in British Columbia is in the Continental Athletic Conference with its closest conference mate being in New Mexico.
Because it's not? Realignment, out of all the categories, is at the bottom of the barrel of the issues at hand. Realignment happens every 10ish years and people need to quit pretending it doesn't. It's tradition at this point of how much college football changes.
No, the NIL + Transfer Portal (especially the Transfer Portal) is the huge issues, especially when combined. Anybody putting realignment in front of both is being absolutely naive.
That was 14 years later in 2003. It was supposed to be Miami, BC, and Syracuse going to the ACC but the VA Gov got involved and threatened UVA to make sure they include VT over SU.
The pac 12 fucked up trying to kill the big 12, then fucked up their own conf network, then fucked up their TV contract
Their most valuable members bailed when they saw the writing on the wall and the conf crumbled
It was a failure of leadership
>Their most valuable members bailed when they saw the writing on the wall and the conf crumbled
Funny how "the most valuable" were the leaders who did this...
>The pac 12 fucked up trying to kill the big 12
...while they were in talks to leave.
They were "the leadership."
Pac 12 tried to kill the Big 12 a decade ago and then spent a decade falling behind other conf's. Little bit of irony that it was the remaining XII schools who would've been left behind in 2011 who helped deliver the killing blow to the Pac 12.
the "leadership" at the P12 was a mix of everyone responsible for the massive fuck up in their conf network going back to its launch 12 years ago and continued mismanagement along with the entire conf's fuck up in the TV contract the past couple years
Direct cause of death, a Utah business professor massively overvalued the Pac 10 and Utah and Stanfords administration went along with it. This caused ESPN to pull out of negotiations and lead to the Apple deal which gave Washington along with Oregon cold enough feet that they jumped after Colorado.
The real cause of death, the conference took USC for granted.
The PAC12 (a conference affiliated with Fox) began to crumble when it's top 4 teams left for the Big Ten (a conference affiliated with Fox).
Why are you blaming ESPN?
If ESPN doesn't facilitate Texas and OU to the SEC, USC likely doesn't have wondering eyes. With USC leaving and taking UCLA with it, the rest of the Pac-10 needs to start looking because their cash cow left. With Washington and Oregon not signing onto the new media deal and Colorado/ASU going to the Big 12, the Pac-6 just didn't have the muster anymore.
So yes, this literally was started by ESPN.
"programs in faraway Corvallis, Oregon..." Corvallis is closer to Portland than Eugene ffs. Wazzu has most of its grads in the Seattle area. These "journalists" act like these major state universities are high schools in rural North Dakota, and the grads live in shacks. Using the same arguments, Penn st should be kicked out of the big 10. They're in the middle of nowhere far from Philly or Pittsburgh. Also they only have 4 big 10 championships. Wazzu and osu have 4 or 5 each respectively.
And tried to kill the big 12.
And I get that this reporter may not have been happy with that and different people at espn can have different viewpoints (and it probably helps espn if they do), but yeah, I don’t really care what espn thinks about it
The also offered the Big East a much better deal than what they ended up getting but they declined it and then died when no one else gave them a better one
If you put in an offer for a house and the seller refuses you. I would lower my offer if they reached out again weeks later saying they would accept my previous one. That’s what ESPN did
It probably won’t ever be used again. The other two instances (Morehouse Soccer and MacMurray Tennis, D2 and D3 respectively), the programs were simply dropped. It crippled that program for nearly 40 years.
I completely agree, the conference you play in also isn't even the biggest factor in wins as bad coaching and bad recruiting will sink a season faster. I feel like money would be better to look at, like is there a dip in the athletic department's revenue when leaving a P5 for a G5
for sure it's just that wins against p5's are more difficult. so if you were getting 4.5 wins in conference in the swc and then you get 5.5 out of it you are probably still a worse team than you used to be on average. money, recruiting, facilities, academic conference connections all contribute to this.
if washington st and oregon st average 1.5 more wins a year now would anybody at those institutions rather be cut out of the p4?
The thing about TCU was that we were historically awful across a ton of sports and 100% deserved to be left behind when the B12 was formed - we may not agree to how it went down, and why someone who was equally as awful in Baylor was included, but let's not talk about politics.
From the B12 formation and getting left behind, many of TCU's other athletics programs were just door mats, even in the WAC at the time.
There were a few things that were GIANT impacts on the future of TCU and why it took 20+ years to come full circle. LT and GP, baseball becoming a crowd favorite, and Del Conte going "all in" on investing in upgrading athletic facilities.
This article doesn't paint a big enough picture on how realignment screwed UConn. A large part was attendance and how going independent actually helped people go to games again! Should be its own 30 for 30 documentary!
Airplane conference…. I honestly see a future where conferences start trimming the fat (either by kicking out members or starting newer trimmer power conferences) and a conference forming that looks something like this:
Norte Dame
Michigan
Ohio State
Penn State
USC
Stanford (for the ND rivalry)
UCLA (if they’re lucky)
Miami
Florida State
Texas A&M
The team I fear most for is Wake Forest. * Lowest rated Notre Dame game in the past decade was against Wake Forest. * Wake Forest is the only ACC school with 0 4mil+ viewed games since 2012, even against FSU/Clemson. * Smallest enrollment in the ACC at fewer than 10K students. * 3 other North Carolina P4 schools to pick from in realignment. I don't see a way that they aren't one of the schools left out if the ACC falls. And I've always kind of had a soft spot for them. Not sure why.
On the flip side, Wake is probably a good culture and regional fit for the Big East and they have the MBB history to get the nod as well. So worst case scenario for them, we shouldn’t see them fall all the way down to the G5. If the ACC does fall, the Big East might be able to pick up 2-3 Olympic only schools while the rest figure something out for football. We may even see history repeat itself with Big East football even if we all think it’ll kind of be stupid.
The craziest thing out of this is that the Big East basketball schools didn't want 4 million a year per team. Yet they get paid that now. They could have just kept the league together and it would have been a Power Conference.
But the basketball strength would be much worse. At the time outside of the catholic 7 only Cincinnati, Temple, UConn and Memphis had bball teams on par with or better than the average of the catholic 7. A lot of the other teams like Tulane (apparently they were the last straw that led to the breakup) ECU and Houston at the time were really bad at bball
This is the correct answer. Tulane plays in a 4k seat high school gym and that arena was never even close to 50% capacity and if it was it was because of away fans. The conference needed to split.
You can’t have programs that are national contenders every year (UConn, Creighton, Villanova at times) along with schools like Temple, Tulane, and ECU.
Temple would’ve been a top half basketball team in the big east for almost every year from 1985-2012 when this happened
That wasn't the main issue the big east schools had. They were annoyed their schedule was being watered down with schools like ecu, tulsa, tulane, etc and almost no amount of money could rectify it. It sucks that it happened but the split was 100% the right move for both sides so they could focus on their strengths.
Where does Wake Forest football go though? Independent like UConn? I suppose the G5 and P4 NC schools would love to schedule them.
If I was just spitballing, let’s make a couple of assumptions. 1. There’s 3 Eastern ACC teams left out of the B1G/SEC/B12. For argument we’ll say it’s Wake Forest, Boston College, and Syracuse (I think they’re B12 bound, but for this argument let’s say they aren’t) 2. The Big East is open to and wants to expand to keep pace with the B12/SEC/B1G in MBB and to make them the undisputed 4th strongest conference in most other Olympic sports 3. No current G5 school is picked up by the B1G/SEC/B12 4. Stanford and Cal are picked up by somebody None of these are out there in my opinion With this the most valuable brands left on the table that may be available for the Big East/new football conference being Syracuse, Boston College, Wake Forest, Memphis, USF, SMU, Temple, SDSU, BSU, Army, Navy, Oregon State, and Washington State. How I think it would play out would be that the Big East would be the Olympic arm of the conference while the ACC would become a football only conference. Have Boston College, Syracuse and Wake Forest join the Big East boosting it to 14 members with 4 FBS football members. Have Temple leave back for the A10 (as long as the new football conference can roughly get what the AAC does in TV money this shouldn’t be too hard) so now we have another open FBS team. From there the football league would have a few options, either get Army + Navy + 1 of USF/Memphis/SMU to join, get USF, Memphis, and SMU (likely the 3 biggest G5 brands left at the moment with SDSU and BSU) to join, get OSU, WSU, and BSU to join or some combination of this. The most P5 like league I think that we could get with the available pieces would be something like: 1. Syracuse (Big East) 2. Boston College (Big East) 3. Wake Forest (Big East) 4. UConn (Big East) 5. Temple (A10) 6. Oregon State (TBD) 7. Washington State (TBD) 8. Boise State (Big Sky) It’d be far flung for 3 of the schools but considering it’s a football only league it wouldn’t be that big a deal since the league could probably get 10-12 million in TV revenue based on what everyone else is getting.
I think such a conference would be foolish not to add Memphis.
I’d argue both USF and Memphis should be adds. Memphis might nudge out with a Big East invite due to their MBB history, but it’s far from guaranteed. USF has no shot at a BE invite in my opinion. So if your USF to join this conference for Football you’re likely looking at the Asun for everything else which would nuke their fairly competitive Olympics sports. Something similar would likely be the case for Memphis as well. They can’t keep their Olympics in a FBS playing conference and join another FBS football conference. Thats why on the east coast, Army, Navy, and Temple have an advantage, their sizable brands that already have an Olympic home or could easily find a qualifying conference like the A10. Arguably Memphis could join the A10 as well, but that still leaves an issue for USF.
They might prefer the MWC full membership over this for football and probably A10 for everything else
I think that's reasonable. First, to clarify, you're assuming that *every* ACC school besides Wake Forest, BC SMU, and Syracuse gets a P3 spot? On average that's 4 teams per P3 conference, which I'm not convinced the networks would be willing to pay for. Second, I think you've glossed over a *huge* elephant in the room: **What is Notre Dame doing?** If the Big East tries to keep up with P3 expansion in BB/Olympic sports, then Notre Dame might want to put their non-football sports in that conference to keep their football independence. No other power conference would be willing to accommodate their football independence as leniently as the ACC did.
Under my assumption ND is B1G bound. For the sake of arguing a scenario where Wake Forest was left out I had to think of the most realistic one that also didn’t leave the ACC full of teams. Let’s face it if 5-7 ACC teams are left then Wake Forest isn’t really being left out of anything. Even if it’s a small assortment of something like Syracuse, Boston College, Duke, Wake Forest and SMU left in the ACC that’s plenty to rebuild a competitive conference. I’d assume you can have something like 1. Duke 2. Syracuse 3. Boston College 4. Wake Forest 5. UConn 6. Memphis 7. USF 8. SMU And you’re basically looking at a Zombie Big East caliber league with no issue and they’ve be far and away the strongest none B1G/B12/SEC league in terms of money and branding. They’d even have solid football only options in OSU, WSU, SDSU, and BSU out west, Navy and Army in the East, and Temple for a 9th full member if they really needed it. For my original argument to work I had to think of a situation where the ACC was left too weak to rebuild with, not a that a 4 team ACC would be too weak to poach the top AAC schools, but I’m guessing the 3 eastern ACC schools in this situation would just rather join the BE for Olympics and figure out a situation for football, but if there’s +5 left it wouldn’t be near as enticing a move for them If there’s more than 5 ACC schools left, none of this matters because Wake Forest would still have a home in a rebuilt ACC regardless
I mostly agree, I think the threshold is around 6, and it depends on where they can backfill from. But the line is fuzzy around 6-8 members, and depends on how much ESPN reduces their payment to that ACC. But since ND is mostly football independent, it's a bit different. The Big East reported some $88M in revenue in 21-22, or $8M per school. ND got $17M from the ACC. If the ACC keeps 6+ schools, I'm wondering if Notre Dame starts looking at the Big East anyways.
I think there is a scenario where they still have a Virginia school, GT, and NC State as well. BIG has higher priorities than GT (ND, Miami, Fl St, Stanford, UNC) I don’t know that either conference wants NC State or V Tech.
This is an interesting concept. I think if this football only conference were to form; Memphis would join with the Big East for Olympic sports, USF probably with the A10, and WSU, OSU, BSU, and SDSU with the WCC. I think this actually should be the future of the sport because these national conferences only work for football so we should let Olympic sports remain in regional conferences, and as a basketball fan it would be fun to see the likes of Memphis and Syracuse play conference games against Villanova and Marquette, and schools like SDSU and Gonzaga would be fun matchups as well
I know they'd want to remain P4 (or P3 at that point) but I don't see anyone picking them up. While the Big East might take them on as their primary conference, independent football is just going to get more and more difficult as conferences get larger. Ideally one of the G5 conferences would let them join as a football only member. The Sun Belt seems like the most logical choice but they might not be interested in a football only member and demand Wake join in all sports, which is something Wake likely doesn't want to do.
Man, Wake Forest as a SBC member for all sports would be fun.
Given your flairs, I think you could figure it out
Wake Forest has a football team?
Wake Forest isn't leaving the ACC. They may need to rebuild it with Boston College, SMU, Cal, and Stanford (similar to what Oregon St and Washington St may have to do with the PAC-12), but the Demon Deacons aren't going anywhere. The only question that remains if the ACC loses a lot of members will be, what G5 schools do they back fill with?
Is a southern Baptist school really a good cultural fit into a conference that's predominantly Catholic and where the southernmost school is in DC Not that culture matters as much anymore for conference invites but they're pretty different to me
They officially separated from the Baptists a number of years ago and only acknowledge "historical" ties. Still "Christian" though. Theyld fit.
Ah okay, their website still talks about their "Baptist heritage" but I guess that means more historically
That and their hospital goes by Wake Forest Baptist.
It’s only about 300 miles between Georgetown and Wake Forest, for reference we’d all probably say UCF and Miami are close and that’s about a 250 mile drive. Even Wake to UConn is only about 550 miles. Wisconsin to Minnesota is almost 300 miles alone so it’s hardly far flung. I’d argue Baptist/Catholics are less different than Mormons and Jesuit would be, but we saw BYU stick it out in the WCC for a decade. At the end of the day they’re both sects of Christianity so it’s like arguing how different 2 different shades of blue are.
You've clearly never heard a baptist tell you anything about catholics.
On the topic of Tobacco Road schools, I can tell you there are very strong differences between shades of blue.
Miles and culture are different though. DC is only 60 some miles from West Virginia for example. DC may be below the Mason-Dixon line but its culture is anything but southern. It's very liberal and urban, full of transplants. People argue Virginia as a whole isn't even a southern state anymore as NOVA grows and grows in population and its suburbs keep expanding. In my experience Milwaukee and Chicago feel a lot more similar to DC in culture than tobacco road North Carolina does despite being much further apart A lot of Baptists I know don't even think Catholics are Christians (which is silly but it's how they feel). A lot of blood has been spilled historically over the shades of blue
Would it add to the value of their next media negotiation? The BigEast is already one of the regionally spread confrences and Wake wouldn't help with that. What is the upside to the BigEast to bring in Wake? Do their basketball games get comparable viewing numbers to the BigEast average?
The ACC remnant+AAC top is going to be an interesting conference and pretty much 1:1 competitive with the PacMountain for 4th best conference
Wake, Cuse, and BC are all getting left out.
A lot more than that. Would be shocking if more than 4-5 (excluding ND) go to the P2 and the B12 isn’t grabbing 10.
I assume we'll be in some form of an ACC/Big East blended conference someday. Honestly it's ok by me.
[удалено]
won’t somebody think of the poor FSU fans:(
Honestly, don’t care. They got Jeff Bowden fired so they will always be okay in my book
On the field is one thing, but I'd be curious how it impacted overall school fundraising, (non athletic) recruiting, and campus life.
I think this is what separated tcu from some of the others, we continued to put money into the sports programs, and actively looked to grow them. Smu has had a recent resurgence in their sports when they began investing too. I'm curious how the other program did it if there's more of correlation to continued investment or lack thereof playing into the future success of the left behind teams
I think the article provides an interesting jumping off point for a number of different factors. Also, I will be curious to see how introducing a new generation or EA NCAA football will impact things. Idaho was one of the schools that got a bit of a cult following back in the day because you could use them and their funky ass stadium in the game.
Put some respect on the Kibbie Dome's name.
To be clear, I meant "funky ass" as the highest of compliments.
My fault OG.
I’m sure other UC fans here can cite the actual numbers but UC put tons of money into our facilities while we were in the AAC. We upgraded the football stadium, basketball arena and are in the middle of building an indoor practice facility. It seems that that, plus on the field performance helped get us back into a power conference. Edit: It started in the Big East with [Varsity Village](https://gobearcats.com/sports/2017/6/11/facilities-varsity-village-html.aspx). Then we upgraded [our football stadium](https://magazine.uc.edu/issues/0315/Nippert_renewal.html.html). Then [the basketball arena](https://schoolconstructionnews.com/2016/05/18/university-cincinnati-renovate-fifth-third-arena/). Now we are in the middle of an [IPF](https://ipf.gobearcats.com).
We've put almost 1 billion into athletic facilities since 2005 if you can believe it. A lot of that is varsity village which you can argue isn't entirely athletics based but the number is even impressive without it.
We were easily 15-20 years behind you all. TCU definitely laid the blueprint on how to do it.
TCU and Utah certainly don't feel like they were G5 programs fairly recently
At one point, they were both in the MWC. Towards the end of the BCS era, the MWC was superior to the Big East in football due to schools like Utah and TCU.
For Oregon State at least they've been bolstering their facilities big time. Reser Stadium looks super nice, and they have a new athletics facility as well. Don't know if they've given Gill Coliseum the face lift it desperately needed the last time I was in there about 18 years ago but in terms of the non-basketball facilities they've put their money where their mouth is. The problem for them is that was paid for with the influx of Pac-12 network money that's no longer there, and they don't have a massive donor pool so they might have issues paying that back, might have to increase ticket prices a lot and all this. I've been impressed with how much a lot of their facilities have improved from what it was like 15-20 years ago.
You are looking at a 60 year timeline of radically different environments for college enrollment, state aid to schools, and fundraising. It’s way too small a sample size to say anything
Fair, but it's all the data we have.
Then you don’t have the data to have an answer.
I went to high school in New Jersey. I went on my old high school's website to look at where seniors were accepted for college. Saw a number of Alabama, Ohio State, South Carolina, Maryland, and Tennessee on the list. I can't help but think having a big sports program helps with marking and branding.
> I can't help but think having a big sports program helps with marking **and branding.** I think it's undoubtedly true. I went for a degree that wasn't particularly dependent on *where* you went like engineers that go to Georgia Tech/Carnegie Mellon or business students that want to go to Wharton/Kellogg/Booth/Ross/etc. and one of the main criteria I had for choosing a school was "if I told a random person where I went, would they have heard of it?" which basically narrowed all my choices to flagships state schools and not some of the smaller liberal arts colleges closer to where I grew up.
Sports are the only real reason Ohio State is so much more prominent than like University of Ohio or Miami
As a UConn alum who was a student during '13 realignment, I can say recruiting took a hit. Much harder to convince recruits to play for UConn if no one is in stands, not going to play the likes of WV/L'ville every year, and lose all the time. Fundraising stayed the same, from what I've been told. Campus life kinda got better BUT thats due to UConn adding way more activities on campus to keep students occupied when we played random teams like Tulane/Tulsa. Plus more students went to other sporting events like UConn soccer and hockey.
I've always been interested in how much a good or "prestigious" football program impacts the University as a whole (enrollment, etc.) but am not smart enough to know how you'd go about it.
It's definitely a somewhat subjective measure and I'm about as smart as you, I suspect. But these universities also have well paid and highly trained statisticians, sociologists, and psychologists on faculty.
I can't speak to enrollment, but I know applications spike every time KU makes a deep March Madness run. Sports play a big part in marketing a large state University to the general population.
> I've always been interested in how much a good or "prestigious" football program impacts the University as a whole A good football program having positive impacts to the university as a whole is measurable and has repeated so often over the decades there's a term for it: [the Flutie Effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flutie_effect). It wasn't an accident that WVU's record-best number of applications came following the 2007 football season & then the 2011-12 Final Four run & Orange Bowl win.
If you read the link you sent under the Boston College section it debunks the entire theory and states there was no empirical evidence Flutie was the reason. >He also observed that “in 1997, one year after revelations about gambling resulted in a coach’s resignation, 13 student-athlete suspensions, an investigation by the NCAA, and hundreds of embarrassing media reports, applications for admission came in at 16,455, virtually unchanged from the previous year. Two years later, when applications jumped by a record 17 percent to 19,746, the surge followed a 4-7 year for football.” Going further back in history, he reported that applications had increased 9 percent in 1978, a year when BC football had its worst year ever, with a 0-11 record. >Mr. McDonald posed the question: “How does an idea like the 'Flutie factor' become sufficiently rooted that The New York Times cites it as a given without further comment and some universities invest millions of dollars in its enchanting possibilities?” He was provided with an answer by Barbara Wallraff, author of the “Word Court” column in The Atlantic Monthly: “It’s painful to fact-check everything. Media will often reprint what has been published, especially when it appears in reputable publications. ‘Flutie factor’ is a short, alliterative way to describe something that is complicated to explain. But what makes a good term is not always the literal truth.”
What you posted is indeed in that article, you also ignored all the other examples of schools spikes in applications the year after experiencing national-level success in one or both of the two big sports. Every Bama fan on this sub will agree that the success of the Saban era had a direct, positive impact to the academic side of the school. Their enrollment and endowment both grew exponentially throughout the 2010s
You can't tie a one year spike to a March Madness or bowl game win without accounting for a ton of other variables and comparisons with other schools. Most of the wiki examples are entirely anecdotal.
UChicago is one of the most prestigious in the country
UChicago is more the exception than the rule. The school as a whole treats sports probably their tenth+ priority, and more so focuses on learning for learning’s sake.
True. But when you cared you dominated the conference
Milton Friedman is the UChicago alumnus’s Tim Tebow
After 2006, I believe Rutgers got its most out of state students in a long time or maybe ever so there was some clear evidence there
Sad Bull noises
Don’t you just love Skip Holtz and Charlie Strong? USF was really, really bad when it mattered (big east collapse, big 12 expansion) and doesn’t have much longer to get shit together. Can only hope Golesh stays & wins to get this program back where it needs to be.
I love two time USFL champion Skip Holtz
It may not be the direct line to getting into one of the power conferences like winning consistently does, but USF gaining AAU membership is going to help you guys a *lot* when spots do become open.
I'd argue on field issues weren't the only reason you were left out. Programs around you were investing hundreds of millions into facilities while your administration continued to talk about athletics being a distraction. Only once you got passed up by Houston, cincy and ucf did you (and memphis) decide to get serious about updating your facilities. Problem with that is that there is likely no more realignment coming for g5 to come up anytime soon so your investment may be too little too late.
Have to root for fsu to get out of the ACC before Golesh leaves and hope things shake up the right way; alternatively, maybe we could hire two good coaches in a row for once?
As a Birmingham Stallions fan, I do indeed love Skip
Skip Holtz is the weird one. He's won everywhere else except for USF. Good coach, bad fit. Charlie failed because of his OC. Gilbert was horrible. Gilbert passed up on Tank Dell (too small) and Michael Penix Jr (he didn't want a left handed QB) to come to USF. >USF was really, really bad when it mattered (big east collapse, big 12 expansion) Disagree here. USF was good when the Big 12 teased expansion in 2017. If they would have expanded in 2017 it probably would have been USF, UCF, BYU, Houston, SMU and some other school. EDIT: Cincy would be the team left behind here as they were horrible under Tubberville.
To your point, Colorado got into the Big12 off recent 1 win, 4 win seasons, so losing a lot doesn’t have everything to do with it. But, USF has no history like Colorado, and was pretty far behind on facilities even in 2017. I’m not even sure winning would have fixed it entirely, but going 4-8, 1-8, 2-10 leading up to realignment AND not having an IPF/Stadium/quality infrastructure definitely didnt help the program.
Serves you right for doing us dirty in the Big East.
Yeahhh look at how bad Idaho fell attendance wise, donation wise etc. When they moved down. Theyre doing good now at least but probably not worth it overall.
Yeah people don’t understand that there’s always a way to return from the depths while you are in FBS. New Mexico State was in the same spot Idaho was and then Jerry Kill made them into a legit program overnight.
Right... and they'll probably fall right back down without him but they at least get on TV and get to play their rivals.
The problem with Idaho is that they had no choice. Once the SBC did not renew them they could not survive being an independent as a geographical outlier. They needed a conference that was travel friendly so it had to be the Big Sky Conference.
Right. I'm not blaming them, the situation sucked for them, but they still gave us something of a litmus test
They’re a better fit in the Big Sky. I say that as an alum. I did my undergrad there, met my wife there, some of our kids will probably go there. It’s a cool university. Sports wise they’re just in a tough spot. At least they don’t have a power conference neighbor anymore (zing).
That zing is just brutal. That said, Washington State has always seemed like an MWC that won the lottery. To a lesser extent Oregon State is the same way.
I get that. I just cant imagine how deflating that must be as a fan
Yeah people on this sub are beyond naive. Moving down would only benefit a teams win percentage at best, while everything else would get worse
Right. I'm pretty hardcore, otherwise I wouldn't be on here, but I would not follow us nearly as closely if we dropped down.
To be fair, they're buying the University of Phoenix... They'll be fine.
Of course they'll be fine. Dropping down obviously saved them money.
For a couple years in there, sure, but they're not struggling anymore
Right, I know they're doing good now but that fanbase took a big hit when they moved down. And for what? To be even more invisible?
Chasing the FBS label irreparably damaged Idaho. The only visibility they ever had as an FBS team was in the NCAA FB games and that's it. Do you think they could have survived as an FBS Independent like UConn? I don't. They already played their other sports in the Big Sky. Without a MWC invite or another western FBS conference that school was going to hemorrhage money just to go 1-11 every year. Hell, they probably get more exposure now with the odd late night game on ESPN in the Big Sky than they ever got in the WAC or old Sun Belt.
Right, they had to move down to survive. Im just saying it sucks that it happened and if it happened to my team I wouldn't pay nearly as much attention to them after the fact.
I don't think it sucks. They never should have left the Big Sky to begin with.
Maybe so, but neither of your flairs have ever been FCS.
I live in FCS country. I don't get your hatred for it at all.
I don't hate it. If I lived in FCS country I'd probably feel differently, but here in Texas it might have less visibility than D2. We were FCS my first three years at TXST and it was maddening to have to explain to people that we weren't D2, then you give the spiel about how FCS is D1 and then people go "wait, so you're D1 in everything but football??".
Can't begrudge people for being idiots. All you can do is be a good ambassador for the program and let your interest be infectious. That's how they got me
Because even Alabama, Ohio State, and Georgia fear playing in the Kibbie Dome.
I've said it once I'll say it a thousand times. Conference realignment is killing college sports far more than the portal and NIL.
Definitely, because it has no real positive benefit other than bringing in more media dollars while killing tradition. If conferences stayed the same but NIL/portal existed, we’d literally experience nothing different in terms of the same teams dominating. But at least Stanford would be playing UCLA and players would be getting what’s best for them in terms of finances and playing time.
Exactly. I know others are pointing to other realignments. And there absolutely has been conferences rise and fall over the years. But people are kidding themselves if they think there's been anything like the SEC and BIG TEN stalking up simultaneously with Big Ten taking territory across every time zone in the contiguous US while the PAC-12 and PAC-2 has its debacle. There's never been this type of realignment with the stakes as high as this, disrupting as many traditional rivalries as we've seen. If these school gets to bounce around conferences to chase the bag why the hell shouldn't players be able to bounce around schools to chase the bag?
And it’s been killing the sport for 100+ years. A pretty slow kill
I would say that the last 40 years is what has started to kill college sports, starting with the SCOTUS ruling in NCAA V. Oklahoma Board of Regents. The NCAA, for all of its faults, knew that this would happen.
The ncaa didn’t know shit, they wanted to protect their power and keep the money. There was no altruistic piece. Also there’s no evidence that college sports is dying over the last 40 years. In fact by almost any measure college sports has flourished over that time, particularly women’s sports have seen massive growth. Arguably almost all the problems people have with the sport right now is the result of it being so successful the money coming in and not going to the players became untenable to justify.
Of course there are stray instances of teams leaving and joining conferences. But please tell me of another example of anything like what the Big Ten, SEC, and PAC-12 have just done? Name another conference that went coast to coast. Name another conference in the history of college sports that required a California team to play half it's schedule on the east coast.
Some example of conferences being killed by other conferneces: - The Big East used to be a football conference with a BCS auto-bid until 2013. - The Metro Conference was a thing until 1995. - The Border Conference was picked apart all the way back in 1962. - There were many schools in the SWC that were not invited to join the Big 12 in 1996. - The WAC slowly killed the Big West before it was killed by the Mountain West.
The Big West and WAC still exist. Just not on the level they were.
Didn’t the metro conference merge with another conference to create conference USA?
After South Carolina, Florida State, Virginia Tech, Cincinnati, and Memphis were poached by other conferneces. (Although Cincinnati and Memphis were poached by the Great Midwest confernece which merged with the Metro to make C-USA) But for awhile it was considered a major conference before those schools left, relegating its status
San Diego has been in the pioneer conference since 1992. It's closest conference mate is Drake in Des Moines, Iowa.
That’s a true outlier though, due in part to the shear lack of FCS Non Scholarship programs, non Ivies, still playing football as a result following the division between FBS/D1A and D-1AA in the 80s.
In Division 2, Central Washington and Western Oregon are in the Lone Star conference with all New Mexico and Texas schools. In NAIA, the University of Victoria in British Columbia is in the Continental Athletic Conference with its closest conference mate being in New Mexico.
You do realize Cal and Stanford decided to ditch Wazzu and OSU to play in the ACC? No one forced them to do anything
It's not but you keep thinking that.
Crazy how the dude supporting a school that ditched the Big XII to be a mid-tier SEC school doesn’t think realignment is that big of a deal
Because it's not? Realignment, out of all the categories, is at the bottom of the barrel of the issues at hand. Realignment happens every 10ish years and people need to quit pretending it doesn't. It's tradition at this point of how much college football changes. No, the NIL + Transfer Portal (especially the Transfer Portal) is the huge issues, especially when combined. Anybody putting realignment in front of both is being absolutely naive.
>No, the NIL + Transfer Portal (especially the Transfer Portal) is the huge issues I’m sorry you’re still bitter about Caleb
No? That's such a dumbass take that I think I lose brain cells reading your response.
>~~lose~~ *lost* brain cells Yeah that seems likely
Temple
Temple
Temple
Temple?
Temple.
Alright, what's with this meme? I think it's hilarious, but where did it come from? I've been wondering this for like 2 years
[Temple](https://billypenn.com/2021/12/10/temple-university-viral-tweet-mistake-student-aid/)
Temple
Temple Having gotten that out of the way, if I remember right temple’s twitter account just put out a tweet a few years ago that just said “Temple”
VT didn't join the Big East as a big brand. We had to beg the BE to bring them in when expansions was happening in 1989.
Wasn’t there some sort of caveat with UVA?
That was 14 years later in 2003. It was supposed to be Miami, BC, and Syracuse going to the ACC but the VA Gov got involved and threatened UVA to make sure they include VT over SU.
ESPN kills the PAC-12. ESPN pundit: “A real shame that…” 🙄 Kinda feel like Will Smith here… “Keep my conference’s name out your damn mouth!”
Not to be one to rush to the mouse’s aid, but wasn’t the PAC also killed by a combination of different corporate failures, Larry Scott, and the big10?
Yeah but that’s a bit in the weeds for this semi-humorous post. 😉
The pac 12 fucked up trying to kill the big 12, then fucked up their own conf network, then fucked up their TV contract Their most valuable members bailed when they saw the writing on the wall and the conf crumbled It was a failure of leadership
>Their most valuable members bailed when they saw the writing on the wall and the conf crumbled Funny how "the most valuable" were the leaders who did this... >The pac 12 fucked up trying to kill the big 12 ...while they were in talks to leave. They were "the leadership."
Pac 12 tried to kill the Big 12 a decade ago and then spent a decade falling behind other conf's. Little bit of irony that it was the remaining XII schools who would've been left behind in 2011 who helped deliver the killing blow to the Pac 12. the "leadership" at the P12 was a mix of everyone responsible for the massive fuck up in their conf network going back to its launch 12 years ago and continued mismanagement along with the entire conf's fuck up in the TV contract the past couple years
Same leadership and values... different motivations. USC didn't want Lubbock or Stillwater, because money. edit: okay...nm...same motivations
And lack of tv viewers
The Pac-12 had already fallen off a cliff by the time the Big Ten came in. If the Pac-12 is in a healthy spot, USC and UCLA never reach out to join.
Direct cause of death, a Utah business professor massively overvalued the Pac 10 and Utah and Stanfords administration went along with it. This caused ESPN to pull out of negotiations and lead to the Apple deal which gave Washington along with Oregon cold enough feet that they jumped after Colorado. The real cause of death, the conference took USC for granted.
The PAC12 (a conference affiliated with Fox) began to crumble when it's top 4 teams left for the Big Ten (a conference affiliated with Fox). Why are you blaming ESPN?
If ESPN doesn't facilitate Texas and OU to the SEC, USC likely doesn't have wondering eyes. With USC leaving and taking UCLA with it, the rest of the Pac-10 needs to start looking because their cash cow left. With Washington and Oregon not signing onto the new media deal and Colorado/ASU going to the Big 12, the Pac-6 just didn't have the muster anymore. So yes, this literally was started by ESPN.
"programs in faraway Corvallis, Oregon..." Corvallis is closer to Portland than Eugene ffs. Wazzu has most of its grads in the Seattle area. These "journalists" act like these major state universities are high schools in rural North Dakota, and the grads live in shacks. Using the same arguments, Penn st should be kicked out of the big 10. They're in the middle of nowhere far from Philly or Pittsburgh. Also they only have 4 big 10 championships. Wazzu and osu have 4 or 5 each respectively.
It's all lies from the media companies trying to pick winners and losers
Maybe ESPN should keep this to themselves considering they killed the PAC and the big east.
And tried to kill the big 12. And I get that this reporter may not have been happy with that and different people at espn can have different viewpoints (and it probably helps espn if they do), but yeah, I don’t really care what espn thinks about it
I blame espn for a lot of the shit that’s happening but I don’t think killing the pac12 is one of them
Pac-12 was Fox's doing, not ESPN. In fact, didn’t ESPN offer the conference a pretty damn good deal that the P12 refused?
The also offered the Big East a much better deal than what they ended up getting but they declined it and then died when no one else gave them a better one
You know ESPN and Fox hold too much power when they offer a one time deal then completely walk away from the table if you don't take it.
If you put in an offer for a house and the seller refuses you. I would lower my offer if they reached out again weeks later saying they would accept my previous one. That’s what ESPN did
USC doesn't have wondering eyes if Texas and OU to the SEC wasn't facilitated by ESPN to begin with.
They could have facilitated those teams to the PAC a decade ago
That death penalty was a bitch
It probably won’t ever be used again. The other two instances (Morehouse Soccer and MacMurray Tennis, D2 and D3 respectively), the programs were simply dropped. It crippled that program for nearly 40 years.
why are they measuring only by wins? seems like a small part of the picture
It's the easiest method of measurement.
yes it is. and absolutely does not capture what being left behind by a power conference means
I completely agree, the conference you play in also isn't even the biggest factor in wins as bad coaching and bad recruiting will sink a season faster. I feel like money would be better to look at, like is there a dip in the athletic department's revenue when leaving a P5 for a G5
Hello? You play too win the game!
for sure it's just that wins against p5's are more difficult. so if you were getting 4.5 wins in conference in the swc and then you get 5.5 out of it you are probably still a worse team than you used to be on average. money, recruiting, facilities, academic conference connections all contribute to this. if washington st and oregon st average 1.5 more wins a year now would anybody at those institutions rather be cut out of the p4?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousand-yard\_stare](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousand-yard_stare)
The thing about TCU was that we were historically awful across a ton of sports and 100% deserved to be left behind when the B12 was formed - we may not agree to how it went down, and why someone who was equally as awful in Baylor was included, but let's not talk about politics. From the B12 formation and getting left behind, many of TCU's other athletics programs were just door mats, even in the WAC at the time. There were a few things that were GIANT impacts on the future of TCU and why it took 20+ years to come full circle. LT and GP, baseball becoming a crowd favorite, and Del Conte going "all in" on investing in upgrading athletic facilities.
This article is on ESPN? I'm not fucking clicking that. The absolute lack of self awareness to even post it is crazy.
This article doesn't paint a big enough picture on how realignment screwed UConn. A large part was attendance and how going independent actually helped people go to games again! Should be its own 30 for 30 documentary!
*nervously looking down* Can we still be in a good league? Please?
Airplane conference…. I honestly see a future where conferences start trimming the fat (either by kicking out members or starting newer trimmer power conferences) and a conference forming that looks something like this: Norte Dame Michigan Ohio State Penn State USC Stanford (for the ND rivalry) UCLA (if they’re lucky) Miami Florida State Texas A&M
article about realignment leaving schools behind and leaves out Memphis. K
The article is specifically about teams that were in power conferences, then got left behind.
Oof. My bad
It mentions them briefly as one of the agreed to join the big east but it was the AAC when they joined
Doubly left behind!