sports, means your conference has to stretch from coast to coast --which dooms the ACC and Pac-12-- what is the pathway for both the SEC and Big XII? And is it safe to assume that if the Big 12 absorbed the four corner schools, that the SEC's westward expansion would come to a halt?
Assuming that the future of college
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If the SEC wants somebody then that team is gone. They already scooped up the money and history teams from Big 12. Nothing left westward that the SEC wants.
Why are we assuming they have to stretch from coast to coast? The Big 12 is only doing that because it has no other choice but to pick up the crumbs that fall from the big boy's table.
WVU has benefitted immensely from its switch to the Big 12. $$$ wise. Hope that continues but NOTHING is certain in sports and life these days.
Because the B1G did it and the SEC slowly but surely continues to expand its footprint. The idea that these schools need to be close to one another is yesterday’s thinking as the complete bastardization of college athletics continues to gain momentum.
It's all about the money, not becoming country wide conferences. The BIG skipped over a bunch of other states to grab high value programs. If USC and UCLA were within the current BIG footprint, the BIG wouldn't be taking teams from the west coast.
The B1G will have Clemson, FSU, Oregon and Washington within a few weeks. That gives them a 4 team grouping out west, along with basically the only 4 programs that matter out there and a foothold in the Southeast. If Baylor and/or TCU continue being nationally relevant in football they’ll be next to the B1G to get a hold in the Texas market.
Clemson and FSU are destined for the SEC. Miami, Fla., UNC, gets Big 10 invite. Baylor and TCU to Big 10 will never happen. Big 10 would look at Kansas before those 2.
Big 10 doesn't need a hold in Texas.
The flavor of the month is being a nationwide conference, so naturally all of the big brains that run the show are going to make permanent destructive decisions in pursuit of that objective. Supposedly FSU and Clemson are about to be in the B1G shortly, so we’ll see.
ACC schools, including marquee football brands like Clemson and Florida State, are handcuffed by the league's grant of rights deal that runs through 2036. An expiring grant-of-rights deal makes a conference vulnerable to raids, while deals with many years remaining and carrying high exit fees help protect a conference.
SEC Football is expected to grow to 18-20 teams at some future date. UNC and UVA not expansion priorities for SEC but FSU and Clemson are.
I disagree with the article. I can see the SEC wanting UVA and UNC. UVA and UNC will be coveted by both the B10 and SEC.
They might want them doesn't mean they get them. UNC and UVA according to article is not their top priority.
The GOR can be negotiated, the schools that they are leaving behind would be silly to turn down a decade long payout and FSU and Clemson will make enough to offset the loss as an NFL JV league member. Waiting for a decade for the SEC to come calling may seem inevitable, but not sure Clemson and FSU want to fall behind by a decade making pennies on the dollar in comparison to their peer schools in the Southeast and the other ACC schools they are leaving behind might as well cash in rather than delay the inevitable.
It doesn't need to stretch coast to coast. It just needs to have the most valuable brands and markets. USC and UCLA would've jumped to the SEC if they had gotten an invite. SEC, unlike the Big 10, is not bound by this archaic idea that academics of an institution having anything to do with the absolute derth of academic achievement amongst the average NCAA football player. The average starter for UNC is as dumb as the average starter for Alabama. But I digress. The SEC not having an academic restriction made it so they didn't need to reach across the country, but could take a better fit and more profitable set of teams in OU and Texas than USC or UCLA.
The reason the Big 12 needs to expand coast to coast is not because that is profitable, but rather because geography requires it to survive. With Oregon and Washington likely being Big 10 targets in the future along with UNC, FSU, Clemson, and possibly UVA being SEC and Big 10 targets as well, it leaves the ACC and PAC12 with middling to doormat programs. The best of those middling programs will have only 2 viable options.
First is to stay in their current conference provided that the current conference can poach the best of the Big 12 as G5 really has no decent options remaining. Which would see the PAC 12 siphon off the Big 12's western flank and the ACC siphon off the Big 12 eastern flank and essentially put the Big 12 into the group of 5.
Second option is to join the Big 12 to be part of their middling programs. The way to make this option the clearly more viable and preferable is if the Big 12 poached the best it can get from the PAC 12 now and then grabs what the ACC has left after the inevitable defections as mentioned above. Then the Big 12 with the best of what was left after the Big 10 and SEC raids in the middle and west of the country looks preferable to middling eastern teams with G5 dead weight added to already dead weight GT, WF, and BC.
IMO adding Colorado had more to do with optics than anything. You take Colorado and then Oregon and Washington are rumored to be Big Ten bound and suddenly everyone in the PAC is clamoring for a Big 12 invite rather than vice versa.
I’ll give the Big 12 credit as they really had no business jumping the PAC in the pecking order, the PAC isn’t the one loaded up with a bunch of former MWC, AAC, Big East schools to stay afloat following 6 defections over the past 20 or so years, and had never been raided prior to the USC/UCLA situation. Yet somehow the Big 12 is in the power position to offer a life raft, and I expect they will be in the same power position against the ACC once Clemson and FSU make their inevitable move. Brilliant executive maneuvering in combination of boxing Fox/ESPN against each other rather than just kissing ESPN’s ring, being proactive rather than reactive with adding the 4 best G5s and then in turn reclaiming Colorado to turn the media narrative into the PAC collapsing rather than the Big 12 is collapsing. That said, we are only as stable as the SEC and B1G allow and nothing is really going to change that reality.
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Initial speculation placed the ACC's exit fee at around $120 million and loss of all media rights. Things these schools have thought about to leave is do they find a loop hole in GOR, do they get enough teams to collapse the ACC, do they start a new conference together. ESPN actually holds all the cards over the ACC. Their fate may just be in their hands. Currently 7 teams want out. Clemson, Florida State, North Carolina, Miami, NC State, Virginia, and Virginia Tech have met in private to go over the GOR to search for loop holes.
The current television contract could become voided should eight schools opt out of the current deal.
ACC Spring Meetings
IMO, this is all about viewership and the West Coast just doesn’t really care about college football like the East Coast or Texas. Make no mistake, Yormark has been great.
While the Big 12 isn't a powerhouse and has no premier teams, it looks like collehe football is moving toward only the Big 10 and SEC having premier teams. Big 12 being the first conference without and replacing the lost programs with the best middling teams out there may have been a blessing in its competition with the ACC and PAC 12.
Only Kansas, Houston, and UCF are historically bad programs in the Big 12. While the you can argue they haven't been lately, their histories have been. BYU and Cincy were never world beaters, but were decent enough middling programs for the last 20 or so years. Hell the Big 10 has NW, Illinois, Indiana, Rutgers, Purdue and Minnesota all in within the same conversation with the bottom of the Big 12 over the last 2 decades.
So a middling program on a conference where middling teams and doormats are all that is left, having to add G5 teams like UCONN which are likely to become more doormats vs joining a conference where the floor is set like Big 12 is really not much of a choice at all.
Do you feel Colorado moves the needle more in comparison to Arizona or Utah? IMO they took a shot on a school that was most likely to jump and take a small pay day, and the payoff was creating the perception that the conference is collapsing and now Arizona, Utah, Stanford, Cal are all in play instead of the PAC going to OSU and Baylor and trying to kill the Big 12.
Much like ND or Pitt, it’s all about perception. Colorado was once a great program who won a NC in the last 30 years. It’s a big market as well. The 1-11 or 4-8 records don’t really matter.