I was told the B1G was holy and pure and does not break up conferences . . . .
Realignment Megathread (All The Moves)
- Thread starter ISUcyclones11
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It’ll be hilarious reading these stories years from now Deion decides conference realignment decisions and bolts.
Like if Chiz had power to move ISU into Pac 12 then bolted immediately.
Our local Michigan state fan means well but it’s obvious he’s never been on the doomsday end of this thing.
Big 12 and former Big East fans know the reality. Pac fans are just barely learning what reality is for the first time. ACC fans start learning reality soon. Original SEC and Big Ten fans will never understand.
Schedules. It will take a few years once they made a decision to add them. Yormack could be setting the table for the separation of basketball and football rights. Always thinking forward. And ready for when the current contract expires.
I would hope that expanding with non-FB schools like Gonzaga will be tabled until the end of the new contract and see if Mark Few is still around (he won't be) and if his replacement maintains their existing level of success. And Gonzaga would need a conference home for their other sports beyond MBB. The WCC will kick them out completely if they get invited to the B12.
This is exactly what BY is going to do. In fact, hes hinted at it before.
If they do separate the BB contract, that would make it perhaps easier to partner/cohabitate with the BigEast as well. Now you have sort of a superleague alliance with a ton of games, across all time zones, a couple more possible tournament set-ups, maybe even a huge combined post season. You draw more interest in B12 in the northeast, you draw more interest in the BE in the south and southwest...
I have said before, this is my guess for BY's vision on this. Not the traditional adding teams to the conference, but more of making a nationwide basketball "league" out of these two conferences and a couple other select programs (e.g. Gonzaga).
As far as value of all that, if it is worth half the NBA per game value, then maybe something like $15-20M per team? What do we get now? If its like 80/20 in favor of FB, then maybe $6-7M for BB out of $32M?
I think that basketball super league sort of alignment for Big 12/Big East can make sense or even key Big East members breaking away for it. It's far less disruptive to college sports in general than USC/UCLA moving to Big Ten.
I'm still not sure any of that makes sense for Gonzaga if I'm a self interested Gonzaga fan. Not only are they geographically isolated where every road game is some massive trip, they've been feasting on easy conference schedules. The Big East teams have been playing in usually the #2 conference and very possibly #1 conference last year. Even Arizona will have an adjustment period if they step up to Big 12/Big East level. Big East teams would come into the dance with just slightly higher SOS and similar records, seeds, Gonzaga is not going to be waltzing in as a 1-4 seed every year in the Big 12 like they do now.
Some Big East teams are already very close to Big 12 footprint. It wouldn't dilute the Big 12's basketball quality that much to merge with the entire Big East, it's not a huge conference to begin with and they don't have a lot of total dead weight programs. It adds a lot of high population markets without overlapping a lot of them or being a geographic reach like UCF/Gonzaga are.
As a fan I really want Gonzaga to be added to the Big12. Just like Houston is in for a rude awakening I would love for the zags to play against real competition.
Eventually there's no reason Houston can't be elite (they were elite once before B12 even existed), but agree at least next year will be an adjustment. Long term I think being in an elite conference as geographic outlier would doom Gonzaga. Their fans have no idea how hard it would be to pick up wins @ISU, @KSU, @WVU, etc...
Arizona might feel a slight growing pain too but they'll be a better program for it in the long run if they keep talent at current levels. Signed top transfer yesterday. At this point I feel like AZ/CO full members is a done deal more than any of these others, just a question of if there are more and who.
I personally think Zona would be a middle of the road Big12 team. They have only made one final four in 23 years and have been knocked out the first round or didn’t get in 8 times. Considering how highly they are seeded (due to the pac being pretty bad) that’s not a great record when playing against real competition. Could be wrong but I haven’t been that impressed with Arizona.
On a side not the NBC games were officially announced today for the big ten. They are doing a very weird model we’re most of the games will be aired on both regular NBC and also on peacock. Kind of interesting to see them approach it this way. Only Michigan and Sparty have games exclusively on peacock so it seems like NBC is trying to see how many people are willing to watch on a streaming service.
Might give some insight as to how espn tries to position games if they go through with spinning espn off and being able to buy the stand alone channel.
Might give some insight as to how espn tries to position games if they go through with spinning espn off and being able to buy the stand alone channel.
Does it strike you, or anyone else, that all of this potential that BY is tapping was at Bowlsby's feet for the longest time and completely overlooked? I know Bob wasn't an out-of-the-box thinker by any means, but probably more amazed at the strings BY has been able to pull to make this meteoric rise happen.
How any PAC 12 (-2) school can look at this and not be enticed is beyond me.
They are very different; Bowlsby was an overseer/manager and Yormark is much more innovative. That's not 100% bad vs good - Yormark is going to take more risks than Bowlsby. But so far they have worked out. Yormark getting the TV deal extended early with ESPN and FOX has been a complete master stroke, given what has happened in that landscape since. So I trust BY after having earned that goodwill even if I am skeptical that Gonzaga would be a good addition to the league.
AZ definitely hasn't met expectations. Other than Purdue they may be the poster child for that in all of college bball.
I do wonder though with the talent level if the bump up in competition before the tournament isn't exactly what AZ needs. It'd be a smaller bump up than Gonzaga's WCC schedule, but definitely more physical play. Plus their travel would be almost identical to historical pac travel.
I don't think you can blame Bowlsby for not looking at that. No other conference commissioner has either.
Yormark's decision to split football and basketball media deals could be similar, but not nearly as impactful as the Big10 starting their network. The Big10 network was an out of the box idea that had risk to it; splitting football and basketball media deals while not risky, is an out of the box idea.
Had another thought about this regarding brands.
Of the top 20ish brands in football, SEC and B1G have probably all but maybe 3. That gives them power to drive ratings - and thus demand a bigger payout (ie negotiation leverage)
If you put the B12 and BE together, you gather a lot of brands under one negotiation umbrella. You would have maybe half the top 20? With the others split around the ACC and B1G. Also Kentucky. It would give you leverage to get a better payout, and you could also own the "challenge" type marquee matchups and pre-season tournaments. Imagine putting Kansas, Arizona, Syracuse, Gonzaga, Nova, UConn, Baylor, all in a 4 day 3 game tournament up for bid. And being able to market those matchups thru the season.
And going another step to the future - it might be a magnet for ACC basketball schools once available. You won't outbid the B1G for UNC or SEC for Florida St, but MAYBE it helps nudge a Duke, or Pitt, or NC State your way.
