This column is very late in coming, but I wanted to make sure, like, Anoka-Ramsey Community College didn’t jump into the Big Ten before I file this. …
For all the frenzy about college football realignment that started all the way back in December when Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delaney stated his intention to gobble up other teams and expand his Midwestern empire nationwide, after Texas announced on June 14 it was going to tape the broken parts together and limp the Big XII Conference around, the gossip ceased almost immediately. So after the dust settled, there were only four teams switching conferences: Boise St. to the Mountain West, Utah and Colorado to the Pac-10, and in the most noteworthy move, Nebraska to the Big Ten.
Nevertheless, The Great College Football Realignment of 2010 has given columnists an excuse to employ one of their tried-and-true arrows from the print journalism quiver: the Winners and Losers column. I think I’m going to jump in and provide my own two-parter – winners now, losers when I get to it.
First, let me point out the many teams and entities that seemed to have won or lost, but have come out of GCFR ’10 a wash, their fates probably being decided another day. The five schools of the Big XII that wouldn’t have jumped to another of the BcS conferences must still be checking their pulses after averting major-conference oblivion, but to do that they essentially gave Texas the keys to the asylum for to university to run it as it sees fit. We’ll see how long that control imbalance lasts – and how long league commissioner Dan Beebe is able to pull off this uneasy alliance.
A transitory existence could also apply to the Big East, a prime target within the Big Ten’s crosshairs. Delaney has said he is committed to looking into stealing other teams
Winners, in ascending order:
4) The writer/owner for orangebloods.com. Who the hell is this guy? Contrary to my basest instincts, he isn’t a nobody who lives in his mother’s basement. Chip Brown was a longtime writer for the Dallas Morning News. He saw the writing on the wall as the blood of his fellow newspaper colleagues losing their jobs, and he plunged into new media covering Texas as part of the Rivals Network, while getting a piece of the site as an owner. He was the conductor of this college football symphony for two weeks, and he held our attention with every breaking story and tweet.
The dirty secret of us journalists is that we made this our calling because we have this innate need to gain information no one else has, and to have the control to announce it when and how we want. We compromise a lot of things in order to be the chokepoint for information. We may never the whole story, but the guess here is Brown sacrificed something all of us swear they wouldn’t do when they begin their careers but soon learn to give away in order to be on the front row of history: his integrity. This pay-for-play access bequeathed him the nation’s attention for a few weeks – and subsequently paying subscribers to his site. In return, in my opinion, Brown allowed himself to be the spokesman for the Longhorns when the university said they would leave if Nebraska left for the sole purpose of gaining leverage from the other schools to give them what they want.
Look, there is always a quid pro quo to get the inside scoop. What still rubs me the wrong way is that all of Brown’s stories have been to the benefit of Texas athletics, whether it is the better position it now finds itself in or the number of impressions in the sports media UT generated ever since speculation of its final landing spot began. The high intrigue and the stakes make this investigative sports journalism, and such a pursuit inherently involves pissing off people in powerful institutions. I see nothing bad exposed in the aftermath of this part of GCFR ’10. Instead, I see a win-win situation between quite possibly the most powerful sports college in the nation and a guy who just made some money. Oh, and speaking of quite possibly the most powerful sports college in the nation. …
3) Texas. Brown’s beat/Valhalla parlayed the chaos into an even better position for itself, but it’s not as if they turned lemons into lemonade. They were sitting mighty pretty before all this went down – it’s just that they now sit mighty prettier, maybe even the New York Yankees of college athletics.
Their budget, their brand name, and their dominance over the most sports-crazed state in the union (surprising given that it’s so large there are three other BcS schools and six other teams in top-flight college football) already gave them massive leverage. So the Longhorns were going to throw their weight around to get what’s best for them. Finally, the Little V of the Big XII (that’d be Missouri, Kansas, Kansas St., Baylor, and Iowa St.) gave UT what the Pac-10 ultimately would not: further inequitable distribution of TV money, and the right for all schools to create their own network. That last stipulation does apply to everyone in the 10-team Big XII equally, but the day I see the Iowa St. Network on my TV is the day I reach for my winter coat, ‘cause hell just froze over.
This is the best decision Texas could make. Why move to a conference half a nation away where you’d be fighting for name recognition with USC (even in its weakened state after the ass-kicking the NCAA gave them) and getting the same amount of money Washington St. will get when you can be the big – no, make that enormous – fish in a little pond that you already live in? They preserve all their revenue streams; they just get less interference in exploiting them. And it doesn’t mean they can’t run to the Pac-10 later on. Shoot, why not explore becoming an independent like Notre Dame? That way you can keep all the money to yourself – and with revenue exceeding $138 million in 2008, according to a recent article in Sports Illustrated, that’ll be a hell of a lot.
2) Jim Delaney. If he doesn’t get off on power, he should, because with the exception of Brown, he had all of us in a rapt trance for the past half-year. He is the Most Powerful Man in College Sports
He could throw his weight around because of the Big Ten Network, which has somehow generated tons of subscriber money and finagling its way into the basic tier where they get the most subscriber dollars. I say somehow because their main source of programming are the games ESPN picked over, and I still don’t get how airing Indiana-Northwestern football or, in the future, Penn St.-Nebraska basketball turns into $6.5 million a year for the eleven universities of the Big Ten. (Add in the TV deal with ESPN, bowl money, their share from postseason basketball tournaments and sponsorships, and each school received $25 million last year.) I surf through BTN while working out at the gym; for the summer, they show reruns of past games. This is how Jim Delaney and the Big Ten managed to start GCFR ’10? (In the interest of full disclosure, I have applied to work at BTN. And may I use this opportunity to bounce a fresh summer programming idea off the network: A Big Ten-themed Match Game. You’re welcome.)
Delaney can say he’s ahead of the curve when it comes to college conference media. And he exploited that advantage by telling his chosen targets that they could make at least that same 25 mil … and be an integral part of making even more because of its market and/or brand. He didn’t get the St. Louis market via Missouri, and he has yet to complete the deal with Rutgers and New York. But luring Nebraska, with its underrated Big Red Nation, will still boost each school’s cut of distribution money. More importantly, the conference reaches the magical number of twelve, meaning they have enough teams to hold a conference title game, which means more ka-ching.
He might not stop, but it wouldn’t surprise me if this was Delaney’s plan all along. It’s like what movie directors do when they want to keep the naughtiest bits in their film but have to get a PG-13 rating: They pack in so many naughty bits that some of them invariably stay in, and it’s usually the ones they wanted in the final cut in the first place. Maybe Delaney didn’t want Armageddon. Maybe he just wanted Nebraska and the championship game. Maybe he just said he thought about expanding the conference to 16 teams to make sure he would reach 12. In fact, maybe we were the ones that took it a step further, and ran around like chickens with our heads cut off, speculating that Florida might join the Mountain West. All the while, Delaney could sit back, scotch in one hand and a cigar in the other, and cackle at what peons we must look like. And I wouldn’t blame him if he did.
1) Utah. A perfunctory number one, but it’s important not just to the university, but to the history of college football itself. For all the talk that this was the beginning of the formation of megaconferences, thereby sealing for good the rift between college football’s haves and have-nots, there is one school that has managed to jump over that barrier. No – actually, it was invited through the front door, with fanfare and a red carpet parade into the vaunted sanctum of a kingdom’s inner circle.
And it’s not as if the Utes have been knocking on the door of college football’s elite ever since Knute Rockne. Their meteoric rise to the Pac-10 comes largely on the basis of its track record over the past 15 years. I mean, Free Safety Larry Wilson is the only Ute in the Hall of Fame. But being the only non-BcS school to reach a BcS bowl twice, and having undefeated seasons in ’04 and ‘08, pushed them to the top of the garbage pile in case one of the major conferences went sifting for a potential new school. Add in the fact that it’s close enough to Colorado for the rivalry playdate that came naturally with the configuration of the old Pac-10, and it wasn’t too ridiculous for the Utes to be invited.
What came June 17, then, is a watershed moment: After almost two decades of bitter and cantankerous protest over the widening gap in college football, a member of the proletariat became part of the bourgeoisie, with all the prestige, money, and advantages that come with it. It may happen to another school, like Boise St., or the teams of the BcS Six may strike a chasm which no other program could cross. Regardless, the University of Utah managed to accomplish something mighty special.