Conference Realignment

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#676      
altgeld88
uofi7477 said:
Well, there is always the Battle of the Palouse so all is not lost. Now played every few years instead of annually with the University of Idaho in Moscow Idaho 8 miles away from Washington State University in Pullman Washington. In my Father's day around 1950, he told me that they would walk to the games in Pullman. My Grandfather actually played for Idaho in these games around 1910. And for me in 1970, I was way too cool to be into sports.
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Joel Goodson said:
even nicer than the rolling (ahem) prairie of east central Illinois? c'mon
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Thanks for bringing up the Palouse, the Vandals-Cougs rivalry, and proximity of Pullman and Moscow. I had the good fortune of spending a weekend in August 1990 in Moscow (actually, between Blaine and Genesee, just down the road) on the farm of my brother's girlfriend's parents. My brother lived in Seattle back then and my roommate from UIUC grad school and I were heading there and then down the West Coast on a post-graduation trip, having secured our diplomas in Champaign only a couple weeks earlier.

The Palouse is stunning, on a plateau rising steeply out of the Snake River valley at the confluence of the Bitterroot River (so steep you climb US-95 ~ 2000 vertical feet from the town of Lewiston, ID over the course of only five miles .) Yes, even prettier than the EC Illinois prairie, JG ;). I drove the harvester with Karen's dad for a bit on his wheat & legume farm, enjoyed Moscow, the Univ of Idaho campus, the Kibbie Dome, and then a couple days later we stopped just over the border in Pullman for a visit to Wazzu on our way to Seattle .

Here I am with Karen, reppin' the Illini in my Champion reverse-weave sweatshirt, and wandering through the Palouse wheat 33 years ago in ~ 10 days from now. This is what "rolling" means!

A lifetime ago, and it seems like yesterday.

1691341613181.jpeg
 
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#677      
altgeld88
Writing that Palouse Hills post got me thinking about that visit to Wazzu, and Keith Jackson, an alum who was a childhood idol of mine (as a little boy I watched college football compulsively, wanted to be a sports broadcaster when I grew up and could mimic KJ perfectly.) Coincidentally, my high school basketball coach played for the Cougs in college.

Found this Wazzu promotional video, narrated by KJ, from 1981. Some nice shots of the Palouse, the Snake River canyon below, the campus, and the little stadium (couldn't have seated more than 40k when I visited.) Pure gold. R.I.P. Pac-8/10/12.

 
#678      
IlliniKrush
Joel Goodson said:
if team A has a verified average payout of $100K per year for freshmen! (disclaimer: made up numbers) and plays on national tv a lot and team B doesn't come close, guess where the HS studs are going?
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I guess I see this as a big IF. Outside of the comments on this board I don’t see the information coming out about this possibility. You shared that there is information leaking out about the possibility of 10 games.
If paying players is combined with expanding our in conference games then maybe it works out.
Or even expanding access to bowl eligibility to 5 wins is combined with any conference playing 10+ conference games.
IMHHHO it’s already bad enough that AAC 8th place Memphis got a bowl game while B1G 10th place Mich St did not. What if that were us? because it has been us!
Adding 4 quality FB programs and taking away an easy win by going to 10 games with NO changes to bowl access, again IMHO, hurts the conference as a whole. Someone has to lose those games. We are just starting to dig ourselves out of the hole we’ve dug. It’s already been talked about that making a bowl game is important to keeping the ball rolling and improving recruiting. We are headed in the right direction but any hiccup or headwind could unravel everything.

I guess nothing has been decided and I’m getting all worried about nothing. Sorry, but as one of the 17, I have been living a sad existence, waiting, begging, pleading for success. I don’t want to go back, I can’t go back, I won’t go back, please please please B1G office do not screw this up for me, I’m begging you!
 
#679      
illinistephen
The Big Ten and SEC can do whatever they want with football. If they decide that 6 wins for a bowl is obsolete then it will be obsolete. If they decided that the #14 Big Ten team will face the #14 SEC team at a neutral site in January, then those teams will face regardless of win-loss records. That game couldn't be a worse tv draw than some random 6-6 MWC and MAC teams playing.
 
#680      
sacraig
mattcoldagelli said:
It’s imperfect, but a useful indicator about where someone falls on the Realignment Doomer Spectrum is how they answer “what do you think about bowl system?”
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If my opinion is that it's an outdated dinosaur that long ago eroded it's clout by having so damned many American Standard® Toilet Bowl games, what does that tell you?
 
#681      
GForce
This all feels so rape & pillage, scorched earth, grab the loot and get out before the rabble realizes what's happened. And by then, the people who pushed it or voted for it, the few you can actually identify by name, will be safely ensconced in their Aspen/Fisher Island/Zurich retirement villa, far from the torches and pitchforks... if that ever happens. Fans have long been beholden to (brow beaten by) the big media networks... wanna start your homecoming game at 2? haha, NBC says suck it up and get there at 11. And now we're left to sort out or rationalize the continued superleague, semipro expansion b/c the networks say so, and console ourselves that InBev decided to keep our soda brand (for now), not like those RC Cola rubes in Pullman.
 
#683      
pruman91
IlliniCaboose said:
I get the regionalism arguments from a nostalgia standpoint, we all miss the way things were from when we were younger ("It was a better, simpler time when yada yada yada"). But, as an Illinois and Big Ten fan, going forward I like it. Am I sad I won't get to watch UCLA and Oregon State play at 10pm local time, not really. Am I excited to have USC and Oregon come to Champaign every few years, hell yes.
As they say, change is the only constant. No use worrying about what might be coming down the pike. I'm going to still go to every home game, and watch every road game on TV no matter who Illinois is lining up against that week. There will still be bowl games, and now, with the expanded play off format and a competent coaching staff, we've got an outside shot to make the playoffs every once in a while. Will we ever be at the OSU or Mich level, almost certainly no. Will we ever be at risk of being kicked out of the Big Ten and have to join the MAC and be in the second tier of college football, I don't think that will happen either. We're in as good of a position as a school with our football pedigree could hope to be in, so just sit back and enjoy our hopeful rise from the dregs of the conference to hopefully somewhere in the middle!
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Change is necessary for growth.........A tried and true managing mechanism I used all the time when I was a sales manager.........
 
#684      
pruman91
altgeld88 said:
Thanks for bringing up the Palouse, the Vandals-Cougs rivalry, and proximity of Pullman and Moscow. I had the good fortune of spending a weekend in August 1990 in Moscow (actually, between Blaine and Genesee, just down the road) on the farm of my brother's girlfriend's parents. My brother lived in Seattle back then and my roommate from UIUC grad school and I were heading there and then down the West Coast on a post-graduation trip, having secured our diplomas in Champaign only a couple weeks earlier.

The Palouse is stunning, on a plateau rising steeply out of the Snake River valley at the confluence of the Bitterroot River (so steep you climb US-95 ~ 2000 vertical feet from the town of Lewiston, ID over the course of only five miles .) Yes, even prettier than the EC Illinois prairie, JG ;). I drove the harvester with Karen's dad for a bit on his wheat & legume farm, enjoyed Moscow, the Univ of Idaho campus, the Kibbie Dome, and then a couple days later we stopped just over the border in Pullman for a visit to Wazzu on our way to Seattle .

Here I am with Karen, reppin' the Illini in my Champion reverse-weave sweatshirt, and wandering through the Palouse wheat 33 years ago in ~ 10 days from now. This is what "rolling" means!

A lifetime ago, and it seems like yesterday.

View attachment 27626
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Wow , that pic is stupendous........it really really is.................
 
#686      
pruman91
GForce said:
This all feels so rape & pillage, scorched earth, grab the loot and get out before the rabble realizes what's happened. And by then, the people who pushed it or voted for it, the few you can actually identify by name, will be safely ensconced in their Aspen/Fisher Island/Zurich retirement villa, far from the torches and pitchforks... if that ever happens. Fans have long been beholden to (brow beaten by) the big media networks... wanna start your homecoming game at 2? haha, NBC says suck it up and get there at 11. And now we're left to sort out or rationalize the continued superleague, semipro expansion b/c the networks say so, and console ourselves that InBev decided to keep our soda brand (for now), not like those RC Cola rubes in Pullman.
Click to expand...
1691351825627.png


Without a doubt , RC was my # 1 cola choice............................it really really was.............................
 
#687      
Bucktown
altgeld88 said:
Thanks for bringing up the Palouse, the Vandals-Cougs rivalry, and proximity of Pullman and Moscow. I had the good fortune of spending a weekend in August 1990 in Moscow (actually, between Blaine and Genesee, just down the road) on the farm of my brother's girlfriend's parents. My brother lived in Seattle back then and my roommate from UIUC grad school and I were heading there and then down the West Coast on a post-graduation trip, having secured our diplomas in Champaign only a couple weeks earlier.

The Palouse is stunning, on a plateau rising steeply out of the Snake River valley at the confluence of the Bitterroot River (so steep you climb US-95 ~ 2000 vertical feet from the town of Lewiston, ID over the course of only five miles .) Yes, even prettier than the EC Illinois prairie, JG ;). I drove the harvester with Karen's dad for a bit on his wheat & legume farm, enjoyed Moscow, the Univ of Idaho campus, the Kibbie Dome, and then a couple days later we stopped just over the border in Pullman for a visit to Wazzu on our way to Seattle .

Here I am with Karen, reppin' the Illini in my Champion reverse-weave sweatshirt, and wandering through the Palouse wheat 33 years ago in ~ 10 days from now. This is what "rolling" means!

A lifetime ago, and it seems like yesterday.

View attachment 27626
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My 16 & 20 year old girls are still wearing my Champion reverse weave sweatshirts from the the late 80’s. Those things are bulletproof.
 
#689      
altgeld88
TentakilRex said:
BTW F Ray Anderson! Don't worry guys, ASU fans despise him more.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1688270639600148480

If wasn't for Northwestern, this would be the biggest dumpster fire in the P5.
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After years of driving back and forth past Morgantown between DC and Ohio, I finally stopped and toured the vertiginous WVU campus in late May (it makes San Francisco's topography look gently rolling).

Ray Anderson is an idiot. After wandering in its back gate and taking it all in, seeing a game at Mountaineer Field rose sharply up my college football bucket list.

1691353284018.png
 
#691      
TentakilRex
altgeld88 said:
After years of driving back and forth past Morgantown between DC and Ohio, I finally stopped and toured the vertiginous WVU campus in late May (it makes San Francisco's topography look gently rolling).

Ray Anderson is an idiot. After wandering in its back gate and taking it all in, seeing a game at Mountaineer Field rose sharply up my college football bucket list.

View attachment 27629
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Love the WVU AD's counter

https://twitter.com/x/status/1688202025333293056
 
#693      
IllinoisssssssVarsity
#694      
Ryllini
ChiefGritty said:
The idea that the Big XII is a "major conference" containing no major brands, while hand-waving away the ACC is just pure college football beat writer brain. Oh they added schools therefore they are powerful and winning.

The idea that this is some triumph over the evil NCAA is also just a bizarre brainworm.

Conferences don't exist. The NCAA doesn't exist in any meaningful sense. Only two forces that mean anything exist in college football: Fox and ESPN.
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No one is hand waving the ACC away and of course all that matters is the networks. We probably aren’t going to be calling these conferences by the names we are used to soon anyways. Sitting here waiting for ND to join and conference or FSU, Clemson, Miami, etc is completely stupid. ESPN to think they are locking the ACC down until 2036 isn’t a very good plan, they will be left in the dust. When they do join, there will be shock and a scramble to make a schedule. There should be no shock, this train isn’t stopping. This is why I say, all of these people involved know what they want and need to sit down like grown ups and figure out your conferences, divisions, and playoffs so you can delivery a compelling product. Like NFL, Fox you get the NFC and CBS the AFC, here you’ll have ESPN for half and Fox for the other.

I just want to get on with it is all. On to new traditions and rivalry.
 
#695      
Iloveorangekoolaid
Shief said:
I am going to show my engineering/desire for efficient transportation here.

Why can't there be an easy train connection between O'Hare and downstate? I know that the L has a line that goes from the Amtrac station to O'Hare but I'm not going to do that. I will purposely pay another $200 round-trip to take a hopper from Willard/CU or CIRA/Bloomington to O'Hare a then onto my destination. If there was a good train service from O'Hare to Champaign, then USC, UCLA, Oregon, and Washington fans could easily come to games here.
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I know you’re being mostly facetious but United has been doing exactly this the past few years. Here’s a link with all the additional routes this fall on specific weekends for specific games.


Also, I’d imagine they’d start flying ORD-EUG direct at least seasonally starting next year. LA, Seattle and Portland are already covered.
 
#696      
IlliniLifer123
Doesn't all this lead to player contracts, salary caps & a union?

Doesn't this all just lead to the NFL system, but with maybe 64 teams?

Parity is good for the sports business. Spread out the SEC teams. Spread out the talent somewhat equally across the college football league.

Or does college football slowly turn into a southern NASCAR thing?
 
#700      
illiniE
Shief said:
I am going to show my engineering/desire for efficient transportation here.

Why can't there be an easy train connection between O'Hare and downstate? I know that the L has a line that goes from the Amtrac station to O'Hare but I'm not going to do that. I will purposely pay another $200 round-trip to take a hopper from Willard/CU or CIRA/Bloomington to O'Hare a then onto my destination. If there was a good train service from O'Hare to Champaign, then USC, UCLA, Oregon, and Washington fans could easily come to games here.
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I have been to South Bend for a USC/ND game. USC fans will just fly their chartered jets to Champaign and skip O’hare.
 
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