The new conference shall be named "PACAC"
Sources: ACC plans calls to discuss Cal, Stanford
ACC leaders are set to begin exploratory discussions on the potential additions of California and Stanford to the conference, sources told ESPN's Pete Thamel on Monday, but the scheduled calls are in the embryonic stages at the point.www.espn.com
For god's sake just combine the Powerless Three. It doesn't have to be like this.
Conference Realignment
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Illini92and96
- Austin, TX
At this point the NCAA should focus on aviation and set up a network of charter flights. The National Collegiate Aviation Alliance. They could actually serve a beneficial purpose!
So it ends up putting a random team with UCLA/USC and a random team with ORWA, but 6, 3 team pods fits a nice 9 or even 12 conference game schedule.
Oregon
Washington
Nebraska
USC
UCLA
Iowa
Illinois
Northwestern
Minnesota
OSU
Michigan
MSU
Indiana
Purdue
Wisconsin
Maryland
Rutgers
Penn State
Oregon
Washington
Nebraska
USC
UCLA
Iowa
Illinois
Northwestern
Minnesota
OSU
Michigan
MSU
Indiana
Purdue
Wisconsin
Maryland
Rutgers
Penn State
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
There's a "pretending this isn't happening" current to the discourse around this that really gets under my skin, I'm not going to lie to you.
As funny as the suggestion is, no, we're not kicking Iowa out of the conference with a Greyhound ticket to LA. The Big Ten we grew up with is dead, over, never coming back, Illinois will never again play something anyone would have recognized as a Big Ten schedule ten years ago, ever, period. It has been comprehensively destroyed because a few dollars tomorrow means more to the people running things than preserving anything we love about the sport.
Change is never easy, but new histories start every second of the day. There will plenty of great football played in the B1G now, and in another 10 years when we don't even remember the titanic shifts.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
Well but this is the thing, right? As a matter of fact, there will be quite poor football played in the B1G, relative to what you can see on Sundays. College football games are sloppy, way too long, poorly refereed, decided more often by mistakes than by displays of athletic excellence.
We love it because nonetheless these are games with stakes, games that MATTER, a story we feel a deep personal investment in.
A big part of that is our connection to the University of Illinois, and that's not going away. But that very idea of Fighting Illini sports emerged within a context, a rich cultural heritage. The Big Ten has been a metonym for the Midwest forever, those are inherently connected ideas. And it's a valuable idea. So valuable it turns out that the golden goose is being sold off as a 3-piece leg and thigh combo rather than cherished as our collective inheritance.
Adaptability and openness to the future, and a general spirit of optimism are good things to have in life. They're just making you incorrect here though, they're the wrong tools for this job. And the gap really shows when you play make-believe that Nebraska and Iowa are the only ones things will have to be different for.
Even for those who embrace change and the televised revolution, this is the moment conference realignment has reached saturation, critical mass, and crossed the line into complete stupidity.
The worst realignment move ever is worse than you thought
Rutgers’ time in the Big Ten, college football's most lucrative conference, has been a competitive and financial nightmare.
theathletic.com
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
I hope they “bring back” divisions with two more Pac-12 teams. There’s nothing inherently wrong with one division being worse at the top but more competitive top to bottom. Adding USC, Oregon, Washington and UCLA to a West with a resurgent Illinois, Nebraska and Wisconsin is a damn exciting division. Obviously you’d have to shift some teams east, hopefully it’s Purdue and Northwestern and not us!
altgeld88
- Arlington, Virginia
Nah. It's all about brevity: Coast Conference.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
This is well expressed:The worst realignment move ever is worse than you thought
Rutgers’ time in the Big Ten, college football's most lucrative conference, has been a competitive and financial nightmare.
"But while Rutgers has hemorrhaged money, the Big Ten’s coffers got richer thanks to one particular revenue stream – cable subscription fees. As of 2014, the Big Ten Network, co-owned by Fox, received $1 per month from cable providers within the conference footprint as opposed to around 10 cents out-of-market. Once it joined the Big Ten, Rutgers became an in-market school for the roughly 6 million cable households in New York, New Jersey and parts of Connecticut.
“We basically had a 400 percent increase (in network revenue),” Delany says of the Maryland/Rutgers impact. “We went from about $50 million a year to about $200 million a year annual average value. That makes everybody’s eyes pop.”
But the schools’ arrival coincided with the dawn of cord-cutting. BTN had 49.6 million subscribers in December 2022, a 9 percent drop from just a year earlier, according to Sports Business Journal analysis of Nielsen research. Meanwhile, in 2021, the conference sold a stake in BTN to Fox, which now holds 61 percent ownership. Cable revenue, while still significant, is not nearly the same revenue driver as the conference’s new deals with Fox, CBS and NBC, reportedly worth more than $1 billion a year.
That begs the question, does Rutgers still carry the same value it did then?
“Rutgers was a bad idea long term,” says a sports media consultant, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “At the time, it worked. But with the television model moving from cable to direct-to-consumer, they don’t deliver New York City. The network still has those carriage agreements, but that’s majority owned by Fox now, so their positive impact is shrinking.”"
A very successful short-term play that never had the remotest hope of not being a long-term albatross. A tradeoff Jim Delany eagerly accepted with eyes wide open.
altgeld88
- Arlington, Virginia
This cuts directly to the heart of the matter, which I noted on Sunday: tearing down fences for purported short-term gain without wondering why someone built the fences. The evisceration of tradition rooted in place and region.
Props, BTW, on deploying metonym.
mattcoldagelli
- The Transfer Portal with Do Not Contact Tag
While the "pretend this isn't happening" current is done with its time in the barrel, I nominate the "nostalgia on meth" current to be next.
ANYTHING we love about the sport? Really? Some thoughts about CFB broadly first, and then Illinois specifically:
- I'm sure there's a specific strain of Alabama fan whose sole source of contentment is winning the Iron Bowl, but there are vastly more who are also loving a life that includes a generational rivalry against Clemson, a weirdo blood feud with Texas A&M, a regional pride standoff with Ohio State, and all these other things that would sound like science fiction to a Tide fan in 1970. Wailing about the passing of old rivalries (as is always done, my earliest memory was when the Big XII was formed and killed the Southwest Conference) is easy to do because the things that may take their place are unknowns - we can't compare them because they don't exist yet.
- One of the best things about college football is that the football is subpar. You can get away with things in CFB that will never fly in the NFL because the players and coaches are too good. Maybe you can argue that this is going to make the football in the SEC and the B1G so much better that CFB in those conferences will lose that - but I'm as yet unconvinced on that front.
- We're keeping bands, right? And tailgates? And the fact that these things will all coalesce in autumn, the King of Seasons? Those are not-insignificant parts of what make CFB great.
- Again, good riddance to bowls, in my opinion the dumbest thing going in American sports. Pull back for a minute and think of how much of this sport got sucked into the vortex of inanity that birthed the TaxSlayer Bowl:
"We have to schedule our non-con smartly!"
"Why?"
"So we can get to 6 wins and become bowl-eligible!"
"But why - most bowls don't mean anything?"
"But this is the only way to unlock the super-secret extra practices that are The Way You Build Programs!"
I know the GrittyPilled argument - that this dumb disorganized mess of a sport richly deserves all the meaningless pageantry Meineke Car Care can bestow upon it - and it has some merit. I am, to put it mildly, very open to alternatives.
For Illinois specifically:
- Maybe this is due to my specific age, maybe this is due to the fact that I am unsentimental to a fault, but there's just not a ton there in our specific Big Bucket O' Tradition. Our rival with the highest ceiling for true bad blood just self-immolated. Iowa is loathsome, but they care about Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa State more, and in any event I don't need them on the schedule to enjoy the Brian Ferentz Experience from afar. This is where someone will shout about Michigan or about the Illibuck and buddy, let me tell you we did not need conference expansion for those two schools to not even clock that we exist outside of their game week. We've got some promising coaching-tree/tie-in things cooking with Purdue and Wisconsin - that's great! Your hardest-core Mike White Era Enthusiast would scoff at the fact we are spending energy thinking about those two schools.
- I take the Sam-I-Am approach to seeing Illinois play and win. I would take them against Washington at Soldier Field. I would take them in LA. I would take them in Ann Arbor in an empty Crisler Arena. Football or basketball, I will take the wins here or there, I will take them anywhere, and I will not for a moment have any regret that "this is not your father's Big Ten". You might say we are going to lose more in this bigger and better conference. Maybe. But maybe not. And in any event, I'd rather lose to UCLA in a conference game than lose at home to San Jose State in a failed scheme to collect enough achievement points to make the Beef O'Brady's Bowl.
BZuppke
- Plainfield
I often have noted that our midwestern culture is reflected in Big Ten football - tough, direct, no gimmicks etc. What will the culture of the Big Ten be going forward?
mattcoldagelli
- The Transfer Portal with Do Not Contact Tag
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I like this for B10 tradition and history.
The travel for Neo division would be outrageous. Also Notre Dame would never accept this. Maybe you put Notre Dame in classic and add 2 more schools to Neo. UNC (Charlotte #21 TV, NC population 10.7m 9th largest state) and Georgia Tech (Atlanta market #6 TV)
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
Much as we may disagree, it's clear you get it.
College football's charm is its weapon. For me, from a young age, the weird parochialism (and thereby extensive fun trivia to know) of it all has been very central to that. I'm like that meme photo of Rob Lowe wearing an "NFL" hat, except it's the Floyd of Rosedale. It all well predates me being an Illinois student. That's me, that's not everybody, I understand. This is aesthetically horrifying to me personally in a way that isn't broadly shared.
Still, I think it is charmless and obnoxious in a way that IS broadly shared, and beyond just being upset about it, I sincerely believe we're robbing Peter to pay Paul here, and the sport is going to experience a decline in mass interest and cultural cache that did not need to be the case. Time will tell.
altgeld88
- Arlington, Virginia
I'm nostalgic but retain my teeth and ability to function. So far.
That's a strong post, and I take many of your your points. Both in football and basketball I'm confident that we'll gain from playing our new brethren. We'll also continue to play many of our Midwestern competitors and that component of regional feel will persist.
On the flip side, I chat regularly with a friend who's indelibly a Maryland Terp, is in his 70s, and has substantial ties to the university and its basketball program. After nine years he still doesn't feel part of the B1G, nor do many younger MD fans I talk to. They miss the ingrained rivalries from the ACC, and its regional peculiarities. Goodness only knows how Rutgers' fans feel. PSU and Nebraska fit easily in the conference. MD and Rutgers don't, even in basketball where each is keenly competitive. My friend is awaiting that Alabama-Clemson kind of rivalry. Maybe that sort of thing doesn't happen unless you're Alabama or Clemson. The Iron Bowl was electric, even when one side lagged.
It is what it is. I accept it and look forward to playing the four WC schools. I'm hopeful that the sum of the new parts pus the B1G will exceed the former whole. Perhaps something grand is being done for the wrong reasons. I hope so. I used to believe in Progress. Over many years I noted how often it was blinkered and did substantial damage. So now I'm in favor of progress (lower-case "p".) I became wary of tearing down fences, not that some haven't outlived their purposes.
Money is driving all of this, and those who are making the decisions will be paid extremely well. Like politicians, they'll all reap substantial short-term benefits while being long gone by the time the bill comes due. I dislike the decoupling of action and accountability. It often ends poorly for those on the far receiving end of the action.
Joel Goodson
- dawgville
this! Bravo!
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
One just mathematical note, when Penn State joined the conference as the one new guy, they were immediately playing a full schedule against the historic Big Ten, as still were the historic Big Ten with Penn State mixed in. Everyone had played everyone a ton after a handful of years.
The concentration of that mixture declines every time you add more outsiders to the mix. Maryland joined the league a decade ago and we've played them twice. This will get even more attenuated with the West Coast schools, while also dramatically reducing how much we play the Iowas and Wisconsins of the world.
So the aesthetics of it all and what "feels" traditional is one thing, the realities of the schedule is another.
We will never play something that looks like a Big Ten football schedule again, period. Also outside of the perma-Northwestern rivalry (we hope), we will never play ANYONE on the year-in, year-out basis that was what a "conference" used to mean.
Those are facts, and facts a lot of folks are choosing to not digest, and that's why I had a bee in my bonnet earlier. Embrace it or hate it, but reckon with the reality of it.
Maybe keep the ACC - All Coast Conference . . .
Preach, brother!
Better fit than the ACC, but......
www.yardbarker.com
Former Oregon football coach has surprising advice for Pac-12
With Washington and Oregon bolting for the Big Ten, following hot on the heels of USC and UCLA, what was once known as the Pac-12, the conference of champions, is all but dead.
www.yardbarker.com
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