Conference Realignment

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#551      

Mr. Tibbs

Mr. Tibbs
southeast DuPage
Mr. Tibbs
Chukwuwumba said:
Wonder if mountain west can just rebrand as pac12? I’m sure remaining pac teams will still be able to bring teams in, pac more desired name than other conferences. Guessing they still have rights to the name? But idk. Mountain west will probably be dissolved. Grab some from wac/ west coast/ sky. Just rotating chairs.
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PAC name will likely survive and absorbs some, most , or all Mountain West schools in .

Hard to imagine Stanford relegated to playing a Group of 5 schedule tho . Not sure if ND can or even wants to throw them a lifeline and come into the BIG with them .

and I just don’t think the NCAA remains the governing body of major college football and basketball anymore .

lots of more changes to college sports on the horizon and most do not make me feel good . It’s the NFLing of college football and the money it brings is like a drug to these schools
 
#552      

oldman

O
oldman
24 teams spit into 4 divisions of 6 teams each makes the most sense. It would enable schedulers to continue regional rivalries and reduce travel costs, particularly for the non-revenue sports. Getting to 24 teams with an eye towards maintaining some regional relationships would require adding 2 more west coast teams, such as Stanford and Cal, and adding 4 east coast teams, such as Clemson, FSU, Virginia and North Carolina. All 6 have been rumored to have interest in the B1G or vice versa. The northern California markets would be covered, as would much of the southeast. For the Atlanta market Georgia Tech might be an east coast alternative with strong academics, but their football and basketball programs, the major revenue sports, have been sub-par in recent years. I understand there are a variety of issues with both Cal and Stanford, but if you are serious about creating a truly national conference some compromises will have to be made.

Nebraska and/or Iowa would be spared the travel to the west coast inherent in being part of a west division. Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Northwestern as well as Indiana, Michigan, MSU, Purdue, tOSU and Penn State in two divisions would preserve historic regional rivalries. An east coast division would consist of Rutgers, Maryland, Clemson, North Carolina, Virginia and FSU. Much easier to run a 24 team end of the year basketball tournament than an 18 team tourney. In football four division champions would feed into a playoff for the championship, and someone with an imagination could come up with an also-ran playoff that would keep more teams playing into the post-season. Finally, scheduling and travel for non-revenue sports would be significantly easier. Under the present system the cost of non-revenue sports could become prohibitive.
 
#554      

BashCtIllini

BashCtIllini
BashCtIllini
oldman said:
24 teams spit into 4 divisions of 6 teams each makes the most sense. It would enable schedulers to continue regional rivalries and reduce travel costs, particularly for the non-revenue sports. Getting to 24 teams with an eye towards maintaining some regional relationships would require adding 2 more west coast teams, such as Stanford and Cal, and adding 4 east coast teams, such as Clemson, FSU, Virginia and North Carolina. All 6 have been rumored to have interest in the B1G or vice versa. The northern California markets would be covered, as would much of the southeast. For the Atlanta market Georgia Tech might be an east coast alternative with strong academics, but their football and basketball programs, the major revenue sports, have been sub-par in recent years. I understand there are a variety of issues with both Cal and Stanford, but if you are serious about creating a truly national conference some compromises will have to be made.

Nebraska and/or Iowa would be spared the travel to the west coast inherent in being part of a west division. Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Northwestern as well as Indiana, Michigan, MSU, Purdue, tOSU and Penn State in two divisions would preserve historic regional rivalries. An east coast division would consist of Rutgers, Maryland, Clemson, North Carolina, Virginia and FSU. Much easier to run a 24 team end of the year basketball tournament than an 18 team tourney. In football four division champions would feed into a playoff for the championship, and someone with an imagination could come up with an also-ran playoff that would keep more teams playing into the post-season. Finally, scheduling and travel for non-revenue sports would be significantly easier. Under the present system the cost of non-revenue sports could become prohibitive.
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I agree with this, and do think it is probably the end goal. But, I then say what is the point?

So let's say you're right, the Big Ten adds Cal and Stanford and they go in a division with UCLA, USC, Oregon, and Washington. Ok well you essentially just created the PAC 6 as a subsidiary of the Big 10. You put Clemson, Florida State, Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, and Rutgers into a division, you've created a subset of the ACC as a subsidiary of the Big 10. Then in the middle, you take all the more traditional Big 10 schools and split them into 2 divisions, similar to what we have today. So in effect, all that you've done is separate some of your traditional teams, because they will be in different divisions and given them an extra set of teams they will play pretty regularly.

This is why, in my mind, this is just replacing the NCAA with the 2 or 3 mega conferences. I don't see the point. The schools are just trying to get more money and don't really care about anything else, but if they are all grouping to share in the profits; Well why don't they just share in the profits and skip the grouping into mega conferences? Yes I know the greed will always win out, but it just seems so pointless to me.
 
#555      

Mr. Roberts

Mr. Roberts
Mr. Roberts
BashCtIllini said:
I think ultimately, the more teams group into a small number of conferences, the more meaningless a conference is.
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I agree - as we move to 18 and perhaps 24 schools, we will no longer be a conference, in the traditional competitive sense. We will be an association of schools with a common governing body. The conference championship in any sport will become akin to an NCAA Regional championship, and will become virtually unobtainable for the bulk of the teams. The more unattainable it becomes, the less important it will be to those teams, and hence being part of a "conference" becomes more and more meaningless from a competition standpoint. With 24 teams, even if every program were on an even footing, you could expect to win your conference title no more than four times a century. Factor in the competitive imbalance, and unless you are a traditional power, forget it, it's a pipe dream.

But hey, we'll cash big checks. For a little while longer, anyway.
 
#556      

sacraig

sacraig
The desert
sacraig
illini0440 said:
@Indy Illini Fan we fight?!
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Big Brother Fight GIF by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
 
#559      

altgeld88

altgeld88
Arlington, Virginia
altgeld88
ChiefGritty said:
We've gone from five major conferences that align with a region of the country as commonly culturally understood to (at most) one.

I think regionalism is underrated across a lot of domains in our society.
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Regionalism remains strong in the southeast and in Texas. Strong cultures each. The rest of the country, not so much. I've been interested during the 35 years since I graduated from UIUC how those I know (from school and otherwise) who migrate from the Midwest, Northeast or, increasingly over the past 20 years, California to those strong-culture regions adopt in general, and quite happily, the prevailing culture. Americans who emigrate regionally are extremely adaptable in that way. I have a former colleague form 25 years ago who ended up via mergers in Phoenix around 2005. He and his wife were hard core DC/NYC natives who didn't want to move. They embraced the Valley of the Sun and have no desire at this point to leave, though their kids are grown.

As I've grown older I've come full circle back to my Midwest roots, though I left for good in 1990. Whenever someone asks where I'm from I say "Ohio and Illinois." Those are the places that formed me. They're indelibly who I am. Everywhere subsequently has been a residence. Perhaps I'd feel differently if I'd moved to Texas or Atlanta.
 
#561      

TheChief4Life

TheChief4Life
TheChief4Life
Everyone who keeps saying "what's the point" already knows what the point is... actually, there's two.

First, money.
Second, power.

In no particular order.

Why do businesses buy other businesses, but keep the product basically untouched or renamed? In the same way, the Big Ten will likely absorb a couple more PAC-X schools and form a division of just former PAC-10/12/14 schools. Except now... the Big Ten gets the money and the control. The same will be true of the eventual collapse of the ACC.

On top of that, think about teams in a conference like owning shares in a business. When one person/group owns a majority share, they get a lot more sway in how things are done.

The Big Ten and SEC (and weirdly enough the Big 12 now...) are on their way towards fighting for majority shares. When there's only two or three real conferences left, the NCAA will eventually lose all power as individual conferences will control more. There will be a day, likely in our lifetime, that the Big Ten and SEC specifically will finally decide they can "do it better" than the NCAA, and withdraw. And when they do, the NCAA will be powerless to stop them, and powerless when they leave.

We aren't watching the collapse of college football (seriously... people need to step back from the ledge). We're witnessing the collapse of the NCAA. I for one welcome our super-conference overlords.
 
#562      

ChiefGritty

ChiefGritty
Chicago, IL
ChiefGritty
altgeld88 said:
Regionalism remains strong in the southeast and in Texas. Strong cultures each. The rest of the country, not so much. I've been interested during the 35 years since I graduated from UIUC how those I know (from school and otherwise) who migrate from the Midwest, Northeast or, increasingly over the past 20 years, California to those strong-culture regions adopt in general, and quite happily, the prevailing culture. Americans who emigrate regionally are extremely adaptable in that way. I have a former colleague form 25 years ago who ended up via mergers in Phoenix around 2005. He and his wife were hard core DC/NYC natives who didn't want to move. They embraced the Valley of the Sun and have no desire at this point to leave, though their kids are grown.

As I've grown older I've come full circle back to my Midwest roots, though I left for good in 1990. Whenever someone asks where I'm from I say "Ohio and Illinois." Those are the places that formed me. They're indelibly who I am. Everywhere subsequently has been a residence. Perhaps I'd feel differently if I'd moved to Texas or Atlanta.
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Is what you're saying that people who migrate from the South or Texas to other regions of the country don't adopt the local culture, remaining Southern/Texan, but other regional transitions do?

That's kind of an interesting claim, and there may be something to that, but implicit in that is what I'm actually saying: there ARE regional cultures.

And my point is that they are good and fun and I like them.

I also think the way those regional cultures are expressed is a major reason college football is so popular. Pro sports are both nationalized and homogenized and also anchored on cities. College football shows you the US map in a different way, a way that appeals to people who don't tower over the country from a Manhattan skyscraper.

Until now.
 
#563      

altgeld88

altgeld88
Arlington, Virginia
altgeld88
ChiefGritty said:
Is what you're saying that people who migrate from the South or Texas to other regions of the country don't adopt the local culture, remaining Southern/Texan, but other regional transitions do?

That's kind of an interesting claim, and there may be something to that, but implicit in that is what I'm actually saying: there ARE regional cultures.

And my point is that they are good and fun and I like them.

I also think the way those regional cultures are expressed is a major reason college football is so popular. Pro sports are both nationalized and homogenized and also anchored on cities. College football shows you the US map in a different way, a way that appeals to people who don't tower over the country from a Manhattan skyscraper.

Until now.
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Ah... the problem with multitasking as I monitor the Board on a Saturday morning. I misread "underrated" for "overrated." Or perhaps I wanted to misread it so I could argue with you. ;)

You and I agree, and I also agree that's what makes college sports so much fun.

I don't know whether Texans or southerners who migrate to other parts of the country adopt those new regional cultures. Interesting question. I have no data on that, other than the Texans I worked with in New Jersey in 1991 (thank goodness my NJ sentence was limited to only several months of 1991, never to be repeated) who were looking actively for cyanide pills! Given the economics of the U.S. during my adulthood it has been a mostly one-way flow from the NE and Midwest to the south and southwest.
 
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#564      

Navy_illini

N
Navy_illini
With all theses additions when was the last time a Big Ten school won a national championship in basketball and football
 
#565      

Tacomallini

T
Washington State
Tacomallini
Tough takes on PNW, presumably from folks that have never lived here. I’ll take WA over IL November-April - fantastic time to hike, imo. I’ll take WA over IL May-October too. And you can bet your arse I’ll be painted orange and in Seattle and Eugene every time the Illini are in town.
I-L-L
 
#568      

BretMyBeachHouse

B
BretMyBeachHouse
altgeld88 said:
Ah... the problem with multitasking as I monitor the Board on a Saturday morning. I misread "underrated" for "overrated." Or perhaps I wanted to misread it so I could argue with you. ;)

You and I agree, and I also agree that's what makes college sports so much fun.

I don't know whether Texans or southerners who migrate to other parts of the country adopt those new regional cultures. Interesting question. I have no data on that, other than the Texans I worked with in New Jersey in 1991 (thank goodness my NJ sentence was limited to only several months of 1991, never to be repeated) who were looking actively for cyanide pills! Given the economics of the U.S. during my adulthood it has been a mostly one-way flow from the NE and Midwest to the south and southwest.
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I'll always think of the B1G as a midwest division. Like others have noted, I haven't even warmed up to Penn State.

This feels like Phillip Morris buying General Foods.
 
#571      

Battle89

Battle89
Battle89
LouHenson said:
I think you right in with this, but the problem is the SEC is/was such a better football conference than the BIG. Since the BIG could never get ND to join they had to go outside traditional geographic boundary’s to get more “power” in football. PSU and Nebraska (at least in theory for Nebraska) did this. So the big had:

1) tOSU
2) scUM
3) PSU
4) Nebraska

Still, with the SEC adding Texas and OU they have:

1) Alabama
2) Georgia
3) Florida
4) Tennessee
5) Texas
6) OU
7) A&M
8) Auburn

It was still way better than the BIG. Adding UCLA and USC in particular helped, but we are still behind the SEC (at least in my mind?)

The problem is that most of the “great” college football programs (leaving ND out) are in the South. That is why if I am the BIG I go after Clemson and FSU as hard as I can. There is nothing left in the West and if they could get Clemson and FSU they would have a top 8 that at least in theory would compete with the SEC.

I hate ND, but they really would help the BIG 10
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I go back and forth between Clemson and Miami after FSU, but otherwise agree totally. No question Clemson is the stronger program today, but I wonder about long-term opportunities with a bigger Florida footprint.

Quoting myself, it's all about scale now. On a per-capita football basis, the SEC beats the Big Ten pretty easily. Best we can do is surround them with a more national footprint, which does come with the negative side effects of more travel, bigger environmental hit, etc.
 
#572      

Tophe

Tophe
Middle TN
Tophe
I can see why they're doing what they're doing for football, and to a lesser degree basketball, but how are the non-revenue sports going to adapt to these mega-conferences? Is there any chance they take a different route and keep within their historic geographies?
 
#573      

BRucks

BRucks
BRucks
This pretty much kills the possibility for our athletes to be able to compete in every conference venue over their collegiate career. Of course, many of them don't seem inclined to stick around for four years anymore in some sports.
 
#574      

Joel Goodson

Joel Goodson
ties will be resolved
Joel Goodson
10 game conference schedule is inevitable, I reckon. Then tell the Domers that if they want to play conference teams, they have to be a member. ND comes in with Stanford. Not holding my breath, but that's how I'd play it.

When the ACC breaks up, add FSU, Miami, UNC (if we can) and one of VT/Va/Clemson.
 
#575      

altgeld88

altgeld88
Arlington, Virginia
altgeld88
GrayGhost77 said:
In football it's still Ohio St in 2014 and in basketball still Maryland in 2002 (and before that MSU in 2000).
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lol. I'm sitting 15 miles from College Park, have a close friend who played hoops at MD in the '60s, and yet I block out its Natty. Funny how that works. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that I'm 0-for-3 watching the Illini play Maryland here in person.
 
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