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Big 12 looking for a new commissioner

roses04

Hall Of Fame
Oct 4, 2003
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They have about 10 candidates, one being listed is Kirk Schulz, due to his work in the Pac 12, and previous time in the Big 12, it will be interesting to see what he does. Personally I'd stay away from the Big 12, you have an interesting dynamic that is going to develop. They of course lost Nebraska, Texas A & M, then Texas and OU after year or two. Then you add BYU, Central Florida, Houston, and Cincinnati, Keep in mind you added West Virgina and Baylor last year. The Texas schools are not an issue, just bringing parts of the old Southwest conference back together. I just think the conference is going to have some growing pains that will lead to more breakups. I get why BYU wants to be in a conference, but there are no easy flights from UT to West Virginia, as one example, then Cincy and Central Florida, the sun will appeal to many in Fl, not sure about Cincy, there will be complaints many teams about having to go out to UTAH, plus they have the no games on Sunday rules in basketball. It's nice to have a diverse conference, but sometimes diverse is a nice name for dysfunctional.

The Big 10 pulled it off with Rutgers and Maryland, and since in most cases they have been easy wins it has worked out OK. Maryland negotiated a special travel budget with the league of an extra 4 or 5 million a year. And Maryland and Rutgers are much closer to all the Big 10 schools than BYU is to the rest of the Big 12. The Big 12 had a panic attack and added these 4 schools, who are all doing well right now, of these 4 none were power 5 schools, it was like they threw up some board quickly to keep the house together. However I do believe in 5-10 years we will get down to 4 power conferences so one is going to go, Won't be the SEC and it probably won't be the Big 12, So either the ACC, Pac 12, or Big 12 is gone. And it all depends upon, which teams get stolen from the conferences. Lose a few more big dogs and you're gone. If the Pac 12 lost USC and Oregon to the Big 10, the pac 12 is toast, not sure the Big 12 has a big draw right now. Starting next year, I believe all the conferences will have 14 teams except the Pac 12. Also with the portal and NIL deals, some of these teams won't keep up. So while the portal and NIL is a topic, I do believe it will drive us to 4 conferences as well, makes the numbers and tv dollars easier to split. ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX and right now ESPN dictates who gets what, and that will change in 2024, I hope there is more competition between the networks. 4 leagues with 16 teams each is 64 teams, right now there are 68, I guess time will tell.



Big 12 looking for new commish
 
It's a new challenge for him. I'd take it.

Seems somewhat weird that a league commissioner that oversees athletics is a higher status than a Pac12 President.

Then again, maybe not...given the distorted position of sports in our country.
 
They have about 10 candidates, one being listed is Kirk Schulz, due to his work in the Pac 12, and previous time in the Big 12, it will be interesting to see what he does. Personally I'd stay away from the Big 12, you have an interesting dynamic that is going to develop. They of course lost Nebraska, Texas A & M, then Texas and OU after year or two. Then you add BYU, Central Florida, Houston, and Cincinnati, Keep in mind you added West Virgina and Baylor last year. The Texas schools are not an issue, just bringing parts of the old Southwest conference back together. I just think the conference is going to have some growing pains that will lead to more breakups. I get why BYU wants to be in a conference, but there are no easy flights from UT to West Virginia, as one example, then Cincy and Central Florida, the sun will appeal to many in Fl, not sure about Cincy, there will be complaints many teams about having to go out to UTAH, plus they have the no games on Sunday rules in basketball. It's nice to have a diverse conference, but sometimes diverse is a nice name for dysfunctional.

The Big 10 pulled it off with Rutgers and Maryland, and since in most cases they have been easy wins it has worked out OK. Maryland negotiated a special travel budget with the league of an extra 4 or 5 million a year. And Maryland and Rutgers are much closer to all the Big 10 schools than BYU is to the rest of the Big 12. The Big 12 had a panic attack and added these 4 schools, who are all doing well right now, of these 4 none were power 5 schools, it was like they threw up some board quickly to keep the house together. However I do believe in 5-10 years we will get down to 4 power conferences so one is going to go, Won't be the SEC and it probably won't be the Big 12, So either the ACC, Pac 12, or Big 12 is gone. And it all depends upon, which teams get stolen from the conferences. Lose a few more big dogs and you're gone. If the Pac 12 lost USC and Oregon to the Big 10, the pac 12 is toast, not sure the Big 12 has a big draw right now. Starting next year, I believe all the conferences will have 14 teams except the Pac 12. Also with the portal and NIL deals, some of these teams won't keep up. So while the portal and NIL is a topic, I do believe it will drive us to 4 conferences as well, makes the numbers and tv dollars easier to split. ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX and right now ESPN dictates who gets what, and that will change in 2024, I hope there is more competition between the networks. 4 leagues with 16 teams each is 64 teams, right now there are 68, I guess time will tell.



Big 12 looking for new commish

No way top Pac 12 teams goto Big 10.

Either SEC, Big 10, Pac 12, collectively destroy, absorb the big 12, or Big 12 absorbs the Pac 12.

The most realistic thing that happens, is go down to 3,4 leagues, where Big 10, SEC, absorb ACC, and Big 10, SEC, Pac 12, absorb big 12.

Pac 12, likely doesn't get Absorbed. Could possibly happen, but not likely.

If Big 12 was stronger, didn't have it's top teams leaving, etc, combined with if Pac 12 had a weaker commish(like the most recent former, past commish)then the at least semi competent commish it now has, then maybe semi somewhat probably Pac 12 would, could dissolve to Big 12.

4 to 8 years from now, Big 12 is toast. BYU goes back to Mountain West, or Pac 12, or Big 10, or independent.

Texas Tech, Ok St, Baylor, KSU get Absorbed by Big 10, Pac 12, SEC. The other colleges goto midmajor, group of 5 conferences.

If Pac 12 does get Absorbed by Big 12, Big 10(UNLIKELY), WSU, Ore St, are gone, goto either Mountain west, Big Sky, etc. Borderline gone, not gone: Arizona, Colorado, maybe ASU, Cal, Utah

USC, Oregon, UCLA, Stanford, UW, would goto BIG 12(In this unlikely scenario).
 
They have about 10 candidates, one being listed is Kirk Schulz, due to his work in the Pac 12, and previous time in the Big 12, it will be interesting to see what he does. Personally I'd stay away from the Big 12, you have an interesting dynamic that is going to develop. They of course lost Nebraska, Texas A & M, then Texas and OU after year or two. Then you add BYU, Central Florida, Houston, and Cincinnati, Keep in mind you added West Virgina and Baylor last year. The Texas schools are not an issue, just bringing parts of the old Southwest conference back together. I just think the conference is going to have some growing pains that will lead to more breakups. I get why BYU wants to be in a conference, but there are no easy flights from UT to West Virginia, as one example, then Cincy and Central Florida, the sun will appeal to many in Fl, not sure about Cincy, there will be complaints many teams about having to go out to UTAH, plus they have the no games on Sunday rules in basketball. It's nice to have a diverse conference, but sometimes diverse is a nice name for dysfunctional.

The Big 10 pulled it off with Rutgers and Maryland, and since in most cases they have been easy wins it has worked out OK. Maryland negotiated a special travel budget with the league of an extra 4 or 5 million a year. And Maryland and Rutgers are much closer to all the Big 10 schools than BYU is to the rest of the Big 12. The Big 12 had a panic attack and added these 4 schools, who are all doing well right now, of these 4 none were power 5 schools, it was like they threw up some board quickly to keep the house together. However I do believe in 5-10 years we will get down to 4 power conferences so one is going to go, Won't be the SEC and it probably won't be the Big 12, So either the ACC, Pac 12, or Big 12 is gone. And it all depends upon, which teams get stolen from the conferences. Lose a few more big dogs and you're gone. If the Pac 12 lost USC and Oregon to the Big 10, the pac 12 is toast, not sure the Big 12 has a big draw right now. Starting next year, I believe all the conferences will have 14 teams except the Pac 12. Also with the portal and NIL deals, some of these teams won't keep up. So while the portal and NIL is a topic, I do believe it will drive us to 4 conferences as well, makes the numbers and tv dollars easier to split. ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX and right now ESPN dictates who gets what, and that will change in 2024, I hope there is more competition between the networks. 4 leagues with 16 teams each is 64 teams, right now there are 68, I guess time will tell.



Big 12 looking for new commish

Baylor has been in the Big 12 since 1996 and West Virginia joined the conference in 2012? Not sure what you meant above.

As for Power 5 teams, the Big 12 picked up teams that have been generally been pretty good recently. Houston was a reach, but it's in a huge metro and this could be the shot that they've needed to take the next step. Given how dire the situation looked when OU and Texas announced that they were leaving for the SEC, the Big 12 is sitting pretty good. Here are the final AP Top 25 football rankings of the current and future Big 12 members from 2021:

#4 Cincinnati
#5 Baylor
#7 Oklahoma State
#17 Houston
#19 BYU

Compare that to the Pac-12:
#12 Utah
#22 Oregon

I'm not sure that the Pac-12 is in a position to talk smack on the Big 12. BTW, the Big 12 has won the last two men's NCAA basketball championships too. We all know it, but the Pac-12 needs to figure out how to up its game.....fast.
 
I have a contrarian opinion or two re: the long term.

First, and this is important, all of the speculation depends upon brain injuries not completely derailing college football. That is a possibility, and maybe even not a remote possibility. But for the sake of the conversation let's assume that college football survives.

I don't think you can talk about "superconferences" without somehow having dealt with the current NIL and portal circuses. That is something else that can't continue as-is if college football is to remain healthy. And I'll define one requirement of "healthy" as avoiding a move toward an even greater haves/have nots situation. Having only one or two 16 team superconferences is probably not a sustainable business model, but that is where we are heading if the portal/NIL thing is not brought under control. My thought is that we will soon end up with either a "1 portal transfer only" rule or a "after 1 transfer you lose a year of eligibility for every subsequent transfer" rule, as well as some kind of NIL transparency, timing, multi-year guarantees, limits, tax withholding and other requirements. But assuming that something is done with the portal and NIL madness before they've killed the college football goose that has laid so many golden eggs, then what?

The only way a team can get enough wins in a season to be relevant is to include some weaker teams that are likely wins in your league. If we had one single league with 16 teams that included Notre Dame, USC, Oregon, Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, Clemson, the 6 best funded SEC teams and three more teams TBD, it is obvious that some of those teams would not have sparkling records each year. Would they eventually only have 6 league games so they could schedule enough non-con teams to maybe assure at least a winning record? Or would we set up a Premier League sort of system that bounces the lower teams out and replaces them with teams that did well in a lesser conference every couple of years (that is essentially what we have now at a very high level with the existing national championship playoff system)? Or would we have 2 or 3 superconferences? I doubt the 2 or 3 superconference model, if for no other reason than because I don't think there are enough well funded programs to fill 3 superconferences of 16 teams each. And if you can't equalize the money, you can't have sustainable competition.

The other route, which I consider to be far more likely, is to keep all the existing conferences but go to a wider national playoff model...perhaps with as many as 16 teams. Use the existing bowls for a lot of that. Would probably have to drop down to 10 or 11 regular season games in order to fit in the 4 rounds of playoff games that a 16 team playoff would require. Maybe drop to 10 fixed regular season games, make the playoff decision at that point, and have one more "floater" game to be scheduled between those who don't make the playoff. Certainly there are details to work out, but this keeps more teams "relevant" every year and permits more local rivalries to survive. I suspect it would also mean more total ad platform revenue than a smaller group of teams clustered in a smaller number of superconferences.

Long story short, I think the B12 will survive. I think all the existing conferences will survive, and looking much the same as they do today, up to the point that the SEC breaks up due to too much concentrated competition. I think the portal & NIL will both undergo an evolving set of restrictions over the next 3 years, by which time the new reality will have settled out. And within 3 years I think there will be an expansion of the national championship to at least 8 games, with 16 following at some point thereafter.

I recognize that this is not the prevailing wisdom, but it seems more likely to me than most of the other scenarios.
 
I read an article that predicted that college football as we know it will be gone in 12 years. The money side of the equation is to overwhelmingly prioritized that conferences and universities are going to start cutting schools like WSU, Oregon State, Vanderbilt that are viewed as holding the conferences back financially and that instead of universities running the athletic programs, companies will lease the licensing of the football teams from the universities and run the programs outside the university system. Since it's no longer public dollars, no more talk of Title IX and they drop the illusion that they are "student athletes".

I'm not sure that I buy into that kind of apocalyptic thinking, but it's certainly one version of the future that's possible.
 
I read an article that predicted that college football as we know it will be gone in 12 years. The money side of the equation is to overwhelmingly prioritized that conferences and universities are going to start cutting schools like WSU, Oregon State, Vanderbilt that are viewed as holding the conferences back financially and that instead of universities running the athletic programs, companies will lease the licensing of the football teams from the universities and run the programs outside the university system. Since it's no longer public dollars, no more talk of Title IX and they drop the illusion that they are "student athletes".

I'm not sure that I buy into that kind of apocalyptic thinking, but it's certainly one version of the future that's possible.
The way things have gone in the last 10 years, and has been accelerated in the last 2-3 years, nothing will surprise me. The NIL thing is a huge game changer, it basically throws out over half of the NCAA rule book on recruiting for the past 100 years. I do think a "Super League" of some sort is coming for all the blue blood big money schools. Sad actually, I think over the next few years, there maybe college players that make more money in college than they ever will in professional sports.
 
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We are at a crossroads in terms of the future of college FB. If nothing is done by the adults, it will become semi-pro, or maybe the equivalent to AA or AAA baseball relative to the major league pro teams...without the branded affiliation with the major league team that the baseball minor leagues have. It is headed toward no real player loyalty at all, which means the fan base is going to have to mentally adjust to having a significant number of totally new faces each year. Like it or not, that will alter the overall fan experience somewhat. The need for added revenue to compete in the NIL world is also likely to accelerate what ever result comes out of all this.

Within the next 5-6 years, it appears that either we will restore some sanity to the process, or it will change the face of college football significantly (heck, it has already changed significantly; but it will change a lot more). Whether college FB can survive if the number of relevant teams drops by half or more is a really good question. Ask yourself...if you are a WSU or OSU or Arizona fan, and those three teams went away, would you have any real interest in games featuring UW, UO or ASU? Or would you simply transfer your interest to a pro team? Or decide to watch hoops and baseball from a college perspective but blow off football all together? Based on those answers, what kind of hit will the college football audience and advertising take if half the teams go away?

The issues seem obvious; we are all discussing them. But is anybody really in charge, now that the NCAA had its hand slapped and appears to be confined to their corner for disciplinary reasons? I'm going to suggest that, if nobody is really in charge and it is "everybody for themselves", then in 5-6 years (not even a decade), we won't recognize college football. On the other hand, if some adults (and that group will have to include the university presidents) take a leadership role, then we'll still see change, but it is likely to make more sense and be more inclusive from a "number of participants" standpoint.
 
If the pandemic taught us nothing else, when something doesn't have the same access or appeal, there are other things to take its place.

RIP, college athletics. It's been good knowing you.
 
We are at a crossroads in terms of the future of college FB. If nothing is done by the adults, it will become semi-pro, or maybe the equivalent to AA or AAA baseball relative to the major league pro teams...without the branded affiliation with the major league team that the baseball minor leagues have. It is headed toward no real player loyalty at all, which means the fan base is going to have to mentally adjust to having a significant number of totally new faces each year. Like it or not, that will alter the overall fan experience somewhat. The need for added revenue to compete in the NIL world is also likely to accelerate what ever result comes out of all this.

Within the next 5-6 years, it appears that either we will restore some sanity to the process, or it will change the face of college football significantly (heck, it has already changed significantly; but it will change a lot more). Whether college FB can survive if the number of relevant teams drops by half or more is a really good question. Ask yourself...if you are a WSU or OSU or Arizona fan, and those three teams went away, would you have any real interest in games featuring UW, UO or ASU? Or would you simply transfer your interest to a pro team? Or decide to watch hoops and baseball from a college perspective but blow off football all together? Based on those answers, what kind of hit will the college football audience and advertising take if half the teams go away?

The issues seem obvious; we are all discussing them. But is anybody really in charge, now that the NCAA had its hand slapped and appears to be confined to their corner for disciplinary reasons? I'm going to suggest that, if nobody is really in charge and it is "everybody for themselves", then in 5-6 years (not even a decade), we won't recognize college football. On the other hand, if some adults (and that group will have to include the university presidents) take a leadership role, then we'll still see change, but it is likely to make more sense and be more inclusive from a "number of participants" standpoint.

FWIW, the 12 years that I mentioned was chosen by the author of the article because that is when the SEC and Big 10's most recent TV contracts are expiring. Agree with you that it could be sooner if all the relevant parties agree that there is more money to be had.
 
FWIW, the 12 years that I mentioned was chosen by the author of the article because that is when the SEC and Big 10's most recent TV contracts are expiring. Agree with you that it could be sooner if all the relevant parties agree that there is more money to be had.
Well with Biden's/Democrats economic plan of hyper-inflation to demonetize our debt, of course there is more money to be had!
 
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