I doubt the Big 12 wants any part of us, but what ultimately matters is what ESPN wants.
So you’re saying there’s a chance
- Thread starter COUGinNCW
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WSU and Oregon State would be excellent additional members of the Big 12. Better than Cal or furd.
It could be that my friends and associates in Kansas are just being polite, but every one of them has said that they'd love to see WSU in the Big 12.
The way you've been describing the very likely scenario of what is to come conference wise for WSU athletics is essentially how they're going to have to try to sell ticket packages.
Maybe vote?its clear there will not be a vote until they are sure it will pass
Several things are clear.
First, this situation is being used by some of the ACC schools as leverage to try to increase their own paydays at the expense of others within their league.
Second, there is a shelf life for the offer, similar to the milk in your refrigerator. Nobody knows exactly when the milk will go bad, but it will be evident when the whole situation starts to smell bad.
Third, it is likely that some of those trying to extort the situation don't really want to see it happen, but might be willing to go for it if their payday is good enough. That group is happy to just drag their feet, hoping somebody will be desperate enough as the assumed shelf life date approaches to give them what they want...and if not, then it was no big loss (realistically, nobody wants to travel 3 time zones for games, but it is clear that money is the most important factor, so for enough $$ they might hold their nose and vote yes).
Finally, everyone recognizes how bad this makes college athletics (and primarily football) look. But even those with a smidgeon of honor and an ounce or two of self-awareness feel trapped by the "money only" focus of college athletics. The fact that NIL has been permitted to completely corrupt the process demonstrates that the situation is completely out of control, and that there are no adults in the room.
My prediction is that no decision will come from this particular ACC meeting. The schools are still jockeying for advantage, and that process has not run its course. Either there will be an announcement within a week of the imminent ACC meeting, or shortly thereafter the milk will be spoiled...the shelf life will have been reached...and we will be back to the PAC4 reorg.
there have been many backers of "paying the players" and the nil....not one of these nitwits ever critically thought about what they wanted...not one....there are consequences to allowing the buying and selling of players .....
just like the "lockdowns" were two weeks to flatten the curve.....yeah, right....
just like the "lockdowns" were two weeks to flatten the curve.....yeah, right....
Paying players was billed as a stipend, some spending money etc... not wholesale buying players
POTD!
And not that far off the current version of truth.
Robbing from the internet & editing: Winston Churchill, 1939: "I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest."
Today's version: I cannot forecast to you the action of college football. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is ESPN and (to a lesser extent) Fox broadcasting's interests.
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The way a lot of teams are going about this, it seems power/relevancy is a big part also.
4 corners moving to Big 12 for the money they could have had last year.
W & O to 2B1G for about the same.
Furd, Cal and SMU buying their into ACC and lots of travel.
Maybe they’ll all hit the jackpot in 5 years, but I don’t think those 3 schools will bring stability to the ACC.
I still think this is the scramble on the lifeboats, but as demand gradually drops, the money will dry up. I don't see ESPN ever doing any better than it is now, and it's laying people off. I've run across rumblings of discontent about the results of dumping a ton of money into Internet marketing. I think Hollywood and college football have the same problem with their business model: the production costs are no longer being recouped via streaming or whatever, so it will eventually change.
The ACC is dragging along too much dead weight in small, private schools, some of which are in areas that care little about college football. Stanford and Cal will do nothing to cure that problem - those two bought their way into the ACC, otherwise, they were left behind. Do not think for a second they would have been welcomed into the Big 12 with all of the Cal bullshit. They can stay put and burn another building.
A full commitment from ND would help, but even with that, if Florida St. and Clemson can get an invite to the SEC down the road, they gone!
Texas is the engine room of the BIG 12, a football crazy state at the high school level with a population approaching 30m - producing anywhere from 200 to 250 true Division 1 caliber players a year. Texas, Texas A&M, and Oklahoma can only take so many.
And yes, Washington St. would do well in the Big 12. Who knows? If ESPN comes up with some money, anything can happen. Survive WSU, until around 2031 - It is possible all hell breaks loose with the ACC.
You are probably right, but I'm more familiar with Edwin Starr's musical remake.
Random, I see it similarly. From my porthole, I have a good view of both ESPN and Fox Sports and their operations budget tightening. As fans are alienated by NIL, league destruction and the wiping away of the illusion that it was not just all about money (and it does not matter which fans; I'm looking at this in toto), viewership interest wains. Add to that the head trauma situation, decline of HS football, and other factors, and I suspect that we will look back upon this moment in 10-15 years and see it as the first major shifting of deck chairs on the college football league Titanic. I am NOT suggesting that college football will die...far from it...but we have probably witnessed its crest in the first 3-5 years of this decade. I guess you could loosely compare it to the shift from the Roman Republic to the Imperium...the lower level people were disenfranchised, open corruption was permitted (even encouraged, the farther along that it went), and the level of buy in and ownership felt by those below the elites just continued to drop. This is relevant to the current scenario because as that buy in and ownership feeling drops, so do broadcast ratings. Those ratings are going to drop, regardless of how the deck chairs are shifted. The mid-term answer is streaming, where a shrinking audience that cares can subsidize the Roman circus. However, we've all just seen that the college football elite are not ready for streaming. So the result is going to have to be some really brutal contract negotiations the next time around, and the more viewership falls, the more bloody those negotiations will be. The most effective way to slow this trend would be to clamp down on NIL, cut scholarship roster size, and enforce some rules...but that is the same generic issue that Rome faced, and it flunked the test. I can't see the NCAA doing any better, but maybe I'm just becoming cynical in my old age.
History does tend to repeat itself. Sometimes the parallels are not initially obvious, but those patterns often fit many different situations.
Yeah the head injury issue is a big factor here in shrinking the available talent pool gradually, right along with the viewership and ticket sales. I'm broadly ok with NIL, but it needs some kind of framework. The NCAA going from one extreme to the other in what looks from afar like a bureaucratic fit of pique sabotages their own sport. Breaking up regional conferences will lower the emotional stakes by ending local rivalries, and it will hurt the product on the field by making teams travel back and forth across the country constantly, to say nothing of the impact that's likely to have on students' academic experience. Now add in the additional travel burdens suffered by players in other sports that play two or three times as many games/events, and yikes. The fuel costs alone are going to crush any budget that isn't in that top 40 or so, and as boomers retire and millenials have to lay down a lot more money just to buy a house, where is the donor revenue going to come from to prop all of this up? I suspect that regional conferences will eventually return, for practical and logistical reasons. The overhead HD cameras on ziplines, fancy graphics, massive telecommunications infrastructure, it's all going to be pared down. Games will still be available on video, many probably on ESPN, but the schools themselves will probably make replays or streams available on their websites (most likely replays as a contractual condition with whoever has the broadcast rights), but again, this is less money into the system. Players and coaches at the highest levels are going to see their compensation drop, because this is going to bite the NFL too. Merch and tickets can cover some very basic operating costs, but without advertisers continuing to back up dump trucks to the networks, 8 angles of instant replay and $100 million dollar guaranteed contracts are going to be a relic of the past
Up and down the line, you'll find fans of college football feeling bad for WSU and ORST. Yet it was Cal and Stanford that Notre Dame felt so dearly sorry for. So what comes now? Football. Ten years ago the Big East died, well the football portion of it did. West Virginia and Louisville got the last two boats away from relegation. Cincy tried to save the Big East, they probably could have gotten a boat. But they foolishly stayed on the island of misfit toys.
I feel like Washington State should have been more cutthroat after what happened last year. Imagine if Washington State approached the Big 12 first. " Hey Mr. Yormark, we hear you want to expand. Get into every time zone. We've been a P5 member for years, we don't trust this George guy with our future. Think it might be beneficial to add a known P5 member? We may also help bring a friend or two from the PAC. Open for business?".
I feel like Washington State should have been more cutthroat after what happened last year. Imagine if Washington State approached the Big 12 first. " Hey Mr. Yormark, we hear you want to expand. Get into every time zone. We've been a P5 member for years, we don't trust this George guy with our future. Think it might be beneficial to add a known P5 member? We may also help bring a friend or two from the PAC. Open for business?".
I can imagine it and we'd be sitting in the same chair as we are now. Yormark might be making the decision (with approval from his presidents) to expand, but he's not in control of the who part of that equation. The people in charge of that aren't open to persuasion on that front. They have their formulas and we don't fit the formula. No need to stress over what ifs. There never were any what ifs available
We just need to join the Mtn West. F the Big 12.
If we could work out a deal where the Mtn West joins the Pac 12/ 2/ maybe 16. We need a massive, official fundraising effort. When the hell was the last time Athletics has done this?
Couple of years ago. They sent letters to let us know they were going to ask for money. Then they sent letters asking for money. Then they sent a third letter to let us know they’d sent a letter asking for money. By the time that was all done, they needed donations to cover all the wasted postage.
I dont want the big 12 anymore than they want us, I like the prospect of the reverse merger
There is zero chance that a league consisting of 90 percent G5 schools, gets to keep any autonomy whatsoever. They could keep the name, branding, even try to keep it's history. But all of that history belongs to schools in the Big Ten, Big Twelve, and ACC. At least in the two most important sports. In the Big Twelve you could have gotten the full share of 33 million a year. Whatever Frankenstein conference you try to patch together, isn't going to fetch anywhere close to that. So keep the PAC Twelve name, but it's still the Mountain West. You'll get the Mountain West television deal.
You may have an easier path to the expanded playoffs, but I wouldn't be so sure the new Power structure will keep the provision allowing a G5 school into the party. Even if they do, it's gonna be a real shock to lose twenty five million dollars a year.
Yormark may answer to television executives. But there is strength in numbers. Last year Utah and ASU would never assure the Big Twelve that they would join. Washington State would have been an attractive add at that point imo.
I generally agree with what your saying here, except IF WSU, OSU, PAC 2, were to specifically, exactly add SDSU, BSU, Memphis, USF, Tulane, Fresno St, UNLV, Rice, aka the best remaining G5's, TV media markets, to become a rebuilt PAC 10.
And then IF that rebuilt PAC 10 tries to get, and gets 1 to 4 ACC, LEFTOVERS, IF Clemson, FSU, leave, BLOW UP the ACC.
And then after that, IF the rebuilt PAC 10, PAC X tries to get, poach, gets 1, or 2, or 3 of either Vandy, Iowa St, Northwestern, Rutgers, Duke, etc.
And then after that IF the PAC 12/14, tries to get, gets, adds, Gonzaga, UConn, Villanova, St Mary, in bball only.
If the PAC 2 did specifically, exactly that, then, and only then, would it not only retain its PAC brand, but would be a tier 1.5, 2, 2.5, hybrid Semi P5, semi G5 conference, with 1,2 CFP spots, 1,2 NY6 bowl spots, 2,3,4,5 NCAA tournament bids, and a 19 to 25 mil per team media deal.
That's doable, and Oliver Luck can do that.
But WSU's, PAC 2's, George the Commish's leadership is so bad, that they won't get it done, even with Oliver Luck,
And if they don't do that, and instead just add the whole MWC, to the PAC brand, instead of pick and choose, then your right that that would not be good enough.
But the leadership is so bad, that won't even do that.
The bad leadership will probably just have WSU, OSU just badly join the MWC, instead of either adding the MWC to the PAC brand, or better yet, pick and choosing the exact names I said to rebuild the PAC.
SDSU already tried to vote to dissolve the MWC, and take the best of MWC, and AAC into PAC, and they were SHOT DOWN.
Your right that WSU, OSU would have been better off joining the Big 12, but President Schultz, Chun, WSU, OSU were to bad of leaders to even try to do that, and were NAIVELY BLINDSIDED, when they shouldn't have been, and when they should have foreseen the possibilities, and should have been prepared, and should have approached Yormack, and the Big 12 presidents Way the hell earlier instead of not at all, just like the other PAC colleges.
But it is what it is now. The damage has been done. And the leadership probably isn't going to fix it, and WSU, OSU are probably going to go to the MWC conference.
About the best WSU can hope for, is to try to be like TCU, SMU, Cincy, etc, when the Big East, SWAC conferences, got blown up and they got left behind like WSU, OSU, etc, and then later got added back into P5, Big 12, ACC.
I’m resigned to the notion that we are stuck with the MWC and in the long run, it’s going to be fine, but I talked to one of the player’s dads at the hotel yesterday and he said to not be surprised by a mass exodus of players.
He said that a lot of the guys on the team are Power 5 talent and won’t stay if the PAC-2 can’t retain Power 5 status.
He said that a lot of the guys on the team are Power 5 talent and won’t stay if the PAC-2 can’t retain Power 5 status.
Unfortunately that is one of the huge drawbacks, not being in a power 5 conference. We will have a record number of players hitting the portal, and we will be looking to the big sky to fill the holes.
I dont think the big sky will be our fallback for players, plenty of guys want an oportunity to play
Not sure you're grasping what's going on here or what will transpire over the next 2-5 years. The G of 5 guys we used to get because we were Power 5 aren't coming now. That isn't to say we won't ever get anyone from the G of 5, so no quoting this thing when we get some kid who is not getting playing time at Nevada or whatever, especially if there's a coaching connection. But we had a hard enough time getting those guys previously, and this is much more impactful on our recruiting and retention than many seem to appreciate.
WSU is going to become something like a hybrid of Utah State and Wyoming over time. The highlight of the year will be beating the occasional team in a conference that actually is relevant, like Wyoming did with Tech, and maybe winning a bowl game vs. a MAC team if half the team doesn't opt-out. Exciting. In truly exceptional years--which possibly won't ever happen due to WSU's place in the MWC over time--WSU can be the Mountain West team beating the disinterested 5th-best Pac-12 team in the LA Bowl or something and wind up ranked somewhere between 20th and receiving some votes. That's like a once-a-decade thing if not rarer. Get those season ticket deposits in.
When you back things out to 30,000 feet and we are talking about stuff like the impacts of Larry Scott's failure to get a network partner, his waste, the foolish retention of ownership that created misaligned incentives with those who really run college football (ESPN and Fox), and his stupid bet on streaming, the impacts of NIL and unfettered transfers, and everything else like that when it comes to how money and strategy are going to impact WSU, I've been dead-on about everything in the past dozen years. Only thing I'd call a miss was not seeing 2018 coming, and that wasn't as much about money or strategy as it was about good football on the field with health and Minshew and a lot of things aligning. Glad I got to go to that Alamo Bowl in person, though, because it was, as one more call I made, probably as good as it ever would be going forward for WSU.
You guys who don't understand how bad this is are not getting it. At all.
I worked hard to get to just about every home game in the Mike Leach era because I had the exact same feeling - that it was going to be as good as it would get and needed to cherish it. Hall of fame coach in a league we were heavy underdogs to everyone but OSU when it came to tradition, alums, cash etc.
I think the perspective I’m going with is that things rarely end up as bad as some expect, or as good as others. Things usually end up somewhere in the middle.
Maybe it’s a little P5-colored glasses, but I think some of our recruiting struggles in the past were because P5 recruits saw us as more of a G5 program, so we were a tougher sell. We still landed the kids who were G5 to low-P5 quality. If we’re actually a G5 team…I’m not sure that changes much. And, we’d still be foolish to not hit the portal hard and try to pick up those kids who aren’t getting enough PT in P5.
Oh, we will. But what will separate WSU from a Nevada to a non PT, P5 athlete
Now, we get a trickle of these guys solely because of our P5 status. IMO that will go away.
Let's examine that. I agree WSU was viewed by some of a G of 5 level program with P5 status. So how did that affect recruiting to date? WSU would recruit toward the lower end of P5 but almost always beating out every single G of 5 program, both in the aggregate and with regard to particular recruits.
I used to be really into recruiting. I got less into it in recent years when it became apparent this was all going to hell due to NIL and unfettered transfers anyway, but something like 90% of the time, we were getting the kid because we were the only P5 offer or, pretty often but more rarely, we were beating out lower-end P5s occasionally (Arizona, Colorado, etc.). And that's with Leach as a coach, winning in the top 1/3 in the league, with pretty good assistants for most of that, especially toward the earlier portion of Leach's tenure, and so on.
So now WSU becomes a G of 5 program that belongs there in terms of its stadium, facilities, etc. (yes, even G of 5 programs have FOBs, and all meaningful northern ones have IPFs, that are pretty nice; most don't face the high construction costs in Pullman and got away with getting 90% of the benefits for 35% of the cash). But WSU still has to try to recruit to Pullman, Washington. That location is a tough sell even against most MWC schools, especially once the former P5 status fades, coaching and recruiting budgets are slashed, WSU's lousy travel becomes more significant to assistants and their families when they are making chump change (and to recruits), we have a stadium with 8,000 people in it for some lower-end home games, and so on.
So losing the one thing that allowed us to recruit where we did, which basically was like a high-end G of 5 team, doesn't strike you as being tremendously impactful ... because some recruits viewed us as a bullshit P5 team? We weren't getting those kids anyway, and we sure as hell aren't now. But we are going to lose out on our bread and butter, the kids who otherwise wanted no part of Pullman but wanted to play in the Pac-12. Trust me. Or don't. WSU will recruit in the middle to lower end of the MWC over time. So welcome to the Utah State / Wyoming hybrid.
I apologize to anyone I've offended lately with some of the vehemence in these rants. I just can't believe how screwed we are in terms of any actual relevance, with massive consequences for the university (which is poorly positioned to lose such a key benefit as big-time athletics), and am a bit incredulous anyone doesn't see it. It's plain as day.
WSU needs to do everything possible to maintain (notice I said maintain, an increase at this point would be beyond miraculous) the TV revenue.
