You're listening to the Back Home Network presented by Home
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GAIL and Clavio. Here it is.
The 31st of Wow. The 31st of August.
Maybe maybe I can learn word formation in my next lifetime.
But now we're back here on Crimson Cast and looking forward
to speaking with you folks again.
If you missed our almost two hour long football Preview
podcast final podcast, you can check that out if you're an I U
Football fan. If not, I I wouldn't recommend
it. But you're you're still invited
to listen. Certainly.
But we're back here talking about college sports realignment
in the business of college sports and looking forward to
our guest today coming on Doctor Matthew Zimmerman, another
longtime contributor to Crimson cast and friend of the podcast
and that we've had him on before.
This is right in his wheelhouse, not just because of the college
sports piece but because of the PAC 12.
And we wanted to get his opinions and thoughts on what's
going on with all of that. So first of all, Matt, good to
have you back on how you doing. I'm doing really well.
I actually just returned from a trip back home to PAC 12 country
and so I'm I'm a little refreshed and renewed and in
some ways did you get to see the give Reggie Bush back his
Heisman sign on the on the 405 by chance.
I did not have a chance to see, though I did not seek it out.
I should have. Because I am, I am most
definitely on board with that sentiment.
Absolutely. Well, we might end up talking
about that obliquely a little bit later.
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All right, Matt. Well, if I can go ahead.
In words about home field apparel, Yes, yes, you don't
want to. When I first started looking at
home field apparel a few years ago, around the time of the
Black Oval T, that amazing I UT shirt was released by them.
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Most people, they just complain that home field drains their
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field that really honestly that's like a profile worthy I
think from the home field website.
We should talk to them about that.
Thank you. Thank you.
So Matt, we wanted to have you on to talk about college sports
realignment and specifically what's happened with the PAC 12
we obviously had you on last summer.
Many people listen to that episode and enjoyed it when we
talked about what at the time looked like, you know, the heart
being cut out of the PAC 12 with USC&UCLA deciding to join the
Big 10. But it, you know, even with the
heart gone, it felt like the PAC 12 might find a way you know,
through necromancy or something to keep the body animated for a
while and and maybe add some brands.
And instead it's gone exactly the opposite direction.
Now Oregon and Washington have left the PAC 12 to join the Big
10, which then led to Arizona, Arizona State and Utah
announcing that they were going to join Colorado in moving to
the Big 12. And now what we're left with is
the Bay Area schools who are in this, like weird, awkward should
we hold hands or have sex phase with the ACC?
And then Oregon State and Washington State just seem to
have been left out altogether at this point.
So, you know, first before we get to the business aspects and
all of that, you know, for you as a guy who grew up in PAC 10
country and, you know, followed those teams and that was really
what you grew up with. Like what?
What's been your overall emotional and intellectual
reaction to what's transpired over these last two months?
Well, when I I recently relistened to what we talked
about last year and when USC&UCLA went to the Big 10, I
was a little tickled by that because I thought it was funny
that USC&UCLA, who are our schools, which are very, they
very much fit the Big 10 mold, but they basically want the
money if long term and had to come to the Big 10.
And I thought that was kind of. Fun I thought the PAC 10 could
survive. I didn't know that they should
add anybody because no one fit that profile.
What's happened over the last couple months, though?
I thought. It's been heartbreaking, to be
honest, to see the whole thing fall and just into a shamble so
quickly, but also. Incredibly baffling to see and
hear and read about how much how many bad decisions the PAC 12
including the PAC 12 presidents made to get to this point.
I know we had an exchange about the the fact that what was it
there was one PAC 12 like like the the commissioner went to
them and was like OK the here's a couple deals what are we
looking at And one of the presidents was like according to
an economist on our campus we believe we can get big 10 or SEC
money and I think our. The agreement was that it was
there is in the states president probably.
So it's it's very strange in that way that the PAC 12 could
be so short sighted when a year ago everyone would have thought
they'd start rating the Big 12 and now it's been the complete
opposite and now the PAC 12 is I mean the Rose Bowl going forward
is kind of dead as a PAC 12 Big 10 matchup anyway.
Yeah, but this is crazy. It's funny, I I want to get to
all the other things you mentioned.
But I was I was actually teaching a class on this
yesterday and I was doing the part of the lecture where we're
talking about like the formation of the BCS And you know I always
forget that you know that the BCS and it's and it's
predecessors the Bowl Coalition and the Bowl Alliance so much of
that had to orbit the Rose Bowls place in things and the PAC 10
and the Big 10 saying we have to have the Rose Bowl that's where
we have to go. And it it's kind of it's weird
now that essentially that's become like just another neutral
site for the Big 10 given how the expansion has got.
It's just such a radical change from what seemed to be ruling
things 1520 years ago. Yes, absolutely.
When I teach that particular lesson I did in the spring and
what I always talked about, aside from the fact that, you
know, Notre Dame gets money just for being Notre Dame from every
playoff and championship system, that the PAC 12 and big, excuse
me, PAC 10 and Big 10 were like, we just want to preserve the
tradition of the Rose Bowl. You know the tradition of the
Rose Bowl is so important to us when in actuality is probably
the TV contract that they wanted to make sure they preserved and
so. And so now it's in the Rose Bowl
presented by AT&T because there's no way the Rose, the
sacred Rose Bowl, can have a sponsor and associated no
tospitos for them. And so the so the Rose Bowl was,
you know, holding its head up high, holding its nose up high.
And now it again, I think last year was the last truly
traditional matchup we were going to have.
Since this year it's going to be a playoff semifinal and then
it's going to be part of the playoff going forward.
So it's nice to end on a Utah, Penn State matchup in the Rose
Bowl, which I believe that's what we had last year.
Yeah, yeah. So Utah, two schools.
Two schools that were not in the Big 10 in 1990, or the PAC 10
for that matter. Right.
That's so you get to hold the banner one last time.
So it's been that. That is one of the crazy things
that just how much the Rose Bowl plummeted in importance over the
last couple years and how it's basically gone now.
So the PAC 12 cannot say, well, we lose that that traditional
matchup because it was gone anyway.
So, but yeah, that that has been a really weird loss of
tradition. Yeah.
So well you talked a little bit about some of the weird
decisions that were being made by the presidents and the other
folks in the room. I mean part of this I'm going to
do something I didn't think I would do at the start of all of
this and and maybe very mildly defend the PAC 12 presidents in
as much as there's we've talked about this on one of the other
podcast. But you know you've got this
booster at Michigan who has or not not just a booster, but he's
like a member of the Board of Regents up there and he and he's
been giving interviews. He had this long tweet storm
about how you know, the the, the decision making around all of
this has just been screwed up. And one of the things he noted,
which I think is a a keen observation is that, you know,
the athletic directors were forced to cede control of what
the athletic programs did to the presidents of the universities.
And then the president ceded that control to the conference
commissioners and then the conference commissioners ceded
control of that to the networks. And the networks have largely
driven a lot of the decision making, a lot of the movement,
and we've seen that going back a couple of decades now, you know
that I do wonder as much as the PAC 12 presidents I think
deserve grief for allowing things to get that to where they
were. It it had it.
It feels like there had to have been more information in the mix
then, you know what one PAC 12 president thought a professor on
his campus had told him? It it, it feels almost to some
degree, especially when you think about how essentially,
yes, you know, Fox was unwilling to pay the PAC 12, but they were
willing to pay for Oregon and Washington to join the Big 10,
and they were the ones that came up with the extra money.
And yeah, ESPN didn't want to pay the PAC 12, but they are,
you know, they were willing to front the money to the Big 12 to
allow those four schools to join that.
And now we're hearing that, you know, if you get Stanford and
Cal in the ACC, that money would get kicked in by ESPN as well as
part of things. So it's like what was there just
bad information being given was this very Machiavellian by the
networks where they're like, well, we really don't really, we
don't want 4 entities anymore. We really or excuse me, we don't
want five, we really want 4. You know, are we willing to
front the money to like break one of them up?
And in this case, it's the PAC 12 because the component pieces
are more valuable than the collective.
And if that's the case and the presidents are operating off the
idea or that they've been told, hey, you guys do have intrinsic
value, then I wonder like where, like where do you really assign
blame at that point? Clearly you still have to be a
custodian and and you have to safeguard these things as a
college president. But I'm starting to wonder, what
kind of information were they being given in the first place?
You know, it'd be easy to say, well, maybe they just didn't
like the PAC 12 being together or even produce to a PAC 10.
But that whole PAC 12 After dark, I mean that always got
really big buzz. And they the entire idea of
while the games start too late, nobody's watching was thrown out
the window with all that. I mean maybe the ratings weren't
as big as, you know, a big noon Saturday game on on Fox for the
Big 10. But clearly the PAC 12 was still
getting some viewership and there's passionate fans and all
that. I part of me wonders if the
networks were trying to negotiate and they got annoyed
with the PAC 10 like the that the presidents were like just a
little agree look well, how much more can you give us type of
thing like I, because I think it's pretty obvious in this
whole thing. And yeah, that that one
president was probably being thrown under the bus a little
bit by the whoever talked to, I believe the LA Times about that.
Very true. But I think what happened was
the PAC 12 just lost sight of what his true value was.
And we've have seen that from the beginning.
Again, I know you've talked about in one of the previous
Pods about a dozen years ago, they had the biggest TV deal and
they had three of the top six teams when SC, Stanford and
Oregon were all up there. The year that Alabama beat LSU
for the national title, I believe 2011.
And so it's easy for them to just.
Not understand that there's still very much a regional
delight and I think that after USC&UCLA left instead of having
a proverbial come to Jesus moment where they said we're not
what we were there's no way to get back to that And you know
the San Diego State is a laughable addition if we're if
the idea is to replace USC&UCLA instead they basically tried to
get as much as they could and. And I think it'd be very easy
for her to think the networks just got annoyed with them.
Like, you know what? You have value, Some of you have
value, but you have more value as part of a different
collective rather than your current PAC 12 collective.
Yeah, I mean, that's probably accurate and it really is.
There's a lot of interesting things floating around right
now. And I think with the PAC 10/12
in particular the idea of value, the idea of you know being able
to clearly evaluate where you are in the marketplace and make
adaptations and that is obviously something that most of
these conferences have struggled with the and honestly the ACC
kind of falls under that same category.
I mean the the one thing I am curious to get your, your take
on in addition to all of this before we get to more of the
business things is from a cultural perspective.
A lot of sports media people have treated the the essential
death of the PAC 12. I mean it's not technically dead
yet, but I don't know who they would get to actually replace
teams and and even if they did it wouldn't be a power
conference anymore. But this has been decried as,
you know, this this tragedy of sorts and and that it's going to
have a a really negative impact on a bunch of different things.
The one area that I'm kind of curious about is how important
really has PAC 10 sports been to the larger sports culture on the
West Coast? This is something that I've
always had a hard time getting my head wrapped around because
you know, LA, it's kind, it's kind of like Miami in a way,
where there's there's a lot of sports fans and there's more
sports fans by far in LA than there are in Miami.
But because of the dominance of professional teams, college
sports always tends to take a bit of a back burner.
New York has the exact same issue, although it doesn't have
any local teams. So going up and down the coast,
like, how much does this actually resonate?
How much of this will have really a negative longterm
impact versus like, well, this is a shame.
It was nice to have our own regional conference that
represented these areas, but it's it's either not vital to
the continued interest in college sports on the West Coast
or people just weren't that interested in the first place.
Well, there's a lot of different layers here.
It's funny because, you know, I have a obviously multiple family
members or excuse me, wives of my brothers who attended PAC 12
schools, Cal and UCLA. And I called my brother who is,
who's the UCLA fan by osmosis and I told him he goes, what's
So what? What's this all about?
And I said first lesson, you're going to learn to be as annoyed
by Illinois and its fans as the rest of us already are in the
Big 10 and. And so he was like, OK, that's a
good lesson to know. But you know as far as this
about 30 years ago, Al Davis and that had the Coliseum, the LA
Coliseum downsized from 92,000 capacity to 68,000 capacity.
And then the Raiders proceeded of course to average 34,000 and
anyway. But when the when USC got good
again, like under Pete Carroll and those guys like Reggie Bush
who we mentioned earlier were there, they would get 80, some
90,000 people per game. And there was a lot of passion
for a lot of revive passion because everybody loves a
winner. Yeah, I mean at UCLA, that's it.
the Rose Bowl is very, very big. Until yesterday, it held the
record for the largest attendance ever at a women's
sporting event in America and with 91,000.
And I think there were 95,000 for the men's World Cup final in
94. It's a very, very large place.
And there been some Rose Bowls that have had that kind of
attendance. But UCLA?
They might get like 60,000 for attendance, and it looks like an
old MLS game. Where like there's, you know,
oh, there's nobody in that. Yeah, stadium.
And it's like, no, that's 60,000 people.
So there's still people. And there was still a lot of
media coverage. Even with the return of the NFL,
there was still a lot of interest in USC&UCLAI mean, and
you drive around, there's all those, you know, license play
frames for alumni and fandom and all that other stuff.
Can can I speak to the rest of the PAC 12?
Yeah, please do. No, sorry, I was saying.
And I need a glass of water. My apologies.
But Matt, unlike unlike me, Matt's not used to talking on
podcasts for 90 minutes at a time.
So you're excused. That's fine.
I have. I have a very large bottle of
water here. So anyway and some grapes.
There you go. So anyway, you know, in
Washington, I know that there was a lot of interest as well,
especially with the loss of the Sonics.
Which is largely why, you know MLS has thrived there as well.
So they're Washington fans and there are obviously Oregon fans.
They are very into it as well. But at the same time it is a
whole thing where? Even in LA, on the West Coast,
there is a lot of, well, you know, we like sports, but you
know, there's so many other really cool things to do out
here. And so it's not the same level
of passion like Stanford should have some of those passionate
fans in the country and they just they just don't.
And same. And so it's kind of, it's it's
not like it's the Big 10 collapsed or the SEC collapsed,
which neither one would because the fans wouldn't let it happen.
The presidents wouldn't let it happen.
The GM's, the AD's wouldn't let it happen and so on.
The politicians wouldn't let it happen.
And in California, of course, they tried to stop UCLA with
like that weird vote. And then they were going to try
to bring UCLA back with under like $50 million a year.
They they offered them that and it was just.
Really weird. Like they they were caught
pretty flat footed. I think the politicians were out
there. So yeah, I think it's a lot of
these fan bases will follow these teams to the new places.
They'll just, they'll just fold into new rivalries.
Because ultimately having a home at this point, if you're a PAC
12 school, I think your fan base is just very, very relieved.
So, you know, sad for Wazoo and Oregon State fans.
Yeah, it's tough when you're when you're looking at them
getting courted by the Mountain West commissioner and the
American Athletic Conference commissioner.
It's like, God, I hate to see that, but well, yeah, and where
you're at this point. That's to say that's where
you're at at this point. If you them absolutely.
And you mentioned earlier, you know, a lot of these things were
like, you know, do we hold hands?
Do we dance, You know, kind of like a dating thing.
And, you know, Oregon State of Washington state are, you know,
the people, you know, left at the well left looking for a prom
date. And now you know that the nerdy
kids are coming to them and going, hey, you know what, we
don't have a date either. And it's like, yeah, not you so.
This doesn't sound like you're speaking from experience at all.
So no, no, this is not a reference to my high school life
at all. So let's talk about the.
Yeah, I guess we we've talked a lot about the the dissolution of
the PAC 12 from a business perspective and and where the
struggles came in. Obviously the big news right now
is this Cal, Stanford, maybe SMU, maybe to the ACC movement
it's that's so. I mean you could make an
argument that the Big 10. When they added Nebraska, when
they added Rutgers, they really came out of their regional shell
and and even though they only covered two time zones, even
with those expansions they were more of a national conference.
Because really, Nebraska doesn't have a lot in common culturally
with anybody but Iowa in the Big 10 and Rutgers really didn't
have that much in common with anybody.
I guess, maybe mildly they had something in common with Penn
State. But you know, you can make an
argument that with those moves and with adding Maryland, which
is really a Southern school, like they've broken out of the
regional shell. And so adding the four West
Coast schools seems at least within the characteristics of
what they are aiming to do, A CC adding these three schools just
feels completely, you know, it feels desperate, first of all,
and it desperation and necessity are often times the same things,
but it also feels like they. You know, this is a almost like
a harbor of last resort for all of the parties.
I don't think anybody if you would just put this out on the
table a year ago and said hey Cal and Stanford, what about
joining the ACC or ask the question in reverse.
I think everybody's laughing you out of the room.
Like obviously Cal and Stanford probably need this because I
don't know where they go if they don't do it and and SMU's almost
not important enough to mention in this.
No offense to. Thad Matula and the and the the
folks down in pony excess land. But I mean when you offer to not
take any media distributions for seven years just so you can be
part of the conference like you kind of remove yourself from the
conversation at that point. But the Callen Stanford are
different. I mean you know these are these
are longstanding brands. Stanford obviously has you
essentially sport by sport, I think the largest athletic
department in the country. You know, is a bastion of all of
these Olympic sports who has been competitive in the in the
revenue generating sports. This just feels like it's a
subject of ridicule and it's it's a bandaid at best.
It's not a not a permanent solution for any of these
parties. Well yeah like Stanford is.
I mean for lack of it it's an extremely proud athletic program
and what is it they they jockey for position with USC&UCLA for
the most total national championships and there might be
in all the Olympic quote non revenue sports mostly and but
you know they're proud of their water polar dominance now
similar to UC Santa Barbara winning ultimate frisbee
national titles. I wonder who Stanford is
competing against in sailing. But they still are winning these
national titles. They're an athletic program as
you said. I think it's Dem in Ohio State I
think might have the two largest athletic departments in terms of
number of. Something like that, yeah.
And so in this case, you know, I think everybody when USC&UCLA
left a year ago and we all kind of knew that Washington and
Oregon would be the next move if the Big 10 made another move and
and grabbing from the PAC 12 because they were just good fits
overall academically, athletically, fan base and so
on. But my fantasy of course was
Stanford, Notre Dame. And that's not going to happen.
Instead, Notre Dame, a non football member of the ACC,
tried to throw its weight around and get the ACC to add Stanford
and Cal. And then certain ACC members
looked at Notre Dame, apparently because these are all reports
and so, well, who do you think you are type of thing.
But it looks like I thought that ACC was set to add Stanford Cal
and SMU the other day. But of course the tragedy
happened at University of North Carolina.
So it but this it's a weird fit and it is just a Band-Aid.
At the same time, what it reminds me of is when the Big 12
lost Missouri, Texas, A and M, Colorado and Nebraska, and
patched it up with schools which could charitably be called not
quite that same caliber of state school.
Right. Although TC just played for the
national title. I need to acknowledge that but
but it but it was the thing of but you know what we survived we
made it. You know, we're not the Big
East, for instance, and so if Stanford and Cowell.
The Big East, which notably was killed by the ACC, but we'll
come back to that in a second. Yes.
Yeah, very much, very much so.
And so in this case, Stanford and Cal, it's all about survival
at this point. And I think they, because,
again, they're very open about their academic profile.
I think they prefer the ACC before the Big 12 overall
because the Big 12 is very much a mishmash.
And the ACC at least could say that they're kind of a unified
other than North Carolina's fake classes.
Oh, excuse me. Anyway, sorry.
Yeah no, it's it is it is interesting because I mean this
is where trying to explain this to people who aren't in academia
is challenging because and and look it's not terribly
consistent and I understand how that looks with people because
you could say, well Callum Stanford just need to find a
port of of refuge. But they they do care about who
they associate themselves with institutionally from an
academics perspective and. While there are certainly some
good academic institutions in the Big 12, that is not a group
of institutions that one would point to and say, wow, that's a
great collection of academic institutions, you know, Whereas
obviously, I mean the A/C and it's funny because the ACC, they
have some high end schools who you would point to North, I
guess North Carolina. You know, Boston College,
Syracuse, some others. Virginia is certainly in that
mix, but they've also got their share of of kind of big
twelveish style state schools that you know, North Carolina
State, Virginia Tech, you know, Florida State I think fits into
that category to some degree. So it it it is, it is just an
awkward fit. But it brings up a larger point
that I think is worth mentioning from the ACC's perspective,
which is. You wanted.
This very much reminds me of what the Big East tried to do
when the Big East decided that they weren't satisfied with just
being a basketball conference in the 1980s.
You know, they go out and they add pit and they add Miami and
they add these other brands that are much stronger in football so
that they can bolster themselves and they end up with this weird
dichotomous conference where you've got basketball powers and
then you've got football powers and.
No one really knew where the power lay and they were primed
to be raided by a conference that was a little more together.
It's ironic that they were largely rated.
I mean yes, Rutgers left the biggies to go to the Big 10.
That's not really raiding the the biggies might have sent a
thank you note actually after that but but but you know but
the ACC going in and grabbing Miami and Virginia Tech and and
then and then later going in and grabbing.
Syracuse and you know, basically making it so that the Big East
couldn't continue viably and had to be reborn, you know,
essentially later as as the Big East again, just it with a
complete focus on basketball. It's just kind of it.
It very much is reminiscent of what the ACC is trying to do now
where they don't have the right mix of teams.
They've got schools that are all over the map, both the actual
map and in terms of what they want to do.
You know what their organizational or institutional
aims are, how dedicated or not they are to to academics, how
dedicated or not they are to football.
And now they're trying to add completely nonsensical fits from
a a geographical perspective that are really you know they're
these are largely at this point second or third tier football
brands that they're trying to add.
It's like that's that's probably not going to have any sort of
positive longterm impact and could frankly hasten.
The demise of the conference as a power because getting bigger
at this point doesn't seem like it's the answer for a conference
like the ACC. Well, it's interesting that you
mentioned be the Big East trying to grab some schools and then of
course the ACC grabbing some of those schools from them.
You know what everybody's talking about the absurdity of
the travel. What would these West Coast
schools do? Going to the East Coast or the
Midwest? You know the horror of this
terrible? Well, Cincinnati and Louisville
were in the Big East. Yeah, for some time.
That E is pretty big. And it was.
And then you. Know now the really Big East.
Yes, sorry. Yeah, that's a really Big East.
Yeah. And now Louisville's in the
Atlantic Coast Conference. I don't know.
I don't know if our listeners are familiar, but I mean,
Louisville is in Northern Kentucky.
Look, man, climate change works quick as all I can say.
No, I'm kidding. Go ahead, Yeah.
The coast. Yes.
And. And so this absurdity was
existing before the money got as big as it is now.
Yeah, and that's the thing. The ACC, with the backing of
ESPN for its network, that money is only going to get bigger.
It'll never be SCC, Big 10 level.
But they have the money to travel.
They will figure this out. And so it's absurd on its face.
But at the same time, college sports realignment has been
absurd for some time. So let's, I mean, let's dive in
a little bit too. There was a piece that was
written by by a colleague of ours actually Doctor Ariane
Waite at the University of North Carolina.
Ariane's been a sports management scholar for a long
time. And you know the the, the one of
the primary thrust of the piece really was essentially that.
You know college sports is aim has failed and that there's too
much money in the system and that you know what what the the
the explanation here is the ACC needs to resist expansion and
needs to consider like splitting football off and considering
that independently and you know I mean first and foremost I mean
I have I have a lot of respect for doctor weight and and her
her overall intellectual presence within the space.
But, and I've seen this kind of mentality put forward a bunch
like, you know, like, well, we've gone too far this time.
College sports and what, You know, it's not it's it's about
more than just money. And you know, we need to somehow
segregate football and what they're doing from the other
sports. And you know, it kind of makes
sense on its face if you're not really, I guess, attuned to the
commercial realities of a lot of this stuff.
But. I'm a little bit put off by by a
couple of things with this line of argument.
And I mean one of them is we'll get to all of them.
But I guess the first one that we could start with is this idea
that, you know, there was some kind of inflection point where
all of this wouldn't have been rendered inevitable.
Like somehow, oh, if we had, if we had stopped worrying so much
about money, I don't know who the we is here and focus more on
the educational mission of college athletics.
Then somehow this all this wouldn't be taking place or
would be lessened or would be more equitable.
You know, I mean, Matt, one of the things that you and I talk
about a bunch is, is this reality of finance and why
college and university systems engage in collegiate athletics
at this level in the 1st place. And you know that I, like a lot
of people in the Academy really focus on the educational aspects
because that's what people in the Academy do.
Professors are supposed to talk about academics and.
You know, you're supposed to to be thinking about things along
the lines of how is this educating people or how is this
advancing humanity? But you know, we're on a
longterm track here with college sports that existed long before
the current crop of leaders were put into place, where money has
been the deciding factor in a whole number of changes and.
The idea that it wasn't going to get to this point of that
somehow, you know changing people's focus on to something
else was going to fix this kind of ignores the realities of why
these colleges and universities engage in this like it it I'm
I'm sure there are people for whom education is still the
primary purpose but those people generally are at the division
two and three levels. Division One.
If your if your institution is a member of a conference, that's
an FBS level conference, I mean. The whole idea of an FBS, of an
FBS level in Division One, which is a subset of a subset within
college sports, is built around the very concept of money.
And the idea that that money is generated by football and the
other revenue producing sports and the sports that can be put
on television to fill advertising inventory, It's that
has been the way things have gone for 20 years.
Nothing this, frankly, nothing new here other than that.
There's been more consolidation. The money isn't so much the
issue, but the consolidation is the issue.
But I don't know that that was ever something that could be
really fixed given the governance structure of colleges
and universities and how they decide to come together around
these things. Well, there's a, there's a few
different thoughts on this thing and and you've articulated
you've already just mentioned a few of them.
I guess my whole thing is, well, I know I made a joke to you the
other day and I've said it to a couple other people that college
athletics with all the money flowing through, especially in
the last couple decades since the BCS started and got really
going. It's maybe one of the times when
quote UN quote, trickle down economics actually works where
you have all this money coming in from football and men's
basketball and to an extent women's basketball, but again
women's basketball. The payout for each for each
unit in in their tournament is 0, whereas the men's basketball
gets payment and football brings in the money as well.
And yet, you know, here on our campus we've had to, we've
gotten to renovate multiple venues and their locker rooms.
I know what I U or the way I describe it to my students is
Indiana University has no business having the money to
renovate its football stadium. And yet it does because of
what's going on with the conference and all the bowl
money there. And then all of a sudden you
have a brand new baseball stadium, you have a brand new
softball stadium, and there's more money for these things,
largely because of all the money that the bigger sports bring in.
So when we talk about separating football, it's it's kind of
absurd because it really is Okay.
That football drives, drives the drives the car, drives the van,
drives the bus, because there's whatever vehicle you want,
because that money does trickle down or trickle across.
If you want to put all the sports on it on a similar level
because all the athletes are, you know, they're all working
crazy hours with you as well. So there's that.
And then we have these situations where there's a lot
of people are to say, yeah, if only could we have stopped the
money. Well, the fact is that the money
is big. And who are the most frontward
facing people involved in any university that's in Division
One sports, the athletes. And when they do positive things
on the field, court or ice, that brings positive recognition.
I applied to Indiana. I wanted to apply to Indiana
back in the 90s cuz I thought coach Bob Knight was a real good
coach. And I thought that'd be really
awesome to be part of that whole thing.
And there are other people who were like that at the time.
And so now, like, like we won the national title in baseball a
couple of years ago, a bunch of my students talk.
About we by we, you mean, you mean Mississippi State, where
you're currently teaching. I'm sorry, Mississippi State?
Yes, I was. Going to say why Indiana won the
Big 10 pair, the National Baseball title.
That's amazing. Mississippi State won the
national title. Couple years in college baseball
and it's of course a sport there's a lot of passion for
here. And you bet a lot of the
students talk about, yeah, everywhere I went for a couple
weeks after that, I wanted to wear something maroon and white
that said Mississippi State on it so that people would say,
hey, hey pretty good. Of course I remember being in
our being a Disney World the day after night was fired wearing an
Indiana sweatshirt and I got hey what's up tonight at least four
or five times when I was there. So it takes all kinds but but
that that's another thing is though that the athletics do
bring in as we as you've talked about already and on these they
do bring in more applications. They do bring in more positive
recognition of different things of the university and that
juices the university. I mean big time athletics are
not bad for a university at all in my opinion.
I'm and it's like, well, you know, there's too much money
flowing through. Yeah, but if you're one of the
universities that has a piece of that money, you're doing OK cuz
right now Stanford and Cal are loving the idea that getting a
piece of that money. I mean, it's interesting because
I the money is great when it's being what it's having an impact
on, the things that you want it to have an impact on.
And then not when it's not. And that that I think is
probably my biggest concern about some of The opinions
expressed. And this is not something that's
unique to to Ariane's piece, but it's something that I see
elsewhere. It's like everybody's fine and
happy and has been for the last 20 years with the money.
When the money has paid for a brand new softball stadium, a
brand new track and field facility, a brand new swimming
facility, these are facilities as I'm want to.
Point out that don't exist anywhere else in the world
except at, like National Olympic Training Centers.
And we essentially have 60 or 70 National Olympic Training
Centers in various sports across the country on college campuses,
paid for by the revenue generated from television
contracts built almost entirely on the backs of football and to
a lesser extent, men's basketball.
I mean, that's just the reality. You can.
You can dislike the reality but that's not a debatable thing.
So you're okay with that. You're okay with the travel the
increase in coaches salaries all of these things that have come
along with that money. But the you know the the
Faustian bargain I guess you could say with that is it is now
dependent on our is your brand as a university athletically and
and it is the the brand of the conference that you're
associated with. Viable enough from a commercial
perspective that it can continue to generate that amount of money
and you know with it, with there's an added thing there.
Are you able to put yourself in a position where you can be at
the level that your alumni and your prospective students and
your corporate partners that have been buying signage to help
pay for everything and. And, you know, signing apparel
contracts, can you be in a position where you can continue
to collect from those people, whether it's through donations
from alums or whether it's through applications from
incoming students? And, you know, to say that while
the ACC needs to resist expanding, they need to double
down on the education. It's like, well, that's all well
and good if you're in North Carolina, for instance, who?
Who, despite the academic malfeasance of that institution
over the course of time, still isn't an international brand.
I'm sorry, but it's just true. I'm tired of people not
mentioning that, you know, but you know, it's fine if you're
them. It's not so fine if you're North
Carolina State. I mean, what kind of national
profile does North Carolina State have as an institution?
Are people, are they really getting applications from across
the country, from people interested in going there if
they are not active in highlevel college athletics?
And. And that's the part that I I get
frustrated with. It's like you can't just on the
one hand say, well, we want all these benefits and we like
everything that's happened the last 20 years.
And and and you know, the the indirect benefits of the money
that's been made by college football and college basketball
at least, you know, I mean really both the men's and
women's, but primarily the men's has financed the expansion of
women's sports. It's financed, you know, through
through, you know, Title 9 opportunities.
The ability of of US females to be the, you know, the best in
the world that many of the sports that they are competing
in, you know it's allowed. Students who want to compete at
the collegiate level where there is no national professional
league, The ability to participate in the de facto
professional league, you know, whether that's in in wrestling
or in track and field or any of these other things.
And then be upset when it's like, well, here's what it now
that money from football is dictating.
I mean, this is where things have headed and ultimately it's
is it greed? It kind of is.
But you know, the the it's that's not like the institutions
making this money and getting this attention.
It's it's not like individual enrichment.
It is a competition and it's not that different from what you see
on the academic side. I mean, it's not like all the
universities in the world are holding hands and singing
kumbaya and splitting research grants.
They're, you know, most of these universities, especially at the
research one level are are cutthroat with each other,
hiring away professors and, you know, edging out other
competitors for NIH grants or or NEA grants.
And, you know, it's that is how the rest of the educational
establishment works. It's weird that somehow we
expect this, you know, fog of altruism to be, you know,
enveloping college sports. It just it feels a little bit
like it misses the mark a bit, I guess, from my perspective.
Well, absolutely. I mean, and I'd add to that
academic competition, you know, building state-of-the-art dorms
and new academic buildings and different things of that nature
where they're all trying to lure students are all trying to lure
professors, They're in competition with each other.
And that's not a bad thing. And so in sport, I mean it's
funny you what is NC State's brand?
And I always think to my I was thinking to myself.
Hey, I can only show that video of Jim Valveno running around
the court hugging people so many times.
They don't really have a great academic, athletic brand.
Athletic brand. Excuse me, but they have, they
have Archie Miller bat. Come on.
That's true. And point guard.
What is it with all ACC tournament point guard I think
let's let's not recap Archie Miller.
I was. I was very excited to his coach.
Go on, go on. It's not revisit that chapter
but but yeah that's and and and it's and as I've said before
what reminds me of is the people who I love football who say I
love football but now that I know that they are getting
concussions out there I I just can't watch anymore.
It's a disgusting sport and and my response is is twofold #1.
We watch football because it is the OR a lot of us watch
football I think because it is the best combination of chess
match and sudden wanton violence in American sport.
I mean just there's there's excitement either way.
But some related to that it is said that basically aside from I
always, I always say that the the two positions on the field
who talk the most trash are corners and whiteouts because
they only have to be worried, worried about being hit by the
other skinny guy. But, but the rest of the field
running backs are saying nothing because you know, they're
they're, you know, they're in danger on every play basically.
And so when people look at the football, it's been described as
you know 8 car crashes on every single play or whatever or
however many. And so I guess roundabout way to
get to my point of what sport did they think they were
watching? And with this revenue stuff with
football you know when 80,000 people show up to the stadium or
90,000 have a bigger stadium is or 53,000 show up to your
stadium and and are there to watch people play a sport that
has a very very high injury rate and is very brutal sport but is
there make money it is massively popular all day Saturday we have
a remote control from. You know, on on the West Coast
time, it'd be, you know, 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM you're watching
football for 12 straight hours. And so again, what did people
think they were watching like in terms of, of course, the revenue
is huge. Of course, the revenue will not
always go to places you want it to.
And what I think also gets lost in this, like you mentioned the
fact that N Carolina's academic choices.
Have been swept under the rug so much.
Well, the fact is 2030, forty years ago, a lot of these guys
playing football, they were just kept eligible and the system
would basically chew them up and spit them out.
At least now we have some accountability with a PR and and
progress toward graduation. And we both had.
Want to get too into it, but we both know that football players,
basketball players on all athletes are.
The idea is to get them to graduate.
And so I hate when there's all this hold.
It's similar to people complaining by the BCS what BCS
doesn't work, yeah, but it's better than the system we had,
man. And so the systems can always
improve just a little bit or even a lot bit as we go forward.
Well, that's the thing. I mean there's look there.
I think the thing that's fundamentally hard for people to
get their heads wrapped around is that universities, yes,
they're in the business of education, but they're also in
the business of of making revenue to sustain themselves
and to grow because that's what's been asked of them.
And and that has been doubly important with state
legislatures cutting funding to colleges and universities in
their own states, public universities that never used to
have to rely on that. And it's like so we've had a 30
year plus period now of budgets and approaches having to be
shifted, you know, away from what we're just going to educate
people and we're going, you know, we're not going to do job
training, we're going to, you know, just teach people the arts
and the sciences. And it's like well that's not
going to draw particularly well in an era where a, college is
expensive, B, the education is in a lot of ways kind of
interchangeable from university to university.
And So what are you selling? You're selling the student
experience. How do you do that?
And you know what? What is hard, maybe hard is the
wrong word. But what is difficult for people
who don't want to acknowledge that to get their heads wrapped
around is that sports are a great way to sell a student
experience that is unique from what you would get elsewhere.
And it's one of them, a number of other things.
But it's the most high profile. And as I always talk about you
know, we, I use Butler University as an example in
class where you know Butler makes 2 back-to-back national
championships in men's basketball.
And The upshot of that was that their applications all across
the country go through the roof. Why?
Because Butler see much like you talking about wanting to go to I
U, because you know Bob Knight was a really good basketball
coach. People look at that experience
and they're like wow, Butler sounds like the place to go.
Alabama's had that their their presence since the Saban era
started has gone national because they are so successful
and that's part of the experience.
You can argue that that shouldn't be part of the the
the, the equation that's used to determine what a university
does. You you can argue that.
But I don't know how much that argument would carry weight
given the realities financially of the situation and the fact
that most of I would say pretty much all of the schools, with
maybe one or two exceptions that currently exist in the FPS level
of college football. And ironically Stanford is one
of those need and want to have that national marketing
perspective and or need to do the type of alumni service that
really you only get when you have high level college sports
that are competing you know and and and fighting for titles and
fighting you know and winning games on a national level.
I mean, Stanford doesn't need to sell itself as an academic
destination, but it has a lot of alums for whom, you know,
success on the athletic field or on the floor is important.
And you know, that's why they're still in it.
I think that's why Vanderbilt and Duke and, you know, schools
like Rice are in it. I mean, these are fine academic
institutions. They would probably be fine on
their own. But they themselves are in a
huge battle over, you know, who's going to apply, who's
going to enroll, how are they going to lift their profile so
that they stand out amongst other peers who on paper all
kind of look the same. And I mean, the number of
schools that don't have to do that.
I mean, what the Ivy League schools, Chicago, Caltech.
I mean, there's not that many, you know, other than the really
small private schools in the Northeast and and you know, some
of the highly religious schools, there aren't a whole lot of
other places that can just afford to not worry about that
kind of thing. Well and you mentioned Stanford
and its national profile, its embrace of victory in the OR of
high performance in the non revenue quote UN quote Olympic
sports gives it an international profile and athletics in in a
lot of these places. I mean, I've been at places
where half the tennis team was from overseas or half the golf
team was from overseas and that's the other thing is the
athletics by offering scholarships that it is a unique
system. College athletics pretty much in
the world. So by having scholarships to
people from overseas, that increases the international
footprint as well and makes these schools be able to say,
you know, we are not just getting people from our state or
from our adjacent states, we're getting people.
You know, we have an Australian who just, you know, won the
conference title on our tennis team or South African on our on
our men's golf team, and so on and so on and so.
And that's another thing that that athletics brings and for
these schools that again, there's too much focus on
football. I think because football does
drive, does drive all of the realignment.
But athletics overall like that, when you see a lot of the
garment rending where it's like, oh, football, it's too big, it's
so bad. But well, no, it's not too big
and it's not bad. But then it also that that
positive attention can flow through an entire athletic
department and thus a university.
Yeah, I mean, I think we're going to continue to see debates
on these things. And, you know, whether or not
the ACC decides to to bring in Cal, Stanford and SMU or not,
it's not the end of the story. Because as we mentioned earlier,
it feels like a bandaid because it feels like Florida State
would like to get to a higher profile conference.
It feels like Clemson would like to you know it's ironic that you
you know, I I find 2 ironic things about people who are like
well you know you you guys killed the PAC 12 and that was
awful. You better not kill the ACC to a
the you know they could. The ACC could absolutely
guarantee its longterm survival if Notre Dame would just join
the conference as a full Member. But but Notre Dame refuses to do
that because Notre Dame, who loves to talk about the moral
implications of college sports across the board, is clearly
only interested in what's best for Notre Dame.
And I'm not begrudging them that, but spare me the
sanctimony if that's your perspective, that the other
thing I'll say is that these kinds of things to me ring
really hollow from a CC land when the ACC, as we mentioned
earlier, killed the Big East, actively murdered it, it wasn't
like a passive well, we're going to cut your food off and lock
you in the cellar like they went in and cut every vital organ out
of the Big East, causing the Big East to collapse in the span of
a decade. And it's like, so it was fine
back then. It was fine to, you know, force
the the Big East to completely change its financial model and
all of those schools and all those athletes to have to deal
with that. But now suddenly, you know
what's good for the goose is no no longer good for the gander.
That really, that really smacks of of hypocrisy.
The same kind of hypocrisy that's being complained about
with all the things that have gone on elsewhere in college
sports. Well, yeah, it's it's really
weird the lack of that historical perspective like
conference realignment did not start when Jim Delaney said what
back in 2010 that we're that the Big 10 is exploring expansion
and everybody freaked out and Missouri's governor begged us,
begged the Big 10 first spot and all that other stuff.
Yeah, it it didn't start then and and again we've talked about
before all of the. Where the the media was
breathlessly saying there's going to be a PAC16A, Big 16 and
a CC-16 and SCC16, it's going to be crazy.
And then they're going to kill the NCAA.
And that didn't happen, of course, but that was there.
That's what they wanted. And now a lot of those same
media members are saying, Oh my goodness, I can't believe this
expansion. It's so weird, so strange.
Are are the conferences getting too big?
What happened to the PAC 12? And it's like Y'all gleefully
we're promoting the. Idea of you know the whole thing
hitting a Wrecking Ball take take taken to it and collapsing
and then being these super duper conferences and now that it's
happening you're you're like whoa, what what what what
happened? We don't understand this you
know and it didn't. But what this?
This is the this is the classic. Like, I never thought leopards
would eat my face. Moment of college sports, right?
Yes, absolutely. And and it reminds me of all of
all the the baseball writers who knew exactly what was going on
in the late 90s and promoted all that and now say I will never
vote one of them into the Hall of Fame.
It's the integrity of the game. And I said, well, OK, and then
wait, what? You mean having?
Having an open bottle of of Andro next to your locker isn't
just part of a normal, like, workout plan mad.
I'm shocked. Well, yeah.
What amazing workouts Roger Clemens does.
Yeah, amazing. Where's the needle?
Yeah. So, yeah, it's.
So it's it's so much like it is hypocrisy that is created by a
willingness to look the other way.
Well and now. Yeah, go ahead.
Sorry, go ahead. Well, and now we see some of
these writers I won't, I won't name.
Name the writers but it's some of these writers like Stuart
Mandel are are sitting there trying to say on on their
platforms well here's what's going to happen next and I'm
proposing a football Super League like that soccer one.
Well, A, the soccer one didn't happen and because every there
was an up uproar and B, it's a lot of these guys are mostly
trying to get. Ahead of the story that they
have never been ahead of like all this comments realignment
like after they all got egg on their face from Texas and
Oklahoma and then USC and UCLA made their moves they're like
oh, which we're now we're going to try to predict what happens
next and said you can't you can't because these machinations
are happening in backrooms. It is wild.
I mean, I I think a lot about that from the standpoint of
first of all the, the immediate leap of logic, like what were,
you know, we're right on the precipice of the Super League
with only 30 or so teams being involved.
It's like well, are we? I mean, if you, if you think
about it, like, first of all, they've been trying to do the
Super League in Europe for 30 years now.
I want to say, I mean this is, this is an idea that keeps like
arriving and then departing and then new new folks come in
because of the way. And again, this is like you need
to know the historical aspects of this.
You need to understand why things work the way that they
work. The the cultural obstacles and
the business obstacles of a Super League and European soccer
make it essentially impossible to do.
You already have a Super League in America in in European soccer
it's called the Champions League.
The idea of having another one on top of it is not something
that the individual countries will countenance.
And I think that that's pretty much been proven as as the way
that things are because again Europe is a bunch of different
countries. Yes, you have the European
Union, but it is a bunch of and I mean the key, some of the key
brands are in England, which is no longer part of that.
So that's a separate thing to put aside.
But if you think about the US and college sports, it's a
similar kind of constraint in a different way in that yes, you,
you're all under one roof in terms of you're all under the US
government. But as we've already seen with
some of these conversations, there are still affiliation
elements to who wants to get in bed with whom.
That limits, you know, the Big 10 and the SEC from just
grabbing everybody because Big 10 schools don't want to have
subpar academic teams or academic schools in their
conferences. And SEC doesn't really want to
break out of its regional footprint.
And you know, there are cultural elements involved in this that
are either they're not just things that can be easily
dispersed of it's it's not formed like the NFL.
It is a bunch of independent businesses.
Some of them are public, you know, university, some of them
are private institutions. But it is a bunch of independent
businesses who have trouble coming together to decide on,
like how many muffins should be on the tray that you give to
football recruits when they come in to tour the facilities and
they're somehow going to put a Super League together.
It just seems implausible, like it seems a lot more likely.
If you go back and look at the history, It was 1978 when
Division One split, and essentially the programs that
could be serious about football and fill the stands and we're in
the big conferences, became Division 1A, which became FBS
and everybody else went to Division One AA, which became
FCS. It's a lot more likely that you
would see division 1FBS split in half and have like 65 to 70
teams in the top tier and then the remainder the the group of
five conferences or whatever group of six.
I guess if you want to add the remnants of the PAC 12, it's a
lot more likely that they would end up being in kind of a
division that straddles the line between FBS&FCS.
Then you would have, like, that get cut in half again.
But yeah, I mean, look, anything's possible, but it
seems really unlikely we're going to go from 131 teams to 31
teams in the span of a year, given all of the different
cultural and political realities that exist within the college
football landscape. Well, that's The thing is, if
somebody wants to talk about the absurdity of the money flying
through or flowing through college football, and they want
to say that the Power Five soon to be Power Four, should
separate from the Group of Five, I'm listening.
Because when you look at those numbers, what is it like?
Every Power 5 conference right now gets 60 or $70 million from
the playoffs before any bowl games are assigned every year.
That's what they get. And the group, the entire group
of five, gets like $65 million to divide amongst themselves.
And that's why Ball State is playing at Georgia this year.
Yeah, you know, because they, they need those money games.
They need those. Here's $1,000,000 or a million
point five, 1.5 million, please come in and get your head beat
in. Now go home and pay every single
coach on your entire athletic department with that money.
That disparity is something I'm interested in talking about.
But then they always say, well, what about, you know, the times
when there's giant killers? Well, yeah, but those are going
to get fewer and further between with the disparities and
facilities and recruiting budgets.
I mean, again, have. I've been putting it for years.
Long Beach State will never win another women's volleyball
title. Cal State Fullerton will never
win another baseball title. And those aren't even football
schools. But we're just saying that these
are schools that got used to being powers and in those
sports. But now the worst of the power
Five schools had in terms of on court performance or on field
performance has better facilities, better recruitment,
and then all these schools that for a while enjoyed some
advantages. So yeah, this is again, that's
but the whole idea of a Super League.
It just seems like one of those fantasies.
It's a media fantasy and it makes no sense because when the
playoff becomes 12 teams, that sounds like a pretty Super
League to me. Yeah, absolutely.
So I guess maybe with that, we'll go ahead and wrap up any
final thoughts on all of this before we do.
So pour one out for the PAC 12. Yeah, I'll miss it a lot.
The PAC 12 shall rise again, Sir.
It'll happen at some point, I'm positive.
I don't know. Well, indeed, indeed, well.
The big actually to me that the big question is what will end up
being bigger, the eventual Super League in college sports or MLS
in terms of number of teams? In terms of number of teams,
like right now we're talking about like a 30 some team,
college, Super League. I think MLS is at least at that
number now, are they not? We are.
I think MLS is. I know.
I know MLS is nearing 30. I think they're at 28. 29 There
are 29 teams right now. 29 Yeah, I gotta go, Gotta go to.
And actually, they're gonna hit 30 because this is not counting
the future San Diego team that's going to be added.
I am. On the one hand, it's kind of
cool, like I remember where there wasn't a league, but on
the other hand it just it's that's a lot of teams.
That's a it is anyway. Well, it's a lot.
Yeah, Matt, I as always enjoy talking to you about this stuff
and I'm sure we'll have more to talk about as we move forward.
But thank you for joining me. This was great.
Absolutely. Galen, bring back the bison.
Thank you. There you go.
Thank you for popping that in. Some people have been giving me
grief cuz I haven't been saying it lately and I've just
forgotten. No other reason that anyway.
My thanks to all you folks for tuning in.
My thanks to our sponsor at home field apparel and all of our
friends at the back home network.
My thanks to Doctor Matt Zimmerman for joining us here.
We'll be back with I U football coverage this weekend.
I'm Galen Clabby. We'll catch you folks on the
flip side. So everybody.