You're listening to the Back Home Network presented by Home
Field Apparel. Welcome back to Crimson
Cascaille and Claudio Scott Caulfield joining you.
It is Tuesday, August 8th. We still owe you folks a bunch
of value football podcast and we will be getting to them
throughout the course of these next few weeks as we continue to
March towards the start of the season.
But there's so much going on with college sports realignment
and restructuring and just kind of a changing of the fabric of
things that we wanted to go ahead and do another episode.
If you missed the first one that we did at Crimson Cast last
week, we had our friends Zach on to talk through things and
that's worth the listen. But Scott and I wanted to tackle
some of the questions that are out there as well.
We had some thoughts we wanted to share and also had some
questions from you folks out there in X land that we wanted
to get to. So Scott, good to see you.
Always nice to catch up with you mid afternoon.
Yeah, good to talk to. You know, I I highly recommend I
texted you like that. The positive of Zach was was
awesome. So I look at this as kind of
like the sister companion, maybe hopefully as good of a sequel.
But no, that was a great pod. I learned a lot.
I kind of dug into it. The only thing I'll say is that
yesterday I was in Bloomington. I was with my dad who you know
and it was just kind of he had actually like he's getting
older. He's 93.
God blessed me still all here and and and lucid.
But he we're kind of talking about this stuff and he didn't
know it was finalized and but he was trying to say like, NIL has
really messed up college sports. But he kept on saying like, man,
like OPEC, like keeps on messing up college sports.
He gets on getting his acronyms messed up and I guess somebody
who mispronounces stuff. I I appreciate it was like 4
different times. He's like I can't believe like
OPEC is messing up with the it's like all right dad OPEC is not I
I do love I do love the idea of Saudi Arabia and Venezuela like
tanking the PAC 12 like that's that's 100% certainly I mean the
way it. Pays for Florida State to get
out of the ACC? No, I was going to say with the
world of sovereign wealth funds, that's not that far off.
You know, it's Venezuela's like Citgo.
Like what about Conference USA? I think there's some real
possibilities there. Yeah, so.
So my dad's mispronunciation might be like the prophecy for
the future and OPEC taking over college sports.
I think it would be the first leader college sports has had in
like 50 years. So it's I I'm trying to fake.
What for? I no, I actually already have
the answer. Well, because like the live tour
they got Greg Norman, who like shot all of his credibility, you
know, long time ago. And so like, what former college
star or athlete could they get? And the answer is immediate.
It's Craig James like like unquestionably, you know, former
SMU guy who you know, was on ESPN sued Mike Leach.
You know, I mean has just kind of been a jerk about everything.
I mean that seems like and he's also got an oil tie like he's
from Texas. I see a lot of of overlap there
they where he could be the spokesperson for the new OPEC
fueled, pun intended college football situation.
I like it. I got a better answer.
It's Chefsky. Yeah, Chefsky is like he was
like so always like above the board but yet Grand Team USA and
had this huge advantage of doing that and always you know that
Duke was always like, oh, we play by the rules, but yet they
always seemed to get guys like Zion Williamson like that's a
total Chefsky moves. That would be my my pick.
I was going to say I think Chefsky's too old.
Then I looked he's only 14 years older than Craig James, so it's
not like they're completely out of the ball.
I like maybe both. Maybe we need one spokesperson
for football, 1 spokesperson for basketball, and I'm sure we
could find somebody somewhere with one of the other Olympic
sports to that's that's. And then you can get and then
you can get Saban just be like and you know and you know and no
that was Beltec, sorry. Beltec like we're on to the on
to the UAE. Sorry anyone.
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All right, Scott, let's dive into things.
We had some kind of leftovers from the talk that we had on on
at the end of the week last week regarding college sports and we
had some lingering questions that were kind of overarching
the people have asked and then we had some specific questions
that you find folks who listen to the show had reached out
with. So I wanted to touch on a couple
of those things first. So one of the questions that we
got and and it's still been getting and it's actually even
more pertinent now that we've seen some news you go, we heard
obviously that the Oregon and Washington are joining the Big
10. Wait what Scott, we had to
remember we had to remind you last week that Kevin Wilson had
a head coaching job. So nothing, nothing is beyond
you at this point in terms of not paying attention.
But everybody asked the question, wait, OK Oregon, sure.
Washington, sure. No Stanford, no cow like those
seem like shoe ins for everything that the Big 10 seems
to want. High level academic schools that
also have BCS level, like I said it again Scott, also have power
conference level athletic programs, particularly in
football. You've got the Bay Area, which
is obviously one of the biggest media markets in the country.
Why is it that we don't have Stanford and Cal in this mix?
I mean, first of all, were you surprised when you heard that
they're just adding Oregon and Washington at this point?
I was, I I honestly, I always looked at Arizona or Arizona
State as an interesting ad just because of the the Phoenix
market is so many, you know, Midwesterners in the Phoenix
area. So I was, I was kind of curious.
It didn't seem like they were ever on the radar, but no the
the the Cal Stanford thing. I find interesting because you
and I mentioned it, we talked about it offline too that when
the Big 10 released that schedule, you know what is it,
you know two or three months ago, the 2024-2025 schedule.
Like the first thing I pretty sure I said on the spot is like
you noticed they, you know we've had leaders and legends in East
and West. Like there was no divisions and
it was like very obvious you could easily add more teams to
this schedule without a lot of reengineering.
And I think that as we look back.
You know, we don't know what's going on, but to me, I think
it's very obvious the Big 10, if they wanted Cal and Stanford
could have gotten them two, two or three days ago.
They didn't. And so that leads to me the deep
that the next question is why didn't they get them because for
all of the, oh, Washington, Oregon help travel in the West,
like not really. It's still 1000 miles from
Seattle to Lai mean it's it's that's like, you know, Iowa to
Rutgers. Almost like it's not super close
travel. That would definitely help the
West Coast travel, having six teams out there.
To me it kind of signals I think in a, you know, two days or 18
months, you know, we'll probably see the Big 10 add two or four
more teams and I would assume that those teams are more
attractive to the Big 10 than Callen Stanford.
That's kind of how I viewed it. Is that they?
They knew they were there, they just didn't want them because
they might want something else instead.
And also know that there's really not a lot of places Cal
and Stanford can go and they can probably grab them in 12 months
if they want to. Anyway, that that's how I viewed
it. I mean, they can probably grab
them anytime they want to, but I think that's ultimately the key.
So this is where I think we have to be.
I think one of the problems with trying to figure out college
sports expansion now as opposed to what it was when we talked
about it 13 months ago is what are the rules of engagement?
What are what are people trying to do?
And I think it's important to understand that a school can be
a great academic fit, it can be a great geographic fit, but if
it's not a great financial fit, it's probably not going to be
included at the highest echelon in this round.
And clearly, and we talked about this a little bit on the show
that we did last week, Stanford has really let its football
program fall off from the heights that they were at when
Harbaugh was there. And you know where they're at
now. It's just this gulf of
achievement. And that has had an absolute
direct effect on how popular they are to watch on television.
The answer is not very. They also don't have an alumni
base that is particularly turned on by football, Other sports,
Yes. Football, not as much.
Cal is in an even worse position because, yes, I mean, they've
had their moments of glory in football, but they've not had
those in a while. And again, they don't have a big
audience that they command in the PAC 12 or on a national
stage. And so I think what occurred
with all of this was the Big 10 new, and I think this is the
president's as much as it is the television networks.
Here we have an opportunity to add 2 truly national brands.
Oregon, who's knocked on the doorstep or knocked on the door?
I don't know if you've knocked on the doorstep.
You've got some problems of of a national title on a couple of
occasions. They've got all that Nike money
behind them. They've got the most
recognizable uniforms in college football.
They have occupied a particular demographic from an interest
perspective for a while. And then Washington, who has won
a national title and while they haven't been a top level player,
they've been to a beast like an FBS or the the College Football
Playoff, like they've been in the mix.
Thank you. Yes, they've been in the mix as
far as the national stage. And you would want to add those
programs, those schools, if you were the Big 10, because in
addition to all of that, they also fit the academic profile.
I don't think the Big 10 felt like splitting the pie
significantly more than they already have.
And indeed, if you look at the deal that Oregon and Washington
agreed to, it's like half the money that the other Big 10
schools, the vested ones, are going to get.
They were willing to do that because it was more money than
they were going to get if they had stuck with that PAC 12 Apple
deal. So they were happy with that.
If you try to throw two more schools in the mix, especially
Stanford and Cal, who just do not move the needle for Fox or
whoever's broadcasting the games, now you're taking food
off the plate of everybody in the conference, so to speak.
And so I really think yes, down the line, if the Big 10 wanted
to add Stanford and Cal, they'd find a way to make it happen.
But this kind of dovetails with the question we got from our.
There's always the other side too, and I don't.
Truly believe is we don't know what's going on.
But there's a world where the Big 10 offered, you know this
kind of half deal to Cal and Stanford.
So if you're Washington, Oregon, it's like you got to be in a
conference like you're they're not going to go independent.
They've got, they want to be highlevel teams.
They need to be in the Big 10 or the SCC.
There is a world just throwing it out there.
We're like maybe the Big 10 offers this or even like a
lesser deal like you know you get 25,000,000 and you know a 2%
raise or whatever to Cal and Stanford.
If you're Stanford, it's like. We're setting on more money than
anybody in the cut. Like we're okay.
Like we don't really need to be a top level football program.
Maybe we'll just go independent for a couple years and see
what's going on. There's a world where the big
tech deal, they just looked at it and like we don't, you know,
we don't need that deal either. So that's also a possibility
that the last thing with Camper, Stanford and Cal for people of
our age group that is odd or just is interesting is.
You know, I grew up watching all of these like Tim McCarver led
blooper reel videos from like you know, from like Sports
Illustrated and stuff. You get these videos and be
like, you know, the best 35 bloopers in college, you know,
in sports history and it was like the George Brett pine tar
incident was up there. And then there was always the
Cal Stanford game where, you know, again, I hate this.
Kids go back and watch it like the end of the game.
Like Guy was a player for Cal, right?
Like runs into the Stanford band and like hits the kid with the
two button scores, a touchdown. Like knocks them over.
And it was a huge deal. Like growing up that was like
the craziest thing that ever happened in a huge football game
like Cal Stanford big game. And it's it's no matter what
happens. Like, it's like weird that that
Cal Stanford game has already been way diminished, but it's
going to turn into like the Army Navy game or it's just even the
Army Navy game has more appeal now.
Like this thing that was just, well, big deal for us growing
up. That is just like a vestige of
the past. I mean, John Elway was the
starting quarterback for Stanford in that game.
But I would, I would, I would pop the brakes on Stanford and
Cal being at the end of of of any prominence because I think
it's a better than average chance they might end up in the
ACC. That's been the news that's
popped up here lately is that there's mutual interest there
and a lot of people are freaking out about it and we'll get to
that in a second. The one thing I wanted to get to
had a question from a Hooper Razzie on X, when will the
networks run out of cash or is that even possible?
And I think it actually dovetails with this particular
question because I think the networks have already kind of
run out of cash, at least what I would say, they haven't run out
of cash, they've run out of like FU money.
And that's the big difference here.
You know, I think for a while it looked like the ceiling was
limitless in terms of what you could do with repackaging
college sports for a television audience.
And that's what really drove the last huge round of realignment.
That's that period from 2003 up until about 2014.
You know, we're starting new television networks and we're
we're, you know, we're merging new conferences and we're making
a Super ACC and a Super Big 10 and a Super SEC and we almost
made a Super PAC 12. That has really changed.
And so I think what you're seeing now like the reporting
around the Oregon and Washington moves is that once the Big 10
presidents decided that they indeed wanted to go through with
this, they went to Fox and they said, can you make the numbers
work? So we're not going to lose money
on it. And they were able to put
together an additional financial package that got Oregon and
Washington in the league. But I think the implication
there is that there wasn't money to put other teams in the
league, even if the presidents had wanted them.
And I honestly don't think they wanted Stanford and Cal, you
know, But that's I believe what we're looking at it.
As you look around college sports, there's still money out
there for the right brands. Notre Dame is probably going to
get somewhere between 60 and $70 million by themselves per year
from NBC. There's money for them.
I think if something extraordinary happens with the
ACC where it comes apart, there would be money put together for
certain brands to join the Big 10 or join the SCCI.
Don't think you're going to get money.
In fact, we kind of saw it already like it was a news story
yesterday that the four remaining PAC 12, I guess we
call them the PAC 4 schools had all contacted the Big 12 and
we're like, hey, we'd be very interested in joining.
And the word out of the Big 12 was we're done.
We're we're not going to do anything else.
And that ultimately is a decision that's not being made
by the because look the the Big 12, no offense will let anybody
in as long as they bring a good football stadium.
That's the network partners, whether it's ESPN or Fox saying
guys, there's not really enough money to add to essentially
regional schools in the Northwest +2 largely academic
institutions that haven't had success in football in a decade.
So that's I think what we're seeing with that.
And so ultimately, we're going to see more and more of this
where the networks don't have that much money.
They still have some. They're going to make logical
moves to get good inventory so that they can make more money on
the back end. But I think the era of just
everything moving all the time is probably close to an end
because the media landscape and the financial landscape that
surrounded it changed so much. Agree with that, although I
would, I would caveat this. I think there's a world where it
happens again because yes, networks don't have the same
amount of money. And partially because a lot of
them have been throwing their money into creating their own
streamers, which hasn't worked. But you know, I think two or
three years ago everyone was kind of assuming like all right,
you know, the, the Apple, Netflix, Amazon, those
streamers, they are going to be the ones who are going to bid
crazy amounts. It hasn't happened yet.
But part of that is because you know we went from a world of low
interest rates and you know all of those streamers were getting,
you know, they were getting viewed on Wall Street for
subscribers and sub numbers and it didn't matter their profit.
Changed in the last two years, interest rates went up, they
need profit. But I do think you saw Apple
kind of they're starting to dip their toe in there.
And then you know I I follow this on the side, but like
Netflix, you know they've started to change their model
obviously when they're adding advertising on that.
But their numbers, if you look at their last two Q earnings
call, their numbers were insane where they are, every subscriber
they add is like an extra 60% revenue boost.
Like they are actually now profitable as they add people.
It just goes. Revenue side.
So they have kind of weathered that storm gotten over the hump
and I I do think there's a world where a real profitable Netflix,
Apple and Amazon you know those players they end up saying at
some point you know we want to get into live right sports, they
start out bidding each other and you could see those numbers jump
up again. We're just in kind of that weird
spot where the networks don't have the funds, they don't have
the landscape, their numbers are going down.
The streamers whose numbers are going up aren't quite ready to
to dive into live right sports yet.
Oh yeah, that's that's the big aspect of this, that I think the
PAC 12 especially, but a lot of other schools in college
athletics have miscalculated because I do believe that they
thought, Oh well, if the network TV door is closing, the the big
company streaming stuff is going to be an even bigger golden
door. And in fact, if you read a lot
of the reporting from the insiders in the PAC 12, that was
the thing they were banking on. It's like, oh, not going to
matter. Amazon's going to come in and
write us a $50 million check or Apple's going to write us a $50
million check. Well, we know Apple was only
willing to write about a $24 million check to the PAC 12
score, PAC 10. I guess at that point when they
wrote the deal and they were willing to do some extra with
incentives based upon like already, you guys actually get
your fans to subscribe. We talked about that a bunch on
the previous podcast. There was a fascinating bit of
of journalism that happened in the Sports Business Journal.
I think it was John Orand this came out yesterday.
I want to read a little bit of this because it answers some of
the questions you're talking about, and some of this was
stuff I didn't know before I read it.
Yesterday, ESPN, Fox and CBS all put in last minute bids for
packages of Big 12 games, but they all came in much, much
lower than the conference wanted.
And you know, they've kept waiting.
And that's why the Apple TV bid was finally presented last week
because that was the only thing that they had.
So here were the packages that apparently were offered
according to this story, Fox. Offered a bid for a package of
13 total games, which would pay about 35 to $40 million a year
total, not per team total. So that's like with three to $4
million a team and probably would have been distributed
unevenly. That's what you would call, as
the piece points out, the B package.
Not the primary rights package, but like an ancillary thing that
gets added to a deal. ESPN.
I'm going to come back to ESPN in the second.
CBS engaged with the PAC 12 over the last couple of weeks, but
only put forward a bid for a handful of basketball games,
about 5 in total. That's bad.
You know, if all they're bidding on is 5 basketball games, you're
in bad shape. Sources expected ESPN and Amazon
to share the PAC. Twelve's a package, the primary
rights package, but Amazon never submitted a bid.
NBC never submitted a bid. ESPN, and this is probably the
thing you know if you're If you're feeling sympathetic about
the PAC 12, feel sympathetic for the athletes, Feel sympathetic
for the coaches, feel sympathetic for the fans.
Do not in any way, shape or form feel sympathy for the Conference
commissioners or the presidents of the of the PAC12ESPN offered
what is being termed a significant package to the
conference more than a year ago, and the Conference University
presidents rejected it. ESPN then turned around and cut
a deal with the Big 12. But the offer that they ended up
giving in the last couple of weeks to the PAC 12, according
to this piece, was only a small bid for overall PAC 12 rights.
And so you know this. It's one of those things where I
think everybody is always in such a rush to figure out, like,
what narrative do I need to attach myself to.
And, you know, one of the big narratives is money and networks
are ruining college sports. And it's like and and then, but
then there's the other narrative, which was touched on
by a couple of people. It's like the money's all run
out and it's like, well, neither of those narratives is
necessarily true because the the networks were interested in
doing a deal. The PAC 12, as it's done over
the course of really the entire last 13 years, just constantly
decided to shoot itself in the private parts at every single
possible opportunity, every. And you can go through the list.
The PAC 12 had so many opportunities to put themselves
in a favorable commercial position, maybe not at the same
level as the Big 10 in the SEC, but certainly in just as
favorable, if not more so a position than the ACC in the Big
12. And they were so convinced that
they were above that that they rejected things left and right
because they were convinced that a white knight with the Amazon
logo on its chest was going to come riding through the door on
a horse made of cardboard boxes and give them each a $50 million
check. When they walked in to Network
Partner Opportunities a few years earlier.
And they were looking for the the deal renewal, they walked in
and they were like, we want at least $50 million at school.
And, you know, from all accounts, the network execs
looked at that and like, people are crazy.
There's no way. And, you know, so there's
clearly some money. And it's also clear that the
networks are being a little more circumspect, a little more
cautious about this than people are giving them credit for.
But that doesn't fit a lot of the narratives that we've seen
spewed around on this. It's hard not to look at all of
this when you see the reporting and say to yourself, gosh, the
PAC 12 screwed itself. And there were plenty of
opportunities for this not to be the outcome.
And they ignored every single warning along the way.
And there's just not going to be that much money coming out of
streamers because Apple, Amazon, Netflix, they're getting like,
absolutely destroyed on the stock market right now.
They're looking at this and they're like, is live sports
television really a business we want to get into at this point
in any scale? The thing with the streamers is,
and they I mean Netflix has actually come way back.
Like they are looking good from a wall, Wall Street perspective.
Here's the thing with the streamers that I've always been
dubious of with them getting deep into sports is.
Sports is a live rights. You are renting the sports.
So ESPN has put itself in a spot where they just don't have any
original program. They just they rent sports and
that's what they do. If you look at the history of
Netflix, Amazon, Apple, like Netflix, has spent the last 15
years doing everything it can to own.
Everything that it puts out there, it is owned, produced and
made by Netflix. That's partially why there's a
lot of is that they don't pay residuals.
Like that's why there's strikes right now with the actors and
the writers you look at you know Amazon, they they only promote
their own stuff. Apple TV.
The only thing on Apple TV services are their own shows,
things that they make. You know, Disney, they bought
Lucas Films, they bought Marvel because they want to own those
properties and own their own stuff.
So. This is where I look at it.
It's like, if you're Netflix, your entire business model is
how do we make stuff that is Netflix produced and made Like
they're tired of renting other shows.
Do they want to spend a huge chunk of money to rent and, you
know, to to rent Big 10 game, rent anything, any sport?
And then it's like they're going to build a bunch of shows around
it, and then five years from now they lose all of that stuff like
this is. In no respect any way any of
these streamers has ever viewed content for them.
They would much. You know, I've read I've heard
this other places is a little bit crazy and it's like not
realistic, but it's like Netflix or Apple would be more
interested in just. Buying the NFL, like instead of
buying the rights like we'll just buy it and then we'll own,
you know, we'll own the Big 10. Like they'd much rather do that.
So that that's the thing with the streamers.
I do think it's and it's like that's where the PAC 12 also
miscalculated. It's just to think that they're
going to Apple and Amazon's going to come in with a higher
number. It's like this is really, this
is not what streamers do and it's not the business they're
in. They're in the business of
creating their own content, like they might have just bought the
PAC 12. But they weren't going to give
you a higher number than legacy media companies.
And again, legacy media companies have their own issues.
And so anyway, that's that's where I look at streamers.
And like, they're probably not the white knight who's going to
push the money even higher. Yeah, absolutely.
And that's, I think, a hard lesson.
And again, it didn't have to end up this way for the PAC 12.
They mismanage the situation. So it's like I think you can be
concerned about what you, not you, but like the the audience
member can be concerned about how they perceive college sports
to be going. But I would really caution
people about acting like college sports is being killed from the
outside when at least in the PAC Twelve's case, the calls were
absolutely coming from the inside of the house.
And that's that's a real problem when you think about it.
Let's talk about a couple other things in this vein before we
get to some questions. So one of the things I've been
mentioning and I I put this to you in our show notes
beforehand. I've seen a lot of complaints
about academic related conferences or athletic
conferences like not making a lot of sense geographically.
Like in most people's minds, the Big 10 is a Midwest conference,
The ACC is an Atlantic Coast Conference that may just be
getting ready to add Stanford and Cal.
The SEC clearly is in the Southeast.
The Big 12 I guess is in the plains States and the PAC 12 is
the West. And it's very difficult for
people to get their heads wrapped around the idea that
their geographical predispositions of where things
are supposed to be might not match.
I really would advise people, and you may not want to do this,
so you could take my advice and and decide to ignore it.
By all means. You have to stop thinking about
these conferences in this way. I agree it doesn't make a whole
lot of sense to have four West Coast schools in the artist
still known as the Big 10. But if you, if you, if you
unhinge the idea that the Big 10 has to be a Midwestern based
university conference and you look at it instead as one of the
two leading college sports brands that has a national
footprint and it tries to bring together not all of the best
brands but most of the best brands to play particularly
college football but also other sports.
I mean I just think it's a more realistic way of looking at it.
And I honestly like as much as I am sympathetic to some degree to
the argument that we need to keep these things more
geographical. It's like where were these
complaints A decade ago? I mean we've got, you know, ACC
schools in, you know, in SEC territory and in the Northeast
but also inland a bit. We've got, you know, the Big 10
stretches from New Jersey to Nebraska that was even, you
know, and that was, you know, before they added the California
schools and the Pacific Northwest schools.
The Big Twelve's got a school in West Virginia.
You know, I mean, it's it hasn't made geographical sense for a
long while. And I think, you know, at least
to some degree, I'm, I'm just tired of seeing people arguing
for a system that only made geographical sense like 40 years
ago and it's gradually had to change because of the economic
realities of high level college sports.
You've lived in that system for a while and I get that this is
kind of beyond the pale, but it also feels like, you know, fans,
you can be mad about it. You can be like, I'm not going
to pay attention to college sports, but if you're not, you
kind of got to let that part of it go because there's just
clearly been an economic stratification where a couple of
brands, in particular, the Big 10 and the SEC, have just
completely lapped the field because they've been smarter
business wise over a longer period of time.
It probably isn't going to be very beneficial to get mad about
that moving forward that you might have schools from outside
the Midwest in the Big 10. So you said something, we talked
on the phone a couple days ago that that kind of hits this
point. Was you.
You were like, just think of it like, you know that the end of
the PAC 12 was no different than like the end of Johnson and
Johnson or just some corporation that goes down.
And, you know, I was thinking about that.
And. And you're right.
And in this respect, it's very similar to, like, pick on Amazon
again. But, you know, you and I have
lived through the growth of Amazon.
Like Amazon, you should just be a place you'd go to buy books.
And it's like, oh, you can buy toilet paper on Amazon.
And now it's like if you would have told me in, you know, 1997,
it's like you're going to get to watch Thursday Night Football
games on Amazon. I'd be like.
Like why not Barnes and Noble, what are you talking about?
Like they sell books, but like it has evolved and that would
have something totally different.
You know Apple sells phones but also has a TV network.
Like the companies can grow and change and sometimes they do it
well, sometimes they, you know, they they make mistakes and they
stay, they go out of business and they don't do it.
But I think looking at it from the corporation point of view
kind of makes sense and it's just like the Big 10 is like
Amazon and it is just offering different things in different
areas that the thing that I would say.
From your last pod with Zach, you barely touched on this, but
just an idea. You know, no one's listening to
to me, but it's like we're almost at a point where, you
know, the people that I feel bad for are, you know, basketball
and football. Everybody's like, oh, you're the
travel. It's like basketball, football
are going to be fine. Like they they have, they are
the ones that generate the revenue, like they are going to
be catered to when it comes to travel.
I do feel bad for like, you know, the the, the baseball
teams, the lacrosse teams at the low level sports.
There is a world where maybe it just makes sense, you know,
again, because no one's in charge, like no one's still
doing those things. Maybe you just say, hey, the Big
10 in football and basketball are these schools.
But like for all the other sports we're just going to play
a regional group. Like we're just going to have
like Indiana's going to play you know the old Big 10 or the OG
Big 10 in all of the other non revenue producing sports.
And you kind of have like what Notre Dame has where they're
just like we're playing football over here and all the other
sports are playing over there. And there's a world where like
because it it is absurd to think like, you know, the women's, you
know, field hockey team, you know, low level sports, they're
just not, you know, softball, they're not revenue producing
like they're going to get screwed on some of these travel
pieces. And so maybe there is a world
where you just like we're going to pull men's basketball and
football out. These are going to be in what we
call these TV conferences and then everything else will play
kind of geographically. I get that argument.
There's a couple of things that make it kind of not possible.
And also and also from my perspective not as important, I
mean here. So let me let me put it this
way, A, I was love Notre Dame being brought up as this.
As an example of this, Notre Dame flies their nonrevenue
sports teams to Miami. They fly them to Tallahassee,
they fly them to Atlanta, they fly them to Clemson.
I don't know if you guys have looked on a map, but those are
pretty far away in terms of of geography and just trying to get
that. You're trying to fly to Clemson,
Scott, not not the easiest place to get into necessarily if
you're flying commercial especially.
So I I get the idea in theory, but realistically nobody's
really been concerned. At least very few people on the
national stage have been concerned about this regional
issue. And we've had teams that fly
everywhere. You know, we've got I U, we're
in Indiana, I U as a water polo varsity team and I love it.
They're they're always ranked in the top 25.
Look at the teams in their conference.
They're all in California. They fly out there on a regular
basis. All the players are from
California. You can look at baseball across
the country. If you are located north of the
Ohio River, you spend the first two months of your season in the
South or in the West playing games on the road at with with
travel that absolutely runs right into what you're doing in
the classroom and and absolutely gives an incredible, you know,
advantage to the schools that are in the South and the West.
NCAA is allowed that for decades nobody's cared.
So while I understand the argument, I think the travel
thing is pretty overblown. And it even at the major level,
like I see all these like, oh gosh, now Oregon's student
athletes have to fly to Rutgers in Maryland regularly.
And I'm like, you know how often they're likely going to play at
Rutgers? But once every six to eight
years, you know how often they're going to play at
Maryland? About once every six to eight
years. They may do them in the same
weekend once every six to eight years.
That's to me a little bit overblown.
It does stink I think for for some of the smaller, you know,
the the the you know, smaller budget athletic programs.
But I also think the other issue here is that the way that
colleges and universities have packaged their athletic
programs, that's all television inventory, it's streaming
inventory that's all being sold. It's not like those are
unfortunate throwins. Those are considered to be
inventory that the networks are buying when they're buying the
rights for the football and basketball.
I don't think that that's good. I've long been a proponent of
why don't we keep our Olympic sports in a more regional
environment when you can like it wouldn't really be something
that water polo could do because there are no Regional Water polo
schools. But so I would I would support
that but the chances of that happening are almost nonexistent
because you know a on the flip side it's like well we need
those on TV. Well, it's going to be hard for
look like if Illinois is playing Western Illinois and Eastern
Illinois and Northwestern, that's not going to work from a
TV perspective. And if the whole idea is, gosh,
we need to like women's soccer at the college level needs to be
more prominent, volleyball needs to be more prominent, you're
going to only get that through connecting brands with brands.
So to some degree, I think that's almost an unworkable
scenario because I don't think you're going to get a situation
where, Oh yeah, we're going to have a conference for football
and then a conference for everything else.
It doesn't work the way that things are being run right now.
And it's a little, it's unfortunate, yes, but it's it
also may all be moot because I think down the line, and this is
it's this is the thing that kind of hangs over this conversation
any and it rarely is getting talked about right now.
There's a nonzero chance that in five years a lot of these sports
won't be varsity sports at a lot of these colleges and
universities because of the fact that the moment that that, you
know, the National Labor Relations Board or Congress
declares that these are actually employees as opposed to student
athletes, a lot of that's going to drop down to the club level.
And I think that will fundamentally alter a bunch of
things. And so that's going to be really
interesting to watch. Before we get to questions, I
have two just as a you are a media professor.
I just. If I was in your class I would
bring these up as I think they're they're interesting
contradictions that I I'm hearing in the media and I would
also say I've been guilty of probably within this podcast and
I think you I don't want to blame you but maybe the royal we
we've been guilty of these but I do I just throw it out there and
it's kind of more you know an FYI but I think it's interesting
you know on one hand we all we're talking about you know the
death of the the cable bundle the media landscape has changed
and as we talk it's like you know there's no longer which by
the way. Side note like the medium
everyone your cables dying. It's like it kind of is.
But it's like there's also YouTube TV and Hulu which are
based because digital cable. So it's not totally dying.
There's still carriage fees anyway.
You know that media markets don't really matter anymore like
you know Rutgers to get the New York market like it really
doesn't matter to get those markets anymore And yet like 2-2
minutes later I he'll somebody say but you know but the Big 10
is getting the Seattle market and that's really good.
It's like it is. It's funny that we talk about
how the media markets don't matter.
And then we talk about how like, oh, it's like really good.
The Big Ten's getting Seattle and you know, the Big 12 is
getting the Phoenix market for for growth.
And so I find that that interesting.
The other contradiction is something you and I have talked
about, you know, just kind of joking and like, you know what
if teams are getting relegated and as you brought up, it's
like, you know? Nobody wants to have a power
conference. If you're Ohio State, you don't
want to play the best teams all the time, which makes sense.
You need some, you know, semi easy games even within your
conference, which I agree with and that's true.
But that it is also funny that it's like the reason we didn't
bring Washington State and Oregon State is because they
suck in football and it's like we want to get better teams.
Like all of this is always about getting better teams.
And in a way they are like on one hand it's like we don't want
super conferences, but then it's like well.
Then why didn't we go for Oregon State or Cal and Stanford?
It's like, well, because they suck in football, so we're only
getting the best team. So it is.
It's an interesting contradiction, at least that I
see. Well, I don't.
I don't think that's why they didn't want Washington State in
Oregon State. They don't Washington State in
Oregon State. Not because they suck at
football, because they both been better than not just I you, but
they've been better than Northwestern.
They've been better than Purdue. They didn't get them because
they don't have a market attached to them.
They're just they don't. I mean they and it's weird
because like Washington State does okay in in games in terms
of like television ratings, but that's generally because they're
playing teams that people want to see.
And so these two questions end up kind of dovetailing with each
other. And so let me go back to the
first one, which is the market situation.
Markets aren't. They're not irrelevant, but
they're not as relevant as they were when cable networks,
whether it was ESPN or Big 10 Network or SEC Network, we're
trying to secure carriage fees and monthly subscriber money
that would come from the cable companies or the satellite
companies to have those things on television.
And so when you think about it, like that still exists.
It's not like nobody subscribes to cable or YouTube TV, but it's
about 50 million people, 40 to 50 million people fewer now that
subscribe to those things than there were a decade ago.
That's a pretty big loss. And you know, not to.
I do a whole lecture on this in in class, so I'm not going to do
it here. But the Cliff Notes version is
one of the things that fueled ESPN being able to buy all the
media rights. And play Kingmaker in college
sports was the fact that they had two separate huge revenue
streams for a couple of decades. One was subscriber fees and the
other was advertising. Well, they can still survive on
the advertising and a reduced number of fees, and they've
tried to convert people more to subscribing to ESPN Plus, which
isn't going to pay them nearly as much money, but it's going to
give them $100 a year out of those people.
It's just not going to be as many because there was a bunch
of people that were paying $7.00 a month to ESPN that never
watched ESPN because it was tied into the local cable bundle.
You take that and you apply it to the schools.
The problem is ultimately for schools like Washington State,
Oregon State, a lot of the other thing, a lot of the other
schools that are kind of in that mix, they just don't have enough
people who are going to subscribe to an ESPN Plus or an
Apple TV or whatever to make it worth the while of the
conferences and the networks that are going to be working
with them or the streamers where it's going to generate enough
revenue that everybody can get paid.
And so when you look at Washington State, it's like from
a competitive perspective, you know, they wouldn't have been
any worse or better of an addition.
They would have probably a better addition than like
Maryland and Rutgers just because they're they're more
isolated that you know, they they've had individual successes
at times, but the problem is that they just don't bring
enough people to the table. And this is actually the issue
with Stanford and Cal. I mean, Stanford and Cal both
have a lot of alums, a lot, and don't particularly care enough
about football or their other sports that they're willing to
fork over X amount of dollars a year.
You know, So you think about like, MLS is a great example.
Despite not being a college sports league, MLS recently
signed a deal with Apple, which was pretty controversial.
And I had certainly me and a bunch of other people kind of
curious how it was going to work out because they signed this
deal with Apple and it's largely like most of the games are just
on Apple, which means you have to subscribe to the MLS package
on Apple, which is $100 a year. And everybody was like, is MLS
really popular enough that they're going to be able to
bring in enough subscribers to pay all of their teams, enough
to go and be competitive in the marketplace for signing players?
Well, what did MLS do this year, Scott?
They go out and sign the most popular player in the world and
suddenly, you know, ticket prices go through the roof and a
bunch of people halfway through the season have dropped $100 to
watch half of the MLS season because they're going to get to
see Leonel Messi play soccer. College sports can't do that.
Like, the Washington state right now is not going to be able to
go and get a top player to goose their subscriptions.
And so you know, look there's there's some level of luck
involved in this, but there's also and it's kind of it, it
crosses over with some I U related stuff that we'll talk
about. Like if you're already in the
club and you're at school like I U that has like the the second
largest living alumni base in the country, that's a lot of
potential subscribers. If you're a school like
Washington State, that's, you know, it's a, it's a small, I
think it's a land grad institution, it's agriculturally
focused. You just don't have that many
people who are going to add money to the pie and that's
ultimately what these conferences are trying to put
together. So that's really kind of a it's
a twisty answer, but it winds its way through some of the
things that affect the decision making process.
Yep. No, that's that's, that's why I
asked you. That's a good answer.
No. And you and I mean I think most
people know this, but like that was the secret sauce for not
only ESPN but a lot of these kind of legacy media brands was
they had the best. And I've been listening to a lot
of pods about like you know, the death of, you know, streamers
and all this. It's like in the 90s and the
2000s, you know, normal profit for a business is like 10 to 20%
is really good. You know, ESPN have like a 40 to
45% profit margin most of these. You know, companies that were,
you know, the the cable type companies were in that profit
margin because a lot of the people you were selling to were
not using your product. It doesn't matter if you were
watching or not, but it's like that.
The line was always, you know, like your grandmother pays $8 a
month watching. It's for for ESPN.
They never watched. It's like everybody who signed
up for cable was paying nine or 10 bucks for ESPN.
And they're paying, you know $3 for lifetime is you were just
like everybody was paying for everything.
And it was whether you used it or not, it became like the best
deal for 20 years because everyone you had to pay for it,
whether you used it or not. And so it's like that's the best
thing in business is selling something that nobody needs or
wants. It doesn't matter whether they
use it. You don't have to make more of
it. And and now like that is where
this is changing, is that it's like you like you said, it's
like you have to now kind of pick and choose what you pay
for. But anyway, Well and look.
And from a college athletics perspective, look, there's
certain brands that are in better shape than others.
And I think you know, we right now, we're going through this
with these PAC 12 schools and you've seen who the winners and
losers are. UUSC&UCLA were never going to
struggle to find a home. Oregon and Washington, if they
had thrown themselves open and it had been an open bidding
process, you know, who knows, maybe ESPN would have said yes,
we'll pay extra or we'll give a full share to Oregon and
Washington to join the Big 12 so that they don't join the Big 10
because that strengthens Fox. But Oregon and Washington I
think had kind of a behind the scenes.
They've been vetted already in the last round of realignment by
the Big 10. So I think that was an easy
match. I think, well, you know, but
you're looking, it's like, OK, Stanford and Cal didn't bring
enough to the table and that blows people's minds.
But realistically, in what matters from a revenue
perspective, they don't bring enough to the table and you put,
you know. Real quick, not to interrupt,
but like the the Washington, Oregon part, this goes back to
the pod you had with Zach. But it's like a great point that
he brought up talking about the and we can go to the ACC.
Time of the ACC with Florida State was like, where are you
going to go and like that? That's the other part of this is
like, you know, for Washington and Oregon it's it's like, all
right, if you're not like if you're going to, you know, not
go to the Big 10. And the PAC 12 is disintegrating
once USC and you know at let's just take it two weeks ago USC
and USCLA is already gone. The PAC 12 doesn't have a good
deal if you're Washington and Oregon.
It's like you have a you don't have a lot of other options
either. It's like you're not going to go
to the SEC or the SEC is not invited you the ACC has their
own issues, like you're not going to just join their grant
of right problems. The Big 12 is like Okay and then
it's like are you going to become an independent Like that
is the other part that is sometimes it in this discussion
is like you know well you know you I can't believe they went to
the Big 10. It's like where else were they
going to go and and that's like well great point is Zach made
about Florida State is like Florida State's like we're out.
It's like Okay, where you going? Well, so this is where it's
going to get interesting because I, you know, I do think that
there's a, there are two. The Florida State question is,
is a curious one because they are outside of Notre Dame who's
constantly going to do their own thing, but they are the most
attractive football property left that might be movable to
one of these larger conferences. Now what I said on the podcast
with Zach, it's not just like where are they going to go.
A lot of those SEC schools have every reason to not want Florida
State in the league. Now the Big 10 if they can get
over misgivings, they might have about Florida State academics
and look Florida State's not. I mean they're they're not great
but I mean they're they're a research one institution.
They're not an A, a U school. But I mean neither's Nebraska at
this point there's they would be attractive if the Big 10 wasn't
like to put off by their academic picture.
They're attractive because there's your entry point into
the South and that is a real concern from a recruiting
perspective that you don't have an entry point into the South.
That's what would make them attractive.
The big question there is, can they get out of the ACC
contract? And then if Fox is looking at
that and saying, oh, Florida State's on the table and they
could potentially join the Big 10, how much would that mean in
terms of our additional revenue? And what could we then
distribute to the league that would make it worth their while,
you know? But then where I was going
originally is if you look at the other brands in the ACC, there's
going to be a lot of brands that get left behind if that thing
blows up, which is why, if they're smart, you know, I think
the Stanford Cal thing, if they actually did join the
conference, that might give them a longer term lifespan, kind of
like what the Big 12 has done. I mean, if you notice the Big
12, and we talked about this again on the last podcast, Big
12 knows who they are. They're not the Big 10.
They're not the SEC. They are quite clearly in the
second tier. But they have enough brands that
they are an attractive television property and they're
going to be in the College Football Playoff.
You know, they're going to be in in contention for bowls.
They can recruit well, They have a fun product.
Will the ACC finally appreciate that they are not on the Big 10
and SEC's level accept that and you know and then the big
question is OK they. Go look at the Big 12 like like
my dog waffles in a nice way. Like we have dinner.
He just kind of scrounges around the bottom.
He does pretty well. He gets, you know, under my 7
year old that gets some cheese, gets some pizza.
Like he's not eating off the table.
He's not getting aggressive with the table, but like he's doing
pretty well getting the scraps. And the Big 12 has kind of been
in that spot where they're they've never like leveraged
another conference to pull people out a high level
conference, but they just kind of wait.
And then once the PAC 12 explodes and the Big 10 grabs
you at the top of the plate, whatever falls off, it's like,
all right, yeah, we'll take Arizona, Arizona.
And they've actually done pretty good at getting some some pretty
good brands kind of after all the big boys have had their shot
at the the buffet, so to speak. Yeah, I mean this is honestly
what killed the PAC 12 is that they refused to acknowledge
where they were in the pecking order and because they kept
expecting Big 10 money or SEC money, that's why they no longer
exist. And it's it's it's a cautionary
tale more than anything else. And I think the ACCI do think
you might look at it and say do we really want an angry Florida
State making things worse for everybody or can we?
You know that the flip side is if you lose Florida State or if
you lose Miami, you suddenly make the conference less
attractive from a television perspective.
How much less attractive? That's the big question mark.
Are they so much less attractive that now they're getting 20
million a year instead of 30 million a year?
Well, if you're the ACC, you have to look at it and again
keep referencing you know you and Zacks pod, but in other
places like. The the death knell to, you
know, pulling out USC&UCLA was the death knell of the PAC 12.
It just took another 13 months for it to completely implode.
That would be the fear of the ACC.
In my mind, if you let Florida State leave is you better have a
plan for what you're doing to move forward and continue to
grow. Because if you don't, you just
sit there and it's like you're now at a point where you could
just you could be a spot where everyone's waiting for you to
implode. And then you implode and then
everyone just picks the carcass clean and that that would be the
fear in my mind. If you're an ACC school, it's
like a Florida State leaves and you let them leave and they
somehow get out of this grant of right, which is dig into the
grants of rights, the amount of money they need to pay and then
the the media money that like they would forsake in the
future. It's banana.
Even Venezuela would balk at that a little bit.
But you know, but you let them leave and it's like that's if
you don't have, if you just then kind of if you're the ACC and
you're like oh we'll talk about it next year.
You're doing exactly what the PAC 12.
When UCLA&USC left and then you could be in a spot where they
just completely implode and the Big 10 is able to grab three
schools at A at a discount rate. Now, look, I think the the
biggest existential threat to the ACC is you know the if
schools can want to press for more money or they want to press
for more prominence, that's where you could see them picked
apart, you know. And again, this is one thing
that is in short supply in hot both higher education and in
sports is humility and a realization of your your
position in life and your position in in your profession.
And I I would worry with the ACC and you can this goes all the
way back to why they have their grant of rights and their
television contract like they were so desperate.
They so felt that they deserve their own television network
that they were willing to let ESPN essentially sign them to a
it's like that you know scene from the social network where
you know he the at the end he's you know signs away.
Where he's at with stock not realizing that everybody else's
stock has increased in value like 6000% and his is going to
increase in value like 50%. It's that mentality, the grant
of the grant of rights just for those who don't know, and you
can correct me too if I fully wrong, but you know the the ESPN
deal with the ACC goes through 2036.
If any school wants to leave, they have to pay an exit fee.
I think it's like $150 million and then not only do they pay
that. Let's just say Florida State
comes up with 150 and they come to the Big 10.
They then have to, Florida State has to pay any new media money
they get back to the ACC for the life of that contract that goes
to 2036. Like they're it's like a, you
know, they're not allowed to get money from their new employer
until the end of that deal. Whether that would hold up in
court, I don't know, but it's a wild provision that's in there.
Again, completely opposite of the Fact 12, which was just.
Hey, everyone's gone and there's no exit fee and we're just out.
It's the complete opposite of the of a way just just for those
who don't know. Like when you dig into it's like
that's why any school that wants to leave the ACC, they're
looking at like a 5 to $600 million tab and 12 years of no
incoming revenue, right. Well anyway, let's get to some
questions from folks out there. We got time for a few.
So let me start with a long time friend of the podcast Mike
Petry. Do you agree with the Athletic
that Rutgers is the worst realignment addition First of
all no I don't I I really had some misgivings about that
athletic article. If you haven't read it yet out
there in in podcast land read it.
But it's it's very one sided and it kind of, it ignores a couple
of key elements in terms of like Rutgers was so far behind in
facilities, they were going to have to bring themselves up to
speed. And I think that that would have
been the situation regardless of who the Big 10 added, the Big 10
at the time. And this goes back to what we
were talking about in terms of of markets and television
networks really felt like they needed a presence in the New
York metro area. There were only three options.
Syracuse was not leaving the ACC, so that was not an option.
UConn and Rutgers were your only two options there.
And both of them, St. Joseph's have a football
program. Scott.
Yeah, but you know, both UConn and Rutgers were not going.
They were going to need a lot of upgrades from a financial like a
facilities perspective. It just wasn't going to be an
easy transition. Rutgers, much like we're seeing
with Oregon and Washington right now, only started.
I mean, they didn't start with a full share of Big 10 network
money and overall distribution money.
They had to work their way up to that.
I think they finally started receiving a full share a couple
of years ago. I mean, I look, honestly, I
don't think Rutgers was a bad realignment addition.
You know they're not. I don't think it is because the
Big 10 is where it's at because they got that East Coast market
when it mattered at the time. And to your point, like, yeah,
unless you're getting Syracuse, but Syracuse really isn't like
you just needed to plant your flag there.
Because I I grew up in New York before I moved to Indiana.
I have a lot of friends there. Like it's just there is no
college. There is no like college team of
New York there, I mean. Sports Town.
And so you just need somebody. You could have, like, I joke St.
John's doesn't have football, but you could have just grabbed
anybody there and be like, oh, we're we're here.
And it would be like, oh, it's great.
We're going to have like, it's to get the alumni of the other
Big 10 schools that are in that area.
I mean, it's and look, and I I, I don't really have a problem
with either Rutgers or Maryland or Nebraska for that matter, in
this new age of college athletics, being in the Big 10.
I mean, you know, and and there's no reason to throw
stones here, but it's not like Maryland's had the greatest
start to their time in the Big 10 either.
They haven't won a whole lot. They had that terrible, you
know, tragedy with the football player dying and they had to
fire a head football coach and they came in with a tremendous
amount of debt that they've been saddled with that they couldn't
pay. You know, that's why they exited
the ACC. And and you know, even with
paying the fees that they had to pay to get out of the ACC, it
was still a better financial deal.
You know those those schools, I think all of them look like
questionable additions, but I think longterm they make sense
in the big scheme of things. And so it's it's hard for me.
I don't know what the the purpose of that article was.
Honestly, I think it was like let's find something that
everybody hates about realignment and for a lot of
people they hate the fact that Rutgers is in the Big 10.
I don't. I don't.
To me, that was just kind of like it was way overblown for
how relevant it is in the bigger scheme of things with all of
this. But I have the answer.
What's that? Of what?
It's. Just kind of its tongue in cheek
a little bit. But to me the answer would be
Nebraska if it meant the Big 10 could have gotten like Oklahoma
or Texas instead, right. That's that's the thing.
It's like you you Nebraska, came in as it's like Oh my God, we're
getting this legacy power and they've.
Done. Absolutely zero.
And there's a world where it's like, you know, it's more the
opportunity cost of what we maybe had lost if we weren't
able to get, like I said, Texas, Oklahoma, you know, maybe we get
UCLA&USC earlier like they're it's just Nebraska's kind of
been like what have they really added and could we have gotten
maybe some better schools if you get, if you get Texas, Oklahoma
instead of Nebraska? You are now probably ahead of
the SEC in all rounds. I really, there really is an
interesting alternative history where the Big 10 gets off their
high horse a bit and sign and like agrees to let Missouri and
instead of Nebraska and Nebraska stays in the Big 12.
You know because it it really feels like from a a bunch of
different perspectives Nebraska makes a lot more sense as a Big
12 school. But I'm curious what would
happen because absolutely Oklahoma and Texas are leaving
Nebraska behind to go to the SEC.
You know is Nebraska happy being the big fish in the relatively
small pond of of the Big 12 in this revamped mode maybe they
are. That seems to be what they want.
They want to be the center of attention.
You know, they should have known that before joining a conference
that already had two centers of attention, that refused to yield
the spotlight to anybody. I I don't know why they thought
it would somehow be different, you know, But I I do think
actually like Rutgers and Maryland, whatever you want to
complain about budgets or facilities, Rutgers and Maryland
understood their place when they joined the Big 10.
Nebraska never has and never will, and so that I do think
it's kind of an interesting wrinkle in all this.
Mike did ask more than any specific school which
realignment move was the worst overall strategy. i.e.
Big 10 moving EACC rating, the Big E, Big 12 rating, the A A/C
before rating the PAC 12. I think the honestly, for me, I
think the biggest mistake was the ACC and the moves that
they've made and here's why. Like the ACC is really not much
different than the Big East, when the Big East made all those
moves in the 90s to try to become a football power in
addition to being a basketball power.
If you really look at the ACC, the core of the ACC, it's a
basketball conference first and foremost.
It's it's North Carolina. It's Duke.
It's, you know, Virginia, Wake Forest, NC State.
You know, it's, yes, you've got some good football programs in
there, but you know, they they were the ones that added Florida
State. Florida State was an independent
in football. And I think they were in the
metro for all other sports and they've been they they
completely changed the trajectory of that conference
into something that I think most of their membership is not
comfortable with. You can make the same argument
about adding Virginia Tech, adding Miami, adding Syracuse,
because all of that was part of that raid that they carried out
on the Big East. And it was.
It's interesting because I think the ACC, and this is where some
of the hubris we've talked about, comes in.
They really thought by doing that they were guaranteeing an
equal seat at the table with the Big 10 in the SCC.
And in the early 2000s, you could probably make that
argument. It hasn't worked out that way.
And you know, a lot of it is not really realizing what you're
adding when you do that. They added a Miami program that
by the time they added them was, you know, running on fumes.
And no one realized that they added a Syracuse program that
was real good in the 80s and pretty good in the 90s, but was
rapidly like was in an area that was rapidly disintegrating from
a recruiting perspective. They added a Virginia Tech
program much like Florida State that was largely the Providence
of one man, Frank Beamer at Virginia Tech, Bobby Bowden at
Florida State. Those were not programs that had
a huge amount of success prior to those two guys getting there.
And there was always the chance that they were going to fall
off, especially when you consider what surrounds them.
You know, and I, we talked about it on this previous show.
You know Florida State you're surrounded by Auburn and Alabama
and Louisiana State to and the Mississippi schools to your W
You're surrounded by Georgia and you know Florida and South
Carolina to your EI mean that if you fall off at all, which
they've done, especially since Jimbo Fisher left, it's going to
be real hard to pick yourself back up.
And Syracuse or excuse me, Virginia Tech again, it's like
that's what Beamer did there is kind of miraculous.
What Have you ever been to Blacksburg and you've been to
that surrounding area Not exactly a hotbed for modern
athletic talent. And so, you know, I also think
the ACC just got, they got a little too greedy.
I mean for no reason. They had Boston College.
Why, what is it you want to talk about?
I mean calling Rutgers the worst realignment addition just
completely ignores Boston College having done absolutely
nothing in the ACC since they've arrived.
And you want, I mean a major media market, like one of the
biggest media markets, one of the most sports savvy media
markets in the nation. Boston College doesn't move the
needle at all. People complain that you know
that that LA schools don't move the needle in LA.
Boston College is in Boston and it's it's a complete
afterthought, you know. So to me that would probably be
my answer is like the ACC does not need to be a 15 school
league. It tried to do with the Big East
did, which was be two things at once, and it's done none of them
particularly well. Yeah, I I would say it has to be
whatever the PAC 12 did. Because they were so bad and
imploded. But no you're you're you know I
mean other than I mean really and that's the thing the PAC 12
sins are are not doing things not adding Texas and Oklahoma
you know and where and you know because I think on on their face
the Utah and Colorado editions for the PAC 12 were actually
pretty good but everything else they did was a real bad idea.
Couple other questions we want to get to real quick because the
bus is about to arrive, which means my podcast time comes to
an end here. Assembly Call asks question.
Can you speak to some of the fears that have been expressed,
including by Ryan Phillips, rumors and rants about Indiana
potentially being left behind if the big football brands someday
decide to do their own thing? So I'll say this, all the things
I highlighted earlier about moving out of the era where, you
know, markets are important, moving more into an era where
subscriber numbers are important and having, you know,
essentially as many people within reason interested in your
product on both a national level and on a regional level.
That to me has changed the equation from what it was 1015
years ago. And a lot of the proclamations
and the the the declarations we've been seeing from media
commentators and sports about oh, you know, we're just a few
years removed from Ohio State and Michigan saying, well wait,
why are we paying Indiana and Purdue all this money when we
could just cut out the middleman and keep more of it to
ourselves. I, you know there's a couple of
things to that. First of all, what I just said
you know there there are certainly going to be some
brands that don't have as much market value as some other
brands, but they all bring quite a bit to the table right now.
I mean the fact that with a variety of different football
and basketball programs in a variety of different schools in
a variety of different locations, that the Big Ten's
been able to go out and secure the amount of money that they've
been able to secure from multiple media partners.
You know, there were plenty of opportunities for the networks
to say, you know guys, as we move into this next media
contract, why don't why don't we leave Indiana or Iowa or
Minnesota, you know, by the wayside because you guys can
make more money. The fact that didn't happen
tells me that there's not much of an appetite for doing that
right now. I'd also point to just the
history of college sports to my understanding and and maybe I've
missed something. Let me ask you this, Scott, Can
you name me the schools that have been kicked out of power
conferences, Power Five or BCS or CFP based conferences?
How many have been kicked out and forced to go down a level?
I I can because we talked about this.
You gave me the answer so it's like I I have the the the CHEAT
SHEET, but the answer is temple. Temple, the only school that is,
has moved from a power conference and didn't move to
another power conference or move.
And and why did that happen? Why did it happen?
It happened because Temple officials were not willing to
commit to a bunch of facilities upgrades in football.
That was it. And there were a few other
things, but that was the primary reason why.
And you know, now you've had schools left behind when
conferences have reorganized. But I have a hard time believing
at this point that you're going to see the formation of a true
super conference that involves just the best brands from each
of these different school, of the each of these different
conferences. We already have that.
It's called the College Football Playoff, and this is a separate
media entity that's been cooked up by the conferences.
And this is the thing. It's like the idea that Ohio
State, Michigan, Alabama, Georgia and like six other
brands are going to get together and say, hey, you know what
we're going to do? We're going to screw over our
media partners and we're going to screw over all of the schools
that we've been working with for decades, sometimes centuries,
and go off on our own and create a new thing and cut everybody
else out. Is it possible?
It's possible. But it's like I would say about
a .5% probability because there are still a lot of people
running college athletics. And I mean college presidents, I
mean athletic directors who are very heavily committed to this
idea that they are working with partners that they consider
peers. And there's other schools that
they don't consider peers that they don't let into those clubs.
We are not in 30 years from now, we might revisit this
conversation 10 years from now, 10 years from now.
Some of these media deals won't even be over yet.
So the idea that we are on the threshold of some kind of Super
League to me is fear mongering from people that don't like the
change in the reorganization that's occurred right now rather
than anything that's informed by actual stuff.
Like the Big 10 might add Florida State, they might add
Clemson, they might add both. They're not going to kick
Northwestern out in the process. They're not going to kick
Indiana out in the process. Both of those schools in
particular for different reasons.
You know, right now I think we're still in an additive
state. I would have a hard time
believing that we're suddenly going to go to an entirely new
model because right now what we're seeing is just different
iterations of the same model. And that's a model that both the
schools and the networks are comfortable with.
So I'm going to take this from a different angle cuz I I have
enjoyed having this conversation with people.
You've you've kind of shot me down and we talked about it, but
I've been like, man. Let's just pretend the Big 10 is
looking to, you know, ADD, you know, Notre Dame, Clemson, and
they're going to boot two schools to bring them in.
Who would you boot? I've had fun with that
discussion, and unfortunately Indiana is close to the boot
list. Like when you start looking at
the school, don't agree at all. Don't agree.
Sorry. But we're we're near the bottom.
But here here is what I would say to Jared.
So let me let me let me get this through.
You know the the two things that is.
On the the Indiana docket, everything you just said that,
you know there we are in an additive mode.
I do think that if a conference started booting schools I think
that everybody would wig out in the sense that right now it's
like okay, the PAC 12 died. Like that sucks.
Like, oh, sucks for, you know Washington state and Oregon
State like it sucks. Everyone kind of feels bad.
But they didn't they didn't get kicked out of the PAC 12.
They just didn't get picked up by anybody.
You know if if the Big 10 tomorrow just says, hey, we're
booting Purdue in Northwestern. Suddenly every school would be
like what like Vanderbilt like like like a lot of other schools
would suddenly get this would all hit a different fever and
people would would freak out the two things that Indiana so I I
but I do hear what Jared is saying and I will say that you
know I'll make my point but caveat it with it's still really
helpful if we could be good in football like it's this isn't
just a like let's let's we'll get to it in our football pods.
Let's not just advocate our role in football, like being good in
football does help. But let me name off some schools
and they all have one thing in common.
Florida State, Kentucky, Clemson, Oregon, WI, Illinois,
Washington, IA. Those are all schools that last
year brought in less money than Indiana.
When you look at the total right now, again, it's because we're
part of the Big 10. But.
We're one of the highest revenue producing schools in the Big 10.
We were 13th in the country last year, $166,000,000 in revenue,
something that some of that coming through donations back
from the foundation, but yes. Yes, in a normal year Indiana is
like between 30th and 40th which is still very respectable within
college sports, really good. But the other piece you
mentioned it too, alumni is that you know it varies, but we are
second, third or top top five of living alumni base in the
country. We have 650,000 alumni and I
would say that they are a very active alumni base that when you
go, you know when when you and I went to the Gator Bowl, a, you
know, pretty good football team, it wasn't.
The national championship game, we If we didn't outdraw
Tennessee, we damn near drew the same as Tennessee, a school that
has a long history of football that shows up when we go to
basketball. We went to the game in Vegas
last year, the basketball game, It was 75% IU fans, Arizona has
had way more success in basketball is also way closer to
Vegas than we are. We outdrew them four to one or
three to one. However, you want to say it's a
very active, engaged alumni base and so that alone.
Is very appealing to TV networks, which are pushing a
lot of these decisions. And so it would be very, very,
very short side. Just wouldn't be in the interest
of any of these networks to be like, hey, there's 650,000
possible Subs who want to watch I U Sports.
Maybe they suck in football. A lot of them just want to watch
I U Suck In Football like we We. To go against my own comment,
there's, you know, Penn State is above us.
I'm looking at this list of, you know, alumni bases.
Michigan is third, Michigan State is 4th, UCLA is fifth,
Ohio State is 6. Like, you know, Wisconsin's not
up there. Illinois is not up there.
You know, the difference ultimately is what you said.
It's like I use alumni base, love sports, you know, they love
that. They love basketball more than
football, but they're not. They're not not watching
football. Soccer.
Yeah, I mean the the, you know, the problems are like Cal
Berkeley has a lot of alums and none of them, very few of them
are watching their sports regularly, at least
comparatively speaking. And you mentioned like that.
All these things were saying go for a lot of the other schools
in the Big 10 that haven't had a whole lot of on field success
with Illinois, Minnesota, you know, I mean Purdue is in this
mix as well. Purdue's actually in worse shape
because they have a lot of living alumni and a lot of them
don't live in the United States and don't particularly care.
I mean, this is where having a an internationally known
engineering school can hurt you because a lot of people come in,
take classes, and then leave. Again, that's not something
unique to Purdue. Miami deals with this.
Miami's got a lot of alums, relatively speaking.
It's a small private school. None of them live in Florida.
So Miami will turn decent ratings in like Northeast
markets where a lot of their alums live, and then they'll do
a bad rating in Miami because nobody cares and nobody goes to
the games. So it look there's a lot of
factors and I think my big problem with the argument that
the conferences are going to start dropping underperforming
schools. This goes to a question that
Patrick asked us on on X. It a it it ignores something
that was mentioned earlier in this show which is that
conferences and television partners need inventory and they
don't just need top line inventory.
They need to fill those force like slots throughout the course
of a Saturday. They need to fill a Thursday
night game or a Friday night game.
They need second tier sports to fill streaming situations.
They need the Big 10 Network, which is basically just a Fox
outlet at this point to carry games.
And you know, you can start chopping schools out if you
want. You're going to run out of
inventory real fast, particularly again if we get
down the line and you got a lot of current varsity sports that
have had to turn into club sports because of the issues
with with college athletes potentially being considered
employees. And so I just think to me, you
know, could it happen down the line?
Of course, there's a lot of things that are hard to predict,
but a lot of the commentary I'm seeing is born out of nothing
other then I think a misreading of what's actually going on in
broadcast markets and streaming markets and college athletics
and why all of this is happening.
It's not, oh, we're going to shove everybody off the table
other than the top players. It's more along the lines of,
well, we have a way to capitalize on that already.
This is largely like service for the sports fan who needs a
reason to subscribe to a streaming service.
You don't get there by saying, hey, look at all of these really
highly identified sports fans that root for in Indiana or root
for, you know, a team that's like Indiana that hasn't had a
huge amount of success. And say you know what, we're
kicking you out like, OK, so great, you're you're for for
saving like what, $5,000,000 a year maybe if you, if you take
the the distribution and you separate it, you're going to
just sacrifice maybe 200,000 subscribers to whatever the big
10 packages. That makes zero sense, you know,
So that's that's where again, circumstances could change.
I could be reading it totally wrong.
I don't think I am. And that's why I'm not really
concerned about it at all. But I understand why people are
concerned about it because it keeps getting pushed like it's
an inevitability. And it's like the big 10
contracts run through the next eight years.
It's it's like nothing's going to happen during that period at
all. And the idea that we're going to
get to 2030 and suddenly we're just going to start kicking
people off the boat. If the first time it happens, I
will come on the podcast, if it still exists, and apologize.
But that we've been through 25 plus years, 30 years of
realignment and we've had one school kicked out of what was at
the time considered a power conference is as good of an
indicator to me as anything. And I trust that a hell of a lot
more than anonymous sources saying, oh, this might happen in
the future. Anyway, couple of the things
real quick before we go. Let's see.
Yeah, we actually. So Matt's ever been asked a
similar question. How many disingenuous won't
someone think of the sports and athletes we never cover takes?
Will we continue to continue to see from the same sports writers
who've bleeded for so long, basically asking for this car
conference Armageddon to occur? We kind of touched on that
earlier, Matt. It's this idea that the travel
thing, which if you've been following college sports, you've
known that's an issue for a while, that's been going on for
like a long time and it hasn't really been an issue.
It's an issue now. And I think a lot of it really
came down to the PAC 12 essentially dying by its own
hand, by the lack of of what they did to protect themselves
really made people kind of take a step back and be like, is this
the direction we really want to go?
And the answer is no. But I got news for you.
You guys are riding in a bus that's been driving down this
road for a while at this point. So, you know, my hope would be
maybe people will pause after this initial wave of
recriminations and and garment rending and say okay, maybe we
really need to look at what's going on and report more
critically on the things that are harming people in college
sports. Part of the issue here.
And and look, I have a lot of respect for our journalist
friends and our in his particular sports writer
friends. But I read about, you know, I
read as much about college sports written by journalists as
anybody. And you know who gets
interviewed? Coaches and athletic directors.
You know who doesn't get interviewed?
In most cases, college athletes. So there's these stories have
been out there for a while. You know who else doesn't get
interviewed that much? Coaches at Olympic sports and
nonrevenue sports. You know, we see a lot from the
football coach. We see a lot from the basketball
coach. And look, there's a ton of
reasons why access is restricted.
It's very difficult. Colleges have really put
themselves in a position where they can restrict what gets out,
what gets talked about. That's a real problem.
But these are problems that have existed for a long time.
You and I have both been in airports where we've seen like a
large group of people wearing college apparel walking by.
And it's like, Oh yeah, that's the that's the Houston golf team
who's in Indianapolis because they're playing in a tournament
and it's like, why are they playing in a tournament here and
vice versa. This stuff has been going on for
a while. I would love to see it reported
on more and it's sad that it's taken this situation to make it
more prominent for people. You said you hit it on the head,
sorry I didn't know if you had there last thing I'll I'll
address so Dan Corral asked. I U athletic department
currently earns at least 20 to 30 million per year more than A
CC schools, yet it doesn't reflect in terms of results on
the gridiron. Will money alone actually lead
to success or will Wake Forest still be five times better?
Look, I mean part of the issue is there's more good football
players in the Southeast than there are in the Midwest at this
point that are available. That's just the numbers.
And it's it's a hard sell. It's a harder sell to get
players that are good to come to I U than it is to go elsewhere.
That sounds like an excuse. It's more just a reality.
That's been the case for a long time I U.
Realistically, for decades I U didn't take their football
program seriously. They made the wrong hires at
head coach. In a lot of cases, they didn't
upgrade their facilities. You know, you, you think about,
you know, I, and I've said this before on this podcast.
I think the last 12 to 15 years of I U Athletics, as they've
related to football, have been by far the most sustained
interest in trying to grow and support the football program,
both in terms of facilities and in terms of the money they've
been willing to pay to head coaches, assistant coaches,
support staff and whatnot. I think the problem I use got
that Wake Forest and many other programs don't have is there
were so many decades of neglect on the part of I U in terms of
their football program. And you know you go back and you
look and it's like you know all the way through from the, you
know the you start in the the 1910s and 1920s and the lack of
investment in a good football stadium and the lack of
maintenance on the football stadium that I you had.
And then you know that hiring of coaches that were not top level
and got I you on probation or just got I you into a bunch of
games where they lost. You know, it looked like things
that turned around in the 80s and 90s.
And then, you know, the Mallory era kind of collapses.
And I U goes and hires a guy who'd never even been a
coordinator. He was an alum, but he was not,
not ready for what a difficult job this is.
And meanwhile, the facilities are falling apart.
I mean, you and I went to school in the late 90s.
I don't know why you would come to play for I U with those
facilities. So I think the problem right now
is that I U Yes, They're making more money.
And I do think that the consistent application of money
to salaries, to facilities, to recruiting will help I U level
and eventually you know exceed the playing field that a lot of
these middle level A CC schools, maybe a couple of the lower tier
SEC schools have. They're still going to be a real
deficit in terms of the available talent recruiting.
It's not sitting in Indiana's backyard and what little there
is is going to Notre Dame or going to Ohio State or going to
Michigan, but it's going to be a long slog.
I U unfortunately, I think especially with NIL now that
they were just there's two there's a huge gap that they
have to make up and it's going to take longstanding, consistent
investment in order to make this work.
And so, you know, I understand I'm frustrated.
You're frustrated about. I know a lot of I U football
fans are. It's not a completely unwinnable
scenario because I do think that, you know, we've seen with
the right coaches, you can, you can put together 678, you know,
win seasons, but it's going to take, it's going to take
continued effort. It's not something that's going
to, you know, just happen next year and that's really
frustrating, especially when you look at the dollar differences
between these different schools and what they're pulling in.
Yeah, I mean it's just basically we should be better than every
school that's not in the Big 10 or the SEC and we we just need
to be paying higher rates and all the other schools that are
not in the SEC or the Big 10. But to your point, you can hire
the wrong guy, you can pay, you can pay somebody, you know, in
the top ten and they're not a good coach.
They're not a good coach. And so, but I think over time
you find the right people, you know, we should be able to buy
our way out of some problems and do that.
The other thing too is that, you know, we do bring in a lot of
money, but you see it. Activated for basketball.
You know like when we want to get out of the Archie Miller
contract, we can get that done if we want to get out of some
football contracts. You know, I'm not even talking
to Tom Allen, just some coordinators like Tom Allen had
to pay for that himself to get out of some of those.
The money is not always there for football.
When you see, when you see those numbers up there really is
activated in basketball. I think this will help us all in
basketball. That the thing that I will say
that I always kind of harp on that is just I always preface
it. I understand how this works.
I'm not naive. I I know how this all goes.
But to Dan's point in question, like there is a part where it's
like it is, it is tough seeing this, like man, big 10 schools
make an extra 50 million / a CC schools.
It's like then, but then on the same hand, it's like, you know,
we're kind of like, well, you know, we're even if we wanted to
get out of our coaching contracts, we can't because we
can't afford it. We got to find some donors to
pay for. It's like why?
Again, I I don't don't tell. I know the answer is why.
But it's like you hear that and it's like with with football
it's like well, we need a new facility, but we got to find a
donor first. And it's like really because you
guys are a nonprofit who has a 2 billion you know I use got a
huge, you know, funding base. They have a huge endowment
they're sitting on. They always, they just made $166
million last year and they had to spend some of it.
But it's like. Why is it always the donor's
problem? Like at some point do you get to
put your hand in your pocket? Like on one hand you can't do a
press release kissing your own ass and slapping your own back
on the amount of money you brought in from the big from Fox
and then be like, but I I really can't pay the tip well, but I
really need. Somebody saying again, I I know
why. It's just it is really annoying
as somebody who's a graduate and a donor and a varsity club
member, to always being looked at by this university.
What's like they can't they have alligator arms?
In terms of when it comes to finding any money, I I I
understand that frustration and and there's two things I'll say
in response to it. You know, A, the reason you
don't do it without a donor is what's happening to Cal right
now, who just had to pay, take loans out for $250 million worth
of loans to fix the football stadium that they built over the
Hayward fault. And now they don't have a
conference to be in that they don't have television money.
I mean, that's a real, real problem.
Now Cows got like a 15. Now cows got like a $15 billion
endowment. So they'll probably be able to
figure a way out of that, but that's a real bad situation.
The other thing is, I mean when I talk about I, U as an
institution not being serious about their football program
historically and even when we talk about the last 10-15 years
in terms of like what they've done there, I think it's really
been like, well, okay, you've got to kill what you eat,
athletics and football. You're not going to get like
general fun stuff because we don't view football as central
to the mission of the institution.
And I U is certainly not the only ones in that mix.
They're probably the ones for whom it looks like it's, it's
the most prominent. Look, we'll see.
I mean, I think leadership changes occur in terms of
universities and what they want to spend money on and it's it is
an unfortunately difficult sell at I U and it always has been
in. The reason why there hasn't been
more institutional commitment to improving facilities or paying
more money for staff or coaches is because everybody's been
interested in basketball. That's what's made alumni
excited, and that's where the university's been willing to
make moves and do things. And it's, you know, again, I
think it's one of those deals where it's a shame that
historically it worked out that way, because there's no reason
why Indiana football, from a structural perspective, should
be any worse than Purdue, Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan
State. Michigan State really is in a
different echelon, like there's Iowa is another one.
There's no reason why Indiana should be like such a tear below
that, but that's what the history did.
And I think despite what I would view is the best efforts of the,
of the, of the athletic department to fix that over the
last 10-15 years, it's it's hard to overcome a century plus of
history to get it where it needs to be.
And that was exactly what I was going to end on is like you and
Zach Osterman have talked about this a lot that yes, I agree
because we when you and I went to school there, Memorial
Stadium was just falling apart. There was kind of this it was
like the stalemate of game of chicken.
It's like, well, the football team's got to get better before
we spend money on. It's like we're not going to
spend money on to the football team gets better and it's like,
all right, so we'll just. Have bad facilities and a bad
football team staring at each other and no one's going to do
anything. The stadium looks a million
times better. They put money into it.
But I think as you pointed out like that, The trouble that I U
has is they've started funding over the last 10 to 15 years.
And the trouble is like they're just now getting to where they
should have been 10-15 years ago.
And you look at like you know, Tom Allen is making I think like
4.9 million this year or somewhere in that range.
And that was a huge jump from Kevin Wilson, was like, Oh my
gosh, it's a ton of money. It's like, all right, you know,
I'm just, I'm pulling this out just, you know, looking at the
list. Like, you know, the hypo at
Tennessee makes $9 million a year and it goes up from there.
We look at the highest coaching salaries and it's like, you
know, this is where, yes, these are big jumps, but it's because
if you don't make. I do real estate.
Like if you don't increase rents for 10 years, there's going to
be a big jump after 10 years. Like normally you do a small
increase every single year. So that way it's not a big pill
to swallow at the end. The trouble is we basically just
didn't do anything for 12 years and then we're now getting back
to 2012 market rates and it's like, oh, that.
It's another like if you want to get in that top 15 of coaches.
We're going to have to spend 7 to 10 million.
We have to double whatever we're paying our coach now.
Sure, not because, but it's that's because we just didn't do
enough as you said 1520 years ago.
And so it's we either continually or always a little
bit behind or we just have to take a huge jump forward and I
think that's the trouble Indiana's in is.
It's like if you want to really be with the big boys, you got to
be with the big boys. And those numbers are really big
because they've grown over the time that we've been growing.
We're just keeping up to where things were 15 years ago because
it's not like every other school stopped spending money in 2012
when we just started, when we decided to start spending money.
So exactly what you're saying, just rephrasing it.
But yeah. Anyway, we went way over time,
but this was fun. Scott, I hope you had a good
time with it as well. We'll have more to talk about.
There were a bunch of questions we weren't able to get to, but
you know us we'd start talking and can't stop.
So I appreciate all the last. Thing that you hit on to is like
nothing else. This screws our schedule for 24
completely live like that. That schedule was so nice and I
know we joked about it's like if any school is getting A at USC
home to Michigan at Washington set up that's going to be I U
like no question. Yep.
We're either going to speak this into existence or speak it out
of existence one way or the other.
So we'll see what happens but no it look it's that what you know
we'll I'll wait for the official confirmation that we've we're
screwed. I'm sure it's coming at some
point here probably in the next couple of months.
So anyway I hope you all had a great time listening and we had
a great time podcasting. Our thanks to our friends at
home Field apparel. Be sure to tune into the back
home network, Assembly Call, the Do the Work podcast and all the
other fun stuff you can find in the Assembly call community.
For Scott, I'm Galen, This is Crimson Cast.
We will catch you folks on the flip side.
So everybody.