Post by elp525 on Apr 26, 2010 5:07:40 GMT -5
Monday April 26, 2010
by Jack Bogaczyk
Daily Mail Sports Editor
OK, so the Big Ten Conference is considering expansion to 68 teams.
No, that was the NCAA Tournament, which learned that a lot bigger isn't always better in college athletics - unless, of course, you're talking about revenue streams.
That's how the expansion talk that has been occupying major college athletics is different. The NCAA learned from potential TV partners that a 96-team bracket wouldn't necessarily produce more bucks than one that added only three play-in games annually.
In the collegiate calamity that the Big Ten is about to cause its BCS brethren, it is potential viewership volume that seems to be making a difference. The Big Ten Plus One wants to grow to 12, 14 or 16 teams.
It's likely that "who" could determine "how many." If the Big Ten could land Notre Dame (which doesn't seem likely at this point), it might stop at 12 (which doesn't seem likely, either).
With its Big Ten Network, the conference's revenue growth looks to be tied as much to advertising revenue potential on its own TV network - that's ratings, folks - as to just shoehorning into big markets.
So, rather than a Rutgers in the New York metropolitan market, who's to say the Big Ten might not be more enthralled with a Connecticut? The Huskies can deliver a whole state of influence, but also pieces of the viewing audience in the Big Apple and Boston.
Rutgers is in the New York market. The Scarlet Knights don't deliver it. Rutgers isn't the Yankees, Giants, Knicks, Rangers, Jets ... shall I go on? However, Rutgers (the State University of New Jersey) is viewed by many Big Ten academic types as a perfect expansion fit.
Still, what a lot of this Big Ten bust-up will come down to are two things:
Death (of Big East football as we have come to relearn it) and Texas.
The Big Ten, if nothing else (and it is much, much more) was and is about tradition. Its membership is carved from the Association of American Universities. The conference looks upon itself as sort of the Ivy League for public institutions.
As much as Woody and Bo and the Rose Bowl, the Big Ten has been about university research dollars, enrollments, huge alumni bases ... and the committee vetting this expansion talk is composed of 11 university presidents and two athletic directors. It's academically skewed.
Pitt, Rutgers and Syracuse are AAU schools, as are Missouri and Nebraska - also considered prime Big Ten potential members. UConn is not. Texas is (as are Kansas, Maryland and SUNY-Stony Brook, if you want to dig deep into Division I).
Some think Notre Dame is the elephant in the room. No, it's Texas.
If the Big Ten doesn't want Texas or can't land the Longhorns, the Southeastern Conference - where Commissioner Mike Slive already said that his league won't be a just spectator to the Big Ten's moves - will try.
The SEC is the one conference that already has a bit richer TV situation than the Big Ten. Maybe Texas will stay put - thereby saving the core of the Big 12, which may be in straits as dire as the Big East - but the 'Horns could also go to the Pacific-10 Plus Two.
Or, if Texas refuses the SEC, maybe that conference raids the southern sector of the ACC (which is heading for the last year of its own TV contract), putting another whole game of dominoes on the board.
Even without talking Texas and a likely traveling partner is Texas A&M, the Big 12 could be looking at losing as many or more teams (Missouri, Nebraska; Colorado to the Pac-10?) as the Big East.
(And how would you like to be that new Pinstripe bowl at Yankee Stadium, which gets the Big East's fourth against the seventh Big 12 selection starting this December?)
As for the Big East, the conference's hiring of former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue as a consultant is a nice step and sends the message that the Rhode Island-based conference isn't just sitting back and waiting to be gutted - again.
However, when much of the Big Ten bushwhacking is going down, Tags' talk and guidance will be pretty much window dressing.
Simply put, the Big East is in a situation where it hopes to preserve the order, and despite all of the circle-the-wagons talk for public consumption, deep down the conference movers (OK, bad choice of words) and shakers know the league is going to lose at least a couple (maybe three) schools.
That is not resignation. That is realism.
It's also about who the Big East figures to lose.
Syracuse and Pitt have been conference standard-bearers (and two of the football anchors) for a long time. Rutgers hasn't been as successful, but a Scarlet Knights' exit would be like Boston College's bolting to the ACC - another blow for Eastern college football.
Using Syracuse as an example, back in 2004, when the ACC was wooing the Orange before taking Virginia Tech after a governor strong-armed Virginia's vote, the SU athletic director was Big East lifer Jake Crouthamel.
He wasn't going to leave the Big East. Crouthamel has since retired, replaced by Dr. Daryl Gross, a California native and former NFL wide receiver whose allegiance to the Big East is based strictly on business, not the emotional ties of his long-term predecessor.
The Big East football members (including their basketball bucks) can't even bring in one-third of what Big Ten and SEC schools do in conference revenue sharing.
Last year, each Big Ten member received $22 million in revenue sharing from television, bowls and NCAA Tournament units. That number will continue to grow (although new members will undoubtedly be brought aboard with a percentage of the full payment) as the Big Ten Network does.
This fiscal year, the SEC will pay its 12 members about $23 million apiece, thanks to new, 15-year TV contracts with ESPN and CBS that pay will provide about $17 million to each school annually.
However, outside of that really rich SEC deal, schools may do their own multimedia rights contracts. Florida, for example, has a 10-year contract with Sun Sports for $100 million. So, the Gators are looking at $33 million in revenue (estimate).
And we haven't yet discussed what each school's ticket sales mean in two conferences with most of the nation's largest football stadiums (and seven or eight home games annually).
The Big East knows what trying to meld 16 teams into one conference mindset is like, but the Big East hasn't had to do that with 16 football members. In a conference that's so traditional (as the Big Ten is), it's going to mean strikingly dramatic change.
It's going to mean the football season won't end with Ohio State-Michigan. To a lot of its own longtime people, Big Ten expansion is going to be jolting. The conference will never be the same.
Then, neither will the rest of big-time college athletics. When the Big Ten bursts out of the Rust Belt, it's going to reverberate all the way to the Sun Belt Conference.
TUESDAY: The potential future for West Virginia's program and its Big East brethren.
by Jack Bogaczyk
Daily Mail Sports Editor
OK, so the Big Ten Conference is considering expansion to 68 teams.
No, that was the NCAA Tournament, which learned that a lot bigger isn't always better in college athletics - unless, of course, you're talking about revenue streams.
That's how the expansion talk that has been occupying major college athletics is different. The NCAA learned from potential TV partners that a 96-team bracket wouldn't necessarily produce more bucks than one that added only three play-in games annually.
In the collegiate calamity that the Big Ten is about to cause its BCS brethren, it is potential viewership volume that seems to be making a difference. The Big Ten Plus One wants to grow to 12, 14 or 16 teams.
It's likely that "who" could determine "how many." If the Big Ten could land Notre Dame (which doesn't seem likely at this point), it might stop at 12 (which doesn't seem likely, either).
With its Big Ten Network, the conference's revenue growth looks to be tied as much to advertising revenue potential on its own TV network - that's ratings, folks - as to just shoehorning into big markets.
So, rather than a Rutgers in the New York metropolitan market, who's to say the Big Ten might not be more enthralled with a Connecticut? The Huskies can deliver a whole state of influence, but also pieces of the viewing audience in the Big Apple and Boston.
Rutgers is in the New York market. The Scarlet Knights don't deliver it. Rutgers isn't the Yankees, Giants, Knicks, Rangers, Jets ... shall I go on? However, Rutgers (the State University of New Jersey) is viewed by many Big Ten academic types as a perfect expansion fit.
Still, what a lot of this Big Ten bust-up will come down to are two things:
Death (of Big East football as we have come to relearn it) and Texas.
The Big Ten, if nothing else (and it is much, much more) was and is about tradition. Its membership is carved from the Association of American Universities. The conference looks upon itself as sort of the Ivy League for public institutions.
As much as Woody and Bo and the Rose Bowl, the Big Ten has been about university research dollars, enrollments, huge alumni bases ... and the committee vetting this expansion talk is composed of 11 university presidents and two athletic directors. It's academically skewed.
Pitt, Rutgers and Syracuse are AAU schools, as are Missouri and Nebraska - also considered prime Big Ten potential members. UConn is not. Texas is (as are Kansas, Maryland and SUNY-Stony Brook, if you want to dig deep into Division I).
Some think Notre Dame is the elephant in the room. No, it's Texas.
If the Big Ten doesn't want Texas or can't land the Longhorns, the Southeastern Conference - where Commissioner Mike Slive already said that his league won't be a just spectator to the Big Ten's moves - will try.
The SEC is the one conference that already has a bit richer TV situation than the Big Ten. Maybe Texas will stay put - thereby saving the core of the Big 12, which may be in straits as dire as the Big East - but the 'Horns could also go to the Pacific-10 Plus Two.
Or, if Texas refuses the SEC, maybe that conference raids the southern sector of the ACC (which is heading for the last year of its own TV contract), putting another whole game of dominoes on the board.
Even without talking Texas and a likely traveling partner is Texas A&M, the Big 12 could be looking at losing as many or more teams (Missouri, Nebraska; Colorado to the Pac-10?) as the Big East.
(And how would you like to be that new Pinstripe bowl at Yankee Stadium, which gets the Big East's fourth against the seventh Big 12 selection starting this December?)
As for the Big East, the conference's hiring of former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue as a consultant is a nice step and sends the message that the Rhode Island-based conference isn't just sitting back and waiting to be gutted - again.
However, when much of the Big Ten bushwhacking is going down, Tags' talk and guidance will be pretty much window dressing.
Simply put, the Big East is in a situation where it hopes to preserve the order, and despite all of the circle-the-wagons talk for public consumption, deep down the conference movers (OK, bad choice of words) and shakers know the league is going to lose at least a couple (maybe three) schools.
That is not resignation. That is realism.
It's also about who the Big East figures to lose.
Syracuse and Pitt have been conference standard-bearers (and two of the football anchors) for a long time. Rutgers hasn't been as successful, but a Scarlet Knights' exit would be like Boston College's bolting to the ACC - another blow for Eastern college football.
Using Syracuse as an example, back in 2004, when the ACC was wooing the Orange before taking Virginia Tech after a governor strong-armed Virginia's vote, the SU athletic director was Big East lifer Jake Crouthamel.
He wasn't going to leave the Big East. Crouthamel has since retired, replaced by Dr. Daryl Gross, a California native and former NFL wide receiver whose allegiance to the Big East is based strictly on business, not the emotional ties of his long-term predecessor.
The Big East football members (including their basketball bucks) can't even bring in one-third of what Big Ten and SEC schools do in conference revenue sharing.
Last year, each Big Ten member received $22 million in revenue sharing from television, bowls and NCAA Tournament units. That number will continue to grow (although new members will undoubtedly be brought aboard with a percentage of the full payment) as the Big Ten Network does.
This fiscal year, the SEC will pay its 12 members about $23 million apiece, thanks to new, 15-year TV contracts with ESPN and CBS that pay will provide about $17 million to each school annually.
However, outside of that really rich SEC deal, schools may do their own multimedia rights contracts. Florida, for example, has a 10-year contract with Sun Sports for $100 million. So, the Gators are looking at $33 million in revenue (estimate).
And we haven't yet discussed what each school's ticket sales mean in two conferences with most of the nation's largest football stadiums (and seven or eight home games annually).
The Big East knows what trying to meld 16 teams into one conference mindset is like, but the Big East hasn't had to do that with 16 football members. In a conference that's so traditional (as the Big Ten is), it's going to mean strikingly dramatic change.
It's going to mean the football season won't end with Ohio State-Michigan. To a lot of its own longtime people, Big Ten expansion is going to be jolting. The conference will never be the same.
Then, neither will the rest of big-time college athletics. When the Big Ten bursts out of the Rust Belt, it's going to reverberate all the way to the Sun Belt Conference.
TUESDAY: The potential future for West Virginia's program and its Big East brethren.
