Athlon Sports reports Clemson, Florida State, Oregon, and Washington

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Two schools I'm wondering about are Oregon State and Washington State

I expect the 4 Pacific Coast schools we've been talking about to go Big Ten. I expect the inland Pac 12 to end up with the Big XII - that means Colorado, Utah, and the Arizona schools.

But when the music stops the Beavers and Cougars could be in a rough spot.
 

fmlizard said:
Two schools I'm wondering about are Oregon State and Washington State

I expect the 4 Pacific Coast schools we've been talking about to go Big Ten. I expect the inland Pac 12 to end up with the Big XII - that means Colorado, Utah, and the Arizona schools.

But when the music stops the Beavers and Cougars could be in a rough spot.
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there have been reports that the Pac-12 has already reached out to the Mountain West to discuss a possible merger. under this scenario, if there is a mass exodus from the Pac-12, the remaining schools would join the Mountain West to create some new "West Time Zone Conference." with a better name than that.
 

MNfootballfan said:
The problem with this is:
1) Either you play your entire division (9 games) and no non-divisional games
2) You don't play your entire division in order to play non-divisional games. Would be weird to be a division champion if you dodge Michigan or Ohio State.
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Yep. You need to do NFL style divisions. You play your entire division, you play another division on a rotating basis, and then you play another team or two from the other divisions based on the previous year's record or something.

Then, all division winners enter a 4-team Big Ten playoff. The winner of which will play the SEC in the title game. At least, that's the end game when we're down to 2 super conferences.
 

MNfootballfan said:
This would be a sweet setup. Probably have to cheat the borders a bit and swap Notre Dame and Illinois to balance out the strength of the divisions.

Imagine a quick 4 team playoff to get the automatic bid and bye in the CFP? Would make for a great December/January!
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Or at that point, the 4 division winners all make the CFP.
 

I am a strong believer that Arizona State is the biggest sports sleeper in college sports. Get them in a legit conference and I think huge things happen. Would love to see them in the BIG10. I know all the midewest snowbirds down there would too.
 


MNfootballfan said:
The problem with this is:
1) Either you play your entire division (9 games) and no non-divisional games
2) You don't play your entire division in order to play non-divisional games. Would be weird to be a division champion if you dodge Michigan or Ohio State.
Click to expand...
Could go to 11 conference games. Not saying that's ideal or even preferable, but it does make scheduling in four divisions of six teams pretty straightforward. You would rotate through every team in the other divisions once every three years. Leaves a lot of G5 programs with a scheduling and $$ gap to fill, but that's the breaks.
 

Dan Patrick said Oregon is deciding the fate of college football today. Perhaps a tad dramatic. But basically if they stay, the Pac 12 holds, if they go, Washington and both Arizona schools jump too.
 


mngolf said:
www.yahoo.com

Big Ten authorizes commissioner to explore adding Oregon, Washington: report

With the future of the Pac-12 uncertain, there are new reports out that the Big Ten could look into adding two more west coast teams to the conference in coming years.
www.yahoo.com www.yahoo.com
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Interesting read. Per the contract escalators, I think NBC and CBS would sweeten the payout, I don't think that they couldn't. It also probably would have a future affect of limiting what either would be willing to pay for broadcast rights to Notre Dame...this is where the Irish are vulnerable, IMHO.
 
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PMWinSTP said:
Interesting read. Per the contract escalators, I think NBC and CBS would sweeten the payout, I don't think that they couldn't. It also probably would have a future affect of limiting what either woud be willing to pay for broadcast rights to Notre Dame...this is where the Irish are vulnerable, IMHO.
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Agreed. NBC can sort of force ND to a conference with the B1G being the preference of NBC.
 

MNfootballfan said:
The problem with this is:
1) Either you play your entire division (9 games) and no non-divisional games
2) You don't play your entire division in order to play non-divisional games. Would be weird to be a division champion if you dodge Michigan or Ohio State.
Click to expand...
Yeah it's not my favorite setup but it's one option that could work out based on the rumors we hear now. It does work out competitively for football and preserves nearly all meaningful rivalries.

I wouldn't be thrilled about being separated from most of the long-time members of the conference. Depends on how they set it up but a team might only play someone on the other side a couple times a decade.

In almost any case a 20+ team conference will dilute a lot of long-standing lesser rivalries like Minnesota and Purdue/Northwestern or similar.
 

fmlizard said:
Yeah it's not my favorite setup but it's one option that could work out based on the rumors we hear now. It does work out competitively for football and preserves nearly all meaningful rivalries.

I wouldn't be thrilled about being separated from most of the long-time members of the conference. Depends on how they set it up but a team might only play someone on the other side a couple times a decade.

In almost any case a 20+ team conference will dilute a lot of long-standing lesser rivalries like Minnesota and Purdue/Northwestern or similar.
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Agreed. that is why I suggested all the "old original" members of the conference be put in one division and all the "new" members put in another division. this would maintain most if not all the "rivalries"
 




short ornery norwegian said:
there have been reports that the Pac-12 has already reached out to the Mountain West to discuss a possible merger. under this scenario, if there is a mass exodus from the Pac-12, the remaining schools would join the Mountain West to create some new "West Time Zone Conference." with a better name than that.
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Yeah they would almost certainly go Mountain West.
 

swelna said:
I think with just the 4 additional Pac-12 additions they stick with the flex schedule and more tightly couple the west coast schools. I think we need to be looking at more than 20 schools for them to rethink scheduling again. At 24 schools the big ten championship is likely adds a semi final.
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At 24 they could also keep the flex schedule with three protected rival games, go to 10 conference games and still rotate through the other teams every three years (check my math).
 

fmlizard said:
Baylor and Cal are both the Bears and are the two other schools I've seen go Full Banana besides Minnesota. They can play the in the Behr Banana Bowl every year.
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Full banana…

lunch-dog.gif
 

fmlizard said:
What if they brought back the East and West like this? It would be pretty fair from a competitive balance standpoint. Only problem is Minnesota ends up quasi-joining the Pac 12

East
Ohio State
Michigan
Penn State
MSU
Indiana
Purdue
Maryland
Rutgers
Illinois
Northwestern

West
Minnesota
Wisconsin
Iowa
Nebraska
USC
UCLA
Oregon
Washington
Stanford
Cal
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This set up would be clean with a 9 game conference slate and keep the biggest historical rivalries (OSU/MI, MI/MSU, MN/WI, MN/IA, IN/PU) but it would effectively end the historical BG10 as we know it by going to two conferences within a conference. Personally, I wouldn't have an issue with it.
 


apparently the Washington Board of Regents has a meeting scheduled.

also saw a tweet somewhere that the B1G wants ESPN to create a late-night time slot for games, possibly including Friday nights. the hold-up is over how much more $$ that ESPN would be willing to kick in for media rights if 2 or 4 more schools are added to the TV package.
 



The dominoes are falling.

My thought on how this went down:
  1. The PAC12 was already on shaky ground with their poor leadership, and relative inability to keep up with other conferences media rights payouts.
  2. We grabbed USC and UCLA from the PAC12, probably leveraging that shakiness. This gave the whole thing a big push.
  3. Rumored talks initially happen between Washington, Oregon, and the Big Ten
  4. Our new media rights deal came out, and put a spotlight on the PAC12 with their upcoming media rights deal.
  5. The PAC12 moved like molasses getting a deal solidified.
  6. The writing was on the wall that the deal would not be anywhere close to other conferences. Perhaps some details were leaked to the University Presidents.
  7. Colorado read the writing and bolted back to the Big12. This was another huge shove.
  8. The media right deal was revealed, and it was not great.
  9. Schools like Washington and Oregon, not wanting to have a poor landing spot as the conference crumbled reached out to the Big Ten OR the Big Ten, originally not interested in further expansion, sees the impending collapse of the PAC and decides "Well, we better grab the schools we want before someone else gets them".
  10. Talks resume, this time with more likelyhood to lead somewhere.
 

short ornery norwegian said:
apparently the Washington Board of Regents has a meeting scheduled.

also saw a tweet somewhere that the B1G wants ESPN to create a late-night time slot for games, possibly including Friday nights. the hold-up is over how much more $$ that ESPN would be willing to kick in for media rights if 2 or 4 more schools are added to the TV package.
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ESPN? I thought they were completely removed from the next media rights package for the Big 10. Would they be back in play with the additional inventory created by adding teams?
 

TruthSeeker said:
Yep. You need to do NFL style divisions. You play your entire division, you play another division on a rotating basis, and then you play another team or two from the other divisions based on the previous year's record or something.

Then, all division winners enter a 4-team Big Ten playoff. The winner of which will play the SEC in the title game. At least, that's the end game when we're down to 2 super conferences.
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I think this makes the most sense. One of the things that makes the NFL the NFL is parity and regionalization. There doesn't appear to be a way to force parity on CFB (salary cap and draft in NFL) but each region is going to be represented in the playoffs. The MN/WI/IA/NE/IL division probably isn't going to see a NC contender most years, but would at least get a team in the Big 10 playoff, even if they are a sacrificial lamb for OSU et al. I think the divisions now in the Big 10 make it more interesting. Even here we talk realistically of a Big 10 West title while tacitly acknowledging by the silence that winning an outright Big 10 title is probably not realistic. The division championship adds interest beyond the rivalry games.
 

Dave H said:
Yeah they would almost certainly go Mountain West.
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The reality is that if CFB (or college conference affiliation in general) were starting from scratch today based on today's priorities ($$$), WSU and OSU would not be in any of the P5 equivalent conferences. It's too bad for those schools but not a bad result for the MWC. I would guess that such a result would effectively end NDSU's wet dreams of getting a MWC invite in the near future.
 

swede2 said:
The reality is that if CFB (or college conference affiliation in general) were starting from scratch today based on today's priorities ($$$), WSU and OSU would not be in any of the P5 equivalent conferences. It's too bad for those schools but not a bad result for the MWC. I would guess that such a result would effectively end NDSU's wet dreams of getting a MWC invite in the near future.
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saturdaytradition.com

Hickey: The B1G is right to play Pac-12 vulture rather than raptor

Ballooning the B1G to 20 teams creates more headaches than solutions. The unlikely survival of the Pac-12 would best serve all parties.
saturdaytradition.com saturdaytradition.com
 

Taji34 said:
The dominoes are falling.

My thought on how this went down:
  1. The PAC12 was already on shaky ground with their poor leadership, and relative inability to keep up with other conferences media rights payouts.
  2. We grabbed USC and UCLA from the PAC12, probably leveraging that shakiness. This gave the whole thing a big push.
  3. Rumored talks initially happen between Washington, Oregon, and the Big Ten
  4. Our new media rights deal came out, and put a spotlight on the PAC12 with their upcoming media rights deal.
  5. The PAC12 moved like molasses getting a deal solidified.
  6. The writing was on the wall that the deal would not be anywhere close to other conferences. Perhaps some details were leaked to the University Presidents.
  7. Colorado read the writing and bolted back to the Big12. This was another huge shove.
  8. The media right deal was revealed, and it was not great.
  9. Schools like Washington and Oregon, not wanting to have a poor landing spot as the conference crumbled reached out to the Big Ten OR the Big Ten, originally not interested in further expansion, sees the impending collapse of the PAC and decides "Well, we better grab the schools we want before someone else gets them".
  10. Talks resume, this time with more likelyhood to lead somewhere.
Click to expand...

Great list. I would add the Texas/Oklahoma move to the beginning as a catalyst for major schools like USC/UCLA to also consider moving.
 

I will toss this in. As of 2023, University of Miami (FL) is now a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU)

Could be a coincidence... but if a Florida school is desired, the B1G might just look a lil' farther south.
 

laazrakit said:
I will toss this in. As of 2023, University of Miami (FL) is now a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU)

Could be a coincidence... but if a Florida school is desired, the B1G might just look a lil' farther south.
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Florida, Miami, USF all AAU. Just Sayin'
 

Dave H said:
Do they care about the 3 Rose Bowls?
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Honestly? No. They care about alumni bases and viewership they'll bring. They play in a large media market but dont have a huge following. Their rose bowls are about as relevant as Wisconsin's last 4 rose bowls in a similar time frame.
 

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