ADVERTISEMENT

SHR - Yet again, realignment

According to Stewart Mandel on the latest Athletic podcast suggested there are serious conversations about Cal-Berkeley just dropping football all together.
Only ten years ago, Cal spent $321 million dollars renovating it's stadium. If Cal drops football, what a waste of money that was. I suppose they could use the stadium for women's soccer. Left wingers like to pretend that they like women's soccer.
 
Only ten years ago, Cal spent $321 million dollars renovating it's stadium. If Cal drops football, what a waste of money that was. I suppose they could use the stadium for women's soccer. Left wingers like to pretend that they like women's soccer.
Wasteful spending isn’t a concern cough high speed rail cough
 
Clemson and fsu will end up in the sec. Unc uva and possibly duke will go big 10
I do not see how people have a hard time grasping this. The B1G makes more in 1 year from research, and academic collaborations, than they do from a ten year tv contract. UNC and UVA are not going to go to the SEC if they have a choice in the matter. The same can be said for Duke, too.
 
Just saw a report that the BIG10 is looking to add Florida State, Clemson, Oregon and Washington by the end of next week... It's becoming clear that the BIG10 and SEC are most likely going to be 24-team super leagues in the next 5 years or so. With the ACC and Pac12 dismantling.

With that in mind, I saw a model that has the Sun Belt adding 8 teams as well... The teams I saw added were -- Charlotte, FAU, Memphis, South Florida in the East... SMU, Rice, Tulsa and UTSA in the West.

Thoughts?
Tulsa is not an all sports team. Rice brings nothing, UTSA too far and Fau is a joke.
 
Last edited:
I do not see how people have a hard time grasping this. The B1G makes more in 1 year from research, and academic collaborations, than they do from a ten year tv contract. UNC and UVA are not going to go to the SEC if they have a choice in the matter. The same can be said for Duke, too.
College sports exist for several reasons:
- To make people who never attended any college think of the college with the same name as on their drivers license as "us". As if they have some sort of relationship to it. And, thus, to not question how poorly run most are.
- The Hayes Rule "most people who never attended college believe the quality of a college is proportional to the quality of its football team".
- To entertain drunken future student loan deadbeats. Kids self-select to different colleges, and if you want "big time sports" as a part of your life, then there you go.
- To influence politicians to presume that the big time sports schools should get the bulk of funding, not have their practices questioned or their books audited, and should be the site of any new spending without first determining where the money would be best spent.

So, yeah, most of the Big 10 schools are deep into research. The blunt fact is that if football had never been invented, there would be more people in those states who know what town the state prison is in than the state university.
 
  • Like
Reactions: alphasig1053
If, and that’s a big if, you are a WVU fan, what away game are you going to????? What about the other sports besides football? Who wants to start watching a game that starts at 10:00pm? How many alumni live in Arizona ? Cincinnati is the only opponent you can drive to. So WVU can recruit from their area, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas. An athlete really should consider what their life will be like being. Mountaineer. As an athletic director your life would be miserable trying to keep costs down. It has been proven that they can’t. So sorry I can’t wish you any success.
 
If, and that’s a big if, you are a WVU fan, what away game are you going to????? What about the other sports besides football? Who wants to start watching a game that starts at 10:00pm? How many alumni live in Arizona ? Cincinnati is the only opponent you can drive to. So WVU can recruit from their area, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas. An athlete really should consider what their life will be like being. Mountaineer. As an athletic director your life would be miserable trying to keep costs down. It has been proven that they can’t. So sorry I can’t wish you any success.
Well what driveable away games did they have before this latest conference realignment? At least now they have Cincinnati which is close. I don't know if that's a home or away game for them this year. They play away at Penn State this year which isn't too far away if they want to suffer in person through that. And 6 home games if they want to suffer through those as well. So that's either 7 or 8 games they can go to in person and watch the rest on TV. And if a game starts at 10:00pm and you're getting beat badly at the half you aren't going to want to stay up late to watch the second half anyway. I still say they win 6 this year, and go to a minor bowl. The "Pop-Tart Bowl", has a Big 12 v ACC tie in this year.
 
That was what I pointed to wvu fans that were giddy when they joined the B12. What kid from Florida wants to move to WV to fly to Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas to play football?

Now, less than 10 years later, their roster is considered “MAC-like” by other coaches in the conference.
 
That was what I pointed to wvu fans that were giddy when they joined the B12. What kid from Florida wants to move to WV to fly to Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas to play football?

Now, less than 10 years later, their roster is considered “MAC-like” by other coaches in the conference.
I beg to differ on the travel part. At least from the players perspective. The hypo convo goes something like this:
Sun Belt: We fly to most of our away games.
Big12: Us too.
SB: Our average flight time is “x”.
B12: Ours is “x+an hour & a 1/2”.
SB: Dudes - how do you manage?
B12: We play an extra round of Madden23.
SB: cool.
The American: We matter!!
 
I beg to differ on the travel part. At least from the players perspective. The hypo convo goes something like this:
Sun Belt: We fly to most of our away games.
Big12: Us too.
SB: Our average flight time is “x”.
B12: Ours is “x+an hour & a 1/2”.
SB: Dudes - how do you manage?
B12: We play an extra round of Madden23.
SB: cool.
The American: We matter!!
Interesting….
 
  • Like
Reactions: muthed
That was what I pointed to wvu fans that were giddy when they joined the B12. What kid from Florida wants to move to WV to fly to Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas to play football?

Now, less than 10 years later, their roster is considered “MAC-like” by other coaches in the conference.
This is the worst their team has been since I've been on this earth. Like I posed the other day. They don't have one household name on their roster. I couldn't name a single player on their team.

Moving to the Big XII nuked their program.
 
I beg to differ on the travel part. At least from the players perspective. The hypo convo goes something like this:
Sun Belt: We fly to most of our away games.
Big12: Us too.
SB: Our average flight time is “x”.
B12: Ours is “x+an hour & a 1/2”.
SB: Dudes - how do you manage?
B12: We play an extra round of Madden23.
SB: cool.
The American: We matter!!

Or how about- hey, you got family coming to any games? No, we don’t play anywhere near to where I’m from and they can’t afford to fly to Morgantown because it’s so expensive. Well what about road games? They are all longer and expensive flights to and to far to drive.
 
This is the worst their team has been since I've been on this earth. Like I posed the other day. They don't have one household name on their roster. I couldn't name a single player on their team.

Moving to the Big XII nuked their program.
The "Big" 12 was created based on an experiment. Unlike every other conference, they have these "third tier" rights. Which is to say one (s***y) football game, three (semi-s***y) basketball games and all of the "olympic" sports. Texas and ESPN started this Longhorn Network for big $$ and Oklahoma first tried pay-per-view and then made a deal with what became the Bally's channel in Oklahoma. Thus Texas and Oklahoma got more money than the other teams. Texas and Oklahoma had the idea that they would settle the football between themselves, 9 years out of 10.

Playing in an uneven conference where other teams make more money is stupid, so the teams with a choice, left. Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, and TAMU. They then went out and found 2 mid-major teams to field fill as the Little 8.

The experiment failed. As a media venture turns out that watching your team play football vs. Sam Houston State or Lamar, your basketball game play some Southland or Missouri Valley team, and watching women's softball and such, plus the endless reruns of games played decades ago is really not that interesting. ESPN is losing millions of dollars per MONTH on LN and Bally's went bankrupt. As a sports venture, the best athletes like to test themselves against the other best players of their generation. You do that in the SEC.

So Texas and Oklahoma moved back up to a legitimate conference, the SEC. The best conference. Had to.

As a venture for WVU, it also is a failure. Its idiot fanbase ACTUALLY BELIEVED, that its Lambert Least/Little Least/Leastleftovers success was, and yes this is laughable, the same as what went on in major conferences. It paid millions, well actually WV taxpayers paid millions, to join the Big 2,Little 8. Obviously they cannot compete even at that level/ Now, just a few years later it collapses and WVU would have been fine with the new mid-majors they infilled the league with. Back to their old gameplan of telling people beating Cincinnat or some Texas directional is the same as the ACC or SEC. Then the league goes out and gets 3 more team, not great, teams the Big 10 didn't want, but still with more resources than WVU. So they are stuck in a geographically illogical conference, none of which its members want to be in.
 
  • Like
Reactions: W-S HerdFan
I beg to differ on the travel part. At least from the players perspective. The hypo convo goes something like this:
Sun Belt: We fly to most of our away games.
Big12: Us too.
SB: Our average flight time is “x”.
B12: Ours is “x+an hour & a 1/2”.
SB: Dudes - how do you manage?
B12: We play an extra round of Madden23.
SB: cool.
The American: We matter!!
From Stanford’s HC on joining the ACC/travel:
As two of only four remaining members of the Pac-12, California and Stanford have been publicly exploring options as they search for some long-term stability. One potential path could involve joining the ACC. At first glance, the distance between the two Northern California schools and their potential conference opponents in the ACC looks like a logistical nightmare, but Stanford coach Troy Taylor believes a long-distance relationship with future league mates is doable.

"I'm OK with traveling," Taylor said. "Our guys love playing football, and if you've got to travel a little more, that means when people come play us, they got to travel," Taylor said. "We want to be in a great conference, and we're sure that will happen. The travel, if that happens, it's fine. People used to have to come across the country in a covered wagon -- it would take them months and they'd be completely different people by the time they got there. We get on a plane for five hours, six hours, that's not the end of the world. You get drinks served to you and some snacks, and it's not that bad."
 
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT