As a sportswriter, I’m constantly asked, “What’s your favorite sport?” That’s easy, I say. College football. I love how losing in September means something in December. I love Cal State Sacramento beating Oregon State. And I love the Ohio State band dotting the “i.”
I then quickly add what I hate about college football. That’s easy too. I hate how college football is, without question, the most screwed-up, convoluted, greedy, lying, back-stabbing, front- stabbing train wreck in North American sports right now.
Look at the current landscape. Texas is on the verge of cutting ties with Texas A&M after playing yearly since 1915. For its back-alley deal with A&M, the SEC is being threatened by Baylor, the same school that kicked Rice, Houston, SMU and TCU to the curb as it joined the yapping mob rush to the Big 12.
Oklahoma indicated it wouldn’t stay in the Big 12 unless commissioner Dan Beebe was replaced. He’s now out, three days after that demand become public. Texas’ ingenious and rich Longhorn Network has turned into a scarlet letter. The Mountain West is looking for a life preserver, and the ACC ravaged the Big East, which is getting propositioned by that gem of an East Coast power, East Carolina.
Meanwhile, you have the governing body of collegiate athletics, the NCAA, with seemingly no role in college football other than investigating potential major violations at powers such as Oregon, Miami and Ohio State.
This is nothing new. Karl Benson, commissioner of the Englewood-based WAC, has seen his conference raided more times than ancient England. He saw his 16-team conference splinter into the Mountain West over a decade ago and in the last year saw Boise State, Hawaii, Nevada and Fresno State bolt.
“I’m not as shocked as others might be,” Benson said Thursday. “I’ve lived it. I feel bad for Dan Beebe and (Big East commissioner) John Marinatto. I got my share of blame back in 1998. It’s not deserved in any shape or form. But the captain of the ship is the easy target.”
Let’s don’t lionize Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott for putting some sanity in realignment Tuesday evening by declining to expand. He may have kept the Big 12 in place — for now — and stemmed the rush to superconferences. But remember, he met with Texas officials for three hours last Friday. The reason he didn’t expand wasn’t to keep Washington State’s tennis team from trekking all the way to Lubbock. He didn’t expand because he couldn’t fold the Longhorn Network into the Pac-12 and guarantee equal revenue sharing.
Texas is the problem. I don’t blame the Longhorn Network. All university presidents out there who would turn down a $300 million, 20-year deal from ESPN to handcraft your own national programming, please raise your hand.
Thought so.
The problem is, Texas throws its weight around like Bevo in a china shop. I talked to Pac-12 athletic directors on my “Carwriters” tour in June, and they were all grateful the league expanded with Colorado and Utah, and not Texas.
With Texas in the league, how long would it take for Scott’s fair and unprecedented league title game to go from the stadium of the highest- ranked division champion to Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas? Oregon State is going to outbid Jerry Jones to host?
Beebe’s undoing was his twisting like a circus contortionist to appease Texas, thinking that he would keep the league stable if Texas was happy. He wound up with revenue sharing that’s about as unequal as Major League Baseball’s. It helped save the Big 12 this year, but it chased away Nebraska and couldn’t keep Texas A&M, and the conference is now about as stable as most Internet relationships.
What Scott’s move did, though, was change the college football landscape from an earthquake to a tremor. The ashes are settling, for now.
“Let’s get through this football season without having to focus on membership changes or membership additions or subtractions,” Benson said. “There’s no reason why we can’t wait until after the first of the year.”
Yes, maybe by then Baylor will have removed the knife from the SEC’s throat, and sooner than that a new commissioner will have his family pictures on Beebe’s desk.
Then it’ll all start over again.
I wonder if I’ll notice them dot the “i” at Ohio State on Saturday.
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Pac-16 wouldn’t be much more lucrative than Pac-12
As it turns out, expanding to the Pac-16 may not have earned member schools much more money.
According to Navigate Marketing, each school would have earned 4.9 percent more if the Pac-12 added Texas, Texas Tech, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State, the Arizona Daily Star reported.
Under the current TV agreements, the Pac-12 will bring in around $3.1 billion over 12 years. Starting in 2012-13, the Pac-12 television contract with Fox and ESPN will earn each school around $20.8 million a year, not including a Pac-12 Network that figures to add to that total once it’s up and running. Under Navigate’s estimates, going to a Pac-16 would net each school around $21.86 million a year.
“Texas is so large and based on their fan affinity, that in theory a foursome would bring more households and more value to the Pac-12,” Navigate president AJ Maestas told the Star. “But it would get dispersed among 16 teams.”
John Henderson, The Denver Post
