Tag: Big 12 Expansion

Where in the World is Carmen San Diego State? Mapping Out Big 12 Expansion Strategies

On By Frank the TankIn College Basketball, College Football, Sports1,509 Comments

mv5bzgjlotk0mtytzgu2os00mdc4ltg2mgutyzrjymnlnjnkotyzxkeyxkfqcgdeqxvynza2mzywotg40._v1_

Last week, the Pac-12 announced that it was not seeking any expansion at this time in the wake of its announced Big Paclantic Alliance with the Big Ten and ACC. While some fans of schools remaining in the Big 12 that are hoping for another power conference home may cling to the “at this time” qualifier from the Pac-12, the practical reality is “at this time” really means, “We’re not expanding unless Notre Dame and schools such as, well, Texas and Oklahoma are coming through that door.”

Therefore, reality is setting in for the Big 12 that it will ultimately need to expand and, to that end, the league has formed an expansion subcommittee. At a minimum, the Big 12 will need to have at least 10 conference members after Texas and Oklahoma officially leave for the SEC in order for the league to maintain its current TV contracts with ESPN and Fox. Note that everyone from the Big 12, SEC, Texas and Oklahoma will all publicly state that no one is moving until 2025 in order to comply with their existing agreements. No one can even hint anonymously that there’s a possibility that UT and OU will leave the Big 12 prior to that time. However, in practicality, everyone knows that there will eventually be a settlement so that those schools aren’t spending the next 4 years in lame duck status that isn’t good for anyone. This means that the Big 12 has to be ready to act once it knows the UT/OU exit timeline and staying at 8 members simply isn’t an option.

Over the past decade (decade?!) in writing about conference realignment, I’ve had multiple posts about examining Big 12 expansion candidates complete with dated pop culture references ranging from Avicii to The Bachelor. In reviewing Big 12 expansion this time around, though, I felt that a straight ranking of the candidates really wouldn’t add much to the analysis. The interesting opportunity that the Big 12 has is that, as a result of its current roster of members with a potpourri of institutional types and geographic placement in the center of the country (except for West Virginia), the league can legitimately expand in any direction both philosophically and geographically. With only a small handful of exceptions, the realistic expansion candidates for the Big 12 essentially all have, in baseball terms, the same Wins Above Replacement Value where there aren’t glaring differences. As a result, expansion should be looked at holistically in terms of the overall strategies that the Big 12 could use. Putting on my consulting hat, here are 11 different Big 12 expansion strategies:

1. Lazy AF Bare Minimum Backfilling Strategy – Cincinnati and BYU

If it’s true that no realistic combination of expansion options for the Big 12 can bring in additional revenue and would only dilute per school shares, then it stands to reason that doing just the bare minimum to backfill to 10 members simply to keep the current conference TV contracts intact is high on the list of potential strategies. Cincinnati and BYU were generally looked at as the top targets for Big 12 expansion 5 years ago and that’s likely going to be the same today. (Heck, Cincinnati and BYU were even the two top schools in my Big 12 Expansion Index from 2013.) It’s not the most explosive or Armageddon-like path for the conference realignmentologists out there, but it might be the most realistic.

Out of all of the available schools, Cincinnati is the school that I believe is most likely to get a Big 12 invite. The Bearcats have a solid TV market, an excellent football recruiting area (which would be the best in the Big 12 outside of Texas), as good of an overall athletic history in both football and basketball as any other candidate, a great football program today, and (maybe most importantly) absolutely no baggage of potential issues with religious stances or in-state conflicts with current members. These are all reasons why Cincinnati is the only school that is listed in every single one of the strategies in this post.

Now, from a pure financial value standpoint, BYU is typically viewed to be the most valuable potential addition to the Big 12 due to its TV viewership history and fanbase size. The challenge with BYU is the “baggage” in past objections from other Big 12 members regarding BYU’s Honor Code and its treatment of members of the LGBTQ+ community and the real or perceived difficulty of negotiating with the school in its past conference realignment discussions with both the old Big East football conference and Big 12. That being said, The Athletic quoted a Big 12 source stating that the ones that opposed adding BYU 5 years ago are the ones “leaving the conference”, so the barriers to BYU getting an invite to the league might have come down.

Of course, the flip side is that BYU, with its independent TV contract with ESPN and BYUtv, might be the only school outside of the Power Five that could conceivably turn down a Big 12 invite. Personally, I find that prospect to be doubtful if/when we have an expanded 12-team playoff system with guaranteed spots to the top 6 conference champs, but no one should discount the fact that BYU has different institutional goals compared to any other place in the country. If BYU won’t come or can’t get into the Big 12 for any reason, look for one of either Houston or UCF (both of which will be discussed in the next strategy) to take their place.

2. You Come at the King, You Best Not Miss Strategy – Cincinnati, BYU, Houston, and UCF

One of the cardinal rules that we have learned over many years of expansion analysis: S**t ALWAYS rolls downhill in conference realignment. That is, any time that a league lower on the pecking order thinks that it could poach a conference that’s higher on the pecking order, that’s exactly when the lower league gets completely demolished. (See the old Big East football conference, Mountain West Conference and WAC in the early 2010s.) When Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby publicly accused ESPN of engaging in a conspiracy to get the AAC to raid the Big 12, I wrote that this might have changed the Big 12’s attitude from taking as few AAC schools as possible (see the Lazy AF Bare Minimum Backfilling Strategy above) to trying to take as many AAC schools of value as possible. This ensures that there’s no chance that a reverse raid occurs in the future or that the CFP committee in a 12-team playoff world is trying to debate whether the Big 12 or AAC champion faced a tougher conference schedule in fighting for a playoff spot.

Houston is a school that should be in the Big 12 with its institutional and geographic fit combined with being directly located in one of the most important markets for the conference and an excellent athletic program for both football and basketball (including a New Year’s Six Bowl win in 2015 and a Final Four appearance this past year). If Houston (the school) was located anywhere outside of the state of Texas, it would essentially be a lock for Big 12 expansion. The one major wrinkle is that Texas Tech, Baylor and TCU may very well not want to elevate an in-state competitor, which is a theme that we have seen throughout conference realignment history. The Athletic mentioned that some in the Big 12 had issues with in dealing with UH board chair Tilman Fertitta in 2016, although my intuition is that’s cover for the more likely reason of in-state conflicts of interests. If I were running the Big 12, I would absolutely add Houston and this particular strategy would be the one that I’d favor the most.

When the Big 12 was looking at expansion in 2016, the league essentially looked at UCF and USF as effectively tied in a coin flip. That’s not the case any longer with UCF’s on-the-field success and building of its brand over the past several years. Today, UCF arguably brings the most pure football value of any option in the AAC along with new entry into the Orlando TV market and recruiting grounds.

3. TV Executives Will Tell Us What to Do Strategy – Cincinnati, BYU, UCF, Boise State

In the above-referenced article from The Athletic on the Big 12 expansion process, the schools in this strategy were ones specifically named as possibly maximizing football and TV value for the league. Whether that was pure writer speculation or more of an informed opinion is unknown (although my gut feeling is that those names were just thrown against the wall within the context of that article). From a pure football perspective, Boise State might have the best brand value of any Group of 5 team (despite not performing as well on-the-field compared to several AAC options recently), so they are one of the few expansion options with a solid recent history of on-the-field success and corresponding TV viewership.

4. Life After Death Southwest Conference Strategy – Cincinnati, Houston, SMU, and Rice

My head says that this expansion strategy won’t be used by the Big 12, but my heart really wishes that it would. In most conference realignment situations, the reality is that the resulting matchups when games finally get played lack any history or general emotions at all. (Recall the Civil Conflict “rivalry” between UCF and UConn in the AAC where UCF didn’t even acknowledge the existence of the trophy that UConn created.) That won’t be the case here: nothing will be forced. The hate will be real with Houston, SMU and Rice (yes, Rice!) getting into the very league whose creation destroyed the Southwest Conference and demoted them to non-power status for the past 25 years. The rivalries between the those 3 schools and Baylor, Texas Tech and TCU are longstanding and, in some cases, date back over a century. While the main weakness of the Big 12 up to this point has been its overconcentration in the Texas market, that may now be its greatest asset going forward as it rebuilds. So, the strategy here would be to lean into that asset. It may be better to be the clear #2 conference in the State of Texas than to be the #3 conference in Florida or even the #2 conference anywhere else. Honestly, this is the most fun option for me as a sports fan.

5. Stealing Magnolias Strategy- Cincinnati, SMU, Rice, and Tulane

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, there were various discussions of the creation of a “Southern Ivy League” of top academic private schools that was colloquially known as the “Magnolia League” and involved SMU, Rice and Tulane. As I’ve noted previously as the most important rule in conference realignment: Think like a university president and not like a sports fan. This strategy would fit into the university president’s typical desire to raise the academic pedigree of a league. While this may not be the best path to improve football quality, the argument here would be that getting AAU members like Rice (yes, Rice again!) and Tulane would have a greater institutional impact in being academic peers to a critical mass of members of the other power conferences. Even with the defections of Texas and Oklahoma, the actual on-the-field football product for the Big 12 will likely still be very good, but the challenge is about how the league’s members are perceived as overall institutions compared to the rest of the Power 5. Tulane provides a bonus of being directly located in a solid TV market (and world class road trip destination) of New Orleans and opens up another fertile recruiting area. 

6. All My Exes Live in Texas Blackballing Strategy – Cincinnati, BYU, UCF, and 1 of either Memphis or USF

Going in the other direction from the Life After Death Southwest Conference strategy, it wouldn’t surprise anyone if Baylor, TCU and Texas Tech form a voting bloc that would blackball any other Texas-based additions to the Big 12 altogether. As noted in the initial discussion on Houston, whether it’s fair or not, protecting the home territory of existing conference members has long been a major factor in realignment decisions. Essentially, this is the You Come at the King, You Best Not Miss Strategy with Houston removed and the last spot being a choice between Memphis and USF. Memphis is in an excellent college sports market that brings a fair amount of historical pedigree for both football and basketball. Meanwhile, USF creates synergy as a pair with UCF in solidifying a presence in the Central Florida region where any school that isn’t Florida or Florida State can’t carry on its won. My feeling is that Memphis would win out due to it being stronger as an overall athletic program, although there might be an overarching desire of the Big 12 to create a more impactful presence in Florida.

7. The Mountains Win Again Strategy – Cincinnati, BYU, Colorado State, and Boise State

The options discussed up to this point have focused on the Big 12 adding schools to the East outside of BYU. However, there’s a fair argument that going West would be better long-term in order to get the conference into a less competitive region of the country that is also fast-growing. The Big 12 (and old Big 8, for that matter) used to have Colorado as a key member before they defected to the Pac-12. This strategy works best with building around BYU and Boise State. Colorado State has long been at the top of the list of schools that would improve its conference realignment prospects drastically if it could be merely consistently competent in football since it has so many off-the-field factors in favor of it in terms of academic profile and a location in a state that is exploding with growth. .

8. Return of the WAC Strategy – Cincinnati, BYU, Colorado State, Boise State, New Mexico, San Diego State, UNLV, and Air Force (alternate: anyone else from the Mountain West Conference)

Taking The Mountains Win Again Strategy one step further, once upon a time, the WAC was a 16-team superconference with games going on at all hours of the evening. The Big 12 could resurrect that model by going big with many of the same teams that were involved in that WAC format. Essentially, this is a full-on raid of the Mountain West Conference. San Diego and Las Vegas markets are two of the largest TV markets that don’t have a direct or de facto connection to a power conference team, so the Big 12 could serve a need in those areas with San Diego State and UNLV, respectively. (Recall that Boise State and San Diego State were willing to join the old Big East football conference for a few moments before conference realignment further took its toll and they decided to re-up with the Mountain West.) Air Force further solidifies the Rocky Mountain region with some national brand value as a military academy. The Falcons have also been willing to play a higher level of competition for basketball and other non-football sports compared to their other military academy brothers of Army and Navy (who will be discussed later on in this post), although the school expressed concern about competing in a power conference in the past. In the event that Air Force doesn’t want to move, the Big 12 would effectively being throwing at a dartboard at a map of the MWC for which school gets the last spot. (Fresno State? San Jose State? Nevada? Wyoming? Utah State? Heck, Hawaii? It’s totally unclear who would win that battle.) 

9. Big Country Conference Strategy – Cincinnati, BYU, UCF, Boise State, Colorado State, San Diego State, UNLV, and Houston (alternate: either Memphis or USF)

Further to my last point, the old Big East attempted to put together a coast-to-coast football conference in 2012 in the wake of the ACC raiding that league of Syracuse and Pitt and the Big 12 grabbing West Virginia. However, the plan was killed when the league was raided again by the Big Ten (Rutgers) and ACC part 2 (Louisville) shortly thereafter. That’s too bad since they were employing a variation of one of my favorite blue sky ideas from the crazy conference realignment days of 2010: a coast-to-coast football-only Big Country Conference of the Big East plus the best of the then-non-AQ conference schools. For football purposes, today’s proposed Big Country Conference would be a super-fun league that can deliver 14-plus hours of games for TV networks every Saturday (plus plenty of willingness to fill weeknight time slots). The challenge would be that this may not be realistic as an all-sports league for the West members since there isn’t a critical mass of schools in that part of the country (unlike the Return of the WAC option). If those schools As a result, football-only memberships for those schools would require some coordination with a league like the Big West or West Coast Conference to take those Western schools as members for basketball and other sports.

10. I Wish I Was a Little Bit Taller, I Wish I Was a Baller Strategy – Cincinnati, BYU, Houston, Memphis, Temple, and UConn

It is a common refrain that “football is all that matters for conference realignment.” However, I would push back on the universality of that statement. While it’s true that the top power conferences such as the Big Ten and SEC are making so much revenue that football is really the only sport that can make a material difference, that isn’t necessarily true at the lower levels. Case in point is the new Big East that has been able to thrive both on-the-court and off-the-court financially based on basketball and no longer needing to deal with football members.

Also note the situation in the Big 12 where the most valuable school left for conference realignment purposes happens to be Kansas… and that is due entirely to its status as a blue blood basketball program. As a result, Kansas may very well have the most influence in Big 12 expansion discussions, which means that basketball prowess could become more of a factor in the decision-making. In this case, 3 AAC schools that we have discussed at length already (Cincinnati, Houston and Memphis) are included along with UConn, Temple and BYU. Granted, it’s hard to see UConn switching conferences again after leaving the AAC and going “home” to the Big East for basketball last year while turning independent for football. However, if the Big 12 is looking to really focus on its basketball brand (which will still be excellent with blue blood Kansas, reigning national champion Baylor, alma mater of the latest #1 pick of the NBA Draft in Cade Cunningham in Oklahoma State, and the national runner-up from 2 years ago in Texas Tech), then UConn has the best available brand on the table. Temple also has an excellent basketball history and would bring in the Philadelphia area that, while being perceived as a weak college football fan market, is actually a strong college basketball region with great rivalries in the Big 5.

11. Shock and Awe Strategy – Cincinnati, BYU, Air Force, Navy (football-only), Army (football-only), and 1 of either Houston or UCF

Andy Staples of The Athletic recently wrote about the importance of the 4 Million Club, where TV value is driven by games that draw more than 4 million viewers. The SEC and Big Ten have excelled on this measure since 2015, so it’s not a surprise that they draw in the most TV revenue of any conferences by far. The weakness of the Pac-12 and Big 12 (not counting Texas and Oklahoma games) by comparison was also stark. In looking through the source ratings data at Sports Media Watch, one interesting tidbit is that out of 193 college football telecasts that drew more than 4 million viewers since 2015, only 6 didn’t involve at least one Power Five team (including Notre Dame)… and 5 of those 6 games were Army-Navy games. If the Big 12 could actually make the Army-Navy game into a contest that falls under the conference contract, that may be worth more from a TV value standpoint than any other possible addition. Add in Air Force on top of that and the Big 12 would have all three service academies under its wing. Cincinnati, BYU and Houston or UCF can also be added for depth across all sports.

Now, the Army-Navy game currently has a separate TV contract with CBS, which was a requirement of Navy upon joining the AAC as a football-only member and means that league doesn’t receive any revenue from that matchup. Whether that can be adjusted would make a significant difference as to whether going for an expansion strategy focused on adding the service academies would be financially viable. In any event, Navy, Army and Air Force all do bring national brands that are hard to come by outside of the power conferences.

If I’m handicapping the field, I’d rank the following strategies in terms of likelihood: (1) You Come at the King, You Best Not Miss Strategy, (2) Lazy AF Bare Minimum Backfilling Strategy, (3) TV Executives Will Tell Us What to Do Strategy, and (4) the rest of the field. (EDIT: Thinking about this further, the All My Exes Live in Texas Blackballing Strategy ought to be included on this list. I would move that up to the #3 choice.) It’s not an accident that the same schools such as Cincinnati, BYU, UCF, Houston and Boise State are the ones that are being discussed the most along with a small handful of others. The Big 12 already went through an expansion evaluation in 2016, which would seem to make the process this time around much more efficient in theory. The real question is where the Big 12 wants to go, both literally and figuratively, as their strategies are all across the map.

(Image from IMDb)

The Art of Deception: Big 12 vs. ESPN

On By Frank the TankIn Sports1,008 Comments

For most conference realignment moves, the timing may often be surprising, but the logic behind them makes sense. The SEC taking Texas and Oklahoma is a perfect example: the move came out of nowhere last week and shocked the college football world to its core, but it’s a move that makes perfect sense for the parties involved with increased money and power.

Every once in awhile, though, conference realignment causes a story that goes beyond the realm of reasonable possibility, such as a Power 5 conference commissioner publicly going postal on ESPN. Yesterday, Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby sent a cease and desist letter to ESPN where he accuses the network of attempting to induce league members to join another conference. Then, he didn’t just let that letter speak for itself: he basically went to every media outlet out there (sans ESPN) and left no doubt about how he really feels. Conspiracy! Deception! Manipulation! Tortious interference! Backstabbing partner! All that we need is a missing body and this would be an episode of Dateline!

The only thing crazier than all of this is ESPN’s alleged plan: dissolve the Big 12 by having 3 to 5 members join the AAC. Not the ACC, but the AAC. Now, from a pure ESPN perspective, the dissolution of the Big 12 makes financial sense: that allows Texas and Oklahoma to move to the SEC without paying any exit obligations (likely in the neighborhood of $70 million to $80 million for each of those schools), move the most attractive remaining Big 12 brands to a less expensive AAC contract that’s 100% under the control of ESPN, and eliminate around $1 billion in rights fees that are remaining on the current Big 12 contract with ESPN. I have no doubt that ESPN would love everything to play out this way.

However, if these allegations are true, this is an insanely brazen and obtuse proposal regardless of incentives for ESPN. If we assume that no other P5 league is going to take any of the remaining Big 12 members, how on Earth did ESPN think this was going to work? Think of it from the perspective of the remaining Big 12 schools of the ESPN “offering”:

(1) This would have involved asking Oklahoma State to ask Tulsa for an invite to a league. It would have involved Texas Tech, Baylor and TCU to ask SMU and Houston to the same. Putting aside football, this would have required Kansas State and freaking Kansas (whose basketball program was founded by basketball inventor James Naismith) asking Wichita State to join the Shockers’ league!

(2) The Big 12 would just willingly disband and give up $140 million to $160 million of exit fees from Texas and Oklahoma.

(3) The Big 12 would further willingly dissolve and give up around $1 billion for the rest of the existing TV deal with ESPN.

Once we take a step back from the initial shock of how openly public this dispute is between the Big 12 and ESPN, the alleged proposal from ESPN is frankly comical. It’s no wonder that Bob Bowlsby claims that he has receipts that ESPN has been attempting this here: any Big 12 school that received a proposal from ESPN for them to join the AAC (not the ACC) so that they can dissolve the league and make less money in the process would have forwarded those texts and emails to the Commissioner’s Office with the subject line: “Dude?! WTF?!”

To be sure, nothing is going to change ESPN’s power position in college sports (or simply the sports world in general). However, I believe that this is going to backfire on the AAC quite badly. The AAC might get a few days of positive news cycles where they appear to be the aggressor as opposed to being the hunted in the conference realignment game. However, when anyone takes a step back and goes line-by-line comparing the Big 12 and AAC members, the fact of the matter is that the AAC would take every Big 12 member while there are several schools that the Big 12 wouldn’t touch from the AAC. That inherently means that the remaining Big 12 schools as a core are simply more valuable than the AAC and it makes more financial sense for the Big 12 to take the best schools from the AAC as opposed to the other way around.

Just 24 hours ago, I would have believed that the Big 12 was aiming to have as little backfilling as possible (maybe just taking 1 AAC school like Cincinnati plus independent BYU) or even simply stand pat at 8 schools. Frankly, the Big 12 has been spending the past several years convincing itself of reasons to not take AAC schools such as Cincinnati, Houston, UCF and Memphis. I believe those days are gone. With this accusation of the AAC coordinating with ESPN for the equivalent of a hostile takeover, my sense is that the Big 12 is going to find every reason to strip mine anything of value from the AAC to neutralize any real or perceived threat here. This may turn out well for the AAC schools that I just mentioned, but any current schadenfreude at the Big 12 predicament from the bottom half of the AAC is wildly misplaced.

In the past week, I feel that a lot of fan chatter has overrated the chances of the Big 12 schools to get an invite to any of the other Power 5 conferences since they were ignoring institutional fits and simply how much more money a school needs to bring to the Big Ten, Pac-12 or ACC just for expansion to break-even for them (much less actually be more profitable). However, it seems as if though the tide has turned where the Big 12 is now underrated in comparison to the AAC and rest of the Group of 5 leagues. The truth is somewhere in the middle – the rest of the Big 12 may not be finding homes in other P5 leagues, but they still have absolute poaching power over the G5 leagues if only because of a combination of autonomy status with the NCAA, incoming exit fees from Texas and Oklahoma and existing NCAA Tournament credits. To say that I’m watching all of this from the sidelines while eating popcorn is an understatement: this is all worthy of downing an entire souvenir Chicago skyline tin of Garrett’s Popcorn.

(Image from the Big 12 Conference)

(Follow Frank the Tank’s Slant on Twitter @frankthetank111 and Facebook)

Big 12 Expansion Press Conference Pregame Thoughts and Open Thread

On By Frank the TankIn Big 12 Expansion, Sports1,652 Comments

460x

The Big 12 will be live streaming a news conference today at 5:30 pm Central Time regarding expansion. Will the Big 12 expand by none as has been intimated over the past few weeks (with ESPN and Fox kicking in some money to kill expansion)? Maybe the Big 12 presidents will expand by 2, 4 or kick the can down the road?

This is just my gut feeling, but I believe the Big 12 presidents will vote to expand by 2 despite so much tampering down of expansion expectations over the last month. Whenever the Big 12 presidents have actually met together, they seem to believe that expansion is a positive. It’s only when they separate and are left to their own devices that more negative perceptions about expansion come around. Strictly on a psychological basis, the group dynamics can change a lot of things since the presidents have to confront what is best for the Big 12 conference overall as opposed to solely thinking about their own individual school’s interests.

We’ll see what happens. If the Big 12 decides to expand, it seems that this will come down to a game of musical chairs between BYU (arguably the most valuable school but also the most controversial politically), Houston (helped by a heavy dose of Texas politics) and Cincinnati (the non-controversial and very good across the board candidate but doesn’t have the passionate supporters that BYU and Houston seem to have). If any of the other candidates get into the Big 12 (which I examined Bachelor-style last month), then it would almost certainly entail the Big 12 expanding by 4. (As I noted on Twitter earlier today, my “crazy but plausible” scenario is the Big 12 adding BYU, Houston, Cincinnati… and Colorado State. This would address the disproportionately high number of Big 12 alums that live in the Denver market. I don’t think that scenario is very likely, but who knows what will happen when these Big 12 presidents get into a room.)

Regardless, feel free to use this post as an open thread to discuss Big 12 expansion and the presidential press conference. It’s pretty rare to have such anticipation for a conference realignment event where the outcome is truly up in the air, so enjoy the speculation while you can!

UPDATE (2:24 PM CT): Chip Brown reporting that there were no schools added by the Big 12:

We’ll see whether that means that Big 12 expansion is dead or if the presidents will continue to discuss this further ad nauseum.

UPDATE (2:34 PM CT): Pete Thamel also with a report that there won’t be Big 12 expansion:

UPDATE (2:52 PM CT): Jake Trotter from ESPN with another confirming report that there won’t be Big 12 expansion.:

Soooooo, it looks like this is going to be a pretty boring press conference.

(Image from Associated Press)

Big 12 Expansion Edition of The Bachelor: First Rose Ceremony Elimination

On By Frank the TankIn College Basketball, College Football, Sports643 Comments

When Brett McMurphy reported a few weeks ago that the Big 12 had at least twenty expansion candidates, the most common comment that I saw in my Twitter feed was that this was just like “The Bachelor”. As an admitted former viewer of the show* and considering the latest report that the Big 12 is down to circa 12 candidates, it’s a perfect comparison. Out of the reported survivors, we have:

  • The “First Impression Rose” candidate that seems like a natural fit (Cincinnati);
  • A contender that is absolutely perfect on paper and The Bachelor has lots of chemistry with… yet also has some serious baggage that puts it at risk of getting the final rose (BYU);
  • Someone that the producers (AKA politicians) clearly want to keep on the show regardless of how The Bachelor personally feels and, even with lukewarm chemistry, may end up in the final rose ceremony through attrition by keeping everything on the down-low and not acting bats**t crazy (Houston);
  • A contestant that seems to have all of the right attributes yet lives on the other side of the country from The Bachelor with a lot glaring cultural differences (UConn);
  • Twins that The Bachelor sees a lot of potential in but no one has any idea if there’s a long-term relationship there (UCF and USF);
  • A candidate that questions whether a relationship here will work and where The Bachelor might actually be more interested in the contender than the contender is interested in The Bachelor (Air Force);
  • A bachelorette that attracts the adventurous side of The Bachelor in outdoor activity dates like rock climbing, but no one is sure whether they will be any good in the one sport (football) that The Bachelor really cares about (Colorado State);
  • The smart ones with multiple advanced degrees that are easy to talk to… and 99.9% certain to end up in the friend zone (Tulane and Rice); and
  • A couple of others that used to be in the power ranks back in the day and may at least get a date card (Temple and SMU).

(* In my opinion, the flagships of “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette” have been getting a bit long in the tooth for several years. However, I’m ALL IN on “Bachelor in Paradise”. It’s like watching The Lord of the Flies in reality-TV form. I love everything about it.)

It’s unclear whether Memphis has survived (my gut feeling is that they’re still alive), but if they move on to the next round, it’s because they’re a contender with loaded parents that are willing to buy their way to the final rose ceremony.

As for all of the other candidates, it appears that they have been eliminated in the very first rose ceremony without even an obligatory make-out session with The Bachelor (although no one can discount a surprise return from one or more of them in later episodes). The Big 12 seems content with dragging this expansion process out until a conference leadership meeting on October 17th, so we’ll likely be talking about the remaining contenders ad nauseum for the next few weeks. Therefore, in the spirit of Chris Harrison, let’s take a moment and say our goodbyes to those that did not receive a rose:

  • East Carolina – In Bachelor terms, ECU is the candidate that all of the other contestants seem to like but The Bachelor has no interest in at all. Under my conference realignment maxim (“Think like a university president and NOT like a sports fan”), ECU is a classic sports fan thinker’s choice. Fans see that ECU has excellent football attendance with a core group of passionate backers and a typically competitive on-the-field football team. University presidents, though, see a school that doesn’t fit the applicable academic profile and is located in a small market in what is already the most over-saturated state in the country for power conference sports (North Carolina). The Pirates had to give it the old college try to apply for Big 12 expansion in order to provide their fans some hope, but I doubt anyone at the school realistically believed that the Big 12 was actually going to call them up.
  • Boise State – If ECU is a candidate that other contestants seemed to like, then Boise State is the audience favorite that was eliminated early and would be in line to be named “The Bachelorette”. There might be no better example of a “Fan’s Choice” that conflicts with the “University President’s Choice” in conference realignment than Boise State. The on-the-field performance of the Broncos for the past decade speaks for itself for fans, but the university presidents still see a lack of an institutional and academic fit in a small TV market. The primary reason why Boise State was considered at all is that they arguably have the most valuable national TV brand out of any non-power conference school. However, the off-the-field academic reputation is still a killer (both with the Big 12 here and the Pac-12 in the future).
  • San Diego State – The Aztecs could look good on paper for the Big 12, but if UConn already lives pretty far from The Bachelor, then San Diego State is effectively on another planet. In my Big 12 Expansion Index post, I gave SDSU some high marks since it was an evaluation that largely discounted geographic proximity as a factor. However, reality might be setting in here that there needs to be some semblance of geographic proximity in conference realignment. For all of the complaints about the power conferences expanding the geographic boundaries to large distances, the reality is that every power conference move made since 2010 was with a school in a state that was geographically contiguous to the then-existing league footprint, as applicable… with the exception of West Virginia going to the Big 12. It was just difficult to see the Big 12 turning an already bad geographic situation into a comically horrific geographic situation.
  • UNLV – Similar issues here as San Diego State. Now, I’ll say that both the San Diego and Las Vegas markets are still quite ripe for the picking for college sports since they are among the largest TV markets that don’t have legitimate power conference representation. If the Raiders end up moving to Las Vegas (and as much as I don’t want to condone owners holding cities hostage for publicly financed stadiums, anyone without Oakland-tinged glasses can see that Las Vegas and the Raiders are perfect for each other), that could create a state-of-the-art stadium that might be shared with UNLV. At the end of the day, though, the issue for both SDSU and UNLV is that they are not institutionally or academically-aligned with the Pac-12 and their geography with the Big 12 is a problem, so they’re stuck at this time.  Improving off-the-field academic items will be much more of a factor for the future conference realignment prospects of San Diego State and UNLV compared to on-the-field football ability.
  • New Mexico – There’s nothing wrong with New Mexico: it’s a solid flagship university in a growing state with a very good basketball fan base that’s contiguous to the existing Big 12 footprint. The issue is that there never seemed to be a spark between UNM and the Big 12 as other candidates seemed to cover the Lobos’ positives just a little bit better. If the Big 12 really wants a basketball-oriented flagship, then UConn has elite programs for both men’s and women’s hoops and is there for the taking. If the Big 12 wants geographic proximity, then there are schools like Houston, Rice, SMU, Tulane and Memphis available. If the Big 12 wants a solid overall school in a new market, then Cincinnati covers even more bases in a larger TV market and recruiting territory. So, New Mexico isn’t the worst option, but it also one of the best options, either.
  • Northern Illinois – There is no more damning charge in The Bachelor when someone is accused of “not being there for the right reasons”. When a contestant is clearly angling for a spot on “The Bachelorette” or “Bachelor in Paradise” or looking for free advertising for a home business, then “The Right Reasons” Police come out. I know that my brain is turning to mush due to an excess of conference realignment Tweets when (a) someone participating on a contrived reality TV dating show believes that they have the moral authority to accuse another of “not being there for the right reasons” and (b) I always totally agree with the accuser. “The Right Reasons” Police are always right. Now, I’m certainly not saying NIU was doing anything nefarious here (and I’ll be upfront and state that NIU is personally my favorite Group of Five school), but let’s face it: the Huskies knew that they weren’t getting a Big 12 invite. Instead, this presentation to the Big 12 was really aimed toward convincing the AAC and/or Mountain West Conference to consider NIU if/when those leagues lose any schools. NIU senses an opportunity to move up the pecking order even if it might be just one rung up from the MAC as opposed to a rocket to the top.
  • Arkansas State – Similar issues here as NIU, where Arkansas State knew that their Big 12 chances were zero but wanted to go through an audition for other conferences (such as the AAC or Conference USA). There could very well be a large shakeup in the Group of Five non-power conferences even if the Big 12 only adds 2 new members and the current Arkansas State home of the Sun Belt Conference is the most vulnerable. Positioning for a potential new home outside of the Sun Belt would be prudent for any member of that league.

In witnessing the Big 12 expansion process unfold, there seem to be a few overarching takeaways (none of which are surprises except for the last point):

(1) Politics Matter – Politics, both the procedural kind (politicians trading favors) and the societal issue kind, are no stranger to the history of conference realignment. Just look at how heavily politicians got involved in the original formation of the Big 12 in the 1990s and the ACC expansion of the early-2000s (with a key role played by current Vice Presidential candidate Tim Kaine in leveraging the vote of UVA to get Virginia Tech into the league). As a result, anyone that discounts the open and unambiguous statements from the Governor and Lt. Governor of Texas in support of Houston to the Big 12 ignores them at their own peril. One of the most common comments that I get on Twitter is that the non-Texas-based Big 12 schools don’t want to add another Texas member. My general reply is, “So what?!” There are few complaints that I’ve heard over the years more than the belief that the Big 12 is beholden to UT, yet there is now this argument that the other Big 12 schools will suddenly ignore UT on expansion. That makes zero sense to me. From a pure vote counting perspective, the Big 12 needs 8 schools to approve any expansion and the university presidents at Texas and Texas Tech are already on-the-record of wanting (or needing) to vote for Houston. It’s not exactly a stretch that politicians that have stuck their necks out for Baylor and/or TCU in conference realignment matters previously are going to call in some chits to secure their support for Houston, too. All it takes it one of either Baylor or TCU to bow to political pressure and there is now a Texas-based group that has veto power over all expansion in the Big 12 (similar to how UVA effectively had veto power in the early-2000s ACC expansion process since UNC and Duke had come out as firm votes against any type of expansion). Saying that the Big 12 will expand without the support of Texas is like saying that Donald Trump can win the White House without winning Florida: the electoral math doesn’t work.

At the same time, as I explained in my last post, BYU is dealing with rapid changes in society with respect to LGBT rights and pushback against the language in the school’s Honor Code regarding homosexuality. What might have been a socially “acceptable” position in 2010 regarding the treatment of the LGBT community is not necessarily going to be a socially acceptable position in 2016, just as there was a sea change in the public’s viewpoints regarding racial segregation and civil rights from 1960 to 1966. As result, the “religious liberty” argument isn’t going to work for BYU in this context. Instead, the school is going to need to assuage the legitimate practical concerns of the Big 12 presidents regarding any prospect of discrimination against the LGBT community and possibly amend its Honor Code so that it does not specifically reference homosexuality (similar to what Baylor did last year). I have some faith that this would actually occur (and not just because of Big 12 expansion, but simply in response to societal changes in general). The Honor Code is not a set-in-stone document that is mandated by the Bible or Book of Mormon and can certainly be changed to reflect the times while continuing to be consistent with the school’s underlying religious beliefs (similar to adjustments made by a Baptist school like Baylor or many Catholic universities across the country over the years). I’ve said this many times before: on traditional conference realignment metrics, BYU is the most valuable option for the Big 12. However, the political issues matter greatly here and they’re significantly more important today compared to only a few years ago.

Of course, the ultimate irony is that the Texas politicians that have openly pushed against gay marriage while trying to defend the ability to discriminate on “religious liberty” grounds are now the same ones that are advocating for Houston going to the Big 12… and the best way for Houston to get into the Big 12 is for BYU to be rejected by Big 12 presidents that don’t buy anti-LGBT discrimination as being justifiable based on “religious liberty” at all. Politics can make for strange bedfellows.

(2) Academics Matter – As I’ve noted with some of the fallen candidates above and time and time again, conference realignment decisions are ultimately made by university presidents as opposed to fans, coaches and athletic directors. Those university presidents simply have a different worldview. It’s not just overall academic snobbery. Instead, think of it from the personal incentive perspective of a university president. For a football coach or athletic director to go from, say, Kansas State to Rice, that is generally deemed to be a step down in money and prestige. However, a university president going from Kansas State to Rice (an academically prestigious AAU member) is considered to be a major promotion in the world of academia. Heck, it’s arguably an upgrade for any of the Big 12 university presidents (outside of the University of Texas) to take the same job at Rice or Tulane. Therefore, no one should be surprised that those academically elite schools are still in the process. The Big 12 university presidents are going to be quite nice and cordial in speaking with the respective administrators, board of trustee members and donors at schools like Rice and Tulane since those same presidents might be on the other side of the interview process with those schools looking for a job later on.

Meanwhile, the schools that aren’t in a strong position academically have a massive strike against them in the power conference realignment game. The lowest ranked school in the US News national university rankings out of all of the 5 power conferences is West Virginia at #175. Out of the 20 reported Big 12 candidates, 12 schools were ranked higher than WVU (Rice, Tulane, UConn, SMU, BYU, Temple, Colorado State, Cincinnati, San Diego State, USF, and UCF along with Air Force that had scores in the national liberal arts rankings that would put it in the elite category)… and 11 of those schools have moved on in the process (with San Diego State being the only exception). Out of the 8 schools that were ranked lower than WVU (New Mexico, Houston, East Carolina, Memphis, Northern Illinois, UNLV, Boise State and Arkansas State), only Houston is confirmed to have moved on (aided greatly by the political factor in point #1) and the status of Memphis is unclear. That doesn’t mean that the Big 12 is going to expand with Rice and Tulane, but lack of an academic reputation has shown to be a direct elimination factor for all of the power conferences.   Great academics might not get a school into a power conference, but poor academics can keep a school out of one.

3. Geography Sort of Matters – As I noted in my comments about San Diego State and UNLV, conferences will only ignore geographic issues up to a point. The Big 12 has already expanded eastward to West Virginia, so extending the league footprint further east with UConn and/or Temple as options is at least on the table. Likewise, the Big 12 was once in the Rocky Mountain region when Colorado was in the conference and they would like to be in it again (hence the interest in BYU, Colorado State and Air Force). However, the thought of expanding the lague all the way to the West Coast with a school like San Diego State really pushed the limits of practicality. There’s bad geography in conference realignment (e.g. Nebraska to Rutgers), and then there’s BAD GEOGRAPHY (e.g. West Virginia to San Diego State).

4. Confidentiality Does NOT Matter – In recent conference realignment history, there has been quite a bit of laughable subterfuge and public media denials of what was actually occurring behind the scenes up until actual expansion announcements were made. Recall Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany stating back in 2010 that he would give a conference that he wanted to poach from a lot of notice… and that “notice” consisted of calling the Big 12 a few hours before he was going to hold a press conference that the Big Ten was adding Nebraska. The subsequent additions of Maryland and Rutgers by the Big Ten came out of nowhere timing-wise. The SEC would continuously deny that they were even looking at expansion despite reports galore that Texas A&M and then Missouri were ready to join. The Pac-12’s attempt at creating a new Pac-16 conference with Texas, Oklahoma and other Big 12 schools ended up getting exposed to the public, but even to this day, Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott won’t provide details of how close they were to sealing the deal. The ACC has a well-established track record of making conference expansion decisions with very few leaks.

By comparison, the current Big 12 expansion process is a veritable fire hose of open quotes and comments. Candidate schools haven’t even tried to hide the fact that they are applying to the Big 12 and, in many cases, are openly going on the record about the application process. At the same time, while conference realignment observers could reasonably guess who was being considered by the Big Ten, SEC and ACC in recent expansion discussions, there hasn’t been the direct and specific confirmation from conference offices about candidates in the way that we see with the Big 12 now. I can’t imagine the type of confirmed information that’s already out there about the Big 12’s expansion moves ever leaking out of the Big Ten or SEC. Mike DeCourcy of The Sporting News notes how crass the Big 12 process has been up to this point.

Now, from the perspective of a conference realignment blogger, this openness is great and provides a ton of material that isn’t just pure speculation. However, there could be a whole lot of burned bridges among administrators of different schools and university leaders with their own alumni and fan bases when probably only 2 (and no more than 4) schools end up with Big 12 invites and over a dozen schools are left behind at the alter. (Lord help us if the Big 12 decides to not expand with anyone at all.)

As always, we’ll keep an eye out for the latest conference realignment news. Until then, enjoy the start of the football season!

(Image from Yahoo!)

The Return of Conference Realignment: Summer of Big 12 CYA Expansion

On By Frank the TankIn College Basketball, College Football, Sports571 Comments

For the past several years, the Big 12’s public position on potential expansion was constantly wait-and-see with lots of studies being commissioned and a general lean towards staying at 10 members. The league’s presidents and other stewards (despite public proclamations from Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby to take action on expansion one way or the other) seemed to indicate that they were simply not motivated to expand, effectively stating that the options weren’t good enough (sort of like how much of America despises both major presidential candidates at record levels). The focus from the Big 12 was more about short-term maximization of their ability to make it into the College Football Playoff (whose leaders finally figured out today that New Year’s Eve blows for watching playoff games).

In meantime, though, the Big Ten put into place the structure of a new record-breaking TV deal with Fox and ESPN (on top of existing rising revenue from BTN) and the ACC announced the formation of the ACC Network with ESPN that will provide a financial windfall for that conference. Not coincidentally, the Big 12 presidents put down their Pokémon Go* games for a few moments and changed their tune on expansion within 24 hours of the finalization of the ACC Network deal. Now, the Big 12 is looking to add at least 2 and maybe even 4 additional members.

(* The Charmander as Houston Cougar image above come from a SBNation post about all of the FBS football teams’ corresponding Pokémon characters that was written well before the Pokémon Go craze came about. Enjoy!)

What happened? Well, it appears that the Big 12 might have finally gotten off of its delusion that it could ever attract members of the ACC or any other power conference. Coaches like Bill Snyder and partisan Big 12 fans might try to suggest schools that left the Big 12 wish that they could come back, but trust me on this one: every single person that actually matters at the schools that left the Big 12 are happy to be far, far, far away from that dysfunctional mess. The Big Ten, SEC, Pac-12 and ACC are all academically, financially and demographically superior to the Big 12… and it’s not even a contest. The ACC Network deal seems has to cemented the notion that the Big 12 can’t hold out for the misguided hope to pick off other power conference schools (albeit Pete Thamel of Sports Illustrated reported some residual delusion within the Big 12 that they could poach some Pac-12 schools in the next decade, which ought to be asinine to anyone that has followed conference realignment over the years). Every reasonable Big 12 expansion target is going to come from one of the non-power Group of 5 (“G5”) conferences outside of independent BYU.

At the same time, this self-realization by the Big 12 members is coupled with the very real fear that Texas, Oklahoma and/or Kansas could be out the door when the current conference Grant of Rights agreement expires in 2025 or even upon expiration of the new Big Ten TV deal in 2023 (which gets into the time range where breaking the GOR agreement might be financially feasible). The other members of the Big 12 have already seen Texas attempt to create the Pac-16 and Oklahoma’s leadership openly talk about the school having options in the realignment sphere. Maximizing short-term money by keeping membership numbers low is only sustainable if the Big 12’s three top flight risks stay put. As a result, the Big 12 has to engage in some “CYA expansion” whether they believe that UT, OU and KU will stay or not. When the conference’s largest TV markets, top athletic recruiting territory, fastest growing area, best academic institution and most valuable national brand name are all wrapped up in the single school the University of Texas, the rest of the Big 12 needs to expand and diversify its membership for survival in the event that the Longhorns ever decide for a “Texit”.

Now, that being said, the worst house (the Big 12) in Beverly Hills (the power conferences) is still significantly more valuable than the nicest house in Compton (G5 conferences). As Thamel noted, each member of the Big 12 makes more annual TV revenue than the entire AAC (which is the highest-paid G5 conference). Indeed, AAC commissioner Mike Aresco said this week that he has been “talking to the (athletic directors) and the president of the schools that might leave, and it looks like some of them will.” The chasm between the power and non-power ranks is so stark that none of the G5 schools to pass on any opportunity to join any of the 5 power conferences (the “P5”) regardless of geography or a hope that another better “fit” within the P5 might be coming down the road in the future (e.g. an Eastern school like UConn isn’t going to pass on a Big 12 invite in the hopes of an ACC or Big Ten invite later). Every G5 school has to take any Big 12 offer that it receives immediately because this expansion process might constitute the last new additions to the power conference ranks for the next generation. The stakes couldn’t be higher for the handful of G5 schools that are in position to make the jump.

When I started writing frequently about conference realignment with the formation of the Big Ten Expansion Index nearly seven(!) years ago, I’ve made some correct predictions and quite a few wrong ones. However, I will always believe in my first rule of conference realignment: “Think like a university president and NOT like a sports fan.” Too many sports fans look at recent on-the-field records (what I call the “What Have You Done For Me Lately?” Syndrome) and not the long-term off-the-field factors that drive conference realignment, such as TV revenue, markets, demographics, stability and academic prestige. No one should analyze an expansion candidate based on the best case scenario where a school goes 12-o in a football season. Instead, the proper analysis for adding a school is whether it still provides value (whether in the form of a major TV market, top recruiting territory or academic excellence) even if it has a 0-12 record. This is something that I have stressed for many years and I’ll continue to emphasize it here. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the schools that are generating the most discussion for Big 12 expansion:

POLE POSITION

CINCINNATI

I created the Big 12 Expansion Index nearly three(!) years ago that admittedly had some interesting results (such as a high ranking for San Diego State) due to my desire to create an index based on as many objective factors as possible without inserting any subjective “smell test” bias. Still, my overall conclusion at the time was that Cincinnati was the very clear #1 best fit for Big 12 expansion and I still firmly believe that to be the case today. Whether the Big 12 expands by 2 or 4 schools, it’s extremely difficult to see how Cincinnati wouldn’t be involved in any combination. At worst, the Bearcats seem to be the #2 option out of the realistic expansion candidates regardless of who might be the personal #1 favorite of any Big 12 school. They provide a solid new TV market, excellent historical performance in both football and basketball, revamped facilities, an entry point into the state of Ohio (which would become the best football recruiting territory in the Big 12 outside of the state of Texas), good academics (particularly at the graduate level) and a way to eliminate the issue of West Virginia being a geographic and cultural island within the league. Cincinnati might not be the very best option in any of those individual categories, but it is the only one that is good-to-great across-the-board for the Big 12.

PRIME CONTENDERS

HOUSTON

When some Tweets from well-connected Dave Sittler surfaced over one year ago(!) that Houston would be a prime expansion target for the Big 12, I noted the following:

Putting aside the Big 12’s obvious delusions of grandeur of reverse raiding the Big Ten for Nebraska or adding Notre Dame and/or Florida State, this actually appears to be some legitimate information from someone with contacts with people that control the situation. Follow Sittler’s Twitter timeline for some further comments. Bottom line: Houston has seriously vaulted itself into Big 12 expansion talks. Now, this makes little sense for the Big 12 when looking at the typical goals of power conference realignment, such as expanding into new TV markets and recruiting territories. However, we would be remiss to forget that Texas politics (whether we’re talking about the state itself or the university) effectively control the Big 12 (as Sittler alluded to in his Tweets). The Big 12 was initially formed with heavy demands from then-Texas Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock and other Texas politicians in order to get Texas Tech and Baylor to tag along with UT and Texas A&M. It’s a bit of surprise to see such relatively strong statements about Houston’s Big 12 candidacy here, but not completely shocking when looking at the political history of the conference. Back in the midst of conference realignment mania in 2010, I recall then-UT President Bill Powers stating that it was a goal for Houston to become a “Tier 1” university, so there was an acknowledgment even back then of some broader goals to elevate the stature of that school.

Sure enough, look at the explicit Tweets from the past week from the Governor of Texas, Lt. Governor of Texas and the President of the University of Texas:

The president of Texas Tech then also issued a statement in support of adding Houston to the Big 12. It’s pretty clear that no matter what people will try to argue, there’s a whole separate political game that’s being played here where the normal metrics of conference realignment (such as obtaining a new TV market) do not apply.

Keep in mind that the Big 12 requires 75% of its members to approve a new school, which means any expansion candidate needs 8 votes. As a result, Texas and Texas Tech cannot block Big 12 expansion by themselves, but don’t be surprised if TCU and Baylor fall in line behind their state counterparts. TCU and Baylor might be private schools, but they certainly aren’t beneath the state political game, particularly with how Baylor got into the original Big 12 due to powerful alums in the Texas state government in the early-1990s and leveraged lawmakers that played a part in derailing the proposed Pac-16 deal of 2010. Meanwhile, TCU essentially owes its Big 12 membership to the efforts of UT, so it’s not a stretch to see the Longhorns call in a chit on that front.

The upshot is that it won’t take much for the Texas-based schools to effectively have veto power over any Big 12 expansion decision: if UT and Texas Tech are politically-aligned and just attract one of either Baylor or TCU, then they have as much leverage as the University of Virginia did in making its vote for ACC expansion in 2003 contingent upon inviting Virginia Tech (which also happened to be forced upon UVA by state lawmakers, including prominent moves by then-Lt. Gov. and current US. Senator and Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine*). There are other reasons that Houston could be a solid expansion pick for the Big 12, such as its institutional support and solidifying a Houston TV market that is being encroached upon by the SEC via Texas A&M and LSU fans, but the Texas state political developments may trump everything else. That’s why no one other than Cincinnati should feel very safe in a 2-team expansion by the Big 12 and a great candidate could be left without a chair when the music stops even in a 4-team expansion.

(* Judging by the Democratic National Convention last night, I’m fairly certain that Tim Kaine loves balloons more than my 7-year old twins… and every other kid that I’ve ever met in my entire lifetime.)

BYU

If Houston could get into the Big 12 because of outside personal political relationships even if it doesn’t fit traditional conference realignment goals, BYU might end up outside of the Big 12 because its relationships (for better or worse) within the conference haven’t been as strong despite being arguably the strongest single expansion option. When looking at what “matters” to university presidents in expansion, BYU seems to fit the bill: great fan base, excellent academics, new and growing TV market, national appeal due to its direct link to the LDS church (essentially being to Mormons what Notre Dame is to Catholics) and a fantastic top-to-bottom athletic department*. If the Big 12 were to pick a school based on a blind resume of the metrics that are critical to conference realignment decisions, I’d be certain that BYU would be picked every time.

(* I’ve seen some suggestions that BYU might end up being a football-only candidate for the Big 12 in order to avoid Sunday play issues, but that doesn’t seem like the right move for the conference considering how strong BYU is in basketball and non-revenue sports. BYU’s entire athletic department can provide a ton of value, whereas there are some other schools that we’ll discuss later that would make more sense as football-only membership considerations.)

Yet, for whatever reason, the expansion prospects for BYU seem to run hot and cold. There are certainly plenty of observers out there that believe that BYU is near the top of the list, but then there are very well-respected reporters that have been correct more often than not on realignment news (such as Brett McMurphy of ESPN.com) that have been much more skeptical of BYU’s chances. One argument that is out there is that the Big 12 is focused on expanding to the east. The prohibition of athletic teams playing on Sunday is another possible negative factor, although it wouldn’t be applicable to football. A more pernicious suggestion brought up by Chadd Scott is that there could be an anti-Mormon sentiment among university administrators.

Despite the cold bucket of ice water above for BYU fans, I’ve been on the record many times that if I were running the Big 12, the top two picks for expansion based on what the conference claims to be looking for ought to be Cincinnati and BYU. If the Big 12 is looking to maximize revenue (which is goal #1 in conference realignment), then it’s difficult to see them passing on BYU regardless of any other perceived problems.

UCONN

UConn is right next to BYU in terms of being an extremely valuable school by G5 standards that would fare well in a blind resume test. It is the only school mentioned here that’s a true unambiguous state flagship university, which P5 members inherently like since most of them are flagships themselves. At the same time, Connecticut has great academics, a location that gives them access to the massive New York City and Boston TV markets on top of its affluent home state and elite of the elite programs in basketball (both men and women). Indeed, UConn’s stock has been justifiably rising in Big 12 expansion reports compared to very few mentions over the past couple of years. UConn just feels like it should be a P5 school and it has the athletic department revenue to back it up. The two main concerns for UConn’s Big 12 candidacy are (a) geographic fit and (b) football fit (which rules conference realignment). The geographic fit issue is based on the fact that it extends the already far-flung Big 12 all the way to the Northeastern corner of the United States. Personally, I think that issue can be overcome by UConn since it could argue that it wouldn’t be any more of a geographic outlier than BYU (who doesn’t seem to get docked points as much on geography) and its access to the NYC and Boston markets would justify the move.

Now, the football fit isn’t as easily explained away. It’s not so much the on-the-field performance of UConn, but rather that the other football-based metrics, such as the lack of a recruiting territory (where New England and the neighboring State of New York constitute arguably the worst per capita FBS recruiting region in the country). UConn also simply has a young FBS football program – it only moved up to then-Division I-A in 2002 in a world where P5 conferences (whether right or wrong) put a premium on having generations of tradition.

So, the institutional profile, TV markets and overall athletic department strength point to UConn being a very strong candidate for the Big 12 even if there’s only a 2-team expansion, yet the geographic and football fit issues make it vulnerable enough that its fans are unfortunately going to sweat whether it’s a 2 or 4-team expansion. To be clear, if I were running the Big 12, I’d certainly add UConn in a 4-team expansion since I believe that it’s clearly a P5-level institution, but it’s a school whose prospects are hard to read in the real world. UConn is essentially in the same “hot or cold” boat as BYU where there are respected people that believe that they’re near the top of the Big 12 expansion list while others that are in the know aren’t as optimistic.

MEMPHIS

If Houston has political backers in Big 12 expansion, Memphis is engaging in some Chicago/FIFA/IOC-style “patronage” with FedEx chairman Fred Smith essentially offering to pay for the Tigers to get into the league. Memphis also brought out its biggest PR gun to date this week:

The next time that someone tells you that you’re the dorky college football equivalent of a baseball sabermetrician for being obsessed with conference realignment, you can retort that Justin Timberlake (who is in contention for The Song of the Summer yet again*) is ALL-IN on the action.

(* My personal definition of “The Song of the Summer” is (a) it needs to be played within the first 15 minutes after the dance floor opens at any wedding that summer and (b) Grandma needs to be dancing to that song without irony or needing to participate in a gimmicky line dance. On those metrics, Timberlake’s “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” is probably taking the cake since it’s a bit peppier than the entries from Drake and Panda while also being completely inoffensive. I think Sia is coming on strong here as we get towards the end of the summer, though. Unfortunately, my favorite performance from JT isn’t getting much airplay at weddings.)

In all seriousness, Memphis has a number of attractive attributes for the Big 12: improving football program, solid TV market, excellent basketball fan base (which may or may not translate to football), location in a top notch football recruiting territory and geographically sensible for the conference overall. The negatives are based on academic reputation and its direct competition from the SEC from multiple directions. If Cincinnati is a likely pick and Houston has the political leverage to get into the Big 12, it feels like this is going to be a competition between BYU, UConn and Memphis for the last two spots in a 4-team expansion. In particular, outside of the fact that both UConn and Memphis are known more as being basketball schools, UConn seems have strengths where Memphis is weaker and vice versa. It will be interesting to see what the Big 12 prioritizes here.

ALL OR NOTHING

UCF AND USF

I put Central Florida and South Florida together in the analysis since my feeling is that the Big 12 is either going to add both of the schools or neither of them at all. The main arguments in favor of UCF and USF are location, location and location. The Big 12 obviously has a great hold on the state of Texas but suffers from very poor demographics outside of it, so the thought of adding the state of Florida to that mix for TV market and recruiting purposes can seem intoxicating. At the same time, both UCF and USF have massive enrollments (particularly UCF), which helps when the perception is that bigger is better.

However, the flip side of being in the state of Florida is that UCF and USF face the strongest in-state competition by far of any the Big 12 expansion candidates with the exception of Houston (which has political factors in its favor within the Big 12), so the on-paper market size may not translate into legitimate market share. I’ve spent more time in the I-4 Corridor between Orlando and Tampa than any other place besides my hometown of Chicago. The fact of the matter is that Florida and Florida State have as strong of a hold as any pair of schools has on their home state in the entire country (including the Texas and Texas A&M combo in the state of Texas). Plus, the Miami Hurricanes will still get significant mindshare in the Southern half of Florida whenever they end up being competitive. (Don’t let the current relative down period for the Canes lull you into thinking otherwise.) Other Big 12 expansion candidates might be in markets that are within the territories of P5 conferences, such as Cincinnati being within the Big Ten footprint (covered by Ohio State) or Memphis being within the SEC footprint (with Tennessee as an in-state competitor and Ole Miss being nearby across state lines), but the P5 fan penetration in those markets are on the weaker end. In contrast, the Orlando and Tampa markets are among the strongest ones out there for both the SEC and ACC. There are a lot of college football fans on paper in those markets, but they’re also largely accounted for by the Gators, Noles and (to a lesser extent) Canes. It would be like an upstart baseball league deciding that it was going to take the Yankees and Mets head-on in the New York market based on the theory that there are a lot of baseball fans living there (which would be financial suicide).

Therefore, a conference can’t expect to extract any value out of the Florida market with only one school unless they’re UF, FSU or maybe Miami. If the Big 12 really believes that getting into the Florida market is truly what is best for their long-term interests, then it ought to add both of UCF and USF. Otherwise, adding only one of those schools is simply going to provide a Florida outpost on paper without really gaining any legitimate market share. The league simply can’t compete in the state of Florida in a half-assed manner with such dominant pre-existing competition from the SEC and ACC. Once again, market share means much more than market size in this particular analysis. This is an all-or-nothing proposition for the Big 12.

ON THE UPSWING

COLORADO STATE

The fact that Colorado State has been wedging itself into the Big 12 expansion discussion shouldn’t be a surprise if you have been applying my first rule of conference realignment of thinking like a university president instead of a sports fan. CSU has solid academics in a fast-growing market that has only one direct P5 competitor (former Big 12 member Colorado). The state of Colorado is sort of the opposite of the description of the Florida market above: there isn’t very much competition considering the size of the population base, but a lot of people aren’t committed to being fans of CU or college sports overall. The risk of adding Colorado State is that the Big 12 would be adding a school where its home market sports fans aren’t known for having a propensity to support college sports. On the other hand, the Denver market in particular is growing so fast with such fantastic demographics in terms of income and education levels that it’s an area where the Big 12 presidents would love to get back into ASAP. The addition of Colorado State to the Big 12 would seem to make the most sense if they’re paired up with BYU as part of a 4-team expansion (with the other 2 schools from the east).

THE PRESIDENTS’ SOFT SPOT

TULANE

Pushing further on the first rule of conference realignment of thinking like a university president, I’ve said for several years that Big 12 expansion observers ought to keep an eye on Tulane. This is the only school in the Big 12 mix that is a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU) that is a marker of being a part of the educational elite. (Rice is also an AAU member, but they don’t seem to be garnering any real consideration.) At the same time, Tulane is in the New Orleans market with access to top notch recruiting in the state of Louisiana and only one in-state competitor (albeit a monster in the form of LSU). I’m not saying that Tulane is likely to be added to be the Big 12, but they’re going to get a lot more consideration than the average fan would expect because they’re the type of school that university presidents love. Indeed, Jake Trotter of ESPN.com brought up the prospect of Tulane being a Big 12 expansion candidate earlier this week.

THE FANS’ SOFT SPOT

BOISE STATE

Bob Bowlsby mentioned the possibility of adding football-only members to the Big 12, which for many observers brought to mind two schools: BYU and Boise State. As I noted earlier, it doesn’t make much sense to me to add BYU as a football-only member because it has such a strong top-to-bottom athletic program than the Big 12 ought to want as an all-sports member. In contrast, Boise State seems to fit as a potential football-only option since its non-football sports aren’t bringing as much value and they’re even more geographically isolated from the rest of the Big 12 than BYU or UConn (which isn’t a big deal for football but can cause logistical challenges for all other sports). The problem is that Boise State is the classic “Thinking Like a Sports Fan” choice, where fans love watching Boise State on-the-field (at least compared to virtually all other G5 options), but they don’t fit any of the academic, TV market or demographic metrics that university presidents are looking for in expansion decisions. The on-the-field performance of Boise State over the past decade has been stunning, yet the problem for the Broncos (whether right or wrong) is that conference realignment is more about off-the-field attributes. The main off-the-field factor that Boise State can hang its hat on is that it has become the most valuable national TV property in the G5 to the point that the current Mountain West Conference media contract has a provision that was effectively written to provide the Broncos with a financial bonus for national appearances, so that would be the attribute that the school is going to emphasize in any Big 12 discussions.

THE SERVICE ACADEMIES

AIR FORCE, ARMY AND NAVY

At least for me, the schools that immediately came to mind when the Big 12 said it was contemplating football-only members were the service academies. Indeed, Air Force, Army and Navy are strong national brands with stellar academics and the Department of Defense recently opened the door for their athletes to have their 24-month service commitment waived if they go directly to the pros after graduation (which could help with recruiting). Do I think any of these schools are likely to end up in the Big 12? Not really. However, that would likely be more because Air Force, Army and Navy would take themselves out of consideration themselves as opposed to the Big 12 not wanting them. Air Force was reportedly approached several years ago by the Big 12, but preemptively nixed the discussions because the Cadets were concerned about competitiveness. This stance might change if the academies start getting more top-level athletes due to the more open policy of allowing grads to go straight to the pros. Regardless, the service academies have unique value that isn’t replicated anywhere else at the G5 level, so they ought to considered if football-only options are on the table for the Big 12.

CONCLUSION

The Big 12 has kicking the proverbial can down the road on expansion for years and years. Frankly, they should have expanded to at least 12 back when they lost Texas A&M and Missouri to the SEC and the league was teetering on collapse. There’s still a decent chance that the Big 12 could come back and state that they won’t expand any further, but this time seems different. It was one thing for the Big 12 to be behind the Big Ten and SEC in terms of financial stability since that has been the normal state of college athletics for the past few decades, anyway. However, it’s an entirely different matter to find the Big 12 cemented on a lower pecking order than the ACC. I believe the Big 12 has finally realized that size does matter in terms of college sports power even if they never end up with their own conference network. In fact, Dennis Dodd is reporting that the Big 12 is looking to make an expansion decision prior to the beginning of this season, which means that the college sports world could have some finality on this issue within the next few weeks. For the G5 schools that are pushing for an invite to the Big 12, August 2016 will be the most important month in the histories of their respective athletic departments. Once the door closes on Big 12 expansion, the power conferences will be set in place for the next generation.

(Image from SBNation)

Big 12 Expansion or Contraction? Watch Out for Oklahoma

On By Frank the TankIn Big Ten, College Basketball, College Football799 Comments

It might be legitimate smoke or just the hot summer air of the peanut gallery, but conference realignment talk is still percolating in the wake of University of Oklahoma President David Boren’s comments last month about wanting Big 12 expansion. Lee Barfknecht of the Omaha World-Herald reported that five Big 12 schools approached the Big Ten back in 2010 (intimating that they were Nebraska, Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa State and Texas A&M) about joining forces with Jim Delany. Today, Berry Tramel of The Oklahoman (essentially OU’s home newspaper) explained why Nebraska would never leave the Big Ten and noted that OU was “thrilled at the prospect of joining a conference that included the likes of Stanford and Cal-Berkeley” when it was considering the Pac-12. Finally, Dick Weiss (a Naismith Hall of Fame inductee for sportswriting as opposed to a plebeian blogger like myself) “casually” Tweeted the following on Monday:

Weiss has been on the conference realignment beat before as he was one of the first to report about the “Catholic 7” breaking away from the Big East and then forming… the Big East.

Edit: Weiss has clarified his Tweet:

I don’t position this blog as a newsbreaking site, but I have heard from a knowledgeable person with extensive contacts with current and former Big 12 members (i.e. knew specific details about Nebraska heading to the Big Ten and Texas A&M to the SEC beforehand that couldn’t have been simply guessed from the news) that basically had this to say: Oklahoma isn’t happy with the Big 12 and wants to get out.

Putting aside all of the valid issues of whether the Big 12’s grant of rights agreement can be broken or whether Oklahoma could politically leave Oklahoma State behind (both of which need to be cleared before any moves are even possible), it doesn’t seem as though OU wants to stand pat. David Boren’s comments about wanting Big 12 expansion with the “right schools” was more of a warning shot to the rest of the league because, frankly, the “right schools” wouldn’t ever take a Big 12 invite. As a result, everyone in Sooners land seems to agree on the overarching desire to leave the Big 12, but there are two mindsets within the school: the academic wishes of Boren and the athletic interests of OU Athletic Director Joe Catiglione. (Emphasis that these are currently mindsets that could take years to play out – please don’t interpret anything here as “Oklahoma is leaving for Conference X by the end of the year.”) Boren, not surprisingly, wants a more academic league, but it seems as though his focus is more on the Pac-12 as opposed to the Big Ten as of now. That’s not to say that OU wouldn’t consider the Big Ten (as it did in 2010), but there are still apparently concerns that the B1G would find OU to be academically acceptable. In contrast, the Pac-12 would like Oklahoma if they came with, say, Kansas. The West Coast league just doesn’t want an OU/Oklahoma State expansion (which is what OU had offered back in 2011 in the wake of Texas A&M bolting the Big 12 for the SEC). Meanwhile, the athletic side of the school would relish going to the SEC. Once again, the SEC would take Oklahoma in a heartbeat without Oklahoma State coming along. The SEC would likely prefer Kansas, as well, provided that the biggest dog of them all of Texas rejects their overtures.

Ah yes – Texas. The Longhorns aren’t oblivious to their rivals to the north. In a perfect world for Texas (as described to me by my Big 12 guy), they would want to join the ACC as full members with… wait for it… Notre Dame. Apparently, the UT people are convinced that the new College Football Playoff system will eventually drive the Irish to join a conference and Texas wants to be right alongside them. In turn, UT would also have Oklahoma and Kansas follow along to create an 18-school ACC behemoth. Texas would be fine with the same type of move to the Big Ten (although Notre Dame is contractually obligated to join the ACC if it chooses to drop independence until 2027, which would seemingly make that prospect impossible). The new Texas leadership doesn’t have the West Coast preference that their leaders circa 2010 had, so any new deal with the Pac-12 seems to be out. At the same time, the SEC continues to be simply a non-starter for the Longhorns.

Personally, I reflexively reject the viability of any realignment move predicated on Notre Dame joining a conference as a football member, where we might as well say that Texas would be willing to join the MAC if Notre Dame comes along with them. Also, the Irish would have 100% made a 4-team playoff in a year like 2012, so I consider any supposed South Bend-based worries about the CFP system to be false hopes for Texas partisans. Until I see actual consternation from Notre Dame itself about today’s college football world, they are going to be an immovable object. In that sense, it seems as though the smoke from Texas is more of a “If we get the PITCH PERFECT deal to move, then sure, we’ll move.”

Contrast this with Oklahoma, where they appear to be making public comments and private moves to put themselves in position to bolt from the Big 12 with merely a passable offer (as opposed to the perfect one that Texas would require). It then becomes a matter of whether it’s worth the risk of breaking the Big 12’s grant of rights of agreement with unpredictable damages claims (which I wrote about a couple of years ago) and/or any political fallout if Oklahoma proactively leaves the Big 12 without Oklahoma State.

If I were running the Big Ten, it’s time to take advantage of one of those rare moments where a national football brand name is essentially begging for offers. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: if we assume that Texas, Notre Dame and ACC schools are off the table, then the single most valuable expansion that the Big Ten can have at this point is adding Oklahoma and Kansas. These are two of the most elite blue blood brand names in college football and college basketball, respectively, and their small markets on-paper compared to Eastern options are irrelevant when they can effectively turn the Big Ten Network into a legit national network instead of a mostly regional one (which may become more important as cable cord cutting continues and the TV industry starts moving toward an a la carte or at least less-than-basic cable model). Also note that Kansas actually had the highest third tier TV rights revenue of any Big 12 school prior to the formation of the Longhorn Network, so it has been shown that the BTN can basically charge any price within KU’s market (and presumably OU’s market) and garner a ton of more revenue even with fewer households on paper.

Finally, I’m as much of a Big Ten academic snob as anyone, but Oklahoma’s academic reputation rankings have long been right in line with Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri and Iowa State despite OU never having had membership in the Association of American Universities. If the Big Ten is fine with Nebraska no longer being an AAU member from an academic standpoint, then that should make any concerns about OU’s academics much less of a roadblock. The prospect of Oklahoma and Kansas moving within the next few years is simply much more likely than schools like Virginia and North Carolina leaving the ACC within the next generation, so an OU/KU combo is the best viable expansion option for the Big Ten by far as of today.

(Image from KOTV)

Houston Launching Into the Big 12 Expansion Discussion

On By Frank the TankIn College Basketball, College Football, Sports464 Comments

The comments from University of Oklahoma President David Boren last week voicing his desire for Big 12 expansion has kicked up some dust on conference realignment speculation. National media people such as Andy Staples from Sports Illustrated and Jake Trotter from ESPN have started weighing in on at least the possibility of the Big 12 expanding (even if there is a wide range in opinions about how likely that will be in the near future). The Twitter universe continues to be a source of rumors of all types (and for those of you that follow the NBA closely like I do, this is the most rumor-filled week of the year on Twitter with free agency starting), including the following:

Yeesh. A Paul Finebaum Tweet that quotes Colin Cowherd*. All we need to do is add in the HOT TAKES of Stephen A. Smith and (IMHO, the absolute worst) Skip Bayless and we would have an ESPN shock jock grand slam.

(* What’s interesting is that if you’ve ever heard Cowherd in interviews outside of his own show, he actually comes across as a measured and analytical guy with a ton of business savvy. I didn’t even feel he was out of line in his awkward interview with Jim Harbaugh yesterday that received a lot of attention. Cohwerd reminds me of a sports version of Howard Stern in a way, where I never really enjoyed Stern’s show but it was clear that he was a media business genius. Of course, that makes Cowherd’s liberal use of HOT TAKES on his show that much more disappointing. Finebaum, Smith and Bayless are just plain terrible and don’t know any better.)

It’s all interesting speculation to get people to call in on radio shows, but there’s not much substance. Even if we were to buy that Oklahoma were to go to the SEC, how do we rectify the clash of interests between the Pac-12 Network and the ESPN-owned Longhorn Network if Texas were to go to the Pac-12? I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: Texas will never get a better offer than the Pac-16 deal from 2010 that would have brought Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State along with them. That would have given them a power base in a superconference with a division largely made up of their historical rivals. Now, Texas A&M has gone its separate way to the SEC and the Texas TV deal with ESPN complicates any potential move. Honestly, it’s hard to see Texas ever agreeing to be an equal member of any conference. Sure, the Big Ten, SEC and Pac-12 all want Texas (just as the Big Ten wants Notre Dame), but it’s with the caveat of the Longhorns being an equal member. Outside of the Big 12, the only other viable power conference option would be for Texas to go independent in football and then join the ACC for other sports in the same manner as Notre Dame. This allows Texas to receive the special treatment it desires/needs if it ever wants to leave the Big 12.

That being said, one of the things that I was very wrong about in 2010 was thinking that Texas wanted to get away from the Big 12 members that weren’t bringing in much revenue and that they could make so much more in the Big Ten (or Pac-12 or SEC) by aligning themselves with much stronger brands and markets. Instead, Texas has proven that it wants other schools like Texas Tech and Baylor to be dependent upon them. Notre Dame wants everyone to get off of their lawn as an independent, whereas Texas wants a huge estate with lots of worker bees from Lubbock and Waco. Controlling a conference (even if it’s weak) has shown to be more of an end game for Texas than merely being a member of a strong conference.

With that backdrop of the Texas desire for control, here is a sampling of direct Big 12 expansion Tweets from Dave Sittler over the past few days that conference realignment observers should be much more aware of, as he is known to have very close connections with David Boren and administrators throughout the Big 12:

https://twitter.com/DaveSittler/status/614816720948101121

https://twitter.com/DaveSittler/status/614828709405573120

https://twitter.com/DaveSittler/status/614830664697839616

Putting aside the Big 12’s obvious delusions of grandeur of reverse raiding the Big Ten for Nebraska or adding Notre Dame and/or Florida State, this actually appears to be some legitimate information from someone with contacts with people that control the situation. Follow Sittler’s Twitter timeline for some further comments. Bottom line: Houston has seriously vaulted itself into Big 12 expansion talks. Now, this makes little sense for the Big 12 when looking at the typical goals of power conference realignment, such as expanding into new TV markets and recruiting territories. However, we would be remiss to forget that Texas politics (whether we’re talking about the state itself or the university) effectively control the Big 12 (as Sittler alluded to in his Tweets). The Big 12 was initially formed with heavy demands from then-Texas Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock and other Texas politicians in order to get Texas Tech and Baylor to tag along with UT and Texas A&M. It’s a bit of surprise to see such relatively strong statements about Houston’s Big 12 candidacy here, but not completely shocking when looking at the political history of the conference. Back in the midst of conference realignment mania in 2010, I recall then-UT President Bill Powers stating that it was a goal for Houston to become a “Tier 1” university, so there was an acknowledgment even back then of some broader goals to elevate the stature of that school.

This is just my personal reading between the lines, but it’s noteworthy to me that these quotes and sources are coming out of Oklahoma. There isn’t any obvious reason why Oklahoma itself would be pushing Houston specifically over the likes of BYU or Memphis (note that it seems that Cincinnati is still a frontrunner for a Big 12 spot) – it’s hard for me to fathom that the Sooners have a strong feeling either way outside of who can make them the most money. As a result, these aren’t quotes that seem to be pushing a specific school’s agenda, but rather a reflection of what the Big 12 overall is thinking… or more specifically, what Texas is thinking (as the Longhorns do have a very specific interest one way or another about Houston). This is critical because if Texas wants (or outside forces like politicians force them to choose) Houston, then that’s going to be a game-changer for Big 12 expansion candidacies. If a spot is effectively reserved for Houston by the powers that be, then that is going to be disheartening for schools like BYU, Memphis and Tulane. Cincinnati seems to be in good shape with the right combination of a solid athletic program in an advantageous location as a bridge between West Virginia and the rest of the Big 12.

It goes to show you that whatever might seem logical in conference realignment can get changed up by outside forces (such as politicians in the form of a Bob Bullock-type) or personal connections (see how the athletic directors at TCU and Louisville won over their counterparts in the Big 12 and ACC, respectively, while BYU’s personnel seemed to have turned off the Big 12). Who knows when or where Big 12 expansion will happen, but it’s fair to at least move Houston onto the short list of candidates (as opposed to being a complete long-shot) based on these Tweets. These comments carry a lot more weight than what Finebaum and Cowherd are throwing out there. At the same time, if both Texas and Oklahoma want the Big 12 to expand, then expansion will likely happen sooner rather than later.

Have a great Fourth of July!

(Image from Pinterest)

Bad Blood within the Big 12: Oklahoma President Wants Expansion and What it Means for the Big Ten

On By Frank the TankIn Big Ten, College Basketball, College Football, Sports283 Comments

I know that is has been a looooooooong time since my last post. Between coaching basketball and baseball teams for both of my kids and work, it’s been tough to write lately. The patience of the readers and commenters here is sincerely appreciated.

Not much has gone on in the conference realignment world over the past couple of months between a few smaller moves on the margins, such as the Big Ten adding the Johns Hopkins women’s lacrosse team as an affiliate member. (They didn’t join the B1G at the same time as the men’s team.) However, University of Oklahoma President David Boren had some interesting direct comments yesterday about Big 12 expansion. Some quotes from NewsOK about his desire for the Big 12 to add teams:

University of Oklahoma President David Boren on Wednesday reiterated his stance that the Big 12 should expand to 12 teams.

“I think it’s something we should strive for while we have the time, stability, all of that to look and be choosy,” Boren said. “(We) can be very selective about who we want to add. It would have to add value to the conference. I think we should.”

Boren said he worried about not only the perception of the league as other major conferences have expanded but there long-term health of such a setup.

“How many years can this go on?” Boren said. “Finally, it just gets to be really debilitating. I worry about that. That’s something I just worry about long-term about the conference, not short term.”

Boren also threw some shade on the Longhorn Network and the notion that the Big 12 TV revenue distributions would be reduced by expansion:

Boren also said without explicitly naming it that the Longhorn Network—which keeps the Big 12 from having a conference network like the SEC, Big 10 and Pac 12—is a big problem for the conference.

“The elephant in the room remains the network south of us that has struggled and has in a way as long as it’s there,” Boren said. “And we have done quite well with our network and if anything ever changed, it has value to it which we see. But someday, maybe we’ll get past that other problem as well. It’s a problem.”

Boren said the problem of reduced revenue per school with expansion wasn’t as big of a hurdle as it had been made out to be.

“The contract says that our main television contract … if we grow from 10 to 11 or 11 to 12, their payments to us grow proportionally,” Boren said. “So everybody’s share stays the same. If it’s ‘X’ dollars, it stays ‘X’ dollars.

“Our main media contract says it’s not the same pie now cut 12 ways instead of 10.”

Boren did say that that only includes the primary television contract, not other revenue that is split between the schools.

“It’s not total because there’s some smaller—much smaller—amounts of money around the edges but if you can find the right people, it should be additive even though it’s split 12 ways instead of 10.”

Boren provides an important confirmation that the Big 12’s first tier TV contracts would increase proportionally in the event of expansion. Essentially, the notion that each Big 12 member’s revenue slice would be reduced in the event of expansion is largely a non-factor. As a result, any potential Big 12 expansion school doesn’t need to show that they would directly increase the value of the league by $20 million (as some Big 12 expansion opponents have suggested) – that increase is already baked into the conference’s TV contracts.

West Virginia Athletic Director Shane Lyons also indicated support for Big 12 expansion earlier this month (albeit athletic directors generally do not drive conference realignment talks in the way that university presidents have done, notwithstanding the efforts of special exceptions such as Tom Jurich of Louisville and

Does this mean that the Big 12 will take my advice and invite BYU and Cincinnati (or Memphis or other potential candidates)? I’ll reiterate my belief that the Big 12 has been focusing on short-term revenue dollars at the expense of long-term stability… and Boren indicates that there isn’t even much of a short-term revenue upside to avoiding further expansion. The worst thing that happened to the Big 12 leadership (and in turn, many of their fans) is that they deluded themselves into believing schools from the ACC (notably Florida State) could possibly be interested in joining the Texas-centric league. Ever since that occurred, the Big 12 has been paralyzed on the expansion front with an overrating of their position in the conference realignment marketplace (which is #5 out of the 5 power conferences). The Big Ten might have initially wanted Texas and Notre Dame (and to be sure, I wanted them as a fan), but the league moved on with adding a national brand in Nebraska and two mega-markets with Rutgers (New York City) and Maryland (Washington/Baltimore). The Pac-12 had a Pac-16 proposal to create a superconference that would have completely upended the college sports world by adding Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Colorado, but when that fell through, the league quickly shifted gears to solidify the Rocky Mountain region with a smaller expansion with Colorado and Utah. The SEC surely would have wanted Texas and Oklahoma, too, but they went out and nabbed Texas A&M and Missouri. The ACC will always dream of getting Notre Dame as a full member while harboring their own delusions of thinking that they could ever raid the Big Ten, but that league still got the Irish to commit to being a non-football member with 5 football games per season against ACC opponents and pilfered much of the value of the old Big East.

The point is that the other 4 power conferences gained more power and adjusted even when they didn’t get their #1 and/or #2 expansion options, whereas the Big 12 simply survived. Now, the Big 12 will always survive as long as Texas stays there. The MAC could add Texas and it would be automatically deemed to be a power league. However, if the Big 12 ever wants to get past mere survival and continuing to be the primary target for raiding by the other power conferences, it needs a more cohesive long-term strategy that doesn’t involve pie-in-the-sky hopes and dreams. The only realistic pool of expansion candidates for the Big 12 exists in the non-power “Group of Five” conferences plus independent BYU. The Big 12 can’t just sit back and wait for much longer – it needs to proactively find a way to extract value from 2 (or even 4) expansion candidates from that group in order to be more than a very regionalized (with a West Virginia appendage) conference.

Otherwise, the words of David Boren should be cautionary to the Big 12: this doesn’t sound like a guy that would turn down an invite from the Big Ten, Pac-12 or SEC. Indeed, once you get past the expansion targets that multiple conferences lust after because of their combination of athletic value and academic prestige (i.e. Texas, Notre Dame, North Carolina), Oklahoma is probably the single most valuable school that you could plausibly envision actually moving conferences in the nearish-term (defined as the next 10 years). I’ve stated here previously that if you take away any Texas/Notre Dame/Florida State expansion scenarios, the Big Ten adding Oklahoma and Kansas is probably the most valuable expansion that the league could realistically obtain. Their respective direct markets might not be the largest, but the national brand values of Oklahoma football and Kansas basketball are massive. With the NYC and DC markets already in the fold, the Big Ten Network is not necessarily going to be swayed by market size unless it’s the size of California, Texas or Florida (all of which might be unrealistic). Instead, expansion is about taking the last step of turning the BTN into a true national network, which is something that OU football and KU basketball can do. (Think about how much more attractive the Big Ten West looks as a division with Oklahoma in the fold, too.) On paper, Oklahoma may have some academic issues with the Big Ten since it is not an AAU member, but I believe the conference would look at form over substance in this instance with such an elite national football brand. Oklahoma has long been in the same academic tier as its neighbors of Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri, so this would not be a completely outside-the-box expansion. To be sure, it would be a much easier case for OU if it did have AAU membership, but they’re such a valuable potential addition (like non-AAU member Notre Dame) that I think that it would tip the balance.

The massive mountain-sized caveat, though, is that Oklahoma and Kansas aren’t schools that have complete autonomy over their conference decisions. Oklahoma State and Kansas State need to be taken care of if those schools move, which means either (a) the Big 12 can’t collapse (AKA Texas can’t move anywhere else) as a result of OU and KU ditching the league or (b) OSU and KSU have to come along with them as a package. This is big difference from the decisions of Colorado, Nebraska and Missouri leaving the Big 12 and even Texas A&M was able to avoid outside political pressure (which had occurred during the collapse of the Southwest Conference in connection with the formation of the Big 12 and the potential leaving behind of Baylor in the Pac-16 proposal) since Texas had (and still has) such huge financial incentives with the Longhorn Network that provide it with golden handcuffs to the Big 12.

Indeed, the Big Ten, SEC and Pac-12 would all take Oklahoma in a heartbeat, but the existence of Oklahoma State could limit the options of the Sooners. Note that the Pac-12 turned down an expansion proposal from Oklahoma and Oklahoma State in the chaotic days following Texas A&M’s announcement that it was leaving the Big 12 for the SEC, which means that the Pac-12 did NOT reject Oklahoma as an individual expansion candidate. If Oklahoma and Kansas were making that expansion proposal instead, then they would almost assuredly be Pac-12 members today.

Regardless, David Boren is pretty directly stating that Oklahoma isn’t that happy with where the Big 12 is today. Whether OU has any leverage to do anything about it depends upon whether it can act alone (in which case it has all of the options in the world with the Big Ten, SEC and Pac-12) or needs to do everything in tandem with Oklahoma State (where the only option might be to grit their teeth and stay in the Big 12).

(Image from Wikipedia)

College Football Playoff and Big 12 Expansion Rumors: Cincinnati and… Memphis?

On By Frank the TankIn Big Ten, College Football, Illinois Fighting Illini, Sports1,677 Comments

With our first regular season of the College Football Playoff over, I’ve got to paraphrase the ESPN commercials that have been running all year: I’M IN. It’s not perfect, as I’ve had my issues with the CFP committee and my optimal dream is to have an 8-team playoff with auto-bids for the 5 power conference champions (assuming that they are all “one true champions”), but from a pure unattached sports fan perspective (outside of sweating out whether my 6-6 Illini would actually have a bowl slot), having multiple teams from multiple conferences still legitimately in the hunt on Championship Saturday with a whole slate of games with massive stakes is a huge improvement over the old BCS system. There have been too many years where fans have been left with entrenched teams at #1 and #2  in the BCS rankings and/or several power conferences completely out of the national title chase for the last anticlimactic month of the season from a national viewpoint. That definitely wasn’t a problem this season – it felt as if though there were multiple de facto playoff games every week with a broad cross section of teams from all of the 5 power conferences (although the unrequited love for the SEC West got be suffocating after awhile). This is what I was hoping for when I wrote my “BCS Final Four” proposal four years ago that ended up looking a lot like what the new CFP system turned out to be today. It would have been nice if the Rose Bowl could have still received a traditional Big Ten vs. Pac-12 matchup, but most sports fans aren’t going to be complaining about Oregon vs. Florida State and Alabama vs. Ohio State on New Year’s Day in a survive and advance doubleheader.

Of course, in the blog/Twitter niche that I’ve staked out, the question that I’m getting the most right now is whether the CFP committee’s snub of the Big 12 and its co-champions of Baylor and TCU will spur that conference to finally expand. Indeed, Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby has stated that the league coming up empty in playoff bids “will certainly be catalyst for discussion and [the Big 12 will] have to weight whether this is substantial enough to add institutions.” Now, I have been an advocate of Big 12 expansion (with Cincinnati and BYU as the top two choices) and believe that the conference badly wants two obvious non-power conference teams to rise up on their own as expansion targets (in the way that Utah and TCU had made names for themselves a few years ago in the Mountain West Conference) no matter how much they tout their company line about being happy at 10 members. However, the effect of College Football Playoff bids on conference realignment is a red herring. The Big 12’s weak TV markets, population demographics, and recruiting areas outside of the state of Texas are really what the conference needs to worry about addressing through expansion in the long-term. Conferences don’t expand to get more playoff teams; instead, conferences expand to make more money. Those might be related issues, but they aren’t one and the same. Ohio State completely taking Wisconsin out to the woodshed had more of an effect on Baylor (or TCU or whoever the Big 12 wanted to name its champ)* not getting into the playoff than the lack of a Big 12 conference championship game.

(* To be sure, I’m happy that the CFP committee didn’t end up rewarding the hypocritical and contradictory statements that Bowlsby has made over the last 6 months, whether that snub was intentional or unintentional. The misguided arrogance to have an entire league marketing campaign based on “One True Champion” touting the round-robin schedule and then blatantly backtrack to attempt to get two schools into the playoff by naming co-champions was rightly punished by the karmic sports gods.)

Even when looking at conference realignment through the prism of the new playoff system, most writers and fans have had the Big 12 expansion analysis backwards: The financial value of a conference championship game isn’t tied to how it helps (or hurts) a conference in getting into the new College Football Playoff. Instead, the critical question is how much the new College Football Playoff adds to the financial value of a conference championship game itself. The Big Ten signed a contract with Fox a few years ago that was worth over $24 million per year just in TV rights alone for the conference championship game. Remember that contract was signed in the BCS era where the ratings for conference championship games that didn’t involve a potential national championship game participant were often mediocre. With the top 4 CFP system, though, the chances are vastly increased that every conference championship game will have national title implications every year, which in turn drives up the value of those games significantly. (The SEC, ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 conference championship games all drew great overnight ratings over the weekend, even with the Ohio State-Wisconsin game being completely non-competitive after about the first half-hour.) If consolation Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl games are worth $40 million each to their participating conferences, then the conference championship games are arguably worth even more in this new system. The conference championship games are de facto playoff games that can be guaranteed every single year and easily monetized with 100% of the revenue controlled by the applicable conference. Sure, a league like the Big 12 could regularly end up having an important game on the last weekend of the season, such as the Baylor-Kansas State game this past Saturday, but the Big 12 can’t sell that matchup ahead of time for $50 million or more in the way that the Big Ten will likely be able to do with its conference championship game when it enters into a new TV contract in a couple of years. If/when we start seeing money being thrown around at those levels, then the financial argument for expansion becomes much more compelling for the Big 12 (whether it’s actually helpful for on-the-field playoff bids or not).

Considering all that has transpired over the past few days, it makes some comments last week on a Nashville radio station about the prospect of the Big 12 adding Cincinnati and Memphis (which I also discussed on Twitter on Friday) all the more interesting. I’m pretty cautious about giving too much credence to these types of rumors since sooooooooo many have turned into nothing over the years, but I’ll say this particular scenario is at least one that I’ve heard about separately prior to Friday. So, I’d put it in the plausible category – it might be a bit surprising if the Big 12 heads down that road, but it wouldn’t be shocking. IF the Big 12 decides that it wants/needs to expand (which is really the threshold question above everything else), then the reality is that (a) it’s not realistic at all that the Big 12 is going to poach anyone from the Big Ten, SEC, Pac-12 or ACC and (b) there’s no perfect football power-in-waiting available at the non-power “Group of Five” level. This means that Big 12 expansion candidates are inherently going to have some flaws and aren’t going to make hearts palpitate for the average fan. However, it’s very possible that any two random schools picked off the street could pay for themselves with how much conference championship games can be worth in the new CFP world.

Readers of this blog know that I have quite a bit of respect for Cincinnati and wrote in the Big 12 Expansion Index that it’s the one “obvious” expansion choice for the Big 12 (to the extent that there are any obvious choices at all). Memphis didn’t fare quite as well in that analysis from a year ago and it was mainly based on its historic football ineptitude. That being said, I’ve also always acknowledged that any school with a great basketball fan base (i.e. UConn, Memphis, San Diego State, New Mexico, etc.) could do wonders for its conference realignment prospects if it could merely be competent in football. (I’d also say the same thing about quality academic schools in attractive locations, as well – see how much Tulane and Rice could be worth if they could string a few winning seasons together.) Memphis with a solid football program can certainly be a financially viable addition and it’s in a recruiting rich area for both football and basketball players. While its market is in SEC territory, it’s a split area for football (mainly between Tennessee and Ole Miss), has shown to be unified for Memphis basketball, and it’s a region that isn’t oversaturated with power school competition (much like Cincinnati where it’s a great recruiting region with “only” Ohio State as an in-state competitor and it’s located on the outer geographic band of the flagship’s sphere of influence). In contrast, the states of Texas, Florida and North Carolina are overloaded with power conference schools already, which is a negative for the prospects of schools like UCF, USF, Houston and East Carolina even if they have a lot of other positive conference realignment attributes going for them.

This certainly isn’t a proverbial slam dunk. Like I’ve said, the threshold question is whether the Big 12 wants to expand at all (as they are awaiting feedback on their proposal to the NCAA to allow for leagues with less than 12 schools to hold a conference championship game). At the same time, Memphis isn’t suddenly a no-brainer addition – there are plenty of open issues, particularly whether its academic reputation would satisfy Texas and if its football success this past year is sustainable. Looking at conference realignment in a vacuum, the two most valuable Group of 5 schools are arguably BYU and UConn, so who knows how the Big 12 views either of those schools. I’ll re-state my firm belief that BYU would be a fantastic fit for the Big 12 both on-the-field and financially, but acknowledge that it’s the most unpredictable school that I’ve seen over the past few years of conference realignment both in terms of its own actions and how the rest of the Big 12 perceives the school. If the Big 12 expands and BYU is somehow passed over, then it would be a clear inverse of the Michael Corleone credo: “It’s not business, it’s just personal”. UConn is in a tough spot because it’s not a very good fit at all for the Big 12 culturally or geographically, yet it still needs to push hard for a place in that league since it doesn’t have any other power conference options forthcoming in the near future. It’s all an interesting set of circumstances right now. The last couple of spots in the Big 12 might be the final power conference additions that the college sports world will see in this generation, so the stakes are massive for those schools that have a viable chance.

(Image from Wikipedia)

Shake it Off: Random Thoughts about the College Football Playoffs, Big 12 Expansion and TV Contracts

On By Frank the TankIn Sports709 Comments

I know that it’s been a loooooong time since my last post. Let’s get right to some random thoughts:

(1) College Football Playoffs – We have seen two iterations of the College Football Playoff rankings and my mind comes back to the same question that I had when the powers that be first announced that the system would use a committee: Why is this any better than just using the AP Poll (or old Harris Poll)? (To be sure, the Coaches’ Poll is a worthless self-serving steaming pile of garbage.) The former BCS rankings were much maligned, but they were at least a little progressive in attempting to incorporate some objective computer rankings. All that I see with the new CFP rankings is a 12-person poll, which isn’t necessarily any better than other polls with much larger sample sizes. The NCAA Tournament Committee serves an important purpose for basketball since they are vetting at-large teams that much of the general public hasn’t seen before. However, a 4-team college football playoff is much more suited to a “Wisdom of Crowds” determination: the public has a fairly good sense of who it believes to be the very top teams in any given season, so a decision from a small committee isn’t necessarily going to be any better.

Having said that, I do enjoy seeing the broader array of games that matter at a national level this season. The expansion from a 2-team championship race to a 4-team playoff has a pushdown effect where there are more impact games involving many more potential postseason participants. Unfortunately, very few of those impact games have involved the Big Ten over the past couple of months. I don’t believe that this is some type of long-term permanent situation, but it’s an early indicator of issues down the road for the playoff system overall. A 4-team playoff structurally means that at least one power conference champion is going to be left out every year, and when a league like the SEC looks as if though it can garner multiple playoff sports, that means that 2 or more power conference champs can be left on the outside. A consolation Rose Bowl or BCS bowl berth was seen as a worthy prize back in the 2-team BCS championship world, but this season has already shown that 100% of the oxygen in the sport is being taken up by the 4-team playoff race.

So, I’ve spent quite a bit of time once again contemplating the next (and probably final) phase of playoff expansion: the 8-team playoff with all 5 power conference champs receiving auto-bids. If it were up to me, we would just use the traditional bowl arrangements to slot the teams:

Rose Bowl: Big Ten champ vs. Pac-12 champ
Sugar Bowl: SEC champ vs. at-large
Fiesta Bowl: Big 12 champ vs. at-large
Orange Bowl: ACC champ vs. at-large

I expanded quite a bit more on this proposal last year as a mind meld between the progressive (expanded playoff) and the traditional (old school bowl tie-ins). Believe me – if there’s one proposal that I’ve had on this blog that I’d want to see implemented, it would be that one by far.

(2) Big 12 Expansion – Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby was asked last week about Big 12 expansion and he had some comments that we can over-analyze here (as not much has been happening on the conference realignment front lately). Here was his response to a question about whether further conference realignment was coming (via The Oklahoman):

There are several of us that are numerically challenged. I don’t know that anybody could’ve anticipated that the Big 12 would have 10 and the Big Ten would have 14. … In our case, I don’t know that there are a lot of obvious candidates out there. We’re distributing about $25 million per school through our distributable revenue, so anybody that would be considered for expansion in our league would have to bring at least pro-rata value. … But the opportunity to move from one high-visibility conference to another is pretty slim right now. I don’t see much movement in the near- to mid-term. As we get near the end of some of these TV contracts, which would be 10 or 12 years down the road, there may be some renewed conversations. The only movement that is possible right now is from some of the secondary-level conferences that might move people into one of the five high profiles.

The super-conferences concept … has largely been a media fabrication. I have heard no serious conversation among people who do this for a living that the super-conference concept has got any traction. It’s always dangerous when the media starts to interview the rest of the media, and I think that’s where the super-conference thing came from.

Nothing too new here, although Bowlsby does seem to give some hope to non-power conference schools looking to move up to the power ranks (such as BYU, Cincinnati and UConn) in stating that the only possible movement is from the “secondary-level conferences” to one of the power leagues. Seeing that the Big 12 is the most likely conference to expand in the near future (meaning the next 3 to 5 years), anything that Bowlsby says that suggests some possible movement is something to watch. Nothing has changed from my viewpoint a year ago that the Big 12 is demographically challenged long-term (other than the state of Texas) and would benefit from a 2-team expansion (specifically with Cincinnati and BYU under my Big 12 Expansion Index). I’ve never bought the notion that the Big 12 is truly happy being at 10 schools – their leaders will always publicly state that they’re happy with their TV revenue and round-robin scheduling, but deep down, they’re dying for two obvious non-power schools to rise up (similar to TCU and Utah in the past) that they can add on.

(3) TV Contracts – Bowlsby also had some interesting comments about the impact of the Longhorn Network on the Big 12 (once again via The Oklahoman):

The Longhorn Network is a boulder in the road. It really is. They did something that almost no other institution in the country could do because of the population in the state, and we’re looking at some way to try and morph that around a little bit. … It really begs the question about, how are we going to get our sports in the years ahead? If technology changes in the next five years as much as it’s changed in the last five years, we’re not going to be getting our sports by cable TV. I don’t know what it’ll be. But increasingly, we’re using mobile devices … Google Network and Apple TV and things like that are coming into play. … I’m not sure the world needs another exclusive college cable network. Rather than trying to do what everybody else has done, I would much rather try to figure out what tomorrow’s technology is and get on the front side of that and be a part of what happens going forward and monetize that.

I think Bowlsby is trying to spin a nice tale that the Big 12 can somehow take advantage of new technologies in the way that’s different than the Big Ten Network or SEC Network. However, the Big 12 can’t sell rights to games that it doesn’t have the rights to. If anything, the best properties to leverage for digital platforms in the future are conference networks themselves – see the BTN2Go streaming capabilities and the SEC Network’s integration into WatchESPN. The most powerful conferences in the cable world are going to continue to be the most powerful conferences in the digital world.

Separately, the NBA’s record-breaking new TV deal portends some incredible cash on the horizon for the Big Ten, which is the last major sports property (college or pro) that will be on the open TV rights market for the rest of this decade once its current ESPN deal expires in 2016. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the Big Ten ends up extending with its current first tier rights TV partner ESPN sooner rather than later in the same way that the NBA extended its deals with ESPN and Turner. While there is some fan sentiment out there that the Big Ten ought to separate itself from ESPN, that’s (1) unbelievably short-sighted from an exposure perspective and (2) very likely to be a poor decision financially. (Mark Hasty of Midwest Sports Fans had a great critique of Big Ten fans complaining about supposed ESPN bias against the conference. I wholeheartedly agree with his analysis – our media coverage off-the-field is honestly miles ahead of our performance on-the-field.) It is also a common fan misnomer that the Big Ten is somehow more aligned with Fox. While the BTN is a Big Ten/Fox partnership, remember that the Big Ten actually provides the top picks of college football games for ABC and ESPN every week, which is of immense importance to both the B1G and Disney. (If you live in a cave, SEC sends its top game of the week to CBS.) Ultimately, ESPN has the most cash by far and they have shown to be willing to pay up to ensure that competitors like Fox and Comcast/NBC don’t get their hands on prime sports properties. Meanwhile, there is the risk that cable TV money might not last forever with the increase of chord cutting, so waiting a few years for the open market isn’t necessarily the guarantee of greater riches that it appears a couple of years ago. The NBA made the calculation that it was better to take the cash now rather than later and I’d trust the media savvy of Adam Silver over any other commissioner in sports. I would expect the Big Ten to do the same thing.

(Image from God and Sports)