My Head Hurts: Making It Through The College Realignment Media Cycle.

Congratulations.  You’ve made it to the 6^th level of the media cycle on college football realignment.

Level 1: The Rumor

Level 2: “Wait….what?”

Level 3: “Does that blow your mind, because that just happened?”

Level 4: “Wait….what?”

Level 5:  “Let me tell you why this sucks.”

Level 6: “Remember when that thing happened last month?”

Now this is where I come in.  I know what you’re thinking.  He’s late to the party and wants to play the all knowing pompous guy who lets you know that you shouldn’t have drank so much when you are fighting a hangover the next morning.  Well, you’re right.  Not the pompous part, but the guy who comes in the next day and points out the things you should have been thinking about on your 5^th Jagger-Bomb.

Here’s what you should have been thinking.  The Big Ten wanted just one more team.  Not this year or last.  This has been the goal for 20 years.  Ever since 1991 when the SEC pointed out a random rule from the lower leagues to the NCAA that said a 12 team conference could have a championship game.  Some say this was in response to the Big 10 adding Penn State to go to 11 teams the year before.  Since then the Big 12 was formed and started their own championship game.  The Big Ten, being barred from having their own championship, has been rumored be trying to get Notre Dame to join the conference for years.  Notre Dame told them it was too special to join their conference and in turn seemed to take a number of Big 10 beatings over the last few years.  So what was the Big Ten to do?

Jim Delany had a plan.  He’s always had a plan.  He was the man who brought Penn State into the Big Ten fold.  He was the man who instituted college football’s first replay system.  He was the man who helped broker the deal between CBS and the NCAA for the tournament.   He was the man who helped establish the Big Ten Network.  He is the Big Ten commissioner.   Cold and calculating, loved by some and despised by others.  He was the man pulling all the strings here.

Level 1: The Rumor

“Did you hear the Big Ten wants Texas?”

The opening salvo was launched.  Rumors ran rampant about the Big Ten going after their 12^th team.  They waited until they had a year in which they made more revenue than any other conference including the SEC who has been signed to CBS and ESPN.  They were done waiting for Notre Dame.  Let them have their embarassing NBC contract.  They had their own network.  They wanted a big fish. They wanted the Longhorns.

Level 2: Wait…what?

“Big Ten Officials make offers to Nebraska and Missouri.”

It turns out that the Texas ploy might have been a feigned jab at the rest of college football.  Get everybody else talking about something outlandish and allow yourself to work under the radar.  Things are starting to take shape and questions are being asked. What does this mean for the Big 12?  Does the Pac 10 want to make a move?  What about the basketball strong schools?  Chaos ensues.

Level 3: Does that blow your mind? Because that just happened.

“The Pac 10 announces they want to expand to a third of the country.”

The Pac 10 also has a commissioner and a brash new one at that.  He wants to put his stamp on the conference.  Larry Scott is here, and he’s ready to do some damage.  This wasn’t unheard of.  There was talk of Texas going to the Pac 10 when the Big 12 first came together.  This time around Larry Smith means business.  The Big Ten was carefully and methodically trying to add one team.  This guy wanted half the country.  Not just Texas but Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas Tech etc.  Whatever he could get his hands on to make history in his first month on the job.  Texas A&M says that they might go to the SEC which is a rumor that nobody at the SEC seems to be corroborating.  All hell breaks loose.

Level 4: Wait….what?

“Nebraska to the Big 10, Colorado to the Pac 10.”

That’s it?  That was what the uproar was all about?  Yep.  The Big 10 gets an AAU affiliated school in a neighboring state with a similar traditional profile.

Side note: The AAU affiliation was highly overlooked. The fact of the matter is that these are universities and in the world of academics, where Latin is still spoken at graduations and the more letters on the end of your name the better, prestige is currency.  The 61 schools that make up the Association of American Universities are all doing federally funded research on campus.  They make up just 6% of the nations undergraduate population but received 58% of all federal funding in 2008.  That’s about $18.1 Billion.  More money equals more research equals more prestige equals being more attractive to better faculty equals more prestige equals higher tuition costs.  Other than the Ivy League the Big 10 is the only conference that can say every member is AAU affiliated and they are very proud of that.  You have to sell expansion to the school brass and that’s a good place to start.

The Pac 10 pulls in Colorado which everyone calls a win as it will bring in the Denver market.  However anyone in Denver will tell you that it’s a transplant city for Big 10 graduates.  Walk through downtown on a Saturday morning in the fall and you will swear you are at the Big 10 media day.  Every bar is an alumni bar and I’m not talking dive bars with a 4’x4’ flag in the window.  With Boulder being 40 minutes up the road there are lines out the doors of bars at 8 in the morning with people wearing scarlet and grey, maize and blue, and the brave top 3% of the population who can get away with wearing purple because it means they were better educated.  Colorado comes up from out of the water to see their friends still standing on the edge of the deep end with a look that says, “Dude, I can’t believe you jumped.”

Level 5: Let me tell you why this sucks.

“Big Ten retracts its offer to Missouri, Pac 10 pulls in Utah, Big 12 survives.”

It turns out that Missouri was the Big Ten’s safety school.  Larry Scott still wants to make his splash so he gets Utah, which would have been awesome 4 years ago.  The Big 12 realizes it’s the Big 12 and gets its act together before it has to disband, but the damage is already done.  This is where the haters come into play.  Beano Cook calls out Jim Delany.  Oklahoma fans get some shots off at Nebraska for jumping ship.  Sports talk radio doesn’t know what to make of it so they fall back into their base argument of “Let me tell you why this sucks.”

Level 6:  You reading this article.

Everybody comes to the conclusion that change is inevitable and that it won’t be that big of a deal.  The Big 12 surely will need to make some moves in the coming year, but there will be one more season of conferences that we all understand.

The Winners:  Big Ten, Colorado/Utah, most college football fans, NCAA because CFB owned a good portion of the summer they never get.

The Losers: Big Twelve, Colorado (they are going to lose at everything that happens outdoors with the exception of skiing)

Push: Pac 10. Larry Scott avoided having to talk about nothing but USC for the past few months and he picked up enough teams to force his own championship game.  The question is are either of those two schools as good of a fit as Nebraska is for the Big Ten? 

What to take away from next time:  The difference in how this was handled shows how well these conferences are run.  The top two earners handled themselves well.  You heard nothing out of the SEC during all of this, confident that they have all that they need and that they are in no rush to mess with success.  The Big Ten got with they wanted with not that much of a fight.  The Big 12 almost fell apart.  The Pac 10 completed overreacted and didn't really get that much better.  How did your favorite conference handle itself?  How does that make you feel?

So congrats, you made it through another sports media cycle.  Did you hear that the Yanks are looking for another pitcher?