BCS leagues expanding - yeah?

There is reporting this morning that UT/OU have been talking to the SEC for a year. No idea how this has not leaked before now.

Does the SEC boot Vandy and Moo U and upgrade? Do they add high end schools from other conferences and go to 18 or 24?

At this point the rest of the B12 has to be on the phone looking for a soft landing. There are reports of TCU, Texas Tech and Baylor contacting the PAC 10. AAC may try to cannibalize B12, B12 will all but certainly try to do the same to the AAC. Kansas to the Big 10 sounds very possible. B12 may implode outright.

Damn near all the second tier schools have to be making contacts and contingency plans. Things are going to be nuts for a while.

 

Congrats to Oklahoma on finishing fifth every season from here out in the SEC West.

 

I'd be cool with a Pac-20. Figure Kansas and Iowa State to the Big 10, TCU to Conference USA. West Virginia to the ACC? I doubt the Pac could stomach Baylor though, NCAA title or not.

 

Pac-12 doesn't need anybody. When Texas and Okie split, the rest of the Big 12 is compromised. Why would the Pac-12 give any of them a place to land, when they really add nothing? Eight fewer P5 teams raises everyone else's profile.

The best the Big 12 can do is add Houston and BYU. Still a big cut above a G5 league.

 

They don’t have any good expansion options, and their best one (BYU) will never make it past the academic gatekeepers. But they are a weak league with below-par TV contracts and about to fall further behind in the money race. Honestly wouldn’t shock me if USC explored going independent, at least in football.

 

The Pac-12's problem has been poor leadership. Hopefully that has been resolved. The TV contract looks poor now, but it was the richest-ever when it was signed. That will be resolved considerably when the new rights package comes up for bid.

College sports aren't as big on the West Coast as the Midwest and South, true. But the Pac-12 has more of the largest TV markets than any other league and the country's top public and private research universities. It's not going anywhere, and diluting the brand (like the ACC has done) by taking any more members would be a huge mistake.

 

Does the Pac-12 really have more major TV markets than the Big 10 (Chicago, Detroit, Ohio's big three cities, Minneapolis, Baltimore-DC, NYC) or the ACC (Boston, Charlotte, Atlanta, Miami, Orlando (in part))?

 

If there's a total scrambling of conferences, it will be interesting what happens to the "weakest links" in each conference. Vanderbilt and Washington State immediately come to mind.

 

If you really look at the college sports landscape, what happens overall? You have some schools that have very good something -- like Kansas in basketball -- but most bring exactly what to a power conversation? Maybe is some sort of mass realignment is going to happen, the Vanderbilts and Washington States of the world need to start sweeting but honestly, how much of this becomes an SEC and BIG 10 and a little ACC sprinkled in and everyone else?

Maybe this in some weird way helps the other conferences because it levels playing fields? I don't see at least in terms of money the other conferences coming close to those main two now. So just figure out how to get it done on their own.

 

Every Pac-12 team except WSU is located either directly in, or within 100 miles or so, of a top-30 TV market. Six of the country's top 21 TV markets (LA, SF, Phoenix, Seattle, Denver, Portland) contain 10 of the 12 league teams within their footprint; an 11th team is in the 30th-ranked market (Utah). No one matches that. The Big Ten has five (NYC, DC, Chicago, MSP, Detroit), the SEC one (Atlanta), or four if you count Florida markets, only one of which is close to UF.

But very, very, very few people care about Big Ten football in the NYC and DC/Baltimore TV market.

 

Would you rather have half the TV sets in Atlanta or 5 percent of LA?