BCS leagues expanding - yeah?

Does Stanford have a group of donors who will pony up dozens of millions -- in addition to any previous commitments they may had made -- to make up for the TV cash they won't be getting from a conference? That would be only way this could work. Donors would have to bridge the gap in real time, motivated by the imminent fear of total disaster. Maybe that's what's going on here. If the story is true. Only thing I can think of.

 

Why does Stanford even care about having a football team? I get why they want the other nine dozen bougie sports they win championships in, because stuff like water polo attracts the kind of well-heeled families they are after. But what do they care about football? They could drop it tomorrow and ascend to academia Valhalla with Chicago.

 

Certainly not the silliest thing I have heard in these past few weeks.
The problem is that less than 20 years ago, they "renovated" the stadium, downsizing from 89,000 to 50,000. Even with its wealth, Stanford is probably paying for that project for several more years.
In my lifetime, that stadium hosted a Super Bowl.

 

Sunk cost. They’re offering to give up TV revenues. Last year they openly gave away tickets to the last two games. We’ve covered the weakness of the Bay Area college football market to exhaustion. Join the WCC and become a trivia answer.

 

It's got legs. I keep seeing discussion of joining the ACC without taking a media payout.

 

A Super Bowl, World Cup in 1994 and countless Shrine games, to name a few. But outside the Big Game or when USC or Notre Dame came to town, capacity was hardly taxed.

 

I got free tickets to the ASU game for teacher appreciation. The last time I went to one of those, it was the band section was the fullest, a corner of students and us. The rest was sparsely filled.

 

That’s like my kid trying to convince me to adopt a “free” kitten out of the box. There’s still a financial outlay involved and besides, I’m not even interested. SMU-Syracuse and Stanford-Miami is not going to suddenly restore the balance of the universe.

 

<shrug> We'll see, probably in just a few days. The Pac 4 are going to have to make a move of some sort. I'm past attempting to read the tea leaves on this.

 

Cal and Stanford to the B1G, the other two to the Big XVIII or more likely the MWC.

The Pac-Whatever cannot survive as a viable conference even if they sweep up every low-hanging wannabe team west of the Rockies. The big ones have already ghosted. High time anyway to rethink the "P5".

 

Oregon State is on its third President in the last five years, Oregon is on its second, USC its second, Stanford's is being replaced. There really doesn't seem to be an "alpha" in the group who could have saved the conference. A real mess. Even the schools who landed in a decent place should be questioning the school's leadership.

 

As of last August, Stanford's endowment was $36.3 billion. I daresay they have donors who could fund the football team for a year or two, or get it an NFL franchise for that matter.