It’s common these days to hear suggestions or predictions that college football will break away from the rest of college sports, the bull in the china shop carving itself relieving independence from its medium-money, low-money, and no-money siblings. Football already operates somewhat on its own, with the College Football Playoff not administered by the NCAA. Football is the driving force behind most conference realignment, and most conference realignment is unpopular. The why behind college football separatism is evident. The concept is favorably viewed. Where it gets complicated is the how. A “super league” is a common suggestion, but specifics quickly turn comical. Many are a sterile echo of the NFL. Some include Syracuse.
Yesterday, Brett Yormark took the stage at the Big 12’s football media days in Las Vegas. The unspoken topic on audience minds? Whether continued ACC disgruntlement will lead any universities into the Big 12’s waiting arms. The two most prominent unresolved frontiers? The conference’s naming rights and the conference potentially taking on private equity investments. Yormark shared nothing of much note on any of those three fronts. What was more interesting was a passing comment, responding to a question about basketball:
“We’ll be back in the (TV negotiation) market in January of 2030. And we have a lot of optionality. Do we go back into the market as we’ve historically done, or do we bifurcate football from basketball?”
It’s not a question Yormark discovered on the spot. Clearly, this is on his radar. Will it happen? To retreat for a second, let’s look at Brett Yormark’s why:
The current impression, based on Yormark’s public comments, various reporting, and simple revenue math, is that Brett Yormark wants UConn basketball in the Big 12 but the Big 12’s member universities do not want UConn football. Yormark believes in college basketball as a valuable asset. He wants to build the Big 12 into a basketball super league. Big 12 schools, however, are already trailing their SEC and Big Ten competition in annual revenue. They don’t want to water their shares down further by adding a football program that’s currently much less valuable than the Big 12 average.
Back to the how.
This has probably long been the case, but I think it’s dawned a little on all of us the last few years that the real contracts keeping universities aligned in conferences are not signed between school and conference, or signed between school and school. They’re signed between schools and television networks in packages called Grants of Rights. When the SEC added Texas and Oklahoma, Texas and Oklahoma didn’t exactly sign agreements with Alabama and Georgia, or with the Southeastern Conference. They signed them with ESPN as part of a package linked with similar or identical contracts signed by their 14 new league-mates. This is probably an oversimplification, but this is generally how it works. Schools get together, form a conference, go to ESPN and FOX and NBC and CBS and streaming services, and say, “Hey. We’re a conference. Who wants us?” Then, they divide up all their sports between some collection of broadcasters and sign agreements with each.
What Yormark suggested yesterday is doing this process separately for football and for basketball. Why this is so significant is that if the process is different between different sports, the schools involved can be different as well. UConn can be part of the Big 12 in basketball without being part of the Big 12 in football. Would UConn go for this? That’s a conversation for closer to 2030. But this is the mechanism for football separating.
This does already exist, to an extent. Notre Dame is part of the ACC in most sports, but it operates independently in football. There are tons of one-off arrangements between schools and conferences in low-money and no-money sports. What Yormark is suggesting, though, is larger. Those one-off agreements are driven by the school. Yormark is operating from the perspective of a conference. The Big 12 is currently headed towards representing college sports’ middle class, and it is a big middle class. If the Big 12 or the Allstate Conference or whatever this entity becomes turns into a meaningfully different league in football from what it is in basketball, the dominoes will be in motion. College football will not separate through every power conference program getting together under the College Football Playoff and designing some perfect new system from scratch. College football will separate through conferences themselves slowly carving it off, voluntarily, as groups of schools.
Here’s the unfortunate part, for those who dislike conference realignment.
If the dream accompanying college football’s separation is a return to regionalized conferences in non-football sports…I’m not sure Yormark’s plan would actually send college sports in that direction. It might in a lot of sports. It might in baseball and volleyball and the others which trail football and basketball in revenue, at least until those sports—the popularities of which are growing—grow large enough to receive independent treatment as well. But Yormark emphasizes basketball more heavily than any other football conference commissioner. Yormark is coming at this from a basketball perspective, a perspective probably aimed at courting UConn (and presumably Gonzaga). If the real goal of separating football from other sports is to get UConn into the Big 12 in basketball, it might not resolve the tumult at all. It might heighten it, opening up another front in the realignment movement. If the Big 12 adds UConn for basketball but not football, UConn will be in the Big 12 for basketball. That’s not regionalized. That’s not historic. And in the bigger picture: What’s to stop the Big Ten from pursuing Duke?
The way realignment works is that everyone acts in their own best interests. It’s always been this way. Realignment is eternal. It is never new, no matter what a generation believes. Usually, this results in a lot of incremental movements. It’s not in one school’s best interests to try to reconfigure the entirety of college sports. But if the Big 12 creates a separate basketball market, away from football, the path towards similar movement will be established. The legal process will become simpler. It will be easier for schools to group themselves in more precise ways than it ever has been before. The result could be conference alignments which would make this coming season’s look quaint: Duke in the Big Ten in basketball but the Big 12 in football. Cal State-Fullerton into the SEC in baseball. South Carolina men’s and women’s basketball in separate conferences.
There are plenty of incentives holding off that level of chaos. But they exist more for safer institutions. Big Ten schools like to associate with schools with academic pride, and they have the power to do so. SEC schools like to associate with schools who prioritize football, and they have the power to do so. ACC schools love traditional Tobacco Road basketball, but they’re not in a powerful enough position to keep UNC from eying the Big Ten as soon as the option becomes financially feasible. ACC schools aren’t safe. They’re in that middle class, right there with the Big 12, separated from the Big Ten and the SEC from the rest of college sports. What was once a binary high-major/mid-major dichotomy is now trinary. Three-legged schools might be stable, but this is not. Big 12 and ACC schools want back in. That will drive innovation. And if Brett Yormark’s comment was as meaningful as it seemed, that innovation is going to open doors not appetizing to hardcore college fans.
Miscellany – Kawhi Leonard Is Out
Kawhi Leonard is off of Team USA, out with the same knee injury which sidelined him during the playoffs. As recently as Sunday, he was saying he was good to go. The statement places responsibility for the decision with the Clippers:
“…The Clippers determined it’s in (Kawhi Leonard’s) best interest to spend the remainder of the summer preparing for the upcoming season rather than participating in the Olympic Games in Paris.”
Fair enough.
But why now?
The clearest possibilities are these:
1. The Clippers were being a little dumb. They waffled, and when nothing changed but they still felt uneasy, they finally realized it was better to make a good decision late than to make a bad decision.
2. The Clippers and Leonard aren’t being transparent about Leonard’s knee. There are checkups going on, his status was always in doubt, and the knee didn’t meet a necessary milestone this week.
3. Kawhi Leonard pissed off the Clippers and they reminded him who signs his checks? This seems unlikely. I don’t know what Leonard would have done that met this description, unless something about his seemingly innocuous Paul George comments on Friday upset his front office.
It’s probably inconsequential, but it seems like there’s a fuller story here we’re not getting. In the meantime, Derrick White will replace Leonard in Paris.
Miscellany – 96 Wins Is Bad
The Yankees are 17 games over .500 only a little more than halfway into the season. They’re on pace to win 96 games. They’re well within striking distance in the AL East, and they’re among the World Series favorites. This is evidently very bad?? Via ESPN:
“Because of how we’ve been playing, I’ve decided to join us,” Cashman said before Tuesday’s game. “It’s been a struggle, obviously. Thankfully we got out of the gates really strong, so hopefully that cushion will allow us to work through this hopefully sooner than later on because it’s gone on long enough.”
I understand the desire for urgency after years of perceived complacence, and yes, the Yankees have lost 17 of 23. I buried that part. But I find the implication funny that Brian Cashman joining the Yankees in Florida this week could be some sort of spark. Is he going to play third base??
I do wonder if the Yankees would be better off getting combative in the press. A reasonable response to, “Why are things going so badly?” is to say, “We are on pace for 96 wins, you hacks. We’ve lost 17 of 23 and we’re still on pace for 96 wins. You think I shouldn’t have a job? How do you have a job? Who gave you a college degree?” Maybe this is Cashman’s problem. Maybe he’s acquiesced too much to the narrative.
Miscellany – Miscellaneous
- Wander Franco was formally charged with sexual abuse yesterday, right around the one-year anniversary of allegations surfacing that he’d had relations with a 14-year-old. More charges may still be filed, including one for human trafficking, but the situation is fluid and there has not yet been a trial. I would personally guess Franco never plays Major League Baseball again, given where Trevor Bauer’s career stands, but there is a lot of truth we don’t yet know.
- Exciting tennis yesterday morning, with Tommy Paul giving Carlos Alcaraz a scare and Daniil Medvedev upsetting Jannik Sinner. The World Number One has still only won just the one major, this year’s Australian Open, and while he’s 22, that’s older than Alcaraz, who’s won three and is the new Wimbledon co-favorite (with Novak Djokovic). No quarrel with the ranking—it’s objective, and Sinner earned it—but I was surprised as an outsider to see Sinner favored over Alcaraz, and I’m curious if Medvedev winning was a bigger upset than it seems to me or if markets got ahead of themselves with the Italian.
