San Diego State occupies a unique position in the college sports landscape as the only school in the country clearly on the threshold of Power Five membership. If the Pac-12 expands, it appears San Diego State will definitely be among the schools added. That can’t be said with as much certainty of SMU (if it were certain, it would have happened by now), and while there are doubts about whether the Pac-12 will hold on long enough for the Aztecs to join its ranks, it’s somewhere around a 50/50 proposition.
As plenty of people will tell you, college basketball does not drive conference realignment. It’s mostly about football, and about schools’ cultural fits with their conference counterparts. Still, it can’t hurt SDSU to be making this run. It can’t hurt, at a college basketball convention more than halfway across the country, to have what Stu called the most impressive fanbase at the national semifinals. It can’t hurt to be playing for your second national championship across all sports.
The championship is the important thing. The championship is what matters. If fate offered San Diego State the choice between a national title and Pac-12 membership, it would be criminally foolish to choose the Pac-12. Conferences, after all, hold a lot of their power because of what they can do for national championship hopes.
Still, the realignment element looms large. News of Pac-12 expansion or collapse could be lurking around any corner. This may be quite the moment for the Aztecs, underdogs though they may be.
Caitlin Clark and Iowa
I was more than happy to cheer for Caitlin Clark yesterday. Kim Mulkey is a villain, Clark’s electric to watch, Kim Mulkey is a villain, I don’t follow women’s basketball closely enough to have built up much disgust for Iowa in that sphere, and Kim Mulkey is a villain.
Looking beyond the Iowa State angle, it’s incredible how much the women’s game has grown in terms of national attention these last few years, and this year in particular. More than twice as many viewers watched yesterday’s championship as watched in 2021. That is an incredible rate of growth.
Much of the growth, of course, can be traced back to Clark, a transcendent talent, but given how consistently the women’s game has been growing its popularity, it’s no sure thing that ratings will drop next year if Clark and Iowa don’t enjoy a comparable run. There’s an argument for that, of course. You could argue that the sport will drop back next year to where normal growth would have gotten it if this season hadn’t been so captivating. But there’s also a big possibility that the sport will continue on its positive pace from this new, higher baseline. It’s possible Caitlin Clark hasn’t only been a memorable figure in college basketball. It’s possible she’s forever changed the sport. You can’t say that about very many people.
The Transfer Portal Heats Up
Max Abmas and LJ Cryer are each into the transfer portal. Two spectacular players, out there for the taking, in addition to those already in, like Hunter Dickinson and Keegan Records and Kel’el Ware (the current top three on EvanMiya).
It’ll be interesting to see what direction this year’s transfers take with their recruitment, and how the transfers grade out in rating relative to last year’s. With the first question: Will more transfers follow the Nijel Pack style of recruitment, and opt for a bidding war, or will more do what Kendric Davis did, and at least keep that piece of it quiet if they don’t make it a smaller factor altogether? With the second: Is the portal getting busier at the top? Are more high-quality players entering the portal? The number of EvanMiya five-stars in the portal has to be at least equal in its significance to the number of total transfers.
MLB’s Good Opening Weekend
It’s a bad sign that I’ve watched only a few innings of my favorite sport over its opening weekend (I’ll catch up this week), but I don’t think I’m representative of where things are overall, and I also don’t think this weekend’s ratings are the important numbers for gauging MLB’s health. With all the rule changes, the bigger things to watch are length of game, the percent of balls in play that become hits, and the number of stolen bases. I know for a fact that the first two of those are turning in positive results. On the first, the average length of a game is down something like ten percent, pointing to a faster, more digestible sport. On the second, line drives are especially being rewarded more with hits, which could change but would be a victory for those who believe baseball is more exciting when there are fewer of the three true outcomes. I don’t know about the third, the number of stolen bases, but I at least know that the Orioles have stolen a lot.
There were the expected issues this weekend with rules being broken and then enforced, changing games, and ideally, this will all get to the point where the rules are just never broken. For now, though, baseball seems to be looking a little more like its older self, and that’s a very good thing.
