Pete Thamel posted another realignment post today, and if you aren’t subscribed to ESPN+ already, this shouldn’t be the thing that pushes you to change that. There’s no real scoop, though it’s always interesting to read Thamel’s perspective on these things, as he’s as plugged in as anybody and he’s clearly a smart guy who thinks about this a lot (do remember, he’s got a pro-ESPN filter because he works for ESPN). Really, there’s just not a lot of news. The Pac-12 very publicly went and checked out SMU, but there’s been no invitation yet, which is a bad sign for the Pac-12’s schools actually wanting SMU to join their league. The Pac-12’s TV deal has still not been publicly announced, and Thamel and others seem to believe there’s nothing good put together there yet. If there are three options—Pac-12 expansion, a short-term Pac-10, and Pac-12 dissolution—I’d still put my money on the second, but the third makes the most sense (I admittedly have a pro-Big 12 filter), and any of the three are believable. The Pac-12 could add San Diego State and SMU. As many as eight teams could defect to the likely welcoming arms of the Big 12 and/or ACC. The Pac-10 could sign a five-year deal to hold at ten teams, doing the thing longtime roommates do as they approach 30 and reupping the lease one last time before moving on.
One idea that’s been tossed around a lot is a Big 12/Pac-12 merger. It was very publicly denied last year, and it doesn’t sound to be actively on the table right now, but it’s worth considering. The downside for the Big 12 is that they’d get a little financial dead weight in the form of Oregon State and Washington State, smaller brands placed far from useful population centers. The downside for the Big 12 is that with three Pac-12 programs—Oregon, Washington, and Stanford—all keenly eying the Big Ten, the new league could become something of a revolving door. The downside for the Big 12 is that a 22-team league is unwieldy. But then again…maybe this would be the next big step towards college sports’ impending status quo.
We’re all expecting superconferences, if we don’t call the new Big Ten and new SEC superconferences already. The only thing standing in the way of the Big Ten and SEC jumping to unrecognizable size seems to be the longevity of the ACC’s TV deal. If the ACC were not so financially hard to exit, UNC would likely be in the Big Ten today, as well as possibly Miami. It’s fair to speculate that Florida State would be in the SEC, alongside possibly Clemson or Louisville. After that? Dominoes. We seem to be heading towards big conferences which work with one another and—in their ideal world, though we’ll see how this works out—handle some of the functions currently handled poorly by the NCAA (it’s easier to make rules and regulations for 24 schools than for upwards of one thousand). Are we perhaps headed towards a three-power system?
There are benefits to the Big 12 from accepting the whole Pac-10, as is, or possibly with the addition of Gonzaga—whom the Big 12 has made a show of courting—and someone like Saint Mary’s or Creighton. That 24-team league just described would likely contribute more than a third of this year’s NCAA Tournament at-large bids. That 24-team league just described would have a decent shot at putting three or more teams into the twelve-team College Football Playoff. Travel costs could actually be eased, with BYU no longer needing to play UCF and West Virginia so often for scheduling to make sense. Schedules could be tweaked annually to provide consistent blockbuster games. If the league wanted to get really diabolical about this, it could give mediocre teams weaker schedules, padding the league’s number of bowl-eligible teams and optimizing basketball team sheets. Most importantly, even if the league really was a revolving door, its national size would make it easy to annex up-and-comers (James Madison, how would you like to play in Morgantown and Cincy and Orlando?) and its vast number would leave little fear for the vulnerable ag schools (Oregon State & Washington State & Kansas State & Iowa State) of falling into the ranks of mid-majors. It would be a mess, especially if it went well—right now, the Big 12 and Pac-12 have comparably valued brands, but the leagues would prefer to develop some powerhouses who would then want more money—but there are advantages to being first, and there might be fertile unclaimed land across the 20-school threshold. Maybe Notre Dame would want to be Gonzaga’s partner as the mostly non-football 24th member, swapping out football games against Wake Forest and Virginia for visits from old friends with fanbases happy to travel, like BYU and Washington.
It’s hard to find a disadvantage for the remaining Pac-12 schools aside from Stanford, unless you really believe Washington and Oregon will be palatable to the Big Ten in less than a decade. Stanford’s the only one of the ten with a legitimate national reputation; Stanford plays in the largest market of the remaining schools; Stanford doesn’t care that much about football but that nonchalance actually gives it more power here, because it would really rather not play in Stillwater but it wouldn’t mind more home-and-homes with Northwestern. For Arizona, Arizona State, Utah, and Colorado, the Big 12 already makes obvious sense, especially with BYU in the fold. For Oregon and Washington, the Big 12 offers a path to not becoming the Mountain West’s equivalent of UConn back in the AAC. For Oregon State and Washington State, the Big 12 offers survival. Even for Cal, who currently seems to be out on sports, membership in a power league would certainly be preferred over life as a mid-major. It’s not in George Kliavkoff’s best interests to merge—he wouldn’t be conference commissioner anymore—but he and Stanford are about the only ones with an obvious reason to not want this to happen. Maybe that’s the holdup. George.
When realignment news comes, it comes fast and it comes heavy. This exploration has been odd, with both the Pac-12 and the Big 12 more public about their expansion ambitions than we usually see. The problem for the Pac-12 is that there isn’t much value left in the deck. It might be time to negotiate a peace.
The Committee Didn’t Do Its Job
Want a little conspiracy theory? The NCAA Tournament Selection Committee, which ostensibly released its current top 16 on Saturday morning, didn’t really release its top 16. It never put its top 16 together. Why do we think this? It didn’t follow its own rules.
When the committee groups the first four seed lines into regions—all the 1-seeds, all the 2-seeds, the 3’s, the 4’s—it takes a step to make sure the regions are relatively balanced competitively. That step, specifically, is to add the overall seeds of each region’s four teams and make sure none of the four regions are more than five “points” apart. In practice, this means that if the overall 1-seed, overall 8-seed, overall 9-seed, and overall 13-seed are in the same region, that region has 31 points, and another region with the overall 4-seed, overall 7-seed, overall 12-seed, and overall 14-seed must be altered, because it has 37.
There was a region listed on Saturday with 31 points.
There was another region with 37.
I don’t fault the NCAA for having its committee release 16 teams. It gets TV viewers. It gets clicks. It confuses a few people by making them think the NCAA Tournament is already here, or that the top quarter of the bracket is already set. But if the committee isn’t going to be bothered to go to the trouble of actually grouping the regions—a process that takes five minutes—it probably isn’t really hammering out the top 16, the way it will in a few weeks. This is just clickbait, and like the earlily-released NET, which makes people think the NCAA is actually using a system that would ultimately rate Sam Houston State as the fifth-best team in the country or whatever, it weakens trust in the system. Debate it great. But I don’t see how weakened trust is good.
UNC Choked, But So Did the AP Poll
A lot of people are using UNC’s preseason number one ranking right now to pile on the Tar Heels, and…why? Why is it UNC’s fault that the Associated Press looked at a team who finished last year 16th in KenPom and then traded Brady Manek for Pete Nance and thought they’d be the best in the country? UNC has underperformed, but UNC wasn’t putting that poll together. That was the AP voters. And the AP voters were idiots.
Iowa State is Fine, Not Great
It wasn’t a disappointing loss for the Cyclones in Manhattan, but it kind of reminded everyone what the deal is with this team: It’s a good team, better than it was expected to be, but it isn’t a great one. It isn’t going to win the Big 12. It would take a hell of a set of breaks to make the Final Four.
What’s left to want, then? Plenty. Winning the Big 12 Tournament is a possibility. Finishing with a high-enough seed to spend the NCAA Tournament’s first weekend in Des Moines is unlikely, but possible. Getting to the second weekend for the second straight year—a rare feat—is on the table. But in the end, we’re not where we briefly thought we might be able to be. Iowa State is fine. Iowa State is good, really. But Iowa State is not great.
We’re Still in Bridge Mode
For those curious, our bracketology was still in Bridge Mode today. Not a lot of progress over the weekend on getting the full bracketology up and running, to be honest. Hopefully this week, but we’ll see. Meanwhile, college baseball has begun, so we’re keeping an eye on that and hoping to jump in as soon as we can. Probably April, if we’re being honest.
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What’s happening the rest of the day:
College Basketball (the good stuff)
- 7:00 PM EST: Oklahoma State @ West Virginia (ESPN2)
- 9:00 PM EST: Kansas @ TCU (ESPN)
NHL (what’s left after all the day games)
- 7:00 PM EST: Winnipeg @ NY Rangers (ESPN+)
- 7:00 PM EST: NY Islanders @ Pittsburgh (ESPN+)
