Excuse my language, but…
Holy fucking shit.
We’ll start with a few caveats, and then we’re going to treat this like something that’s definitely happening. Is it definitely happening? No. That’s what the caveats are for.
I guess the one real caveat is that “at the highest level” part. Texas and Oklahoma’s SEC move coming to light and immediately being confirmed by all parties may have us overly primed to accept this as gospel. We’ve seen other instances (remember when the Pac-10 was going to add Oklahoma?) where reports have emerged and talks have then broken down. This is why Texas, Oklahoma, and the SEC were as secretive as they were. It’s easier to play defense when you know someone else is playing offense. The leak itself could, theoretically, kill this move.
Now. What the hell does this mean?
To preface this all: I am not an expert on college athletic conference sports networks. What I’m sharing is my understanding, which may be flawed, and my speculation based upon that understanding, which may be similarly flawed.
When the Big Ten declined to expand last summer, my understanding is that the explanation was that the simplest expansion targets—Kansas and Iowa State—weren’t bringing enough TV revenue to the table to increase every school’s slice. Iowa State brought no new market to the table, and while Kansas would add some heft in Kansas City, it wouldn’t grow the pie large enough to outweigh the cost of dividing said pie 16 ways rather than 14. Los Angeles is larger than Kansas City. Los Angeles grows the pie enough to outweigh each school’s reduced fractional share.
An argument could be made, then, that this is the Big Ten making a bet that cable revenue is still the biggest deal, and that the days of streaming have not yet arrived. This is flawed. The takeaway from the Big Ten not adding KU and ISU last summer was not that cable was going to matter forever. The takeaway was that cable still mattered, and that the Big Ten could still come calling for KU and ISU in a few years if the landscape had progressed enough for it to not immediately hurt other league members financially. The Big Ten was stable enough to not need KU and ISU. Applying this thinking to USC and UCLA, well, if revenue now will grow, why not take some stability, and get two of the ten or twenty most successful athletic programs/biggest brands in the country while they’re at it? Every piece of this adds up for the Big Ten, and for USC and UCLA, which will now move into the second-strongest conference nationally, should this really happen (I’m going to stop saying “should this really happen” now, but it applies to all that follows). Every piece of it except, of course, geography.
There’s a funny thing here where just as leagues start abandoning divisions, their practicality increases dramatically. In football, it isn’t as big a deal. Sure, you don’t want to be flying your football team across the country all the time (this was one of many things Brian Kelly whined about while at Notre Dame, and in an indication of its merit, Notre Dame did adjust its scheduling in response), but there’s a week between games in football and football brings in enough revenue to pay for flights. In even women’s basketball, somewhere around the third-highest-revenue college sport, it’s a bigger deal, partially because of cost but largely because of the rest factor. We may see divisions in basketball and no divisions in football.
This is, of course, if the Big Ten really does sit at 16 teams in a few years: Its current 14, plus the two Los Angeles schools.
Will it? Maybe, maybe not. I would say no, if not for UNC and Duke.
It still doesn’t make sense to add Iowa State and Kansas. In fact, it makes less sense than it previously did. It doesn’t make sense to add Clemson, for the same reasons (also—and this is a topic for another day—there is reason to doubt that Clemson will continue as a national football power). But North Carolina and Duke? Possibly paired with Georgia Tech and/or Miami and/or Washington? You get good academic schools—the perception that the Big Ten cares about academics should be reinforced, if anything, by the addition of two schools of USC and UCLA’s caliber—and you get big media markets. Not Los Angeles, but potentially big enough to add enough to the pie. The ACC is in a good position, still, but relatively, their position is worse as the SEC and Big Ten grow stronger. If you’re UNC or Duke, you’d rather leave too early than too late.
This, if USC and UCLA do leave the Pac-12 and join the Big Ten, becomes the next question. Do we continue in stable instability with the Power Five intact, the Pac-12 adding schools from the Mountain West and/or Gonzaga, and the Big 12 and ACC unchanged? Or does this become a two-horse arms race?
If it becomes a two-horse arms race, there are two directions it could go: The first is that the Big Ten and SEC add judiciously, poaching neighbors and cultural fits. The SEC adds Clemson and Florida State. The Big Ten adds UNC and Duke. They skim off the top of the Lesser Three, either creating a new Group of Eight on the lower rungs of the FBS ladder or creating a three-tiered power structure. The second is that the Big Ten and SEC add aggressively, sweeping up every program which brings anything to the table. The Big Ten becomes college athletics for Blue America, or for people who don’t have southern accents (there’s a linguistics theory which says there are only two regional dialects in this country, with an arc from Texas to Virginia the boundary between the two). The SEC becomes college athletics for Red America, or for people who do have southern accents. There are leagues and conferences within the Big Ten and SEC. Eventually, the NCAA dissolves, and the Big Ten and SEC run the entirety of college athletics while newly-independent schools and smaller leagues gradually join one or the other.
If it doesn’t become a two-horse arms race, the Big Ten is certainly stronger than it previously was, and the Pac-12 is certainly weaker, but neither is changed dramatically enough to immediately break the Power Five/Group of Five structure in college football (and this only matters in college football at the moment—basketball is not going to reshape college athletics entirely). The Big 12 (and Iowa State, notably for our purposes) is fine. Notre Dame retains its independence. The ACC keeps hoping Miami rises to give them the flag-bearer they want (again, Clemson might be fading, and even if they don’t, you’d rather have Miami be 1A and Clemson be 1B than vice versa). The Pac-12 does something wacky like add Gonzaga, Saint Mary’s, San Diego State, Boise State, Colorado State, and North Dakota State. We return our attention to a redesigned playoff model until the next shoe drops.
In the end, my best guess is that USC and UCLA do get themselves to the Big Ten, because the Pac-12’s too weak to hold onto them, and that we do see a two-horse arms race, but that it’s slow, and that it’s the judicious kind. Clemson and Florida State do join the SEC. When the Big Ten Network model allows this to make sense, or when the Big Ten feels it can’t afford to risk losing these schools in the long-term, the Big Ten does add UNC and Duke. Stanford and Washington end up, eventually, with the Big Ten. The SEC wins the Louisville battle and buys the Arizona schools. The Big Ten swings it with Miami. Notre Dame forms a scheduling alliance with the SEC. On and on we go. In the short term, we get a new College Football Playoff format which effectively gives the SEC and Big Ten each two guaranteed teams and the other Power Five leagues each one guaranteed team, with five wild card slots which will, inevitably, often be filled mostly by the SEC. In the long term, as leagues below them dissolve and fold into one another and the NCAA continues to lose legitimacy, we end up with a picture in most college sports not unlike today’s, but with a football situation more akin to the old American League vs. National League relationship in baseball, where the leagues operate independently but send their best to play one another in an annual national championship.
This is just a guess, of course. Especially on the specifics. But it’s hard to see how the Pac-12 will successfully stop USC and UCLA if they want the Big Ten and the Big Ten wants them, and it’s hard to see the Big Ten/SEC expansion effort not becoming a Cold War. It’s not necessarily that the Big Ten would desperately desire UNC and Duke. It’s not even necessarily that the Big Ten desperately desires USC and UCLA right now. It’s that those schools want stability, and the Big Ten’s afraid that if they don’t give it to ‘em, the SEC will. Mutually assured expansion. The biggest question left, for me at least, is whether the Big Ten and SEC might cut dead weight if streaming comes and some schools like Rutgers and South Carolina are competitive liabilities. I guess at that point it’s promotion and relegation, in a sense.
Where does this leave Iowa State, for the Iowa State friends in the room? Iowa State both does and doesn’t control its destiny. On the one hand, Iowa State’s not that big a brand. It’s not that small a brand—it’s probably closer to Oregon and Washington than football results fifteen years ago would have us believe—but it doesn’t bring to the table what Stanford, UNC, Duke, Miami, etc. bring to the table. I don’t think it brings what Kansas brings to the table. But if we do get to a point where streaming is the focus, rather than cable media markets (and it may already be the focus in the SEC—the media-market thing may be Big Ten-specific), then it kind of becomes all about wins and losses, in addition to fan support. If Iowa State is a strong enough athletic program, it will in all likelihood find a home. There are things that could keep it from happening—cable holding on longer than expected, basically—but those things are unlikely. If Iowa State wins football games, one of the big conferences will take them.
In the meantime, the dominoes are falling fast. Pete Thamel is reporting that UCLA and USC’s jump is more done than it appeared even hours ago. We may get answers rather quickly here.
Kevin Durant Wants Out of Brooklyn
In other sport-shaking news, KD wants to leave the Nets. Not a lot of details other than that, but that’s a big detail! Other news from today’s day of NBA free agency:
- The Nets are expected to hold onto Ben Simmons, because, as one blogger ponders, what else would they do with him?
- The Nets have acquired Royce O’Neale in exchange for a first-round pick. The Jazz have waived Juancho Hernangómez, clearing them off the luxury tax.
- The Spurs are waiving Danilo Gallinari after yesterday’s trade with the Hawks. Doesn’t seem like a big surprise.
- Kemba Walker, who was sent to Detroit in the Jalen Duren draft deal, will reportedly be bought out by the Pistons.
- Miles Bridges was arrested yesterday in Los Angeles on felony domestic violence charges. The well-being of the alleged victim is a drastically higher priority than this, but Bridges is a restricted free agent, so technically free agency news.
College Softball: Bigger Than Baseball?
Oklahoma and Texas’s Women’s College World Series final game averaged more viewers than Oklahoma and Mississippi’s Men’s College World Series final game, while the Men’s CWS was viewed by roughly ten percent more people per game than the Women’s CWS overall. Each was roughly one-tenth as viewed as an average men’s basketball NCAA Tournament game. I believe this is limited to the College World Series themselves, and not inclusive of Regionals and Super Regionals.
On the Ballfield
And, in the Majors, news for today:
- Yordan Álvarez collided with Jeremy Peña yesterday, and Álvarez was carted off. Neither has been placed on the IL yet, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be before gametime tonight. Álvarez is eighth in the Majors in fWAR (and sixth in the AL).
- The Marlins sent Jazz Chisholm to the IL with a back strain. His timeline is unclear.
- The Rays are bringing Ryan Yarbrough back up. Central to the Tampa Bay pitching staff in recent years, Yarbrough’s early results this season were poor (though not that poor—his FIP’s only 4.66, but I guess when you’re the Rays…), leading to a demotion to AAA a few weeks ago. He’ll get another chance this weekend in Toronto.
Plus results from last night:
- Avisaíl García provided a moment in St. Louis, homering off Ryan Helsley with two outs in the ninth and a man on first to give the Marlins a 4-3 win. Sandy Alcantara went the distance, allowing two earned runs and striking out three. With the Brewers beating the Rays earlier in the day (Rowdy Tellez homered twice), Milwaukee pulled a game and a half ahead of the Cardinals.
- Bryan Reynolds homered three times as the Pirates beat the Nationals. Pittsburgh, for those not watching the NL Central standings, is in third place.
- Josh Naylor walked it off for the Guardians against the Twins, setting up a rubber match today in that five-game set. His celebration was what you’d hope it would be, and he’s now sixth among hitters in Win Probability Added on the season, meaning that in a very literal sense, Josh Naylor has been the sixth-most valuable hitter in baseball this year. The Guardians trail the Twins by two games.
- Shohei Ohtani was tough to hit for the White Sox, who struck out eleven times in fewer than six full innings against the righty. The Angels won the series, but still sit four games under .500 and a game behind Texas for second place in the West.
- The Astros beat the Mets, 2-0, behind eight strong innings from Justin Verlander. Atlanta beat Philadelphia, narrowing the gap between them and New York to just three games after it sat in the double digits when this month began.
- The Padres and Dodgers both bounced back, beating the Diamondbacks and Rockies, respectively, on the road. Game and a half apart over there, with the Giants—who lost to the Tigers—six back of first place.
- The Blue Jays almost pulled off another late-inning comeback against the Red Sox, then nearly did it again two innings later, tying the game at three on a Raimel Tapia double in the eighth before rallying from three down to lose 6-5 in the tenth. The Yankees completed a sweep of the A’s.
On the topic of the Cubs: Good win last night. Between Fabian the ball boy, Christopher Morel’s dinger, Willson Contreras’s 600th hit, and Justin Steele turning in a solid start, it was what you’d hope summer games at Wrigley would be. Minus, of course, the leverage in a season sense.
Chance to win the series tonight. Only 3-3 so far this year against the Reds, and 5-8 against the Pirates, and while it’s a rebuilding year, it’d be nice to be beating those teams. Hopefully tonight’s is a good outing for Hendricks. This Graham Ashcraft guy has quietly been pretty good since the Reds called him up.
***
Viewing schedule, second screen rotation in italics:
- 1:10 PM EDT: Minnesota @ Cleveland, Archer vs. Bieber (MLB TV)
- 6:05 PM EDT: Atlanta @ Philadelphia, Anderson vs. Nola (MLB TV/ESPN+)
- 6:10 PM EDT: New York (AL) @ Houston, Severino vs. Garcia (MLB TV)
- 7:07 PM EDT: Tampa Bay @ Toronto, Wisler vs. Kikuchi (MLB TV)
- 8:05 PM EDT: Cincinnati @ Cubs, Ashcraft vs. Hendricks (MLB TV)
- 10:10 PM EDT: San Diego @ Los Angeles, Musgrove vs. White (FS1)
