There’s an interesting development happening online right now between fans of schools in the Mountain West Conference and fans of schools in the American Athletic Conference. Each is clamoring for Washington State and Oregon State to join their league.
I’m not sure which would be a better deal for WSU and OSU. That may become the question soon, but I don’t believe we’re there yet, with the Pac-4 ag schools still seeming likely to wait on Stanford and Cal before making a move. In this sense, relative to Stanford, WSU and OSU are not operating from a position of power. In the other sense, though, where mid-major fans are begging for their attention? This is a new spot for the Cougars and Beavers to occupy.
We often get so fixated on the designation between power conferences and non-power conferences that we ignore the gradients which exist within each category. A lot of this has to do with how the College Football Playoff treats each league, but even with that, certain leagues get more benefit of the doubt than others. The SEC is a better league than the Big 12, and everybody knows it, and everybody goes about their business with that in mind. That distinction matters. It matters that the SEC is better than the Big 12. They’re both power conferences, but one is more powerful, on and off the field.
In the same way, it matters which of the MWC and the AAC is the better league. It matters for the college football rankings, it matters for college basketball tournament selection, it matters for those evil TV deals which set up who we get to watch with what convenience. Each is a Group of Five conference, each is not a power conference, it’s unlikely that will change for either in the immediate future. But it matters which is better, and which that is depends in large part on what happens with OSU and WSU.
Washington State and Oregon State, then, are going from getting picked last as the power conferences made their teams at recess to serving as the captains themselves. It’s not what they would have wanted, this is obviously not the best thing for Washington State and Oregon State, but they do matter a lot now in the world of their peer institutions, from Colorado State and Boise State and Nevada in the Mountain West to South Florida and Memphis and Temple in the AAC. Suddenly, Washington State and Oregon State are the kings of a hill. It’s a smaller hill, but it’s theirs, and if they can stay on top of it, we’ll see a whole lot of them, just as we’ve long seen so much of Utah, TCU, Boise State, UCF, and Cincinnati over the last two decades. Don’t discount that part of this.
What’s Happening in the ACC
Pete Thamel and Andrea Adelson reported last night that the ACC’s potential expansion to add Cal and Stanford has “hit significant roadblocks.” The same, they report, is true of SMU’s attempt to join the league.
This is not a surprise. As we wrote on Monday, the decision is subjective and arbitrary on the ACC side, roughly a break-even proposal financially for each school in the short term and so centered on the other preferences involved in these decisions—academics, travel, culture, and the rest. In a league that’s split all over the place between football–basketball, public–private, etc. and is already suffering some infighting (remember the sinewy seven), it’s going to be hard to get twelve of fifteen schools to agree in any one direction. The Athletic reports that ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips wants to add all three schools, and someone—presumably SMU—keeps anonymously telling media that SMU would give up every dollar of their TV revenue for a few years if it meant finally getting their seat back at the big kids’ table, but as long as four ACC schools aren’t on board, expansion isn’t happening in the ACC.
One very funny element to this is that Notre Dame is reportedly pushing hard for Cal and Stanford’s admission, despite being only a partial ACC member themselves. The reasoning? Per reports, Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick—who went on a big media crusade to save college sports in March, with one of his most earnest requests being to limit travel for student athletes on school nights—thinks it’s wrong to see strong academic schools get effectively relegated to becoming mid-majors.
Swarbrick is not alone in this line of thinking, but can you imagine being Jack Swarbrick and thinking that *you* are the person who is going to save the power conference life of your alma mater, Stanford? (Swarbrick got his bachelor’s in South Bend and his J.D. in Palo Alto.) If I was the athletic director at Louisville and the man in the suit came in from Notre Dame to tell me to let Stanford in because it does great research, I would want to beat him up. Who made Wake Forest and Syracuse responsible for saving the integrity of college sports? Jack Swarbrick, evidently.
If someone is going to convince however many holdouts remain that adding at least Stanford and Cal is a good idea, it’s hard to believe it would be Notre Dame. It more likely has to come from leaders on both sides of the seraphic seven’s divide, not unlike how party leaders have to work together to make things get through Congress. At the moment, that doesn’t appear to be the tack the ACC is taking, and so it doesn’t appear that the ACC is going to expand. The question, then, becomes how long Stanford and Cal are each willing to wait to see if anything will change. I suppose they could push this all the way to next summer if they really wanted to, given how big a prize they’d each be for the Mountain West or the American if they were to join, but I would imagine that they, like many of us, and like their recruits and athletes and coaches and staff, would like to nail down answers soon. In other words? I think where we’re headed is a four-option decision between trying to rebuild the Pac-12, adopting some sort of football independence (see: our WCC thought), joining the Mountain West, or joining the American. If the first doesn’t happen, there could be a split amongst the four Pac-4 schools between the last three routes. That’s where things stand right now, barring a pivot from the ACC which wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense.
The Iowa State Betting Scandal Got Worse
We got answers today on our question from yesterday regarding Iowa State starters Jirehl Brock, Jake Remsburg, and Isaiah Lee. They can be assumed to be suspended, not injured. Ditto DeShawn Hanika, one of the Cyclones’ primary tight ends. I’m unsure if he’s been practicing or not, but he sure isn’t going to be anymore.
Court records from the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, reported on by Travis Hines of the Des Moines Register and others, shared that all four players have been charged with tampering with records, like Hunter Dekkers before them. All of them are accused of using other people’s names on their accounts but placing the bets themselves. Lee is accused of betting against Iowa State in the 2021 game against Texas (the one where Iowa State beat UT so badly that the video leaked afterwards of the UT coach reaming out part of the team on a bus). Lee played in that game and is accused of having bet on eleven other ISU football games. Brock is accused of having bet on four Iowa State football games, two of which—this past fall’s Kansas State and Iowa games—he played in. Hanika is accused of betting on Cyclone basketball games. Remsburg is not accused of betting on any games involving Iowa State.
Hines shares that Brock, Lee, Hanika, and Dekkers could all be permanently suspended by the NCAA for betting on games involving their own school, and that Remsburg could be suspended for up to half the football season because he bet on college football. These were small-dollar bets, all averaging fewer than ten dollars per wager. There are no accusations of point-shaving at this time. But goodness, is this a stupid, unforced error.
The core question with the nature of this is whether Iowa State and Iowa (who is dealing with another side of the same scandal, but whose football program doesn’t appear to be as affected as ISU’s) are unique in their inability to keep their athletes from gambling on college sports. Is this happening at every school in the country, and did the state of Iowa’s enforcement bodies simply do their job better than those in the other states where this is legal? I don’t have a great guess. I think sports gambling is a social activity for a lot of college students, which makes me think there could be some contagion elements at play, but neither the problem being unique nor the problem being widespread would surprise me, and in the end, we might not ever know. I would guess that the NCAA comes down hard on the athletes involved, to set a precedent, and that the NCAA doesn’t back off in the name of being fair. Fairness does not seem to be a priority to the NCAA above self-preservation, and in the end, enforcing your own rules is a just thing to do, fair or unfair.
Whatever the case, widespread or isolated, the severity of this scandal and its impact on Iowa State’s ability to win football games this fall is the worst mark by far on Matt Campbell’s career to date. Even ignoring all questions of right and wrong, the inability to prevent his players from gambling on college sports is a major disappointment from a man who built his reputation on his ability to run a capable program. We’ve said it before, but we have to say it again now. The players bear responsibility for their actions, and so does Campbell, as their coach. He is still a very good coach, and this does not mean he is a bad man, but he and his staff came up short here, and Iowa State is set to pay the price.
Bryant to the CAA (But Only for Football)
Another historic conference membership, gone. Bryant, members of the Big South–OVC alliance since 2023, will be moving to the CAA in 2024. (That’s the Coastal Athletic Association, remember, we don’t say Colonial anymore.) Thankfully, this is a football-only move. Bryant will still be a member of the America East in most sports.
Michael Lorenzen’s No-Hitter
Moving to baseball, Phillies trade deadline addition Michael Lorenzen threw a no-hitter last night, striking out five and walking four while, as you may have guessed, allowing no hits.
Lorenzen is a wild character in Major League Baseball, and I don’t mean that he has an unusual personality. What I mean is that this guy’s career is full of stories.
One of the best-hitting pitchers before the DH was instituted in the National League, Lorenzen—a former center fielder at Cal State–Fullerton—was initially most famous as the relief pitcher who homered in his first plate appearance following his father’s death back when the player Lorenzen was 24, in 2016. Here’s Zach Buchanan’s writeup from the time.
From there, Lorenzen’s career has not stepped off the rollercoaster. A workhorse mostly out of the bullpen for the Reds from those 2016 days through 2020, Lorenzen also spent a decent amount of time in the outfield over his time in Cincinnati, a stint which ultimately ended after the 2021 season. The Angels used him as a starter last year, and then he became one of the Tigers’ best starters this year, and now he’s two months away from potentially starting postseason games for last year’s National League champions.
It is a wild, wild ride.
The Decision to Bunt
The Cubs lost last night, dropping their series to the Mets and losing the final game of 16 in 16 days, a tough stretch this time of year but not an unusual one, with 27 games in 27 days coming up (there’s one off day in there). Over the 16 games, the Cubs went 11–5, took a series from the best team at baseball, and played their way from likely trade deadline sellers to a team slightly more likely than not, per FanGraphs’s projections this morning, to play in the postseason. Still, last night’s loss stung, because even after the Cubs entered the ninth inning trailing by two runs, it felt like a game the Cubs could win.
That, to me, is the big takeaway here. After a few seasons now of not always expecting competitive at-bats, the Cubs sent Seiya Suzuki, Jeimer Candelario, and Mike Tauchman out to start the ninth in the 6/7/8-spots in the batting order, and fans rightfully felt really, really good about it. Part of this was that Suzuki, after sitting for a few days, had smoked the ball twice already, but even that is a reflection of how the energy around this team has changed. The Cubs, for the first time in a few years, expect things to go right.
After Suzuki homered to cut it to one, Candelario singled, and after Adam Ottavino threw over to first base one more time than is allowed (balking Candelario to second), Tauchman walked and Ottavino was pulled from the game. Phil Bickford came in, his arm live but his results poor on the season, chosen by Buck Showalter to face Nick Madrigal, whom David Ross had pinch-hitting for Miguel Amaya.
If the goal was to get another runner on base, Amaya would be a better choice for the role than Madrigal, but this was not Ross’s goal. Ross was choosing to bunt. Madrigal did bunt. He laid down a solid sacrifice bunt and Candelario and Tauchman moved to second and third with just one out. But Christopher Morel struck out, and after a Nico Hoerner walk, Ian Happ struck out as well. The Cubs lost, 4 to 3. The bunt got a lot of the blame.
I *think,* and I didn’t have the sound on when this happened, so it’s possible I missed Boog Sciambi sharing this, that if you can bunt guys from first and second to second and third while only recording the first out of the inning, it raises your expected runs, in a vacuum. I don’t know that it raises your probability of scoring at least one run, but I think that on paper, it’s seen as the right decision given the risk of a double play, the value of having the go-ahead run on second, etc. Overall, though? I don’t think this is something for fans to complain about too intensely. I get it, I understand the urge, I think a lot of the reason fans do complain about bunts (and about bullpen management) is that it’s a more concrete and transparent decision to second-guess than one regarding Keegan Thompson’s offseason throwing regimen, even if the latter might make more of an impact. But really, you’re dealing with fractions of probabilities here, and I would imagine the Cubs are putting a whole bunch of resources into getting those probabilities right. Maybe Ross got outfoxed, maybe he should have waited longer to pull Amaya and seen if Showalter went to the ‘pen, but I find it hard to complain about the decision, just as I find it hard to complain about the loss when looking at it with a day’s worth of hindsight. The Cubs are half a game out of playoff position heading into this weekend, and after this weekend they get to play eleven straight games against non-playoff teams. The task ahead is challenging, but things are good.
