Joe’s Notes: What if Mick Cronin Doesn’t Fix This?

College basketball trickles back to life tonight, with two Pac-12 conference openers highlighting the action. First, USC plays Oregon in Eugene in a game that would receive all sorts of bubble attention were we this late into February. In the second start, UCLA tries to stop the bleeding from becoming a terrible hemorrhage.

When Mick Cronin took over in Westwood, the situation was comic. He was demonstrated to not be UCLA’s top choice, with the Bruins turning to him only after TCU declined to lower Jamie Dixon’s buyout (I’m still confused about how there was any possibility TCU *would* have lowered that buyout, but I’m resigned to having missed something). Cronin was successful at Cincinnati—he’d made nine straight NCAA Tournaments—but he wasn’t near the top of anyone’s list of national coaches, having recently blown a championship chance with a second-round loss to Nevada. Steve Alford left UCLA in a bad place. Mick Cronin was not expected to bring the program back to college basketball’s peak.

Two years later? There we were. UCLA was playing overtime in the Final Four against the most dominant edition of a national power in Gonzaga.

After only making the Sweet Sixteen once during his thirteen years at Cincinnati, Cronin has not yet missed it at UCLA, and his tournament losses—to Gonzaga twice, to UNC once—all qualify as respectable. In a metric more reflective of his performance, Cronin’s teams have only finished worse than 13^th in kenpom one time. Mick Cronin has, in his fifth year, already produced UCLA’s three best teams since Kevin Love and Russell Westbrook went pro.

This year, things aren’t going so well.

UCLA enters tonight’s game in Corvallis with a losing overall record, and they’ve yet to win in the month of December. Of their losses, only the one to Cal State-Northridge is a total disaster, but the succeeding loss to Maryland was also ugly, and they’ve beaten only one team so far who’d be a Division II national title contender, their other victories coming against Chaminade in Maui and against the dregs of Division I men’s basketball. UCLA is bad.

There’s precedent for this situation with Cronin in Los Angeles. Four years ago tonight, UCLA lost to Cal State-Fullerton, the lowest point in a troubled start to its new coach’s first year. The situation wasn’t quite so bleak as this one—the Bruins were still 7–6 after that loss, and they’d at least beaten UNLV, a respectable mid-major—but it was ugly, and the possibility of the Cronin experience lasting only one season was a real one. That season, though, ended well for the Bruins. Before Covid cut things short, they finished second in the Pac-12, with a late-season seven-game win streak bringing them to the bubble from extraordinary depths. But what if the season didn’t end well? What if Jaime Jaquez and Tyger Campbell’s freshman year didn’t produce a situation in which the team developed experience parallel to the program melding to fit Mick Cronin’s mold? Would things have spiraled at UCLA? That’s the concern over these next two and a half months.

I’m not trying to say that Mick Cronin is on the hot seat, or that anything can happen on the basketball court this year to put him there. But I do wonder if it’s hard to recruit players to UCLA with the right mindset to be coached by Cronin, whether that’s the quality Cronin is prioritizing or not. Jaquez was a special player, and the veterans on that 2019–20 team (Chris Smith, most notably) had been thoroughly humbled by the time the basketball coach in a wrestler’s body rolled into California. There was a thought that the glut of 4-stars was a choice by Cronin, that he was seeking out the “right” guys rather than the best guys. The rationale there diminished when Cronin hinted at disappointment in UCLA’s NIL efforts last week. Where we’re left is with a UCLA that has neither the best guys nor, from what we can see, those “right” guys who might embrace Cronin’s piss and vinegar approach.

Clearly, Cronin’s approach can work at UCLA, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to make it happen. The question for tonight, and for this Oregon road trip, and for the Pac-12 season more broadly, is how a coach whose reputation says he doesn’t compromise can get his inexperienced team to gel with the season on the brink of disaster. If things don’t turn around, there’s going to be a lot of “reset” talk ahead of an already transitional offseason.

When to Suspend Terrence Shannon Jr.

Illinois suspended Terrence Shannon Jr. today after he was charged with rape in Douglas County, the incident alleged to have occurred in Lawrence in September when Illinois played Kansas in football. Shannon’s lawyer stated that Shannon has “cooperated with law enforcement throughout the investigation, declaring his innocence from the beginning.” Illinois officials said they’ve been aware of the investigation since late September but that the available information wasn’t “actionable” until the arrest warrant was issued yesterday.

I don’t have any way to know whether Shannon is guilty or innocent, though charges being brought is significant. As always, one hopes rape survivors receive justice and manage as much healing as possible. I’m interested, though, in why Illinois made its decision when it did, and why it didn’t make the same decision earlier.

At face value, it would seem that Illinois’s threshold for sexual and/or violent misconduct is charges being brought, at least in the case of rape. The Buffalo Bills—whose Von Miller was arrested on a domestic violence charge last month after his pregnant girlfriend accused him of choking her (police noted injuries consistent with choking)—have a different standard, at least in the case of this specific type of domestic violence. They and the NFL have not yet suspended the linebacker. The Tampa Bay Rays—whose Wander Franco appears to not be complying with an investigation in the Dominican Republic into his alleged relationships with underage girls—have a standard of their own, at least in the case of pedophilia. They put Franco on the restricted list when allegations first surfaced, and he was suspended shortly thereafter by Major League Baseball.

It’s probably good that this is something professional leagues and professional franchises and college athletic departments have to deal with, in that it means these instances are being addressed legally. It’s bad that these things happen (all of these instances are still only alleged, but they are far from alone), but it represents progress that legal systems are pursuing justice. It’s clear that allegations should be taken seriously by law enforcement and prosecuted to the fullest extent warranted. What’s less clear is what these leagues and teams and schools should do. Do they wait for a conviction? Do they wait for a trial to start? Do they act when an arrest is made? Do they act based on the first allegation? How does it differ between different crimes? How does it differ between differing instances of the same crime? To what extent is it their job to discipline athletes for wrongdoing?

I’d imagine we get to something more of a status quo with this in the years to come, with sports zeroing in around norms of how all these things are handled. College sports are further behind the pros when it comes to this zeroing in—the Big Four leagues all have their policies in their CBA’s by now—but they’re probably on their way as well. In the meantime, though, it’s a familiar and chaotic scene, and it makes a tragic situation that much more uncomfortable.

Florida State and the ACC, the Pac-2 and the WCC

Since we last published these notes, there were two big realignment developments.

The first is that Florida State is suing the ACC, challenging the conference’s Grant of Rights, the collection of TV contracts which legally holds the league together. It sounds like this would have happened no matter what—FSU’s been talking about leaving the ACC over the SEC/ACC revenue gap since summer—but it may have been hastened by Florida State being left out of the College Football Playoff at 13–0, something which tied back in part to the schedule they played by virtue of playing in the weakest of the Power Five conferences. It’s easy to put things off until after Christmas. Florida State did not put this off until after Christmas.

I have no idea how long this legal process will take. I have no idea how the legal process will turn out. If Florida State wins, though, this is what I would guess would happen next:

• Other schools would take advantage of the victory to negotiate or seize exit opportunities of their own. It wouldn’t be shocking to see UNC, Miami, Clemson, Virginia, and other schools jump ship if the price to do so is lowered.
• The ACC would likely become a battleground in the SEC/Big Ten arms race. At the moment, the New Big Ten is 18 schools big and the New SEC is 16 schools big. I’m not sure the SEC cares to keep up perfectly with the Big Ten, but it likely doesn’t want to be a ton smaller than the Big Ten. The SEC wants the most teams in the College Football Playoff, and a proportional share of NCAA Tournament teams, and the most national titles in lower-money sports. It can do that with 16 vs. 18, but 16 vs. 24 (or something like that) might be pushing it, and might threaten the SEC’s ability to swing its weight in TV spaces.
• There wouldn’t be a ton of ACC schools who present Big Ten or SEC-level value. There might not be any, in fact. The Big Ten has gotten around this before—they gave Washington and Oregon a temporary partial revenue share—but we’ve yet to see a permanent partial revenue share, and the marginal value from adding even Florida State, a top-two ACC brand, might not be enough to raise the per-school payout of the SEC’s media deals.
• Following from that last point: Unless the SEC’s contracts with ESPN come with stipulations about a proportional rise in revenue (as the Big 12’s did), the question will land somewhere between, “Is Florida State more valuable than the average SEC brand?” and, “Does adding Florida State to the ESPN mix bump every broadcast up in value by enough money to justify a proportional total revenue increase?”
• Following, again: Think of the latter question like this. ESPN would probably only feature Florida State in a handful of its biggest moneymaking broadcasts per football season, and it would bump out lesser schools to do so. Those schools, though—Mississippi, Mississippi State, Auburn, Florida, etc.—aren’t the smallest brands themselves. For ESPN, is the difference big enough between the existing scenario, where it has its pick of the litter with the existing 16 SEC teams and gets a lot of Florida State on a sweetheart ACC deal (one that Florida State itself signed, as the ACC has been pointing out), and one in which it has its pick of the litter with 18 SEC teams and the ACC might disintegrate?
• I would say the likelier case is that academics continue to matter to the Big Ten, and that Florida State continuing to not gain admission to the AAU—despite trying—bodes poorly for the Big Ten wanting it. Cable and broadcast television still matter—it’s far from a streaming-only world, even if streaming is growing over the long run—and Tallahassee isn’t as good a location for public interest as, say, Miami (which is home to an AAU school with a lot of football upside). I struggle to see Florida State as a preferred Big Ten option over Miami.
• Overall, it seems likeliest that the Big Ten would want UNC, and then that the Big Ten would want Virginia or Miami. The SEC? It might depend how good each football program is at the moment the push comes to shove. Three years ago, Clemson would have led the pack, but I don’t know that Clemson leads the pack anymore. Right now, Florida State leads the pack, but it needs to maintain that. For whatever it’s worth, I would guess the SEC also wants UNC. The Big Ten is not alone in that. Behind Notre Dame, UNC is the top realignment prize not yet in these two leagues.
• Depending upon the degree to which the ACC loses teams, I wonder if it could make a play for more schools in the Central and Pacific Time Zones to pair with its recent additions. Oregon State? Gonzaga? Memphis, at long last? I’m also curious whether the remaining league would be strong enough in non-football sports for Notre Dame to continue its association. I doubt Notre Dame would want to give up football independence if it could still play ten power conference schools a year, but depending how the ACC is viewed in the post-Power Five era, this could lead to a dramatic move from the biggest realignment prize out there.
• All of this is still contingent on FSU winning a lawsuit it may or may not have a realistic chance of winning.

Those are the thoughts. Right now. I’m sure there will be developments, in the news and in our own understanding of the situation.

In less expected news, there was a pair of events involving Oregon State and Washington State. First, those two settled with the other ten Pac-12 schools, at least in principle. The agreement, as announced, is that the departing ten schools will give up some revenue over the rest of this year and will give some “specific guarantees against potential future liabilities,” likely referring to payments the courts could force the Pac-12 to make. The next day, OSU and WSU announced that in most sports, they will be WCC schools for the next two years. Football will remain independent for two years through the Mountain West alliance. Baseball will possibly remain independent because Oregon State is really good at it. Other sports—almost all of them—will go to the WCC.

This is great for the WCC. It elevates the profile of the conference and produces some local rivalry games between Gonzaga and Washington State in men’s basketball. It’s sort of like a two-year audition for the league, too, or at least for its top members, from whom OSU and WSU could potentially draw membership in its dreamed-of rebuilt Pac-12.

For OSU and WSU? I’m not sure if it’s better than the Mountain West option or not, but I do suppose that if things are going really well for either men’s basketball program, this will give them some huge games against Gonzaga. The ceiling for individual games is higher than it is with MWC opponents. Also, it doesn’t really sound like the Mountain West was willing to make things work with its own scheduling these next two years. So, here we are. Plenty more to come, but it’s at least settled.

(In other things we didn’t circle back to: Lamar Jackson didn’t do “unbelievable” things, as we implied he had to, but he sure did steal the NFL MVP on Monday night, eh? Helped that the Ravens absolutely did the Hawkeye thing to our guy Brock Purdy. Purdy should rally. He’s rallied from worse. Like the Iowa game, for example. The man became an NFL MVP candidate not too long after that.)

A Rest Rule Loophole?

There was a weird development involving Mikal Bridges last night in which he played one quarter before resting alongside other Nets starters, a move designed to keep his active games streak (the longest current one in the NBA) intact. There was a second weird development in which Jusuf Nurkić sat the second half of his first game back after returning to Bosnia for his uncle’s funeral.

These moves—the Bridges one, mostly—primarily made news because of betting implications involving prop bets. Some bettors noticed the Nets were resting other starters, and they bet on Bridges’ unders accordingly. That’s mostly the sportsbooks slipping up, though. The bigger thing this reveals is a possible loophole in the NBA’s new anti-load management rule. Can guys play a quarter and call it a night?

Maybe the loophole doesn’t exist. Maybe it’s I who am out of the loop. But it would seem to me that teams can dodge punishment for resting stars if they just ration out their minutes instead of full-on sitting them for games. Adam Silver, if you are reading this, I would love your thoughts.

Other NBA thought: The Bulls are playing well without Zach LaVine. They got through that six-game hellish stretch with a 3–3 record and they’ve won two of three since heading into tonight’s game against the Pacers. And while I mostly doubt it’s because of Zach LaVine’s absence, it isn’t exactly shocking that a team whose recipe (take a player who’s best-suited to be a second or third option and make him the focal point of the lineup) wasn’t going to work started performing better when they moved to a different approach (vets and vibes). Nothing personal against LaVine, but I really hope he never plays another game in a Bulls uniform. I hope he generates a great return, but he shouldn’t, and he most likely won’t.

Connor Bedard Is Scoring Goals

In happier United Center happenings: How great was the Bedard game-winner last night for the Blackhawks? I think I most enjoyed his presence as he brought the puck over the blue line. It was so clear what he was about to do. It felt like David Ortiz stepping to the plate in close situations in the 2005 regular season. Let’s include the video, before we turn our attention to the live Pop-Tart in Orlando.