Joe’s Notes: Where This Week Ends for Conference Realignment

Earlier this week, we thought the likeliest next imminent move in conference realignment was rapid Big 12 expansion. Yesterday, we pivoted to the Pac-12 refilling with Boise State and San Diego State and the status quo being mostly maintained. Today, we’re back to the Big 12 angle…but with ACC movement preceding it. Let’s explain:

We got another update from Pete Thamel this morning, and before we dig into that, a quick explanation of why we’re relying exclusively on Pete Thamel:

Nobody else seems to know anything.

Yes, someone else broke the USC/UCLA news, but they broke it as being close. Thamel quickly confirmed it was final. Yes, others are sharing information, but it’s mostly of the assumable variety, like that of the Arizonas, Colorado, and Utah talking to the Big 12. Thamel is sharing specifics. There’s an uncomfortable angle here where ESPN is an active party in the process, with things to lose and things to gain, and Thamel works for ESPN, but The Athletic is trotting out speculation and dressing it up as scoops. Thamel’s giving us specifics, and he’s explaining the calculus behind those specifics. For the time being, we’re Pete Thamel guys. Until someone else starts delivering with regularity.

Highlights from today’s Thamel dispatch:

• The ACC and Pac-12 have indeed talked about a partnership of some sort, but it’s not going to be a full-on merger, and as such, it’s not going to change the financial math enough to have much of a chance in hell of happening. While they all wait for the numbers, though, from what Thamel calls “the schools” and others call “ESPN,” everyone’s content to wait a minute.
• The ACC has incentives to expand, but it needs its expansion partners to be revenue-boosters. Expansion partners need to bring more revenue than the average school currently boasts, and potentially a lot more to actually make UNC and similarly-situated conference-carriers satisfied.
• The Big 12’s dalliance with Arizona/ASU/Colorado/Utah was exaggerated (again, it’s easy to amplify a rumor when you know there’s a high probability it’s at least happening in some fashion). They’ve talked, but the rest of the Pac-12 has those four content to wait.
• Notre Dame is in the position of power between itself and the Big Ten, where the Big Ten will want Notre Dame no matter what and Notre Dame doesn’t currently want the Big Ten. One interesting piece here: Notre Dame evidently values its relationship with Stanford, and should Notre Dame join the Big Ten, Stanford would evidently likely be the partner for such a move.
• There’s some playoff format talk, but it’s all far off.

What can we take away from this?

It’s hard to believe everyone’s actually content to wait a minute on expansion. More likely, the Colorado/Utah/Arizona/ASU package is talking to the Big 12, and the ACC is talking to somebody, and if the Pac-12/ACC partnership numbers are underwhelming, as everyone expects, that will be justification for immediate movement. Right?

The question, then, is what exactly that movement would be. The four Big 12 additions continue to line up logically, but if Stanford is friends with Notre Dame, and if Stanford’s looking for a temporary home, I wonder if the ACC could be such a place. The risk here, for Stanford, would be hopping aboard the stuck-in-the-Suez ship that is the ACC’s TV contract with ESPN, but perhaps the addition of Stanford would sweeten that enough to, well, make sense for Stanford? At least for a decade or so, until the SEC’s new contract gets close to expiring and we enter another vigorous round of this? It feels a little far-fetched, but if the ACC is talking to someone, Stanford checks a lot of boxes, and Notre Dame seems to enjoy its relationship with the ACC enough to potentially convince their friends in Palo Alto.

Our hunch all week has been that Stanford is valuable, and all week, reporting has been very quiet on Stanford. Yesterday, we interpreted this to mean our estimation of Stanford may be too low, but reflecting on it today, I wonder if the truth is that Stanford is simply better at keeping secrets than others are, and that Stanford is more comfortable operating independently than the Arizonas or Utah or the famously “skittish” Colorado (I’m sorry to forget who used this apt term for the Buffs), something which makes secrets easier to keep. If all of that’s the case, it wouldn’t be outlandish to expect Stanford to be the first move, choosing between the ACC and the Big 12, a choice which seems to favor the ACC for reasons cultural and academic if not strictly financial. (Everyone says this is all about money, but everyone forgets to mention that schools of similar nature have similar financial situations, which makes it even more straightforward for Texas & Oklahoma to buddy up, for USC & UCLA to buddy up, for Notre Dame & Stanford to buddy up, etc.) The question for the ACC, then, becomes whether to add a 16^th football-playing member, and the answer to that question is almost certainly, “yes.”

Thamel lists Cincinnati, TCU, Houston, Washington, Oregon, Cal, Stanford, Arizona State, Colorado, and Oklahoma State as attractive schools for the ACC due to media market or, in Oklahoma State’s case, being ****ing good at football (for purposes of personal Iowa State-related self-justification, I would love to see what Mike Gundy could do in and to the ACC, even if this would actually be bad for Iowa State because ISU buddying up with this OSU could be highly convenient down the line). Up until today, I’ve been lumping Cal in with Stanford, but that made more sense when thinking of a world in which the ACC was too hamstrung to expand at all. If the ACC’s the place for Stanford, the ACC will presumably want another cultural fit, another bigger-revenue program, and—and here’s where Cal bows out—a unique market. This is where Washington puts Cal away, and where Washington pulls away from even Oregon. Seattle’s bigger than Portland. Washington’s total generated revenue, per Sportico, was significantly higher than that of Arizona State in the last pre-pandemic year (and thoroughly dwarfed Colorado’s). Washington and Oregon have been treated as partners because they’re not as independent as Stanford and they’re the biggest non-USC revenue generators in the pre-last week Pac-12. They indeed seem to be running the Pac-12 now that USC and UCLA have abdicated the throne (because who else would be convincing Arizona State to hold off moving to the Big 12), but that doesn’t mean they’re a package deal.

What’s going to happen next week, then? If my guess is correct, the ACC/Pac-12 partnership’s revenue projection will come back from ESPN, and it will be underwhelming, as Thamel reports all parties acknowledge. At that point, the ACC will add Stanford and Washington. Oregon will settle for being third fiddle and will join the Big 12. The four schools-that-make-sense will also join the Big 12. Cal will join the Big 12, giving the Big 12 an even number of teams, a unique market, and a competitive program in terms of revenue generation. It’s possible Washington and Oregon have Boise State lined up to join as well as either San Diego State (as I guessed yesterday but now realize doesn’t make sense, based on that Sportico data), Colorado State (this makes sense based on revenue), or UNLV (this makes sense based on the sporting world’s understandable fascination with the Las Vegas market), but for that to add up for Washington and Oregon, each would have to be placing a premium on being the biggest dog in the conference, and that seems like a good way to lose a ton of money and also ensure your league isn’t a power conference. You don’t want to be the biggest program in your conference right now if you’re Washington or Oregon. That’s Memphis’s exact problem.

This does, as we thought on Monday, leave Oregon State and Washington State in the lurch. The simplest move for the pair would be to drop to the Mountain West, but the smart move would be to try to break the Mountain West apart, a move that sounds reckless but would be entirely worth it if successful. Which would you rather do, as a former power conference program: Surrender to mid-majordom or try to carve out a third tier between the second-tier power leagues (the ACC and Big 12) and the Group of Five? If I’m Washington State and Oregon State, I’ve got Gonzaga, Boise State, Memphis, Saint Mary’s, Colorado State, SMU, UNLV, and San Diego State ready to start a new Western Conference, with eight teams in football and ten in all other sports. Is it a mid-major league? Yes, but it’s got a great shot of being clearly the best one, it’s got footprints in most of the major western media markets, and it’s got Memphis’s infamous FedEx money that was supposed to long ago send the Tigers to the Big 12. I’m not sure about the feasibility of this with TV contracts, but I’d imagine a TV provider would be happy to get away from the current upcoming AAC alignment, which is effectively just Memphis and SMU sobbing into their whiskey while South Florida continues trying to pick up the pieces of all the vases it’s shattered since it got the key to the Big East mansion once upon a time. Another option for Oregon State and Washington State? Join the Sun Belt. Those guys are on the come-up, at least in football. But please, don’t surrender. You will be just another Mountain West school if you join the conference as it currently is. At least insist on kicking San Jose State out.

It’s possible the SEC has something up its sleeve here, but I doubt that for the reason that any SEC movement would have already happened by now if it was going to happen, unless it’s the addition of ACC schools who are, like Washington and Oregon, using this ESPN “study” as an excuse to buy some time and weigh options. If the SEC does move, we should expect it to be small: Miami and UNC (Miami, like Stanford, is a private school everyone’s being unreasonably quiet about). And honestly, UNC’s fit remains better with Notre Dame and Virginia and the eventual Big Ten than it does with Tennessee and South Carolina.

Where does this all leave us? A reckless, haphazard prediction of the top half of the FBS, in order of heft:

• SEC: Current 16 Teams (including Texas and Oklahoma)
• Big Ten: Current 16 Teams (including USC and UCLA)
• ACC: Current 14/15 teams (ND in non-football sports makes it 15) plus Stanford and Washington
• Big 12: Current 12 Teams (including BYU, Cincinnati, UCF, and Houston) plus Oregon, Cal, Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, and Utah
• New Western Conference: Washington State, Oregon State, Boise State, Memphis, Colorado State, SMU, UNLV, San Diego State, Gonzaga*, and Saint Mary’s* (*no football team)

Now, to see how much has changed come Monday.

There’s a Football Season Coming Up

Lest we forgot.

Iowa State was picked sixth yesterday in the Big 12 media poll, receiving one of the 41 first-place votes in the process. The full poll looks like this:

1. Baylor: 365 points (17 first-place votes)
2. Oklahoma: 354 (12)
3. Oklahoma State: 342 (9)
4. Texas: 289 (2)
5. Kansas State: 261
6. Iowa State: 180 (1)
7. TCU: 149
8. West Virginia: 147
9. Texas Tech: 119
10. Kansas: 48

The whole thing looks reasonable, though if I remember correctly, SP+ would put Oklahoma ahead of Baylor and have Texas and Kansas State closer to the Bears and the Pokes. The proposition that Brent Venables is this much worse of a coach than Lincoln Riley is a strange one to me. Venables is unproven, yes, but it’s not like Riley was ripping through the Big 12 at the end, and after his second game as a head coach, it’s not like Riley ever won a single nonconference game of note. Oklahoma has a whole lot of talent, and though they missed the Big 12 Championship, they only missed it narrowly.

Anyway, Iowa State’s work’s cut out for it. I’d categorize three games as must-win (vs. SEMO, vs. Ohio, @ Kansas), two games as should-win (vs. West Virginia, vs. Texas Tech) and the other seven as possible-not-probable (the Cyclones do get Oklahoma, Baylor, and Kansas State all in Ames, which may be what that one voter was looking at but maybe that voter was also just me sowing intrigue in a parallel life I don’t know I lead).

One last note on college football: If anyone knows of a good flow-chart-ish resource (or anything, really) that shows how bowl invitations shake out, please send it our way!

Are the Packers Going to Sign Another Wide Receiver?

Sticking with football for one more minute: Are the Packers going to let Sammy Watkins and Christian Watson be two of their three first-string wide receivers? It seems dubious, so, to check in on options, here are some available receivers:

• Odell Beckham Jr.
• Julio Jones
• Emmanuel Sanders
• T.Y. Hilton
• Will Fuller

There are others, but this is the top crop, and each player on it comes with substantial risk of one sort or another. Does that mean no move’s happening? Not necessarily, but it at least makes me more ok with a cautious approach. God loves a one-year deal—especially for Emmanuel?

(I’m sorry, no more puns today.)

The Draft Is Done

The NHL draft wrapped up in recent hours, and it sounds like there weren’t any bombshells, but that’s kind of the nature of hockey. It’s like baseball that way, but with a sport less conducive to stardom because the best players are usually only on the ice for twenty or thirty minutes a game, tops. We maintain our commitment to learning what the hell is going on in the NHL, but we aren’t there yet.

NBA Catchup

Oh no.

So, last weekend I promised myself I’d keep track of NBA free agency after tracking it through its first day. I did not succeed on that promise, then I kept putting it off this week. Now, here we are.

One annoying thing about the NBA free agency period is that nobody has put together a comprehensive offseason tracker that combines reported deals, official deals, free agent acquisitions, and contract extensions all in one place. The Malcolm Brogdon trade isn’t on all the official trackers. Extensions like that of Nikola Jokić aren’t on the free agent trackers. Rather than try to create such a beast ourselves (you could just go team-by-team, but we ain’t doin’ it), we’ll direct anyone looking for such a thing to the NBA’s own Player Movement Tracker and ESPN’s Trade Tracker, then hit this at a high level and move on to the actual news of the day.

The high level:

Below is where each team ranks in Bovada’s 2023 NBA Championship odds as of right now. In the column next to them is where, relative to the rest of the Association, each roster finished this past season in the higher of FiveThirtyEight’s “current rating” and “full-strength rating”, our best proxy for where the teams finished 2022 on paper. The idea here is to give us a feel for who’s stepping up, who’s stepping down, etc.

Team	2022-23 Bovada Title Odds Rank	2021-22 Final 538 Effective Rank	Change (Positive = Improving)
Celtics	1	1	0
Bucks	2	2	0
Warriors	2	3	1
Clippers	4	7	3
Suns	4	6	2
Heat	6	4	-2
Lakers	7	17	10
76ers	8	8	0
Nuggets	9	9	0
Mavericks	10	10	0
Grizzlies	11	11	0
Raptors	11	15	4
Nets	13	4	-9
Pelicans	14	14	0
Timberwolves	14	16	2
Bulls	16	19	3
Hawks	16	13	-3
Trail Blazers	18	18	0
Jazz	19	12	-7
Cavaliers	20	23	3
Hornets	20	20	0
Knicks	22	21	-1
Wizards	23	26	3
Kings	24	24	0
Pacers	24	22	-2
Spurs	24	25	1
Pistons	27	28	1
Thunder	28	28	0
Magic	29	27	-2
Rockets	29	30	1

The main stories, then, seem to break down as follows:

• The Celtics have added strength to strength, picking up Brogdon and Danilo Gallinari without entering the superteam game. They’re going to be good.
• The Bucks haven’t changed much, and they don’t really have to. They remain good.
• The Warriors, like the Bucks, currently appear to mostly be running it back, and while conventional wisdom says they’ll miss Otto Porter and Gary Payton II, the market still is rather in on the defending champs.
• The Clippers have added John Wall to their Kawhi Leonard/Paul George tandem. The market seems to think highly-enough of it.
• The Suns are reportedly Kevin Durant’s preferred destination, as he wants out of Brooklyn, but the Nets are reportedly asking an obscene price of any suitors. Meanwhile, DeAndre Ayton is reportedly on the verge of landing with the Pacers, but as the Durant situation drags on, the routes for making that happen are complicated by the Suns’ uncertainty. Taken in totality, the market seems to believe in the Suns, but futures markets are often wrong.
• The Heat have been relatively quiet, at least so far, but the market still thinks well of them.
• The Lakers are liked by the market at the moment, partially because of the LeBron factor and partially because they’re reportedly working on acquiring Kyrie Irving, who like Durant has asked out of Brooklyn (even with the possibility of retaining Irving and Durant theoretically on the table, the Nets’ outlook has plummeted since season’s end).
• The Knicks picking up Jalen Brunson and others after a weird draft still leaves them looking more to the future than the present. Despite Brunson’s departure, the Mavericks’ outlook appears comparable to what it was.
• The Timberwolves’ Rudy Gobert addition doesn’t appear to have significantly moved the needle on them in the eyes of the market.
• The Bulls recentering around Zach LaVine hasn’t impressed bettors.
• The Raptors are in the Durant mix, which may be part of what’s driving up their odds.
• As we have famously been told, the Jazz are tanking.

There’s more, I’m sure, but that’s the high level as far as I can tell. Eyes are mostly on Durant and Irving right now.

On the daily side, the only big story seems to be that Shaedon Sharpe, the Blazers’ first round pick who enrolled at Kentucky but never played and was then drafted seventh overall, hurt his shoulder six minutes into his summer league career and is now going to get an MRI. It’s unclear, at least to me, whether the injury might or might not be severe.

F1, etc.

Formula 1’s in Austria this weekend, and we never talked about last week’s race, which was almost a big win for us in the betting. We had Lewis Hamilton at 15-to-1, and for a lot of the race, he was the live favorite, but Carlos Sainz’s aggression paid off in the end and Mercedes’ tire approach did not pay off. We also missed on Chase Elliott at Road America, as he finished second. Felix Rosenqvist, our IndyCar play, had to exit the race on the second lap due to mechanical failure.

I would assume we’ll be in on Max Verstappen on Sunday unless the odds are just too ridiculously short. We’ll publish those on Saturday night or Sunday morning, when the starting grid is set. They’ll be accompanied by our picks for NASCAR’s second race of the year at Atlanta, which surprised us last time in terms of how it ran as a track.

In the Ballpark

And lastly: Baseball.

There was a scary moment in the Padres/Giants game last night in which Jurickson Profar and C.J. Abrams collided, with Profar’s chin taking the brunt of it from Abrams’ knee. Profar collapsed walking off the field and has been diagnosed with both a concussion and a cervical neck strain.

There’ll be plenty of exciting moments in the All-Star Game a week from Tuesday, but one will hit the nostalgia bones: Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera have been selected by the commissioner’s office as All-Stars under the new CBA’s “legendary” roster spot provision, which gives the commissioner’s office the power to do just this. Good calls all around. Where is the catch here? (Starters will be announced tonight.)

Yesterday’s action:

• Rafael Devers homered twice, but the Red Sox couldn’t catch up after Josh Winckowski walked five Yankees, allowing six earned runs, five of them in the third, four of them on a Josh Donaldson grand slam.
• Mookie Betts also homered twice, but he looked a little tentative as he half-dove for a Seiya Suzuki bloop double in the ninth inning. Would presume his rib’s still not 100%. The Cubs almost came back against Craig Kimbrel, but Alex Vesia came in and got out of the jam.
• Despite getting twelve strikeouts from Spencer Strider in six innings of work, Atlanta fell 3-2 to the Cardinals in eleven innings, narrowly missing out on a four-game sweep.
• The Padres won that game with the Giants, pushing San Francisco down to just one game above .500 again. 2-1, 10 innings.
• Also winning 2-1 were the Tigers, who took their fifth straight and pushed the White Sox to three games below .500. The Twins and Guardians were idle, as were the Brewers in the other Central Division.
• The Mets smoked the Marlins, plating six against Daniel Castano while Trevor Williams worked seven scoreless, striking out seven and walking no one. I wrote last summer about how the Cubs got enough back for Javier Báez but not enough for Williams. Thankfully, I thought Pete Crow-Armstrong was going to be worse. The Phillies beat the Nationals, keeping pace with St. Louis.
• The Blue Jays lost the first of four in Seattle as the Mariners moved up to an even .500 roster, just three games back of Toronto and the playoff slots in the standings. Remarkable turnaround from the suddenly-lively AL West foil (the Astros beat the Royals).

And, personnel news:

• The Guardians are calling up fringe top-100 prospect Nolan Jones, who’s been crushing the ball as a third baseman at AAA.
• The Cardinals are getting Génesis Cabrera back from the Covid IL.
• The Mets are getting Chris Bassitt back from the Covid IL.
• Yusei Kikuchi’s going on the IL with a neck strain.

**

That’s it for today. Bets on Sunday for NASCAR and F1, possibly some other blog posts here and there, presumably some Twitter action. Weekend viewing schedule, second screen rotation in italics:

Friday

• 6:40 PM EDT: Tampa Bay @ Cincinnati, McClanahan vs. Castillo (MLB TV/ESPN+)
• 7:10 PM EDT: Miami @ New York (NL), López vs. Bassitt (MLB TV)
• 7:10 PM EDT: New York (AL) @ Boston, Cortes vs. Seabold (MLB TV)
• 8:15 PM EDT: Philadelphia @ St. Louis, Wheeler vs. Wainwright (MLB TV)
• 9:40 PM EDT: Houston @ Oakland, Urquidy vs. Blackburn (MLB TV)
• 9:40 PM EDT: San Francisco @ San Diego, Long vs. Snell (MLB TV)
• 10:10 PM EDT: Cubs @ Los Angeles, Thompson vs. Anderson (MLB TV)
• 10:10 PM EDT: Toronto @ Seattle, Stripling vs. Kirby (Apple TV+)

Saturday

• 2:15 PM EDT: Philadelphia @ St. Louis, Gibson vs. Hudson (MLB TV)
• 4:10 PM EDT: Tampa Bay @ Cincinnati, Rasmussen vs. Greene (FS1)
• 7:15 PM EDT: San Francisco @ San Diego, Rodón vs. Darvish (FOX)
• 7:15 PM EDT: New York (AL) @ Boston, Montgomery vs. TBD (FOX)
• 10:10 PM EDT: Cubs @ Los Angeles, Steele vs. Kershaw (MLB TV)
• 10:10 PM EDT: Toronto @ Seattle, Manoah vs. Ray (MLB TV/ESPN+)

Sunday

• 9:00 AM EDT: Formula 1 Austrian Grand Prix (ESPN2)
• 1:40 PM EDT: Miami @ New York (NL), Alcantara vs. Walker (MLB TV)
• 2:15 PM EDT: Philadelphia @ St. Louis, Sánchez vs. Pallante (MLB TV)
• 3:00 PM EDT: NASCAR Cup Series: Atlanta (USA)
• 4:10 PM EDT: Cubs @ Los Angeles, TBD vs. Urías (MLB TV)
• 4:10 PM EDT: San Francisco @ San Diego, Wood vs. Gore (MLB TV)
• 4:10 PM EDT: Toronto @ Seattle, TBD vs. Flexen (MLB TV)
• 7:00 PM EDT: New York (AL) @ Boston, Taillon vs. Pivetta (ESPN)