Ep 972 - College Sports Realignment Podcast Part 2

You're listening to the Back Home Network presented by Home Field Apparel. Welcome back to Crimson Cascaille and Claudio Scott Caulfield joining you. It is Tuesday, August 8th. We still owe you folks a bunch of value football podcast and we will be getting to them throughout the course of these next few weeks as we continue to March towards the start of the season.

But there's so much going on with college sports realignment and restructuring and just kind of a changing of the fabric of things that we wanted to go ahead and do another episode. If you missed the first one that we did at Crimson Cast last week, we had our friends Zach on to talk through things and that's worth the listen. But Scott and I wanted to tackle some of the questions that are out there as well.

We had some thoughts we wanted to share and also had some questions from you folks out there in X land that we wanted to get to. So Scott, good to see you. Always nice to catch up with you mid afternoon. Yeah, good to talk to. You know, I I highly recommend I texted you like that. The positive of Zach was was awesome. So I look at this as kind of like the sister companion, maybe hopefully as good of a sequel. But no, that was a great pod. I learned a lot.

I kind of dug into it. The only thing I'll say is that yesterday I was in Bloomington. I was with my dad who you know and it was just kind of he had actually like he's getting older. He's 93. God blessed me still all here and and and lucid. But he we're kind of talking about this stuff and he didn't know it was finalized and but he was trying to say like, NIL has really messed up college sports. But he kept on saying like, man, like OPEC, like keeps on messing up college sports.

He gets on getting his acronyms messed up and I guess somebody who mispronounces stuff. I I appreciate it was like 4 different times. He's like I can't believe like OPEC is messing up with the it's like all right dad OPEC is not I I do love I do love the idea of Saudi Arabia and Venezuela like tanking the PAC 12 like that's that's 100% certainly I mean the way it. Pays for Florida State to get

out of the ACC? No, I was going to say with the world of sovereign wealth funds, that's not that far off. You know, it's Venezuela's like Citgo. Like what about Conference USA? I think there's some real possibilities there. Yeah, so. So my dad's mispronunciation might be like the prophecy for the future and OPEC taking over college sports. I think it would be the first leader college sports has had in like 50 years. So it's I I'm trying to fake. What for? I no, I actually already have

the answer. Well, because like the live tour they got Greg Norman, who like shot all of his credibility, you know, long time ago. And so like, what former college star or athlete could they get? And the answer is immediate. It's Craig James like like unquestionably, you know, former SMU guy who you know, was on ESPN sued Mike Leach. You know, I mean has just kind of been a jerk about everything.

I mean that seems like and he's also got an oil tie like he's from Texas. I see a lot of of overlap there they where he could be the spokesperson for the new OPEC fueled, pun intended college football situation. I like it. I got a better answer.

It's Chefsky. Yeah, Chefsky is like he was like so always like above the board but yet Grand Team USA and had this huge advantage of doing that and always you know that Duke was always like, oh, we play by the rules, but yet they always seemed to get guys like Zion Williamson like that's a total Chefsky moves. That would be my my pick. I was going to say I think Chefsky's too old. Then I looked he's only 14 years older than Craig James, so it's not like they're completely out of the ball.

I like maybe both. Maybe we need one spokesperson for football, 1 spokesperson for basketball, and I'm sure we could find somebody somewhere with one of the other Olympic sports to that's that's. And then you can get and then you can get Saban just be like and you know and you know and no that was Beltec, sorry. Beltec like we're on to the on to the UAE. Sorry anyone.

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We had some kind of leftovers from the talk that we had on on at the end of the week last week regarding college sports and we had some lingering questions that were kind of overarching the people have asked and then we had some specific questions that you find folks who listen to the show had reached out with. So I wanted to touch on a couple

of those things first. So one of the questions that we got and and it's still been getting and it's actually even more pertinent now that we've seen some news you go, we heard obviously that the Oregon and Washington are joining the Big 10. Wait what Scott, we had to remember we had to remind you last week that Kevin Wilson had a head coaching job. So nothing, nothing is beyond you at this point in terms of not paying attention. But everybody asked the question, wait, OK Oregon, sure.

Washington, sure. No Stanford, no cow like those seem like shoe ins for everything that the Big 10 seems to want. High level academic schools that also have BCS level, like I said it again Scott, also have power conference level athletic programs, particularly in football. You've got the Bay Area, which is obviously one of the biggest media markets in the country. Why is it that we don't have Stanford and Cal in this mix?

I mean, first of all, were you surprised when you heard that they're just adding Oregon and Washington at this point? I was, I I honestly, I always looked at Arizona or Arizona State as an interesting ad just because of the the Phoenix market is so many, you know, Midwesterners in the Phoenix area. So I was, I was kind of curious. It didn't seem like they were ever on the radar, but no the

the the Cal Stanford thing. I find interesting because you and I mentioned it, we talked about it offline too that when the Big 10 released that schedule, you know what is it, you know two or three months ago, the 2024-2025 schedule.

Like the first thing I pretty sure I said on the spot is like you noticed they, you know we've had leaders and legends in East and West. Like there was no divisions and it was like very obvious you could easily add more teams to this schedule without a lot of reengineering. And I think that as we look back. You know, we don't know what's going on, but to me, I think it's very obvious the Big 10, if they wanted Cal and Stanford could have gotten them two, two or three days ago.

They didn't. And so that leads to me the deep that the next question is why didn't they get them because for all of the, oh, Washington, Oregon help travel in the West, like not really. It's still 1000 miles from Seattle to Lai mean it's it's that's like, you know, Iowa to Rutgers. Almost like it's not super close travel. That would definitely help the West Coast travel, having six teams out there.

To me it kind of signals I think in a, you know, two days or 18 months, you know, we'll probably see the Big 10 add two or four more teams and I would assume that those teams are more attractive to the Big 10 than Callen Stanford. That's kind of how I viewed it. Is that they? They knew they were there, they just didn't want them because they might want something else instead.

And also know that there's really not a lot of places Cal and Stanford can go and they can probably grab them in 12 months if they want to. Anyway, that that's how I viewed it. I mean, they can probably grab them anytime they want to, but I think that's ultimately the key. So this is where I think we have to be.

I think one of the problems with trying to figure out college sports expansion now as opposed to what it was when we talked about it 13 months ago is what are the rules of engagement? What are what are people trying to do? And I think it's important to understand that a school can be a great academic fit, it can be a great geographic fit, but if it's not a great financial fit, it's probably not going to be included at the highest echelon in this round.

And clearly, and we talked about this a little bit on the show that we did last week, Stanford has really let its football program fall off from the heights that they were at when Harbaugh was there. And you know where they're at now. It's just this gulf of achievement. And that has had an absolute direct effect on how popular they are to watch on television.

The answer is not very. They also don't have an alumni base that is particularly turned on by football, Other sports, Yes. Football, not as much. Cal is in an even worse position because, yes, I mean, they've had their moments of glory in football, but they've not had those in a while. And again, they don't have a big audience that they command in the PAC 12 or on a national

stage. And so I think what occurred with all of this was the Big 10 new, and I think this is the president's as much as it is the television networks. Here we have an opportunity to add 2 truly national brands. Oregon, who's knocked on the doorstep or knocked on the door? I don't know if you've knocked on the doorstep. You've got some problems of of a national title on a couple of occasions. They've got all that Nike money

behind them. They've got the most recognizable uniforms in college football. They have occupied a particular demographic from an interest perspective for a while. And then Washington, who has won a national title and while they haven't been a top level player, they've been to a beast like an FBS or the the College Football Playoff, like they've been in the mix. Thank you. Yes, they've been in the mix as

far as the national stage. And you would want to add those programs, those schools, if you were the Big 10, because in addition to all of that, they also fit the academic profile. I don't think the Big 10 felt like splitting the pie significantly more than they already have. And indeed, if you look at the deal that Oregon and Washington agreed to, it's like half the money that the other Big 10 schools, the vested ones, are going to get.

They were willing to do that because it was more money than they were going to get if they had stuck with that PAC 12 Apple deal. So they were happy with that. If you try to throw two more schools in the mix, especially Stanford and Cal, who just do not move the needle for Fox or whoever's broadcasting the games, now you're taking food off the plate of everybody in the conference, so to speak.

And so I really think yes, down the line, if the Big 10 wanted to add Stanford and Cal, they'd find a way to make it happen. But this kind of dovetails with the question we got from our. There's always the other side too, and I don't. Truly believe is we don't know what's going on. But there's a world where the Big 10 offered, you know this kind of half deal to Cal and Stanford.

So if you're Washington, Oregon, it's like you got to be in a conference like you're they're not going to go independent. They've got, they want to be highlevel teams. They need to be in the Big 10 or the SCC. There is a world just throwing it out there. We're like maybe the Big 10 offers this or even like a lesser deal like you know you get 25,000,000 and you know a 2% raise or whatever to Cal and Stanford. If you're Stanford, it's like. We're setting on more money than

anybody in the cut. Like we're okay. Like we don't really need to be a top level football program. Maybe we'll just go independent for a couple years and see what's going on. There's a world where the big tech deal, they just looked at it and like we don't, you know, we don't need that deal either. So that's also a possibility that the last thing with Camper, Stanford and Cal for people of our age group that is odd or just is interesting is.

You know, I grew up watching all of these like Tim McCarver led blooper reel videos from like you know, from like Sports Illustrated and stuff. You get these videos and be like, you know, the best 35 bloopers in college, you know, in sports history and it was like the George Brett pine tar incident was up there. And then there was always the Cal Stanford game where, you know, again, I hate this. Kids go back and watch it like the end of the game. Like Guy was a player for Cal, right?

Like runs into the Stanford band and like hits the kid with the two button scores, a touchdown. Like knocks them over. And it was a huge deal. Like growing up that was like the craziest thing that ever happened in a huge football game like Cal Stanford big game. And it's it's no matter what happens. Like, it's like weird that that Cal Stanford game has already been way diminished, but it's going to turn into like the Army Navy game or it's just even the Army Navy game has more appeal now.

Like this thing that was just, well, big deal for us growing up. That is just like a vestige of the past. I mean, John Elway was the starting quarterback for Stanford in that game. But I would, I would, I would pop the brakes on Stanford and Cal being at the end of of of any prominence because I think it's a better than average chance they might end up in the

ACC. That's been the news that's popped up here lately is that there's mutual interest there and a lot of people are freaking out about it and we'll get to that in a second. The one thing I wanted to get to had a question from a Hooper Razzie on X, when will the networks run out of cash or is that even possible?

And I think it actually dovetails with this particular question because I think the networks have already kind of run out of cash, at least what I would say, they haven't run out of cash, they've run out of like FU money. And that's the big difference here. You know, I think for a while it looked like the ceiling was limitless in terms of what you could do with repackaging college sports for a television audience. And that's what really drove the last huge round of realignment.

That's that period from 2003 up until about 2014. You know, we're starting new television networks and we're we're, you know, we're merging new conferences and we're making a Super ACC and a Super Big 10 and a Super SEC and we almost made a Super PAC 12. That has really changed.

And so I think what you're seeing now like the reporting around the Oregon and Washington moves is that once the Big 10 presidents decided that they indeed wanted to go through with this, they went to Fox and they said, can you make the numbers work? So we're not going to lose money on it. And they were able to put together an additional financial package that got Oregon and

Washington in the league. But I think the implication there is that there wasn't money to put other teams in the league, even if the presidents had wanted them. And I honestly don't think they wanted Stanford and Cal, you know, But that's I believe what we're looking at it. As you look around college sports, there's still money out there for the right brands. Notre Dame is probably going to get somewhere between 60 and $70 million by themselves per year from NBC. There's money for them.

I think if something extraordinary happens with the ACC where it comes apart, there would be money put together for certain brands to join the Big 10 or join the SCCI. Don't think you're going to get money. In fact, we kind of saw it already like it was a news story yesterday that the four remaining PAC 12, I guess we call them the PAC 4 schools had all contacted the Big 12 and we're like, hey, we'd be very interested in joining. And the word out of the Big 12 was we're done.

We're we're not going to do anything else. And that ultimately is a decision that's not being made by the because look the the Big 12, no offense will let anybody in as long as they bring a good football stadium. That's the network partners, whether it's ESPN or Fox saying guys, there's not really enough money to add to essentially regional schools in the Northwest +2 largely academic institutions that haven't had success in football in a decade.

So that's I think what we're seeing with that. And so ultimately, we're going to see more and more of this where the networks don't have that much money. They still have some. They're going to make logical moves to get good inventory so that they can make more money on the back end. But I think the era of just everything moving all the time is probably close to an end because the media landscape and the financial landscape that surrounded it changed so much. Agree with that, although I

would, I would caveat this. I think there's a world where it happens again because yes, networks don't have the same amount of money. And partially because a lot of them have been throwing their money into creating their own streamers, which hasn't worked. But you know, I think two or three years ago everyone was kind of assuming like all right, you know, the, the Apple, Netflix, Amazon, those streamers, they are going to be the ones who are going to bid

crazy amounts. It hasn't happened yet. But part of that is because you know we went from a world of low interest rates and you know all of those streamers were getting, you know, they were getting viewed on Wall Street for subscribers and sub numbers and it didn't matter their profit. Changed in the last two years, interest rates went up, they need profit. But I do think you saw Apple kind of they're starting to dip their toe in there.

And then you know I I follow this on the side, but like Netflix, you know they've started to change their model obviously when they're adding advertising on that. But their numbers, if you look at their last two Q earnings call, their numbers were insane where they are, every subscriber they add is like an extra 60% revenue boost. Like they are actually now profitable as they add people. It just goes. Revenue side.

So they have kind of weathered that storm gotten over the hump and I I do think there's a world where a real profitable Netflix, Apple and Amazon you know those players they end up saying at some point you know we want to get into live right sports, they start out bidding each other and you could see those numbers jump up again. We're just in kind of that weird spot where the networks don't have the funds, they don't have the landscape, their numbers are going down.

The streamers whose numbers are going up aren't quite ready to to dive into live right sports yet. Oh yeah, that's that's the big aspect of this, that I think the PAC 12 especially, but a lot of other schools in college athletics have miscalculated because I do believe that they thought, Oh well, if the network TV door is closing, the the big company streaming stuff is going to be an even bigger golden

door. And in fact, if you read a lot of the reporting from the insiders in the PAC 12, that was the thing they were banking on. It's like, oh, not going to matter. Amazon's going to come in and write us a $50 million check or Apple's going to write us a $50

million check. Well, we know Apple was only willing to write about a $24 million check to the PAC 12 score, PAC 10. I guess at that point when they wrote the deal and they were willing to do some extra with incentives based upon like already, you guys actually get your fans to subscribe. We talked about that a bunch on the previous podcast. There was a fascinating bit of of journalism that happened in the Sports Business Journal. I think it was John Orand this came out yesterday.

I want to read a little bit of this because it answers some of the questions you're talking about, and some of this was stuff I didn't know before I read it. Yesterday, ESPN, Fox and CBS all put in last minute bids for packages of Big 12 games, but they all came in much, much lower than the conference wanted. And you know, they've kept waiting. And that's why the Apple TV bid was finally presented last week because that was the only thing that they had.

So here were the packages that apparently were offered according to this story, Fox. Offered a bid for a package of 13 total games, which would pay about 35 to $40 million a year total, not per team total. So that's like with three to $4 million a team and probably would have been distributed unevenly. That's what you would call, as the piece points out, the B package. Not the primary rights package, but like an ancillary thing that gets added to a deal. ESPN.

I'm going to come back to ESPN in the second. CBS engaged with the PAC 12 over the last couple of weeks, but only put forward a bid for a handful of basketball games, about 5 in total. That's bad. You know, if all they're bidding on is 5 basketball games, you're in bad shape. Sources expected ESPN and Amazon to share the PAC. Twelve's a package, the primary rights package, but Amazon never submitted a bid.

NBC never submitted a bid. ESPN, and this is probably the thing you know if you're If you're feeling sympathetic about the PAC 12, feel sympathetic for the athletes, Feel sympathetic for the coaches, feel sympathetic for the fans.

Do not in any way, shape or form feel sympathy for the Conference commissioners or the presidents of the of the PAC12ESPN offered what is being termed a significant package to the conference more than a year ago, and the Conference University presidents rejected it. ESPN then turned around and cut a deal with the Big 12. But the offer that they ended up giving in the last couple of weeks to the PAC 12, according to this piece, was only a small bid for overall PAC 12 rights.

And so you know this. It's one of those things where I think everybody is always in such a rush to figure out, like, what narrative do I need to attach myself to. And, you know, one of the big narratives is money and networks are ruining college sports. And it's like and and then, but then there's the other narrative, which was touched on

by a couple of people. It's like the money's all run out and it's like, well, neither of those narratives is necessarily true because the the networks were interested in doing a deal. The PAC 12, as it's done over the course of really the entire last 13 years, just constantly decided to shoot itself in the private parts at every single possible opportunity, every. And you can go through the list.

The PAC 12 had so many opportunities to put themselves in a favorable commercial position, maybe not at the same level as the Big 10 in the SEC, but certainly in just as favorable, if not more so a position than the ACC in the Big 12. And they were so convinced that they were above that that they rejected things left and right because they were convinced that a white knight with the Amazon logo on its chest was going to come riding through the door on

a horse made of cardboard boxes and give them each a $50 million check. When they walked in to Network Partner Opportunities a few years earlier. And they were looking for the the deal renewal, they walked in and they were like, we want at least $50 million at school. And, you know, from all accounts, the network execs looked at that and like, people are crazy. There's no way. And, you know, so there's

clearly some money. And it's also clear that the networks are being a little more circumspect, a little more cautious about this than people are giving them credit for. But that doesn't fit a lot of the narratives that we've seen spewed around on this. It's hard not to look at all of this when you see the reporting and say to yourself, gosh, the PAC 12 screwed itself. And there were plenty of opportunities for this not to be the outcome.

And they ignored every single warning along the way. And there's just not going to be that much money coming out of streamers because Apple, Amazon, Netflix, they're getting like, absolutely destroyed on the stock market right now. They're looking at this and they're like, is live sports television really a business we want to get into at this point in any scale? The thing with the streamers is, and they I mean Netflix has actually come way back.

Like they are looking good from a wall, Wall Street perspective. Here's the thing with the streamers that I've always been dubious of with them getting deep into sports is. Sports is a live rights. You are renting the sports. So ESPN has put itself in a spot where they just don't have any original program. They just they rent sports and that's what they do. If you look at the history of Netflix, Amazon, Apple, like Netflix, has spent the last 15 years doing everything it can to own.

Everything that it puts out there, it is owned, produced and made by Netflix. That's partially why there's a lot of is that they don't pay residuals. Like that's why there's strikes right now with the actors and the writers you look at you know Amazon, they they only promote their own stuff. Apple TV. The only thing on Apple TV services are their own shows,

things that they make. You know, Disney, they bought Lucas Films, they bought Marvel because they want to own those properties and own their own stuff. So. This is where I look at it. It's like, if you're Netflix, your entire business model is how do we make stuff that is Netflix produced and made Like they're tired of renting other shows. Do they want to spend a huge chunk of money to rent and, you know, to to rent Big 10 game, rent anything, any sport?

And then it's like they're going to build a bunch of shows around it, and then five years from now they lose all of that stuff like this is. In no respect any way any of these streamers has ever viewed content for them. They would much. You know, I've read I've heard this other places is a little bit crazy and it's like not realistic, but it's like Netflix or Apple would be more

interested in just. Buying the NFL, like instead of buying the rights like we'll just buy it and then we'll own, you know, we'll own the Big 10. Like they'd much rather do that. So that that's the thing with the streamers. I do think it's and it's like that's where the PAC 12 also miscalculated. It's just to think that they're going to Apple and Amazon's going to come in with a higher

number. It's like this is really, this is not what streamers do and it's not the business they're in. They're in the business of creating their own content, like they might have just bought the PAC 12. But they weren't going to give you a higher number than legacy media companies. And again, legacy media companies have their own issues. And so anyway, that's that's where I look at streamers. And like, they're probably not the white knight who's going to

push the money even higher. Yeah, absolutely. And that's, I think, a hard lesson. And again, it didn't have to end up this way for the PAC 12. They mismanage the situation. So it's like I think you can be concerned about what you, not you, but like the the audience member can be concerned about how they perceive college sports

to be going. But I would really caution people about acting like college sports is being killed from the outside when at least in the PAC Twelve's case, the calls were absolutely coming from the inside of the house. And that's that's a real problem when you think about it. Let's talk about a couple other things in this vein before we get to some questions. So one of the things I've been mentioning and I I put this to you in our show notes

beforehand. I've seen a lot of complaints about academic related conferences or athletic conferences like not making a lot of sense geographically. Like in most people's minds, the Big 10 is a Midwest conference, The ACC is an Atlantic Coast Conference that may just be getting ready to add Stanford and Cal. The SEC clearly is in the Southeast.

The Big 12 I guess is in the plains States and the PAC 12 is the West. And it's very difficult for people to get their heads wrapped around the idea that their geographical predispositions of where things are supposed to be might not match. I really would advise people, and you may not want to do this, so you could take my advice and and decide to ignore it. By all means. You have to stop thinking about

these conferences in this way. I agree it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to have four West Coast schools in the artist still known as the Big 10. But if you, if you, if you unhinge the idea that the Big 10 has to be a Midwestern based university conference and you look at it instead as one of the two leading college sports brands that has a national footprint and it tries to bring together not all of the best brands but most of the best brands to play particularly

college football but also other sports. I mean I just think it's a more realistic way of looking at it. And I honestly like as much as I am sympathetic to some degree to the argument that we need to keep these things more geographical. It's like where were these complaints A decade ago? I mean we've got, you know, ACC schools in, you know, in SEC territory and in the Northeast

but also inland a bit. We've got, you know, the Big 10 stretches from New Jersey to Nebraska that was even, you know, and that was, you know, before they added the California schools and the Pacific Northwest schools. The Big Twelve's got a school in West Virginia. You know, I mean, it's it hasn't made geographical sense for a

long while. And I think, you know, at least to some degree, I'm, I'm just tired of seeing people arguing for a system that only made geographical sense like 40 years ago and it's gradually had to change because of the economic realities of high level college sports.

You've lived in that system for a while and I get that this is kind of beyond the pale, but it also feels like, you know, fans, you can be mad about it. You can be like, I'm not going to pay attention to college sports, but if you're not, you kind of got to let that part of it go because there's just clearly been an economic stratification where a couple of brands, in particular, the Big 10 and the SEC, have just completely lapped the field because they've been smarter

business wise over a longer period of time. It probably isn't going to be very beneficial to get mad about that moving forward that you might have schools from outside the Midwest in the Big 10. So you said something, we talked on the phone a couple days ago that that kind of hits this point. Was you. You were like, just think of it like, you know that the end of the PAC 12 was no different than like the end of Johnson and Johnson or just some corporation that goes down.

And, you know, I was thinking about that. And. And you're right. And in this respect, it's very similar to, like, pick on Amazon again. But, you know, you and I have lived through the growth of Amazon. Like Amazon, you should just be a place you'd go to buy books. And it's like, oh, you can buy toilet paper on Amazon. And now it's like if you would have told me in, you know, 1997, it's like you're going to get to watch Thursday Night Football games on Amazon. I'd be like.

Like why not Barnes and Noble, what are you talking about? Like they sell books, but like it has evolved and that would have something totally different. You know Apple sells phones but also has a TV network. Like the companies can grow and change and sometimes they do it well, sometimes they, you know, they they make mistakes and they stay, they go out of business and they don't do it.

But I think looking at it from the corporation point of view kind of makes sense and it's just like the Big 10 is like Amazon and it is just offering different things in different areas that the thing that I would say. From your last pod with Zach, you barely touched on this, but just an idea. You know, no one's listening to to me, but it's like we're almost at a point where, you know, the people that I feel bad for are, you know, basketball and football. Everybody's like, oh, you're the

travel. It's like basketball, football are going to be fine. Like they they have, they are the ones that generate the revenue, like they are going to be catered to when it comes to travel. I do feel bad for like, you know, the the, the baseball teams, the lacrosse teams at the low level sports. There is a world where maybe it just makes sense, you know, again, because no one's in charge, like no one's still

doing those things. Maybe you just say, hey, the Big 10 in football and basketball are these schools. But like for all the other sports we're just going to play a regional group. Like we're just going to have like Indiana's going to play you know the old Big 10 or the OG Big 10 in all of the other non revenue producing sports. And you kind of have like what Notre Dame has where they're just like we're playing football over here and all the other

sports are playing over there. And there's a world where like because it it is absurd to think like, you know, the women's, you know, field hockey team, you know, low level sports, they're just not, you know, softball, they're not revenue producing like they're going to get screwed on some of these travel pieces. And so maybe there is a world where you just like we're going to pull men's basketball and

football out. These are going to be in what we call these TV conferences and then everything else will play kind of geographically. I get that argument. There's a couple of things that make it kind of not possible. And also and also from my perspective not as important, I mean here. So let me let me put it this way, A, I was love Notre Dame being brought up as this.

As an example of this, Notre Dame flies their nonrevenue sports teams to Miami. They fly them to Tallahassee, they fly them to Atlanta, they fly them to Clemson. I don't know if you guys have looked on a map, but those are pretty far away in terms of of geography and just trying to get that. You're trying to fly to Clemson, Scott, not not the easiest place to get into necessarily if you're flying commercial especially. So I I get the idea in theory, but realistically nobody's

really been concerned. At least very few people on the national stage have been concerned about this regional issue. And we've had teams that fly everywhere. You know, we've got I U, we're in Indiana, I U as a water polo varsity team and I love it. They're they're always ranked in the top 25. Look at the teams in their conference. They're all in California. They fly out there on a regular basis. All the players are from California. You can look at baseball across

the country. If you are located north of the Ohio River, you spend the first two months of your season in the South or in the West playing games on the road at with with travel that absolutely runs right into what you're doing in the classroom and and absolutely gives an incredible, you know, advantage to the schools that are in the South and the West. NCAA is allowed that for decades nobody's cared. So while I understand the argument, I think the travel

thing is pretty overblown. And it even at the major level, like I see all these like, oh gosh, now Oregon's student athletes have to fly to Rutgers in Maryland regularly. And I'm like, you know how often they're likely going to play at Rutgers? But once every six to eight years, you know how often they're going to play at Maryland? About once every six to eight years. They may do them in the same weekend once every six to eight years. That's to me a little bit overblown.

It does stink I think for for some of the smaller, you know, the the the you know, smaller budget athletic programs. But I also think the other issue here is that the way that colleges and universities have packaged their athletic programs, that's all television inventory, it's streaming inventory that's all being sold. It's not like those are

unfortunate throwins. Those are considered to be inventory that the networks are buying when they're buying the rights for the football and basketball. I don't think that that's good. I've long been a proponent of why don't we keep our Olympic sports in a more regional environment when you can like it wouldn't really be something that water polo could do because there are no Regional Water polo

schools. But so I would I would support that but the chances of that happening are almost nonexistent because you know a on the flip side it's like well we need those on TV. Well, it's going to be hard for look like if Illinois is playing Western Illinois and Eastern Illinois and Northwestern, that's not going to work from a

TV perspective. And if the whole idea is, gosh, we need to like women's soccer at the college level needs to be more prominent, volleyball needs to be more prominent, you're going to only get that through connecting brands with brands. So to some degree, I think that's almost an unworkable scenario because I don't think you're going to get a situation where, Oh yeah, we're going to have a conference for football and then a conference for everything else.

It doesn't work the way that things are being run right now. And it's a little, it's unfortunate, yes, but it's it also may all be moot because I think down the line, and this is it's this is the thing that kind of hangs over this conversation any and it rarely is getting talked about right now.

There's a nonzero chance that in five years a lot of these sports won't be varsity sports at a lot of these colleges and universities because of the fact that the moment that that, you know, the National Labor Relations Board or Congress declares that these are actually employees as opposed to student athletes, a lot of that's going to drop down to the club level. And I think that will fundamentally alter a bunch of things. And so that's going to be really

interesting to watch. Before we get to questions, I have two just as a you are a media professor.

I just. If I was in your class I would bring these up as I think they're they're interesting contradictions that I I'm hearing in the media and I would also say I've been guilty of probably within this podcast and I think you I don't want to blame you but maybe the royal we we've been guilty of these but I do I just throw it out there and it's kind of more you know an FYI but I think it's interesting you know on one hand we all we're talking about you know the

death of the the cable bundle the media landscape has changed and as we talk it's like you know there's no longer which by the way. Side note like the medium everyone your cables dying. It's like it kind of is. But it's like there's also YouTube TV and Hulu which are based because digital cable. So it's not totally dying. There's still carriage fees anyway.

You know that media markets don't really matter anymore like you know Rutgers to get the New York market like it really doesn't matter to get those markets anymore And yet like 2-2 minutes later I he'll somebody say but you know but the Big 10 is getting the Seattle market and that's really good. It's like it is. It's funny that we talk about how the media markets don't matter. And then we talk about how like, oh, it's like really good.

The Big Ten's getting Seattle and you know, the Big 12 is getting the Phoenix market for for growth. And so I find that that interesting. The other contradiction is something you and I have talked about, you know, just kind of joking and like, you know what if teams are getting relegated and as you brought up, it's like, you know? Nobody wants to have a power conference. If you're Ohio State, you don't want to play the best teams all the time, which makes sense.

You need some, you know, semi easy games even within your conference, which I agree with and that's true. But that it is also funny that it's like the reason we didn't bring Washington State and Oregon State is because they suck in football and it's like we want to get better teams. Like all of this is always about getting better teams. And in a way they are like on one hand it's like we don't want super conferences, but then it's like well.

Then why didn't we go for Oregon State or Cal and Stanford? It's like, well, because they suck in football, so we're only getting the best team. So it is. It's an interesting contradiction, at least that I see. Well, I don't. I don't think that's why they didn't want Washington State in Oregon State. They don't Washington State in Oregon State. Not because they suck at football, because they both been better than not just I you, but they've been better than Northwestern.

They've been better than Purdue. They didn't get them because they don't have a market attached to them. They're just they don't. I mean they and it's weird because like Washington State does okay in in games in terms of like television ratings, but that's generally because they're playing teams that people want to see. And so these two questions end up kind of dovetailing with each other. And so let me go back to the first one, which is the market situation.

Markets aren't. They're not irrelevant, but they're not as relevant as they were when cable networks, whether it was ESPN or Big 10 Network or SEC Network, we're trying to secure carriage fees and monthly subscriber money that would come from the cable companies or the satellite companies to have those things on television. And so when you think about it, like that still exists.

It's not like nobody subscribes to cable or YouTube TV, but it's about 50 million people, 40 to 50 million people fewer now that subscribe to those things than there were a decade ago. That's a pretty big loss. And you know, not to. I do a whole lecture on this in in class, so I'm not going to do it here. But the Cliff Notes version is one of the things that fueled ESPN being able to buy all the

media rights. And play Kingmaker in college sports was the fact that they had two separate huge revenue streams for a couple of decades. One was subscriber fees and the other was advertising. Well, they can still survive on the advertising and a reduced number of fees, and they've tried to convert people more to subscribing to ESPN Plus, which isn't going to pay them nearly as much money, but it's going to give them $100 a year out of those people.

It's just not going to be as many because there was a bunch of people that were paying $7.00 a month to ESPN that never watched ESPN because it was tied into the local cable bundle. You take that and you apply it to the schools.

The problem is ultimately for schools like Washington State, Oregon State, a lot of the other thing, a lot of the other schools that are kind of in that mix, they just don't have enough people who are going to subscribe to an ESPN Plus or an Apple TV or whatever to make it worth the while of the conferences and the networks that are going to be working with them or the streamers where it's going to generate enough revenue that everybody can get paid.

And so when you look at Washington State, it's like from a competitive perspective, you know, they wouldn't have been any worse or better of an addition. They would have probably a better addition than like Maryland and Rutgers just because they're they're more isolated that you know, they they've had individual successes at times, but the problem is that they just don't bring

enough people to the table. And this is actually the issue with Stanford and Cal. I mean, Stanford and Cal both have a lot of alums, a lot, and don't particularly care enough about football or their other sports that they're willing to fork over X amount of dollars a year. You know, So you think about like, MLS is a great example. Despite not being a college sports league, MLS recently signed a deal with Apple, which was pretty controversial.

And I had certainly me and a bunch of other people kind of curious how it was going to work out because they signed this deal with Apple and it's largely like most of the games are just on Apple, which means you have to subscribe to the MLS package on Apple, which is $100 a year. And everybody was like, is MLS really popular enough that they're going to be able to bring in enough subscribers to pay all of their teams, enough to go and be competitive in the marketplace for signing players?

Well, what did MLS do this year, Scott? They go out and sign the most popular player in the world and suddenly, you know, ticket prices go through the roof and a bunch of people halfway through the season have dropped $100 to watch half of the MLS season because they're going to get to see Leonel Messi play soccer. College sports can't do that. Like, the Washington state right now is not going to be able to go and get a top player to goose their subscriptions.

And so you know, look there's there's some level of luck involved in this, but there's also and it's kind of it, it crosses over with some I U related stuff that we'll talk about. Like if you're already in the club and you're at school like I U that has like the the second largest living alumni base in the country, that's a lot of

potential subscribers. If you're a school like Washington State, that's, you know, it's a, it's a small, I think it's a land grad institution, it's agriculturally focused. You just don't have that many people who are going to add money to the pie and that's ultimately what these conferences are trying to put together. So that's really kind of a it's a twisty answer, but it winds its way through some of the things that affect the decision making process.

Yep. No, that's that's, that's why I asked you. That's a good answer. No. And you and I mean I think most people know this, but like that was the secret sauce for not only ESPN but a lot of these kind of legacy media brands was they had the best. And I've been listening to a lot of pods about like you know, the death of, you know, streamers and all this. It's like in the 90s and the 2000s, you know, normal profit for a business is like 10 to 20%

is really good. You know, ESPN have like a 40 to 45% profit margin most of these. You know, companies that were, you know, the the cable type companies were in that profit margin because a lot of the people you were selling to were not using your product. It doesn't matter if you were watching or not, but it's like that. The line was always, you know, like your grandmother pays $8 a month watching. It's for for ESPN.

They never watched. It's like everybody who signed up for cable was paying nine or 10 bucks for ESPN. And they're paying, you know $3 for lifetime is you were just like everybody was paying for everything. And it was whether you used it or not, it became like the best deal for 20 years because everyone you had to pay for it, whether you used it or not. And so it's like that's the best thing in business is selling something that nobody needs or

wants. It doesn't matter whether they use it. You don't have to make more of it. And and now like that is where this is changing, is that it's like you like you said, it's like you have to now kind of pick and choose what you pay for. But anyway, Well and look. And from a college athletics perspective, look, there's certain brands that are in better shape than others.

And I think you know, we right now, we're going through this with these PAC 12 schools and you've seen who the winners and losers are. UUSC&UCLA were never going to

struggle to find a home. Oregon and Washington, if they had thrown themselves open and it had been an open bidding process, you know, who knows, maybe ESPN would have said yes, we'll pay extra or we'll give a full share to Oregon and Washington to join the Big 12 so that they don't join the Big 10 because that strengthens Fox. But Oregon and Washington I think had kind of a behind the scenes.

They've been vetted already in the last round of realignment by the Big 10. So I think that was an easy match. I think, well, you know, but you're looking, it's like, OK, Stanford and Cal didn't bring enough to the table and that blows people's minds. But realistically, in what matters from a revenue perspective, they don't bring enough to the table and you put,

you know. Real quick, not to interrupt, but like the the Washington, Oregon part, this goes back to the pod you had with Zach. But it's like a great point that he brought up talking about the and we can go to the ACC. Time of the ACC with Florida State was like, where are you

going to go and like that? That's the other part of this is like, you know, for Washington and Oregon it's it's like, all right, if you're not like if you're going to, you know, not go to the Big 10. And the PAC 12 is disintegrating once USC and you know at let's just take it two weeks ago USC and USCLA is already gone. The PAC 12 doesn't have a good deal if you're Washington and Oregon. It's like you have a you don't have a lot of other options

either. It's like you're not going to go to the SEC or the SEC is not invited you the ACC has their own issues, like you're not going to just join their grant

of right problems. The Big 12 is like Okay and then it's like are you going to become an independent Like that is the other part that is sometimes it in this discussion is like you know well you know you I can't believe they went to the Big 10. It's like where else were they going to go and and that's like well great point is Zach made about Florida State is like Florida State's like we're out.

It's like Okay, where you going? Well, so this is where it's going to get interesting because I, you know, I do think that there's a, there are two. The Florida State question is, is a curious one because they are outside of Notre Dame who's constantly going to do their own thing, but they are the most attractive football property left that might be movable to one of these larger conferences. Now what I said on the podcast with Zach, it's not just like where are they going to go.

A lot of those SEC schools have every reason to not want Florida State in the league. Now the Big 10 if they can get over misgivings, they might have about Florida State academics and look Florida State's not. I mean they're they're not great but I mean they're they're a research one institution. They're not an A, a U school. But I mean neither's Nebraska at this point there's they would be attractive if the Big 10 wasn't like to put off by their academic picture.

They're attractive because there's your entry point into the South and that is a real concern from a recruiting perspective that you don't have an entry point into the South. That's what would make them attractive. The big question there is, can they get out of the ACC contract? And then if Fox is looking at that and saying, oh, Florida State's on the table and they could potentially join the Big 10, how much would that mean in

terms of our additional revenue? And what could we then distribute to the league that would make it worth their while, you know? But then where I was going originally is if you look at the other brands in the ACC, there's going to be a lot of brands that get left behind if that thing blows up, which is why, if they're smart, you know, I think the Stanford Cal thing, if they actually did join the conference, that might give them a longer term lifespan, kind of

like what the Big 12 has done. I mean, if you notice the Big 12, and we talked about this again on the last podcast, Big 12 knows who they are. They're not the Big 10. They're not the SEC. They are quite clearly in the second tier. But they have enough brands that they are an attractive television property and they're going to be in the College Football Playoff. You know, they're going to be in in contention for bowls. They can recruit well, They have a fun product.

Will the ACC finally appreciate that they are not on the Big 10 and SEC's level accept that and you know and then the big question is OK they. Go look at the Big 12 like like my dog waffles in a nice way. Like we have dinner. He just kind of scrounges around the bottom. He does pretty well. He gets, you know, under my 7 year old that gets some cheese, gets some pizza. Like he's not eating off the table. He's not getting aggressive with the table, but like he's doing

pretty well getting the scraps. And the Big 12 has kind of been in that spot where they're they've never like leveraged another conference to pull people out a high level conference, but they just kind of wait. And then once the PAC 12 explodes and the Big 10 grabs you at the top of the plate, whatever falls off, it's like, all right, yeah, we'll take Arizona, Arizona.

And they've actually done pretty good at getting some some pretty good brands kind of after all the big boys have had their shot at the the buffet, so to speak. Yeah, I mean this is honestly what killed the PAC 12 is that they refused to acknowledge where they were in the pecking order and because they kept expecting Big 10 money or SEC money, that's why they no longer exist. And it's it's it's a cautionary

tale more than anything else. And I think the ACCI do think you might look at it and say do we really want an angry Florida State making things worse for everybody or can we? You know that the flip side is if you lose Florida State or if you lose Miami, you suddenly make the conference less attractive from a television perspective. How much less attractive? That's the big question mark.

Are they so much less attractive that now they're getting 20 million a year instead of 30 million a year? Well, if you're the ACC, you have to look at it and again keep referencing you know you and Zacks pod, but in other places like. The the death knell to, you know, pulling out USC&UCLA was the death knell of the PAC 12. It just took another 13 months for it to completely implode. That would be the fear of the ACC.

In my mind, if you let Florida State leave is you better have a plan for what you're doing to move forward and continue to grow. Because if you don't, you just sit there and it's like you're now at a point where you could just you could be a spot where everyone's waiting for you to implode. And then you implode and then everyone just picks the carcass clean and that that would be the

fear in my mind. If you're an ACC school, it's like a Florida State leaves and you let them leave and they somehow get out of this grant of right, which is dig into the grants of rights, the amount of money they need to pay and then the the media money that like they would forsake in the future. It's banana. Even Venezuela would balk at that a little bit.

But you know, but you let them leave and it's like that's if you don't have, if you just then kind of if you're the ACC and you're like oh we'll talk about it next year. You're doing exactly what the PAC 12. When UCLA&USC left and then you could be in a spot where they just completely implode and the Big 10 is able to grab three

schools at A at a discount rate. Now, look, I think the the biggest existential threat to the ACC is you know the if schools can want to press for more money or they want to press for more prominence, that's where you could see them picked apart, you know. And again, this is one thing that is in short supply in hot both higher education and in sports is humility and a realization of your your position in life and your position in in your profession.

And I I would worry with the ACC and you can this goes all the way back to why they have their grant of rights and their television contract like they were so desperate. They so felt that they deserve their own television network that they were willing to let ESPN essentially sign them to a it's like that you know scene from the social network where you know he the at the end he's you know signs away.

Where he's at with stock not realizing that everybody else's stock has increased in value like 6000% and his is going to increase in value like 50%. It's that mentality, the grant of the grant of rights just for those who don't know, and you can correct me too if I fully wrong, but you know the the ESPN deal with the ACC goes through 2036. If any school wants to leave, they have to pay an exit fee. I think it's like $150 million and then not only do they pay

that. Let's just say Florida State comes up with 150 and they come to the Big 10. They then have to, Florida State has to pay any new media money they get back to the ACC for the life of that contract that goes to 2036. Like they're it's like a, you know, they're not allowed to get money from their new employer until the end of that deal. Whether that would hold up in court, I don't know, but it's a wild provision that's in there. Again, completely opposite of the Fact 12, which was just.

Hey, everyone's gone and there's no exit fee and we're just out. It's the complete opposite of the of a way just just for those who don't know. Like when you dig into it's like that's why any school that wants to leave the ACC, they're looking at like a 5 to $600 million tab and 12 years of no incoming revenue, right. Well anyway, let's get to some questions from folks out there. We got time for a few.

So let me start with a long time friend of the podcast Mike Petry. Do you agree with the Athletic that Rutgers is the worst realignment addition First of all no I don't I I really had some misgivings about that athletic article. If you haven't read it yet out there in in podcast land read it. But it's it's very one sided and it kind of, it ignores a couple of key elements in terms of like Rutgers was so far behind in facilities, they were going to have to bring themselves up to

speed. And I think that that would have been the situation regardless of who the Big 10 added, the Big 10 at the time. And this goes back to what we were talking about in terms of of markets and television networks really felt like they needed a presence in the New York metro area. There were only three options. Syracuse was not leaving the ACC, so that was not an option. UConn and Rutgers were your only two options there. And both of them, St. Joseph's have a football program. Scott.

Yeah, but you know, both UConn and Rutgers were not going. They were going to need a lot of upgrades from a financial like a facilities perspective. It just wasn't going to be an easy transition. Rutgers, much like we're seeing with Oregon and Washington right now, only started. I mean, they didn't start with a full share of Big 10 network money and overall distribution money. They had to work their way up to that. I think they finally started receiving a full share a couple

of years ago. I mean, I look, honestly, I don't think Rutgers was a bad realignment addition. You know they're not. I don't think it is because the Big 10 is where it's at because they got that East Coast market when it mattered at the time. And to your point, like, yeah, unless you're getting Syracuse, but Syracuse really isn't like you just needed to plant your flag there. Because I I grew up in New York before I moved to Indiana.

I have a lot of friends there. Like it's just there is no college. There is no like college team of New York there, I mean. Sports Town. And so you just need somebody. You could have, like, I joke St. John's doesn't have football, but you could have just grabbed anybody there and be like, oh, we're we're here. And it would be like, oh, it's great. We're going to have like, it's to get the alumni of the other Big 10 schools that are in that area.

I mean, it's and look, and I I, I don't really have a problem with either Rutgers or Maryland or Nebraska for that matter, in this new age of college athletics, being in the Big 10. I mean, you know, and and there's no reason to throw stones here, but it's not like Maryland's had the greatest start to their time in the Big 10 either.

They haven't won a whole lot. They had that terrible, you know, tragedy with the football player dying and they had to fire a head football coach and they came in with a tremendous amount of debt that they've been saddled with that they couldn't pay. You know, that's why they exited the ACC. And and you know, even with paying the fees that they had to pay to get out of the ACC, it was still a better financial deal.

You know those those schools, I think all of them look like questionable additions, but I think longterm they make sense in the big scheme of things. And so it's it's hard for me. I don't know what the the purpose of that article was. Honestly, I think it was like let's find something that everybody hates about realignment and for a lot of people they hate the fact that Rutgers is in the Big 10. I don't. I don't.

To me, that was just kind of like it was way overblown for how relevant it is in the bigger scheme of things with all of this. But I have the answer. What's that? Of what? It's. Just kind of its tongue in cheek a little bit. But to me the answer would be Nebraska if it meant the Big 10 could have gotten like Oklahoma or Texas instead, right. That's that's the thing. It's like you you Nebraska, came in as it's like Oh my God, we're getting this legacy power and they've.

Done. Absolutely zero. And there's a world where it's like, you know, it's more the opportunity cost of what we maybe had lost if we weren't able to get, like I said, Texas, Oklahoma, you know, maybe we get UCLA&USC earlier like they're it's just Nebraska's kind of been like what have they really added and could we have gotten maybe some better schools if you get, if you get Texas, Oklahoma instead of Nebraska? You are now probably ahead of

the SEC in all rounds. I really, there really is an interesting alternative history where the Big 10 gets off their high horse a bit and sign and like agrees to let Missouri and instead of Nebraska and Nebraska stays in the Big 12. You know because it it really feels like from a a bunch of different perspectives Nebraska makes a lot more sense as a Big 12 school. But I'm curious what would happen because absolutely Oklahoma and Texas are leaving Nebraska behind to go to the SEC.

You know is Nebraska happy being the big fish in the relatively small pond of of the Big 12 in this revamped mode maybe they are. That seems to be what they want. They want to be the center of attention. You know, they should have known that before joining a conference that already had two centers of attention, that refused to yield

the spotlight to anybody. I I don't know why they thought it would somehow be different, you know, But I I do think actually like Rutgers and Maryland, whatever you want to complain about budgets or facilities, Rutgers and Maryland understood their place when they joined the Big 10. Nebraska never has and never will, and so that I do think it's kind of an interesting wrinkle in all this. Mike did ask more than any specific school which

realignment move was the worst overall strategy. i.e. Big 10 moving EACC rating, the Big E, Big 12 rating, the A A/C before rating the PAC 12. I think the honestly, for me, I think the biggest mistake was the ACC and the moves that they've made and here's why. Like the ACC is really not much different than the Big East, when the Big East made all those moves in the 90s to try to become a football power in addition to being a basketball power.

If you really look at the ACC, the core of the ACC, it's a basketball conference first and foremost. It's it's North Carolina. It's Duke. It's, you know, Virginia, Wake Forest, NC State. You know, it's, yes, you've got some good football programs in there, but you know, they they were the ones that added Florida State. Florida State was an independent

in football. And I think they were in the metro for all other sports and they've been they they completely changed the trajectory of that conference into something that I think most of their membership is not comfortable with. You can make the same argument about adding Virginia Tech, adding Miami, adding Syracuse, because all of that was part of that raid that they carried out on the Big East. And it was.

It's interesting because I think the ACC, and this is where some of the hubris we've talked about, comes in. They really thought by doing that they were guaranteeing an equal seat at the table with the Big 10 in the SCC. And in the early 2000s, you could probably make that argument. It hasn't worked out that way. And you know, a lot of it is not really realizing what you're adding when you do that. They added a Miami program that by the time they added them was, you know, running on fumes.

And no one realized that they added a Syracuse program that was real good in the 80s and pretty good in the 90s, but was rapidly like was in an area that was rapidly disintegrating from a recruiting perspective. They added a Virginia Tech program much like Florida State that was largely the Providence of one man, Frank Beamer at Virginia Tech, Bobby Bowden at Florida State. Those were not programs that had a huge amount of success prior to those two guys getting there.

And there was always the chance that they were going to fall off, especially when you consider what surrounds them. You know, and I, we talked about it on this previous show.

You know Florida State you're surrounded by Auburn and Alabama and Louisiana State to and the Mississippi schools to your W You're surrounded by Georgia and you know Florida and South Carolina to your EI mean that if you fall off at all, which they've done, especially since Jimbo Fisher left, it's going to be real hard to pick yourself back up. And Syracuse or excuse me, Virginia Tech again, it's like that's what Beamer did there is kind of miraculous.

What Have you ever been to Blacksburg and you've been to that surrounding area Not exactly a hotbed for modern athletic talent. And so, you know, I also think the ACC just got, they got a little too greedy. I mean for no reason. They had Boston College. Why, what is it you want to talk about? I mean calling Rutgers the worst realignment addition just completely ignores Boston College having done absolutely nothing in the ACC since they've arrived.

And you want, I mean a major media market, like one of the biggest media markets, one of the most sports savvy media markets in the nation. Boston College doesn't move the needle at all. People complain that you know that that LA schools don't move the needle in LA. Boston College is in Boston and it's it's a complete afterthought, you know. So to me that would probably be my answer is like the ACC does not need to be a 15 school

league. It tried to do with the Big East did, which was be two things at once, and it's done none of them particularly well. Yeah, I I would say it has to be whatever the PAC 12 did. Because they were so bad and

imploded. But no you're you're you know I mean other than I mean really and that's the thing the PAC 12 sins are are not doing things not adding Texas and Oklahoma you know and where and you know because I think on on their face the Utah and Colorado editions for the PAC 12 were actually pretty good but everything else they did was a real bad idea. Couple other questions we want to get to real quick because the bus is about to arrive, which means my podcast time comes to

an end here. Assembly Call asks question. Can you speak to some of the fears that have been expressed, including by Ryan Phillips, rumors and rants about Indiana potentially being left behind if the big football brands someday

decide to do their own thing? So I'll say this, all the things I highlighted earlier about moving out of the era where, you know, markets are important, moving more into an era where subscriber numbers are important and having, you know, essentially as many people within reason interested in your product on both a national level and on a regional level. That to me has changed the equation from what it was 1015

years ago. And a lot of the proclamations and the the the declarations we've been seeing from media commentators and sports about oh, you know, we're just a few years removed from Ohio State and Michigan saying, well wait, why are we paying Indiana and Purdue all this money when we could just cut out the middleman and keep more of it to ourselves. I, you know there's a couple of

things to that. First of all, what I just said you know there there are certainly going to be some brands that don't have as much market value as some other brands, but they all bring quite a bit to the table right now.

I mean the fact that with a variety of different football and basketball programs in a variety of different schools in a variety of different locations, that the Big Ten's been able to go out and secure the amount of money that they've been able to secure from multiple media partners.

You know, there were plenty of opportunities for the networks to say, you know guys, as we move into this next media contract, why don't why don't we leave Indiana or Iowa or Minnesota, you know, by the wayside because you guys can make more money. The fact that didn't happen tells me that there's not much of an appetite for doing that right now. I'd also point to just the history of college sports to my understanding and and maybe I've

missed something. Let me ask you this, Scott, Can you name me the schools that have been kicked out of power conferences, Power Five or BCS or CFP based conferences? How many have been kicked out and forced to go down a level? I I can because we talked about this. You gave me the answer so it's like I I have the the the CHEAT SHEET, but the answer is temple. Temple, the only school that is, has moved from a power conference and didn't move to another power conference or move.

And and why did that happen? Why did it happen? It happened because Temple officials were not willing to commit to a bunch of facilities upgrades in football. That was it. And there were a few other things, but that was the primary reason why. And you know, now you've had schools left behind when

conferences have reorganized. But I have a hard time believing at this point that you're going to see the formation of a true super conference that involves just the best brands from each of these different school, of the each of these different conferences. We already have that. It's called the College Football Playoff, and this is a separate media entity that's been cooked up by the conferences.

And this is the thing. It's like the idea that Ohio State, Michigan, Alabama, Georgia and like six other brands are going to get together and say, hey, you know what we're going to do? We're going to screw over our media partners and we're going to screw over all of the schools that we've been working with for decades, sometimes centuries, and go off on our own and create a new thing and cut everybody else out. Is it possible?

It's possible. But it's like I would say about a .5% probability because there are still a lot of people running college athletics. And I mean college presidents, I mean athletic directors who are very heavily committed to this idea that they are working with partners that they consider peers. And there's other schools that they don't consider peers that they don't let into those clubs.

We are not in 30 years from now, we might revisit this conversation 10 years from now, 10 years from now. Some of these media deals won't even be over yet. So the idea that we are on the threshold of some kind of Super League to me is fear mongering from people that don't like the change in the reorganization that's occurred right now rather than anything that's informed by actual stuff. Like the Big 10 might add Florida State, they might add

Clemson, they might add both. They're not going to kick Northwestern out in the process. They're not going to kick Indiana out in the process. Both of those schools in particular for different reasons. You know, right now I think we're still in an additive state. I would have a hard time believing that we're suddenly going to go to an entirely new model because right now what we're seeing is just different

iterations of the same model. And that's a model that both the schools and the networks are comfortable with. So I'm going to take this from a different angle cuz I I have enjoyed having this conversation with people. You've you've kind of shot me down and we talked about it, but I've been like, man. Let's just pretend the Big 10 is looking to, you know, ADD, you know, Notre Dame, Clemson, and they're going to boot two schools to bring them in.

Who would you boot? I've had fun with that discussion, and unfortunately Indiana is close to the boot list. Like when you start looking at the school, don't agree at all. Don't agree. Sorry. But we're we're near the bottom. But here here is what I would say to Jared. So let me let me let me get this through. You know the the two things that is. On the the Indiana docket, everything you just said that, you know there we are in an additive mode.

I do think that if a conference started booting schools I think that everybody would wig out in the sense that right now it's like okay, the PAC 12 died. Like that sucks. Like, oh, sucks for, you know Washington state and Oregon State like it sucks. Everyone kind of feels bad. But they didn't they didn't get kicked out of the PAC 12. They just didn't get picked up by anybody.

You know if if the Big 10 tomorrow just says, hey, we're booting Purdue in Northwestern. Suddenly every school would be like what like Vanderbilt like like like a lot of other schools would suddenly get this would all hit a different fever and people would would freak out the two things that Indiana so I I but I do hear what Jared is saying and I will say that you know I'll make my point but caveat it with it's still really helpful if we could be good in football like it's this isn't

just a like let's let's we'll get to it in our football pods. Let's not just advocate our role in football, like being good in football does help. But let me name off some schools and they all have one thing in common. Florida State, Kentucky, Clemson, Oregon, WI, Illinois, Washington, IA. Those are all schools that last year brought in less money than Indiana. When you look at the total right now, again, it's because we're part of the Big 10. But.

We're one of the highest revenue producing schools in the Big 10. We were 13th in the country last year, $166,000,000 in revenue, something that some of that coming through donations back from the foundation, but yes. Yes, in a normal year Indiana is like between 30th and 40th which is still very respectable within college sports, really good. But the other piece you mentioned it too, alumni is that you know it varies, but we are second, third or top top five of living alumni base in the

country. We have 650,000 alumni and I would say that they are a very active alumni base that when you go, you know when when you and I went to the Gator Bowl, a, you know, pretty good football team, it wasn't. The national championship game, we If we didn't outdraw Tennessee, we damn near drew the same as Tennessee, a school that has a long history of football that shows up when we go to

basketball. We went to the game in Vegas last year, the basketball game, It was 75% IU fans, Arizona has had way more success in basketball is also way closer to Vegas than we are. We outdrew them four to one or three to one. However, you want to say it's a very active, engaged alumni base and so that alone. Is very appealing to TV networks, which are pushing a lot of these decisions. And so it would be very, very,

very short side. Just wouldn't be in the interest of any of these networks to be like, hey, there's 650,000 possible Subs who want to watch I U Sports. Maybe they suck in football. A lot of them just want to watch I U Suck In Football like we We. To go against my own comment, there's, you know, Penn State is above us. I'm looking at this list of, you know, alumni bases. Michigan is third, Michigan State is 4th, UCLA is fifth, Ohio State is 6. Like, you know, Wisconsin's not

up there. Illinois is not up there. You know, the difference ultimately is what you said. It's like I use alumni base, love sports, you know, they love that. They love basketball more than football, but they're not. They're not not watching football. Soccer. Yeah, I mean the the, you know, the problems are like Cal Berkeley has a lot of alums and none of them, very few of them are watching their sports regularly, at least comparatively speaking. And you mentioned like that.

All these things were saying go for a lot of the other schools in the Big 10 that haven't had a whole lot of on field success with Illinois, Minnesota, you know, I mean Purdue is in this mix as well. Purdue's actually in worse shape because they have a lot of living alumni and a lot of them don't live in the United States and don't particularly care. I mean, this is where having a an internationally known engineering school can hurt you because a lot of people come in,

take classes, and then leave. Again, that's not something unique to Purdue. Miami deals with this. Miami's got a lot of alums, relatively speaking. It's a small private school. None of them live in Florida. So Miami will turn decent ratings in like Northeast markets where a lot of their alums live, and then they'll do a bad rating in Miami because nobody cares and nobody goes to

the games. So it look there's a lot of factors and I think my big problem with the argument that the conferences are going to start dropping underperforming schools. This goes to a question that Patrick asked us on on X. It a it it ignores something that was mentioned earlier in this show which is that conferences and television partners need inventory and they don't just need top line inventory.

They need to fill those force like slots throughout the course of a Saturday. They need to fill a Thursday night game or a Friday night game. They need second tier sports to fill streaming situations. They need the Big 10 Network, which is basically just a Fox outlet at this point to carry games. And you know, you can start chopping schools out if you

want. You're going to run out of inventory real fast, particularly again if we get down the line and you got a lot of current varsity sports that have had to turn into club sports because of the issues with with college athletes potentially being considered employees. And so I just think to me, you know, could it happen down the line?

Of course, there's a lot of things that are hard to predict, but a lot of the commentary I'm seeing is born out of nothing other then I think a misreading of what's actually going on in broadcast markets and streaming markets and college athletics and why all of this is happening. It's not, oh, we're going to shove everybody off the table other than the top players. It's more along the lines of, well, we have a way to capitalize on that already.

This is largely like service for the sports fan who needs a reason to subscribe to a streaming service. You don't get there by saying, hey, look at all of these really highly identified sports fans that root for in Indiana or root for, you know, a team that's like Indiana that hasn't had a

huge amount of success. And say you know what, we're kicking you out like, OK, so great, you're you're for for saving like what, $5,000,000 a year maybe if you, if you take the the distribution and you separate it, you're going to just sacrifice maybe 200,000 subscribers to whatever the big 10 packages. That makes zero sense, you know, So that's that's where again, circumstances could change. I could be reading it totally wrong. I don't think I am. And that's why I'm not really

concerned about it at all. But I understand why people are concerned about it because it keeps getting pushed like it's an inevitability. And it's like the big 10 contracts run through the next eight years. It's it's like nothing's going to happen during that period at all. And the idea that we're going to get to 2030 and suddenly we're just going to start kicking people off the boat. If the first time it happens, I will come on the podcast, if it still exists, and apologize.

But that we've been through 25 plus years, 30 years of realignment and we've had one school kicked out of what was at the time considered a power conference is as good of an indicator to me as anything. And I trust that a hell of a lot more than anonymous sources saying, oh, this might happen in the future. Anyway, couple of the things real quick before we go. Let's see. Yeah, we actually. So Matt's ever been asked a

similar question. How many disingenuous won't someone think of the sports and athletes we never cover takes? Will we continue to continue to see from the same sports writers who've bleeded for so long, basically asking for this car

conference Armageddon to occur? We kind of touched on that earlier, Matt. It's this idea that the travel thing, which if you've been following college sports, you've known that's an issue for a while, that's been going on for like a long time and it hasn't really been an issue.

It's an issue now. And I think a lot of it really came down to the PAC 12 essentially dying by its own hand, by the lack of of what they did to protect themselves really made people kind of take a step back and be like, is this the direction we really want to go? And the answer is no. But I got news for you. You guys are riding in a bus that's been driving down this

road for a while at this point. So, you know, my hope would be maybe people will pause after this initial wave of recriminations and and garment rending and say okay, maybe we really need to look at what's going on and report more critically on the things that are harming people in college sports. Part of the issue here. And and look, I have a lot of respect for our journalist friends and our in his particular sports writer

friends. But I read about, you know, I read as much about college sports written by journalists as anybody. And you know who gets interviewed? Coaches and athletic directors. You know who doesn't get interviewed? In most cases, college athletes. So there's these stories have been out there for a while. You know who else doesn't get interviewed that much? Coaches at Olympic sports and nonrevenue sports. You know, we see a lot from the football coach. We see a lot from the basketball

coach. And look, there's a ton of reasons why access is restricted. It's very difficult. Colleges have really put themselves in a position where they can restrict what gets out, what gets talked about. That's a real problem. But these are problems that have existed for a long time. You and I have both been in airports where we've seen like a large group of people wearing college apparel walking by.

And it's like, Oh yeah, that's the that's the Houston golf team who's in Indianapolis because they're playing in a tournament and it's like, why are they playing in a tournament here and vice versa. This stuff has been going on for a while. I would love to see it reported on more and it's sad that it's taken this situation to make it more prominent for people. You said you hit it on the head, sorry I didn't know if you had there last thing I'll I'll

address so Dan Corral asked. I U athletic department currently earns at least 20 to 30 million per year more than A CC schools, yet it doesn't reflect in terms of results on the gridiron. Will money alone actually lead to success or will Wake Forest still be five times better? Look, I mean part of the issue is there's more good football players in the Southeast than there are in the Midwest at this point that are available. That's just the numbers.

And it's it's a hard sell. It's a harder sell to get players that are good to come to I U than it is to go elsewhere. That sounds like an excuse. It's more just a reality. That's been the case for a long time I U. Realistically, for decades I U didn't take their football program seriously. They made the wrong hires at head coach. In a lot of cases, they didn't upgrade their facilities. You know, you, you think about, you know, I, and I've said this before on this podcast.

I think the last 12 to 15 years of I U Athletics, as they've related to football, have been by far the most sustained interest in trying to grow and support the football program, both in terms of facilities and in terms of the money they've been willing to pay to head coaches, assistant coaches, support staff and whatnot. I think the problem I use got that Wake Forest and many other programs don't have is there were so many decades of neglect on the part of I U in terms of

their football program. And you know you go back and you look and it's like you know all the way through from the, you know the you start in the the 1910s and 1920s and the lack of investment in a good football stadium and the lack of maintenance on the football stadium that I you had. And then you know that hiring of coaches that were not top level and got I you on probation or just got I you into a bunch of

games where they lost. You know, it looked like things that turned around in the 80s and 90s. And then, you know, the Mallory era kind of collapses. And I U goes and hires a guy who'd never even been a coordinator. He was an alum, but he was not, not ready for what a difficult job this is. And meanwhile, the facilities are falling apart. I mean, you and I went to school in the late 90s. I don't know why you would come to play for I U with those

facilities. So I think the problem right now is that I U Yes, They're making more money. And I do think that the consistent application of money to salaries, to facilities, to recruiting will help I U level and eventually you know exceed the playing field that a lot of these middle level A CC schools, maybe a couple of the lower tier SEC schools have. They're still going to be a real deficit in terms of the available talent recruiting.

It's not sitting in Indiana's backyard and what little there is is going to Notre Dame or going to Ohio State or going to Michigan, but it's going to be a long slog. I U unfortunately, I think especially with NIL now that they were just there's two there's a huge gap that they have to make up and it's going to take longstanding, consistent investment in order to make this work. And so, you know, I understand I'm frustrated. You're frustrated about. I know a lot of I U football

fans are. It's not a completely unwinnable scenario because I do think that, you know, we've seen with the right coaches, you can, you can put together 678, you know, win seasons, but it's going to take, it's going to take continued effort. It's not something that's going to, you know, just happen next year and that's really frustrating, especially when you look at the dollar differences between these different schools and what they're pulling in.

Yeah, I mean it's just basically we should be better than every school that's not in the Big 10 or the SEC and we we just need to be paying higher rates and all the other schools that are not in the SEC or the Big 10. But to your point, you can hire the wrong guy, you can pay, you can pay somebody, you know, in the top ten and they're not a good coach.

They're not a good coach. And so, but I think over time you find the right people, you know, we should be able to buy our way out of some problems and do that. The other thing too is that, you know, we do bring in a lot of money, but you see it. Activated for basketball. You know like when we want to get out of the Archie Miller contract, we can get that done if we want to get out of some

football contracts. You know, I'm not even talking to Tom Allen, just some coordinators like Tom Allen had to pay for that himself to get out of some of those. The money is not always there for football. When you see, when you see those numbers up there really is activated in basketball. I think this will help us all in basketball. That the thing that I will say that I always kind of harp on that is just I always preface it. I understand how this works.

I'm not naive. I I know how this all goes. But to Dan's point in question, like there is a part where it's like it is, it is tough seeing this, like man, big 10 schools make an extra 50 million / a CC schools. It's like then, but then on the same hand, it's like, you know, we're kind of like, well, you know, we're even if we wanted to get out of our coaching contracts, we can't because we can't afford it. We got to find some donors to pay for. It's like why?

Again, I I don't don't tell. I know the answer is why. But it's like you hear that and it's like with with football it's like well, we need a new facility, but we got to find a donor first. And it's like really because you guys are a nonprofit who has a 2 billion you know I use got a huge, you know, funding base. They have a huge endowment they're sitting on. They always, they just made $166 million last year and they had to spend some of it. But it's like. Why is it always the donor's

problem? Like at some point do you get to put your hand in your pocket? Like on one hand you can't do a press release kissing your own ass and slapping your own back on the amount of money you brought in from the big from Fox and then be like, but I I really can't pay the tip well, but I really need. Somebody saying again, I I know why. It's just it is really annoying as somebody who's a graduate and a donor and a varsity club member, to always being looked at by this university.

What's like they can't they have alligator arms? In terms of when it comes to finding any money, I I I understand that frustration and and there's two things I'll say in response to it. You know, A, the reason you don't do it without a donor is what's happening to Cal right now, who just had to pay, take loans out for $250 million worth of loans to fix the football stadium that they built over the

Hayward fault. And now they don't have a conference to be in that they don't have television money. I mean, that's a real, real problem. Now Cows got like a 15. Now cows got like a $15 billion endowment. So they'll probably be able to figure a way out of that, but that's a real bad situation.

The other thing is, I mean when I talk about I, U as an institution not being serious about their football program historically and even when we talk about the last 10-15 years in terms of like what they've done there, I think it's really been like, well, okay, you've got to kill what you eat, athletics and football. You're not going to get like general fun stuff because we don't view football as central to the mission of the institution.

And I U is certainly not the only ones in that mix. They're probably the ones for whom it looks like it's, it's the most prominent. Look, we'll see. I mean, I think leadership changes occur in terms of universities and what they want to spend money on and it's it is an unfortunately difficult sell at I U and it always has been in. The reason why there hasn't been more institutional commitment to improving facilities or paying more money for staff or coaches is because everybody's been

interested in basketball. That's what's made alumni excited, and that's where the university's been willing to make moves and do things. And it's, you know, again, I think it's one of those deals where it's a shame that historically it worked out that way, because there's no reason why Indiana football, from a structural perspective, should be any worse than Purdue, Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan State. Michigan State really is in a different echelon, like there's Iowa is another one.

There's no reason why Indiana should be like such a tear below that, but that's what the history did. And I think despite what I would view is the best efforts of the, of the, of the athletic department to fix that over the last 10-15 years, it's it's hard to overcome a century plus of history to get it where it needs to be.

And that was exactly what I was going to end on is like you and Zach Osterman have talked about this a lot that yes, I agree because we when you and I went to school there, Memorial Stadium was just falling apart. There was kind of this it was like the stalemate of game of chicken. It's like, well, the football team's got to get better before we spend money on. It's like we're not going to spend money on to the football team gets better and it's like,

all right, so we'll just. Have bad facilities and a bad football team staring at each other and no one's going to do anything. The stadium looks a million times better. They put money into it. But I think as you pointed out like that, The trouble that I U has is they've started funding over the last 10 to 15 years. And the trouble is like they're just now getting to where they should have been 10-15 years ago.

And you look at like you know, Tom Allen is making I think like 4.9 million this year or somewhere in that range. And that was a huge jump from Kevin Wilson, was like, Oh my gosh, it's a ton of money. It's like, all right, you know, I'm just, I'm pulling this out just, you know, looking at the list. Like, you know, the hypo at Tennessee makes $9 million a year and it goes up from there.

We look at the highest coaching salaries and it's like, you know, this is where, yes, these are big jumps, but it's because if you don't make. I do real estate. Like if you don't increase rents for 10 years, there's going to be a big jump after 10 years. Like normally you do a small increase every single year. So that way it's not a big pill

to swallow at the end. The trouble is we basically just didn't do anything for 12 years and then we're now getting back to 2012 market rates and it's like, oh, that. It's another like if you want to get in that top 15 of coaches. We're going to have to spend 7 to 10 million. We have to double whatever we're paying our coach now. Sure, not because, but it's that's because we just didn't do enough as you said 1520 years ago.

And so it's we either continually or always a little bit behind or we just have to take a huge jump forward and I think that's the trouble Indiana's in is. It's like if you want to really be with the big boys, you got to be with the big boys. And those numbers are really big because they've grown over the time that we've been growing.

We're just keeping up to where things were 15 years ago because it's not like every other school stopped spending money in 2012 when we just started, when we decided to start spending money. So exactly what you're saying, just rephrasing it. But yeah. Anyway, we went way over time, but this was fun. Scott, I hope you had a good time with it as well. We'll have more to talk about. There were a bunch of questions we weren't able to get to, but you know us we'd start talking and can't stop.

So I appreciate all the last. Thing that you hit on to is like nothing else. This screws our schedule for 24 completely live like that. That schedule was so nice and I know we joked about it's like if any school is getting A at USC home to Michigan at Washington set up that's going to be I U like no question. Yep. We're either going to speak this into existence or speak it out of existence one way or the other.

So we'll see what happens but no it look it's that what you know we'll I'll wait for the official confirmation that we've we're screwed. I'm sure it's coming at some point here probably in the next couple of months. So anyway I hope you all had a great time listening and we had a great time podcasting. Our thanks to our friends at

home Field apparel. Be sure to tune into the back home network, Assembly Call, the Do the Work podcast and all the other fun stuff you can find in the Assembly call community. For Scott, I'm Galen, This is Crimson Cast. We will catch you folks on the flip side. So everybody.