You're listening to the Back Home Network presented by Home Field Apparel. Welcome back to Crimson Cast, GAIL and Clavio. Here it is. The 31st of Wow. The 31st of August. Maybe maybe I can learn word formation in my next lifetime. But now we're back here on Crimson Cast and looking forward to speaking with you folks again. If you missed our almost two hour long football Preview podcast final podcast, you can check that out if you're an I U
Football fan. If not, I I wouldn't recommend it. But you're you're still invited to listen. Certainly. But we're back here talking about college sports realignment in the business of college sports and looking forward to our guest today coming on Doctor Matthew Zimmerman, another longtime contributor to Crimson cast and friend of the podcast and that we've had him on before. This is right in his wheelhouse, not just because of the college sports piece but because of the PAC 12.
And we wanted to get his opinions and thoughts on what's going on with all of that. So first of all, Matt, good to have you back on how you doing. I'm doing really well. I actually just returned from a trip back home to PAC 12 country and so I'm I'm a little refreshed and renewed and in some ways did you get to see the give Reggie Bush back his Heisman sign on the on the 405 by chance. I did not have a chance to see, though I did not seek it out.
I should have. Because I am, I am most definitely on board with that sentiment. Absolutely. Well, we might end up talking about that obliquely a little bit later.
But first of all, before we get started with that, just a reminder to everybody that we are part of the back home network here at Crimson Cast. And the back home network is brought to you by home field apparel, your place to go for the finest in college fashions, the softest fabrics and even more so these days, some of the best vintage gear from some of the more obscure brands, which that's really what we're in this for all of us, I think it's not just wearing a comfortable
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In words about home field apparel, Yes, yes, you don't want to. When I first started looking at home field apparel a few years ago, around the time of the Black Oval T, that amazing I UT shirt was released by them. I thought, okay, There's so much amazing stuff, I better limit myself only to schools with which I have an affiliation, like. Maybe that I attended or worked at, or my friends were. The problem is my list of schools with an affiliation. I keep artificially expanding it
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Or go get press passes so that you can justify buying home field that really honestly that's like a profile worthy I think from the home field website. We should talk to them about that. Thank you. Thank you. So Matt, we wanted to have you on to talk about college sports realignment and specifically what's happened with the PAC 12 we obviously had you on last summer.
Many people listen to that episode and enjoyed it when we talked about what at the time looked like, you know, the heart being cut out of the PAC 12 with USC&UCLA deciding to join the Big 10. But it, you know, even with the heart gone, it felt like the PAC 12 might find a way you know, through necromancy or something to keep the body animated for a while and and maybe add some brands. And instead it's gone exactly the opposite direction.
Now Oregon and Washington have left the PAC 12 to join the Big 10, which then led to Arizona, Arizona State and Utah announcing that they were going to join Colorado in moving to the Big 12. And now what we're left with is the Bay Area schools who are in this, like weird, awkward should we hold hands or have sex phase with the ACC? And then Oregon State and Washington State just seem to have been left out altogether at this point.
So, you know, first before we get to the business aspects and all of that, you know, for you as a guy who grew up in PAC 10 country and, you know, followed those teams and that was really what you grew up with. Like what? What's been your overall emotional and intellectual reaction to what's transpired over these last two months?
Well, when I I recently relistened to what we talked about last year and when USC&UCLA went to the Big 10, I was a little tickled by that because I thought it was funny that USC&UCLA, who are our schools, which are very, they very much fit the Big 10 mold, but they basically want the money if long term and had to come to the Big 10. And I thought that was kind of. Fun I thought the PAC 10 could survive. I didn't know that they should add anybody because no one fit that profile.
What's happened over the last couple months, though? I thought. It's been heartbreaking, to be honest, to see the whole thing fall and just into a shamble so quickly, but also. Incredibly baffling to see and hear and read about how much how many bad decisions the PAC 12 including the PAC 12 presidents made to get to this point.
I know we had an exchange about the the fact that what was it there was one PAC 12 like like the the commissioner went to them and was like OK the here's a couple deals what are we looking at And one of the presidents was like according to an economist on our campus we believe we can get big 10 or SEC money and I think our. The agreement was that it was there is in the states president probably.
So it's it's very strange in that way that the PAC 12 could be so short sighted when a year ago everyone would have thought they'd start rating the Big 12 and now it's been the complete opposite and now the PAC 12 is I mean the Rose Bowl going forward is kind of dead as a PAC 12 Big 10 matchup anyway. Yeah, but this is crazy. It's funny, I I want to get to all the other things you mentioned.
But I was I was actually teaching a class on this yesterday and I was doing the part of the lecture where we're talking about like the formation of the BCS And you know I always forget that you know that the BCS and it's and it's predecessors the Bowl Coalition and the Bowl Alliance so much of that had to orbit the Rose Bowls place in things and the PAC 10 and the Big 10 saying we have to have the Rose Bowl that's where we have to go. And it it's kind of it's weird
now that essentially that's become like just another neutral site for the Big 10 given how the expansion has got. It's just such a radical change from what seemed to be ruling things 1520 years ago. Yes, absolutely.
When I teach that particular lesson I did in the spring and what I always talked about, aside from the fact that, you know, Notre Dame gets money just for being Notre Dame from every playoff and championship system, that the PAC 12 and big, excuse me, PAC 10 and Big 10 were like, we just want to preserve the tradition of the Rose Bowl. You know the tradition of the Rose Bowl is so important to us when in actuality is probably the TV contract that they wanted to make sure they preserved and
so. And so now it's in the Rose Bowl presented by AT&T because there's no way the Rose, the sacred Rose Bowl, can have a sponsor and associated no tospitos for them. And so the so the Rose Bowl was, you know, holding its head up high, holding its nose up high. And now it again, I think last year was the last truly traditional matchup we were going to have. Since this year it's going to be a playoff semifinal and then it's going to be part of the playoff going forward.
So it's nice to end on a Utah, Penn State matchup in the Rose Bowl, which I believe that's what we had last year. Yeah, yeah. So Utah, two schools. Two schools that were not in the Big 10 in 1990, or the PAC 10 for that matter. Right. That's so you get to hold the banner one last time. So it's been that. That is one of the crazy things that just how much the Rose Bowl plummeted in importance over the last couple years and how it's basically gone now.
So the PAC 12 cannot say, well, we lose that that traditional matchup because it was gone anyway. So, but yeah, that that has been a really weird loss of tradition. Yeah. So well you talked a little bit about some of the weird decisions that were being made by the presidents and the other
folks in the room. I mean part of this I'm going to do something I didn't think I would do at the start of all of this and and maybe very mildly defend the PAC 12 presidents in as much as there's we've talked about this on one of the other podcast. But you know you've got this booster at Michigan who has or not not just a booster, but he's like a member of the Board of Regents up there and he and he's
been giving interviews. He had this long tweet storm about how you know, the the, the decision making around all of this has just been screwed up. And one of the things he noted, which I think is a a keen observation is that, you know, the athletic directors were forced to cede control of what the athletic programs did to the presidents of the universities. And then the president ceded that control to the conference commissioners and then the conference commissioners ceded
control of that to the networks. And the networks have largely driven a lot of the decision making, a lot of the movement, and we've seen that going back a couple of decades now, you know that I do wonder as much as the PAC 12 presidents I think deserve grief for allowing things to get that to where they were. It it had it. It feels like there had to have been more information in the mix then, you know what one PAC 12 president thought a professor on
his campus had told him? It it, it feels almost to some degree, especially when you think about how essentially, yes, you know, Fox was unwilling to pay the PAC 12, but they were willing to pay for Oregon and Washington to join the Big 10, and they were the ones that came up with the extra money. And yeah, ESPN didn't want to pay the PAC 12, but they are, you know, they were willing to front the money to the Big 12 to allow those four schools to join that.
And now we're hearing that, you know, if you get Stanford and Cal in the ACC, that money would get kicked in by ESPN as well as part of things. So it's like what was there just bad information being given was this very Machiavellian by the networks where they're like, well, we really don't really, we don't want 4 entities anymore. We really or excuse me, we don't want five, we really want 4. You know, are we willing to front the money to like break one of them up?
And in this case, it's the PAC 12 because the component pieces are more valuable than the collective. And if that's the case and the presidents are operating off the idea or that they've been told, hey, you guys do have intrinsic value, then I wonder like where, like where do you really assign blame at that point? Clearly you still have to be a custodian and and you have to safeguard these things as a
college president. But I'm starting to wonder, what kind of information were they being given in the first place? You know, it'd be easy to say, well, maybe they just didn't like the PAC 12 being together or even produce to a PAC 10. But that whole PAC 12 After dark, I mean that always got really big buzz. And they the entire idea of while the games start too late, nobody's watching was thrown out
the window with all that. I mean maybe the ratings weren't as big as, you know, a big noon Saturday game on on Fox for the Big 10. But clearly the PAC 12 was still getting some viewership and there's passionate fans and all
that. I part of me wonders if the networks were trying to negotiate and they got annoyed with the PAC 10 like the that the presidents were like just a little agree look well, how much more can you give us type of thing like I, because I think it's pretty obvious in this whole thing. And yeah, that that one president was probably being thrown under the bus a little bit by the whoever talked to, I believe the LA Times about that.
Very true. But I think what happened was the PAC 12 just lost sight of what his true value was. And we've have seen that from the beginning. Again, I know you've talked about in one of the previous Pods about a dozen years ago, they had the biggest TV deal and they had three of the top six teams when SC, Stanford and Oregon were all up there. The year that Alabama beat LSU for the national title, I believe 2011. And so it's easy for them to just.
Not understand that there's still very much a regional delight and I think that after USC&UCLA left instead of having a proverbial come to Jesus moment where they said we're not what we were there's no way to get back to that And you know the San Diego State is a laughable addition if we're if the idea is to replace USC&UCLA instead they basically tried to get as much as they could and. And I think it'd be very easy for her to think the networks just got annoyed with them.
Like, you know what? You have value, Some of you have value, but you have more value as part of a different collective rather than your current PAC 12 collective. Yeah, I mean, that's probably accurate and it really is. There's a lot of interesting things floating around right
now. And I think with the PAC 10/12 in particular the idea of value, the idea of you know being able to clearly evaluate where you are in the marketplace and make adaptations and that is obviously something that most of these conferences have struggled with the and honestly the ACC kind of falls under that same category. I mean the the one thing I am curious to get your, your take on in addition to all of this before we get to more of the business things is from a cultural perspective.
A lot of sports media people have treated the the essential death of the PAC 12. I mean it's not technically dead yet, but I don't know who they would get to actually replace teams and and even if they did it wouldn't be a power conference anymore. But this has been decried as, you know, this this tragedy of sorts and and that it's going to have a a really negative impact on a bunch of different things.
The one area that I'm kind of curious about is how important really has PAC 10 sports been to the larger sports culture on the West Coast? This is something that I've always had a hard time getting my head wrapped around because you know, LA, it's kind, it's kind of like Miami in a way, where there's there's a lot of sports fans and there's more sports fans by far in LA than there are in Miami.
But because of the dominance of professional teams, college sports always tends to take a bit of a back burner. New York has the exact same issue, although it doesn't have any local teams. So going up and down the coast, like, how much does this actually resonate? How much of this will have really a negative longterm impact versus like, well, this is a shame.
It was nice to have our own regional conference that represented these areas, but it's it's either not vital to the continued interest in college sports on the West Coast or people just weren't that interested in the first place. Well, there's a lot of different layers here. It's funny because, you know, I have a obviously multiple family members or excuse me, wives of my brothers who attended PAC 12
schools, Cal and UCLA. And I called my brother who is, who's the UCLA fan by osmosis and I told him he goes, what's So what? What's this all about? And I said first lesson, you're going to learn to be as annoyed by Illinois and its fans as the rest of us already are in the Big 10 and. And so he was like, OK, that's a good lesson to know. But you know as far as this about 30 years ago, Al Davis and that had the Coliseum, the LA Coliseum downsized from 92,000 capacity to 68,000 capacity.
And then the Raiders proceeded of course to average 34,000 and anyway. But when the when USC got good again, like under Pete Carroll and those guys like Reggie Bush who we mentioned earlier were there, they would get 80, some 90,000 people per game. And there was a lot of passion for a lot of revive passion because everybody loves a winner. Yeah, I mean at UCLA, that's it.
the Rose Bowl is very, very big. Until yesterday, it held the record for the largest attendance ever at a women's sporting event in America and with 91,000. And I think there were 95,000 for the men's World Cup final in 94. It's a very, very large place. And there been some Rose Bowls that have had that kind of attendance. But UCLA? They might get like 60,000 for attendance, and it looks like an old MLS game. Where like there's, you know, oh, there's nobody in that. Yeah, stadium.
And it's like, no, that's 60,000 people. So there's still people. And there was still a lot of media coverage. Even with the return of the NFL, there was still a lot of interest in USC&UCLAI mean, and you drive around, there's all those, you know, license play frames for alumni and fandom and all that other stuff. Can can I speak to the rest of the PAC 12? Yeah, please do. No, sorry, I was saying. And I need a glass of water. My apologies.
But Matt, unlike unlike me, Matt's not used to talking on podcasts for 90 minutes at a time. So you're excused. That's fine. I have. I have a very large bottle of water here. So anyway and some grapes. There you go. So anyway, you know, in Washington, I know that there was a lot of interest as well, especially with the loss of the Sonics. Which is largely why, you know MLS has thrived there as well. So they're Washington fans and there are obviously Oregon fans.
They are very into it as well. But at the same time it is a whole thing where? Even in LA, on the West Coast, there is a lot of, well, you know, we like sports, but you know, there's so many other really cool things to do out here. And so it's not the same level of passion like Stanford should have some of those passionate fans in the country and they just they just don't.
And same. And so it's kind of, it's it's not like it's the Big 10 collapsed or the SEC collapsed, which neither one would because the fans wouldn't let it happen. The presidents wouldn't let it happen. The GM's, the AD's wouldn't let it happen and so on. The politicians wouldn't let it happen. And in California, of course, they tried to stop UCLA with like that weird vote. And then they were going to try to bring UCLA back with under like $50 million a year.
They they offered them that and it was just. Really weird. Like they they were caught pretty flat footed. I think the politicians were out there. So yeah, I think it's a lot of these fan bases will follow these teams to the new places. They'll just, they'll just fold into new rivalries. Because ultimately having a home at this point, if you're a PAC 12 school, I think your fan base is just very, very relieved. So, you know, sad for Wazoo and Oregon State fans.
Yeah, it's tough when you're when you're looking at them getting courted by the Mountain West commissioner and the American Athletic Conference commissioner. It's like, God, I hate to see that, but well, yeah, and where you're at this point. That's to say that's where you're at at this point. If you them absolutely. And you mentioned earlier, you know, a lot of these things were like, you know, do we hold hands? Do we dance, You know, kind of like a dating thing.
And, you know, Oregon State of Washington state are, you know, the people, you know, left at the well left looking for a prom date. And now you know that the nerdy kids are coming to them and going, hey, you know what, we don't have a date either. And it's like, yeah, not you so. This doesn't sound like you're speaking from experience at all. So no, no, this is not a reference to my high school life at all. So let's talk about the.
Yeah, I guess we we've talked a lot about the the dissolution of the PAC 12 from a business perspective and and where the struggles came in. Obviously the big news right now is this Cal, Stanford, maybe SMU, maybe to the ACC movement it's that's so. I mean you could make an argument that the Big 10. When they added Nebraska, when they added Rutgers, they really came out of their regional shell and and even though they only covered two time zones, even
with those expansions they were more of a national conference. Because really, Nebraska doesn't have a lot in common culturally with anybody but Iowa in the Big 10 and Rutgers really didn't have that much in common with anybody. I guess, maybe mildly they had something in common with Penn State. But you know, you can make an argument that with those moves and with adding Maryland, which is really a Southern school, like they've broken out of the
regional shell. And so adding the four West Coast schools seems at least within the characteristics of what they are aiming to do, A CC adding these three schools just feels completely, you know, it feels desperate, first of all, and it desperation and necessity are often times the same things, but it also feels like they. You know, this is a almost like a harbor of last resort for all of the parties.
I don't think anybody if you would just put this out on the table a year ago and said hey Cal and Stanford, what about joining the ACC or ask the question in reverse. I think everybody's laughing you out of the room. Like obviously Cal and Stanford probably need this because I don't know where they go if they don't do it and and SMU's almost not important enough to mention in this. No offense to. Thad Matula and the and the the
folks down in pony excess land. But I mean when you offer to not take any media distributions for seven years just so you can be part of the conference like you kind of remove yourself from the conversation at that point. But the Callen Stanford are different. I mean you know these are these are longstanding brands. Stanford obviously has you essentially sport by sport, I think the largest athletic
department in the country. You know, is a bastion of all of these Olympic sports who has been competitive in the in the revenue generating sports. This just feels like it's a subject of ridicule and it's it's a bandaid at best. It's not a not a permanent solution for any of these parties. Well yeah like Stanford is.
I mean for lack of it it's an extremely proud athletic program and what is it they they jockey for position with USC&UCLA for the most total national championships and there might be in all the Olympic quote non revenue sports mostly and but you know they're proud of their water polar dominance now similar to UC Santa Barbara winning ultimate frisbee national titles. I wonder who Stanford is competing against in sailing. But they still are winning these
national titles. They're an athletic program as you said. I think it's Dem in Ohio State I think might have the two largest athletic departments in terms of number of. Something like that, yeah.
And so in this case, you know, I think everybody when USC&UCLA left a year ago and we all kind of knew that Washington and Oregon would be the next move if the Big 10 made another move and and grabbing from the PAC 12 because they were just good fits overall academically, athletically, fan base and so on. But my fantasy of course was Stanford, Notre Dame. And that's not going to happen.
Instead, Notre Dame, a non football member of the ACC, tried to throw its weight around and get the ACC to add Stanford and Cal. And then certain ACC members looked at Notre Dame, apparently because these are all reports and so, well, who do you think you are type of thing. But it looks like I thought that ACC was set to add Stanford Cal and SMU the other day. But of course the tragedy happened at University of North Carolina. So it but this it's a weird fit and it is just a Band-Aid.
At the same time, what it reminds me of is when the Big 12 lost Missouri, Texas, A and M, Colorado and Nebraska, and patched it up with schools which could charitably be called not quite that same caliber of state school. Right. Although TC just played for the national title. I need to acknowledge that but but it but it was the thing of but you know what we survived we made it. You know, we're not the Big East, for instance, and so if Stanford and Cowell.
The Big East, which notably was killed by the ACC, but we'll come back to that in a second. Yes. Yes. Yeah, very much, very much so. And so in this case, Stanford and Cal, it's all about survival at this point. And I think they, because, again, they're very open about their academic profile. I think they prefer the ACC before the Big 12 overall because the Big 12 is very much a mishmash.
And the ACC at least could say that they're kind of a unified other than North Carolina's fake classes. Oh, excuse me. Anyway, sorry. Yeah no, it's it is it is interesting because I mean this is where trying to explain this to people who aren't in academia is challenging because and and look it's not terribly consistent and I understand how that looks with people because you could say, well Callum Stanford just need to find a
port of of refuge. But they they do care about who they associate themselves with institutionally from an
academics perspective and. While there are certainly some good academic institutions in the Big 12, that is not a group of institutions that one would point to and say, wow, that's a great collection of academic institutions, you know, Whereas obviously, I mean the A/C and it's funny because the ACC, they have some high end schools who you would point to North, I guess North Carolina. You know, Boston College,
Syracuse, some others. Virginia is certainly in that mix, but they've also got their share of of kind of big twelveish style state schools that you know, North Carolina State, Virginia Tech, you know, Florida State I think fits into that category to some degree. So it it it is, it is just an awkward fit. But it brings up a larger point that I think is worth mentioning from the ACC's perspective, which is. You wanted.
This very much reminds me of what the Big East tried to do when the Big East decided that they weren't satisfied with just being a basketball conference in the 1980s. You know, they go out and they add pit and they add Miami and they add these other brands that are much stronger in football so that they can bolster themselves and they end up with this weird dichotomous conference where you've got basketball powers and then you've got football powers and.
No one really knew where the power lay and they were primed to be raided by a conference that was a little more together. It's ironic that they were largely rated. I mean yes, Rutgers left the biggies to go to the Big 10. That's not really raiding the the biggies might have sent a thank you note actually after that but but but you know but the ACC going in and grabbing Miami and Virginia Tech and and then and then later going in and grabbing.
Syracuse and you know, basically making it so that the Big East couldn't continue viably and had to be reborn, you know, essentially later as as the Big East again, just it with a complete focus on basketball. It's just kind of it. It very much is reminiscent of what the ACC is trying to do now where they don't have the right mix of teams. They've got schools that are all over the map, both the actual map and in terms of what they want to do.
You know what their organizational or institutional aims are, how dedicated or not they are to to academics, how dedicated or not they are to football. And now they're trying to add completely nonsensical fits from a a geographical perspective that are really you know they're these are largely at this point second or third tier football brands that they're trying to add. It's like that's that's probably not going to have any sort of positive longterm impact and could frankly hasten.
The demise of the conference as a power because getting bigger at this point doesn't seem like it's the answer for a conference like the ACC. Well, it's interesting that you mentioned be the Big East trying to grab some schools and then of course the ACC grabbing some of those schools from them. You know what everybody's talking about the absurdity of the travel. What would these West Coast schools do? Going to the East Coast or the Midwest? You know the horror of this
terrible? Well, Cincinnati and Louisville were in the Big East. Yeah, for some time. That E is pretty big. And it was. And then you. Know now the really Big East. Yes, sorry. Yeah, that's a really Big East. Yeah. And now Louisville's in the Atlantic Coast Conference. I don't know. I don't know if our listeners are familiar, but I mean, Louisville is in Northern Kentucky. Look, man, climate change works quick as all I can say. No, I'm kidding. Go ahead, Yeah.
The coast. Yes. And. And so this absurdity was existing before the money got as big as it is now. Yeah, and that's the thing. The ACC, with the backing of ESPN for its network, that money is only going to get bigger. It'll never be SCC, Big 10 level. But they have the money to travel. They will figure this out. And so it's absurd on its face. But at the same time, college sports realignment has been absurd for some time. So let's, I mean, let's dive in
a little bit too. There was a piece that was written by by a colleague of ours actually Doctor Ariane Waite at the University of North Carolina. Ariane's been a sports management scholar for a long time. And you know the the, the one of the primary thrust of the piece really was essentially that.
You know college sports is aim has failed and that there's too much money in the system and that you know what what the the the explanation here is the ACC needs to resist expansion and needs to consider like splitting football off and considering that independently and you know I mean first and foremost I mean I have I have a lot of respect for doctor weight and and her her overall intellectual presence within the space.
But, and I've seen this kind of mentality put forward a bunch like, you know, like, well, we've gone too far this time. College sports and what, You know, it's not it's it's about more than just money. And you know, we need to somehow segregate football and what they're doing from the other sports. And you know, it kind of makes sense on its face if you're not really, I guess, attuned to the commercial realities of a lot of this stuff.
But. I'm a little bit put off by by a couple of things with this line of argument. And I mean one of them is we'll get to all of them. But I guess the first one that we could start with is this idea that, you know, there was some kind of inflection point where all of this wouldn't have been rendered inevitable. Like somehow, oh, if we had, if we had stopped worrying so much about money, I don't know who the we is here and focus more on the educational mission of college athletics.
Then somehow this all this wouldn't be taking place or would be lessened or would be more equitable. You know, I mean, Matt, one of the things that you and I talk about a bunch is, is this reality of finance and why college and university systems engage in collegiate athletics at this level in the 1st place. And you know that I, like a lot of people in the Academy really focus on the educational aspects because that's what people in the Academy do.
Professors are supposed to talk about academics and. You know, you're supposed to to be thinking about things along the lines of how is this educating people or how is this advancing humanity? But you know, we're on a longterm track here with college sports that existed long before the current crop of leaders were put into place, where money has been the deciding factor in a whole number of changes and.
The idea that it wasn't going to get to this point of that somehow, you know changing people's focus on to something else was going to fix this kind of ignores the realities of why these colleges and universities engage in this like it it I'm I'm sure there are people for whom education is still the primary purpose but those people generally are at the division two and three levels. Division One. If your if your institution is a member of a conference, that's
an FBS level conference, I mean. The whole idea of an FBS, of an FBS level in Division One, which is a subset of a subset within college sports, is built around the very concept of money. And the idea that that money is generated by football and the other revenue producing sports and the sports that can be put on television to fill advertising inventory, It's that has been the way things have gone for 20 years. Nothing this, frankly, nothing new here other than that.
There's been more consolidation. The money isn't so much the issue, but the consolidation is the issue. But I don't know that that was ever something that could be really fixed given the governance structure of colleges and universities and how they decide to come together around these things. Well, there's a, there's a few different thoughts on this thing and and you've articulated you've already just mentioned a few of them.
I guess my whole thing is, well, I know I made a joke to you the other day and I've said it to a couple other people that college athletics with all the money flowing through, especially in the last couple decades since the BCS started and got really going. It's maybe one of the times when quote UN quote, trickle down economics actually works where you have all this money coming in from football and men's basketball and to an extent women's basketball, but again
women's basketball. The payout for each for each unit in in their tournament is 0, whereas the men's basketball gets payment and football brings in the money as well. And yet, you know, here on our campus we've had to, we've gotten to renovate multiple venues and their locker rooms. I know what I U or the way I describe it to my students is Indiana University has no business having the money to
renovate its football stadium. And yet it does because of what's going on with the conference and all the bowl money there. And then all of a sudden you have a brand new baseball stadium, you have a brand new softball stadium, and there's more money for these things, largely because of all the money that the bigger sports bring in. So when we talk about separating football, it's it's kind of absurd because it really is Okay.
That football drives, drives the drives the car, drives the van, drives the bus, because there's whatever vehicle you want, because that money does trickle down or trickle across. If you want to put all the sports on it on a similar level because all the athletes are, you know, they're all working crazy hours with you as well. So there's that. And then we have these situations where there's a lot of people are to say, yeah, if only could we have stopped the
money. Well, the fact is that the money is big. And who are the most frontward facing people involved in any university that's in Division One sports, the athletes. And when they do positive things on the field, court or ice, that brings positive recognition. I applied to Indiana. I wanted to apply to Indiana back in the 90s cuz I thought coach Bob Knight was a real good coach. And I thought that'd be really awesome to be part of that whole thing.
And there are other people who were like that at the time. And so now, like, like we won the national title in baseball a couple of years ago, a bunch of my students talk. About we by we, you mean, you mean Mississippi State, where you're currently teaching. I'm sorry, Mississippi State? Yes, I was. Going to say why Indiana won the Big 10 pair, the National Baseball title. That's amazing. Mississippi State won the
national title. Couple years in college baseball and it's of course a sport there's a lot of passion for here. And you bet a lot of the students talk about, yeah, everywhere I went for a couple weeks after that, I wanted to wear something maroon and white that said Mississippi State on it so that people would say,
hey, hey pretty good. Of course I remember being in our being a Disney World the day after night was fired wearing an Indiana sweatshirt and I got hey what's up tonight at least four or five times when I was there. So it takes all kinds but but that that's another thing is though that the athletics do bring in as we as you've talked about already and on these they do bring in more applications. They do bring in more positive recognition of different things of the university and that
juices the university. I mean big time athletics are not bad for a university at all in my opinion. I'm and it's like, well, you know, there's too much money flowing through. Yeah, but if you're one of the universities that has a piece of that money, you're doing OK cuz right now Stanford and Cal are loving the idea that getting a
piece of that money. I mean, it's interesting because I the money is great when it's being what it's having an impact on, the things that you want it to have an impact on. And then not when it's not. And that that I think is probably my biggest concern about some of The opinions expressed. And this is not something that's unique to to Ariane's piece, but it's something that I see elsewhere. It's like everybody's fine and happy and has been for the last 20 years with the money.
When the money has paid for a brand new softball stadium, a brand new track and field facility, a brand new swimming facility, these are facilities as I'm want to. Point out that don't exist anywhere else in the world except at, like National Olympic Training Centers.
And we essentially have 60 or 70 National Olympic Training Centers in various sports across the country on college campuses, paid for by the revenue generated from television contracts built almost entirely on the backs of football and to a lesser extent, men's basketball. I mean, that's just the reality. You can. You can dislike the reality but that's not a debatable thing.
So you're okay with that. You're okay with the travel the increase in coaches salaries all of these things that have come along with that money. But the you know the the Faustian bargain I guess you could say with that is it is now dependent on our is your brand as a university athletically and and it is the the brand of the conference that you're
associated with. Viable enough from a commercial perspective that it can continue to generate that amount of money and you know with it, with there's an added thing there. Are you able to put yourself in a position where you can be at the level that your alumni and your prospective students and your corporate partners that have been buying signage to help
pay for everything and. And, you know, signing apparel contracts, can you be in a position where you can continue to collect from those people, whether it's through donations from alums or whether it's through applications from incoming students? And, you know, to say that while the ACC needs to resist expanding, they need to double down on the education. It's like, well, that's all well and good if you're in North Carolina, for instance, who?
Who, despite the academic malfeasance of that institution over the course of time, still isn't an international brand. I'm sorry, but it's just true. I'm tired of people not mentioning that, you know, but you know, it's fine if you're them. It's not so fine if you're North Carolina State. I mean, what kind of national profile does North Carolina State have as an institution?
Are people, are they really getting applications from across the country, from people interested in going there if they are not active in highlevel college athletics? And. And that's the part that I I get frustrated with. It's like you can't just on the one hand say, well, we want all these benefits and we like everything that's happened the last 20 years.
And and and you know, the the indirect benefits of the money that's been made by college football and college basketball at least, you know, I mean really both the men's and women's, but primarily the men's has financed the expansion of women's sports. It's financed, you know, through through, you know, Title 9 opportunities. The ability of of US females to be the, you know, the best in the world that many of the sports that they are competing
in, you know it's allowed. Students who want to compete at the collegiate level where there is no national professional league, The ability to participate in the de facto professional league, you know, whether that's in in wrestling or in track and field or any of these other things. And then be upset when it's like, well, here's what it now that money from football is dictating. I mean, this is where things have headed and ultimately it's is it greed? It kind of is.
But you know, the the it's that's not like the institutions making this money and getting this attention. It's it's not like individual enrichment. It is a competition and it's not that different from what you see on the academic side. I mean, it's not like all the universities in the world are holding hands and singing kumbaya and splitting research grants.
They're, you know, most of these universities, especially at the research one level are are cutthroat with each other, hiring away professors and, you know, edging out other competitors for NIH grants or or NEA grants. And, you know, it's that is how the rest of the educational establishment works. It's weird that somehow we expect this, you know, fog of altruism to be, you know,
enveloping college sports. It just it feels a little bit like it misses the mark a bit, I guess, from my perspective. Well, absolutely. I mean, and I'd add to that academic competition, you know, building state-of-the-art dorms and new academic buildings and different things of that nature where they're all trying to lure students are all trying to lure professors, They're in competition with each other.
And that's not a bad thing. And so in sport, I mean it's funny you what is NC State's brand? And I always think to my I was thinking to myself. Hey, I can only show that video of Jim Valveno running around the court hugging people so many times. They don't really have a great academic, athletic brand. Athletic brand. Excuse me, but they have, they have Archie Miller bat. Come on. That's true. And point guard.
What is it with all ACC tournament point guard I think let's let's not recap Archie Miller. I was. I was very excited to his coach. Go on, go on. It's not revisit that chapter but but yeah that's and and and it's and as I've said before what reminds me of is the people who I love football who say I love football but now that I know that they are getting concussions out there I I just can't watch anymore. It's a disgusting sport and and my response is is twofold #1.
We watch football because it is the OR a lot of us watch football I think because it is the best combination of chess match and sudden wanton violence in American sport. I mean just there's there's excitement either way. But some related to that it is said that basically aside from I always, I always say that the the two positions on the field who talk the most trash are corners and whiteouts because they only have to be worried, worried about being hit by the
other skinny guy. But, but the rest of the field running backs are saying nothing because you know, they're they're, you know, they're in danger on every play basically. And so when people look at the football, it's been described as you know 8 car crashes on every single play or whatever or however many. And so I guess roundabout way to get to my point of what sport did they think they were
watching? And with this revenue stuff with football you know when 80,000 people show up to the stadium or 90,000 have a bigger stadium is or 53,000 show up to your stadium and and are there to watch people play a sport that has a very very high injury rate and is very brutal sport but is there make money it is massively popular all day Saturday we have a remote control from. You know, on on the West Coast time, it'd be, you know, 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM you're watching
football for 12 straight hours. And so again, what did people think they were watching like in terms of, of course, the revenue is huge. Of course, the revenue will not always go to places you want it to. And what I think also gets lost in this, like you mentioned the fact that N Carolina's academic choices. Have been swept under the rug so much.
Well, the fact is 2030, forty years ago, a lot of these guys playing football, they were just kept eligible and the system would basically chew them up and spit them out. At least now we have some accountability with a PR and and progress toward graduation. And we both had. Want to get too into it, but we both know that football players, basketball players on all athletes are. The idea is to get them to graduate. And so I hate when there's all this hold.
It's similar to people complaining by the BCS what BCS doesn't work, yeah, but it's better than the system we had, man. And so the systems can always improve just a little bit or even a lot bit as we go forward. Well, that's the thing. I mean there's look there.
I think the thing that's fundamentally hard for people to get their heads wrapped around is that universities, yes, they're in the business of education, but they're also in the business of of making revenue to sustain themselves and to grow because that's what's been asked of them. And and that has been doubly important with state legislatures cutting funding to colleges and universities in their own states, public universities that never used to
have to rely on that. And it's like so we've had a 30 year plus period now of budgets and approaches having to be shifted, you know, away from what we're just going to educate people and we're going, you know, we're not going to do job training, we're going to, you know, just teach people the arts
and the sciences. And it's like well that's not going to draw particularly well in an era where a, college is expensive, B, the education is in a lot of ways kind of interchangeable from university to university. And So what are you selling? You're selling the student experience. How do you do that? And you know what? What is hard, maybe hard is the
wrong word. But what is difficult for people who don't want to acknowledge that to get their heads wrapped around is that sports are a great way to sell a student experience that is unique from what you would get elsewhere. And it's one of them, a number of other things. But it's the most high profile. And as I always talk about you know, we, I use Butler University as an example in class where you know Butler makes 2 back-to-back national championships in men's basketball.
And The upshot of that was that their applications all across the country go through the roof. Why? Because Butler see much like you talking about wanting to go to I U, because you know Bob Knight was a really good basketball coach. People look at that experience and they're like wow, Butler sounds like the place to go. Alabama's had that their their presence since the Saban era started has gone national because they are so successful and that's part of the experience.
You can argue that that shouldn't be part of the the the, the equation that's used to determine what a university does. You you can argue that. But I don't know how much that argument would carry weight given the realities financially of the situation and the fact that most of I would say pretty much all of the schools, with maybe one or two exceptions that currently exist in the FPS level
of college football. And ironically Stanford is one of those need and want to have that national marketing perspective and or need to do the type of alumni service that really you only get when you have high level college sports that are competing you know and and and fighting for titles and fighting you know and winning games on a national level.
I mean, Stanford doesn't need to sell itself as an academic destination, but it has a lot of alums for whom, you know, success on the athletic field or on the floor is important. And you know, that's why they're still in it. I think that's why Vanderbilt and Duke and, you know, schools like Rice are in it. I mean, these are fine academic institutions. They would probably be fine on
their own. But they themselves are in a huge battle over, you know, who's going to apply, who's going to enroll, how are they going to lift their profile so that they stand out amongst other peers who on paper all kind of look the same. And I mean, the number of schools that don't have to do that. I mean, what the Ivy League schools, Chicago, Caltech.
I mean, there's not that many, you know, other than the really small private schools in the Northeast and and you know, some of the highly religious schools, there aren't a whole lot of other places that can just afford to not worry about that kind of thing. Well and you mentioned Stanford and its national profile, its embrace of victory in the OR of high performance in the non revenue quote UN quote Olympic sports gives it an international profile and athletics in in a
lot of these places. I mean, I've been at places where half the tennis team was from overseas or half the golf team was from overseas and that's the other thing is the athletics by offering scholarships that it is a unique system. College athletics pretty much in
the world. So by having scholarships to people from overseas, that increases the international footprint as well and makes these schools be able to say, you know, we are not just getting people from our state or from our adjacent states, we're getting people. You know, we have an Australian who just, you know, won the conference title on our tennis team or South African on our on our men's golf team, and so on and so on and so.
And that's another thing that that athletics brings and for these schools that again, there's too much focus on football. I think because football does drive, does drive all of the realignment. But athletics overall like that, when you see a lot of the garment rending where it's like, oh, football, it's too big, it's so bad. But well, no, it's not too big and it's not bad. But then it also that that positive attention can flow through an entire athletic department and thus a university.
Yeah, I mean, I think we're going to continue to see debates on these things. And, you know, whether or not the ACC decides to to bring in Cal, Stanford and SMU or not, it's not the end of the story. Because as we mentioned earlier, it feels like a bandaid because it feels like Florida State would like to get to a higher profile conference.
It feels like Clemson would like to you know it's ironic that you you know, I I find 2 ironic things about people who are like well you know you you guys killed the PAC 12 and that was awful. You better not kill the ACC to a
the you know they could. The ACC could absolutely guarantee its longterm survival if Notre Dame would just join the conference as a full Member. But but Notre Dame refuses to do that because Notre Dame, who loves to talk about the moral implications of college sports across the board, is clearly only interested in what's best for Notre Dame.
And I'm not begrudging them that, but spare me the sanctimony if that's your perspective, that the other thing I'll say is that these kinds of things to me ring really hollow from a CC land when the ACC, as we mentioned earlier, killed the Big East, actively murdered it, it wasn't like a passive well, we're going to cut your food off and lock you in the cellar like they went in and cut every vital organ out of the Big East, causing the Big East to collapse in the span of
a decade. And it's like, so it was fine back then. It was fine to, you know, force the the Big East to completely change its financial model and all of those schools and all those athletes to have to deal with that. But now suddenly, you know what's good for the goose is no no longer good for the gander. That really, that really smacks of of hypocrisy. The same kind of hypocrisy that's being complained about with all the things that have gone on elsewhere in college
sports. Well, yeah, it's it's really weird the lack of that historical perspective like conference realignment did not start when Jim Delaney said what back in 2010 that we're that the Big 10 is exploring expansion and everybody freaked out and Missouri's governor begged us, begged the Big 10 first spot and all that other stuff. Yeah, it it didn't start then and and again we've talked about
before all of the. Where the the media was breathlessly saying there's going to be a PAC16A, Big 16 and a CC-16 and SCC16, it's going to be crazy. And then they're going to kill the NCAA. And that didn't happen, of course, but that was there. That's what they wanted. And now a lot of those same media members are saying, Oh my goodness, I can't believe this expansion. It's so weird, so strange. Are are the conferences getting too big?
What happened to the PAC 12? And it's like Y'all gleefully we're promoting the. Idea of you know the whole thing hitting a Wrecking Ball take take taken to it and collapsing and then being these super duper conferences and now that it's happening you're you're like whoa, what what what what happened? We don't understand this you know and it didn't. But what this? This is the this is the classic. Like, I never thought leopards would eat my face. Moment of college sports, right?
Yes, absolutely. And and it reminds me of all of all the the baseball writers who knew exactly what was going on in the late 90s and promoted all that and now say I will never vote one of them into the Hall of Fame. It's the integrity of the game. And I said, well, OK, and then wait, what? You mean having? Having an open bottle of of Andro next to your locker isn't just part of a normal, like, workout plan mad. I'm shocked. Well, yeah. What amazing workouts Roger Clemens does.
Yeah, amazing. Where's the needle? Yeah. So, yeah, it's. So it's it's so much like it is hypocrisy that is created by a willingness to look the other way. Well and now. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry, go ahead. Well, and now we see some of these writers I won't, I won't name.
Name the writers but it's some of these writers like Stuart Mandel are are sitting there trying to say on on their platforms well here's what's going to happen next and I'm proposing a football Super League like that soccer one. Well, A, the soccer one didn't happen and because every there was an up uproar and B, it's a lot of these guys are mostly
trying to get. Ahead of the story that they have never been ahead of like all this comments realignment like after they all got egg on their face from Texas and Oklahoma and then USC and UCLA made their moves they're like oh, which we're now we're going to try to predict what happens next and said you can't you can't because these machinations are happening in backrooms. It is wild.
I mean, I I think a lot about that from the standpoint of first of all the, the immediate leap of logic, like what were, you know, we're right on the precipice of the Super League with only 30 or so teams being involved. It's like well, are we? I mean, if you, if you think about it, like, first of all, they've been trying to do the Super League in Europe for 30 years now.
I want to say, I mean this is, this is an idea that keeps like arriving and then departing and then new new folks come in because of the way. And again, this is like you need to know the historical aspects of this. You need to understand why things work the way that they work. The the cultural obstacles and the business obstacles of a Super League and European soccer make it essentially impossible to do.
You already have a Super League in America in in European soccer it's called the Champions League. The idea of having another one on top of it is not something that the individual countries will countenance. And I think that that's pretty much been proven as as the way that things are because again Europe is a bunch of different countries. Yes, you have the European Union, but it is a bunch of and I mean the key, some of the key brands are in England, which is no longer part of that.
So that's a separate thing to put aside. But if you think about the US and college sports, it's a similar kind of constraint in a different way in that yes, you, you're all under one roof in terms of you're all under the US government. But as we've already seen with some of these conversations, there are still affiliation elements to who wants to get in bed with whom.
That limits, you know, the Big 10 and the SEC from just grabbing everybody because Big 10 schools don't want to have subpar academic teams or academic schools in their conferences. And SEC doesn't really want to break out of its regional footprint. And you know, there are cultural elements involved in this that are either they're not just things that can be easily dispersed of it's it's not formed like the NFL. It is a bunch of independent businesses.
Some of them are public, you know, university, some of them are private institutions. But it is a bunch of independent businesses who have trouble coming together to decide on, like how many muffins should be on the tray that you give to football recruits when they come in to tour the facilities and they're somehow going to put a Super League together. It just seems implausible, like it seems a lot more likely.
If you go back and look at the history, It was 1978 when Division One split, and essentially the programs that could be serious about football and fill the stands and we're in the big conferences, became Division 1A, which became FBS and everybody else went to Division One AA, which became
FCS. It's a lot more likely that you would see division 1FBS split in half and have like 65 to 70 teams in the top tier and then the remainder the the group of five conferences or whatever group of six. I guess if you want to add the remnants of the PAC 12, it's a lot more likely that they would end up being in kind of a division that straddles the line between FBS&FCS. Then you would have, like, that get cut in half again.
But yeah, I mean, look, anything's possible, but it seems really unlikely we're going to go from 131 teams to 31 teams in the span of a year, given all of the different cultural and political realities that exist within the college
football landscape. Well, that's The thing is, if somebody wants to talk about the absurdity of the money flying through or flowing through college football, and they want to say that the Power Five soon to be Power Four, should separate from the Group of Five, I'm listening. Because when you look at those numbers, what is it like? Every Power 5 conference right now gets 60 or $70 million from the playoffs before any bowl games are assigned every year.
That's what they get. And the group, the entire group of five, gets like $65 million to divide amongst themselves. And that's why Ball State is playing at Georgia this year. Yeah, you know, because they, they need those money games. They need those. Here's $1,000,000 or a million point five, 1.5 million, please come in and get your head beat in. Now go home and pay every single coach on your entire athletic department with that money.
That disparity is something I'm interested in talking about. But then they always say, well, what about, you know, the times when there's giant killers? Well, yeah, but those are going to get fewer and further between with the disparities and facilities and recruiting budgets. I mean, again, have. I've been putting it for years. Long Beach State will never win another women's volleyball title. Cal State Fullerton will never win another baseball title. And those aren't even football
schools. But we're just saying that these are schools that got used to being powers and in those sports. But now the worst of the power Five schools had in terms of on court performance or on field performance has better facilities, better recruitment, and then all these schools that for a while enjoyed some advantages. So yeah, this is again, that's but the whole idea of a Super League. It just seems like one of those fantasies.
It's a media fantasy and it makes no sense because when the playoff becomes 12 teams, that sounds like a pretty Super League to me. Yeah, absolutely. So I guess maybe with that, we'll go ahead and wrap up any final thoughts on all of this before we do. So pour one out for the PAC 12. Yeah, I'll miss it a lot. The PAC 12 shall rise again, Sir. It'll happen at some point, I'm positive. I don't know. Well, indeed, indeed, well.
The big actually to me that the big question is what will end up being bigger, the eventual Super League in college sports or MLS in terms of number of teams? In terms of number of teams, like right now we're talking about like a 30 some team, college, Super League. I think MLS is at least at that number now, are they not? We are. I think MLS is. I know. I know MLS is nearing 30. I think they're at 28. 29 There are 29 teams right now. 29 Yeah, I gotta go, Gotta go to.
And actually, they're gonna hit 30 because this is not counting the future San Diego team that's going to be added. I am. On the one hand, it's kind of cool, like I remember where there wasn't a league, but on the other hand it just it's that's a lot of teams. That's a it is anyway. Well, it's a lot. Yeah, Matt, I as always enjoy talking to you about this stuff and I'm sure we'll have more to talk about as we move forward. But thank you for joining me. This was great.
Absolutely. Galen, bring back the bison. Thank you. There you go. Thank you for popping that in. Some people have been giving me grief cuz I haven't been saying it lately and I've just forgotten. No other reason that anyway. My thanks to all you folks for tuning in. My thanks to our sponsor at home field apparel and all of our friends at the back home network. My thanks to Doctor Matt Zimmerman for joining us here. We'll be back with I U football coverage this weekend.
I'm Galen Clabby. We'll catch you folks on the flip side. So everybody.