Maryland is leaving ACC to join the Big Ten

Pac12 is hoity toity and prides themselves on being the conference of champions - academically and athletically. Pac12 won't take OK or OKState without Texas and even during the height of speculation, 3/4 of the conference was grumbling about OKState's academics (much less the thought of stomaching another Texas university to balance out to 16 with UT). They would only stomach such universities if and only if UT came along. ('Worse than the Arizona universities!' came the cry.)

OU - If they came by themselves... Maybe. OKState will be an anchor on them in the eyes of the Chancellors. Kansas - maybe. UNLV - LOL, no.

 

Well, Texas had this vision of world Domination in the old Big12 with the old traditional rivals and the biggest piece of the pie.

Half the pie left and the rest pushed back, and their tv market doesn't look so great now.

They might rethink that an equal share of a huge pie is better and easier.

And the offer they turned down was from the PAC 12. The B1G is a lot bigger pie.

 

They wanted in, but they didn't want to give up their Longhorn network. Scott did offer to let them rebrand it as Pac16 Texas network but no revenue sharing from it was a non-starter. OU and OK State were considered for Pac14 but the Chancellors voted it down to stay at 12.

If there is an expansion, Chancellors will want to pick big, prestigious research universities with AAU (Association of American Universities) status if at all possible (8/12 are in it).

 

Well, it was a non- starter then, but the Longhorn network is a bust. They can make more than that by just collecting the B1G money.

Here is the AAU roster http://www.aau.edu/about/article.aspx?id=5476

I see about five candidates. BC, UVA, UNC, Texas, and Pitt.

Pitt is PSU's market.

Tell me, which are the market plums there?

Start by looking here:
http://www.stationindex.com/tv/tv-markets

But to tell you the truth, I don't think AAU is the criteria they will use.

 

Yep.

Texas. The rest are a bit far.

It won't be the sole criteria but it will be one. If you note our AAU list, you'll see all the California schools have it and one of each 'pair' has it. So, for our newest members, Colorado has AAU status. Utah doesn't.

I think you underestimate how (academically) snobby some of the Chancellors will be (and the fanbases too). It's not solely Pac12, imo. I think Oklahoma's leadership has said they are strongly averse to joining the SEC due to the academic situation.

 

ACC makes up for Maryland by adding Louisville. Definitely helps ACC in football. ACC takes a hit in its lofty academics, but saying this is about academics would be a laugh.

If you want to see how to financially ruin an athletic program and how dire things became at Maryland, check out this article:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/writers/the_bonus/11/26/maryland-athletics/index.html

And as expected the ACC is not going to let Maryland off of the $53 million exit fee. This could get ugly. Don't expect Maryland to make any facility renovations or big hires since they will have to cough up this $ up somehow.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/20...land.lawsuit.2nd.ld.writethru.0516/index.html

 

Well, if it goes to litigation the legal tieup will most likely hamper the ambitions of the ACC as well, and there is speculation that the B1G schools have already agreed to no interest loans to come out of increased TV revenue.

http://www.testudotimes.com/2012/11...rapins-big-ten-acc-realignment-exit-fee-legal

Then, of course, there is the question of the legality of the 50 million fee itself, which hasn't been tested at all yet. When Maryland voted against the exit fee increase, President Wallace Loh did say one reason was that he doubted the legality of the move. The guy does have a PhD in law from Yale and was Dean of the University of Washington law school. I'm sure he didn't go in blind here.

I think this might be more about keeping the other schools in line than it is about extracting money from MD.

And while the athletic departments books may show a $57 million deficit, I think they can cover it. The UMD endowment is up around $800 million and went up 17% between 2010 and 2011.

And from what I am reading, Louisville's academics aren't much of an issue right now. Some ACC schools are busy looking inward when it comes to lofty academics, with some help from the NCAA.


But this should be fun to watch

 

The huge ACC exit fee reminds me of the issue surrounding the legality of over broad non-compete clauses. There have been cases that have disallowed the clauses requiring former employees refrain from working in a competing industry for too long a period of time or in too large a geographic area. In a way this newly and hugely increased buyout is even worse as it was imposed on long time members (rather than new hires) who would have to leave the league to avoid it (and maybe they couldn't). It's also a disincentive to join the ACC although I guess it didn't bother Louisville or the other ACC wannabees too much. If ND pulls out their sports do they have to pay the whole thing or did they get a special deal?

 

spoken like a lawyer . . . the whole realignment debacle just seems sad to me.

 

Perhaps I should have said interesting, as in:

"May you live in interesting times".

 

Sad for me too. Although I have been aware for decades that big time college sports are about money, I still find myself clinging to a thread of hope that maybe they are a little about team values, healthy rivalries, opportunities for self improvement, recreation, and growth, etc. --the Greek Ideal-- --basic American Values of healthy competition--
.....then I'm clobbered by reality once again when Maryland throws over 60 years of history with an organization it helped to found and their president makes it crystal clear that the move is ALL about money, pure and simple. Not even a nod to athletic or team values. Highest bidder gets it. End of discussion. Greed and desperation prevail over the other values that seem so quaint and old fashioned.

Yes, very sad.

 

Md is desperate for $$$ to maintain what it has but honestly you might want to consider this -

Being from NC you might not be aware of how NC centric the ACC administration has at times been. I'm not saying that rivalries don't matter by any means but it's not like the tobacco road folks didn't treat everyone else like also rans in many sports. I mean does Duke care about Md bball? Of course not - they care about UNC. So some rivalries (MD- Duke) were one way. Just saying. Exactly how many home games did NC state women's soccer have televized this year? Now I understand that none of this is about women's soccer but still - you'd think they'd at least make the effort so it wasn't completely obvious.

 

Their track record is every time they chase those $$ they end up deeper in debt. The move makes sense up front, UMD cut a bunch of sports and was still facing a multi-million $$ deficit (of course, the sports they cut didn't really save them any money, but that's a whole different issue). Now they'll have enough money so that if they don't increase expenditures, they'll be ahead.

Of course, they've just upped their travel budgets by a factor of 5 or 10, and rather than being $10 million behind in football spending, they're $50 million down. So if you think they're not going to have to spend every Big Ten dime propping up football . . . I just hope they don't cut soccer.

 

Some good points. This football money grab is not good for other sports. Wait til APR's in other sports are directly affected - MD Baseball/Lacrosse/Soccer games in Minnesota?

WVU joined the B12 early - their womens' soccer team played in the B12 Quarterfinals on a Wednesday night in San Antonio, TX. That's a week of classes down the drain. Heard they had another mega roadtrip to Iowa and Kansas that was another week of missed classes.

We can all imagine this was discussed at some point but why didn't the BCS Football schools just leave the NCAA? Form their own 6-8 regional conferences and run a playoff format ending in the bowls? Everyone can make their TV money and you don't have to send the thousands of other-sport athletes on these cross-country adventures. Funny thing is, this is probably going to happen anyway with everyone else dragged along for the ride...

 

Well because they aren't interested in running all those other sports themselves. There is no money in it.

And because the NCAA will appease the BCS almost without limit in order to keep its own $6 billion cash cow, March Madness. It is almost the only piece of the pie left for the NCAA since they lost the football tv contracts to football schools in the 60's.

It's also why the BCS isn't much interested in a full playoff. They fear a real playoff would get folded back into the NCAA and all the bowl money would fall out of their grasp.

So the NCAA feels powerless to controll anything the bcs schools want to do with TV bowl money and contracts as long ast the BCS holds March Madness over their heads.

 

Think before you type - I meant for football only. The BCS is only a football thing so create a nationwide BCS for Football only with 6-8 regional conferences with a hybrid bowl/playoff arrangement and keep football from affecting all the other sports and "traditional" conferences. The "SE Region" of a new Football Only BCS would have probably still been the traditional SEC teams, PAC10 would be similar, etc. You can imagine the Big East would have wanted that when they actually had some good football schools (and were still really "East")

NOW - all the other sports are now being dragged into the football melee and it will not be good for everyone (this=my original point)

You are very correct that the basketball/CBS money is a major factor that probably prevented the Football schools from "going independent" with a football only conference.