If You Must Conquer, Uniting Is the Way to Go. Not Dividing.
Everybody wants to play Toy Soldiers.
I have never understood fans and media who dive into salary caps and television revenue with the same gusto they apply to appreciating a two-out double with the bases loaded or a 13-yard completion over the middle on third down.
Then again, I don’t play fantasy sports, either. I crunched enough sports numbers as part of my job writing about sports. Had no interest in doing any more of that when I could be watching a good movie or reading a good book. Or hitting a little white ball. Or hiking into the sunset.
But now comes this mania for shuffling the college-conference deck. And fans and media accepting that institutions of higher learning have to do this because they will make more money.
In my mind, this is paving paradise to put up a parking lot.
But OK. If this is the way the world is headed, I will say this: If you want to maximize your television revenue—which seems to be the whole point—everybody needs to get together.
Kumbaya!
Whether it’s 80 schools, 100 schools, 200 schools. . . One negotiating unit is the way to go.
If I was going to Big Ten Media Days, which begin Tuesday in Indianapolis, I would gently be asking questions about this scenario. Till they grabbed the microphone away.
The Big Ten and the SEC can add all the muscular traditional powers they want. The ACC, Big 12, Pac-Number-Please and every other hungry school can band together in whatever bizarre coalitions they want.
The way to do this is the way the NFL does this: The sport negotiates all of its TV in a unified way.
They will figure this out eventually.
It will also take time because they will need to coordinate the end of their current contracts so that they all end at the same time. The networks will try to entice them not to do this.
But when they get there, the people who drool over television revenue—um, the people who run college football—will be able to say:
``Here’s the deal: You want the Big Ten or SEC on Saturdays? Line up your caravan of Brink’s Trucks. Special consideration given to offers that include other conferences.
``And we are taking bids for these games on these days. You want Alabama to play The Citadel at midnight on Tuesday? Michigan to play Northern Illinois at 3 a.m. on Thursday? Make an offer. A really big offer.
``And if you want USC-Notre Dame, you had better come up with more doughnut holes than Dunkin at the end of your bid.’’
In the meantime, while I find the idea of the SEC and Big Ten power grabs wrong, wrong, wrong. . . if the Big Ten/Big Stage/Big Dollars is going to engage in this arms race with the SEC/It Just Means More Money, here’s what the Big Ten should do.
Go for the Brass Ring. Let’s have a 24-school Big Ten.
Go get Oregon, Washington, Stanford and Cal. With USC and UCLA, you have a six-team Pacific Division.
Midwest: Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Northwestern.
Eastern: Michigan, Ohio State, Michigan State, Indiana, Purdue, Penn State.
And finally, an Atlantic Division. Pick up Syracuse, Boston College, North Carolina and Notre Dame to go with Maryland and Rutgers.
Yes, the Irish are going to see the handwriting on the wall at some point. And if geographically-challenged ND insists on pretending its Eastern roots make more sense than its Midwestern campus, here's the path. Which conveniently avoids a diet of Ohio State and Michigan.
Everyone plays five games within their division, plus one game against a team from each of the other three divisions. For Game 9, the four division winners meet in the semi-finals, while the No. 2 through No. 6 teams are matched. The following week, hold a mega-conference-championship game.
If you still don't have enough money, how about No. 2 through No. 6 ``championships?''
Big Ten expansion, of course, will force the SEC to add teams. Actual Southeastern teams like Clemson, Florida State and Miami are naturals.
From there, the Big Ten and SEC keep forcing each other to expand until there’s no one else left.
And then the two of them can merge—and dictate to Fox, ESPN, NBC, CBS and whoever else wants in.
Or. . . Greg Sankey and Kevin Warren could just broker a deal for a unified college-football world right now—which would spare a lot of growing pains.