was in Austin this weekend and caught a round of golf at Plum Creek Golf Club about 20 minutes on the south side.
when we pulled up I noticed two mini vans of girls getting ready to play decked out in Cincinnati gear.
as we were walking up to the clubhouse I chatted them up (man I miss being in college / an athlete…) and they were in town for the Texas State Invitational or whatever (the course was Texas State University’s home course - their locker rooms were there, pretty cool).
long story short I can confirm they are in fact stoked about joining the Big 12 and I wished them good luck in this weeks tourney. I was rocking my UH polo of course.
two groups of them ended up playing the holes behind us the entire round. great day and a nice course.
Academics tank Fresno and Boise. Maybe also recruiting competition.
I don’t understand the need for inventory, though, considering the lack of bidders on their downstream content. Only thing I can think of is downstream content brings Fox into the fray. Or they can get games on CBS by offering up games to Paramount+ or CBSSN.
Otherwise, the case for expansion seems mostly to be long term conference-building rather than a short term contract.
Tulane doesn’t need to go to the CFP to make their fans happy. They are deliriously happy with the pinnacle they reached this past season in football and their basketball team is playing well too. You are talking about a school that has rarely had football success and were resigned to being near the bottom of whatever conference they were in. Beating USC in the Cotton Bowl was beyond their wildest dreams.
They will not bring California markets. Only Phoenix is a good sized market.
Separated from UCLA and SC they lose their best recruiting area for both students and athletes.
Increasing the divisor from 12 to 16 will lower revenue for each existing Big-12 school. If it can’t be proven the revenue for existing Big-12 will not go down, they should not be added.
Then, there is opportunity costs in having too many schools to add current ACC schools.
My preference is grabbing 2 of the 4 but I would take all 4 if that is what it took to get them. I personally think the Cali market is a lost cause… USC/UCLA own that. What left over is really overrated with respect to college sports. Focus on the best P5 brands available that will stick with Big 12 long-term.
I’m not saying authoritatively that you guys are wrong (there are a lot of variables I am not privvy to) but I am saying that is how the Pac-12 convinced itself not to raid the Big 12 when they had the chance, and how the Big 12 ended up at 8 teams and within an inch of its life as a power conference…
If 92010 achieves his dream and we get in the B1G, we will definitely need to add wrestling on the men’s side, and women’s gymnastics on the ladies’ side.
There are only 78 schools offering wrestling. 6 of them are only D1 in that sport. 41 of them don’t play FCS football meaning they run much smaller funded athletic programs.
From what I understand from things I’ve read, the B12 TV contracts are constructed so that adding new teams will also add revenue so that the existing teams will get the same revenue per team. I may be wrong, so if you want verification you need to do the research, I too lazy and get annoyed with the google rabbit trails.
The Big 12 is also a pretty decent wrestling conference with Okie State, Iowa State (both of whom have won multiple natties), Northern Iowa, and Mizzou.
We should add wrestling and women’s gymnastics for that as well!
