Umm ... that's quite a jump from present Big 10 country.

Man, that would be a huge deal if it becomes true!!!

I read a site that opines that USC, UCLA, Stanford, and Cal could all make the move. That would give the Big10 18 teams. That seems like too many ..... but what do I know?

It's a lot. The SEC is going to have 16 teams and their mantra is "don't stop there."

Not sure if these power conferences are good for college athletics or not?

I don't think so. I have a feeling that after the conference "build ups", there will come a dismissal of some lower performing teams.

It's about super conferences now. Adding 2 west coast teams seems to be a stretch, but the TV market will be a big boost. USC and UCLA really had nowhere else to go since it seems the west coast is dead meat for football teams. But, it had to be done. I would think Cincy would be a natural target, but OSU probably doesn't want any in state rivals for recruiting purposes

The SEC just picked up Texas and Oklahoma. If or when the SEC wants to expand again, they could look at a Florida team, Clemson, maybe Va Tech.

If I were the remains of the Big 12, I'd be talking wih the rest of the Pac 12 and be looking to merge or something.

I'll be planning a road trip to watch a game on the left coast.

Yea Peen, alluded to two of the main reasons for the Big Ten: schools with a deep history and a major tv market

Agree, I wonder IF or when the Big Ten changes their name.....Nebraska and Rutgers sure didn't change the name, but will it change when we have 20 schools .....just wonder. I think the league should change its name.

Just call themselves "The Big Conference."

Also, I would like to see The Big follow the lead of the ACC and eliminate divisions. Play the schedule on a rotating basis while keeping long-standing rivalries, such as OSU/Tun, USC/UCLA, Purdue/Indiana, TUN/MI St, Minnesota/Wisconsin intact.

For the playoffs, take the top two teams record wise to play in the Big Conference Championship.

Love this news. NIL money is going to be off the charts in a few years with OSU and USC in bidding wars for the top recruits!

Yeah, and we are going to be killing the always-rich So-Cal high school market.

It'll be interesting when big money gets involved. Especially, now that Lincoln Riley is there. Going to be fun to watch as this moves forward 4-5 years down the road.

I'm waiting for the first school to build a multi-billion dollar state-of-the-art stadium to help get recruits to sign on the dotted line.

Good point about Lincoln Riley. He's a great recruiter and a very good offensive mind.

Likewise, Ryan Day is probably the most genius offensive mind in the collegiate game today. Have you been following all the WRs that are committing to OSU? The word is out. We have the right guy.

But again, good point about Riley. He's very good.

Absolutely on the WRs. Brian Hartline deserves a ton of credit as well for what he is doing with the position group and the recruiting.

If Day bolts for the NFL in 2-3 years, I'd be curious if Hartline would take over. He received a $350k bump in pay last season and added passing game coordinator to his title.

Great point about Hartline.

I hate to think about Day leaving, but it's inevitable. Dude is an offensive minded genius. Hartline might be a good choice, but I hope it does not come to that. Hopefully Day realizes that he has it made in Columbus and that the NFL is fickle.

What do you think of the DC hire from Ok State? I think he has a good rep. Has to be better than what we've had. Our offense is the best in the country. Our D has sucked ever since Coombs and his successor took over. I think Knowles will help. Do you?

Man, that was an awesome three day commitment of the three receivers. This class is number 1 in the nation (though they are second in quality), but that will be a fight at the end. Alabama will get their recruits by signing day.

I agree, I would hate to see Day leave.

I am excited about Knowles. From what I've read, I know his former players loved him at OK St. They were a top ten defense, which is meaningful to a point. They were #1 in the nation in sacks and a few other areas. But how good was their competition? I see the scores and the teams, but I would be lying to know how good those teams offenses were compared to their rankings. Though I know the Big 12 offenses love to put some points on the board.

I do like his philosophy on being very aggressive and wanting to cause confusion for the offense. It would kill me knowing/seeing we had all 4 star - 5 star talent on D and watching our team not be able to do basic fundamentals like tackle/be out of position in games. All the while knowing we were the more talented team. It really shows when your head coach has to take over play calling duties on defense.


It seems like he got the most out of his players. I am hoping he can do that here. One of the things, I am excited about is he has 10+ years experience as a D coordinator and his teams D have improved over the years. We need that stability on defense.


Day said the spring game would be a vanilla defense, which isn't surprising. But it at least gives you a little bit of info on basic looks. I don't know if you read elevenwarriors or not.
Film study

Just a few comments.

First, to amend a few comments I had yesterday. With all the changes, I forgot Cincy just went to the Big 12, and ACC schools like Clemson all got in to some agreement that if a member school who decides to leave forfeits it's TV revenue until 2030something, so Clemson isn't going anywhere.

It pretty much boils down to two super conferences. Kind of like the NFL AFC/NFC. Where this goes from here, who knows? Maybe simply headed to a Superbowl of sorts. I am just concerned that this will erode college football and you end up with all of the top 400 HS players signing with the two conferences.

I do think the SEC and Big 10 are in position to dominate the scene. Both will probably go to 20 teams each in an agreement between each other.

On a broader issue, I do think something has to be done about NIL money. From a legal standpoint, I don't think the teams or leagues can limit the amount of money a player can negotiate for the use of image, but they probably can limit the total $ amount a member team can have on the roster. Something has to be figured out on that front. As a person who probably likes college football more than the NFL, I don't want to see college football become pretty much another professional league without rules in place to allow weaker teams to get better, much like the NFL draft is supposed to accomplish. I'd also like to know how these NIL agreements work. Are these simply 1 year deals or are they 4 year agreements? If they are 1 year deals, that might encourage players to jump from team to team simply chasing the money. If they are something they can't get out of, a kid might get buried on a team with no opportunity to showcase his ability. Maybe the NIL money being offered has to be regulated in a way that it is paid to the conference who then distributes that money to the member teams in a somewhat equal manner?

I just don't want to see college football ruined. We already have the have's and have nots to some degree, but it is headed to unhealthy territory IMO.

No doubt it is a complex issue, but one that needs to be addressed.

Vers,

Here are a couple of film studies I found from his time OK St. I haven’t really had a chance to go over them yet. So I don’t know how good they are. But I see in one of the pics he’s circling the defensive players, so he at least understands which team is on D.

Film study 1

Film study 2

Put me in the game coach! Put me in the game!

I'd go even farther and make that "signing with the top half of two conferences". In addition, any player that shows some skill after committing to a lesser school will be jumping into the portal to get there. This is the inevitable end result of portal transfers and NIL. Sadly, college football as we knew it has come to an end. The cost of putting a top tier team on the field is going to be out of reach for most schools, especially if the TV revenue levels off.

j/c:

I just heard that The Big is about to sign a new TV deal that will pay each team in the conference $100 million annually. No wonder USC and UCLA wanted in. Could Notre Dame be next?

Hey Scott........I'll try and watch the film studies later and comment on them. Thanks for providing them.

THE BIG TEN JUST PULLED OFF THE BIGGEST HEIST IN COLLEGE FOOTBALL HISTORY
By Johnny Ginter
https://www.elevenwarriors.com/coll...iggest-heist-in-college-football-history

I lacked the imagination.

In the Expansion Wars of college football, which began over a decade ago at this point, I had always been fairly skeptical about the potentiality of anything close to superconferences. Too many historical/cultural ties to surmount, too many logistical issues to sort out, and maybe just a lack of desire among conferences to blow up a system that had been stable for generations.

That proved incorrect! In large part because I failed to recognize that money is a thing and that even when a conference (like the Big Ten) has a lot of it, said conference would also like more of it, and is willing to do pretty much whatever it can to get it.

When Kevin Warren became commissioner of the Big Ten, his number one priority was to negotiate the conference's new television contract. Then COVID happened, and his number one priority suddenly became crafting a coherent and consistent response to the greatest public health crisis in a century. And he did a pretty crappy job at doing that, all things considered, so anyone expecting some kind of power move from a guy that was getting consistently okie-doked by the SEC and their commissioner Greg Sankey seemed likely to be disappointed.

Until yesterday.

For me, the bottom line of the Big Ten adding USC and UCLA to the conference is this: the B1G now has a significant sports media presence in the three largest markets in the entire country. Whatever else USC and UCLA might mean for "history" and "tradition" when it comes to football and basketball kind of pales in comparison to the Death Star of media rights that the Big Ten has assembled. It is expanding to as many potential viewers as possible in an effort to counter the perceived cultural cache from their main rival, the SEC.

SO NOW THERE ARE TWO DIFFERENT WAYS TO LOOK AT CONFERENCE EXPANSION.

The SEC has taken the prestige route. They want to make their conference look as shiny and impressive as possible, and they accomplish this by talking up their blue bloods that win championships, giving their garbage teams that don't a sense of conference pride, and by absorbing other brands that bolster the image of everyone. Texas and Oklahoma might not always be great or even good on the football field, but they have a fairly reliable and entrenched group of people willing to turn them on every Saturday.

Thus, this approach is heavily reliant on the fans of these brands sustaining growth, which, generally, isn't a terrible proposition. The SEC will be supported by ESPN/Disney, and (assuming at least two or three of the SEC blue bloods continue to be good in the future) the product will be elite. The problem here is that this necessarily requires continuing to incorporate other regional powerhouses under the SEC banner, because the viewership isn't going to grow organically.

That's what the Big Ten is trying to do. USC and UCLA are both hugely popular programs in their own right, but Los Angeles and California as a whole is an untapped media market that gives the Big Ten (and Fox) the ability to sell to new college football viewers that might've otherwise been sequestered because of time zones or a lackluster conference. It's the same approach that the Big Ten took with Rutgers and Maryland, and while neither schools have made much of an impact on the field of play, I don't think the conference is upset about the access to markets they provided.

Now the Big Ten can sell their media rights while claiming that they have a legitimate stake in every major media market in the country, for what will likely be the biggest combined media deal in college sports history. While the SEC is growing by adding fans, the Big Ten will grow by adding people to its footprint, and bet that Ohio State-USC will draw in the same kind of viewership as Ohio State-Michigan does (while also creating new regular watchers). The advantage of this is that it doesn't require a dedicated fanbase to grow an audience, just people to be advertised to.

jimmy!
Patrick Gorski-USA TODAY Sports
Either way, both conferences are barreling towards "giant blob that absorbs everything in its path" status, and it'll be interesting to see what schools like Notre Dame decide to do in the meantime. Actually, by "interesting" I mean "morbidly fascinating," because at this point conference expansion isn't the Big Ten's problem, it's Notre Dame's. Which is on them.

Jim Delany's shrewdest act as Big Ten commissioner was to recognize the changing nature of college sports, and aggressively expand the conference both in terms of size and media presence. The rest of the country has spent the intervening decade trying to catch up (with varying degrees of success), but the jury was out on whether or not his successor would be up to the challenge of continuing that work.

Today it looks like, as far as conference expansion goes, Kevin Warren and the rest of the powers-that-be in the conference have stepped up to the plate and ensured the survival of the Big Ten for the foreseeable future.

I could see Oregon and Washington being added as well and maybe Arizona State or Utah. Have a Big Ten East, Central, and West of 7 teams each. Each team would play their whole division and one team from each of the other (one home, one away) and a random 9th Big Ten game. It solves the football logistical issues, and eases much of the logistical issues from other sports. Alternatively, I could see fewer and the Big Ten purging part of the ACC as well. We're definitely moving towards super conferences and the dissolving of the FBS and playoffs as we know it.

East
Maryland
Rutgers
Penn State
Michigan
Michigan State
Ohio State
Indiana

Central
Wisconsin
Northwestern
Purdue
Iowa
Minnesota
Illinois
Nebraska

West
USC
UCLA
Stanford
CAL
Oregon
Washington
Arizona State or Utah

It's becoming more and more obvious that we are going to end up w/two Super Conferences. The schools who aren't in those conferences are going to suffer financially, not appear on television as often, lose even more recruits, and have a hard time staying afloat.

The interesting thing here is the battle between the networks for the SEC and The Big. The SEC has had an advantage due to ESPN being so widely watched. However, w/The Big landing the LA market, Fox just threw a huge blow at Disney/ESPN/ABC. The Big has the three largest markets in the land. LA, Chicago, and NY. I will say that I don't know how much the NY metropolitan area cares about Rutgers...LOL......but still, this was a huge win for Fox and The Big.

One thing to keep an eye on. Notre Dame has their own network deal w/NBC. They are also aligned w/the ACC in every sport other than football and hockey. Should ND chase the money, it will be interesting if they go to the SEC or The Big. That will be a huge get for either league and their respective networks because ND has fans the world over. With Fox promising $100 million annually to every team in The Big, that would be hard for anyone to ignore. That is a huge sum of money. It's actually mind-boggling.

There is a cost to all the families, and all the tradition of all of the, well, football players who have had family members play football at all of these schools in these now TWO conferences,
that are remaining, and had two of their major (chain stores) so to speak leave for a different conference, since the time when Texas and Oklahoma left for the SEC, and Texas A#M too which is where it started.

All of the fans all over, of all of the left over schools in the former Pac 10, and the former Big 12.

The Arizona States' the Washington States, the Kansas' Kansas states and Colorado's of the world,
the Boises' and Oregon and Oregon States' their, (some of their) traditions matter too.

There are just so many college schools that play football, that it's hard to think that any group of 16 teams... but then not all schools are created equal.

Will I live long enough to see USC lose at Purdue?
Or how will Wisconsin do AT UCLA, tall about 2 different styles.

But the point is it's not all a good thing there is an opportunity cost, the opportunity cost of what existed before.

There are negatives. LOL

Rutgers is in Brunswick, NJ. USC and UCLA are in LA. The distance between the two locations is 2,767.2 miles. Imagine flying from one place to another to play softball, lacrosse, field hockey, etc.

College sports! It's about the student athlete!

I think it would be cool if ND joined the SEC.

Does this mean we will be watching USC & UCLA "best games & seasons videos" fron 40-50 years ago on the Bg Ten Network?

Who knows? With the way college football has pivoted over the last few years I suspect we will be watching a whole new game moving forward. I am not even sure if the NCAA is going to be viable a few years down the road now that recruiting is a new ball game at this point.

To reiterate a earlier point, somehow college football is going to have to gain a grasp on NIL money. Be it under NCAA guidelines of some sort or the Big 10 and SEC form a union of sorts and do their own thing outside the NCAA umbrella.

To a very viable point Vers brought up, I also wonder how this is going to impact womens and the other non money sports programs the various school field. In most cases the only money sports at schools are mens football and basketball, maybe a few other sports at select schools such as Gopher hockey....and even basketball takes a back seat in many cases. On the womens side, I'd say all but a few programs really generate enough money to actually stand alone. It's going to be pretty expensive flying a volleyball team across country a few times a year to play in front of a few parents and boyfriends.

It will be interesting to see how all of this works out.

Good points about the money. I'll just say don't forget about the money from the networks. No one else commented on this, but Fox paying $100 million per year for each team blows my mind.

No doubt.

With all the money going in to two baskets, I worry about the others.

Just a honest question. When I go up to Cleveland for games, when I go to a sports bar, prettty much every TV is on the Bucks game and nothing else is on. Down here pretty much every game is on. I am talking about places with maybe 20 TV's around the space.

I know SEC fans watch other teams games as well. It doesn't seem to be "my team" or nothing else as it is up in Ohio. I can as an example sit and watch Arkansas v Miss. St. It doesn't have to a Gators game. I have also seen and told many members on this board they should hope for Mich to win games to make their last game more meaningful which helps with the rankings at seasons end. I am told to pretty much shut-up...lol

I guess my question is do people watch the Big Ten games other than their team? I do understand you don't live up there anymore, but you seem to be as big an advocate for Big 10 football and anybody on the board.

I watch the Big 10, SEC, Big 12 [I know Iowa State's HC,] an occasional ACC game, PAC 12 once in awhile. I'm just a football junkie. I always have two large screen TVs on in my man cave [it's not anything like a cave, but not sure what else to call it] for both college and NFL games. I watch as many games as I can simply because I love the game. I never miss an Ohio State or Browns' game.

It won't be long and there will really be only the SEC and the Big 10. Then, we'll have an NFL-esque situation where the college football championship has its own Superb Owl as the two conferences become one college football league... and the money for every school will be bigger than ever.

Notre Dame release statement basically saying that their intentions are to stay independent.... But should something happen to the ACC or the playoff they might consider. The playoff expires in 26 btw

https://www.si.com/college/2022/07/...dRFWBnWotrM-kumFjldv7PU1ct_dDVpw5phMPYRw

wow... just crazy...

duped

I can’t see Notre Dame staying independent with the recent shuffling. It’s musical chairs and there will be the ultimate haves and have nots.

My guess is ND goes to the Big 10

I agree... that makes the most sense... but I wouldn't be surprised if they try to hold out...

It makes the most sense, but then none of the recent moves have made sense. I get why the Big 10 wanted USC and UCLA and why those schools wanted to move somewhere, but that doesn't make sense.

The SEC is reportedly not looking to expand beyond 16 teams.


According to Matt Hayes of Saturday Down South, the major college conference thinks it's in good shape when Texas and Oklahoma join the picture. They're currently not looking to make more moves despite the Big Ten poaching USC and UCLA from the Pac-12.

“We’re positioned at 16 (teams) for a robust future,” an SEC athletic director told Hayes. “The need just isn’t there.”

AL.com's Nubyjas Wilborn described the SEC as being "benevolent… for now."

However, others wondered if the SEC simply doesn't have a move to make at the moment.

The SEC already boasts a loaded field of schools that will get even deeper when the Longhorns and Sooners join. ESPN's James Kratch said the SEC's alignment "feels much more natural" than the Big Ten after adding two California schools.

Furthermore, the programs shouldn't want to make the conference too crowded. BetUS TV's Gary Segars said that more SEC squads would "get really close to diminishing returns on a per school basis."

Hayes wrote that any new SEC team must "be a significant addition that checks multiple boxes" as a "right fit" and strong television draw. Conference presidents also reportedly want to "keep college football intact."

This doesn't necessarily mean the SEC will stay at 16 teams forever, but no additions appear to be imminent.

LOL........love the word choice for the very same act of adding teams to each conference.

I didn't or don't see that as a negative towards the Big 10. I didn't post it as such.

I don't get the "in the picture" part you post. As for "poaching", I think that has been widely used for a good while now.

I am sure both conferences are going to "poach" some more as time goes on...and it isn't like the teams that move, be it Oklahoma or USC don't have a choice in if they elect to move. I also think schools are contacting the SEC and Big 10 as much or more about joining.

The only real question I have in all of this, and it really isn't a big one is the Big 10 adding California schools. That seems a bit beyond the reach of having some degree of geographical continuity.

Again, it isn't all that important. I would scratch my head if the SEC and Notre Dame decided to join forces, but wouldn't be surprised.

I wasn't getting on you. I just found the word choice humorous.

I actually think it's the opposite of poaching. I understand those aren't your words so this is just a comment on the writers words.

It's these schools that stand to gain so much by joining these conferences and I highly doubt it's either the SEC or the BIG10 trying to recruit them into their conferences.

That's why I said this in my above post.

Are those home uniforms?

From what I've heard USC and UCLA stand to double their income by joining the BIG 10 and when the new TV deal is signed in a few years they will be making 100 million a year just on football. It's always the dollars!!!