Conference

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Badgers to play the University of San Francisco in the Rose Bowl.

In a couple years, the conferences will split into mini divisions in the conferences and it will all look like it did 10 year ago

There's still hope.

Hateful (TM)

Big 18…3 divisions…

East, Rutgers, Maryland, PSU, OSU, MSU, Indiana

Central, Michigan, Purdue, Illinois, NW, Wisc, Iowa

West, Neb, Minn, UCLA, USC, Oregon, Washington.

Play all the teams in division and 4 rotating games among the others keeping one rivalry game.  10 real games and 2 gimmies.

They should just split football off from the rest of the sports and let the other sports get back to more normal conference alignments. The fact that no one seems to want Stanford, which is the most successful college sports program in the country when you consider all the sports really shows what this is about the ability to generate football revenue.

It's not like Stanford football is some weak sister either. Stanford has had 33 guys drafted by the NFL in the last 10 years. The school has produced Andrew Luck, Richard Sherman, Christian McCaffrey, and Zach Ertz that have all been superstar NFL players within the last decade. The school brings academic credibility at the level of Harvard, MIT, or Yale to any conference (not that anyone really gives a shit at this point) without losing competitiveness on the football field or basketball court. The school that produced some of the biggest stars in non-revenue sports in recent college history (Tiger Woods, Katie Ledecky, Michelle Wie, Kerri Strug, John McEnroe, Ryan Hall). The basketball team has been competitive. Nobody  wants Cal-Berkeley either. The school that produced Aaron Rodgers, Marshawn Lynch, Tony Gonalez, DeSean Jackson, Cameron Jordan, Alex Mack? 

Why haven't they forced Northwestern out of the Big 10 yet? Stanford and Cal are like the Barry Bonds-level steroid versions of Northwestern.

So, we'll pursue Rutgers, Nebraska (which hasn't been relevant in 25 years), Maryland, etc., but not Cal and Stanford?

All for a few football games every fall? So that the Rutgers volleyball team is forced to travel to Eugene, Oregon and Seattle for some weekday games in January? Or that the Maryland cross country team can fly out there in April for a couple of meets? That Nebraska-Washington football game is really going to generate interest? Rutgers-Nebraska or Maryland-Minnesota was bad enough.

The football $$$$ pays for those mid-week volleyball flights. What, you think they care about disrupting “education”? 😀

Unfortunately, it’s football that drives like 2/3 of the overall revenue for the entire athletics program at most universities.  

As good as b-ball blue bloods like UNC and Kentucky and Kansas and UCLA have been it’s no surprise those schools try to pull out all the stops to attempt to win at football.  

If it were me, I’d much rather have Stanford than UCLA and certainly more than Rutgers or Maryland.  But the Big Ten added those two schools to gain access to media markets in the NE.  No different than adding U$C and UCLA as it opens up So Cal which is a huge market.  

Youngest daughter has talked about D1 for softball and tennis but I’m not sure she’s all that thrilled about the commitment and travel and all the other nonsense that goes along with it.   I can’t imagine playing at a school on one of the coasts and having to travel cross country during the week to play games or matches.  

It’s also a big reason now why a lot of programs get recruits from overseas.  Tennis and volleyball and golf are littered with euros and eastern euros because they don’t have quite the demands or emphasis on academics.  They are basically hired guns.  

@Blair Kiel posted:

The football $$$$ pays for those mid-week volleyball flights. What, you think they care about disrupting “education”? 😀

I know, but they wouldn't need the money for the expensive mid-week volleyball flights if they were back playing against Boston College, Villanova, Temple, and Syracuse.

@Tschmack posted:

Unfortunately, it’s football that drives like 2/3 of the overall revenue for the entire athletics program at most universities.  

As good as b-ball blue bloods like UNC and Kentucky and Kansas and UCLA have been it’s no surprise those schools try to pull out all the stops to attempt to win at football.  

If it were me, I’d much rather have Stanford than UCLA and certainly more than Rutgers or Maryland.  But the Big Ten added those two schools to gain access to media markets in the NE.  No different than adding U$C and UCLA as it opens up So Cal which is a huge market.  

Youngest daughter has talked about D1 for softball and tennis but I’m not sure she’s all that thrilled about the commitment and travel and all the other nonsense that goes along with it.   I can’t imagine playing at a school on one of the coasts and having to travel cross country during the week to play games or matches.  

My oldest daughter was a D1 distance runner in the Southern Conference. It was less than a decade ago, but it seems quaint that the school felt they had to self-report a violation when the track coach dropped her off at the airport (4 miles out of his way on his drive home) for a Thanksgiving flight home to Michigan. It was considered an "improper" benefit as it avoided a $25 taxi ride. She had to pay back 25 dollars to avoid losing her eligibility.

She has a former little league teammate that’s a year older and just accepted an offer to play at a major D1 program.  But that girl was used to travelling all over the country for club ball.  My kid does club ball as well, along with a lot of USTA matches, but it’s mostly local and sometimes regional.  Big difference.  

What’s really interesting is two of the best players in the area and state for tennis aren’t even going to play in college because they want to focus solely on academics.   They could have easily had their choice of D1 programs but again I think it’s becoming nearly impossible to be good at both.  Football doesn’t matter because they get plenty of academic “support” and schedules and demands aren’t anything like those other sports.  

We’ll see what happens with college athletics over the next decade as it’s becoming obvious there are two classes-  those wanting to showcase their talents to play pro or those truly wanting to be student athletes.   Maybe football and basketball should be carved out.  

@Tschmack posted:

She has a former little league teammate that’s a year older and just accepted an offer to play at a major D1 program.  But that girl was used to travelling all over the country for club ball.  My kid does club ball as well, along with a lot of USTA matches, but it’s mostly local and sometimes regional.  Big difference.  

What’s really interesting is two of the best players in the area and state for tennis aren’t even going to play in college because they want to focus solely on academics.   They could have easily had their choice of D1 programs but again I think it’s becoming nearly impossible to be good at both.  Football doesn’t matter because they get plenty of academic “support” and schedules and demands aren’t anything like those other sports.  

We’ll see what happens with college athletics over the next decade as it’s becoming obvious there are two classes-  those wanting to showcase their talents to play pro or those truly wanting to be student athletes.   Maybe football and basketball should be carved out.  

Our daughter went to one of the smallest D1 colleges in the country because of the desire to focus on academics. Even in track and field, a few of the places that gave her offers were not that friendly to academics. She went on to get a PhD in a Biology, but was told by a Big East school during an official visit that they didn't want any of their athletes taking lab classes that would interfere with afternoon practices. Another Big East school told her that they would cover her scholarship in Year 1, but we found out they gave money to 5 freshman girls each year and only renewed the scholarship for 1-2 of them. If you were injured, they'd usually drop you off of scholarship ASAP. Track is a sport about 20 people at each school care about, you can imagine what it's like for the sports people actually care about.

I agree that football and basketball should be carved out.

My daughter had a math class with John Clay at UW Madison back in late 2000's.  She saw him in class about 5 times total during the semester. 

Doesn’t surprise me one bit.  I also thought Clay was a partial qualifier at UW.  

For hoops and football I’m not sure many of the star players actually take school seriously.  Many of them get help- either above board or not.  This is why I think the NCAA should just make those two sports professional or semi professional.  It’s mostly a sham anyway if you really think the term student athlete applies to a lot of those guys.

I know we all can pretty much agree that the NCAA is a useless thing but where are they in all of this madness with NIL, realignments, and the endless transfers?   It just feels like they are just happy to cash the huge checks and let everything be the wild wild west. 

A good NIL story for you.  So Ewers who is the Texas QB was at O$U for a year prior to transferring.  A local Columbus car dealership gave him a truck worth just under $100,000 and he had to do a couple of appearances for them.  He transferred a couple of months later and got to keep the truck and the cash. 

@ammo posted:

My daughter had a math class with John Clay at UW Madison back in late 2000's.  She saw him in class about 5 times total during the semester.

I had an employee who got both his BS and PhD from the University of Kentucky. He was either in classes or TA'd for classes a few Kentucky basketball players took. Many had "tutors" that would help them with the work. He did say that there was one exception. John Wall would show up at every class he could, do the work, participate in class discussions, and was clearly a very intelligent guy.

Why do we even have big time college sports?  

@Pikes Peak posted:

Why do we even have big time college sports?  

So alumni can go spend 6-7 weekends each year reliving their college years.

It's really only football at this point that athletic departments and universities make decisions based on.

@Pikes Peak posted:

Why do we even have big time college sports?  

M-o-n-e-y!

Sports will be the only saving grace for Florida schools, pretty soon. Diplomas, there, will not be worth the paper they are printed on.

It really does suck for other athletes that don’t play football.  I read a recent article about a softball player accepting a full ride to Oregon and a big reason was their parents (from CA) could attend some of the games.  Not anymore.  Playing games at Rutgers or Maryland or Penn State?   That would be fun with all of the travel involved.

As a parent you can attend as many games as you want.  I personally knew a guy (he's deceased now) whose daughter played basketball at UW-Madison. He never missed a game in 4 years. Not 1 game.

I mean, I suppose?  Playing in Madison prior to adding the former Pac Ten schools you could get to just about any BT school driving within 8 hours.  Iowa, NW, MN, Purdue, Indiana, and Illinois are pretty close to UW.  Even Michigan and Michigan State aren’t bad.  

Obviously Maryland and Rutgers are further away but as a parent you’d basically have to be self employed or unemployed to make it to most of the games during the week.  

Then there’s the players.  I can’t imagine traveling across the country at all hours of the day and night and getting your schoolwork completed.   Brutal.