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techcrunchappcom · 4 years ago

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Big Ten moving to conference-only model for all sports this fall - ESPN

3:18 PM ET

Heather Dinich

ESPN Senior Writer

College football reporter

Joined ESPN.com in 2007

Graduate of Indiana University

Mark Schlabach

ESPN Senior Writer

Senior college football writer

Author of seven books on college football

Graduate of the University of Georgia

The Big Ten on Thursday announced it will go to a conference-only season for all fall sports, including football, amid “unprecedented times” during the coronavirus pandemic.

“We are facing uncertain and unprecedented times, and the health, safety and wellness of our student-athletes, coaches, game officials, and others associated with our sports programs and campuses remain our number one priority,” the Big Ten said in a statement.

“… By limiting competition to other Big Ten institutions, the Conference will have the greatest flexibility to adjust its own operations throughout the season and make quick decisions in real-time based on the most current evolving medical advice and the fluid nature of the pandemic.”

Date Matchup Sept. 5 Michigan at Washington Sept. 12 Ohio State at Oregon Iowa State at Iowa Penn State at Va. Tech Sept. 19 App. State at Wisconsin Sept. 26 Miami at Michigan State Cincinnati at Nebraska Oct. 3 Wisconsin vs. Notre Dame*

* at Lambeau Field

The Big Ten is the first of the Power 5 conferences to make this type of a major change to its fall sports. The SEC on Thursday said it continues to meet with campus leaders “to determine the best path forward” for fall sports, and Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby said in a statement that he has been advised to “move ahead slowly” and plan “for all available scenarios.” Meanwhile, the ACC has already said it would delay all fall sports until at least Sept. 1.

SEC league officials and athletic directors are scheduled to meet early next week but have no plans to make any decisions on the fall schedule.

“We will talk concepts, just like we have since the beginning, and those concepts have to be more serious given the shifting landscape,” an SEC AD told ESPN. “But everything remains fluid, and no one believes right now that we have to [shorten the season to just league games] like the Big Ten did.”

The Ivy League on Wednesday ruled out playing all sports this fall.

If college football can be played this fall, Big Ten presidents and athletic directors preferred the conference-only model, which will eliminate some long-distance travel and help ensure teams are being tested for the coronavirus universally, multiple sources inside the league and around college football told ESPN.

Other sports affected include men’s and women’s cross country, field hockey, men’s and women’s soccer and women’s volleyball.

The new conference-only schedules for all fall sports will be released at a later date, the Big Ten said. The conference also said it would continue to evaluate other sports.

Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith said he would be in favor of playing 10 conference football games.

“I’m hopeful that’s where we end up next week in locking that down,” Smith said Thursday. “We’ve talked about that, and that’s our preference.”

Smith said if they’re able to play in September, but something happens later in the month or in October, “we can hit the pause button and provide a window of opportunity for our student-athletes not to be put at risk.

“We can move games,” Smith said. “… There’s a flexibility — I can’t say that enough. That’s significant.”

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Heather Dinich details the Big Ten’s goals for this season, including playing 10 conference games with the division games frontloaded.

Big Ten presidents and ADs discussed the issues during a conference call earlier this week, and the league’s head coaches were given an opportunity to weigh in on Thursday morning.

The statement said the league will continue to follow “the best advice of medical experts,” but acknowledged “we are also prepared not to play … should circumstances so dictate” — something that Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren also said later Thursday.

“This is not a fait accompli that we’re going to have sports in the fall,” Warren told Big Ten Network. “We may not have sports in the fall. We may not have a college football season in the Big Ten.

“We just wanted to make sure this was the next logical step to try and rely on our medical experts to keep our student athletes at the center of all of our decisions and make sure they are as healthy as they can possibly be from a mental, physical and emotional wellness standpoint.”

Smith shares that concern about a fall season taking place.

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“I’m really concerned. … I’m very concerned,” Smith said. “In our last conversation, whenever that was, I was cautiously optimistic. I’m not even there now, when you look at the behavior of our country and you consider that in May we were on a downward trajectory with our [coronavirus] cases. … Now, we’re — if not the worst in the world — one of the worst in the world.

“I am concerned that we may not be able to play. Which is why we took the measure we took — in order to try and have September available to us for conference games and give us the flexibility and control to handle disruptions if we’re able to start a season. I’m concerned about where we are, just across the board, relative to the management of the pandemic as individuals.”

The conference also said it was working with the Big Ten Task Force for Emerging Infectious Diseases and the Big Ten Sports Medicine Committee to finalize protocols for the upcoming fall seasons.

“This is really where the work begins — to make sure we get testing protocols finalized, to make sure we get all medical and operational procedures finalized,” Warren told Big Ten Network.

The Big Ten said all student-athletes choosing not to participate in sports during the 2020-21 academic year because of concerns about COVID-19 “will continue to have their scholarship honored by their institution and will remain in good standing with their team.”

Some Big Ten schools preferred playing only conference foes in football with one additional nonleague game — thus preserving some of the marquee non-Big Ten matchups — but there was overwhelming support for a 10-game conference-only schedule, the sources said.

An assistant coach at a Big Ten program told ESPN that his head coach instructed him to stop scouting and otherwise preparing for nonconference opponents and focus only on Big Ten foes.

The Big Ten’s decision to play only conference opponents affects 36 scheduled football opponents, 28 from the FBS and eight from the FCS. Six FBS schools — Ball State, Bowling Green, BYU, Central Michigan, UConn and Northern Illinois — were scheduled to play two Big Ten opponents this season.

Bowling Green athletic director Bob Moosbrugger said the Big Ten’s decision is just “the tip of the iceberg.”

“We understand that difficult decisions need to be made,” Moosbrugger said. “… If we are to solve these challenges and be truly dedicated to protecting the health and safety of our student-athletes, we need to do a better job of working together.”

The marquee nonconference matchups lost to the Big Ten decision include Michigan‘s road game at Washington on Sept. 5, Ohio State‘s trip to Oregon on Sept. 12, Michigan State‘s home game against Miami on Sept. 26 and Wisconsin‘s contest against Notre Dame at Lambeau Field on Oct. 3.

Smith said more decisions regarding the specifics of the football schedule — how many games are played, if the schedule needs to be front-loaded with division games, and how a champion might be determined — are expected next week.

ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg contributed to this story.

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junker-town · 7 years ago

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Here's a wild idea: what if USC left the Pac-12? Let's think through this

Well, let’s give that a closer look.

Shortly after the Playoff committee revealed the Pac-12 had missed the top four for the second time in three years came this interesting, albeit hot, take from Ryan Abraham, the owner and publisher of InsideTroy.com:

So my two off-season rants this year will be 1) #USC ending the lifetime ban of Reggie Bush and 2) A push for going independent. Making $20 mil less than Rutgers, horrible schedules and refs = why do you need the #Pac12? Trojans don't. Explore independence.

— Ryan Abraham (@insidetroy) December 3, 2017

This is not a lone take fired from the corners of Weird Conference Realignment Twitter. Many Pac-12 fans share frustration with the league over a variety of factors. When I floated this idea to the writers of Conquest Chronicles, our USC blog, there was near universal agreement that Abraham had a point.

Here’s why Trojans fans are mad this year

There’s the feeling that Pac-12 schedules make it harder to make the Playoff. Pac-12 teams play nine conference games, and this year, USC didn’t have a bye week until after the end of the regular season. One of USC’s league losses, 30-27 at Washington State, came on a Friday after USC had been on the road the week before. The Pac-12 fixed this problem for next year, saying no road team for a Thursday or Friday game will play on the road the previous week.

There’s also the money

USC is a big program in a major market. But revenue distribution from the Pac-12 lags behind other major conferences significantly. The league distributed about $28.7 million to each conference team in the 2016 fiscal year, well behind the Big Ten, SEC, and the Big 12. As the Big Ten cashes in from its new TV contracts with FOX and ESPN, that margin will grow.

The Pac-12 made a bet on owning its network outright, rather than partnering with ESPN or FOX. But for now, distribution problems (and lower demand for Pac-12 content relative to the Big Ten and SEC) have limited payouts.

So yes, Rutgers, Maryland, and Vanderbilt take in more TV and conference money than USC does. Yes, that is a weird sentence to read out loud.

This is not a new source of tension

Tension between the richer schools in the Pac-12, like UCLA and USC, and programs like Oregon State and Washington State has existed for about as long as those programs shared a conference. The precursor to the Pac-12, the PCC, blew up in part because the California schools didn’t want to travel to Oregon State, Washington State, or Montana (oh yeah, Montana and Idaho used to be in this league). They investigated a nationwide conference with programs like Notre Dame, Penn State and Navy, colloquially called the “Airplane Conference,” in the late 1950s.

Idaho and Montana were jettisoned, and then we had the Pac-8.

But USC wasn’t mollified and still objected that it was leaving money and exposure on the table by required trips to smaller markets, while sharing revenue with programs perceived to be inferior, deep into the mid-1970s. In an effort to keep the Trojans from bolting, the league expanded to include Arizona State, who had a fancy stadium and large fanbase, and Arizona. A conference official at Stanford was quoted by the Los Angeles Times saying, “it was one of the crudest power plays I’ve seen in some time.”

Okay, but could USC leaving the Pac-12 actually work?

Now we enter the realm of reckless conjecture. In order for such a move to work, you’d need a few things.

1. Could USC assemble a workable schedule as an independent? Almost assuredly

BYU can, and it’s nowhere close to USC’s brand. Liberty still gets four-ish P5 teams on the schedule a season, and it’s even lower than BYU. Notre Dame doesn’t have any trouble. USC’s geography might make this a little trickier, but finding enough teams to build a quality slate doesn’t seem impossible.

The only way this would get dicey is if Pac-12 programs completely refused to schedule USC, but that seems unlikely. Everybody in the league recruits Southern California heavily and benefits from the exposure against USC. It would be in everyone’s best interest for the Trojans to still get regular Pac-12 opponents. Sure, there would be bitterness, but Pac-12 programs would need to weigh sticking it to the Trojans vs. giving up chances to play in important recruiting territories. I bet recruiting would eventually win out.

Realignment broke up Texas-Texas A&M, Kansas-Missouri, Nebraska-Oklahoma, and plenty of other rivalries. Would we expect UCLA, Stanford, and Cal to keep annual games with USC going? That’s probably unrealistic.

You get Notre Dame, maybe three or four Pac-12 games a season, BYU, a few national P5 programs, and some MWC schools to fill things out, and you’ve got a fine slate that would give the Trojans flexibility to face teams from across the country.

2. Could USC find a home for Olympic sports? Yeah, probably

The Pac-12 wouldn’t let USC’s other sports hang out minus football. The Trojans already compete in the MPSF for volleyball, indoor track, and water polo. But finding a place for everybody else might be hard.

The most obvious landing spot would be the WCC, a league of private schools. USC’s athletic budget would dwarf the rest of the league, and it wouldn’t be a great fit in every sport (like say, baseball), but a basketball league with Gonzaga, St.Mary’s, BYU and USC isn’t bad.

How this might all break down financially is another factor. A move to the WCC probably means a smaller NCAA Tournament check than staying in the Pac-12, and if the Trojans decided to join a non-WCC league, travel costs for Olympic sports could be higher.

3. Could USC secure access to the College Football Playoff or major bowls? That’s not immediately clear

It’s worth nothing that an independent team hasn’t made the Playoff yet, and they’re deprived of that proverbial 13th data point, the conference championship game. That doesn’t mean making the Playoff would be impossible (Alabama and Ohio State have made it without playing in one), but it is something people would probably holler about if USC was, like, 9-1 heading into late November.

If the Trojans finished outside of the top 10 or so and thus ineligible for an at-large spot in the New Year’s Six games, would they be able to secure some bowl arrangements so they wouldn’t be shipped to Shreveport or something? Probably.

4. Could USC make more money this way? That’s the big question

USC is a huge program in an enormous TV market. Could it start its own TV channel, like Texas did? Given how that deal has gone for ESPN with a school that isn’t competing against tons of pro sports teams in its own city, that seems unlikely.

Could it try to sell its TV rights to a conventional TV channel? Sure, but the companies that shell out fat TV contracts are tightening their belts. Could USC sell rights to a new entrant in the rights race, like Facebook, Amazon, or Netflix? Maybe, but that’d be a risk, exposure-wise.

The Pac-12 is betting that its current setup has it better positioned for the brave new world. Maybe it’s right! If so, leaving would be dumb.

I think it’s almost impossible to answer this with any certainty. If the sports streaming industry matures, and everybody gets a better idea about audience and market rates, then it’s a different story.

Should USC try to leave the Pac-12 now? Probably not. But I don’t think it’s crazy.

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