Sorry I haven’t written in a while. I was working on one story or another and I kept getting distracted by the great games, surprising developments in the Heisman race, coaches getting fired, and the other wonderful things that keep this game so interesting. Last weekend, the family and I went to Des Moines for the weekend, staying in a hotel, indulging on Iowa’s version of foodie heaven (Gateway Market in downtown Des Moines), and filling the car with Christmas gifts. While there, I enjoyed the Court Street District bars while watching USC – UCLA. You need not wonder if I enjoyed the 50 – 0 thrashing of our rivals; it was simply glorious. And it served to highlight the ridiculous farce that will be the Pac-12 championship Friday between the mighty Ducks and the beaten down Bruins led by a lame-duck coach (pun intended).
I had been working on several stories, so I will present two here and the third later on if we ever get a slow news cycle (not likely this year!)
Day of the Dog
Let Hercules himself do what he may, The cat will mew, and dog will have his day.[1600-1 Shakespeare Hamlet v. i. 286]
You all know the story by now, but it's worth repeating: Saturday the 19th was one of the greatest days in underdog history. Sure, it is possible that four top- 10 teams have lost in the same day before, but never with all of them losing to double-digit underdogs.
The BCS carnage began Friday night with the greatest upset in Iowa State history. The Cyclones have had some big wins in their long and not-very-storied history of pathetic football. They upset Texas last year, bit Nebraska the year before that, and knock off in-state rivals Iowa about every 3 years or so. OSU went into the game with their ticket all but punched for the Big 12 championship at home in 2 weeks. A win over Oklahoma and they get to play for the national title. All they had to do was survive a pesky 27 point underdog.
Oops.
I was working in the ED at the time, and the game was on in every patient room I visited. I had patients even wait for the play to be over before their answered my question, "How bad is your pain?" We knew the game ended when a cheer erupted from the waiting room. Kinda bizarre when you think about it.
A somewhat overlooked top 10 loss occurred Saturday afternoon when Clemson got hammered by NC State. Clemson had clinched their ACC division and had no chance at the BCS Championship, so the game was relatively meaningless. But that's no reason to roll over and play dead!
Things really got interesting Saturday night when ABC offered regional coverage of Oklahoma-Baylor and USC-Oregon. Being in a state with a Big 12 team (the aforementioned Cyclones) we were saddled with the OU-Baylor game. Fortunately, ESPN3 is the greatest invention since wireless internet, and I was able to watch both simultaneously.
My wife fell asleep as we watched the game, me getting more and more excited as the night wore on and the Trojans didn't collapse. I shook her awake after the missed field goal, giddy with the upset. Still smarting from the beating that the Ducks handed her Stanford Cardinal, she was almost as happy as I was. We celebrated the win, not even noticing how Baylor held off Oklahoma for the third major upset in 24 hours.
Blow Up the Big East
As you may have noticed, I have not been commenting in any detail on the rash of conference realignment this year. I was in favor of the development of the 4 16-team super conferences because it would directly lead to a playoff system. The money flowing into those conferences would help the college presidents they don’t need the bowls or the NCAA and they could put together a blockbuster 4 team playoff completely on their own, keeping all the money. Interestingly, the legal principle for this lies in a lawsuit brought by Universities of Oklahoma and Georgia against the NCAA in 1984 (NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, 468 U.S. 85 (1984). The US Supreme Court declared the NCAA to be in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and sided with OU and UGA that they could pursue television contracts on their own behalf, free of limitations from the NCAA (the lawsuit specifically was in regards to a association of colleges known as the CFA). Not surprisingly, Notre Dame was a key proponent of the case and went on to model the first school to have an exclusive television contract. A model envied and built upon by Texas (UT) in their development of the Longhorn Network.
Here’s where conference realignment is directly related.
For the duration of the Big 12’s existence, UT has irritated its conference colleagues by not sharing revenue. In that league, the rule had been that the teams earn money based on their TV appearances. Since Texas was always on, they got the most. And with the advent of the Longhorn network, they stood to profit solo on the backs of their Big 12 teammates. The Big 10, however, shares all revenue from both bowls and TV, including the added revenue from their Big 10 Network. Nebraska, frustrated with the “eat what you kill” attitude of the Big 12, jumped to the Big 10 the moment they had the chance. As we saw this year, frustration over the Longhorn Network claimed two more victims, Texas A&M and Missouri.
As the Big 12 started to disintegrate, Oklahoma looked to the Pac-12 for salvation, saying they’ve reconsidered the offer they turned down in 2010. They were ready to bring Texas along to sweeten the deal. (Conquest Chronicles, a sweet USC fan blog, has some good sources on this, http://www.conquestchronicles.
Enter the Big East.
Affectionately known as the Big Least, this glorious conglomeration of the best basketball schools in the country somehow have lobbied, cajoled, and bribed their way into keeping an automatic BCS bid despite their smaller membership and lack of on-the-field success. Sure, occasional runs by Cincinnati or Louisville have kept the league competitive, but ever since the defection of Miami, Virginia Tech, and Boston College to the ACC in 2004, the Big Least has limped along as the playground for West Virginia and Pitt. The extra efforts to keep this league in the BCS is evidenced by the NCAA proclaiming last year that TCU’s “data will transfer.” When the TCU agreed last year to leave the Mountain West for the Big East, the years of Horned Frogs wins as MWC members will count in favor of the Big East when determining their eligibility for continued automatic qualifier (AQ) status. Yeah, you read that right!
Now the ACC has poached Syracuse and Pitt, and West Virginia and TCU want out. Although the legal wrangling will need some time to play out, the Big Least is falling apart rapidly as a football conference. UT and OU, struggling to save their league, saw an opportunity and extended invites to West Virginia and TCU. The key concession UT had to make? Yep, you guessed it; all members (including UT!) agreed to revenue sharing! Now it looks like Louisville wants to get in to the Big 12 party as well.
The Big East is dead. Don’t kid yourself- their attempts to add Boise State (In the east? Really? Really?), Air Force (again, east?), SMU, Houston, and Central Florida are simply desperate, poorly planned attempts to rearrange the deck chairs. I look forward to the fall of 2012 when this Big East mess is more settled. I am certain they will lose their AQ status (for the second year in a row, the Big East league champ is unranked!), but another possibility that has been floated is to eliminate the AQ status altogether. This makes sense, as it permits the East Coast hooligans propping up the Big Least charade to save face and move into a system where the larger 12 and 14 team conferences can get more than 2 teams each in the BCS.
Better yet, get rid of the BCS altogether! Bring on the super conferences and the playoff. I’m ready and so is the rest of college football!
Fight On,
Hans
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