What I am hearing: Conference Realignment

[Thegreatone]

Let me preface this post by saying I am not an insider by any means. I just do a lot of reading about conferences.

Here is the rumors:

- WVU has some people with claiming they have received an SEC Invite and it will be announced on Friday of this week. No real crediable source has jumped on the story. I would not be shocked if this was true though.

- U of L is hearing news about the Big XII. This has more legs than the WVU rumors right now. The Big XII is definitely expanding to 10 and perhaps 12. It is crucial that the Big XII goes to 12 instead of 10.

- Uconn continues to beg the ACC

- RU has nothing

- USF has been connected to Big XII but I don't buy that they would be ahead of Cincinnati in the pecking order.

- Cincinnati is going to be hoping for a Big XII invite. There has been some reports that Big XII is interested in Cincy. Mainly uncrediable media types on twitter. IF U of L gets the Big XII invite than UC will get a good look. I hope President Williams is on the phone to the schools in the Big XII

[JasonS]

I am not so sure WVU is assured of an SEC invite. They may get one by default. All of these schools are ahead of them at this point at least in terms of wishlist by a majority of SEC members:

Missouri
Clemson
Florida State
Virginia Tech

There may be issues with FSU because Florida will not want them. Clemson will give it a real look but I would be surprised if they left the ACC. Virginia Tech won't go. They may be pursued the hardest out of the 3 ACC schools. Missouri is a wild card. There are rumors up here in Columbus that Missouri floated the SEC rumors to try to get the Big 10 to bite and offer them a spot. I still think the SEC has some interest in Missouri but not as much as Missouri maybe has in them. Quite frankly, I don't see it as a good fit for Missouri but who knows.

As for WVU, the only thing they have to offer is a football program who just got smashed at home by LSU and a pretty good basketball program. The school and the fans are flat out awful and geographically, there isn't another school all that close except UK. I don't know that geography plays that big of a role but when you have almost nothing else going for you, I think that could be the final straw.


I am also hearing about an offer to UL from the Big 12 but I only found that in one place and am a little skeptical considering no other outlets are reporting it. I do think the Big 12 wants to get to 12 teams and I think they are trying to figure out if they need to add 3 or 4 schools. Nothing is going to happen with the Big 12 until the SEC decides on #14. Once that happens, the dominoes will begin to fall. If the SEC takes WVU, expect UC, UL and USF to push hard to get into the Big 12. I personally think UL and UC are in a better position than USF. BYU will get a good long look from the Big 12 as well. If Missouri goes to the SEC, expect UC, UL, WVU and either BYU, TCU, USF, or Boise to be schools rounding out the Big 12. This conference realignment thing is not finished yet.

[anbuc88]

Originally Posted by Thegreatone

Let me preface this post by saying I am not an insider by any means. I just do a lot of reading about conferences.

Here is the rumors:

- WVU has some people with claiming they have received an SEC Invite and it will be announced on Friday of this week. No real crediable source has jumped on the story. I would not be shocked if this was true though.

- U of L is hearing news about the Big XII. This has more legs than the WVU rumors right now. The Big XII is definitely expanding to 10 and perhaps 12. It is crucial that the Big XII goes to 12 instead of 10.

- Uconn continues to beg the ACC

- RU has nothing

- USF has been connected to Big XII but I don't buy that they would be ahead of Cincinnati in the pecking order.

- Cincinnati is going to be hoping for a Big XII invite. There has been some reports that Big XII is interested in Cincy. Mainly uncrediable media types on twitter. IF U of L gets the Big XII invite than UC will get a good look. I hope President Williams is on the phone to the schools in the Big XII

I would be shocked if this were true. If the SEC rejected them last week, why would they invite them this week. The SEC will be selective, and needs to make sure that the invited school fits in academically, as well as athletically. WVU was rejected due to their acedemic reputation. I don't think that this has improved over the past week.

[ralph1950]

UC and UofL are committed to the Big East. Both will reject invitations to the Big 12 if offered. UC and UofL both realize the Big East is the best league for them. NBC is forming an all sports channel and will pay the Big East plenty for rights, that is why the Big East turned down ESPN's $1.5 billion offer.

[ucdave]

Originally Posted by ralph1950

UC and UofL are committed to the Big East. Both will reject invitations to the Big 12 if offered. UC and UofL both realize the Big East is the best league for them. NBC is forming an all sports channel and will pay the Big East plenty for rights, that is why the Big East turned down ESPN's $1.5 billion offer.

Funny you say that. I actually read somewhere (don't know how true it is), that Pittsburgh led the charge in turning this down and then bolts for the ACC.

Ralph - time will tell on your prediction. But I think both UC & UL are both gone if offered by the Big 12. The Big East is too unstable. WVU will surely leave in a heartbeat as will UCONN and Rutgers. If they reject the offers, both Presidents should be fired immediately if not sooner. I believe you need at least 6 schools that have been in conference together for 5 years to maintain BCS status. The BE is at 6 now, losing any one I think BCS is toast.

[BigBiscuit34]

By Edward Aschoff -- ESPN COLLEGE FOOTBALL BLOGGER.....

Now that the SEC has its 13th member in Texas A&M, it’s time to search for the 14th team.

Or is it?

The SEC announced Sunday that Texas A&M will officially begin athletic competition in the 2012-13 season. That means the Aggies will be coming to an SEC city near you very soon.

But 13 is an odd number. Worse, it’s a prime number. So SEC commissioner Mike Slive must be reaching out to a handful of schools, gauging their obvious interest in such a successful conference, right?

Well, as of Monday that wasn’t necessarily the case. During Texas A&M’s official introduction into the conference in College Station, Texas, Slive said that he is in no hurry to add a 14th member to the conference and has a plan in place to play the 2012 football season with just 13 teams.

“We anticipate being a 13-team league,” Slive said Monday.

While it might seem odd (and prime) Slive said he’s fine with an unlucky number of SEC teams.

“We have not been necessarily looking to expand,” Slive said. “At some point in time that may come to pass. But this isn’t something that we feel we have to do right away. Clearly, scheduling with 13 is not easy, and we’ll work through that. But we will remain very thoughtful and very strategic about what we do in terms of further expansion.”

As for future schedules, Slive said the SEC has put together a transition team to begin working on them. Sixteen members of his staff went to College Station to begin scheduling conversations.

“The goal will be for the transition team to develop a series of options, and when these options are developed, we will take the options to our athletic directors for their consideration,” Slive said. “Once we have schedules worked out, we’ll be in a position to announce them.”

The SEC also isn’t worried about financial security with the addition of a new team. Slive said in the TV contracts with the SEC, there are agreements in place that deal with the conference’s makeup, in case the league adds or loses a school. There are also negations in place dealing with “look ins.” Look ins are used in order to help the conference adapt during its 15-year agreements when things change, like the landscape of the league and college football.

Basically, the conference is going to see to it that schools aren’t getting shorted revenue because of a new mouth to feed.

“So with the provision for a look in, we will sit down and make sure that at the end of the day, given the composition of our league, that we have exactly what we bargained for when we started.”

[UCBearcats]

UC will wind up in the Big 12. I'm thinking that WVU, UL, UC and TCU will get invites to the B12. They will also most likely reach out to BYU for an invite as well. TA&M and Mizzou will leave the league.

I'm not sure why everyone is so worried about us being left out. If this is really all about money, and the money comes from negotiating TV contracts, then I think UC is in a great position to be an attractive candidate.

I've read on other sites that we can't afford to pay a 5 mil buyout or we don't have this or that. It's all BS. The ONLY thing that matters to the conferences as a whole is how much they can sell their TV contract for. No one cares if we seat 34k or 65k inside our stadium. The conference isn't going to make money if we sell tickets to our games. They're going to make money when they negotiate a TV contract that includes the Southern Ohio media market.

People need to quit the doom and gloom talk. UC is an attractive partner in any of the soon to be mega-conferences.

[david aka the TYZ]

Originally Posted by UCBearcats

UC will wind up in the Big 12. I'm thinking that WVU, UL, UC and TCU will get invites to the B12. They will also most likely reach out to BYU for an invite as well. TA&M and Mizzou will leave the league.

I'm not sure why everyone is so worried about us being left out. If this is really all about money, and the money comes from negotiating TV contracts, then I think UC is in a great position to be an attractive candidate.

I've read on other sites that we can't afford to pay a 5 mil buyout or we don't have this or that. It's all BS. The ONLY thing that matters to the conferences as a whole is how much they can sell their TV contract for. No one cares if we seat 34k or 65k inside our stadium. The conference isn't going to make money if we sell tickets to our games. They're going to make money when they negotiate a TV contract that includes the Southern Ohio media market. People need to quit the doom and gloom talk. UC is an attractive partner in any of the soon to be mega-conferences.

I hate to say it, but there is a truth to that this day and age. Ticket sales make up a smaller and smaller percentage of overall revenue as time goes on. And true the conference doesn't really get much out of whether or not we sell our games out, that only hurts our budget. The argument could be made that not being a big ticket draw means we're less attractive to coaches and recruits and that makes us a less successful program. It would be interesting to see how well our market gets in TV ratings for UC games and for other college football games.

[UCBearcats]

If the conferences cared about how prestigous the athletic programs were or how many people could fit inside a football stadium WVU would already be in the SEC. The SEC doesn't want WVU because their media market isn't worth squat. Most areas of the state don't even have HD-TV. On the flip side WVU is attractive to the Big12 because they would become one of the anchors of a newly formed Eastern division within the league.

The Big12 HAS to get back to a minimum of 12 schools in order to have a championship game, which is also a huge source of income for the conference itself.

[DontMissHim]

The interesting part about BYU is they don't play any sports on Sunday (obviously). While it wouldn't affect them for football- Big 12 has a lot of sports on Sundays (for example- Baseball series are Friday, Sat, Sunday- and many other sports have games on Friday night and then Sunday).

If a conference takes a look at BYU- they will have to be willing to work around BYU's Sunday issue.