Realignment Carousel Spins Up again (USC and UCLA to Big 10)

[BostonWu]

Many years ago, the CEO of a fortune 500 company called me in to have a talk. At that time, I was a product manager and we were discussing a major change in our key product. I was worried because the accountants and lawyers were against the idea. The CEO told me accountants "are always looking backward and down at the pitfalls and traps you fell into." The lawyers were there also "looking down and ahead to warn you about the traps and pitfalls that we might encounter". "However, someone has to have an eye on the horizon and find out where it is we want to go and who we could become."

This was one of the best pieces of advice that I've ever had.

Bring it Back.

What did he say about writing a 9 figure check? Don't worry if it bounces?

[WuDrWu]

Many years ago, the CEO of a fortune 500 company called me in to have a talk. At that time, I was a product manager and we were discussing a major change in our key product. I was worried because the accountants and lawyers were against the idea. The CEO told me accountants "are always looking backward and down at the pitfalls and traps you fell into." The lawyers were there also "looking down and ahead to warn you about the traps and pitfalls that we might encounter". "However, someone has to have an eye on the horizon and find out where it is we want to go and who we could become."

This was one of the best pieces of advice that I've ever had.

Bring it Back.

You can't have discussions about upward conference mobility without having football.


Bring it back, Eddie. Bring it back.


(Using my best Mitch Holthus voice)

[BostonWu]

Can everyone at least agree without a mega donor in the picture, the notion is inconceivable?

[pogo]

As I said before WSU and the city of Wichita need to decide what they want the University to be The City then needs to support that financially Can’t depend on big donors to be there to always pick up the slack because we have seen how that has worked in the past

[Kung Wu]

Can everyone at least agree without a mega donor in the picture, the notion is inconceivable?

Tax payers paid for a $50M grant from the State of Kansas to help rebuild KU's stadium. Why shouldn't WSU get a $50M grant from the State of Kansas to help rebuild theirs?

[Kung Wu]

As I said before WSU and the city of Wichita need to decide what they want the University to be The City then needs to support that financially Can’t depend on big donors to be there to always pick up the slack because we have seen how that has worked in the past

Andover should put up $99M in some fancy tax thingy so that the State will kick in $33M. $132M should get us a nice enough stadium.

[BOBB]

We are close to the end of big time college football (athletics really) outside of 60ish teams. Investing in football now is fielding an entrant into the electric typewriter business in the early ‘80’s.

If WSU wanted to field a team to play regionally that could be supported by 5-10k fans, I’d support it. Hell, I might even schlep back to Ta-town for homecoming every few years. However, Stanford, Cal, Washington State, and Oregon State are currently on the outside looking in. Under what scenario would a WSU football team leapfrog those schools, the Mountain West schools, the Sun Belt schools, and the AAC football schools? This ship has sailed. Maybe there is an alternate timeline where we are on the inside, but it ain’t this one.

[Aargh]

Football is going to come down to a P4 (or possibly 3) group and everybody else. Everybody else will, functionally, be in a different universe. The TV networks will saturate Saturdays with P4 games. Everybody else gets leftovers and has to compete for viewers with the P4. That's not going to work out well for those schools.

Basketball could be less affected. I don't know if the P4 would want to end the NCAA tourney in its current setup. They get a lot of games against lower teams. They may not get the same TV revenue if it was just P4 schools. If basketball is less affected by conference realignment in terms of $$, then WSU is in a good position compared to schools that also have football.

Cal and Stanford are struggling to get into a P4 conference. The B12 is probably regretting adding the AAC schools. WSU has a 0% chance of playing football in any conference with even a bottom dollar TV contract.

FCS is allowing 85 scholarships for a few years now, but the general limit is 63. That's a total of at least 126 scholarships (Title IX) and probably the addition of 3 women's sports (and their facilities and coaching staffs).

Even a diluted AAC is probably the highest conference WSU could hope to join. If WSU had football, it's likely WSU would still be in the badly diluted MVC. The $$ that football would have consumed would have made hiring and retaining Marshall unlikely.

[Kung Wu]

We are close to the end of big time college football (athletics really) outside of 60ish teams. Investing in football now is fielding an entrant into the electric typewriter business in the early ‘80’s.

If WSU wanted to field a team to play regionally that could be supported by 5-10k fans, I’d support it. Hell, I might even schlep back to Ta-town for homecoming every few years. However, Stanford, Cal, Washington State, and Oregon State are currently on the outside looking in. Under what scenario would a WSU football team leapfrog those schools, the Mountain West schools, the Sun Belt schools, and the AAC football schools? This ship has sailed. Maybe there is an alternate timeline where we are on the inside, but it ain’t this one.

Maybe this guy could search the alternate timelines and find the 1 in 14,000,000 outcomes where we pull it off??

[Dan]

In 10 years there will be 2 conference, the Big 10 and the SEC. Those 2 will have taken in the best teams from the ACC by then and will break away from the NCAA and form their own semi-pro organization. Everyone else will be playing in the minor leagues. The Big 12 think they’re part of it but 3 or 4 of their teams may be pulled off as well and they’re just another fledgling league like everyone else.

[Stickboy46]

Tax payers paid for a $50M grant from the State of Kansas to help rebuild KU's stadium. Why shouldn't WSU get a $50M grant from the State of Kansas to help rebuild theirs?

How about we just take back the 50M from KU and make them fund it themselves if its such a great idea. Should have no problem with their "football donor base" that filled the stadium for all of like 2 games before they realized they weren't actually good, they were just **** playing even worse teams before finishing under .500 last year.

[C0|dB|00ded]

In 10 years there will be 2 conference, the Big 10 and the SEC. Those 2 will have taken in the best teams from the ACC by then and will break away from the NCAA and form their own semi-pro organization. Everyone else will be playing in the minor leagues. The Big 12 think they’re part of it but 3 or 4 of their teams may be pulled off as well and they’re just another fledgling league like everyone else.

I think the NFL is going to have something to say about competing pro leagues. We may start to see kids jumping straight to the NFL from HS more often.

Left unchecked, pay for "pro" college players will eventually skyrocket due to competition and what seems like unlimited wealth in this country. Then you will have players remaining at their "schools" for 10 years.

The NFL is watching this very closely.

[C0|dB|00ded]

If WSU had football, it's likely WSU would still be in the badly diluted MVC. The $$ that football would have consumed would have made hiring and retaining Marshall unlikely.

That's a massive ASSumption right there.

We hired some pretty fine coaches while fielding a football team.

Football was NOWHERE near as popular when we shut our program down as it is today.

The reasonable assumption - PARTICULARY considering where we find ourselves now - is that our prospects would have been better had we stuck it out.

Wichita is a very big football town. We just needed to string together a winning era. We broke national attendance records in baseball and basketball when we were good. Loudest, biggest, etc. etc. There's no reason to think we wouldn't have done it in football too. Just needed some wins. And a visionary like The Great Dr. Bardo at the helm.

Our leaders were Asshats.

[Stickboy46]

I think the NFL is going to have something to say about competing pro leagues. We may start to see kids jumping straight to the NFL from HS more often.

Left unchecked, pay for "pro" college players will eventually skyrocket due to competition and what seems like unlimited wealth in this country. Then you will have players remaining at their "schools" for 10 years.

The NFL is watching this very closely.

The NFL requires players to be out of HS for 3 years for a reason. They don't want to limit the risk of drafting players that can't make the transition. They want to see them play against higher level players before making bets on millions of dollars. The NFL would LOVE for there to be a farm system where they can only pay attention to a smaller handful of teams (moreso than already)

[WuShock16]

The NFL requires players to be out of HS for 3 years for a reason.

Another reason is that 18 year old boys would get killed (maybe quite literally) going up against grown-ass MEN.