I woke up Saturday morning with the intention of analyzing how this crazy Big Ten expansion in Los Angeles could be streamlined and become a viable model.
But the more I consider it, the more I want to see the whole Big Ten acquisition company led by FOX Sports collapse and explode into a massive fireball. And so I’ve built a stage for that vision, a stage I can take root in.
First, an updated review of the landscape starting Saturday night. Several journalists I trust have published recent key news:
• Dennis Dodd de CBS Sports reported that Oregon and Washington have been informed that the Big Ten is on hold right now and that Notre Dame will decide whether to join B1G as well.
• Scott Dochterman o Athletic inferred quite logically that FOX is not at all interested in a new B1G West division that would prevent USC and UCLA from playing with the Big Ten East powers of Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State more than once every four years. . People on television want high-splash games to be played as often as possible.
• Influential Portland radio presenter John Canzano, before OregonLive, wrote an open plea to 84-year-old Nike founder and generous Oregon Ducks benefactor Phil Knight to save what’s left of the Pac- 12 encouraging a proactive foray into the Big 12. Assuming quite logically that one conference or another will survive. I say, maybe not either, but that’s another story.
• Illustrated SportsPat Forde suggested that if we are really in a more apt survival mode unknown, what can stop these early super conferences from discarding unwanted luggage, schools that have never taken their toll financially like Purdue and Minnesota and Vanderbilt and Mississippi State?
It’s chaos out there, every league and school by itself. There are no more rules. It is a biosphere of Ayn Rand. And thanks to the takeover of the SEC and B1G by Disney and FOX and the hatching of their larvae within college football, only one asset matters. It’s not tradition, or collegiality, or rivalries, or bands, or any of the other facets we’ve always liked about college sports.
It’s about money. Only money.
These are the architects of this inauguration. Take a good look at them. They are primarily responsible for what has happened to the games on your campus. Jimmy Pitaro, president of ESPN. Mark Silverman, president of FOX Sports. The former fattened the skates for Texas and Oklahoma to join the Southeastern Conference and leave the Big 12 in ruins. The latter headed for Southern California and UCLA launching into the Big Ten and leaving the Pac-12 adrift and most likely irrelevant.
ESPN President Jimmy Pitaro (left) and FOX Sports President Mark Silverman (right). ESPN / FOX Sports
This concept of superleague is what the men of European football tried to do in the Premier League. It didn’t happen because fans there who love the game, even many who wear powerful colors of Chelsea blue and Manchester red, defended the smaller, poorer clubs of the 1920s and called the concept.
But the United States lacks some of that sentiment. Because we are such a divided nation in so many ways, no one seems to care about anyone else’s well-being. Get yours, make sure your fence line is safe and screw your neighbor! These are now the bromides of college sports.
I don’t get the feeling that many B1G or SEC fans care at all that the landscape beyond their ever-growing footprints is being scoured. That the brave disadvantaged of the state of Iowa and the state of Oregon and, yes, now Pittsburgh, are vulnerable to being dragged down by a wave of uncontrolled greed.
My hope is this: that Kevin Warren’s incompetent Peter Principle “leadership” will be exposed again. That this FOX money-taking will explode in the face of the Big Ten when all USC and UCLA athletes begin to realize what has been hooked on them: weekly 12-hour minimum trips to airports and one-way planes and slate-colored back, advanced from the midwest and upper east cloudy with strata. I expect a total rebellion, which recruits craters in Los Angeles schools because word of mouth is spreading; you don’t want to do that, man. It’s brutal.
They are two regional cultures that are not together. Both are beautiful in their own right: the diligent plains swept by the Cornbelt wind and the extravagant sun-kissed children of SoCal. They have zero in common. And what is not achieved by those who take advantage of television broadcasting is that a league must have a common culture. It’s not just a division of professionals. This is a group of university students who still represent a specific part of the country.
I have a feeling this won’t work. Network executives do not have this premonition because they are soulless opportunists who only understand tax metrics. They simply try to group the most valuable assets with the belief that they can maximize profits.
Well, then tell me a spread bettor looking for a loss. I think this USC / UCLA acquisition is headed for disaster.
If Warren had had the audacity of his predecessor Jim Delany, at least everything would have gone in this western expansion. He would have seen SEC / Texas play Oklahoma with USC / UCLA and would have raised him with Oregon / Washington / Utah to form a completely new West division made up entirely of Pac-12 members. then made a big offer to Notre Dame to make 20. If ND refuses, North Carolina is the contingency.
If you are going to make this super-conference move, do it in a big, bold, and shameless way. Women to the Trojan and Bruins brothers in arms to feel included in their new excavations. Of course, the FOX guys have already told Warren and the B1G presidents that the Ducks and Huskies and Utes aren’t providing enough success for the TV money to be worth an equal share of a diminished pie.
And I don’t think Warren has the kind of stones or vision to go against his advice. He will slowly play his hand like the ass he is. And the Big Ten will end up with a couple of incongruous, ill-adapted members with no Pacific brothers to join. It will be shit for them. In fact, it will be shit for everyone.
And so I expect exactly that: a giant failure so dysfunctional and chaotic that it totally implodes. That, by the end of the decade, USC and UCLA are back in a kind of Western conference along the coast with their neighbors. And the Big Ten goes back to the cornfields where it belongs.
This is what happens, however, in this lawless and borderless world. No one knows who they are anymore. They only care what they are worth.
More PennLive sports coverage:
• The USC / UCLA reasons and waste for Big Ten have conflicted me at best, depressed at worst.
• Had he been given a chance, Marlin Briscoe would have been a great professional QB, but he was born too soon.
• Off topic: how a PSU academic advisor inspired Wally Richardson 30 years ago to maximize her words.