Oregon, Washington to Join Big Ten, Leave Pac-12
Oregon, Washington to Join Big Ten, Leave Pac-12
Check out Brett McMurphy's report on Oregon and Washington joining the Big Ten and leaving the Pac-12 in the latest realignment move.
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I'll be honest, I don't really get why the fans of leaving teams support this. Sure your school will have more money but how does that affect you as a fan? You're going to be competing for less conference championships, less playoffs, less Natties, almost guaranteed. All while travelling further and playing schools with less history and breaking your rivalries. I don't get the upside of these kind of moves for the fans.
Literally nothing but woe for almost every team that has switched from a P5 conference to another p5 conference. Mizzou, Nebraska, A&M, CU, Maryland, etc. All doing worse than expectations and seemingly broke 100 years of history for like, no reason (other than the boatloads of cash that is leading to absolutely no athletic success they couldn't achieve prior)
It's all kind of a prisoners' dilemma though. Maintaining historic rivalries and a good current setup requires that no one else leave either. Otherwise, your most "desirable" opponents take the money and leave you with a situation that's just as awkward, but you've also got way less money than them now. Over time the money is helpful for the facilities and coaching arms races, and that may become more pronounced as donors route more of their money directly to the players. Once the barn door is opened, the horses bolt.
Can we cap sports expenditure for schools already so this whole debacle is moot?
D3 mostly has it right, though even there schools will knowingly provide more sports than they can reasonably support and recruit athletes with unrealistic promises because they want the tuition.
At least that’s simple desperation though; it could happen with any perk that any school offers. At the D1 level, when you think about it, it’s really quite insane that we’ve combined the highest level of purely developmental sport with the second highest level of spectator sport (with commensurate amounts of money involved) and tied it all together as officially sanctioned “extracurricular activities” at our universities.
No other country in the world does that. It’s bonkers, and while I love college football , it makes it a hard system to defend.