 Mike HlasHi, I'm Gazette/TheGazette.com sports columnist Mike Hlas. This is the Hlog. We will meet here, discuss things, and then go [...] |
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Hlas column: Big Ten just got a bigger tent, but it comes with a cost
TV money could rise, but old conference friends will grow further apart
I hate to be one of those dreaded baby-boomers who goes around quoting Bruce Springsteen lyrics, but I can’t get this one out of my head today:
Jim Delany and his new best friends (AP photo)
Poor man wanna be rich,
rich man wanna be king
And a king ain’t satisfied
till he rules everything
Billionaires spend tens of millions to try to prop up the political candidates they think will help make them even more money. Actors and athletes who should already be financially set for several lifetimes still pitch products they would never dream of using.
You can never have enough money, I guess. Or power.
The Big Ten Conference, despite all of Commissioner Jim Delany’s previous claims of it being comfortable with 12 members, is about to get more bloated and less recognizable with the additions of the University of Maryland and Rutgers University.
Delany will say all the right things about what the excellence of the academics at Rutgers and Maryland, and all the fine qualities those institutions bring to his conference of excellent institutions.
Maryland's Byrd Stadium last Saturday during the Terrapins' 41-14 loss to Florida State (AP photo)
It’s true, and it’s irrelevant. This is about population and television sets, only. This is about branding and branching out to be as super a superpower as the league can be.
It’s a total money and power grab, or at least that’s the goal. It’s about trying to jam the Big Ten Network onto as many cable television systems in New York/New Jersey/Maryland/Washington, D.C. It’s about trying to make the Big Ten relevant to the television markets of New York City/Newark, Washington and Baltimore. It’s about trying to make the Big Ten even more appealing to ABC/ESPN when its Big Ten media rights expire in 2016.
It’s about getting bigger and making almost everything else in college sports around it seem smaller in comparison.
It’s another king who ain’t satisfied till he rules everything.
This has all been coming down the road for some time now, and it won’t stop until the superpowers have left everyone else in marginalized rubble. The Big East is in shards. If conferences as established as the ACC and Big 12 could get raided by the Big Ten and the SEC, no one else ever had a chance.
Get your goodbyes ready for these guys, Maryland (AP photo)
Those who survive have a chance of operating athletic departments that don’t lose money. Sunday night on “60 Minutes,” Michigan Athletic Director Dave Brandon noted just 22 out of 125 major-college programs are either breaking even or making a profit.
“The business model of big-time college athletics is primarily broken,” Brandon said.
The University of Iowa is one of those few profit-centers, but it’s a tough go every year. It has to keep those donors donating, and keep those football season tickets selling. Getting more potential TV money sure looks good in Iowa City right about now.
Even though the Big Ten Network pie will be cut into two more slices, it will be done with Delany convincing the current members that this will only make for more long-term riches. He’s probably right. The guy always uses six syllables when two will do and can’t name his league’s football divisions without looking pompous, but he understands economics and has clear eyes when it comes to the future.
Financially, Maryland and Rutgers may help Iowa economically. But there are other prices to pay.
The Big Ten as its fans once knew and loved it is won’t be the same. In fact, it will be worse. Iowa, for instance, has already felt isolated from rivals with whom it shares a century of history.
Delany has suggested the league will go to a 9-game conference football schedule. Let’s hope it does. Iowa should be playing Wisconsin every year. It shouldn’t play Maryland and Rutgers as often as it faces the Badgers.
Iowa is happy to have the security of the league’s big tent, and that tent just got a lot bigger. I said bigger, not better.
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For me, this is the end of the Big 10 as I know it. Your money-grab observations are dead-on, Mike. And I don’t think the conference will stop at 14 teams. It’ll look for two more to have two 8 team divisions. And then what? Maybe go to 18 by picking up some some Texas schools to get the Dallas/Houston TV market? Can anyone say that it won’t expand further – maybe going after several west coast schools to get the BTN into L.A. and Phoenix? 20 or 24 schools, maybe?
I just realized that Iowa will play a conference game against Maryland and/or Rutgers BEFORE they play a conference game against Illinois. By the time the Illini are back on the schedule it will be 2015.
This is a joke.
Not much to add, Mike. It’s a sad fact of human nature that the Boss is right. The love of Power and Money have always been, and always will be, at the center of it all. Grantland Rice wrote about those two culprits would be the end of college football back in the 1930s. The more things change, the more they stay the same. But in a bad way.
Once the Big Ten went to divisions, that’s when the league, once known as the “Western Conference,” died. All that’s left is a collection of schools playing big-time sports to see how much money they can make from TV and the new technologies. The BIG may be an embarrassment on the football field, its commissioner may be a pompous buffoon, but he’s Leader in money grabs and a Legend in his own mind.
As for us, the fans, the people who make ALL of this possible, well, just keep your mouths shut and your wallets open and your TV sets tuned to what Grandpa Ferentz quaintly reminds us is “just a game.”
The whole “B1G” was intended as a subliminal transition to two 8 team divisions. No tradition, just a monumental money grab.
Only one problem,……adding Maryland and Rutgers equals a gigantic yawn. Can’t you feel the excitement? Didn’t think so. The conference realignment thing is yesterday’s news,……so 2010. Bringing more mediocrity to a down situation, and the B16 is way down, means little. Better players and competing on a national level is much more important.
Who is next?
And Scott, I like the LA/Phoenix idea, especially if BIG Boss Delany can land the U of Phoenix and its national reach. Iowa might be favored in that match-up, and they have that cool new stadium in suburban Glendale.
Mike, nice reference to “Badlands”. I quote that stuff, too.
If we acquire both eastern teams and shift Illinois into the Legends (three M’s, two N’s and two I’s) NOW can we just call it East and West? Between our division, which apparently has no Leadership and their division, which is not Legendary, I am entering Semantics Hell.
If we want the Dallas Market, we could get North Texas State. In the LA market, how about Long Beach State and Cal-Fullerton? All three have higher enrollments than Iowa. Jeez, where does it stop?
I’d suggest droping the always silly Leaders and Legends divisions and renaming them Promotion and Marketing… in the interest of honesty and all that quaint stuff.
From this point forward I’ll cease to care one bit about the B1G Ten. It’s days as an athletic conference with any roots or identity are over. I’d like to see one or two of the former B1G Ten schools leave the so called conference, play an open schedule, and return to being a university. Fat chance of that happening!!
This is getting out of hand. “Storied rivalries” haven’t mattered in years. the B1G would be happy to do away with all of them except Michigan vs Ohio State. After all, the B1G still thinks that is THE only game that matters each year and that winner will be the Rose Bowl Rep…. as for the rest of the B1G – rivalries don’t matter. just the $$$. that’s it.