Wednesday's Quick Slant: It's All About the "Y"

As I write this, BYU is holding the news conference to discuss the move to independence in football and to the WCC in some of their olympic sports.

Further proof that the mtn., a television network for the Mountain West Conference, was a big mistake.

Let me clarify that: It wasn't a mistake to create a television network for the conference, as the Big Ten has proved that a television network dedicated to one conference can be successful.

The debacle with regards to the mtn. is that it was poorly thought out and executed, and the inflexibility of either Comcast/CBS Sports or MWC commissioner Craig Thompson to renegotiate the deal or try to change parameters of coverage and exposure has led Utah to the Pac-10 (12) and BYU out the door as well.

Not that the people who actually broadcast game aren't good or don't work hard; this has nothing to do with on-camera or off-camera talent.

This is focused on the management, plain and simple.

It took well over a year for the mtn. to become available here in the Las Vegas Valley and in parts of San Diego (because the mtn. was not available on Cox). Hell, if you are in a place that carries Time Warner Cable (parts of San Diego County, for example), you still can't get the mtn.

TCU has emerged as a crown jewel of the conference in football, receiving a BCS bowl bid last season, but it's hard to find them in Dallas-Fort Worth on Versus and CBS College Sports. the mtn. also isn't available in Dallas-Forth Worth and it doesn't look like it will be anytime soon.

Heck, in 2007 BYU and Utah even went so far as to retain lawyers to look at the contract to see what could be done because they were not getting the exposure promised.

So is it any wonder that those two school and their rabid fan bases decided to leave for greener pastures?

Utah found a suitor in the Pac-10.

BYU is going it alone for football, although they found a partner in ESPN, who agreed to an eight year deal to broadcast BYU home games and also is allowing BYU-TV to rebroadcast the games on the same day as the initial airing.

That is a significant deal.

And while the WAC is crippled by the machinations of the Mountain West a couple of weeks ago when this story first started to evolve, WAC schools are giving BYU five games in 2011 and four games in 2012.

Is it a gamble? It sure is. Do I think it's going to fail? I don't think it will fail. But it's also too soon to call it a success for sure.

Pencil it in as a win, and let's reexamine it in four years.

Vince Lombardi and I have a question...

Couldn't have said it better myself, Vince.

I've been swamped at my day job, which is par for the course when you work in higher education. Tuesday night, as I was winding down for the evening, I saw something flash across the ESPN bottom line that caught my attention. To paraphrase, "BYU considering going independent in football."

My first reaction was, "Huh?"

My second reaction is noted above.

Come Wednesday morning, it seemed that the Cougars were close to forgoing the Mountain West and joining the WAC with their Olympic sports and basketball, and playing as an independent in football. In a deal with the WAC, they would be able to schedule somewhere between four and six WAC opponents to help fill out their schedule.

This would allow BYU to increase its profile by coming up with a television contract with ESPN to carry some games and would allow BYU to expand their own broadcasting network (which is transitioning to HD). BYU would get to keep revenue from all television appearances and any bowl games—especially if they made a BCS game as an at-large.

Wednesday afternoon, the Mountain West announced it had invited Fresno State and Nevada to join the conference, and both institutions quickly accepted.

As of last night, Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson was saying that BYU is still a member of the conference, which is true.

A couple of questions come to mind:

1) BYU has looked at being independent before, but it was with the risk of being independent in all of their sports. Joining the WAC was supposed to offer stability to those other teams. But with the Mountain West crippling the WAC by taking (arguably) three of the top programs this decade in Boise State, Fresno State and Nevada, there is not much left of the WAC. Does this move force BYU into check and bring them back into the fold for now?

2) If BYU returns to the fold, the Mountain West will sit at 11 teams, one team short of the tantalizing figure of 12 required to have a conference championship game. Does the league bite the bullet and try to get someone from the West Division of Conference USA (UTEP, Tulsa, Houston) to round out the league?

3) Does this move, with or without BYU, force ESPN and the Mountain West to come back to the table and negotiate some kind of a partial television contract? Or is such a plan already in the works?

4) Karl Benson needs to decide on a plan of action. Does he try and recruit schools from Conference USA or the Sun Belt to join? Do you look at adding Division 1-FCS schools Montana, Northern Arizona, Weber State or Eastern Washington (to name a few)? Because while you can still be a Division 1 school in some other sports with a reduced conference, it's not going to work for football to remain a FBS conference with only six members. The rumor yesterday about trying to poach UNLV and San Diego State is a total non-starter at this point; neither school is going to leave the Mountain West at this juncture.

So it looks like we are back to being in the midst of Expansionpalooza™ once again, and the ground is shifting. It's just smaller tremors than anticipated.

Big Ten Expansion Speculation: Realignment into divisions

Because I love doing these speculative expansion posts in pairs, here's my thoughts on Big Ten realignment. Again, I see four possible scenarios, but unlike the Pac-10, where there appears to be two distinct rumored favorites, there are at least five contenders. I tried to incorporate all five into the different scenarios. Alignment one assumes that Missouri is selected and is based on an East/West split. Alignment two assumes that one of the other schools (Pitt, Rutgers, Notre Dame, Syracuse) is selected, but is still based on an East/West geographic split):

Alignment 1:
East
Indiana
Purdue
Michigan
Michigan State
Penn State
Ohio State

West
Missouri
Illinois
Northwestern
Iowa
Wisconsin
Minnesota

Alignment 2:
East
Michigan
Michigan State
Penn State
Ohio State
Indiana
Pittsburgh (or Syracuse, ND or Rutgers)

West
Illinois
Northwestern
Iowa
Purdue
Wisconsin
Minnesota

Alignments three and four as based on North/South divisions:

Alignment 3:
North
Minnesota
Wisconsin
Northwestern
Iowa
Michigan
Michigan State

South
Missouri (or Rutgers or Pittsburgh)
Illinois
Purdue
Indiana
Penn State
Ohio State

Alignment 4:
North
Minnesota
Wisconsin
Syracuse (or Notre Dame)
Northwestern
Michigan State
Michigan

South
Iowa
Illinois
Purdue
Indiana
Penn State
Ohio State

I don't see the Big Ten taking the radical step of just placing the teams into a hat and pulling names out and slotting them into divisions. The Big Ten is too traditional to do something like "Mountain" and "Plains" divisions; after all, this is a league that was still known as the Western Conference officially until sometime around 1987—even though they had had ten teams since the mid 1950s.

Progressivism is not their style.

Pac-10 Expansion Speculation: Realignment into divisons

As a strictly mental exercise, I wanted to think about how the Pac-10 would realign if they did expand. There are a couple of possible alignments to think about. There is the traditional East/West Alignment, where a line is drawn among the cities that make up the conference and voila!

Now, all of these alignment assume that the Pac-10 takes the two most viable candidates, which are Utah and Colorado.

Alignment 1:
East
Colorado
Utah
Arizona
Arizona State
Washington State
USC

West
Oregon
Oregon State
Washington
Stanford
Cal
UCLA

Of course, this would break up the Washington/Washington State and the USC/UCLA rivalries. So why not go East/West, but with a twist: Take each of the pairings and split them up not based on pure geographical location, but based on their location within the pairing:

Alignment 2:
East
Colorado
Arizona
USC
Cal
Washington State
Oregon

West
Utah
Arizona State
UCLA
Stanford
Washington
Oregon State

Of course, you can always go with the typical North/South geographic realignment:

Alignment 3:
North
Colorado
Utah
Oregon
Oregon State
Washington
Washington State

South
Cal
Stanford
USC
UCLA
Arizona
Arizona State

Of course, there is another option, which makes no regard for the actual geographical location. It's more about trying to balance out the divisions with regards to the perceived relative strengths and weaknesses of the football programs while trying to do some preservation of rivalries.

The rivalries for those who wind up cross-divisional can be handled within the scheduling structures that the conference would create. I believe that this is sort of what happened with the ACC, and why they call their divisions "Atlantic" and "Coastal"

Alignment 4:
Division 1
Oregon
Oregon State
Washington
Washington State
Cal
UCLA

Division 2
Colorado
Utah
Arizona
Arizona State
USC
Stanford

Again, this is all supreme speculation, as Pac-10 expansion is still a long, long way away for being a done deal. But it does make for some fun mental gymnastics.