The Rest of College Football

[Dr. Strangelove]

Clemson seems like the ideal SEC school but I'm not sure they add very much. Certainly not to the extent A&M would

[entropy]

I would think FSU would be better than Clemson. Or VT. jmo

[entropy]

.............. Unless there's a plan in the works and behind tight security for the B12 (the SEC and B10) to split form the NCAA in the short term.

If the news this weekend that Yahoo Sports was about to break another big story and Texas might be a likely candidate for disclosure of NCAA rule breaking, whose to say they just won't say F it and depart?

Chaos within which an already prepared set of BCS conference members will define a new organization.

Guess if you take this further, what schools would be included with this split. Would it be all the BCS conferences only? or would schools like ISU be left out to dry? I would think the easiest movement would be for conferences to break and then invite the best of the rest.

[Wild Hoss]

Texas/ESPN's abuse of the Longhorn network is going to bust that conference...

I doubt it. If ATM bails out the Longhorn Network will be the final straw that makes it happen, but the rest are shamelessly hanging from Bevos' ballbag. Suffering one more indignation isn't going to shake them loose, and they'll find some lower level of existence to get by with.

It'l bust up when UT makes the decision to leave Baylor and the remaining North schools behind. They will cling to Texas for dear life until the day UT kicks them off the lifeboat.

[entropy]

Even Stewart Mandel is experiencing a few glimmers of awareness:

COLLEGE FOOTBALL MAILBAG

Stewart, the news came out recently that Texas' new Longhorn Network is going to broadcast one of the Longhorns' Big 12 games. How in the world can the conference let it and ESPN get away with this? Wouldn't the opposing team have to be paid, too? And wouldn't that go right back into the conference's TV rights pool of money? How does this not open up a huge can of worms in terms of future TV broadcast rights? Not to mention, how PO'd do you think a rival team's fans will be to have to watch their team play on a rival team's biased home broadcast?
-- Ben, Atlanta

I'd definitely be ticked off about the latter part. That's the TV equivalent of trying to find your favorite team's game on the radio while driving and only being able to pick up the opposing team's station. Even if the announcers remain mostly neutral, you'll be subjected to 700 Longhorn-themed ads and in-game promotions. I wouldn't worry about the financials too much. ESPN is simply shifting one of its ABC-allotted broadcasts to the Longhorn Network, so the opponent will get the same cut, regardless. It tells you something about just how much ESPN is investing in this thing that it not only gave up a network window, but, according to reports, basically made a trade with the conference's cable partner, Fox, that will allow Fox to move a 2012 Big 12 game to its mother channel.

And that's the part that should really be troubling not just to Big 12 fans, but to college football fans everywhere. From the moment this 20-year, $300 million deal was announced, it's been astounding just how deeply the company is getting into bed with one of the schools it covers journalistically. Granted, conflicts of interest are unavoidable in sports media these days. This website is owned by a company (Time Warner) that holds the rights to NBA, PGA and NASCAR programming. But ESPN isn't just testing the separation between church and state with Texas; there isn't one. Case in point: The ever-popular GameDay crew (Chris Fowler and Co.) will be appearing live from Austin for the channel's Aug. 26 debut. ESPN and Texas are now one and the same, and you can't tell me it won't affect the way GameDay, SportsCenter, Outside the Lines, et. al., cover Mack Brown's program. In a sport where many fans already live in a constant state of paranoia that the media is propping up someone else at their expense ... well, ESPN is flat-out doing it. It should make for some interesting signs the first time GameDay goes to Norman.


Read more:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/stewart_mandel/07/13/russell-wilson-wisconsin-mailbag/index.html#ixzz1S5q4bY6w

[entropy]

hoss.. if you have no better options, you'll hang on for life. Question for schools like KU and Missouri are do you hang on or jump to the Big East. BE isn't the money you want, but it's better than the Mountain West. The decision of when to jump before Texas leaves you is a tough one. You don't want to leave money on the table


btw... in each of these A&M articles, their AD comes off as lost, either directly or implied. So glad he's gone from UNL

[Wild Hoss]

hoss.. if you have no better options, you'll hang on for life. Question for schools like KU and Missouri are do you hang on or jump to the Big East. BE isn't the money you want, but it's better than the Mountain West. The decision of when to jump before Texas leaves you is a tough one. You don't want to leave money on the table

Depends...Kansas might be leaving more money on the table short-term, but in the long run they might be better off negotiating their way into the BE now rather than after the BE is aware UT and OU are going to dump their ass high and dry.

[entropy]

An NCAA official told Auburn coach Gene Chizik that it is not done investigating the Tigers' football program and the recruitment of Cam Newton, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

More...

[Jeff Buchanan]

"An NCAA official told Auburn coach Gene Chizik that it is not done investigating the Tigers' football program and the recruitment of Cam Newton, The New York Times reported Wednesday."

They are still investigating?

WTF are they going to find that all of us don't already know about.

Newton was paid to play for Auburn. Does not matter if the facts you are able to uncover without subpoena power only support that finding circumstantially. It is still against NCAA rules.

Get on with whatever meaningless penalties you intend to impose then and let Auburn whine. What are they going to do about it anyway?

[Hannibal]

They could be investigating a lot more. That program is really dirty.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Bruce Feldman suspended indefinitely by ESPN for helping write Mike Leach's book

http://www.sportsbybrooks.com/bruce-feldman-suspended-indefinitely-by-espn-29786

[Jamie H]

I guess Craig James rates higer at ESPN than Feldman does.

[entropy]

Wow...espn is looking bad

[entropy]

http://espn.go.com/college-sports/story/_/id/6769894/ncaa-places-georgia-tech-yellow-jackets-four-years-probation?campaign=rss&source=NCBHeadlines

GT put on probation

[Hannibal]

ESPN's near monopoly on all sports is a bad thing for every sport that they cover. I don't think that it's a coincidence that the popularity of the NHL has increased since they moved off of ESPN (the new rules obviously help too). I thought it was a good thing when Fox got some BCS games and a really bad thing when they gave them up. To this day, I'm completely baffled as to why so many people hated their coverage when ESPN's is usually pretty terrible. I can't think of a single way in which ESPN has made the sports experience better in about the past 15 years. In many ways, they have made it worse.