If Big Ten didnt just add lucrative programs like USC but trimmed stragglers, whod get the boot? | Jones – PennLive

It wasnt that long ago that I fabricated a summer column like this one just as an outlandish hypothetical, a wouldnt it be fun if " sort of throwaway that you knew going in would never happen.

It was about what college conferences would be like if there was relegation and promotion in the vein of European soccer. Worst three teams by record are dumped down a division every year and replaced by the three best from the next-lower division. I used the Big Ten and Mid-American Conference simply for examples.

Now? In this Ayn Rand world into which college athletics is seeing itself devolve? Suddenly, nothings off-the-board, nothing discarded out of hand.

You know its the Wild West out there when the Big Ten can suddenly invite a couple of schools from Los Angeles, then has all its broadcast lapdogs nod in approval.

Look, I generally like Colin Cowherd. I watch him and Joy Taylor for an hour once or twice a week on FOX Sports The Herd, and I think both are thoughtful commentators who try to see sports events from unique angles. Its the only such talk show I ever watch.

Cowherd often sets sports issues in thematic terms related to other businesses. And its all a business, I think even the most idealistic of us have been beaten over the head with that truth lately so that we cant drive it from our escapist fans minds.

But its so obvious that Cowherd is dealing in promotion for his Big Ten-partnered network bosses in this case. This USC/UCLA>B1G move is great, he exclaims. Hell, he even got off a plane on vaca when it happened and tweeted a minute-long reaction video from an airport terminal. Win-win-win for everybody Big Ten, LA schools and football fans he proclaimed in assuring tones. It was slightly more convincing than when he was forced to shill for FOXs USFL reboot all spring.

By this point, you know how I feel. I believe Ive made it clear the past two weeks I think its a shameless money grab that appears to make fiscal sense now and will handsomely profit a few in the short term but will diminish the sport in the long run. That its just another step in the inexorable shameless monetization of college athletics at the steep cost of all that fans love about it. That Im totally for unlimited NIL and freedom of movement for athletes, that I dont see that as a threat. But that the suits who now run the sport are motivated by pure greed.

Through that lens, I can now imagine a development I never wouldve believed possible before a contraction of schools from the power conferences.

In other words, if the object is to relentlessly add schools with greater value with total disregard to culture and geography, whats stopping the networks and university presidents from also cutting some fat? I mean, thats how its done in business underperforming units are dissolved. No matter how long and what assets theyve brought to the firm prior, enough substandard quarterly earnings and they can be jettisoned after one executive meeting and nobody bats an eye.

Think it cant happen? Several fans Ive quoted in this space during recent correspondence have floated the idea. And while I never rejected it out of hand, neither did I consider it particularly likely. Then again, that mightve been partly due to my nave traditional mindset, having grown up within a stable Big Ten through young adulthood.

And on Wednesday, something happened that made me think, Uh-oh, this really could happen: Cowherd raised the proposal out of thin air.

Look, I dont necessarily believe hes in cahoots with his FOX management on every strategic move it makes. But neither would I be surprised if he was clued in about the USC/UCLA>B1G bombshell hours or days in advance. He was a cheerleader for the concept straight out of the gate.

So, when he floated the concept of ill-fitting newbies Nebraska, Rutgers, Maryland and maybe even longtime but underperforming member Purdue being carved out of the Big Ten in the future, I didnt take it as coincidence. Could FOX chieftains have intimated the notion at some point and leaked it to Cowherd just as a way to normalize it, get it out there in the mainstream?

Anyway, even if Cowherd conceptualized it all on his own, I dont discount the possibility in the slightest. Hes a bright guy with vision. If we really are in a Machiavellian business now where its eat or be eaten without regard to decades of neighborhood and tradition, then why cant the lesser legacies whove been either born into or recently invited to this gated community be cast out on their own?

More to the point, if the arbiters distilled their decision purely based on gross football revenue, irrespective of annual conference broadcast/streaming payouts, who would get the boot?

We know those figures because theyre made public every spring. Each school must submit a report to the U.S. Department of Education related to its gender equity requirement. Ive been posting them for years.

The latest figures released this past spring were outliers because they related to the heavily COVID-impacted 2020-21 fiscal year. So, I dont believe theyre valid for this purpose.

But if we retreat to fiscal 2019-20, released in Spring 2021, all you need to do is examine the lowest rungs of the B1G ladder. Here are the bottom four programs in gross football revenue:

14. Rutgers: $32.9 million.

13. Maryland: $44.7 million.

12. Purdue: $51.9 million.

11. Indiana: $56.5 million.

You can see the entire fiscal 2019-20 list here for the Big Ten football programs and here for all the 65 Power Five.

Now, imagine a reformed Big Ten with Washington ($91.7 million), Oregon ($77.6 million) and Utah ($62.6 million) all top-25 national football revenue producers in 2019-20 replacing Rutgers, Maryland and Purdue.

Further, try to envision a Big Ten totally incentivized by revenue in which each school knows its contract with the conference is based on some metric combining gross revenue, viewership eyeballs and whatever else FOX and the BTN deem critically marketable. And membership is fluid, predicated on performance with each new broadcast media deal.

The laggards are dropped and promising prospects from the second division (Cincinnati? Louisville? Pittsburgh? West Virginia?) are considered as their replacements.

Now, that would be some true relegation and promotion. Id label this myself as outlandish speculation. Except, these days, I dont know what qualifies for those terms anymore.

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If Big Ten didnt just add lucrative programs like USC but trimmed stragglers, whod get the boot? | Jones - PennLive