| 19 September 2011
Over the past several months, my professional and personal lives have been in direct conflict. The two have battled it out for my football soul, like two dogs fighting over a chew toy.
What do I mean? Well, on the professional side, I’ve carved out a nice little niche as sportswriter on this website and beyond, someone with opinions on all things college sports. And over these past few months, as much as I’d wanted to sit here and talk about the games on the field, all anyone wants to talk about is conference expansion and realignment.
The questions are constant and change by the day: Where are the Texas and Oklahoma schools going? Who is going to join Texas A&M in the SEC? Will Notre Dame ever give up its independence? Is Baylor’s lawsuit have any credence to it? The questions are never ending, and unfortunately I have little more information than anyone else. Ultimately everyone in college sports- from fans and writers to coaches and players- have no say in this mess, and are instead being held hostage by school Presidents and Trustee members. Sadly, the future of the thing that we all care about the most, is being determined by people that know and care little about actual college sports.
On the personal level, expansion has of course hit closest to home with my beloved UConn Huskies. While I’ve sat here and discussed A&M and Oklahoma, Texas and Missouri, one question always stood square in the back of my mind: What’s next for UConn? As things stood coming into the weekend, my Huskies were in a conference- the Big East- that seemed shakier than Sarah Palin’s marriage. The Big East had eight schools that played football (with another one coming) and the eight schools that didn't, a situation that led to just about the biggest conflict of interest in all of college sports. There were just too many entities, in too many different parts of the country, with too many independent agendas. Eventually something had to give.
Well this weekend, it gave. What started as a new story reported by the New York Times Pete Thamel on Friday evening, went official by Sunday afternoon: Syracuse and Pittsburgh were leaving the conference, and doing it as soon as they possibly could. The two schools would be members of the ACC, maybe as early as next year, depending on if they can get out of contract clause with the Big East. Ultimately though, it doesn’t matter when they are allowed to leave, just that they are in fact leaving. The Big East as we knew it, is officially done.
Now before we go any further, let me get a few things out of the way here.
For one, I don’t blame Syracuse and Pittsburgh for making the decision that they did. Do I like it? Of course not. Do I think it was scummy and despicable, especially as more details continue to leak? Absolutely. But I can’t say I blame them, per se. If we’ve learned anything about college sports over the last few months and years, it’s that they’ve turned into modern day Darwinism, survival of the fittest in football pads. Allegiances, rivalries and friendships aren’t really all that important. Not when you’re talking about dollars and cents. At the end of the day the responsibility of the folks at Pittsburgh and Syracuse is to look out for the futures of, well, Pittsburgh and Syracuse only. They did exactly that with this move.
I should also warn that if you’re looking for me to freak out and jump off a bridge because UConn isn’t in the mix right now, well, I’m not going to do that either. The truth is, while some friends and colleagues have been concerned about where UConn will end up, I haven’t been one of them. If this whole realignment game ends where we all think it will (with four 16-team super-conferences), I firmly believe UConn will be fine. Even though UConn’s football program is far from the best in the country, the school as a whole offers too much in stability as an entire athletic department and in a complete brand name to be left out in the cold. UConn has teams that compete nationally in a variety of sports, and as much as I crack on the football team, they still went to the Fiesta Bowl last year. Granted they got the snot beaten out of them once they got to Arizona, but they were there. Plus, as goofy as it sounds, academics matter in this whole mess, and UConn is one of the better public universities in the country. So whether it’s as the 15th or 16th member of the ACC, or even heading out to the Big Ten, UConn will land on its feet. The question now becomes where.
Regardless, while I could sit here and talk about where everyone will end up (which is probably another article for another day), that’s not what’s really important right now. Ultimately, this isn’t about the future so much as the present. And in the present, this all sucks. Really bad. Sorry to use my fourth grade vocabulary there, but it’s the best way I can think of to describe the whole situation.
On a micro level it sucks for the reason that all college expansion sucks: Ultimately we’re seeing long-standing rivalries, allegiances and friendships broken up so that everyone can protect their own interests. To put in perspective for those who can’t fully understand, imagine being a New York Yankees fan and one day waking up to the realization that you’ll never play the Red Sox again. That sucks, doesn’t it? How about being a Cowboys fan and never having the chance to face off against the Redskins? Or the Raiders never again playing the Chiefs. That’s what we’re looking at in the future of college sports.
That exact scenario actually played out this year, with the first burst of realignment, when Nebraska and Colorado left the Big XII, and Utah moved to the Pac-12. Gone was one of the sport’s great rivalries in Nebraska-Oklahoma, and an always fun game between Colorado and Nebraska right around Thanksgiving Day. Not to mention the fact that Utah and BYU- which was one of the great final weekend games of the regular season- was played in Week 3 of this season, per Pac-12 bylaw. Because after all, why change one sentence written into a dumb contract, when you can blow up a 100-year tradition instead, right?
But as bad as losing Nebraska-Oklahoma and altering BYU-Utah, this whole realignment mess didn’t totally hit home for me personally until Syracuse and Pittsburgh left the Big East. Again, it is one thing to read about a rivalry coming to an end, but it’s another 
to see one which has meant so much to you evaporate in front of your eyes.
Well, that’s exactly what happened for me with UConn-Syracuse. The Big East as a whole is older than I am, and I practically grew up watching these two teams in specific. In a lot of ways, those two schools were just as important in the development of who I am today than any elementary school teacher I had. Now for all I know, they might never play basketball again beyond this year. (And yes, I understand that it could still continue if UConn ends up in the ACC with Syracuse. But for the time being, the rivalry is as dead as Jim Tressel’s college coaching career).
And again, that really sucks. As someone who went to UConn, I can’t tell you with actual words in the English language how much Syracuse and their fans get under my skin. I loathe both the team and the fans, if only because I know that my friends who went to the school are going to get after me when they beat UConn. It's as predictable as the changing of the seasons, or seeing Jim Boeheim sitting on the sideline with a sour-puss look on his face. But you know what? I'm going to do the exact same to them when UConn wins.
At the same time for all that venom, I also can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed watching the two teams play basketball every winter. I’ve seen them play more times than I can count, on TV and in person, at UConn, at the Carrier Dome, and even in Madison Square Garden for the Big East Tournament. I was there when Gerry McNamara ripped the heart out of the No. 1 team in the country in 2006, and believe it or not, I was also there for the six-overtime thriller back in 2009. No, seriously, I was there. I even have pictures to prove it.
Well, along with Syracuse-UConn, the Big East basketball tournament, (which is still the best sporting event I’ve ever attended in person, and that includes the Final Four) will be gone. So too could be “The Backyard Brawl,” between West Virginia and Pittsburgh and the Texas-Texas A&M blood-war every Thanksgiving. On top of what we’ve already lost with Colorado-Nebraska and Nebraska-Oklahoma, with plenty more to come I’m sure.
And really, that’s where I think that these college administrators need to be very careful where they walk. Because for all the dollars and cents, TV contracts and “regional footprints,” they are also toeing a very dangerous line of what makes college sports so great. It’s amazing to see it all unfold in front of our eyes. All the things that have made college sports so big and put them in position to make all this money (mainly the passion, excitement and energy of the fans), is what we’re ultimately at stake of losing when we go to super-conferences.
Think about it. What makes college sports…well, college sports is all the stuff that I’ve already mentioned. It’s the fans; it’s the rivalries; it’s the traditions. It’s that once or twice a year (depending on the sport), we can count on Auburn-Alabama, Louisville-Kentucky, UConn-Syracuse, Texas-Texas A&M. Those rivalries transcend the year, and the win-loss record of the team, because the games themselves are bigger than the sport. Texas A&M fans are going to show up when the team is lousy, just to root against Texas. They’ll travel to Austin to do the same, because the history and hatred runs that deep. I just can’t see them doing the same (traveling to road games, or packing Kyle Field when the team is lousy), if the opponent is Ole Miss or Auburn. It just won’t mean as much. How could it?
And please, just trust me on this one. I was at UConn at the time when all this realignment went down, and even seven years later, the “new,” Big East (which, incidentally, is now the old Big East) has just never totally felt "right." It just hasn't felt “right,” when UConn played a mid-week, mid-February game against a Marquette or Cincinnati, at least not to the same degree that it did when they were playing Syracuse or Villanova instead. It’s no different in football, when every December, the University of Connecticut (emphasis on Connecticut), had to play at the University of South Florida. Wait, what? Those two schools have about as much in common as I do with the Kardashian family. Yet somehow, they’re competing every year in sports. Why am I supposed to get excited about this again?
Only that exact scenario is going to play itself every year across college football and beyond. We’ll see it in the ACC and Pac-12, SEC and Big Ten, where geographical affiliation, history and tradition will be replaced by what some TV executive thinks is a game we want to watch. Want to watch Texas-Texas A&M? Too bad, you’re going to get Texas A&M-Mississippi State instead. Good times! Only, not at all.
Beyond that, let’s look at the big picture. Imagine if one of these cross-country “conference” games impacts a conference championship or BCS berth? Let me ask you Oklahoma fans, how excited are you to know that your team could very well be traveling to Eugene with a conference title on the line in mid-November? Forget football for a second; just think about the logistics of it. We’re talking about a long flight, change of time zones, plus all the other crap college kids are already dealing with. And now they’ve got to go out and win a football game, with that much on the line? Think about how anxious you were watching Landry Jones at Doak-Campbell last Saturday. You think it’ll be any easier for him in November when he’s got to go to Autzen Stadium with a conference championship at stake? Good luck with that.
Well, it’s going to happen all over the country, with all these teams. Maybe it’s the Florida Gators going to play at Texas A&M with a trip to Atlanta on the line. Or Florida State going up North to play Syracuse, or Texas traveling to Washington one week after they were at Oklahoma State. Go ahead and read those matchups again. Are you kidding me? Syracuse-Florida State? Texas-Washington? Those are games that should be played in mid-September, not late November. Only that’s where we’re headed.
Of course in the end, like the rest of you, I have no say in this whole mess. I have no say in long-standing rivalries being broken, traditions being tarnished and college sports being altered forever. I have no say in Oklahoma schools playing in a conference with the word “Pacific,” in it, or Syracuse playing in the Atlantic Coast Conference (You know, despite the fact I’ve been to Syracuse and, umm, the Atlantic Coast is nowhere near it). I have no say in the fact that the Backyard Brawl could be a thing of the past, and that a Pitt-Wake Forest football game could replace it instead.
I have no say in any of it. None of us do. Not when the President of our favorite school is worried about dollars and cents, and figuring out how to get a bigger cut of what is already a massive pie, rather than what’s best for the athletes on the field, or even the fans in the stands. After all, once the ink goes dry on that brand spankin’ new TV contract, what do the consumers of your product, or the product itself, matter anyway? They don't of course.
Again, I don't know what to say other than that this whole thing just sucks. It really, really, REALLY sucks.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get out of here.
For one, I’m sick of talking about all this B.S., and at the same time, I’ve got errands to address. The first of which is buying tickets to this year’s Big East basketball tournament.
After all, my favorite sporting event on the entire planet will likely be extinct within a year, so I better get to the Garden and enjoy it now while I can.
And beyond that, who knows? I can only imagine what’s going to be extinct along with it.
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