San Diego State Non-Football Sports to Big West

Following up on San Diego State's becoming a football-only member of the Big East (see below), the school announced that most of its other sports teams will compete in the Big West conference. What does it say about what's happening in collegiate sports that a school can (depending on the sport) belong to both the Big East and Big West?

Big East Expands to West Coast

I realize that geographic compactness and literal interpretation of conference names went out the window long ago. Still, the expansion of the Big East conference all the way to San Diego, California, is about as odd as it gets. Yesterday, however, the Big East announced the addition of Houston, Southern Methodist (SMU), and Central Florida for all sports; and Boise State and San Diego State for football only. These changes come amidst other Big East craziness, such as Texas Christian University leaving the conference before even playing a single game in any sport, and the departures of West Virginia to the Big 12, and Pitt and Syracuse to the ACC.

The following is a Big East schematic I made, replacing an earlier one. The names of existing Big East schools are depicted in red, whereas those of the new members are shown in blue. The green squares represent schools that play all sports within the Big East. The white triangles illustrate schools that either don't play football at all or not within the Big East. Naturally, the football logo denotes schools whose only Big East presence will be in football.

According to the picture above, the Big East would be a 10-team football conference and a 16-team league for basketball and other sports. The status of Big East escapees West Virginia, Syracuse, and Pittsburgh still remains in flux, with lawsuits pending over the conference's requirement that members not leave for 27 months after declaring an intention to depart.

Assuming the Big East eventually looks like the picture above, several questions come to the fore:

• Will the conference change its name?
• Will more schools from the western U.S. be added to the conference to give San Diego State, Boise State, and the Texas schools some shorter road trips?
• If so, what schools might be candidates? One theme running through the new and existing Big East schools is that they're mostly located in large (or fairly large) cities, such as New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Milwaukee, Washington DC, Tampa, Orlando, Houston, Dallas, and San Diego. Possible candidates would therefore seem to be other urban schools, perhaps Tulane (New Orleans), Texas-El Paso, or New Mexico (Albuquerque).

Nothing seems to be stable for long in the Big East, so check back often.

Mizzou to SEC/T-Shirt Update

Missouri is now officially headed to the SEC. I have updated my Big 12 t-shirt to reflect Mizzou's departure.

West Virginia to Big 12

West Virginia will be joining the Big 12. Assuming Missouri's move to the SEC finally comes to fruition, the Big 12 will settle at 10 teams. As shown in the map below, WVU is geographically distant from all the other Big 12 schools. I heard someone on the radio say that the closest Big 12 school to West Virginia is Iowa State. According to the distance calculator at Travel Math, Morgantown, West Virginia and Ames, Iowa are 734 miles apart.

Whether the Mountaineers and the existing Big 12 schools will be able to strike up compelling rivalries in football or other sports anytime soon, I don't know. Count me as skeptical.

Big East Considering Boise State

The Big East is in such a mess, it's considering adding... [wait for it...] ... Boise State! I know that geographic compactness already has been degraded as a criterion for forming conferences, but placing an Idaho school with ones in New Jersey, Connecticut, and Florida seems a little much.

Big 12 Remains in Flux

The Big 12 remains in flux, but we're getting some ideas of where things may be heading. Texas Christian University (TCU) looks like it will be joining the Big 12. This means that TCU will be leaving the Big East before it has even played a game in that league. TCU, temporarily at least, will bring the Big 12's number of teams back to 10, after Texas A&M's move to the SEC.

Another Big 12 school, Missouri, seems to be in a holding pattern regarding whether it will join Texas A&M in moving to the SEC. According to this article: "The Missouri Tigers are still on the fence if they want to stay in the Big 12 or pack up and head to the SEC. However, Missouri may not have the necessary votes to join the SEC."

A Missouri departure (assuming no glitches with TCU's arrival) would take the Big 12 back to nine members. Who might be leading contenders for a new tenth team? Brigham Young University (BYU) seemed likely to join the Big 12 at one point, but the chances seem to be fading at the moment.

Louisville continues to be mentioned, with the possible demise of Big East football giving the Cardinals reason to look elsewhere. A move to the Big 12 would also create for Louisville a basketball rivalry with fellow elite hoops program Kansas. On the downside, however, Louisville is geographically distant from the existing Big 12 schools, between roughly 500-1,000 miles away, according to Travel Math. Louisville, being a city school, would also seem to lack cultural ties to the other Big 12 schools, many of which are in more rural/agricultural areas.

Houston might also be a possibility (at least in the minds of Houstonians).

Missouri's Conference Options

Berry Tramel examines Missouri's conference options. This piece really seems to be a larger commentary on the state of the Big 12, though, in my view.

Historical Overview of Conference Realignment

Today's Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, my hometown newspaper, provides an in-depth historical overview of college football, conference realignment, television, and money. The article, not surprisingly, is Texas Tech-centric, but also quotes sports historians and economists from elsewhere. One thing I had not known about is the cyclical nature historically of teams aggregating into large conferences and then the large conferences splitting back into smaller ones. Quoting from the article:

Superconferences are not a new concept. [Historian J.S.] Watterson said they’ve existed in similar forms before. For instance, the Southern Conference was what he called a “fairly decentralized” league that swelled to 23 teams during the 1920s before splitting into the SEC and ACC some 30 years later.

The article also helps break down the recent mindboggling television contracts into how much exactly each school in a given conference will receive. For example, the Big 12 has a $1.17 billion deal with Fox Sports, but it's over 13 years, making it $90 million per annum. Divided 10 ways ("provided the league replaces SEC-bound A&M"), that's $9 million per school, per year.

Andy Katz Reviews the Landscape

ESPN's Andy Katz provides a good overall assessment of the realignment situation, as of mid-afternoon today. Regarding a possible 10th team for the Big 12 (assuming Texas A&M's move to the SEC comes to fruition, but that Missouri now doesn't join the Aggies), Katz characterizes the possibilities thusly:

• Arkansas is a "no"
• BYU is a "maybe"
• Louisville "available"
• West Virginia "available"

As far as the SEC and its apparent limbo with an odd number of teams (13), Katz writes:

The SEC can take its time in deciding if it would add Missouri or even look again to West Virginia, which it has recently rejected. Grabbing Virginia Tech will be tougher with a $20 million exit fee being proposed in the ACC.

Pac Won't Go Beyond 12

The Pac 12 apparently will expand no further, at least for the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, Missouri is said to be on its way to becoming the SEC's 14th team.

Syracuse and Pitt to ACC

Syracuse and Pittsburgh, both longtime Big East members, apparently have submitted applications to join the ACC.

UPDATE: The move of Syracuse and Pitt to the ACC appears to be a done deal.

Texas and ACC a Good Match?

Kristi Dosh argues that the Atlantic Coast Conference would come "the closest to giving Texas everything it wants and needs" in the areas of competitive balance, academics, and television contracts. Lately, I've been looking at possible realignment scenarios through the lens of travel distances, so why not examine Texas and the ACC that way?

The hub of the ACC arguably would be Raleigh-Durham (North Carolina) Airport. That's where you would fly into to play Duke, UNC, or NC State (Wake Forest, also in North Carolina, has airports closer to campus than Raleigh-Durham).

Looking at the Travel Math flight-distance website, we see that Austin, Texas is roughly 1,165 miles from Raleigh-Durham (1,170 miles from Raleigh, 1,159 from Durham). The outer reaches of the ACC are as or more distant from Austin: Miami (1,115 miles), Washington, DC (an approximation for trips to Maryland and Virginia; 1,318 miles), and Boston (1,696 miles). Tallahassee (home of Florida State, 804 miles), Atlanta (home of Georgia Tech, 819 miles), and Clemson, South Carolina (921 miles) would appear to be the shortest trips for Texas. Even though conferences' geographic names don't seem to mean much anymore, these distances reflect the fact that Texas is nowhere near the Atlantic Coast.

As I previously reported, the average distance from UT-Austin to its nine current mates in the Big 12 (including Texas A&M) is 446 miles, whereas the Longhorns' average travel distance would be 998 miles in a hypothetical 14-team Big 10 (including Notre Dame).

Presumably, Texas would need another school (or three) to join in on the move to the ACC, in order to give the Longhorns some shorter trips. I'm highly doubtful this could happen in reality, but Rice (a Conference USA school based in Houston) would be a good institution to accompany Texas to the ACC. After all, Rice has some academic similarities to the ACC's Duke and Wake Forest, plus the Owls have shown some degree of athletic success, winning the 2003 NCAA championship in baseball.

On the basis of academics, Vanderbilt (in Nashville, Tennessee) has always seemed to me a better fit with the ACC than its existing conference, the SEC; plus Texas and Vandy are "only" 753 miles apart. The SEC presumably wouldn't be lacking for schools to replace Vanderbilt. Throw in another elite academic school, New Orleans-based Tulane from C-USA (460 miles from Austin), and now you're getting somewhere!

Possible Legal Issues with A&M Move to SEC

Attorney Kristi Dosh examines the legal issues of whether the SEC could be vulnerable to a lawsuit for tortiously interfering in Texas A&M's existing cotractual obligations to the Big 12.

Texas to Big 10?

According to some new "buzz" making the rounds, the University of Texas would not go independent or to an expanded Pac 12. Instead, the Longhorns would join Notre Dame in bringing the Big 10 up to 14 teams.

Notre Dame, located in South Bend, Indiana, near Chicago, would be a good geographic fit with the Big 10. Texas, though geographically distant from the other Big 10 schools, would mesh well with the Big 10 prototype of large, state-university campuses. The UT-Austin campus hosts in excess of 50,000 students, similar to Ohio State's 50,000-plus, Michigan State's 47,000, Indiana's 42,000, and Wisconsin's 40,000-plus, as some examples. Austin, Texas and Madison, Wisconsin also mirror each other in being state capitals as well as college towns.

Academically, Texas is a member of the prestigious Association of American Universities (AAU). Until Nebraska's recent demotion, the Big 10 held the honor of all of its schools belonging to the AAU. Notre Dame, though not an AAU member, is nevertheless considered a strong academic school.

Despite the apparent cultural similarities between UT-Austin and several Big 10 schools, there still is that issue of travel distance. Thus, just as I did recently for Texas Tech and the expanded Pac 12, I've conducted a travel-miles distance analysis for Texas and an expanded Big 10, using the website Travel Math.

Big 12 Opponent	Distance	Big 10 Opponent	Distance
Texas A&M*	88	Penn State	1,330
Texas Tech	332	Ohio State	1,067
Baylor	95	Michigan	1,136
Oklahoma	342	Michigan State	1,130
Oklahoma State	405	Indiana	884
Kansas	617	Purdue	929
Kansas State	618	Illinois	865
Missouri	673	Northwestern	986
Iowa State	843	Wisconsin	996
---	---	Minnesota	1,044
---	---	Iowa	859
---	---	Nebraska	729
---	---	Notre Dame**	1,015
AVERAGE	446	AVERAGE	998

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*Move to SEC pending. **Hypothetical scenario.

As can be seen, a Texas move to the Big 10 would increase its average in-conference travel distance by roughly 550 miles. Texas's shortest distance within the Big 10 would be to Nebraska (729 miles), which used to be in the Big 12 with the Longhorns.

Whether the rumor of Texas and Notre Dame to the Big 10 proves to have any more credence than other scenarios remains to be seen, of course. Still, examining the factors of geography/distance, academics, and culture provides an interesting lens on the possible ways institutions may group themselves.

Longhorn Network Impact on Texas Possibly Going to Pac 12?

Attorney and Business of College Sports blogger Kristi Dosh addresses what may be one of the most crucial questions in the whole realignment puzzle: "Is [the] Longhorn Network [a] Roadblock to Texas Joining [the] Pac-12?"

Realingment Effect on Basketball?

With football getting virtually all the attention regarding conference realignment, ESPN.com college basketball writer Andy Katz examines how various possible reshufflings could affect the hoops scene.

Distance Analysis of Possible Texas/Oklahoma Schools' Move to Pac 12

Barring the Big 12 attracting a new marquee school (or three) to raise its number of teams from the current nine, the conference seems likely to implode. One of the leading scenarios, given Texas A&M's departure from the Big 12, is for a quartet of Big 12 South schools (Texas, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State) to join the Pac 12, making it the Pac 16 (one other Big 12 South school, Baylor, would be left behind). Here is how such a plan would look geographically.

A little over a year ago, the Sports Economist blog examined the change in Nebraska's travel distances to conference venues associated with the Cornhuskers' switch from the Big 12 to the Big 10. That article has inspired me to attempt a similar analysis for proposed Pac 16. The same article also happened to mention a useful piece of information, namely that, "The average distance between Pac 10 schools, the most dispersed group of the BCS conferences (before realignment began), was 731 miles."

It is worth repeating. Even before conference realignment got underway in the summer of 2010, the Pac 10 was already the nation's most geographically spread out conference. Adding Colorado and Utah stretches the conference's footprint even more with, for example, the University of Washington in Seattle sitting roughly 1,000 miles (998 to be exact) from the University of Colorado in Boulder. Throw in Texas, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State, and we're looking at some huge distances between member schools.

Texas Tech (in Lubbock) is the westernmost school of the four potential new additions to a Pac 16, so it provides a conservative estimate of the travel distances the new schools would face. For most, if not all, match-ups with the existing Pac 12 schools, Texas, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State presumably would have to cover even greater distances than Texas Tech. For these reasons (plus the fact I'm a faculty member at Texas Tech and thus have a personal curiosity), I decided to investigate what the Red Raiders' average travel distance was to its rivals in the (original) Big 12 and what it would become in the proposed Pac 16. The website Travel Math proved to be an invaluable aid in researching travel distances.

The following chart shows the distances from Texas Tech (Lubbock) to each specific opponent, in miles.

Opponent	Big 12 (Original)	Pac 16 (Hypothetical)
Texas A&M	382	---
Baylor	308	---
Texas	332	332
Oklahoma	277	277
Oklahoma State	324	324
Colorado	482	482
Nebraska	574	---
Kansas	524	---
Kansas State	486	---
Missouri	647	---
Iowa State	736	---
Utah	---	742
Arizona	---	535
Arizona State	---	580
UCLA	---	942
USC	---	942
Stanford	---	1,172
California	---	1,183
Oregon	---	1,348
Oregon State	---	1,372
Washington	---	1,440
Washington State	---	1,213
AVERAGE	461	859

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The main conclusion to be gleaned from this table is that Texas Tech's average distance to its conference rivals would nearly double, from 461 to 859, with a move to the Pac 12/16. Though the football team and perhaps some other revenue-generating sports would fly on chartered flights that avoid layovers, many teams would still presumably fly commercial. I consulted the travel schedules for Southwest Airlines, which I would say is the primary carrier from the Southwest to the West Coast (another leading airline out of Lubbock, American/American Eagle, would require first flying east to Dallas, out of the way, before getting on another plane to go west). If Southwest did not fly to necessary cities, I checked for alternative plans on Orbitz.

Here are some sample trips Texas Tech teams would have to make within a proposed Pac 16. For any given destination, there are usual a few daily departure times from the originating city; for each trip, I have listed the flight schedule that requires the least travel time (departing on a Thursday, assuming a game on Friday or Saturday).

Lubbock to Los Angeles (to play UCLA or USC): 4 hours, 30 minutes (1 plane-change in Albuquerque)

Lubbock to San Jose (to play Stanford): 4 hours, 30 minutes (1 plane-change in Las Vegas)

Lubbock to Eugene (to play Oregon): 7 hours, 55 minutes (on United, 2 stops)

Lubbock to Seattle (to play Washington): 7 hours, 35 minutes (2 stops)

Over at the Texas Tech athletics discussion site RaiderPower.com and on other boards, the idea of four four-team "pods" has been suggested (see the following table). To create a nine-game conference football schedule, for example, a school could play every opponent in its own pod, plus two schools (one at home, one away) each from the other three pods.

Washington	Stanford	Arizona	Texas
Wash. St.	California	Ariz. St.	Texas Tech
Oregon	UCLA	Colorado	Oklahoma
Ore. St.	USC	Utah	Okla. St.

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For the Texas/Oklahoma schools, such a plan would require one trip to a California school and one to a Pacific Northwest school, annually. That wouldn't be so bad, some might argue. Indeed, two long trips might not be so bad for any single team in a particular sport. But taking all the sports in the aggregate (football, baseball, softball, men's and women's basketball, men's and women's tennis, women's volleyball, women's soccer, and others), the travel bills would quickly add up.

For some sports, perhaps a barnstorming strategy could be used. For example, Texas Tech's women's soccer squad could take a nine-day journey to the Northwest to play Washington, Washington State, Oregon, and Oregon State on a Friday-Sunday-Friday-Sunday schedule. Doing so would require only one long round-trip by air, with the ability to drive from campus to campus. Even if such a long trip were never scheduled, the amount of classroom time missed would almost certainly go up in a Pac 16 compared to a more geographically compact conference.

Just as the teams would have to travel great distances, so too would fans. Large contingents of visiting fans from Texas, Texas A&M, and Oklahoma help Texas Tech fill its football stadium. As one of my faculty colleagues asked (perhaps rhetorically), would comparably large traveling parties from WSU or Oregon State make the trip to Lubbock?

Should the Big 12 implode, most fans of Texas Tech (and probably also Oklahoma State) would likely consider it a "must" that their school find a home in a conference at least as prestigious as the Big 12, to avoid a considerable downgrade in the school's athletic reputation. Such an outlook is understandable for a die-hard supporter of a school's sports teams. Texas, it has been hinted, could try to make a go of it as an independent, at least in football, whereas Oklahoma likely could land in a major conference without much trouble (perhaps the Big 10, where it would be re-paired with its old rival Nebraska, or the SEC, if not the Pac 12).

Conference USA, which currently includes four Texas schools (Houston, Rice, SMU, and Texas-El Paso), plus nearby Tulane (in New Orleans) and Tulsa, would allow Texas Tech (along with current Big 12 mate Baylor) to stay in a geographically compact league, without the seemingly exorbitant cost in travel time and money that a Pac 16 move would entail. The scholastically elite Rice and Tulane would also allow C-USA members to point to positive academic role models (similar to Stanford and Cal-Berkeley in the Pac 12).

Although my discussion has been undertaken through the lens of Texas Tech, the factors addressed -- travel time and expenses, geographic compactness, athletic prestige, and academics -- must be considered by any schools seeking to extend (via their league offices) or accept an invitation to a new and distant conference.

Big 12: And Then There Were 9

Texas A&M has officially pulled the trigger on its exit from the Big 12 and move to the SEC. Technically, A&M is only reporting its intention to "submit an application to join another athletic conference." As shown in the above diagram made from my old Big 12 t-shirt, which I bought upon my arrival to the Texas Tech faculty in 1997, Texas A&M is the third school to leave the conference.

The story is far from over, as each conference presumably needs to get back to an even number of members, 10 or 12 for the Big 12, and 14 or 16 for the SEC.

ESPN.com's David Ubben evaluates possible contenders to join the Big 12. Brigham Young University is the leading school mentioned as a potential new member. BYU had previously announced its plans to leave the Mountain West Conference to go independent in football and join the West Coast Conference in other sports. Conceivably, BYU could align with the Big 12 for football only. Some schools from the old Southwest Conference (e.g., Houston, Southern Methodist) that got left behind when Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, and Baylor merged with the old Big 8 to form the Big 12, would probably be interested in joining this time around.

Of course, the Big 12 could in reality be a house of cards, with Texas perhaps entertaining ideas of becoming an independent in football. The school already has its own Longhorn Network with ESPN. Also, Missouri and/or Oklahoma (with Oklahoma State) could follow Texas A&M to the SEC. Should the Big 12 implode, schools such as Texas Tech and the Oklahoma schools (if they aren't in the SEC) could seek membership in an expanded Pac 12.

Other schools rumored to be targets of the SEC include Florida State, Georgia Tech, Clemson, and Louisville.

A&M "Intends" to Move to SEC

This ESPN.com article states that Texas A&M "intends" to leave for the SEC. Conferences generally like to have an even number of teams, to be able to provide full dockets of league play each weekend without one of the teams having a bye or playing a nonconference opponent (although the Big 10 went many years with 11 schools after adding Penn State).

Accordingly, rumors are abuzz regarding who else might shift to the SEC, should the A&M move come to fruition. Clemson (in South Carolina) and Florida State, each from the ACC, have been mentioned. The above-linked ESPN.com article gives more prominence than I've seen elsewhere to the possibility of A&M's Big 12 mate Missouri jumping to the SEC. As if the Aggies' (potential) departure wouldn't be devastating enough to the Big 12, a Missouri exit would have the damaging effect of ending the intense Missouri-Kansas basketball rivalry (at least within the context of the same league).

Being at Texas Tech, I've tended to look at the latest round of proposed changes through a Big 12 lens. From a different perspective, a blogger known as "Mr. SEC" reviews what he considers five myths of that conference expanding.

A&M to SEC Momentum Builds

To paraphrase Yogi Berra, Texas A&M to the Southeastern Conference (SEC) is not official until it's official. Still, as seen in this screenshot from a site that covers A&M sports, the momentum certainly is building.

Birmingham News columnist Jon Solomon writes that the move "feels inevitable." Here are what I feel are key excerpts from Solomon's piece:

Texas A&M would be very attractive to the SEC on several fronts. Culturally, the school fits. The SEC would get into the Dallas and Houston television markets, giving the conference a lot of leverage to renegotiate with its media deal with ESPN. Just as importantly, add a school in Texas and the SEC would have a foothold to recruit in the massive football-crazy state.

Texas A&M has clearly grown weary of Texas and the Longhorn Network, which hasn't even premiered yet. Texas rules the Big 12. That's why the conference won't survive long-term. There's too much in-fighting for this to last.

The A&M story is appearing increasingly in national sports outlets. And if Lubbock, Texas, the home of Texas Tech University and the place where I live, is representative of other Big 12 towns, Aggie talk is ubiquitous in select local markets. Today's two-hour radio show Tech Talk was devoted entirely to the possible A&M move and its implications for Texas Tech and more of the same is planned for the coming days. I heard someone use the term "secede" for what A&M would be doing, which may have been a play on words (as in SEC-ede).

It is being reported that Texas A&M's Board of Regents will meet on August 22 to deliberate on the matter.

An Aggie exit would leave the Big 12 with nine teams (given the previous departures of Nebraska to the Big 10 and Colorado to the Pac 10, now Pac 12). My own guess, for whatever it's worth, is that if A&M were to leave the Big 12, the University of Texas would become an independent in football (a la BYU) and the Big 12 would be history. The Longhorns would presumably need to "hook" up with some other league for sports other than football.

Texas A&M: The Trigger to More Realignment?

Via Double-T Nation, I came across an article from TexAgs.com entitled "Will A&M Trigger the Next Realignment Explosion?" The article suggests that Texas A&M continues to keep open the option of leaving the Big 12 for the SEC (which would almost certainly be part of an even larger SEC expansion). The reason? Indications that the Aggies' archrival, the University of Texas, is "essentially see[ing] if going at it alone will be a viable future option," according to the article. In other words, some inside (and presumably also outside) of Aggieland think that UT, armed with its new Longhorn Network television venture, may try to become an Independent in athletics. BYU, of course, has already set an example of bolting from a conference (the Mountain West) to go Independent, at least partially.

Pitino Chimes in on Organizing the Big East

Louisville men's basketball coach Rick Pitino has some ideas on splitting the Big East conference into divisions, as the league prepares to take on its 17th team (and perhaps more).

State of the WAC

Conference realignment talk has obviously died down quite a bit compared to last year. However, for those keeping track of every move, Seattle University will be joining the Western Athletic Conference. This article on the move also delves into the long-term challenges of the WAC, namely attracting additional football-playing schools (Seattle is not one) and managing the huge geographic spread of member schools (encompassing states from Washington to Louisiana).