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.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
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!
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!
Sunday, September 11, 2011
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.
Friday, September 9, 2011
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.
*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.
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
|
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.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
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?"
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
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.
Saturday, September 3, 2011
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.
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.
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.
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 |
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. |
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.
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