Interesting look at the mileage racked up by the football teams for 2024 … USC’s is bad enough but when you throw in the NC games at LSU and Hawaii, UCLA’s is brutal. And this is just for a half dozen football games. Imagine the toll on sports that play more than once a week. These are NFL-type numbers racked by by college teams here.
I know football drives all things college athletics, but you gotta think a Big Ten west-coast pod with schools like UDub, Oregon, Stanford and Cal has to be somewhere on the horizon for travel costs alone.
If, as some have speculated, the eventual future is two superconferences with perhaps 40 teams each, then it wouldn’t be surprising if they were organized into geographic divisions. But if there are 10 teams in a division then divisional games would pretty much fill up the conference slate, and that’s not gonna fly.
I moved this discussion to a new topic as it seems separate from the original post dealing with Colorado.
Oops - sorry. That wasn’t a reply to the Colorado story (also interesting) … still getting the hang of the new list.
But I do know the “four corners schools” are in the news a lot here in AZ as a major domino in the Pac 12’s future and the Lil’ XII is making a big play for them, it seems. I would give them a better than 50/50 shot at leaving for the rejuvenated Big XII and that would probably send the northern end of the Pac 12 scrambling to the Big Ten (and Wazzu and Oregon State to the Mountain West?).
Also would make the Big XII’s basketball pursuits of Gonzaga and some others interesting … and probably put some heat on our old pal Dr. Phillips and the ACC. Glad we have a secure spot in the Big Ten as it’s still a crazy world out there.
I don’t understand the appeal of Gonzaga to a major conference. They’re a one-sport wonder, and it isn’t the sport that drives the TV contracts. Does anybody give a fig about Gonzaga before March Madness? And if they had to face the competition in a major conference every season, would they still be a powerhouse school? (I guess we’ll sort of get an answer to that when we see how schools like UCF and Houston survive in the reconfigured Big XII after the departure of Oklahoma and UT, but the next round of realignment could happen before the dust settles on the still-pending conference changes.)
Personally, I find it easier to log in to the online interface and post there, and eventually others might decide that’s the best way, too. But I live and work online, so online stuff is what I’m doing all day anyway.
I always thought the Big XII would be the first domino to fall, now it looks like it’ll be the Pac-12.
Right now they’re headed to being similar to Duke. Irrelevant in football with a small unengaged fan base, but make the national news whomever they play in basketball.
Obviously Gonzaga doesn’t have UNC as a double opponent, but the rest of ACC doesn’t add much luster beyond the “vs. Duke”. Virginia, Miami, FSU, BC, NC State, etc. are all single state or single city names in basketball.
Even Louisville, Kansas, and Kentucky at least have some more gravitas in football. Indiana unfortunately lots a lot of its relevance in basketball as the B1G improved and their awful transition from Bob Knight.
Before you take that as a criticism of Duke, Northwestern dreams to be relevant in basketball at that level.
Duke of course beat NU last year in football. So right now I would be happy if NU could be at their level in football alone ; basketball would be nice as well
Regarding Gonzaga ; I can tell you that going to a few of their games agsinst St Mary’s the past several years has been a lot of fun and excitement , particularly when St Mary’s pulled the upset this past winter in their high school atmosphere gym
While like most Catholic schools , ( except ND and BC) they do not have D1 football , they would certainly be a fine addition to anyone’s conference
