College sports realignment gives way to complete chaos

Let’s think about the unthinkable. Last week’s extinction event forces us to wonder about what’s next in college sports. Could the Atlantic Coast Conference evaporate as the Pac-12 is doing right now? Should the Big East be worried?

First rule … ignore all logic. Nobody would make up what’s happening now from scratch. The Power 5 turned out to be a mirage. It’s a Power 2, the Big Ten and Southeastern Conference calling the shots. Credit to the Big 12 for deft responsive maneuvering lately.

Is it really the Big 12 though? It’s more like a bunch of schools in the wilderness huddling by a campfire trying to stay warm. I always thought of the Big 12 as Nebraska-Oklahoma football. Both gone. Texas popped in as a rival for all … gone, see ya. OK, Kansas hoops, still there. But all this chaos isn’t caused by hoops.

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It’s not even caused by football. It’s caused by television networks deciding what the best configuration would be for their dollars. There will be lawyers, sure. But TV consultants rule this world.

Congrats to Penn State, by the way. However crazy the road trips for all your teams, at least you’re in the league of winners, setting this agenda. If Oregon and Washington can join UCLA and USC in joining the Big Ten, you’re telling me Duke and North Carolina and Virginia never would, or Florida State or Miami or Clemson wouldn’t go to the SEC?

After last week’s historic craziness, the Pac-12, Bill Walton’s “Conference of Champions,” is suddenly down to four schools — Stanford, California, Oregon State, and Washington State.

If the ACC’s TV consultants, trying to avoid defections (good luck), offer a home to those four West Coast orphans, they’ll merely contribute to more geographic nonsensical chaos.

Here’s a better idea: Stanford and California should call Gonzaga and discuss a West Coast version of the Big East. Not a football league — find homes for the football programs as stand-alone entities. Just choose eight West Coast schools that could both get a TV deal and make sense from a geographic sense. Then call the Big East and form a basketball scheduling alliance. (See the future … UConn-Stanford women’s hoops has actual value.)

If you pull it off, make sure you call Walton and sign him on to call the games. With Bill on the call, it will sound like West Coast hoops, just like Gus Johnson and Bill Raftery made the new Big East sound like the Big East.

Is this perfect? Nope. Should Oregon State and Washington State join such an outfit? Beats me.

Stanford, despite losing its president to scandal, has the stature and endowment to call its own shots. That school could call the Ivy League and ask for an invite.

This is better, and more sensible. Let’s remember that the power structure in college basketball always evolves. In the 1955 national basketball championship, for instance, San Francisco beat La Salle in the final. Five years earlier, City College of New York beat Bradley. We don’t even need ancient history. Just mention Florida Atlantic, 2023 Final Four.

Football will always be different. The biggest dollars will always win out. More dollars will always be needed. If not for the destruction of the Pac-12, last week’s biggest sports story may have been reported by Sportico, that Florida State is working with JPMorgan Chase, looking to raise capital from private equity firms. A new frontier as the Seminoles presumably try to position themselves for an SEC invite.

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Any of you objecting to players getting paid … if you’re holding to that position, at this point, sorry, you’re lost without a compass. Go find a cool Division III team to watch.

Rick Pitino, of all people, offered a sensible thought the other day about how the NCAA should deal with the chaos. “Doesn’t it make sense for football to break away to separate leagues and allow the rest of the sports to compete regionally? Rivalries remain [in] minor sports … don’t spend half their day looking for bad food at airport restaurants!”

This is spot-on. (I’ve seen so many of those wandering teams in airports waiting for connections.) The solution is becoming more and more obvious even if it comes from a coach who just transferred up from Iona to St. John’s and appears to be a quick student of how to operate the NIL market. As it happens, Pitino has landed in a league that at least seems like a safe haven from the chaos even if the revenue isn’t as rich.

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New NCAA president Charlie Baker has a lot on his plate, starting with the name, image, and likeness situation. But if he wants to build a true legacy, he should figure out this larger mess. The extinction of the Pac-12 requires that Baker give this chaos his full attention. The only way he fails completely is if the NCAA hoops tournament in its present form goes away.

If the unthinkable turns out to be unfixable, Baker can always get a job as a TV consultant. Then he’d be a true power broker.