Football Follies

[cactuswatcher]

Musical Conferences: Congratulations to Maryland, which is joining the Big Ten in 2014. We expect to hear very soon that Rutgers will be joining with them. I'm not sure why any major conference wanted to go to 14 teams. But I get the distinct impression that it's the TV networks that have been driving (and perhaps funding) the most shocking moves this decade from behind the scenes. I'm not talking about just suppling big money to the conferences through TV rights. Missouri which by law has to fund its sports programs solely through sports revenues, seemingly had no legal trouble with borrowing money from the university's general fund to pay its $12M exit fee from the Big XII. Missouri *has* leaned on the usual big donors for coming stadium improvements, but the fee money, it is said, was borrowed from the university. No large screams about program cuts came from the rest of the university and I know of no increase in general funding from the state, so exactly where did the money come from? Did the university 'money-launder' CBS funds to get it done? The ACC currently requires its members to pay an appalling exit fee of something like $50M. We can expect that to go to court just long enough for the ACC to agree to some compromise. Still it will be a lot of money for a school with serious financial issues in its sports programs to suddenly pull out of its wallet. So is ESPN quietly going to fund the deals to get more big-time college football viewers in the Baltimore, DC and NYC areas?

At least the famous Illinois-Maryland, and Northwestern-Rutgers rivalries will be preserved cross division. Or is it Northwestern-Maryland? Or Wisconsin-Rutgers? Maybe ESPN is looking to add Idaho and New Mexico St to bring them upto eight-team divisions if CBS and the SEC doesn't grab them up first.