The existential threat of not being an elite college football program

Nick Wosika/Imagn Images By Andy Greder / St. Paul Pioneer Press Today at 3:45 PM Listen Comments Share Share this article News Reporting News Reporting Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. The Trust Project What is this? The current value of playing in conferences in major college football was a hot topic this week, with Wake Forest coach Jake Dickert and Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz each questioning the value of a league in a new world with expanded playoffs and the end of conference championships. “Why are we associated with conferences anymore if we’re not playing for a conference championship? Drinkwitz asked. ADVERTISEMENT Starting next year, the College Football Playoff field will double in size from 12 teams to 24, and conferences will stop playing championship games because the playoff schedule will grow and those title games could kill a playoff berth for the losing team. “I don’t like it personally, right now,” Dickert said. “… But you can see why, even this year, it can be an elimination game. (Independent) Notre Dame doesn’t have to play that game. … But to say we’re not going to have conference champions, why do we have conferences? It just feels odd.” The Athletic took a shot at imagining what a 24-team bracket would look like this season. Dickert’s 8-1 Demon Deacons would be in, and so would Drinkwitz’s 6-3 Tigers. The Gophers (5-4, 3-3 Big Ten) are not. Right now, the Big Ten Conference is doing more for Minnesota’s football program than the Gophers are doing for the conference. Minnesota sits in a tie for ninth in the 18-team standings heading to Penn State (5-4, 2-4) for a Saturday night game in Happy Valley. Gophers AD Mark Coyle routinely talks about Minnesota’s need to be relevant within the league but in football, they are currently just part of the pack. The substantive changes in college football have created whiplash in recent years and they’re not slowing down. The fear for a program like Minnesota is would the Big Ten’s elite — teams such as Ohio State or last year’s national champion Indiana — breaking away from the likes of Minnesota and Purdue to go independent or join forces with the elites of the SEC and a few from the ACC and Big 12 to form a super league. MORE COLLEGE SPORTS: Game day notebook: Bison LG Empey has new club and it's not golf 1h ago Bison Bowl Projections: Return of the MAC 1h ago How to watch NDSU play Hawaii on Saturday 2h ago That league or collection of independents would be TV-rights behemoth, and teams on the outside would be left with fewer TV deal dollars to share — dollars that help pay the skyrocketing cost of fielding football and basketball rosters via revenue sharing to pay players, and help cover costs for the department as a whole. ADVERTISEMENT “I would argue the Big Ten is a super league,” Gophers athletics director Mark Coyle told the Pioneer Press in October. “I would argue the SEC is a super league. … There’s no doubt that the Big Ten and the SEC have separated themselves a little bit.” Two years ago, the Big Ten and SEC threatened to begin their own postseason, and that led to more control of what this week became the 24-team CFP format. But last year, rumors of of 32- or 48-team upper class in major college football were circulating, and Minnesota might not be one of the chosen. “In terms of positioning in Minnesota … we’re a legacy member of the Big Ten conference,” Coyle said. “I think there’s six of us remaining in the conference (from) when the conference was formed back in 1896.” But that link — Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois, Northwestern, Wisconsin and Purdue were founding members of the Western Conference that soon became the Big Ten — seems more like nostalgia than juice in the rapidly changing football ecosphere. Consider that Oregon State and Washington State, founding members of the Pac-10 Conference, were left scrambling when Oregon, Southern Cal, UCLA and Washington left to join the Big Ten and now play as the only extant members in a Pac-12 with various mid-major programs such as Boise State, Utah State and Fresno State. But Coyle added what he sees as the teeth to the situation: The Big Ten’s grant-of-right contract with its members. Designed to keep programs from leaving, it ties football and basketball revenue to the conference and currently extends to 2036. A provision of the Protect College Sports Act, currently in the House of Representatives after being passed by the Senate, is intended to prevent the Big Ten and SEC from “joining forces to create a super league,” bill author and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz told Yahoo Sports. Provisions in the potential bill would cap conference membership at 22. ADVERTISEMENT Miami (Fla.), currently 8-1 and ranked fifth in the AP poll, is positioning itself for a move outside of the Atlantic Coast Conference because of money. “We are proud members of the ACC,” Miami president Joe Echevarria told Yahoo. “If the economics were even, we wouldn’t be having any of these conversations.” The Gophers reported $63 million from the Big Ten for media rights in 2025, which is, on average, $25 million more than the ACC members receive, Echevarria said. Echevarria described three next routes he sees for the Hurricanes. “As an AAU (Association of American Universities) research institution, we line up with the Big Ten’s profile,” he said. “… On the geography idea, we line up better with the SEC. … If we have to go independent, I like our chances because we are a national brand.” Once seen as disadvantage, independence is gaining traction. Current No. 3 Notre Dame resisted joining a conference for years, in large part because the football program is a big enough property to earn its own national TV rights deal. As part of the new CFP format, the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC have agreed to drop their football championship games — and some of the money that came with it — in order to clear calendar space for the 24-team tournament. ADVERTISEMENT As Dickert and Drinkwitz said, why even play in conferences anymore? ESPN contributor Josh Pate laid it out this way using Notre Dame and new potential streaming partners such as Amazon and Netflix. “The Ohio States, the Alabamas, the Miamis of the world, when they start to look around and say there is no benefit to us being in a conference anymore, this is the hammer-home point, Pate said. ” ‘We are probably worth more on our own … than we are with this conference patch on our chest. “There is no more motivation to be in conference. It is not a question of if that will happen. It’s just a question of when.” Text Example ____________________________________ This story was written by one of our partner news agencies. Forum Communications Company uses content from agencies such as Reuters, Kaiser Health News, Tribune News Service and others to provide a wider range of news to our readers. Learn more about the news services FCC uses here. Comments Share Share this article News Reporting News Reporting Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. The Trust Project What is this? 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