Expansion Round 1 Epilogue

So expansion has come and gone, and it seems a little anticlimactic.  Boise State went to the Mountain West.  Nebraska went to the Big Ten.  Colorado and Utah have gone to the Pac 10, but it could have been so much worse.  I am sure people in Lawrence and Ames are celebrating the fact that Texas kept their conference together by getting what could or couldn't be (the exact details of the deal are still hazy) one of the most lopsided conference television deals ever.  The folks in Dan Beebe's office likely are patting themselves on the back for selling the conference members on a television deal that doesn't actually exist yet.

I grew up in Kansas City and I know how people there are elated to hear that the conference that allowed the city that we love to enjoy college sports so close to home was going to live to fight another day.  But I want to ask my friends back home, and perhaps the fine folks in Ames, Lawrence, Manhattan, Columbia, and the Big XII offices, one question, what do we do to prevent this in the future?


For starters, let's look at the schools.  Specifically, KU, KSU, ISU, and Mizzou.  There is a distinct feeling that the conference that Beebe recently saved is only temporary.  Texas will stay as long as it is beneficial for them and that may not be long.  The Big XII only has three major football schools, OU, Texas, and A&M.  The rest of the remaining conference remains at best novelty acts (TTech, OkState) in the sport of football.  The worst offenders are the four remaining North schools and Baylor.  Baylor has the luxury of having the ability of the Texas legislature to shoehorn them into the Mountain West or Conference USA but the others are still just as vulnerable as they were before all of this.  Let me say that again, KU, KSU, ISU, and Mizzou are just as vulnerable of taking a potentially massive loss due to expansion as they were before Nebraska left. 

Still celebrating?  Texas has given these athletic departments a small window to make themselves more marketable the next time expansion hits.  It became extremely apparent that these schools were the ones most at risk of getting left behind because of their football programs.  If you are an AD at any of those schools this is the writing on the wall "Football matters most".  The Kansas City Star recently broke down the math on it, noting, "'The public has voted with its pocketbook and its clicker that football is king,” said Neal Pilson, a former president of CBS Sports. 'We ask ‘What does the public want to watch?’ and when we find out we give it to them until they gag.'"


Some schools are certainly ahead of others.  Mizzou football may not be a national power but the school is basically the equivalent of a Purdue or Iowa (more or less) which is not a bad thing.  The school lacks the devoted fanbase that Big Ten and SEC schools which has led to them losing out to bowl bids to Kansas and Iowa State.  If the school proves it's fans care more about the Tigers than the Rams or the Chiefs and the team continues its' recent run of success then there is no reason the well rounded athletic department doesn't make some BCS conference's role call.

KU is the second school which has less to fear.  Yeah yeah basketball blah blah, but just talking about the basketball program misses the point and actually sells the program short.  Lew Perkins was a jerk to many but the man knew what he was doing.  Under his watch football has kept pace and then some in the facilities arms race, more so than any of their counterparts in the remaining North.  The football stadium is set to open brand new luxury boxes and the program recently acquired a state of the art practice facility which has even more additions in the works.  The program has a fanbase which remains fair weather but the teams recent success has at least made their attendance numbers respectable for most conferences (though the stadium obviously doesn't seat the kind of crowds you would find in the SEC or Big Ten).  Right now it is win or bust for the Jayhawks.  The Orange Bowl run in 07 has kept them on the national radar but Turner Gil needs to get this squad to at least compete to seal the deal.  A few good seasons would make KU the most attractive team in the North and Lew Perkins deserves a lot of the credit for that.

The other teams are in far worse shape.  KU's counterpart in Manhattan has certainly been the most successful program in the state but a small fanbase, lack of major media market, and the lack of much recent success make the team the most likely to fall into the Mountain West or Conference USA.  For KState, the best thing to do is that Bill Snyder can get the Wildcats to compete for championships again and to get the alumni base to get active again.  There isn't much hope unless KState proves they can compete at a conference title level again and even that might not be enough.

Iowa State is in by far the worst shape of the four schools.  Geographically, they sit squarely in the footprint of the Big Ten who has no reason to add them.  They have a somewhat smaller fanbase than KState and they even lack the breif history of success the Wildcats have.  However there is still hope that Iowa State can avoid falling into the dregs of IAA.  The school needs to grab some success and hope that a fairly well rounded athletic department makes them attractive enough to one of the non-BCS conferences to add.  This all comes at a horrible time for the Cyclones who recently learned that the state legislature is going to start pressuring them to become self funding, something the school will have a lot of trouble doing if they lose millions of dollars in conference revenue.

The message is clear for all of these schools.  No longer can they sit around and survive off handouts from the southern schools to sustain their athletic departments.  It is time to start fighting for football or to accept the fact that when super conferences do come that they will no longer be among the schools in major conferences.

While these four schools can certainly be blamed for creating the atmosphere of reliance on Texas which caused their near meltdown, Dan Beebe should be the one blamed for reinforcing that attitude through structural control.  Sure, Harvey Perlman made it abundently clear during his press conference that NU left the conference because of Texas and the Longhorns attitude had been what made the conference unviable, a point which is still valid.  But the reason that so many schools nearly lost everything is because Beebe has no been proactive enough to at least keep the conference competitive financially.  Texas doesn't think about leaving if the grass out west isn't actually greener, and the Huskers are much less likely to consider leaving if they are earning the money they deserve and aren't worried that the southern schools are all bolting to the Pac 10.  Indeed, Beebe's lack of proactive work doomed this conference just as much as the attitude and control of the Texas schools.

Where was Beebe years ago when he negotiated an absurdly long television contract that became low only years after it was created?  What was he thinking when he dismissed the conference network idea?  His job is to get the most money for schools in his conferences and, looking at the bad deals that he has created so far, it is obvious that he has failed to do so.

The conference needs someone more bullish and more forward thinking than Beebe at the helm right now.  Hell, they needed someone else years ago but that can't be helped now.  The conference needs to get rid of Beebe an hire someone who can at least hold the pieces together through this next round of expansion.  What about creating a Big X (-II) network in  addition to allowing schools to create their own networks?  A Texas network would be nice but only Texas has the population and interest to make that viable.  That means everyone else is stuck and that is just going to create more dissent.  Adding a conference network that wouldn't eliminate the Texas network would allow other schools to generate money from Texas subscribers (there would have to be just enough Texas programming to make people want both that and the conference channel) and would be financially viable enough for each school to operate.  It may not be perfect but it is an idea, which is more than Beebe has had during his tenure as the commissioner of the conference.

The bottom line is this, change is necessary to avoid potential collapses in the future.  While people in Lawrence and Ames may be celebrating to avoid the conference's survival and their avoidance of mid-majordom, the people in charge have to realize the need for change.  Each of the forgotten five has to realize that their current state of football is what put them on the chopping block and they need to remedy that only by making football bigger in their programs do they stand a chance of survival.  The conference at large needs to recognize that change is needed at the top to improve the financial standing of each member of the conference and to ensure proactivity rather than the reactivity that plagued Beebe's tenure.

Celebrate your conference's survival now, but there is a lot of work in the future.