Only Frankenstein’s Monster can save CSU now. One leg, shuffling painfully, is Oregon State. The other — same shuffle, same pain — is Washington State.
The torso of the beast comprises the best football brands from the Mountain West. The left arm is Memphis; the right is UT-San Antonio. The head is Tulane, a green wave with metal bolts attached to either side of its neck.
Is it an abomination? Absolutely. But the Atlantic Coast Conference is now talking, with a straight face, about adding two teams — Stanford and Cal — from northern California. Oregon’s volleyball team will soon to be flying to Maryland for a conference match. Sense went out the window two golems go.
“I’m just dumbfounded at how quickly this all moved and transpired,” Craig Thompson, the former longtime commissioner of the Mountain West, told me as our convo turned to realignment. “It’s like, ‘Oh, man, we better do something.’ I don’t know if we’re going to rue (this) day.”
The boat the Rams needed to be on sailed ages ago, when the Big 12 snapped up Cincinnati, UCF, Houston and BYU. The Pac-12 is down to four programs, and two of them — the Cardinal and Bears — want nothing to do with anything that doesn’t involve the Big Ten, the ACC or Notre Dame. It’s mighty tough to snatch a lifeline from the Power 5 when there’s only a Power 4 left in the water.
Now in five years, when the television contract meteor storm that turned college sports into its current burning hellscape comes around again, maybe the Big Ten raids the ACC or the Big 12. And maybe the trickle-down effect then opens up a slot for CSU to parlay its newfound football status (no pressure, Jay Norvell!) on the national scene into a spot in one of those aforementioned, and picked-over, somewhat bigger conferences.
But in the meantime, in the short term, the Rammies and their Mountain West peers are gonna have to make their own boat.
And, frankly, their own monster.
These are certifiable, insane, bonkers, absolute bat-kaka times. If you need any more proof of that, and it physically hurts to type this, it’s because — Lord help us, San Diego State might actually be onto something.
CBS Sports’ Dennis Dodd reported Tuesday that at least one super-western merger plan already hit the skids, a gambit driven by the Aztecs over the last few days. In it, the SDSU reportedly pitched an idea of patching together the cream of the MW with the cream of the AAC, plus the Beavers and Cougars, to try and fill the Pac-12’s “Power 5” vacuum.
Dodd reports that MW presidents declined to get on board. Aztecs athletic director JD Whicker denied any involvement.
Why does Power 5, or Autonomous 5, designation matter? Because they get the first, and biggest cuts, of the College Football Playoff pie, at roughly $80 million. And because just about any athletic body that adds former members of the Pac-12 will be worth more to television broadcasters — or Apple, or Amazon — than the reported $4 million per year, that Mountain West members, including CSU, reportedly get from CBS and Fox.
According to the Office of the State Auditor, the Rammies could use a little extra capital. OK, a lot of extra capital.
On Monday, the auditor’s office released its triennial study of financial data for the state’s 11 NCAA public schools. And it’s a doozy.
The TL:DR takeaway was that a) expenses are far outpacing revenue among Colorado’s public universities; b) only two sports at the Division I or Division II level produced enough self-supporting revenue for the 2022 fiscal year to land in the black — CU Buffs football and Buffs men’s basketball.
CSU’s numbers were especially bleak. Per the auditor’s report, the Rams spent more in the ’22 fiscal year on football ($30.9 million) than CU ($25.5 million) with only $19.2 million in “self-supporting” revenue — ticket sales, media rights, merchandise, etc. — coming back, for a deficit of $11.7 million. (The report posted a Buffs surplus of $22.9 million, and this was for a 12-month period from July ’21-June ’22, before Deion Sanders rolled into town.)
The contrasts between 2013 and 2022 in Fort Collins were even more stark, with the report noting healthy revenue increases of contributions (123%), royalties (148%) and ticket sales (59%) — while the Rams’ coaching salaries jumped 38%, support staff salaries 47% and “direct overhead” by a whopping 13,052%. We’ll give you three guesses as to the specific item of “overhead” that last number is referring to, and your first two don’t count. (Hint: It rhymes with “Lanvas Radium.”)
Bottom line? The Rams’ credit cards are already getting maxed out, and all the bake sales and GoFundMes in the world won’t fix it. More CFP and TV bucks might. (Per the auditor, CSU collected $3.2 million for the ’22 fiscal in media rights revenues; CU took home $18.4 million.)
Thompson, who basically represented the non-Power 5 leagues in negotiations on an expanded, 12-team CFP, fears his lobbying will come for naught if the Pac-12 completely disintegrates. The plan for 2024 was to produce a bracket of a dozen teams composed of the six highest-ranked conference champs, regardless of conference, and six at-large teams.
“If that does happen, (if) those four (remaining Pac-12 members) go to the ACC, then my two-year work with (SEC commissioner Greg) Sankey and (former Big 12 commish Bob) Bowlsby and (Notre Dame A.D.) Jack Swarbick is thrown out the window,” Thompson said. “Because it’ll be five (conference champions) and seven at-larges.”
“Now I still think, I hope, I cross my fingers, (because) again, when I was in those meetings, I felt I was representing 65 schools, not just the 12 in the Mountain West. It was tough, and I have all the respect in the world for Jack and Bob and Greg. And I thought it was a good plan when it came out. I don’t know if it’ll stand the test of time.”
Per Mountain West bylaws, nine of 12 schools — a supermajority — are necessary to approve a formal dissolution of the league. Multiple sources confirmed that any change in MW membership would trigger a window to renegotiate the league’s current broadcast deals, which expire in 2026.
If the Aztecs figure they can’t afford to wait this out, neither can the Rams. A Mountain West Plus, a Pac Something, at this point, would be better than nothing at all. Once you let the beast out of the box, it ain’t going back in.
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