Can the Non-Football Sports Recover From Chaotic Realignment?

 

Warren Grimes

Coach Tara VanDerveer has spoken of the grief of seeing the storied Pac-12 conference abruptly disintegrate.  As the conference’s number one WBB proponent, VanDerveer can rightly lament the undoing of what was probably the nation’s number one WBB conference. 

This was a money and football driven event.  Football provides the money, the money comes from big sports networks, and the networks care about their own bottom line and not much else.  Among college women’s sports, women’s hoops generates the most revenue, but it is a pittance compared to football.  Neither VanDerveer nor any of the other non-football college coaches had a meaningful say in what transpired.

Realignment is about the rich getting richer.  Schools fortunate enough to join the Big Ten or the SEC will get more revenue.  Those with the least leverage, such as Washington State or Oregon State, are likely to end up with less revenue. 

Realignment is a particular threat to many non-football college sports.  Instead of regional-based conferences, many of these teams (some playing 2 or 3 times as many games as football) now must reckon with the extensive travel involved in a national conference.  According to the Stanford press release, 14 sports will have to deal with significant scheduling changes. That likely includes major non-football sports such as basketball, volleyball, soccer, swimming, track and field, and gymnastics.

That hurts.

That hurts the student athletes.  They must spend substantially more travel time.  Their lives as students are more disrupted; stress and mental health issues could worsen.   

That hurts coaches and staff, who in addition to enduring expanded travel, must also reckon with more  complex scheduling.

That hurts fans, who lose traditional rivalries and have greater difficulty travelling to away matches. 

That hurts athletic departments that must pay costs for more expensive travel (perhaps chartering planes for some of this travel). 

That hurts recruiting for schools that lose out on revenue or prestige, and perhaps for schools that must endure the most disruptive travel.

And it even hurts the environment as hundreds of athletes log more time on planes travelling cross country on multiple occasions.

So what’s to be done?

Facing this challenge, the non-football coaches and staff should fight for their programs.  They should pressure their own athletic departments to make adjustments that will protect the integrity of their sport.  Doing so in coordinated fashion will increase their leverage.  The big winners among the Pac-12 schools are UCLA and USC, which have the most lucrative payouts from joining the Big Ten.  But the non-football sports at these schools face burdens similar to everyone else.   They are in this together.

The women’s basketball coaches of the soon to be former Pac-12 know each other and care about the future of their sport.  As VanDerveer leads her team through the final Pac-12 season, she can interact with her colleagues from other schools about how best to preserve the values of their sport.  Other non-football coaches will have a similar opportunity.  They have several points of leverage to influence future developments.

Let’s start with economics.  Since money is driving realignments, why shouldn’t budget-conscious administrators also seek to cut travel budgets by scheduling more regional games.  Of course, the advantages go well beyond money, as coaches know well the toll extensive travel takes on them and on their student athletes. 

The big sports networks probably don’t have much money in this game.  Yes, they would want to televise many of these non-football contests, but some of the best matchups will involve regional rivalries and schools that don’t necessarily excel at football (U Conn’s or Gonzaga’s men’s and women’s basketball teams, for example). 

The Pac-12 coaches will soon be split asunder (presumably in four separate conferences), but they can build a network with their colleagues in future conferences.  The interests of non-football coaches in the Big Ten, the Big 12, or the ACC are no different than those of the Pac-12 schools.

Coordinated appeals should focus on several ways of improving the sport and lessening travel burdens.

I.                     Football conference alignments could be separated from the conference alignments of other collegiate sports.  This would be the cleanest solution. Football is unique not simply because it generates the most revenue, but also because of the relatively small number of games played. Freeing the non-football sports from the link to football would allow more regionally based alignments.

II.                   To the extent that non-football sports remain in the same conference with football, several mitigating reforms could lessen the travel burdens.  The conference schedule, for example, could be reduced so that teams have discretion to schedule more regional games.  The conference championship would be based on fewer intra-conference games, perhaps placing greater emphasis on an end-of-season conference tournament. 

III.                 Another variation on this theme would allow each conference member to schedule a set number of games against worthy regional opponents that are not members of the same conference (these games could still count in the conference championship). 

IV.                Inter conference agreements could establish a system of cross conference games that would count toward the conference title, with these games designed to favor regional rivalries.

Realignments are unlikely to end with the demise of the Pac-12.  Other vulnerable conferences, including the Atlantic Coast Conference, are likely to see schools such as Florida State or Creighton bolt for greener (as in the color of money) pastures.  These moves are selfish, even to the point of being ugly, and certainly disrespectful of traditional alignments.  These developments have already sparked negative stories and commentary, including from Sports Illustrated, the Los Angeles Times, PBS, and NPR. 

Do non-profit educational institutions really want to be seen as cut-throat money grubbers who place the dollar above the interests of their own student athletes?  The selfish and decidedly unsavory conduct of schools raises the possibility that one or more committees of a dysfunctional Congress may decide to hold hearings on the realignments.  Members of Congress may disagree on a solution, but they could join hands in holding a hearing that will generate national publicity.  They have done so in the past and it is not unlikely that they will do so again.

A member of Congress from a state or district where a school has suffered revenue or prestige loss from realignment would enthusiastically support such a hearing.  While perhaps unlikely to result in legislation, a hearing could shine a light on the issues and generate indirect pressure for universities to rethink how they deal with each other and with their student athletes.