More realignment fun

So I see now that Cal and Stanford are being courted by the Atlantic Coast Conference, as the realignment fun continues. Well, why not.

Geography left the building a long time ago in this greedfest, after all, and no point lighting a candle for it.  Ditto regional identities, common sense, and the welfare of the student-athletes to which Big Football and Basketball used to pay at least nominal lip service. The whole deal is run by network money now, coaches and ADs and university presidents all genuflecting deeply in service to it.

About the only thing left to say about that is what a sharp-witted good friend said the other day: When do Oxford and the Sorbonne get on board?

I mean, if four West Coast schools can join a formerly Midwest conference, and two other West Coast schools can enter talks with a primarily East Coast conference, all bets are off. Get some of those Cambridge scholars out of the rowing shells and into helmets and pads, and soon they'll be playing Michigan in the Big House so the Big Ten can tap  that lucrative BBC market.

College football, Doctor Who and Fawlty Towers. Now there's a winning trifecta for ya.

It's a silly notion, of course, but silliness is all relative these days. How less silly is it that Rutgers, a MAC-level football school, be allowed to join the Big Ten solely because the Big Ten Network wanted to get its grubbies on the New York media market? Or that Cal and Stanford possibly are in play to become bi-coastal?

And, sure, I get it, this is the new reality, trundling down the path to the ultimate reality: The Power Five conferences become Four, and then Three, and then Two,  eventually evolving into a breakaway entity that reconstitutes itself into what it already is in essence: A semipro rival to the NBA G-League in basketball and a similar developmental league for the NFL.

The NIL and exclusive focus on TV money by university boards and administrators have already put us more than halfway there. Why not go all the way and hammer out deals with the NFL and NBA?

The "non-revenue" athletes can still function in the traditional student-athlete construct. Big Football and Basketball, which are already treated differently, can go their own way, with all the attendant parallels.

Georgia and Alabama become  Falcons/Jaguars properties. Michigan and Michigan State sign on as Lions affiliates. Purdue, IU and Notre Dame become Colts/Bears farmhands; Wisconsin, Nebraska and Iowa feed into the Packers system; Clemson, South Carolina and North Carolina develop talent for the Panthers; and so on, and so on.

What the hey. Go big or go home, right?

Thing is, if you go big, the mid-pack or below schools in Big Football and Basketball get diminished, no matter how heftier their cut of the loot. If I'm, say, Purdue or IU football, how much exponentially harder will life be with USC, UCLA, Washington and Oregon coming into the fold? How many times can they be reasonably expected to beat those schools, and how many more rungs down the ladder do they subsequently get kicked?

It won't matter to the Ohio States, the Penn States, the Michigans, the high-end Big Ten football schools. But Purdue just went from third or fourth or fifth in the conference to seventh or eighth or ninth. And Indiana just went from (most years) 10th or 11th or 12th to 16th or 17th or 18th. 

I don't know about you, but "Come get your ass kicked seven or eight times a year," doesn't sound like a great recruiting pitch to me. But what do I know?

I still think Stanford and Cal are west coast schools.