Sunday, June 20, 2010

Trading Utah for Boise State

If pictures really are worth 1,000 words, I need write little more about Boise State than that my impression of them is incurably colored by the mere existence of this fan.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Frogs Omaha-bound

Schloss's crew, following sophomore Kyle Winkler's dominating performance on the mound, knocked Texas out of the baseball post-season, and earned their first trip to Omaha for the college world series. Congrats, Frogs. Florida State awaits.









For a hilarious bit of gamesmanship, hear a Longhorn fan heckle Bryan Holiday ("get in the batter's box and shut up") second before Holiday hits one out of the park (literally) to put the game on ice.

Friday, June 11, 2010

Rumor mill spits out the best possible scenario for MWC

Here it is, folks, supposedly from the BYU AD's mouth: the best possible outcome for TCU and the MWC, after the expansion dust settles:

Kansas is in talks with the Mtn West as we speak and has been for a few days now... Kansas State [also]. ... Mizzou also contacted the Mtn West and is gathering information just in case. ...The Mtn West is scheduled to get BCS status (according to the BCS Commissioner) in 2011. The BCS has also informed the Mtn West that if they do get BCS status in 2011 and the Big12 collapses, the Mtn West is "very likely" to take over the BCS Fiesta Bowl auto-bid hosting slot. ...
The Mtn West will be taking 3 teams and only 3 teams [Boise, Kansas, K-State or Missouri]. They currently have 9 teams and the Mtn West Commish says they will halt expansion at 12 because the Mtn West does not have a big TV deal like the PAC10 will have. In 2015-2016 the Mwc Commish said the league would consider adding 2-4 more teams if the TV deal is increased dramatically at that time.
If this is true, and it happens, the MWC would be a better spot than anybody could have imagined even just a week ago. This would make the Mountain West a first-class basketball conference, a BCS autobid football conference, with better than just an at-large affiliation with the big bowls. And a conference poised to garner a vastly superior TV deal than its current one.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Shock and awe: NCAA to put the hammer on USC?

While we're dealing in explosive imagery, count me as shocked and awed if ESPN's and the LA Times's report that USC is getting substantial sanctions is true. They say USC is getting whacked with a 2-year bowl ban, 20 less scholarships, and forfeitted wins.

So USC's hopes of returning to the Rose Bowl are gone up in smoke, as will its recruiting classes currently in progress, and if the players get penalty-free transfers to other programs, its prospects for winning seasons these next few years...

Perhaps the Wimple shall foreswear chiding the NCAA for treating its banner programs more lightly than its smaller programs. As a lawyer, the Wimple would advise USC to sue Reggie Bush for damages; he's good for 'em, and guilty as sin.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

An appropriate interpretive visual

News reports are proliferating that Nebraska will join the Big10 Friday, meaning the Big12 is on ice. For that matter, so is the rest of college football as we know it. Here's ESPN, Chicago WGN/Tribune, Omaha World-Herald. The next big pieces of realignment are outlined here (nothing new, just that it's going to happen) LATimes (saith the Times's source: it's "locked and loaded"). Colorado apparently has already been invited, and has accepted. Here's the Pac10's press release saying as much.


What remains to be seen is how the pieces will fit together once reassembled. One thing's for sure: Baylor is being left out in the cold. Texas, Texas A&M, and Texas Tech are pledging solidarity among themselves as a trio, but not as a Bears-included quartet.

Kansas schools in the MWC? Market numbers.

Now that we all can agree that eyeballs on TV commercials is one of only two relevant matters driving expansion (the other being the yet-unwritten rules regarding double autobids to the BCS), let's examine the numbers of a hypothetical move of Boise and the Big12 leftovers to the Mountain West.

So, what would happen if an expanded MWC included those schools, and this expansion triggered a media deal that included TV coverage in the basic cable in the Dallas/Fort Worth, Waco, St. Louis, San Diego, Las Vegas, and then every other cable market in Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and those markets close to Kansas City in Missouri? (This list of markets is in the first comment below this post.)

The MWC, from the outside looking in:

Few glimpses into the psyche of the cartel could have been more revealing than the ESPN news story posted today on the (self-proclaimed) World Leader’s website. The story examined Kansas’s predicament, facing all of the expansion talk as a spectator, with the possible outcome being a retreat to the Mountain West. (The story didn’t name that conference specifically as a destination, but it made clear that this was the species of hell that the school was contemplating, with increasing sweat and seriousness.) “Kansas' status as a major player in college athletics has been placed in [jeopardy]. … strip Kansas, Kansas State and Iowa State of the safety and privileges of membership in a Bowl Championship Series conference.” You know: one of those outsider conferences.

What would joining the Mountain West be like?

Thursday, June 3, 2010

The pertinent expansion question in three words: double BCS autobid?

Amid the rumors that suddenly jumped to fever pitch Thursday lurks an issue that is yet fully aired: under which circumstances will a super-conference be given two autobids to the BCS? Will a 14-team conference with two divisions get them? Or will only the truly mammoth sixteen-team conference get them?

The Wimple believes this has become the critical issue driving expansion, now that it is settled that humongous TV contracts will follow BCS conferences that are at least 12 teams large. For example, there is no way Texas and OU will join USC in a conference that gets only one measley autobid to the big January bowls. That's just too many big fish in the pond-- who cares how big the pond.

Why Boise and the MWC are better apart

The Wimple has advocated a ten-team MWC (Boise being the 10th) for years– but today admits the fault of that advocacy. Boise being in the WAC for as long as possible before joining the MWC is a brilliant move, even if the brilliance results from an unintended result. While Boise and the MWC champ are in different conferences, both can (and frequently do) go undefeated, and in years like 2009, both can land a BCS berth. This is an unqualified good, for both teams, conferences, and indeed, for all of college football.

However, when Boise is a MWC-member, the chances of a MWC team going undefeated shrink substantially. From TCU’s perspective, running the Utah-BYU-AFA guantlet every year is hard enough. So hard, in fact, that only twice have the Horned Frogs done it unscathed. TCU has run the Utah-BYU-AFA-Boise gauntlet each of the last two seasons, and emerged 3-1 from it both times.

The Wimple thinks that the addition of Boise State to the MWC is a good idea only if a one-loss MWC champion is guaranteed a BCS berth.