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Jabberwocky

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Posts posted by Jabberwocky

  1. 21 minutes ago, Kwix said:

    Are they going to ban athletes earning off their NIL?  Because none of those labor organizations have that restriction.

    No, but this means pensions, unionized wage negotiations, medical coverage, and tax liability for the schools. This would open up a whole new can of costs. Who knows what other implications come from this?

     

  2. 2 hours ago, bullet said:

    https://sports.yahoo.com/sources-oregon-state-washington-state-finalizing-scheduling-alliance-with-mountain-west-conference-180632163.html

    Pac 2 not going away just yet.  OSU/WSU about to finalize a scheduling alliance with the MWC, paying them $14 million to drop to 7 conference games and schedule one with OSU/WSU.  Because they keep existing ooc games, Washington St. will play 8 MWC games next year while MWC members will only play 7!

    Seems like a lot of trouble to go through just to pretend to be in a power conference.  They should have been talking to people instead of suing.  Don't think anyone would begrudge them power CFP money for 2 years.  And at least from public statements, it seems like the dispute with the 10 Pac is current year revenues, which the WSU president previously said HAD to be distributed ratably.

     

    This is a message delivered directly from the MWC Commissioner, and is somewhat distorted.

    According to most OSU people, the schedule is being finalized with as many as 4 or 5 MWC teams on it. While the MWC has most likely agreed to some sort of scheduling agreement with the Pac 2, I do not think it will be for 7 games for each team in the Pac 2. The commissioner is probably trying to massage the messaging of the terms of the agreement so that it is acceptable to the members of the MWC. We will see soon though. OSU is hiring Trent Bray to be their HC today, and then they were planning on releasing a schedule tomorrow or the day after.

  3. 1 minute ago, Pato del Muerto said:

    If I am understanding the various looch post screenshots, aggy fired jimbo and all that entails, without doing any preliminary candidate search or vetting prior, will start from scratch and perform an exhaustive search, interview candidates mid season, and have a new coach chosen in 2 or 3 weeks. 

    Sounds like money well spent. 

    • Hook 'Em 1
  4. Spoiler

    On the afternoon of Aug. 9, hours before leaders of ACC schools met again to discuss expansion, Ed Weisiger, the chairman of the N.C. State Board of Trustees, sent a text message to Randy Woodson, the university chancellor. The two often remained in contact throughout August, the month that decided the ACC’s future, and now Weisiger wanted Woodson to have the latest.

    “I heard about this today,” Weisiger wrote, and “wanted you to be aware though you probably know about this.”

    What he was about to send was an unsolicited entreaty from his counterpart at Southern Methodist University, an outline of a deal that at first seemed outlandish. Weisiger referred to it as “bizarre” and “not believable.” Soon enough, though, it would come to change the entire future of the ACC.

    The exchange between Weisiger and Woodson surfaced among the hundreds of pages of documents N.C. State recently released to The News & Observer in response to a public records request. The emails, drafts of statements and text messages detail some of the back-and-forth among decision-makers throughout August. The records don’t tell the entire story, as only Woodson and a few others know it, but they nonetheless provide the most complete accounting yet of how N.C. State came to support expansion, and how various players attempted to sway its leadership.

    SMU WILLING TO COME TO ACC FOR FREE? “BIZARRE”
    On Aug. 9, Weisiger acknowledged his skepticism about what he was about to share but here it was, nonetheless, for Woodson’s consideration: a proposal from SMU — a desperate plea — meant to sell N.C. State on the idea of expansion.

    Weisiger had received the proposal earlier in the day. It arrived via email from David Miller, the chairman of the SMU board of trustees and a successful businessman who’d played football for the Mustangs in the early 1970s. If the ACC was going to expand, Miller wanted to fight for SMU’s inclusion. One of the most important steps, he knew, was convincing N.C. State it was a good idea.

    “My understanding is ACC Presidents meet again tonight to discuss expansion,” Miller wrote to Weisiger. “I’d love to share my thoughts with you about what SMU and Dallas bring to the table, but also (in case you’re not aware) want to let you know that we’ve offered to come into the conference and not participate in media revenues for 7 years.

    “Amounts to several hundred million dollars that can go into ‘Success Pool’. Would appear to help solve issue with bigger football programs, such as yours. We’re fortunate to have a very wealthy alumni base that is passionate about athletics and willing to underwrite whatever costs are incurred to get SMU back to Power Conference status. Sorry to be so long winded in an email but wanted to make sure you and your President were fully up to speed on this.”

    Not long after Weisiger passed Miller’s pitch onto Woodson, Woodson texted back.

    “Welcome to the world of folks lobbying,” he wrote, and Weisiger responded with a “haha” tapback. The next morning Woodson filled Weisiger in on the meeting of ACC presidents and chancellors from the night before: “I’ll be brief, no official vote was taken. There is not sufficient support at this time to invite new programs into the conference.”

    A little more than three weeks passed before there was an official vote. The first and only one, given the resistance among some ACC members — N.C. State included — to support adding Cal, Stanford and SMU to a conference with deep North Carolina roots, and a league in which all 15 members reside in the Eastern Time Zone. Twelve of them are in states that border the Atlantic Ocean.

    When news of ACC expansion became official on Sept. 1, Stanhope Kelly, a former member of N.C. State Board of Trustees, congratulated Weisiger in a text message. N.C. State, after all, had for weeks held an outsized amount of power. It initially had joined three other schools — Clemson, Florida State and North Carolina — in opposition to expansion. For it to happen, one of those schools had to change its position to give the ACC the required three-fourths majority vote.

    N.C. State became the one. Kelly seemed happy with the news.

    “Proud of you, the BOT, and Randy for leading the way,” he wrote to Weisiger.

    “Thanks Stan,” Weisiger wrote back. “Interesting month. I appreciate your input and counsel.”

    It was their first exchange in more than three weeks.

    EXPANSION SKEPTICISM STRONG
    On Aug. 8, Kelly had texted Weisiger asking where things stood with the ACC’s expansion talks. There’d been a lot of speculation. Weisiger responded that he’d soon be speaking with Woodson about it, and that “the long term ESPN deal (and their financial straits) make it tough for any deal to happen.”

    “Adding members to the ACC requires something additive,” Weisiger wrote, “and west coast schools don’t fit that narrative. However, those schools are desperate but adding west coast travel to the athletic depts of the ACC (and vice versa) hardly makes sense. Will let you know.”

    In the weeks to follow, what at first appeared to hardly make sense to N.C. State, and its leaders, gradually became more palatable. Along the way, ACC expansion, which to its opponents was a non-starter of an idea throughout the first half of August, gradually became more realistic until it finally passed. In the six weeks since it did, the question of how and why N.C. State reached its decision to support expansion has lingered. It’s a question that Woodson has avoided answering.

    discussion” and “ACC update” and, when the conversation was apparently at its most serious and formal: “A special meeting of the ACC Board of Directors” to discuss “potential additions to the ACC’s membership.”

    The first of those was Aug. 4 and the second on Aug. 9. University presidents met and talked, with ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips and others, but took no formal vote on expansion. There was no need to, in the absence of the necessary support to expand. The talks could’ve ended there, or in the weeks after, if the league’s four holdouts remained united in their opposition.

    Those who favored expansion, though, needed to convince only one of those schools that it was the right move. But which one? FSU had become the ACC’s most vociferous critic, its petulance and angst a growing and festering sore spot among league administrators and rival schools. Clemson had been quieter in its criticism but, like FSU, had expressed concern about its ability to compete as the ACC’s revenue disparity with the SEC and Big Ten continued to grow.

    UNC, meanwhile, understood its place as the most desired of ACC members, if the league were ever to crumble like the Pac-12. Administrators at North Carolina made no secret of their skepticism surrounding ACC expansion, their belief that adding West Coast schools was more trouble than it was worth. That left N.C. State. If any of the schools opposed to expansion was going to change its position, State seemed the most obvious candidate.

    AN EXPERT VOICE WEIGHS IN
    It was during a rare lull in conference meetings, toward the middle of August, when Weisiger received an impassioned plea from an old friend. It came via a text message, but it was one of those texts that was so long that Weisiger’s iPhone opened it in a separate window. It was from Ben Sutton, a prominent Wake Forest alumnus (with both an undergraduate and law degree) and booster who founded ISP Sports, which in the 1990s became arguably the most influential college sports media and marketing company in the United States.

    Sutton remains one of the most powerful behind-the-scenes influencers in college athletics. Among his friends he counts athletics directors and school presidents and conference commissioners and television and media executives around the country. In mid-August, with the ACC’s expansion talks having stalled, Sutton’s text to Weisiger arrived in capital letters:

    “APOLOGIES FOR THE LENGTH, BUT WANTED YOU TO HAVE INFO I HAVE SHARED WITH MULTIPLE PRESIDENTS AND AD’s OVER THE PAST WEEK.”

    The crux of his long message quickly became clear enough: the ACC could no longer wait.

    “We’ve all been watching this movie for 25 years as the ACC consistently waited for others to make the first move and by the time the league’s leaders decided to respond, they were totally reactionary and playing for 3rd and 4th place in a 5 horse race,” Sutton wrote. He soon summarized his argument in three sentences:

    “The ACC has to expand. And now. It is entirely about setting yourself up for the next move (one of the definitions of strategy).” To Sutton, the ACC’s choices were clear. It could either “ultimately get eaten up,” as he wrote, “or you can play the game.” And the game was “to be the #3 conference in terms of revenue output and one of only three bona fide, financially stable national conferences.”

    Allowing expansion, Sutton argued, would be “like buying insurance for the future members of the ACC. The ACC contract with ESPN requires 14 full members in the league. If Carolina and Virginia leave, by taking Cal and Stanford, you take no haircut. If FSU goes independent (they are seriously considering it), SMU could fill the gap.”

    Sometimes they were in smaller groups, like the one on Aug. 23 among Ryan (the Virginia President), Woodson, Phillips (the ACC Commissioner), UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz, Clemson President Jim Clements and Ben Tario, the ACC’s Chief Financial Officer. Sometimes, the meetings came about spur of the moment, like when Phillips texted both Woodson and Guskiewicz early the morning of Aug. 27 for a meeting with the two of them.

    of schools like that.

    “But never did that enter in conversations that I had with any parties and other people.”

    If that’s true — if N.C. State wasn’t compelled to vote yes in hopes of AAU membership — then the next most-likely explanation is that it came to believe supporting expansion afforded the best chance at long term stability and growth. Stability, at least, is an increasingly valuable commodity in a major college athletics landscape that grows more volatile all the time.

    Two years ago, the SEC announced its intention to add Oklahoma and Texas. Last year, the Big Ten poached USC and UCLA from the Pac-12, and then added Oregon and Washington this year, leading to the death of that conference as it has been known. In expanding west, first into the Central Time Zone and then into the Pacific, the ACC is following what other leagues have done.

    Will the move allow N.C. State, and other schools like it, to secure a place at the table in major college sports? Or will it further destabilize the ACC, and hasten the departures of schools that rejected expansion? There are arguments for both.

    “I tell people, this situation is so fluid,” Weisiger said. “You know, three years from now, five years from now, this could look like a wonderful decision. Or it could look like a horrible decision. But I do know it was the best decision for the short term. At least, I agreed with the chancellor on that. ...

    “But in terms of answering the rest? I mean, it’s a ‘who knows’ on the rest of all that.”

     

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