crashcarson15

If there is a monetary benefit, it either comes through: The creation of a late night TV slot for the ACC to offer to ESPN; the SEC isn't going to be offering up 10:30 ET kickoffs, which means Big XII games are the only inventory ESPN could have for the late slot A potential ability to re-negotiate terms of the existing agreement (which could be bad for the league, but also could be a chance for ESPN to secure Florida State if they're concerned about the 'Noles breaking the GoR and going to the Big Ten) Stanford and Cal to the ACC probably makes more sense than any move to this point to be honest, given the context. It's more stability for the smaller schools in the ACC that probably aren't getting a B1G or SEC invite down the road (which may be most of the league), and the academic-minded schools could love the idea of getting a jump-start on an FBS mini-Ivy to carry them through the inevitable Clemson and FSU departures. Plus, the travel isn't really their concern — most basketball/volleyball/tennis/etc. teams would probably make one trip to the Bay Area every other year to play both schools, which at that point is more a novelty that could actually help recruiting than a chronic issue. Obviously, the travel would be a nightmare for Stanford and Cal, but any scenario at this point is a nightmare for them and keeping a seat at the big kids' table might be worth the sacrifice vs. having to put their non-revenue sports somewhere else (and at least you can fly direct or direct+bus to a lot of the league from SFO).

Stanford has the money to go independent if they want to and just eat the costs, but they also probably have the money to ask into the Big Ten and take like, no TV share and just be there for vibes and to park their hyper-successful Olympic sports. Cal is broke because it turns out building a football stadium right on top of a fault line isn't a great idea. They're the school with the most uncertain outlook in all of this, IMO.

To some degree there's always going to be a mismatch when you have an overly metallic helmet paired with non-metallic pants, but I thought the pants from the Champion-era fauxback they did in 2019 did a much better job of matching the helmet than the more mustardy shade does. Would prefer to see the school do this shade of gold across the board.

Yeah, I really don't mind the green pants. Would probably prefer gold pants, but would also prefer gold pants that match the helmet better.

Notre Dame has been doing it for a few years in basketball, albeit with (I think) a darker gold: They have a navy version as well. I'm not a huge fan, partially for readability's sake and partially because I just don't like flat gold lettering for ND (football jersey numbers have always been white-on-navy, for example).

The helmets are a mess, but within the City Connect confines … I actually like the Pirates' set, probably because they look like the Pirates. The color blocking has historical significance with the franchise, the hat and jersey could both pretty easily be mixed-and-matched with other elements of their uniform set, and there's nothing really over-the-top about the design. I still like the Angels and Marlins sets above anyone's because I think they're both really nice jerseys that could serve as primary designs, but beyond that, give me sets like the Pirates and White Sox that fit really well with the existing brand over maybe better looks that don't fit with the overall brand.

There are plenty of things that keep Louisville from being a top expansion/relocation candidate, but the KFC Yum! Center itself is a pro-style arena and not one of those reasons.

This does bring the football field in line with the logo and wordmark Louisville currently uses on its basketball court.

The :censored:ty thing about the A's leaving Oakland is that the market really hasn't had the chance to show itself over the last 30 years given the stadium situation, but Oakland is also one of the like, 15 markets in MLB that is perfectly expendable for any number of other places if the stadium situation is bad. This is probably true of every pro sports league (well, except the NFL, where like, every team is expendable), but it's exacerbated in baseball because (a) 81 home dates and (b) baseball stadiums don't lend themselves to other uses the way NBA and NHL arenas do. I don't know that Las Vegas will necessarily work for MLB, but I think it'll probably be as fine as any other place would be and will be a neat park to visit.

Yeah, like, this UConn team was very comfortably the best team in the country outside of the like, four weeks in the middle of the season where they entirely forgot what they were doing. Finished at No. 1 in KenPom by more than 2 points despite having a 2-6 run in the middle of the season — without that stretch, they would've been a clear No. 1 overall seed and favorite in the tournament, and all our parity narratives would've been at least a little different. Extremely good basketball team, in contrast to 2014, which just kinda went on a random heater.

Man, I just don't know how you can be a baseball fan and not love this tournament. It's been a shining example of everything that makes baseball great — atmosphere, passion, tension, culture.

Nah, if you're gonna make any changes to the First Four, it should be to go the other way and make all four games between at-large teams, not conference champions. Two conference champions leave every year without playing in the actual tournament proper, and that's never sat well with me. The romanticism of the tournament isn't about a 16 vs. 16 matchup in Dayton, it's about getting the chance to play on Thursday or Friday, experience the environment, upset a 1-seed, etc. Everyone likes to talk about the positive of how it means two 16-seeds get to win a game in the tournament, but the downside of the two 16-seeds who are in the tournament but not really in the tournament is greater, IMO. Restructure the tournament shares so going to the First Four isn't a financial benefit, and give every team that earned its way into the tournament an actual spot. (You'll also get the side effect of better matchups in Dayton.)

It’s wild how entrenched some baseball fans are against Rob Manfred that they’ll argue against literally anything MLB does these days. The pitch clock improves the in-stadium experience so much (speaking as a baseball guy) and I’ve come around on shift restrictions. Big bases are great. At the end of the day, most sports have put rules in place over time to counteract “bad” tendencies that have entered the game — a shot clock and 3 seconds in basketball; illegal formations in football; offside and icing in hockey; etc. Hell, volleyball is only a couple decades removed from entirely changing how the sport is scored. The difference with baseball is it took like, 150 years for the game to evolve into a flawed meta.

I don't know whether either of them should be in the Hall or not, but guys like Jim Edmonds and Kenny Lofton being one-and-done on the ballot is one of the worst byproducts of the BBWAA's dick-measuring contest the last decade on Bonds, Clemens, etc. I'm happy that Scott Rolen got through his first year and got a fair shot at his candidacy. I think it's very cool and fine that he's going into the Hall.

The issue with splitting FBS in half is that the NCAA more or less tried that 40 years ago, and dozens of schools realized that it's better to be on the outside in FBS than competing for a championship in a lesser division (particularly in the current bowl game and TV economy). Realistically, the 12-team playoff is as good as it's likely to ever get for the non-power schools — they actually get national championship access as a collective, but they're not diluting the power schools' access in a significant way that would freeze them out. Also, to be very clear, the playoff takes the top six conference champions, irrespective of conference. Would we expect the 2020 scenario where a Pac-10 champion is unranked and two Group of 5 champions make the playoff to happen regularly? Maybe not, but there's not this explicit shut-out of the Group of 5 schools. No playoff format is suddenly going to make people in Akron care more about the Zips than Ohio State. The big schools are the big schools because they're the big schools. That'll largely always be the case (with the current format providing the groundwork for a couple power "mid-major" programs — a la Gonzaga — to develop).

The hatred of Kevin Warren from most Big Ten fans is pretty ridiculous to me — schools like Indiana or Minnesota who’d be irrelevant in the conference realignment carousel (see like, Kansas) are now gonna make like, a gazillion dollars because of moves and TV contracts he’s signed. He’s solidified the league as the clear No. 2 conference in college athletics financially and has provided a lot of stability to a bunch of schools that wouldn’t have it if they were in the ACC, Big 12 or Pac-12. Fun fact: The ACC has won more football national championships since 2013 (3) than the Big Ten has since 1971 (2.5). I’d actually be really interested in a documentary or long form on the mythology of the Big Ten / how they’ve leveraged what’s mostly the Ohio State brand into this power position.

I say this a lot about high school sports where I think it's really true, but college sports would probably be better on the whole if football conference affiliation was split off entirely from other sports. Football is unique in that it's a once-a-week, big-money endeavor — the death of the original Big East is obviously the biggest example, but this landscape where the Big XII will have teams in West Virginia, Florida and Utah and the Big Ten will have two California schools and a New Jersey school is just unnecessary for pretty much every other sport. The MVFC works pretty well as a proof-of-concept IMO by not forcing a school like Youngstown State into a conference for other sports where they aren't within 6 hours of another league member (compare this to the Horizon League, where 8 of the other 10 members are within ~5 hours of YSU). I can't necessarily endorse the concept of schools lighting money on fire to play at the FBS level, but the idea of a football-only conference of misfits is a hell of a lot smarter than an all-sports conference of misfits.

It's automatically better than their previous set insofar as it's actually a coherent uniform set — no gold on some uniforms and not on others, no weird color mismatches, script styles, treatments, etc., between uniforms. I also really like the single-color lettering on a navy jersey, given that the "TC" logo isn't outlined (I always thought it was awkward to have single-color treatment on the hat, then outlined on the jersey). I'm a big fan of the road pinstripes and think the road jersey is pretty solid, but for the most part do think this feels a little unfinished (which just seems like modern jersey trends at this point). I think the color balance on the home jersey is a little off, where red is presented as the dominant color on the home jersey on its own. The whole thing is fine, mostly.

SMU is, functionally, infinitely richer than any of Fresno State, Hawai'i, UNLV, etc., is in a market and recruiting territory that actually matters (that the league doesn't already have access to), and actually has money that's interested in interscholastic sports. It also gives the Pac-12 the option of having the occasional game in the noon ET time slot as part of a TV contract.

I get that it's rooted in the whole "people hate Notre Dame thing", but arguing that a program that went 54-10 over the last five seasons isn't good is just such a weird way to consume college football to me. Reducing the sport to Alabama, Clemson, Georgia, Ohio State and occasionally LSU as the only teams that matter misses like, 90% of what makes college football interesting.

From a Notre Dame perspective, I think this playoff field bolsters independence rather than offers incentive to join a conference (remember that ND's athletic director was one of the four guys who drew up this plan). Six at-large berths means ND will always have a very clear path to making the playoff and, if the program remains at its current level, will make said playoff frequently. I also don't think the inability to get a bye is a big deal and, if the playoff doesn't re-rank between rounds based on the actual rankings vs. seeding, I think you could make a strong case that being the No. 5 or No. 6 seed is better for a team like ND than being the No. 3 or No. 4 seed. 2021 Notre Dame would have been seeded at No. 6 as an at-large, needing to beat No. 11 Utah at home and No. 3 Cincinnati to make a semifinal. Had ND been the ACC champion though, for example, they would've been seeded at No. 4 and bracketed to match up with No. 5 Georgia in a neutral quarterfinal. I would much rather try and win the first two games than have to win one against Georgia. If we operate in the idea where the lion's share of power will be concentrated in the B1G and SEC (plus Clemson), there's at least one non-elite program getting a bye every year. That team is likely to be the No. 4 seed, even if it goes undefeated, and would represent a favorable matchup for whoever finishes at No. 5 (which would likely be an unbeaten ND team's seed). Trying to beat a non-power champion, then a weaker power champion, is probably more appealing to ND than being matched up with whichever of Alabama or Georgia doesn't win the SEC in a quarterfinal.

I would assume the setup is for scheduling purposes — if you went to a plan of 13/division, 6/league and 3/interleague (6/interleague rival), you'd only be set up for four 4-game series / eight 2-game series the entire season, with everything else being 3-game series. Doing it this way allows them to have a healthy mix of 2-, 3- and 4-game sets inside the division, plus the flexibility for a pair of 2-game sets in interleague and some additional 2- and 4-game sets against league opponents. I'd guess there's scheduling advantages to that.

The biggest problem with "March Madness, but make it college football" is that the teams that would benefit most are ones like 2021 Ohio State, 2020 Oklahoma, 2019 Alabama, 2018 Georgia, etc. — teams that already have elite talent and make the playoff regularly, but stumbled a couple times too many during the regular season. If you bloat the field of the playoff, it reduces the value to a program of actually making the program, and now you're asking your upstart to win multiple big games against teams with more talent just to make a "final four". Let's take Cincinnati in 2021 and turn the tournament into a 24-team, March Madness style tournament. This means 4 regions of 6 teams, each seeded 1-through-6. We avoid any rematches and teams from the same conference in the same region, where possible. Applying these restrictions and roughly trying to stay on the "S-curve" gives Cincinnati the following region: No. 1 Cincinnati – BYE No. 4 Oklahoma vs. No. 5 Clemson No. 2 Ohio State – BYE No. 3 Utah vs. No. 6 Louisiana Cincinnati making the current four-team playoff is a huge deal for the program — but because we've made our tournament "March Madness", we suddenly put Cincinnati in a spot where there's a really good chance they become a one-and-done team. At the very least, we're forcing them to beat two top-5/10 overall talent teams that had disappointing seasons just to make the "final four" that, in real life, they qualified into with a really good season. Obviously, not all upstart teams get the access in the current system that Cincinnati does, but FCS having a 24-team playoff hasn't kept that division from having dominant teams that win year-in, year-out, and I don't think anything material would change at the FBS level other than an illusion of hope. There's a middle ground here that improves the current system without a radical change.

Not necessarily a conference realignment thing, but IU and Purdue are splitting IUPUI like they did IPFW a few years ago. IUPUI has always been IU with some Purdue mixed in, so I would assume IU-Indianapolis will be the D1 moniker when the change goes through in 2024 (the opposite change from IPFW, which was always Purdue with some IU mixed in). I will be curious if Purdue-Indianapolis chooses to sponsor athletics -- they're likely to have a pretty decent enrollment compared to IU-Fort Wayne.

I did notice that the Field of Dreams jerseys aren't on the Majestic/standard template — this may have been covered at some point in the thread, but I wonder if Nike will finally move over to its own template next year? (Side note: these half button-up jerseys are interesting.)