I have tried for years to get student athletes to shadow me while working in the healthcare system, as an opportunity to check out different jobs that are available. Not just medical careers either; all kinds of business, tech and
other support/ infrastructure jobs are important, meaningful and accessible.
As a fan of Utah athletics, I feel I owe shadowing opportunities to the athletes. Very few think they won’t play pro, but many don’t have a strong degree preference or a back-up plan.
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The hope is these kids get exposure to all the other walks of life the university opens paths to.
It’s not a matter of “if”, but when athletics runs dry for them as individuals. When you’re a teenager or in your early 20s and an athlete, you naturally dream and think you’ll make it big. Those ambitions power the hard work.
Look at all the pro athletes who go back and get their degrees… not because they need the money, but because a spark was ignited, or they promised their mom they would or whatever.
Hopefully the seeds that get planted while they’re in school germinate, either while they’re here or later.
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It does seem like this is the next natural step for conference affiliation.
Oh well. At some point, I’ll pay very little attention to the money-sports.
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The flip side of this is that the bottom feeders help a conference by giving everyone else a near-guaranteed win. They can jump up and bite when the stars align (see Kansas this year) but it’s typically a gimme game for the big boys. They may want to keep that in place.
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As you’re saying, someone has to be at the bottom.
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The money is going to kill the golden goose. College football is not the EPL. “Relegation” has never been, and should never be, a part of its operations. If this is where we are, it may be time to just shut it down. I get the sports being a unifying thing in the campus environment; but it seems the price for it is getting way too high - especially when one considers the “student fees” paid to fund athletics. Given the already high costs of tuition, it seems like this revenues stream is adding insult to injury. Affordability of a college education has been a problem for a long time now. Heaping unrelated costs onto it is bad policy.
I get Taylor Randall loves the athletics programs. That said, if he wants to save them he better start working with the athletic department to make their budgets become self-sustaining, eliminating that fee, and operating as an independent enterprise.
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Joel Klatt is an attention whore who makes Herbstreit looks like a nun with acute social anxiety.
(Granted, Idaho used to be in the PAC, but a host of events since have validated that decision. I’ll just leave it at “Ligertown” to avoid hijacking the thread.)
As noted above, relegation would deprive the elites of easy in conference breathers for people like Saban, who tirelessly battles to be taken seriously with FCS opponents at home in November.
NASCAR-like sponsor patches would be next, Brett Yormark would be taken to the Supreme Court for an unconstitutional ban against truck stop advertising in B12 venues (and Bill Walton would be grinning in the first row in all the court settings.)
Seriously, I think the media woes will help ease up on the NIL accelerator, and when the LA schools grow weary of being beaten like rag dolls, order will start to return. With Notre Dame on Peacock as my witness, the money problem will start to trend back to just being annoying, not an existential threat.
Last summer the panic was the immediate dissolution of the PAC and superconferences from sea to sea.
This summer it’s relegation.
Our Utes have proven to be a stabilizer against excessive glitz taking over CFB, our own Holly Rowe was there yesterday in celebrating the Lady Utes getting some national publicity and going to the College World Series for a lesser watched COLLEGE sport.
Things will be alright.
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Part of the issue is that parents of prospective students want their kids to go to a school with a strong athletic program as part of the “college experience”.
The state budget for higher education has not kept pace with increasing costs and the demands of parents and students for amenities and services that other colleges offer. It’s a huge arms race now. Utah is currently at about 60-40 instate-out of state and will likely need to get to parity in order to meet the 40K enrollment goal set by President Randall.
All of this stuff needs to be paid by someone so I don’t think the student fees are going anywhere.
In the next few years you will see the University of Utah look very different from the school most here think of. There’s a goal to have 30% of the student body have access to on campus housing. There is additional infrastructure construction underway and in the planning stages. The university just wrapped up a $3B fundraising campaign. The days of being a commuter school are ending I think. This is just the beginning.
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Truth. Watching the softball game yesterday, the brand new HELIX building (260,000 sq feet) was prominent in the views from homeplate.
Within a week MDs will be moving offices out of the School of Medicine building (ie, the original University Hospital building from 1964) to HELIX, Huntsman Cancer is opening a new wing and is now over 1 million square feet. The growth at HCI since opening in 1999 is mind bending.
Replacing the School of Medicine building will be the new Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine Building. (You know, there are too many construction projects to be listed in a post, check them out here: [Projects – Planning, Design & Construction (utah.edu)] (Projects – Planning, Design & Construction)
To your point about housing and a phasing out of the “commuter school” tag - Up to 5,000 new student housing units to be built in public-private partnership – @theU (utah.edu) “…projected to grow to 40,000 over the next seven years.”
Walking through campus right after PACmas was a shock to this 80s grad. The growth has only accelerated from then. It’s pretty staggering.
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Out of state cost is about 45k/yr- easy to see why they want to maximize and facilitate the numbers of these students. The feds have facilitated making sure all students can borrow these massive sums of money which has fueled the arms race of building amenities to attract the students.
Then the graduates can’t pay back the loans and the government forgives the debt- all while continuing to facilitate the students borrowing more money to feed the arms race of increasing the cost of “education.”
The business of college has become a strange thing.
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Progress…
My hunch: things are lining up for PAC media day.
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the latest Cazano Wilner podcast goes into more detail. It sounds like the PAC12 conference will share equal revenue again, with the exception of the college football playoff money. A larger % of the playoff money will go to the conference participants.
They also hinted that t he conference may have soured a little bit on SMU?
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I’d take Rice (AAU school) over SMU if the conference wants/needs to go Texas even if it’s super small - free win for everyone in football. Not sure what sports they are ‘good’ at - apparently Rugby plays D1-AA. But adding the time zone probably not worth it. UW to Rice is the same distance as LA to Ohio St.
SDSU makes the most geographic sense. Any other UC school want to jump to FBS?
But with 10, the football conference can be full round robin, top 2 in championship. As SEC gets larger, it’s probably going to push them to 9 to keep rivalry games. B1G is already there.
Shared revenue makes sense with kickers for performance - like a double share for CFP (esp. as it goes to 12) or something.
Is it a separate contract for basketball? No other sport really gets a deal or positive revenue, right (espn covers gymnastics sometimes)
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I remember when the “Super Conference” was tried with the WAC.
It failed miserably.
That said, it appears 12-team conferences seems to be about the right size for the full complement of sports. Yes, football is driving the bus right now. In the case of Utah, a number of the alleged “non revenue” sports are closing the gap on their operations costs, and a few actually make money for the U.
I will still stand by the comments of the past the alumni interactions with the PAC 12 peers have resulted in more external profitability for the University in general than we ever had in the WAC or MWC. AAU membership has definitely been a catalyst to increased revenue.
That all stated, keeping the conference footprint somewhat compact does matter. Right now, travel costs are a lot more affordable than what the new Super Conference schools will experience. There is nothing worse for an athletic department budget than to get into the “Money Mayweather” trap of making a lot of money, but needing to spend a lot of money, too. There was a time in the not too distant past where tOSU, Michigan, Michigan State and other member schools of the B1G were losing money hand over fist on football. The truth is if they B1G doesn’t hit its TV performance numbers, a lot of that announced money could disappear, leaving member schools scrambling to deal with budget deficits. UCLA is already financially sucking wind as the enter the new arrangement.
Sticking with 10 schools on a geographically compact footprint may be the best ticket for survival and future growth. I will say it now, USC and UCLA will be back sooner than later; and I will not be surprised when these “Super Conferences” implode under the weight of their own bloated costs structures.
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No question. Ask the Admissions office about undergrade candidates and where they’re from. Ask those involved in faculty recruitment. Look at how far over the goal the Imagine U fundraising campaign achieved. Ask anyone in Health Sciences. It’s not even arguable. PAC, then AAU boosted the U beyond what anyone anticipated.
The B1G and the PAC emphasize athletics and academics, and (for better or worse) athletics is a massive marketing machine for universities in the US.
For the sake of the U, I agree with David Shaw, hope he’s right. Western football may not attract the same audience sizes, but there are non-football reasons to keep P5 college football out west.
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I don’t know what the Big10 grant of rights is, but if USC/UCLA do not sniff a CFP appearance during that time and they see a PAC 10 school in it on an annual basis, it will likely cause them to re-think their position.
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somebody pointed out that UCLA is going to play 11 road games in 2024–6 on the east coast and in the midwest, and 5 in the rose bowl when big 10 fans greatly outnumber ucla fans.
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