ESPN to Big East: “We fart in your general direction.”

As the BCS Commissioners gather in a smoky backroom to hammer out the future of major college football’s postseason, all the major media outlets have a take on what to expect, what’s at stake, yadda yadda.

IBCR News shared two earlier today.

Here’s ESPN’s, and what’s most interesting is who they don’t think will have much influence in whatever deliberations take place, emphasis mine:

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Where does each of the conferences stand on the biggest issues?

Here's an educated guess on what each of the five major FBS leagues wants:

ACC: ACC commissioner John Swofford was the only BCS conference commissioner who supported SEC commissioner Mike Slive's plus-one proposal in 2008…

Big 12: The Big 12 and SEC announced last month that their champions will play in a postseason bowl game, a relationship similar to the Big Ten and Pac-12 meeting in the Rose Bowl. As such, interim Big 12 commissioner Chuck Neinas said his league has lined up with the SEC…

Big Ten: More than anything else, Big Ten presidents want to make sure they protect their league's traditional relationship with the Rose Bowl. They actually prefer keeping the current BCS system because of that reason…

Pac-12: Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott also wants to make sure his league maintains its traditional alliance with the Rose Bowl, and he went as far as saying the SEC's new postseason arrangement with the Big 12 puts the plus-one model back on the table…

SEC: Slive dug in his heels and said his league, which has won the past six BCS national championships, wants a playoff that includes the top four teams -- and nothing else. Why wouldn't he?

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Big East? Meh… Who cares.

To be fair to ESPN, they do include the Big East in the matrix of preferences expressed by the different conferences and Notre Dame. But the “five major FBS conference” meme is telling: The World Wide Leader was snubbed by the Big East last year when the conference presidents turned down its offer of a $1.4 to $1.9 billion media rights deal. The conference presidents later forced Commissioner John Marinatto to resign.

The defections of Pitt and Syracuse to the ACC, West Virginia to the Big 12 and TCU reneging on its agreement to join the league have also hurt the Big East’s ability to bill itself as a going concern. Boise State—which pledged to join the league in 2013—was reported to have been reconsidering its decision as well. The league has lured Temple, Central Florida, Houston, SMU, San Diego State and Navy, but Houston is the only program to have been nationally relevant in recent years.

As events unfold over the days ahead, it will be interesting to see if the league with the most to lose gets anything it really wants out of the BCS meetings.

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Big East Turnover: Do college presidents have too much power?

Do college presidents have too much power over athletics? That's a question that SI's Stewart Mandel attempts to answer in a column today, posted in reaction to the news that Big East Commissioner John Marinatto abruptly resigned over the weekend.

Reports that surfaced during the day indicated that Marinatto was forced out, and that the decision to make a change had been percolating for weeks.

Mandel notes that the top executives at major schools have taken an about-step over the last several years. No longer are they leaving critical athletics negotiations regarding conference alignments and media rights deals to the athletic directors and their staffs.

Instead, they're much more ahh... what's the word... tactile.

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Originally Published on SI.com - NCAA Football | shared via feedly

Kudos to former Big 12 commissioner Kevin Weiberg (who left in 2007) and Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese (2009) for getting out when they did.

Over the past decade, university presidents and chancellors have exercised a more hands-on role in major athletics decisions, and while the intent is noble, it's hard to see how athletics has benefited. Having a bunch of distinguished physics professors and English scholars help negotiate billion-dollar television packages makes about as much sense as having conference commissioners deliver physics and English lectures.

In the ideal working dynamic, the presidents put their trust in the hands of a capable commissioner like Mike Slive or Jim Delany to do the heavy lifting, then come in at the end to give their stamp of approval. Pac-12 presidents took little time before entrusting their 2009 hire Larry Scott, and in turn he's radically reinvented that conference and made the presidents' institutions a whole lot of money.

Contrast that to the Big 12, where Beebe walked into a mess of conflicting egos and political grandstanding that only grew worse when Realignment Mania kicked into high gear two years ago. First Texas and Nebraska butted heads, then Texas A&M and everybody else. When schools started fleeing, the presidents first kicked Beebe to the curb, then, under the direction of interim successor Chuck Neinas, proceeded to adopt nearly all the key recommendations (equal revenue sharing, grants of TV rights) Beebe had been pushing for years.

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It's true that presidents are also becoming more attuned to the financial performance of their institutions, and it's also true that during an era of increased state budget pressure, athletics revenues are playing a larger role in that financial performance.

Anyone who doesn’t think college athletics isn’t time business today hasn’t been paying attention.

We haven't conducted any detailed financial studies, but after laughing at and throwing away the farcical financial submittals made to the NCAA by member institutions, we'd lay some strong odds that athletics have become a massively bigger pump on the income side of the balance sheet.

Last year, The Big East conference turned down a $1.9 billion media rights deal with ESPN. Reports at the time indicated that Marinatto's hands were tied by the conference's presidents, who thought they could get a better deal in negotiations with other outlets, including NBC and CBS.

But note well in the story linked above:  At the same time those presidents were instructing Marinatto to say "no thanks" to the World Wide Schemer, at least two of them were in behind-the-scenes discussions with the Atlantic Coast Conference to abandon the Big East and join the ACC.

Note well also that the gist of the story linked above isn't that the presidents were playing hanky panky and hanging Marinatto out to dry. It was that ESPN was allegedly advising the ACC on which schools to rob from the Big East.

Pitt and Syracuse later announced plans to join the ACC.

Look, ESPN is part of the Disney corporation. Disney--and by extension ESPN--has a fiduciary duty to seek business relationships that deliver the greatest value to their shareholders. That is their sole responsibility under their articles of incorporation. If you have shares in a mutual fund, a 401(k) contribution or some other managed retirement account, be thankful for that. They owe nothing to the conferences, their commissioners or the schools they represent.

When that much money is dangled in front of a president facing tightening budgets and increasing pressure from boards of regents and trustees, they might do something that benefits the school at the expense of athletics.

They might also put good men—like Marinatto, Beebe and Weiberg—in impossible situations, then vote to fire them when they don’t deliver a miracle.

Who can you trust, in situations like that?

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Big 12’s Chuck Neinas unloads on Big East and Mizzou and gets facts wrong

Big 12 commissioner Chuck Neinas gave a blistering interview to the Charleston Gazette and in his little fit of rage over uncertainty regarding West Virginia’s ability to get out of the Big East and play football in his league, got his facts screwed up.

Neinas would have you believe that the Big East is acting like spoiled brats in keeping West Virginia in their conference for the 27-month period stipulated by Big East rules. This is false. The litigation between the Big East and the breakaway Mountaineers isn’t about keeping the school in the league at all. It’s about a dispute over how and when the school can leave. The two parties have agreed to enter nonbinding arbitration and there are legitimate hopes that a settlement can be reached.

Neinas would also have you believe that the SEC “poached” his conference by inviting Missouri to join Texas A&M, a school that had already made the move and laid the legal groundwork for Mizzou to follow. But published documents show that it was Texas A&M and Mizzou that approached Mike Slive, not the other way around. The SEC didn’t have to expand. It was just fine at 12 members until Texas A&M quietly began exploring realignment. The SEC was just fine at 13 members too, until Mizzou quietly began exploring the possibility of following the Aggies. Slive wasn’t hunting on posted ground, as Neinas’ comments suggest.

Finally, Neinas would have you believe that the Big 12 is in the situation that it finds itself in because Missouri was “selfish.” That’s the biggest laugher of Neinas’ comments. The Big 12 is where it is today because the University of Texas made a business decision that suits the Longhorn program’s business interests and stuck to their guns when the other schools in the conference realized that what was good for Texas wasn’t necessarily good for the Big 12 as a whole. In other words, as my friend BanditRef puts it on Twitter, “Texas made it clear it was a business, Mizzou made a business decision.” 

We understand that the Big 12 is nervous. They are contractually obligated to release the 2012 schedule on February 1, and they plan to include West Virginia in the rotation. There is legitimate concern over the uncertainty surrounding the Mountaineers ability to compete in the league next year. Millions of dollars are at stake, as are the schedules of the other teams in the league.

But the Big 12’s problems are problems of their own making.

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Scandalous: ESPN told the ACC which programs to invite from Big East

When the Atlantic Coast Conference announced that Pittsburgh and Syracuse would be leaving the Big East and joining the ACC, it was seen as a logical move to expand the league’s footprint in the Northeast. But as details on the backroom negotiations emerge, it is clear that the “worldwide leader” was a behind-the-scenes worldwide schemer, exerting its influence and driving the ACC towards the programs it wanted to have in the league.

The Boston Globe’s Mark Blaudschun has a story in today’s print and online editions outlining the process by which the decision was made to include Pitt and Syracuse and exclude UConn, despite the Huskies’ recent success in both football and basketball.

The money quotes:

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BC athletic director Gene DeFilippo, who was part of the 12-member ACC expansion committee, adamantly denied that the move was dictated by basketball interests, but he did concede that the effects of it may boost that sport more than football.

“It had nothing to do with basketball,’’ said DeFilippo. “It was football money which drove expansion. It was football money and securing our future.’’

DeFilippo said the move was dictated in part by the expansion of the Southeastern Conference to include Texas A&M, which prompted the Big 12 to inquire about Pittsburgh, which is in the Northeast, an area in which the ACC felt it necessary to expand.

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The ACC just signed a new deal with ESPN that will increase the revenue for each school to approximately $13 million. With the addition of Pittsburgh and Syracuse, said DeFilippo, another significant increase will come.

“We always keep our television partners close to us,’’ he said. “You don’t get extra money for basketball. It’s 85 percent football money. TV - ESPN - is the one who told us what to do. This was football; it had nothing to do with basketball.’’

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Why is Disney – via ABC and ESPN – instructing a conference expansion committee on which teams to include and which to leave out? The Big East has been the victim of ACC poaching in the past. Boston College, Miami and Virginia Tech all defected amid very bad blood and rather ugly legal disputes. The current round of hunting on posted land lands a historically powerful but recently weak Pitt football program and a Syracuse program that’s had only flashes of success. Left behind was UConn.

UConn has won a few titles in men’s and women’s basketball and while they lost millions on the trip, the football team earned a BCS bid after the 2010 season. With the Big 12, the Big 10 and even the SEC said to be interested in Big East schools, the conference is on the verge of implosion. What happens to UConn then?

Basketball drives the Big East. Football is important, but there are seven members of the league that don’t play FBS football. Blaudschun suggests that those schools may break off and form a basketball only conference with Notre Dame.

Automatic BCS qualifying conferences poaching members from one another is a zero sum game. Someone has to lose for someone else to win. For the Big East to survive, it would have to either draw programs playing FBS football, or offer someone in a non-automatic qualifying conference an upgrade.

Exit Question: Could the ESPN meddling have been a retaliatory move? Remember, the Big East turned down a $1.9 billion offer from the worldwide schemer and is said to be entertaining offers from NBC, CBS and FOX for its next media contract. ESPN is currently the first tier media partner for the league, but after helping the ACC decide which teams to kidnap from the Big East, my bet is that an over-the-air network gets the deal of a lifetime.

Helmet Tap to @Mengus22.

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