Sankey, Notre Dame Hold The Expansion Keys Moving Forward

“The waiting is the hardest part, every day you get one more yard. You take it on faith, you take it to the heart. The waiting is the hardest part” – From “The Waiting” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

Here we were wondering if we could make it to the beach for the Fourth of July holiday weekend without taking out a second mortgage so we could afford the gas when the Big Ten dropped a 50-megaton bombshell on the college football world by poaching Southern California and UCLA from the Pac-12. A week later and the fallout hasn’t begun to stop, leaving us to wait for the next calculated strike.

The Big 12 is going about matters rather aggressively, looking to add at least four (Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah) from the Pac-12 to expand to 16 teams for the 2024 season. The Pac-12 is desperately pitching itself as a viable league to any network that will listen with the hope that it can hold together and perhaps offer a deal attractive enough to lure Oklahoma State, Kansas, Kansas State, TCU, Texas Tech and Baylor from the Big 12 rather than do the distasteful – invite Boise State, UNLV, San Diego State and Fresno State. As the Pac-12 is doing this, allegedly with the commitment from the remaining 10 school presidents that they wish to keeping the league together is paramount, Washington, Oregon, Stanford and California have callouses on their knees from begging the Big Ten to take them in, and if not, the Big 12.

Meanwhile, the ACC is hoping its steep exit fees and enormous grant of rights contract that runs with its media rights deal until 2036 can keep Clemson, North Carolina, North Carolina State, Duke, Florida State, Miami, Georgia Tech, Virginia and Virginia Tech from finding a legal backdoor that they all can run through in time to join a new league that has substantial payouts. From a money standpoint, the ACC can’t compete with the SEC or the Big Ten, and if there are massive defections, the league may collapse. As it stands right now, either the ACC or the Pac-12 is going to collapse and the survivor will make less money from its media deals than the Big 12.

The schools that make up the conferences in the Group of Five are praying there will somehow be enough television money left to keep them afloat once this wave of expansion is over and done with. Right now, they see a bleak situation moving forward because in addition to TV revenue looking as if it will be in short supply, they face the possibility of being nothing more than a farm system for the big guys since the good players are transferring in record numbers.

Are you confused by all this turmoil and speculation that things are changing far too rapidly for the good of college sports? You should be. You should also be paying close attention to Notre Dame and SEC commissioner Greg Sankey. Amid all this chaos, they’ve been ever so quiet and for good reason. They hold all the cards that matter. The Big Ten has pulled off a whopper of a coup by bringing in Southern Cal and UCLA, but that doesn’t ensure the TV football needle will move all that much and that is where Notre Dame and the SEC come into play.

Notre Dame because like it or not, it’s still the biggest individual name in all of college football even if it’s been since 1988 that the Irish won a national title. The SEC because it has won 16 national titles since the last time Notre Dame won one. The Big Ten only has three national titles since 1990.

So let’s begin with Notre Dame. While everyone assumes the Irish are locked into joining the Big Ten, they do have options. Plenty of them. We know what Notre Dame wants – independence – but money will talk and so will the future of the College Football Playoff.

Option 1: Remain independent

Notre Dame has remained defiantly independent all except for 2020 when COVID-19 forced the Irish to join the Atlantic Coast Conference. Notre Dame had the best regular season record in the ACC, then lost to Clemson in the conference championship game and to Alabama in the first round of the College Football Playoff. Rather than remain in the ACC, Notre Dame reverted back to independence in 2021. The Irish have this sweetheart deal with the ACC in which they are members of the ACC in all sports but football but play five games every year against ACC foes (34-7 counting the ACC title game and CFP since 2015).

The problem with independence has everything to do with the media deal with NBC to televise every Irish home game. The Irish make $15 million from NBC and they get another $7 million from the ACC for their 5-game deal. This pales in comparison to what they could make as a member of a conference.

To remain independent Notre Dame has to get a new media rights deal that will pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 million a year. While that’s not nearly as much as the Irish would make as members of the Big Ten or the SEC, we have to understand that money has never been the driving force for Notre Dame. Still, there is principle and there is common sense. In principle, the Irish wish to stay independent. Common sense says take the Big Ten or SEC money, but if some consortium of NBC, CBS, Apple or Amazon came up with $50 million or so, Notre Dame might decide independence is worth the sacrifice of another $30-50 million.

The College Football Playoff also factors in here. Under Greg Sankey’s 12-team playoff scenario, which was shot down by “The Alliance” of the Big Ten, Pac-12 and ACC commissioners, Notre Dame could have had a seat at the playoff table as an independent as long as the Irish were among the six highest-ranked at-large teams. The expanded playoff is still on the table and this time the Pac-12 and ACC will almost certainly agree because their leagues desperately need the money. If the playoff stays at four teams, expands to eight teams or becomes a defacto NFL playoff between the Big Ten and SEC, Notre Dame will have to forfeit independence.

Option 2: Join the ACC as a full-fledged member

This is the lifeline ACC commissioner Jim Phillips prays earnestly to God will happen. Notre Dame would save the ACC from extinction because it would force ESPN to renegotiate its contract that runs through 2036. The current deal spins its wheels and pays less than $37 million a year, but that’s with Notre Dame only playing five ACC opponents each year. If the Irish join the league as a full-fledged member, the price goes up, probably to $50-60 million. That won’t compare to the SEC or Big Ten, but Notre Dame already likes its relationship with the ACC in all the other sports, particularly basketball. Most folks are unaware that Notre Dame is actually the eighth-winningest college basketball program in history.

If Notre Dame were able to join the ACC while still playing Southern Cal, Stanford and Navy in annual rivalry games, then this might be a viable option. No, it won’t pay as much as the Big Ten or SEC, but Notre Dame wouldn’t have to move its other sports to a new league so for the most part, it would be business as usual.

Then there is this to consider: The path to the College Football Playoff will be easier in the ACC than it would in either the SEC or the Big Ten. Don’t forget that Bobby Bowden and Florida State chose the ACC rather than the SEC because the path to the national championship in the ACC provided fewer speed bumps.

Option 3: Join the Big Ten

If Notre Dame joins the Big Ten it will be a case of money trumping whatever ill feelings there are toward the league that date back 100 years and more recently, Kevin Warren (Big Ten commissioner) joining the Pac-12 and ACC to shoot down the playoff only to turn on his “Alliance” brethren the moment he had a chance. Shooting down the playoff is something forgivable. Stabbing your buddies in the back after you’ve gone to such great lengths to join forces to schedule games, etc.? Not so easily forgiven. Loyalty is big at Notre Dame.

We must also remember that there has been this long-standing feud with the Big Ten dating back to the days when Fielding Yost was the Michigan head coach. He shot down the Irish joining the Big Ten pre-Rockne and then again when Knute Rockne had Notre Dame sitting on top of the football world. The people at Notre Dame may never admit it, but those incidences probably were a large factor in Notre Dame turning down an invitation to join the Big Ten back in 1999. This was at a time when Notre Dame football was spinning its wheels and a Big Ten invitation would have brought in millions.

Notre Dame already shares an academic consortium with the Big Ten which adds favorability to joining the league. When Brian Kelly left Notre Dame to become the head coach at LSU, he said Notre Dame’s higher academic standards had everything to do with the move. Let’s not get carried away here. Notre Dame does have high academic standards and there are some big name academic schools in the Big Ten, but do academic standards prevent Ohio State, Michigan or Penn State from signing a 5-star recruit? You know the answer to that so academics aren’t going to factor although for grad students and researchers that consortium with the other Big Ten schools is huge.

The new Big Ten media deal with Fox is expected to fetch as much as $1 billion annually, even more if Notre Dame is enticed to join the league. From a purely geographic standpoint, Michigan, Michigan State, Indiana, Purdue, Illinois, Northwestern and Ohio State are all within a 4-hour drive from the Notre Dame campus so it’s a really good fit. And, the Irish already have a longstanding rivalry game with Southern Cal, plus one with Stanford, which would leave the Pac-12 in a heartbeat for an invite to the Big Ten. Of course, playing Southern Cal, UCLA and Stanford in all sports might prove a logistical nightmare for Notre Dame as well as everyone else in the Big Ten.

Will an annual media paycheck of something like $100 million and favorable logistics trump independence or deals to join any other conference? The Big Ten is counting on it. The SEC wouldn’t mind it. The ACC needs it desperately.

Option 4: Join the SEC

So many experts have claimed this is a preposterous idea, but is it? If Notre Dame athletic director and SEC commissioner Greg Sankey were at a picnic, they would be the partners whose ankles and knees were tied together for the 3-legged race. They’re that tight. They’ve worked together on the College Football Playoff expansion as well as doing everything they can to ensure the Big 12 remains a power conference even when the league seemed to be taking on water.

From a purely football standpoint, the SEC offers the best deal for Notre Dame. Since 2000, the SEC has won 13 national championships. The Big Ten and ACC have won three each. The problem for Notre Dame will be splintering up sports that the SEC doesn’t promote – ice hockey, men’s soccer and men’s lacrosse. Notre Dame is an affiliate member of the Big Ten for ice hockey. It’s men’s soccer and lacrosse as well as all other non-football sports participate in the ACC. The fate of those other three sports could be an SEC sticking point, but again, football is the driver of all conversations moving forward and the SEC is indeed the tall hog at the football trough.

Logistically, the SEC makes far more sense than the ACC, but it can’t compare with the Big Ten in that respect. Would Irish fans treasure the travel for SEC matchups with Alabama, LSU, Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, Texas A&M more than that 4-hour drive to Columbus or the 3-hour drive to Ann Arbor?

The SEC will be distributing something like $80-90 million a year when Texas and Oklahoma join the league. That’s not as much as the Big Ten is projecting from a new deal that is expected with Fox, but there is Big Ten money and there are SEC championships. The Big Ten might be able to boast about its cash flow, but the SEC will have plenty of money. Also, when Texas and Oklahoma join the SEC, the SEC will be the dominant force not only in football, but baseball, women’s basketball, softball, men’s and women’s tennis, golf and swimming. The Big Ten can’t compete with that nor can the ACC.

All the other sports make the SEC a great package, but let’s get real here: This whole deal is all about football. When it comes to football, the SEC is the top league, but the road to a national championship is easier in the ACC.

The most powerful man in all of college sports has been silent for a week

Have you noticed Greg Sankey has been operating under the Cone of Silence for the past week? Oh, he’s been talking all right, just not to members of the media. Sankey knows that he, along with Notre Dame, hold all the cards here. Expansion has everything to do with football and while the commish is committed to SEC dominance in all sports, he’s well aware that football pays the bills and it is football where there is the SEC and then there is everyone else. So, Sankey doesn’t have to say a word. He can sit in his Birmingham office and hold court while the likes of Clemson, Florida State and Miami beg for an audience. Those three would crawl backwards to Birmingham if it meant a face-to-face conversation about leaving the ACC for the SEC. Here is a dose of reality: The SEC isn’t going to do a thing until Notre Dame makes up its mind and before Notre Dame does anything it won’t be until it has discussed matters with Greg Sankey.

If and when Sankey does make a move, it will be either to welcome Notre Dame into the league, which will spark an entire round of expansion, or to announce the SEC is happy to stand pat at 16 teams. Unlike the Big Ten, which now stretches from sea to shining sea, the SEC is a tight footprint with no gaps. It is a perfect logistical fit and from a scheduling standpoint, the 16 teams are absolutely perfect. For football, it’s almost certain to be a 9-game schedule with three permanent opponents that will allow home and home for the remaining 12 teams every four years. The same format will be used for basketball with its 18-game schedule. For baseball, the league will go with five permanent opponents and then the other 10 teams will be played home and home every four years.

Nothing could be easier to maintain.

The new revenue deal with ESPN will be rewritten when Texas and Oklahoma bolt the Big 12, in all probability in 2024 when the ESPN TV deal kicks in. Texas and Oklahoma are bound to the Big 12 until 2025 but the Big 12 is going to expand to 16 teams – or more – quite soon. The exit fees that Texas and Oklahoma will pay, which are estimated to be a combined $100-120 million, will be helped by contributions from the SEC and ESPN. In a thanks gesture for freeing up Oklahoma and Texas, you can bet the farm that ESPN will offer a nice deal to the Big 12. It won’t be SEC money, but it will probably be along the lines of $45-50 million per school per year.

At 16 teams the SEC is strong enough and powerful enough. Sankey doesn’t have to expand the league any further to remain more powerful than the Big Ten, but Notre Dame’s decision could change that. Notre Dame moves the TV needle in a big way. If Notre Dame goes to the Big Ten and then the Big Ten adds Washington, Oregon and Stanford, Sankey will have little choice but to counter. If Notre Dame does nothing, Sankey stays at 16. If Notre Dame joins the ACC, then Sankey again stays at 16.

Everyone assumes that if Notre Dame joins the Big Ten Sankey will raid the ACC. That’s because ACC teams like Clemson are more of a geographic fit in the SEC and present natural rivalries, which are important to Sankey and the rest of the league. The problem is two-fold: (1) The ACC has this grant of rights contract that includes steep exit fees and the ACC collecting the media payouts from each defecting school until 2036; and (2) there aren’t many schools that move the TV needle.

Here are the SEC options if the league expands:

Notre Dame joins the SEC

If the Irish join the SEC then Sankey will almost certainly expand by three other schools for a 20-team league. Clemson, Florida State and Miami seem the obvious choices, but what if Sankey decides to really beef up the league basketball presence by adding North Carolina and Duke? That would give the SEC FOUR of the winningest basketball programs in collegiate history in Kentucky, UNC, Duke and Notre Dame. It should be noted that the SEC has won more national titles since 1990 (6) than the Big Ten (1). Adding UNC and Duke would give the SEC an additional nine national champions. The issue for adding UNC and Duke could have to do with both schools playing such a prominent role nationwide in men’s soccer and lacrosse.

Notre Dame joins the ACC but the Big Ten expands to 20 teams

Phil Knight is willing to throw hundreds of millions of dollars at the Big Ten to ensure that Oregon will be joining the league. So assume that Notre Dame either remains independent or joins the ACC. Because of logistics, it’s likely the Big Ten adds Washington, Oregon, California and Stanford. None of them move the football needle but it does give Southern Cal and UCLA buddies from the Pac-12 to ease the logistics somewhat.

So what does Sankey do in response? If Notre Dame were to join the ACC, chances are Sankey would hold at 16 teams and let things play out for awhile. Notre Dame joining the ACC would cause ESPN to rewrite the old contract and in doing so, it would most likely alter the grant of rights. Once the legal fight for grant of rights ends, some of the ACC schools might still wish to bolt. Even with Notre Dame bringing more money to the league, it will not come anywhere close to what the SEC can pay, therefore Clemson, Miami and Florida State may elect to make a bid to join the SEC. A fourth school that would make sense would be North Carolina State, which would add the Raleigh TV market to the SEC while allowing the Wolfpack to escape the shadow of Big Brother, aka North Carolina.

Some might suggest the SEC raid the Big 12 once again, but that is unlikely. Sankey wants a viable College Football Playoff that includes all of Division I rather than an NFL-like situation where 40 or so teams are the only ones with a chance to win a national championship. There is the matter of anti-trust lawsuits that Group of Five schools could probably win if they are excluded from playoff consideration. The answer to the future of college football isn’t necessarily expansion that leads to contraction of Division I although it seems that is the direction in which we are heading.

Make no mistake, this is all money-driven and behind the fever to expand are the networks and the potential of streaming giants like Amazon and Apple throw their billions into the ring. Without all this money influencing college football, we might still be in the days when we had the Southwest Conference, the Big Eight and the Big East prominent football leagues, but those days are dead and gone.

College presidents and athletic directors are going to try to sell us on they’re doing what’s right for the “student-athletes” but who are they fooling? It’s all bottom line driven. You could say this has everything to do with the Golden Rule as in those that have the gold will make all the rules. It seems we are heading to an era where two conferences – the SEC and the Big Ten – will have the most money with the Big 12 likely to be third unless the ACC can (a) convince Notre Dame to become a full member and (b) prevent Clemson, Florida State, Miami and possibly several others from defecting to leagues that will pay more money.

What would be ideal at this time would be for the 10 Division I conference commissioners and Notre Dame to hold a summit in which an expansion moratorium was put in place long enough for a college sports czar to be elected with a plan to secede from the NCAA. But, if that were to happen, it would require consensus to give the new boss absolute power to make and enforce the rules. That is a great idea, but donkeys may fly before the people in charge elect someone with real power rather than put an easily manipulated puppet like Mark Emmert in charge.

So what can we conclude from all the Big Ten’s shot across the bow of college sports? We have chaos and without someone in charge to reel things in, we’ll have more chaos. So, buckle your seatbelts because the college football you see now probably won’t be what you’ll be seeing in five years. Throw in NIL and the transfer portal with expansion and you aren’t going to recognize the product much longer.

Is that a good thing? On the surface, it doesn’t seem so. Perhaps out of all this chaos college sports and football in general will find a way to navigate to a safe place where everyone can feel good about the future.

Perhaps, but don’t bet the farm on it.