Own the group chat with The Weekender, highlighting the biggest stories in college sports, standout writing from Eleven Warriors, and a glance at what's next.
Admins Behaving Badly
I'm generally not one to give people with as much power as a major college or conference director/commissioner a ton of leeway. These are people with enormous administrative power, money, and influence, and because of that the standards that they should be held to should be incredibly high.
But maybe I expect too much, because the norm right now seems to be for a lot of these guys to completely screw the pooch in any number of different ways.
Witness former PAC-12 commissioner Larry Scott (from John Canzano):
I’ve talked with a number of frustrated conference athletic directors in recent weeks. They’ll be charged with making ends meet in their departments. One Pac-12 AD told me, “We’re basically turning over rocks these days and finding disasters Larry left for us.”
Disgraced former USC athletic director Mike Bohn (from Yahoo!Sports):
Bohn made inappropriate comments about the physical appearance of female colleagues, including remarks about their dress, hair and weight, that staff members said made them feel uncomfortable, according to two USC sources with knowledge of the incidents.
The Big Ten's (formerly) own Kevin Warren (from ESPN.com):
"These deals (related to Big Ten broadcasting rights) aren't done, and they aren't what they were represented to be from the standpoint of the NBC deal and the availability of all members to participate in November games in primetime," said an industry source.
Great job all around. Really fantastic. At least Barta is retiring.
Matt Campbell Hits the Reset Button
Campbell is fascinating to me, because for a hot minute he was the most lauded young coach in America, and first on the lips of anyone looking for someone to turn around their football program.
Then the Cyclones went 11-14 in the last two seasons (and 1-8 in conference last year), and all of a sudden (per The Athletic) he's Mr. Rebuild in Ames. There are a number of coaches this has happened to, where their initial success at a B-or-C tier program didn't really pan out to something bigger, but it'll be interesting to see if the guy can turn it around or if his top 10 finish in 2020 was just a fluke.
Joel Klatt's Grim (or Super Dope) View of the Future
I guess it depends on how you look at it, but here's a summary of some of his recent statements on his podcast about the future of college football and how that relates to realignment:
Well, pretty soon, those teams are going to be like, ‘Hey, we can’t handle the dead weight at this point. Having X, Yor Z school in our conference is just diluting the conference. It’s diluting it in two ways. One, we’ve got to chop up the pie in more pieces. And then the other is we’ve got to enter them into the schedule so we don’t even get all the big boys facing each other as often as they should, because we’ve got to dilute the schedule with that other team that really doesn’t derive any value.”
Oh baby, that smells like relegation to me! In all seriousness, I'm not sure that I wholly agree with the idea that conferences dropping "dead weight" is in the cards for the near future, at least. There are still a lot of regional and cultural ties that keep these conferences (mostly) tied together for the time being. But 10, 15 years from now?
The quadbox showing the two relegated teams and the safe team with the results in the bottom right might be one of the best sports views Ive seen @SickosCommittee pic.twitter.com/y3OfsKDmMg
— Caahdy (@caahdydub) May 28, 2023
Who knows, you might see scenes like this in late November.
ICYMI
Ohio State Early, Early Dogs Against Michigan
The line is only 2.5 points but damn, that's 1.25 points for the current losing streak against That Team Up North. Excited for the 2024 line to be Bucks -1.
How Ryan Day Stacks Up Against His Predecessors
It's kind of wild to even think of it this way, but Ryan Day is approaching his fifth full(ish) season as Ohio State football's head coach. Dan Hope stacks up his tenure so far next to the greats.
JT Tuimoloau's Evolution
Griffin Strom dropped this great piece about how JT is planning on making what he was able to accomplish against Penn State last year the norm.
Night Game at Notre Dame!
Obvious, but fun! Also, night game against Youngstown State, probably. That's even more exciting.
Up Next
- This week: Men's Golf NCAA Championships
- 97 Days Until: The football season opener at Indiana
- 118 Days Until: Ohio State goes for a home-and-home sweep in South Bend
- 146 Days Until: The Buckeyes host Penn State looking for their seventh straight win in the series
- 181 Days Until: Revenge in Ann Arbor
