And there it is. Pete Thamel reports:
Clemson has filed against the ACC in Pickens County, South Carolina.

We can move this discussion to a new thread.

https://twitter.com/PeteThamel/status/17...9469260128

(03-19-2024 11:23 AM)bryanw1995 Wrote:  

(03-19-2024 11:16 AM)esayem Wrote:  

(03-19-2024 11:14 AM)bryanw1995 Wrote:  

(03-16-2024 10:10 PM)esayem Wrote:  

(03-16-2024 07:37 PM)JRsec Wrote:  Has it occurred to anyone that Kliavkoff's and Phillips' duty was to facilitate the consolidation of the P5 into a S2 and M1? And that their jobs were set up on recommendation from those loyal to the networks?

If so, they have succeeded wildly, just in an unpopular way.

Yormark by contrast hit the ground running with a mission to cobble together a future for the Big 12. I don't think that was by accident either.

No because that’s revisionist history. Yormark had a pretty clear path what to do and had geography on his side. He also has his failures nobody talks about like failing to get his presidents to vote in UConn and Gonzaga.

Were those failures though? UConn and Gonzaga weren't slam dunk moves like the 4c. In fact, I predicted all along (as did many others) that UConn and Gonzaga were the consolation prizes for the Big 12 if they struck out on the 4c, or perhaps they just got CU but the rest of the Pac somehow stuck together. Really, his "failure" there was succeeding too well in getting the entire 4c, and there was no room/money/desire left for UConn and Gonzaga in the eyes of many of the Presidents. Realistically, even though he kept talking about Gonzaga and Uconn, Yormark also had to know that he'd probably need to save as many spots as possible for future ACC refugees like Louisville, VT, NC St, etc etc. In fact, I'd be surprised if Yormark, or one of his intermediaries, hasn't already had exploratory talks with some ACC schools.

He was pushing those two the entire time and couldn't get anyone interested in his vision. They weren't consolation prizes, they were targets.

When he announced the deal with ESPN in 2022, he mentioned, almost as an afterthought, that discussions with Gonzaga were ongoing and that they'd be mildly additive. Hardly the stuff of legend there. And UConn? I get his vision with them, Yormark knows that basketball's importance is likely to increase in the future, but, in the interim, UConn would have cost everyone in the Conference quite a bit of money b/c somebody had to pay for them to join the Conference. Or, perhaps Yormark all along was hoping for both UConn and Gonzaga as basketball-only adds, for which they could actually carry their own weight, and UConn (correctly) put the kibosh on that b/c the BE is a far better home for their basketball than the Big 12.

I remember Iowa State's AD saying that the 4c cost them $7m b/c of dilution of the "everything else" bucket, but that Yormark convinced them to add them b/c it would strengthen the Conference in the long term. How much would UConn (full member) cost the Conference? ESPN and Fox might have given them a half share, but they'd also have diluted bowl money without contributing anything and they'd cost everyone a bit in extra travel. They were a classic "Plan B" move that didn't prove to be necessary at the time. Sometimes those plans become Plan A, like BYU did for the Big 12 eventually, and sometimes they drift away and join the MWC like New Mexico did after they got left out of the original Big 12.

You argument is that he didn't fail, but he did there because he wanted UConn and Gonzaga. It was never an either/or he went after both them and the 4C simultaneously.

The Whiteboard was the actual alternative to the 4C and it had UConn, Memphis, UNLV, and SDSU listed