I find conference realignment stores extremely fascinating. The Athletic is running a series of stories on the topic. I'll post a few of them below
theathletic.com
What sparked college football's realignment craze? Ex-Big Ten commissioner explains all
Delany reflects on what happened in the 1980s and '90s to spark one of college football's biggest waves of realignment.
theathletic.com
How conference realignment shaped college sports, in ex-Big Ten' boss Jim Delany's words
by Scott Dochterman
It's almost inarguable that the most influential figure in collegiate sports during the past three decades and perhaps ever was former Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany. In leading the oldest and most financially advanced league from 1989 through his retirement on Jan. 1, 2020, Delany orchestrated many of the moves that altered the college sports landscape for generations to come.
Delany was 31 when he left NCAA enforcement to take over as the commissioner of the Ohio Valley Conference. Delany was 41 when he became the fifth commissioner in Big Ten history. In an era he described as "bully ball" among the Big Ten's presidents, athletic directors and coaches, Delany presided over a league that grew unified, added four members and soared beyond its peers in wealth.
While working with 71 presidents across 30 years in the Big Ten, Delany helped secure Penn State as the league's 11th member in 1990. It was the first modern-era expansion and one that ushered 26 other major-conference football moves through 1999. The Big Ten missed out on Notre Dame in 1999, but it's expansion search in 2009 and conclusion with Nebraska in 2010 caused major conference upheaval. The major conferences combined for 17 other moves through 2014 and the Big East and WAC collapsed.
Now 75, out of the limelight and living in the Nashville area, Delany reflected on expansion and conference realignment during his time as Big Ten commissioner in an exclusive interview. Delany identified the primary markers that set college sports on their current trajectory.
Delany had plenty to say, so much that his comments will appear in other stories during this series. He also chose not to elaborate on meetings with potential expansion candidates because of signed non-disclosure contracts. In this series of Delany responses to realignment topics -- the first of two -- the former commissioner spoke at length about what he believed drove expansion from the late 1980s through the early 2000s.
For Delany, modern realignment begins with two events, both of which predate his days with the Big Ten. The Big East's formation on May 31, 1979, came one week before the OVC hired him as its commissioner. The Big East chose eight urban basketball-first members, and in concert with ESPN's debut in September 1979, the league found national footing on television. The other marker came on June 2, 1984, when the United States Supreme Court ruled the NCAA violated the Sherman Act by price fixing and placing artificial limits on its membership through its television policy.
Both events work collectively to set the course for the 198 Division I football moves since 1990.
Delany: The first thing I would say is CFA defeats NCAA. That would be No. 1. No. 2, I think, maybe even No. 1 is a precursor to '84, the founding of the Big East by Dave Gavitt on a media-based conference. They were mostly Catholic but not exclusively. They were on the East Coast. And TV underlined it. And there was no football involved; it was just basketball.
But the same year the Big East did that, you know what was founded? ESPN. So I would say '79 begins to lay the foundation for a new media entity in ESPN and a conference based on media markets.
The Big East was lucrative in the early 1980s and had to fend off an attempt from then Penn State football coach/athletic director Joe Paterno to pick off Boston College and Syracuse to form an all-sports Eastern league involving Pittsburgh, Rutgers, West Virginia, Virginia Tech and the Nittany Lions. Gavitt secured Syracuse and Boston College by inviting Pittsburgh on Nov. 18, 1981. It killed Paterno's attempt.
The next year, Penn State sought admission into the Big East. Six of the eight Big East members had to vote yes on Penn State. Basketball-only schools Georgetown, St. John's and Villanova voted no, which kept Penn State out. Its ripple effect was profound when Penn State was accepted as a Big Ten member in 1990.
Delany: If Penn State is with Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Boston College.....the East Coast is stabilized, and the Big Ten doesn't have many places to move. So you have a more formidable, a more stable Big East. But in my view, that inability to see that future and the importance of football made the Big East very vulnerable.
Notre Dame doesn't ever move. Florida State doesn't move in my view if Penn State doesn't move. The SEC was already good with their little move (Arkansas and South Carolina). And Florida State is not going to be pursued by the ACC. I'm saying none of that happens if the Big East expands properly to eight football schools and 12 basketball schools. But their rationale was, that's too many schools. Eight and 12. Isn't that kind of quaint?
It would have changed history probably in the sense that if the East were consolidated with football, and you had Syracuse, Boston College, Rutgers, Pittsburgh, Penn State, maybe West Virginia, and they had full basketball schools, the Big East publics, plus the Catholics plus Penn State and few others, arguably there would have been no vacuum there.
No singular event had more impact on expansion and conference realignment than the NCAA v. Board of Regents case, which included Oklahoma and Georgia universities as primary plaintiffs. Beginning in 1952, the NCAA regulated college football on television to ensure competitive balance and exposure while protecting gate revenue. In 1981, the College Football Association, which represented several conferences, agreed to a deal with NBC, which was outside the NCAA's contracts with ABC and CBS.
The NCAA threatened sanctions against any school that appeared on NBC, and a suit was filed. Filing amicus briefs on behalf of Oklahoma and Georgia included the CFA, the Southeastern, Big Eight, Southwest, ACC and WAC conferences and Notre Dame. The Big Ten and Pac-10 backed the NCAA. District and appeals courts ruled against the NCAA and the U.S. Supreme Court concurred 7-2 on June 2, 1984.
Delany cited the dissent by Justice Byron "Whizzer" White as impactful in predicting the current environment. White wrote: "The (NCAA's) plan fosters the goal of amateurism by spreading revenues among various schools and reducing the financial incentives toward professionalism."
Delany: His basic premise for the dissent was that the educational mission, which justified the controls to some extent, didn't get out of hand and competition get out of hand, was that you need to be able to control this. Otherwise, in a free market environment, it will, at a certain point, serve the wealthiest and drive education into the background of commercial activity.
The key players were the SEC, Notre Dame and (CFA president) Chuck Neinas. I think the ACC was along for the ride. The WAC was along for the ride. The Southwest Conference was along for the ride, the Big Eight, those weren't important. Those weren't the important players that the SEC and Notre Dame were, but they were big numbers.
It wasn't very long before Notre Dame and the SEC pulled out of the CFA and did their own deals. Now you have freedom, and yo have the haves pulling away from the have-nots.
The number of televised games increased by 400 percent between 1985 and 1991, according to Delany, but the advertising rate card got cut so the nominal dollars available didn't reach 1983 numbers until 1991. But the televised freedom coincided with several conference changes, starting with Penn State to the Big Ten.
Delany: I thought we could be stronger and get a view into the East Coast where there were a lot of students to recruit, television homes. The money wasn't so big. I just thought, more competition, better program, broad-based program. Terrific fit.
(SEC commissioner Roy Kramer) executed a strategic expansion. He wanted to do divisions, and he added South Carolina and Arkansas. I call that a strategic expansion. Gene Corrigan and the ACC, I think, had what I would call a reactionary expansion. He brought in Florida State. I definitely knew Gene well, and I definitely know he was impacted by the growth of the Big Ten.......Penn State and Florida State were very similar. One was a reaction to the other.
But Roy's (SEC expansion) was not a reaction to what we did. I think he had seen the divisional opportunity. He was a smart guy and he saw a championship game as a real marketing device. So it was a marketing play, not necessarily a TV play.
The moves impacted other conferences. The Big East got into football in 1991 and invited members ranging from Miami to Rutgers. Arkansas' departure left the Southwest Conference with only eight members, all of which were in Texas. The Pac-10 contemplated adding Texas and Colorado. At the same time, the Big Ten dissolved its cooperative marketing arrangement with the Pac-10 but the two leagues remained close allies.
In 1994, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech and Baylor agreed to join the Big Eight members to form the Big 12 in 1996. Delany said there never was a discussion about adding members of either league at the time.
Delany: The Big Eight was very short on TV homes, and the Southwest Conference was in trouble, mostly by its own actions. With the exception of Rice -- I could be wrong about this -- but most, if not all, were on probation in about a five-year period. So there was a lot of self-inflicted damage there.
The way it was explained to me was from the beginning, it was a problem because the Big Eight felt it had expanded by adding four schools. The Southwest thought there had been a merger. You get the difference. One is an acquisition, and the other is a merger. They never had an agreement sort of about what it really was, and that created enormous governance issues, symbolized probably by the office moving from Kansas City to Dallas. I think that probably reflected the Nebraska-Texas tension that was there for really close to 15 years.
By the late 1990s, conferences had gotten larger, and at least one was too big for its own good. The WAC added six members in 1996, including three from the defunct Southwest Conference. It soared to 16 members and developed a pod system for football.
It became too much for eight original WAC members, who dropped out in 1999 to form the Mountain West Conference. The Big East started to form cracks, too, between the original basketball schools and those that joined as football members. By 2003, Miami and Boston College were accepted into the ACC. A final spot between Syracuse and Virginia Tech became hotly contested. In part becuase of pressure exerted by Virginia's political leaders, the Hokies left the Big East for the ACC.
Television rights fees and a lucrative conference championship game became critical components in the decision to expand.
Delany: I'm not saying the Big East is responsible for it, but it did indicate you could build a conference based on TV. I certainly think that the founding of ESPN showed there's a new technology and new ways to develop revenue. I certainly think Penn State to the Big Ten, and not to the Big East, encouraged people to do some things. I certainly think, having gotten the freedom, Notre Dame and the SEC defecting (from the CFA) so quickly, and then Big Ten defecting from the Pac-10 showed the commercial freedom that was available and how powerful entities could do pretty well.
I certainly think the Big Eight and Southwest Conference was a marriage that maybe wasn't a great marriage, but it was done for media reasons to become stronger. I certainly think the ACC was trying to keep up when they added Florida State. I certainly think that a lot of the adds by the Big East to maintain relevance, which eventually didn't work, whether it's Virginia Tech or Miami, they just weren't very good. They just weren't sustainable. I certainly think the WAC's over-expansion didn't work.
The Big Ten pursued Notre Dame, but the school's leaders announced on Feb. 5, 1999, that they would remain independent in football. NCAA rules through May 2022 called for leagues to have at least 12 members and two divisions to stage a championship game. That annual event further enhanced the SEC's brand. The Big 12 held a title game in 1996, four years after the SEC. The ACC started its football championship game a decade later. Had Notre Dame joined the Big Ten, it would have enabled the Big Ten to hold a title contest.
It does beg a question. Had the NCAA eliminated membership requirements for conferences holding title games, would it have impacted realignment? Delany isn't sure.
Delany: Roy's move was strategic. Our Penn State move was only in a very broad sense. We just thought it was a great add. But we didn't have any plans beyond that. In fact, other than Notre Dame, we had no plans. The bar was high for expansion, and it should be high. But timing, it's like time and score in a basketball game. Circumstances can change, and I think they did change.
What's more relevant than the deregulation of divisions? What would be the two things that stand out in my mind? The '84 TV decision is one. And the other is the Big East turning down Penn State. Those are the two seminal moments because I could tell you Roy going to 12 teams had no effect on us. Notre Dame joining the Big East or the ACC had really no effect on us. Really the Southwest and the Big 12 had no effect on us. What had an effect on us was the deregulation.
I don't think that the question is hypothetical. It's hard to answer a hypothetical, but I'm trying, I don't think that that will have enough of an impact to do anything for anybody. I would say just generally about expansion. There's a point at which an association of colleges is no longer a conference, and my guess is it's at 16.
The Big Ten took the next major step that altered the college landscape, one that has approached the Supreme Court decision in relevance. That move kicks off the second part of Delany's question-and-answer session, coming later this week.
by Scott Dochterman
It's almost inarguable that the most influential figure in collegiate sports during the past three decades and perhaps ever was former Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany. In leading the oldest and most financially advanced league from 1989 through his retirement on Jan. 1, 2020, Delany orchestrated many of the moves that altered the college sports landscape for generations to come.
Delany was 31 when he left NCAA enforcement to take over as the commissioner of the Ohio Valley Conference. Delany was 41 when he became the fifth commissioner in Big Ten history. In an era he described as "bully ball" among the Big Ten's presidents, athletic directors and coaches, Delany presided over a league that grew unified, added four members and soared beyond its peers in wealth.
While working with 71 presidents across 30 years in the Big Ten, Delany helped secure Penn State as the league's 11th member in 1990. It was the first modern-era expansion and one that ushered 26 other major-conference football moves through 1999. The Big Ten missed out on Notre Dame in 1999, but it's expansion search in 2009 and conclusion with Nebraska in 2010 caused major conference upheaval. The major conferences combined for 17 other moves through 2014 and the Big East and WAC collapsed.
Now 75, out of the limelight and living in the Nashville area, Delany reflected on expansion and conference realignment during his time as Big Ten commissioner in an exclusive interview. Delany identified the primary markers that set college sports on their current trajectory.
Delany had plenty to say, so much that his comments will appear in other stories during this series. He also chose not to elaborate on meetings with potential expansion candidates because of signed non-disclosure contracts. In this series of Delany responses to realignment topics -- the first of two -- the former commissioner spoke at length about what he believed drove expansion from the late 1980s through the early 2000s.
For Delany, modern realignment begins with two events, both of which predate his days with the Big Ten. The Big East's formation on May 31, 1979, came one week before the OVC hired him as its commissioner. The Big East chose eight urban basketball-first members, and in concert with ESPN's debut in September 1979, the league found national footing on television. The other marker came on June 2, 1984, when the United States Supreme Court ruled the NCAA violated the Sherman Act by price fixing and placing artificial limits on its membership through its television policy.
Both events work collectively to set the course for the 198 Division I football moves since 1990.
Delany: The first thing I would say is CFA defeats NCAA. That would be No. 1. No. 2, I think, maybe even No. 1 is a precursor to '84, the founding of the Big East by Dave Gavitt on a media-based conference. They were mostly Catholic but not exclusively. They were on the East Coast. And TV underlined it. And there was no football involved; it was just basketball.
But the same year the Big East did that, you know what was founded? ESPN. So I would say '79 begins to lay the foundation for a new media entity in ESPN and a conference based on media markets.
The Big East was lucrative in the early 1980s and had to fend off an attempt from then Penn State football coach/athletic director Joe Paterno to pick off Boston College and Syracuse to form an all-sports Eastern league involving Pittsburgh, Rutgers, West Virginia, Virginia Tech and the Nittany Lions. Gavitt secured Syracuse and Boston College by inviting Pittsburgh on Nov. 18, 1981. It killed Paterno's attempt.
The next year, Penn State sought admission into the Big East. Six of the eight Big East members had to vote yes on Penn State. Basketball-only schools Georgetown, St. John's and Villanova voted no, which kept Penn State out. Its ripple effect was profound when Penn State was accepted as a Big Ten member in 1990.
Delany: If Penn State is with Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Boston College.....the East Coast is stabilized, and the Big Ten doesn't have many places to move. So you have a more formidable, a more stable Big East. But in my view, that inability to see that future and the importance of football made the Big East very vulnerable.
Notre Dame doesn't ever move. Florida State doesn't move in my view if Penn State doesn't move. The SEC was already good with their little move (Arkansas and South Carolina). And Florida State is not going to be pursued by the ACC. I'm saying none of that happens if the Big East expands properly to eight football schools and 12 basketball schools. But their rationale was, that's too many schools. Eight and 12. Isn't that kind of quaint?
It would have changed history probably in the sense that if the East were consolidated with football, and you had Syracuse, Boston College, Rutgers, Pittsburgh, Penn State, maybe West Virginia, and they had full basketball schools, the Big East publics, plus the Catholics plus Penn State and few others, arguably there would have been no vacuum there.
No singular event had more impact on expansion and conference realignment than the NCAA v. Board of Regents case, which included Oklahoma and Georgia universities as primary plaintiffs. Beginning in 1952, the NCAA regulated college football on television to ensure competitive balance and exposure while protecting gate revenue. In 1981, the College Football Association, which represented several conferences, agreed to a deal with NBC, which was outside the NCAA's contracts with ABC and CBS.
The NCAA threatened sanctions against any school that appeared on NBC, and a suit was filed. Filing amicus briefs on behalf of Oklahoma and Georgia included the CFA, the Southeastern, Big Eight, Southwest, ACC and WAC conferences and Notre Dame. The Big Ten and Pac-10 backed the NCAA. District and appeals courts ruled against the NCAA and the U.S. Supreme Court concurred 7-2 on June 2, 1984.
Delany cited the dissent by Justice Byron "Whizzer" White as impactful in predicting the current environment. White wrote: "The (NCAA's) plan fosters the goal of amateurism by spreading revenues among various schools and reducing the financial incentives toward professionalism."
Delany: His basic premise for the dissent was that the educational mission, which justified the controls to some extent, didn't get out of hand and competition get out of hand, was that you need to be able to control this. Otherwise, in a free market environment, it will, at a certain point, serve the wealthiest and drive education into the background of commercial activity.
The key players were the SEC, Notre Dame and (CFA president) Chuck Neinas. I think the ACC was along for the ride. The WAC was along for the ride. The Southwest Conference was along for the ride, the Big Eight, those weren't important. Those weren't the important players that the SEC and Notre Dame were, but they were big numbers.
It wasn't very long before Notre Dame and the SEC pulled out of the CFA and did their own deals. Now you have freedom, and yo have the haves pulling away from the have-nots.
The number of televised games increased by 400 percent between 1985 and 1991, according to Delany, but the advertising rate card got cut so the nominal dollars available didn't reach 1983 numbers until 1991. But the televised freedom coincided with several conference changes, starting with Penn State to the Big Ten.
Delany: I thought we could be stronger and get a view into the East Coast where there were a lot of students to recruit, television homes. The money wasn't so big. I just thought, more competition, better program, broad-based program. Terrific fit.
(SEC commissioner Roy Kramer) executed a strategic expansion. He wanted to do divisions, and he added South Carolina and Arkansas. I call that a strategic expansion. Gene Corrigan and the ACC, I think, had what I would call a reactionary expansion. He brought in Florida State. I definitely knew Gene well, and I definitely know he was impacted by the growth of the Big Ten.......Penn State and Florida State were very similar. One was a reaction to the other.
But Roy's (SEC expansion) was not a reaction to what we did. I think he had seen the divisional opportunity. He was a smart guy and he saw a championship game as a real marketing device. So it was a marketing play, not necessarily a TV play.
The moves impacted other conferences. The Big East got into football in 1991 and invited members ranging from Miami to Rutgers. Arkansas' departure left the Southwest Conference with only eight members, all of which were in Texas. The Pac-10 contemplated adding Texas and Colorado. At the same time, the Big Ten dissolved its cooperative marketing arrangement with the Pac-10 but the two leagues remained close allies.
In 1994, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech and Baylor agreed to join the Big Eight members to form the Big 12 in 1996. Delany said there never was a discussion about adding members of either league at the time.
Delany: The Big Eight was very short on TV homes, and the Southwest Conference was in trouble, mostly by its own actions. With the exception of Rice -- I could be wrong about this -- but most, if not all, were on probation in about a five-year period. So there was a lot of self-inflicted damage there.
The way it was explained to me was from the beginning, it was a problem because the Big Eight felt it had expanded by adding four schools. The Southwest thought there had been a merger. You get the difference. One is an acquisition, and the other is a merger. They never had an agreement sort of about what it really was, and that created enormous governance issues, symbolized probably by the office moving from Kansas City to Dallas. I think that probably reflected the Nebraska-Texas tension that was there for really close to 15 years.
By the late 1990s, conferences had gotten larger, and at least one was too big for its own good. The WAC added six members in 1996, including three from the defunct Southwest Conference. It soared to 16 members and developed a pod system for football.
It became too much for eight original WAC members, who dropped out in 1999 to form the Mountain West Conference. The Big East started to form cracks, too, between the original basketball schools and those that joined as football members. By 2003, Miami and Boston College were accepted into the ACC. A final spot between Syracuse and Virginia Tech became hotly contested. In part becuase of pressure exerted by Virginia's political leaders, the Hokies left the Big East for the ACC.
Television rights fees and a lucrative conference championship game became critical components in the decision to expand.
Delany: I'm not saying the Big East is responsible for it, but it did indicate you could build a conference based on TV. I certainly think that the founding of ESPN showed there's a new technology and new ways to develop revenue. I certainly think Penn State to the Big Ten, and not to the Big East, encouraged people to do some things. I certainly think, having gotten the freedom, Notre Dame and the SEC defecting (from the CFA) so quickly, and then Big Ten defecting from the Pac-10 showed the commercial freedom that was available and how powerful entities could do pretty well.
I certainly think the Big Eight and Southwest Conference was a marriage that maybe wasn't a great marriage, but it was done for media reasons to become stronger. I certainly think the ACC was trying to keep up when they added Florida State. I certainly think that a lot of the adds by the Big East to maintain relevance, which eventually didn't work, whether it's Virginia Tech or Miami, they just weren't very good. They just weren't sustainable. I certainly think the WAC's over-expansion didn't work.
The Big Ten pursued Notre Dame, but the school's leaders announced on Feb. 5, 1999, that they would remain independent in football. NCAA rules through May 2022 called for leagues to have at least 12 members and two divisions to stage a championship game. That annual event further enhanced the SEC's brand. The Big 12 held a title game in 1996, four years after the SEC. The ACC started its football championship game a decade later. Had Notre Dame joined the Big Ten, it would have enabled the Big Ten to hold a title contest.
It does beg a question. Had the NCAA eliminated membership requirements for conferences holding title games, would it have impacted realignment? Delany isn't sure.
Delany: Roy's move was strategic. Our Penn State move was only in a very broad sense. We just thought it was a great add. But we didn't have any plans beyond that. In fact, other than Notre Dame, we had no plans. The bar was high for expansion, and it should be high. But timing, it's like time and score in a basketball game. Circumstances can change, and I think they did change.
What's more relevant than the deregulation of divisions? What would be the two things that stand out in my mind? The '84 TV decision is one. And the other is the Big East turning down Penn State. Those are the two seminal moments because I could tell you Roy going to 12 teams had no effect on us. Notre Dame joining the Big East or the ACC had really no effect on us. Really the Southwest and the Big 12 had no effect on us. What had an effect on us was the deregulation.
I don't think that the question is hypothetical. It's hard to answer a hypothetical, but I'm trying, I don't think that that will have enough of an impact to do anything for anybody. I would say just generally about expansion. There's a point at which an association of colleges is no longer a conference, and my guess is it's at 16.
The Big Ten took the next major step that altered the college landscape, one that has approached the Supreme Court decision in relevance. That move kicks off the second part of Delany's question-and-answer session, coming later this week.
