You Gotta Give Credit To 'The Alliance' For Doing The Impossible And Creating The Dumbest Thing In College Sports
Advertisement
[ESPN] - The ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 alliance became official Tuesday, with the three conferences coming together "on a collaborative approach surrounding the future evolution of college athletics and scheduling."
The three leagues emphasized common values and unanimous support impacting key topics affecting college athletes and schools in all sports. Sources say the Pac-12 has been the most aggressive of the three leagues in forming and encouraging the alliance.
Tuesday's announcement included mention of a scheduling alliance in football, women's basketball and men's basketball, which will go into effect "as soon as practical" based on existing contracts.
I can't stop laughing but I do want to applaud The Alliance here. They went out and created the dumbest thing in sports to try and fight the SEC. That's all this is. They are trying to fight the SEC for being awesome and grabbing Texas and Oklahoma. Hey dorks, maybe just adapt a little bit better than creating something called The Alliance without a signed contract. What can go wrong with that? Everyone running these things always end up being dumber than expected and this is no different.
How about them not backing the 12-team playoff? Uh, we're talking about the Pac-12 here, right? This only HELPS them get into the college football playoff. They aren't getting in 4-team playoffs often. That league has fallen off a cliff. Let's call a spade a spade here too. The SEC will always be the best football conference no matter what. Of course they're likely to end up with the most teams in the CFP. It doesn't matter if it's a 4-team playoff, where we've seen the SEC get 2 teams or a 12-team playoff. Yeah, college football is awesome because each week is sort of a play-in tournament. But I've always wanted to see them expand to 6 or 8 preferably. Still keep the regular season important but reward teams for undefeated seasons and conference championships.
This is the worst gimmick I've seen since the Spirit Squad in WWE.
Advertisement
And hey, scheduling bigger games for college football and basketball is awesome, but do we really need The Alliance for that? No. Just schedule it normally. I get the importance of buy-games for the sport as a whole, but cut it by 1 and schedule a bigger game. Boom problem solved. No contract needed here either. Mind you they are still talking about expansion.
That makes the whole 'protect the Big 12' bullshit even funnier. Who do we think the Pac-12 is going to try and get for expansion? Here's a hint. Teams from the Big 12. Why wouldn't they? The goal is to get the best conference talent possible and trying to get Oklahoma State, Texas Tech, etc. is way better than the MWC or WAC or whatever.
Checks and balances? Come on fellas, you're not fooling anyone here. College sports is changing, no doubt about it. It became too big for the way it was previously. That's just part of the beast. But this? The Alliance? Yeah, dumbest thing I've seen since Billy Raftery got passed on calling the Final Four the first time around.
This sums it up perfectly: