It’s fall 2024. The Stanford and Cal men’s soccer teams need to play conference games to build their playoff resumes. They board flights – we won’t accept charters given the athletic budgets of struggling schools – and land in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.
They board buses to take them into the open arms of Southern Methodist University, their well-heeled host and benefactor, and await the arrival of a group of East Coast teams from their new league, Atlantic Coast Conference. Hell, maybe the Notre Dame team will show up too.
Teams will play numerous matches against each other on a random field in sprawling North Texas to complete the leaderboard and get underway.
Do “student-athletes” play in front of fans? Their friends? Their parents?
Do they get that extra boost by representing their school on an opposing team’s campus, stealing a key victory on the road?
This scenario is just one of the ridiculous ideas I’ve seen floating around on how to make Stanford, Cal and SMU transferring to the ACC — made official Friday morning — practice for the hundreds of affected athletes who don’t play football or men’s basketball.
Reportedly, ACC schools finally found enough “yes” votes because of all the concessions the Bay Area Pac-12 holdovers and SMU in particular were willing to make.
The Mustangs, who never recovered from the death sentence they received from the NCAA in the late 1980s, were so desperate to return to a power conference that they promised not to accept a distribution media rights for nine years. That means some of those wealthy alums who put the football program on the path to ruin by paying players to attend SMU at its peak in the Southwest Conference are going to shell out about $300 million to rediscover that sweet taste of college football. .
Stanford and Cal will only get about a 30% share of the ACC distribution for seven years, probably $10-12 million (and how much of that will go to travel?).
The leaders of these prestigious California institutions simply weren’t willing to partner with Oregon State, Washington State and a collection of Mountain West schools – a situation that would be much better for the athletes’ quality of life – for the same reason they held on. their noses by adding Big 12 schools to the Pac-12 two years ago:
They’ve convinced themselves that they’re better than you – unless you went to an Ivy League school, of course. They can continue to puff out their chests through attending a conference with other schools who share an unbearable pride in their academics. They may say they’ve found a new home within “like-minded” institutions, but let’s be clear: the only thing these schools share culturally is their blind dedication to riding the football gravy train.
The structure of college sports is so broken that it has become redundant to say it. This is what happens when a system fails for the common good but remains too profitable for a lucky few. College presidents continue to pile up bad, short-sighted decisions because they know that when college sports really collapses, they won’t be around to clean up the mess. It will be another academic-turned-politician who made a mistake in making big sports decisions.
When the best college football programs inevitably go their separate ways, Stanford and Cal will not be on this ark. We can only hope they know this. All they’ve done here is position themselves to align with Duke, Virginia, Boston College, Wake Forest and others who won’t make this cut but have acceptable reputations for future mixes.
THE The Pac-12 is officially dead. The Beavers and Cougars need a lifeline from the Big 12 or else they’re headed to the Mountain West, it seems. It’s actually really sad and immensely unfair, but it’s a feeling that’s happening at today’s most “powerful” schools, including Stanford and Cal.
By expanding, the ACC did what was necessary to avoid the fate of the Pac-12, which chose not to expand and then paid dearly for it when USC and UCLA prepare for the Big Ten. The ACC has disgruntled members, like Florida State and Clemson, that it will never be able to cure. Their exit will happen eventually, but the ACC now has strength in numbers (and ratings!) and will continue to live on to some extent as a second-tier football league.
Stanford defensive lineman Jaxson Moi tackles California running back Jaydn Ott during a game in November 2022.
(Godofredo A. Vásquez / Associated Press)
Let’s give credit to ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips for not following in George Kliavkoff’s footsteps. Phillips knew he was going to drive some schools crazy, but he didn’t act out of fear of losing them. He protected the long-term existence of his league – his No. 1 job.
Stanford and Cal will say they had no other choice, but I wouldn’t go that far. Stanford in particular, as an emblem of what the “student-athlete” experience should be, could have stood as a thought leader and said enough is enough. The cardinal did not have to follow the crowd, and his students and alumni, known for marching to the beat of their own drum, would likely have appreciated that.
But we shouldn’t be surprised by Stanford’s herd mentality. In recent weeks, as the ACC debated expansion, I couldn’t help but think back to the pandemic, when Stanford attempted to shut down 11 Olympic sports programs.
The school management then declared that it no longer had the necessary budget. Due to a proposed lawsuit and immense public resistance, Stanford reinstated the sport, but the message remained. All sports that did not bring in money were expendable at the mercy of football, even on the “Farm”.
It’s interesting. Stanford couldn’t subsidize men’s volleyball and sailing three years ago, but now it can endure a drastic reduction in annual income and obscene travel expenses?
Of course, it’s a long-term game. We can all see it. It was an easy decision to make.
But for college sports to secure the future, at some point someone in charge will have to start making tough decisions.
This wasn’t going to be Stanford or the ACC in the middle of this wild and lopsided summer of 2023. So let’s go.
