July 22, 2025 • 37 mins
The Athletic reported Big Ten commissioner Tony Pettiti sent a letter to the NCAA's Committee on Infractions asking it not to level any more sanctions or penalties for Michigan's football program.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:21):
What's up good folk, it's RJ Young.
I am not on a step mill. If this is your first time
watching adapt and respond, thank you for joining us here.
We talk college football year round.
If you're into that, go ahead and hit that subscribe button
like this video and answer the question in the comments below.
As you can see rolling on the ticker, we're going to get into
the Big 10 and Michigan and how both parties just want to get
(00:42):
this squashed. Memphis was offering $200
million that the Big 12 said no to.
And what is the value of your college football team, or should
I say the most popular college football teams?
And we might have a little bit of a lightning round here with
win totals with the ACC and Big 10 holding media day
(01:04):
simultaneously. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
this week, man, it's going to bea huge week for yours truly.
By the way, I turned 38 in what is today like 10 days.
Dog. Your man's is feeling good.
Your man's is feeling really good.
I'm having such a good time doing this show, writing about
(01:27):
the sport. Go check out this column that I
wrote about Georgia being kings of the SEC and probably going to
have some things to say about the Big 10 this this week as the
writing is coming and college football is coming.
We're going to start playing games next month, August 23rd.
Probably going to start doing live shows during that week.
So keep your ears perked up for that.
But I want to start with some news that the Athletic broke
(01:49):
this morning about Michigan and the NCAA and the Big 10.
Turns out Tony Petiti sent a letter to the hearing where he
was supposed to make an appearance on the infractions
that Michigan committed or may may not committed, depending on
what kind of Michigan fan you are.
If you're the one that sees whatyou did and said we got caught,
(02:14):
great, good for you. If you are not the one that see
what you did and say, hey, everybody's cheating.
We were just better at it until you got caught, OK?
Either way, Tony Petiti and the Big 10 want this done.
They want this squash in writinga say we don't think that
Michigan should receive any further sanctions from the NCAA
(02:34):
in large part due to. They already paid a price,
right? So when this was first revealed
that Connor Stallions had organized a group of people to
go to more than two dozen college football games across
the country with the expressed idea of putting a camera on the
(02:57):
sideline of a team you might play, recording their signals
and then deciphering them at home so that you could use them
on the sideline to know what they were going to run.
Yeah, everybody got upset about this.
This also made headset to helmettechnology a thing that needed
to happen right then. Quick, fast, in a hurry and to
(03:17):
really drive this home, it's that the rest of the Big 10 was
so furious about this that Petiti and the Big 10 had to do
something about it from Graciano, Rutgers seemingly
tipping off Texas Christian in the 2022 national, excuse me,
College Football Playoff semi final, the Fiesta ball where
Texas Christian was able to sendsome dummy stuff in there and
really confuse Michigan put themselves in a ball game and
(03:39):
more importantly, they won that ball game.
Feels like every time Michigan had the signals, they won the
football game. Now, I realized that they had
basically been doing this since Connor Stallions started doing
it. 2021, give or take, joining staff around 2018.
But that 2023 season is the one that we're really focused on.
That's the one where they go 15 and O and undefeated.
(04:02):
OK. We're also talking about this at
a time when it dropped in October that this was a thing.
So by the time we get to November, Jim Harbaugh has
already sat out three games due to NCAA recruiting violations,
to say nothing of Sharon Moore also missing time during that.
And then the Big 10 came with another set of sanctions for Jim
(04:23):
Harbaugh, for which he was not on the sideline when they
played. Maryland was not on the sideline
when they played Ohio State. Didn't matter, right?
And it was really chilly when Michigan won the Big 10
championship that year as Jim Harbaugh was standing noticeably
several feet away from Tony Petiti because he believes that
he was fairly made the scapegoatfor other coaches being upset
(04:46):
until the process could be completed.
I during that time and during this time have said two things.
One, you cheated, you got caught, pay a penalty. 2 The
kids did not care. They they simply did not care.
They they went and they played like this was not affecting
their play on the football field.
Now knowing what what play to run is one thing.
(05:08):
Executing that play is somethingelse entirely.
There is nothing about that you could do when a man is going to
say I'm going to move you from point A to point B against your
will. That's called blocking.
I'm going to throw you on the ground against your will.
That's called tackling, right? I'm going to catch this
football. I'm going to break ankles with
this Juke move. We're going to play stifling
(05:30):
defense. These are things I got to give
Michigan credit for, and frankly, they played a game that
did not look dissimilar to the one that Georgia had been
playing for the previous two years.
They didn't need to throw the ball all over the yard to win.
They just need to run the ball well and play great defense.
That's the Michigan that we've come to know.
That is the Michigan that SharonMoore put on the field last year
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and that is the one that would manage to go 8 and five without
the use of a frigging quarterback because they don't
really use frigging quarterbackslike that.
In the year where they won the national championship, they
played 15 games. JJ McCarthy didn't throw for
3000 yards. They they don't need to do that.
As a matter of fact, they've only had two 3000 yard passers
for single season and you can't tell me who they are because
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they don't really rate at Michigan.
You run the ball, you play defense, and that's what you do
at Georgia. They don't need 1000 yard
receivers. They don't need 1000 yard
tailbacks. Matter of fact, they ain't had
1000 yard tailback at Georgia since Deandra Swift 2019.
They've only had 1000 yard receiver in their history and
Terrence Edwards at Georgia. At Michigan, you had this dude
named Braylon Edwards and you probably need to throw that dude
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to rock unless that dude startedplaying running back for you.
I just don't see Braylon being that kind of dude and he was
still cold. He was so cold.
But I mean, that's one dude, right?
Colston Loveland was the leadingreceiver for this team last year
and the most attendable on that team in 2023, despite what you
might think about Roman Wilson and others.
And if the Big 10 wants this squash, then I there's nothing
(06:59):
to discuss anymore. I'm serious.
Like the Big 10 and the SEC are fast becoming the two entities
that run college football. Whether or not we want to admit
it or not doesn't really factor into it for me.
What does factor into it for me is hey, we, we decided that this
is no longer good for the sport.It's no longer good for
(07:20):
Michigan. It's no longer good for the Big
10. And if the Big 10 wants to just
say, hey, let bygones be bygones, then bygones, let
bygones be bygones. Because this has been dragging
out for so long, for so long. And I realized we're going to
have people in the comments and outside saying, hey, look, the
hammer was never going to fall. The hammer was never coming.
(07:41):
Fine. I mean, if that's if that's what
you got to do, cool. You still got to play football
come September, August, August got to play football come
August. And there are other teams that
still want to beat you. But that's the way that Michigan
wants it. Like they really don't mind
wearing the Black Hat. They don't mind being hated by
people. They are OK with it.
(08:02):
As a matter of fact, it's not good enough that Ohio State won
the national championship last year because Ohio State lost in
Michigan. Michigan beat Ohio State on the
way to a national championship and beat Ohio State without a
quarterback last year. I still maintain that if they
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just throw the ball in the direction of Jeremiah Smith, the
score is different. I don't care if you're bracket
covering them or not, because ifyou're bracket covering them and
you're forcing them to rock, you're going to roll coverage
that way. You roll coverage that way.
You throw the Carnell tape brandin and that's, you take
advantage, right? You don't run into the teeth of
the best defensive line that you're going to see all year.
And that was what it was. They ran into the teeth of the
best defensive line that they saw all year because, well, Ohio
(08:47):
State's got some pride about them.
The one thing you will not say about Ohio State is that they
are soft. They they can't stand it and
they will run into that brick wall as often as they possibly
have to, to make the point knownthat no, we are we, we, we come
to run the football too. Turns out last year was not,
it's not the year to be doing that.
(09:07):
Last year you had Jeremiah Smith, which is like Michigan
having Braylon Edwards. Let's not, let's not make this
stupid, right? Let's go win the football game
and then talk about how hard or soft your team can be.
I'm with the TV on this because if he sent the letter, normally
a commissioner shows up to thesesorts of hearings.
But if he sent the letter and itstates what The Athletic says it
(09:28):
does, forget it, you know, because at this point, it's been
a year since that documentary came out on Netflix and nothing
has happened. We've had lots of humming and
Hawk and we've had lots of John.We had lots of talking season
about what this is going to be alot of it from this show.
But frankly, I'm also wanting tosee an end to this.
Like I will continue to do the segments for as long as we got
(09:51):
to keep doing the segments, which is to say until they give
us an end. But it feels like the Big 10
knows that it's two programs. Michigan and Ohio State are is
bread and butter. Two of the four founding
members. OK, let's, let's, let's do that.
Let's come back to the table as the Big 10 and go get what you
want, which is your 4 qualifyingbids for the College Football
(10:14):
Playoffs. It's really hard to do that if
you don't have Michigan on board.
Michigan also going through it in a number of ways, right?
But this is just the latest one.And it's something that the Big
10 could do, right? It's an olive branch.
It's a way of bringing them backinto the fold and making
everybody else understand, hey, it's family and we going to get,
we going to fight. We're going to get it going on
it once again and we'll handle on the football field.
(10:37):
I'm with him on this, right on the other side of this, As we're
going to take a break, I want totalk about what's the deal with
the valuations of some of these football teams and the
valuations of others, which is going to lead us, I promise, to
Memphis as we get into the show.Music back on adapt and respond
(11:23):
with me. RJ Young, thanks for joining us
here. We do this every day.
If you're new to the show, please hit that subscribe button
and follow us on Apple and Spotify where you can listen to
the audio podcast. If you're doing so now, thank
you. I hope you're enjoying your
commute to wherever and I hope that the sound of my voice is
doing something for you because I can't stand listening to the
(11:45):
sound of my voice as as often asas often as people want to point
it out. Like, Nah, I got to listen back
to these. Why would I?
And if you're Memphis probably wouldn't want to listen back to
this particular segment because we're talking about the
valuation of college football teams.
And I find it interesting, right?
I, I like this stuff. I like it as fear theory and
theoreticals because we're nevergoing to see the sell of a
(12:09):
college football team, we hope. But with private equity coming
in and teams and conferences never being more hungry for
money to pay out revenue sharingname, image and likeness, just a
name to new cost that you had toadd.
It's not out of the realm of possibility for a private equity
firm to want to take a large stake in a particular college
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football program. But I was more interested in
methodology, for which The Athletic came up with the
numbers that I'm about to give to you.
So I'm going to give you their methodology.
Then I'm going to go through thelist and we're going to see who
who rates and who doesn't. So they said we use real life
pro transactions to gauge purchase price as relative to a
(12:51):
team's revenue. Over the past three available
years of data, NFLNBA sales guided our ratios in the SEC and
the Big 10, while MLB and NHL were our rough benchmarks in the
ACC and the Big 12. For each school in a Power 4
plus Notre Dame, we factored in everything from prestige and
(13:12):
championships to facility renovations, population trends
and realignment scenarios. That means treating Notre Dame
more like the Los Angeles Lakersand Boston College more like
Kansas City Royals. The Kansas City Royals, excuse
me. So it's kind of all over the
(13:32):
map, but it might make sense forthe individual teams themselves,
which, you know, I kind of that's how we, that's how we
treat college football, right? We don't rate Memphis the same
way that we rate Clemson, right?Clemson's won national
championships, plays in the ACC Memphis has gone from Conference
USA to the American and as I have alluded to, tried to join
(13:54):
the Big 12 not once, but twice. So what we have here is Texas at
the top, which I don't think shocks anybody because if you
looked at revenue sharing, excuse me, revenue sharing, you
make overall revenue. You would see Texas and Texas
A&M are two of the top five teams each year because those
athletic departments don't, theydon't lack donors and they don't
(14:17):
lack oil money. It's the closest thing that we
get to the PLF being a domestic as anything else in the world,
right? That's how we gauge Texas is
going to be about theirs. A&M is going to be about theirs.
So Texas comes in at a projectedprice of 2.3, eight, $2.38
(14:37):
billion, which is, again, an enormous number, but not as much
as you might expect for, say, what they contribute.
Like if you were to try to buy the Dallas Cowboys today, I
think you're looking at closer to 20 billion.
You know, I'm not, I'm not beingfacetious about that.
When you look at how much these teams are going for and how the
(15:00):
money has gotten so big as to seem intergalactic, $2.38
billion feels like a bargain forTexas Longhorns football team
given what you can do with all of it, right?
I'm not just talking about what you could do from a
merchandising standpoint, what you can do from sponsorships,
(15:20):
what if you could put more patches on jerseys, those sorts
of things, right? I think that if, if there was a
pool of people that saw that number and said, hey, is Texas
for sale, you would get a lot ofTexas businessmen go in on this
and probably 1 majority owner inparticular behind them.
You get Georgia at 1.92 billion,so only one team is above $2
(15:42):
billion, and that's University of Texas with Georgia trailing
them. Ohio State coming in at third
with 1.9, so just $200,000 behind Georgia.
But I think Ohio State would dispute all of this given the
economic impact of what Ohio State home games are, especially
when that team is really good. Ranked inside the top five means
for Columbus and the state of Ohio.
(16:03):
Notre Dame checks in at 4 at 1.85 billion.
Michigan at 5 at 1.83 billion, Alabama at six.
One point, 74 million, Oklahoma at seven, 1.49 billion.
The Sooners, more than any otherprogram in the entire country,
(16:23):
matter to the state. That's what that means to me.
You can talk about Nebraska, butNebraska's falling off.
You can talk about Arkansas. Arkansas is not one at the level
that Oklahoma has one. And when we talk about teams
that really don't have an NFL comp and only has one major team
comp, yeah, you're you're talking about the Sooners
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because that's what this state is built on.
Nineteen O 7 is when Oklahoma received statehood.
By 1955, we're talking about a national championship.
So it took less than 50 years. You know, I'm saying that's what
we do here. We play football.
We play Sooner football. I realized that Oklahoma State
has had some things to say. I also know my alma mater,
(17:05):
University of Tulsa, has four Pro Football Hall of Farmers.
Hello. But if you're talking about what
runs the state and what the state is recognized for first
and foremost internationally, itis Sooner football.
Right after Oklahoma we get USC,which is interesting because SC
likes to think quite a bit of itself.
Tennessee, LSU, Penn State, Florida, Auburn, Oregon.
(17:28):
Oregon is the first team under abillion dollars here as Auburn.
Auburn having won that national championship 2010, probably
doing a lot of work there. Florida having won 2006, 2008,
urban Iowa years. The one that's kind of squirrely
to me here is Penn State. I get Tennessee.
I get Tennessee because of what they've been here lately and
(17:49):
making the College Football Playoff, having Niko Iya
Malayala Dr. Such a conversationa couple years ago with his NIL
signing. But Penn State hasn't won any
national championship in the 21st century, but neither is
Tennessee, for that matter. Tennessee also plays in a
tougher conference. And Penn State has been
operating like an independent for so long that it's still hard
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for Penn Staters and people thatroot for Big 10 teams or even
college football to be like, is this really?
Are they really a part of the league?
Yeah, they are. They are.
But they also like to be known as Penn State before they want
to be known as a Big 10 member. And I understand that.
Whereas Auburn wants to be in the SEC, synonymous with the
SEC. Same thing with Tennessee.
(18:31):
It's the conference that is bigger than all of its teams,
which I think has made it a muchmore attractive conference.
When you still have teams in your league that want to operate
like independents, which is whatOklahoma and Texas were doing
toward the end of their years inthe Big 12, then you're going to
have a hard time. I thought thinking about Gene
Smith during the COVID year whenyou had Nebraska and Scott Frost
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and others talking about we'll lead the Big 10 if y'all won't
let us play football. Gene Smith was steadfast.
When you know that we're always going to be Big 10 members.
That's not what this is about. We want to play football.
Everybody wants to play football.
But he stopped short of going, hey, look, we go back to the
19th century with this lead, which is to say it matters to
Ohio State that they are a part of the Big 10.
And it mattered more because SC,Oregon, Washington, UCLA decided
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to join up. I find that pretty telling.
Oregon ranking ahead of A and MIdid not see coming.
But A&M has been not great for some time, right?
We're talking about really the biggest win that they've had is
upsetting A rank. Alabama as an unranked team with
Zach Calzada at quarterback and you keep going down the list,
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you'll see teams that you expectto like Washington, Nebraska,
Florida State, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan State, Clemson,
Arkansas, Miami. We can keep going all the way
through here and we get the 25, Miami, Ole Miss, North Carolina,
South Carolina, Minnesota, Utah,Texas Christian, Texas Christian
I think edges into this thing at523 million the bottom because
(19:59):
they make the College Football Playoff national championship
game. Then they got sun to 65 to 7.
What is cool about this is I canmake an argument for almost
every program here. Say perhaps South Carolina,
North Carolina, excuse me, I can't I can't tell you that
(20:19):
North Carolina's been great playing new year 6 bowl game,
cool, great Matt Brown years awesome for you.
Minnesota had a great 2019 hasn't really reached that high
model, high watermark. But historically, the Gophers
have been a team that you have to contend with here in the last
few years. We know about Clemson, Michigan
State has made the College Football Playoff, Utah, one of
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the more steady programs. Steady.
Your programs that we've seen inthe last 15 years, say last year
where you could just count on them to be there at the end
winning. And then South Carolina had a
great last year, like with Lenore Sellers.
And then the ability to beat Clemson, which is a national
champ in your backyard, being the state champs, that means
something to us, not just to them.
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I think when I look at what the average football revenue might
be for some of these programs isis where you also kind of get
itchy because average football revenue, according to The
Athletic for Texas is $183 million.
After that, at #2 you drop down to 147.
There's, there's a chasm here. It's also why we end up beating
up on Texas so often. Texas is doing the least with
(21:28):
the most for years. When I look at the University of
Texas and I look at the money they have coming in and I look
at what the state of Texas produces in high school football
recruits. And remember, Oklahoma goes down
there often to go get players that don't want to go to Texas.
You feel like they should win a national championship every
other year instead. They've not played for a
national championship since 2009.
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They've had Bjean Robinson come through.
Sam Ellinger is a folk hero to some when you or should be a
folk hero to many. Every great quarterback that has
grown up in Texas had a shot to get there.
I mean from Andrew Luck to Johnny Manziel to RG3 has two
Heisman winners and one of the most fallible college football
(22:10):
players of all time. They decided they wanted to go
another way each time. This might be just the second
time that they hit in the last seven years on who I think their
quarterbacks should be. Sam Ellinger turns out to be the
guy that could run Tom Herman's offense.
But I think about that 2019 yearwhere they just sold out to beat
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LSU and it came up short, but LSU goes undefeated and they
were banged up the rest of the year.
What if you manage it differently?
And that's that's really the task with Texas.
Can you manage this this situation because you're going
to miss somebody. Jalen Melrose was committed to
Texas, wanted to go to Texas. Told me right here on this
channel. It's all I want to do.
(22:51):
RJ grew up going to Teddy, went to Katie Tompkins.
Mike Yersich decided that wasn'this guy.
Nick Saban said come on down andwhat do you get?
You get a quarterback that leadsyou to an SEC championship,
beats Georgia and makes the College Football Playoff.
If there wasn't a Jayden Daniels, there would have been a
Jaylen Melrose. Like that's how good that
(23:14):
school, that state is at producing talent and talent
again wants to go to Texas. So yeah, when you look at these
numbers and you see how much money they make and bring in, it
only stands to reason that we'rehard on them and we should
always be hard on them because they don't have any excuse.
There's there's no reason for them to not be great every
(23:35):
single year. Meanwhile, Oklahoma's average
annual football revenue is at $135 million.
Again, going from Big 8 dominance to Big 12 dominance to
not dominant in the SEC probablyhurt this.
But if they came out firing likeTexas did, probably top five
here in the valuations, that's could go up this year if
(23:55):
Oklahoma gets off on the good foot.
Really excited about what that can mean for Brent Venables
because I like Brent Venables. I want Brent Venables to keep
the job. And then there's Michigan,
right, that we have to mention here, bringing in 141 million in
average annual football revenue.And that's not too shabby,
especially given the the down years they had with Jim Harbaugh
(24:17):
before the up years that came. Remember, they restructured that
man's contract after the 2020 season, made him eat basically
incentive laden contract that I thought was much more of a slap
in the face. But he was also flirting with
the NFL then too. He takes that contract.
He built the program into what it is.
They go win a national championship and he says adios,
(24:38):
you know, I did what I came to do.
As he said at his post victory press conference Nash
championship game. Now I get to sit with the
grown-ups table because his his brother had won a Super Bowl.
His dad won national championships.
Now he gets to be one of the bigboys too, which I really much,
very much enjoyed. All right, come back.
I want to have this discussion about Memphis and what we
(25:01):
learned about what the Big 12 isactually looking for and how bad
Memphis desperately wants to play for national championships.
(25:34):
University of Memphis wanted to join the Big 12, came up with
proposal to join the Big 12. The Big 12 said we're not
interested honey, why adapter responding to the RJ Young if
you are new to the show, thanks for joining us here talk college
football year round. If you are so up for it, answer
(25:55):
the questions that are scrollingon the ticker and go get your
free sticker now. I found this report out of left
field because we're going into ayear where or show me a week
where the ACC and the Big 10 aregoing to hold media days.
So Monday to see the report coming from Ross Dillinger at
Yahoo Sports that Memphis had tried to join the Big 12 by
(26:18):
offering $200 million and the Big 12 saying no thanks.
I have said, huh, OK, so now we know why this story's out there.
They said no, but why did they say no?
So there's this part of Ross's column that you should go read.
But I thought this was the most important part.
(26:40):
Memphis President Bill Hargrave has spent at least 14 months
visiting the president's and topathletic administration
administrator, excuse me, of many Big 12 schools in
individual on campus meetings that have culminated in a
membership offer to the league that is expected to be as high
as $200 million over the next five years.
(27:02):
When Dellinger reached out to some people in the Big 12 about
this, he got one anonymous quoteback that I thought was pretty
good. We vetted Memphis when we added
the other 4, Cincinnati, CentralFlorida, Houston, BYU, and chose
not to add them. What's changed?
The layout of college football, perhaps?
(27:23):
You know, the the layout of the money that you need.
This again, second most important part of the story for
me for that. Ross wrote the industry has
never been in a more money hungry time.
Already, Big 12 schools are receiving roughly $1 million in
additional revenue from sponsorship with PayPal.
Memphis's proposal would have increased that by at least 2
(27:47):
million with sponsorship commitments from Michigan
Memphis partners. Excuse me?
The school is historically aligned with partners such as
FedEx, Lowe's and AutoZone. The school would also take zero
distribution for the final five years of the league's new deal
with ESPN and Fox, add sponsorships in excess of $150
(28:09):
million / / 5 years, and subjectitself to expulsion after 203031
if the Big 12 deems it's not adding value.
That was. That sounds like a found money
zero risk option for the Big 12.But if I'm playing devil's
(28:29):
advocate, which is to say what'sthe argument against adding
Memphis? You're going to create an
imbalance, right? Even teen versus odd teams.
That's going to mess up the mathwhen it comes to playing for
championships and or selection into the College Football
Playoff, which I'll get to. You're also going to add another
program that just got hit with, you know, some sanctions of
(28:53):
their own with Penny Hardaway and the basketball team.
But that's nothing new. If anybody's been following
Memphis basketball since it was Memphis State or even since John
Calipari was head coach there, what is new is that Memphis has
been playing football at a high level for about two decades now.
Like, I'm going all the way backto D'Angelo, you know, like, I
(29:15):
remember being scared of parts of Memphis, the football team.
Don't take that anywhere else. I like Memphis.
Memphis is great. Chill out.
I look at Memphis and I ask myself, why do they want it this
bad? Is, you know, that's the Big 12.
You know why they want it this bad?
Southern Methodist. So Southern Methodist asked to
(29:40):
join the ACC, get out of the American for one reason, one
reason only. To have a road to play in the
College Football Playoff period.You know that if you win the
conference championship, or at least make the conference
championship game, you have a greater than 0 chance of making
(30:01):
the College Football Playoff in a 12 team format.
It was worth it to Southern Methodists and its billion
dollar donors to forgo a lot of money from television revenue if
they can get into the league to which the ACC said yeah, why
not? Could not hurt.
We like adding the value you youwon a bunch of games in the
(30:21):
American and Southern Methodist is wanted to play big boy
football for some time. You take it back to the early
1980s, Southern Methodist was playing big boy football.
Then they got caught for cheating.
They got death penalty. They fought their way back.
They consistently have shown that they can win with different
coaches and that the administration is about its
business. Cool, we'll let them in.
They did not expect them to run through the regular season
(30:43):
undefeated and make the conference championship game in
Year 1. OK, maybe the SEC thought this
would happen with Texas in Oklahoma, but it wasn't enough
to upset the apple cart until itwas, right?
You get SMU in this thing and then Alabama ain't getting in
this thing because you already know Texas is going to get in
this thing, right? Add this if you are adding
(31:03):
Memphis to the Big 12 and you know that Memphis can fight at
the front right away. You've got Iowa State, you got
Kansas State, you've got Colorado, you got BYU, you've
got Oklahoma State. You've got so many programs that
just want to taste this College Football Playoff when you could
only get one team in last year 1and that was your conference
(31:24):
champion. Arizona State played well,
acquitted itself well, made the Big 12 look as tough as it is.
You add Memphis to this, even ifyou're not taking any money out
of their pockets, they're addingmoney to your pockets.
How much money is enough for youto feel bad about making the not
making the College Football playoffs?
After some time, the money is diminishing returns, right?
It's just keeping score. I don't think the Big 12 is
(31:47):
there yet. I think if they thought they
could get Memphis, then they think they can get Memphis now.
PAC 12 has made Memphis a reallyinteresting offer.
What Memphis knows what you know, and I know the PAC 12 does
not have a road to the College Football Playoff.
That is the most important part of this calculus.
You want to join a Power 4 conference because the Power 4
(32:10):
conferences still have a direct path to playing for the national
championship, and that is about playing for money.
OK, There is $8 billion that ESPN paid to air the rights to
these games. It's being distributed among the
teams that make the playoff and continue to win.
OK, this is what I think of sweetheart deal for Notre Dame,
(32:32):
because they're not in a conference.
They get to keep all the money that they make, whereas Ohio
State spread that money across the Big 10.
Memphis could be that right. But is that something you really
want to do? And then the last time that they
tried to add more teams, UConn and Gonzaga for basketball
(32:53):
failed, right? Failed.
Gonzaga ends up joining the PAC 12, which I thought was a better
fit anyway. No football presents to speak
of. And UConn had a really great
season last year. But I don't know how committed
they are to playing football period, at a high level, which
is why they're still independent, right?
I think that the Big 12 should have submitted its own offer.
(33:15):
That's what I think. I think the Big 12 should have
found another way. And because you're going to have
more realignment, you're going to have more teams that are
looking to join your conference.And eventually I think we're
going to get down to we only have this much room for what we
think of as FBS programs playingfor the national championship.
Not because I want it that way, but because that's the way it's
going. It's you're pricing out so many
(33:36):
other programs just by the moneycontinue to go up.
Like Boise State coming up is really going to help the PAC 12.
That's why they could lead the Mountain West, right?
And you look at Mountain West, it's being pillaged and I don't
like the PAC 12 was pillage and it was no more.
So you grow or die. And that is capitalism.
That's that's how you do business.
You don't get to stand still. You don't get to count the
(33:59):
money. You have to continue to make
money and get bigger and eat andeat and eat.
Memphis doesn't necessarily knowwhat it's going to do next, but
I guarantee you this. They want to win and they are
unafraid to spend the money necessary to win.
Somebody's going to take them upon that deal.
Don't know who it's going to be.I just know who they don't want
(34:19):
it to be. Sunbelt Conference USA, PAC 12,
Mountain West, none of the conferences that don't have a
direct path to the College Football Playoff because the Big
10, the SEC are holding all the cards.
They let the ACC in. The Big 12 have seats at the
table because they have to to form something like, you know,
fairness, at least to us in appearance.
(34:41):
But let's not get it twisted here.
The emphasis needs to be on getting as many teams into the
College Football Playoff from your league as humanly possible.
Memphis helps that. Memphis helps that.
The money that they're bringing in will also help that, because
(35:03):
that's more money you get to payout, more money you get to pay
out not just to coaches, players, assistants, but to
support staff. We're seeing front offices take
up more of the operating cost. You had to create one out of
whole cloth. In many cases.
You're having to recruit and evaluate and sign more lawyers,
more lawyer fees. A greater and bigger College
Football Playoff is great for you and me, and that's what the
(35:25):
game is about. But somebody's got to find a way
to fund this, and somebody will.I'm never, I'm never too far
from the point of college football is too big to fail, but
it isn't so big that the Big 12 can't fail.
Just take a look at the PAC 12. Memphis, I salute you for trying
to come up with a found money plan for the Big 12 that they
(35:48):
can't see themselves taking It can't do much about that.
But I know this, you got more opportunities this year.
You run through the American, you win the conference
championship, you make College Football Playoff and maybe you
might think about doing what wasunthinkable some years ago.
Just go independent, just get out of the American, put
together your own damn schedule,make sure that your barn burning
(36:11):
like Notre Dame, and then reap the benefits of what independent
barnstorming right opponents canbe like.
I think that's there for you. But that also means that you're
going to have to do this withouta net.
And that is what a league is. It's safety net for when you are
down, when you're not that good.It's betting on yourself, which
is something y'all tell us to do, but when it comes time for
(36:34):
the money to bet on itself, it says, hey man, I would much
rather we find a different way. All right, yeah, uh huh.
That's how it goes. All right, that's going to do it
for this episode of Adapt and respond.
If you like the show, remember to subscribe to the channel,
subscribe to the podcast on Apple and Spotify and I will see
(36:54):
y'all on the flip side doses.
What's up good folk, it's RJ Young.
I am not on a step mill. If this is your first time
watching adapt and respond, thank you for joining us here.
We talk college football year round.
If you're into that, go ahead and hit that subscribe button
like this video and answer the question in the comments below.
As you can see rolling on the ticker, we're going to get into
the Big 10 and Michigan and how both parties just want to get
(00:42):
this squashed. Memphis was offering $200
million that the Big 12 said no to.
And what is the value of your college football team, or should
I say the most popular college football teams?
And we might have a little bit of a lightning round here with
win totals with the ACC and Big 10 holding media day
(01:04):
simultaneously. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
this week, man, it's going to bea huge week for yours truly.
By the way, I turned 38 in what is today like 10 days.
Dog. Your man's is feeling good.
Your man's is feeling really good.
I'm having such a good time doing this show, writing about
(01:27):
the sport. Go check out this column that I
wrote about Georgia being kings of the SEC and probably going to
have some things to say about the Big 10 this this week as the
writing is coming and college football is coming.
We're going to start playing games next month, August 23rd.
Probably going to start doing live shows during that week.
So keep your ears perked up for that.
But I want to start with some news that the Athletic broke
(01:49):
this morning about Michigan and the NCAA and the Big 10.
Turns out Tony Petiti sent a letter to the hearing where he
was supposed to make an appearance on the infractions
that Michigan committed or may may not committed, depending on
what kind of Michigan fan you are.
If you're the one that sees whatyou did and said we got caught,
(02:14):
great, good for you. If you are not the one that see
what you did and say, hey, everybody's cheating.
We were just better at it until you got caught, OK?
Either way, Tony Petiti and the Big 10 want this done.
They want this squash in writinga say we don't think that
Michigan should receive any further sanctions from the NCAA
(02:34):
in large part due to. They already paid a price,
right? So when this was first revealed
that Connor Stallions had organized a group of people to
go to more than two dozen college football games across
the country with the expressed idea of putting a camera on the
(02:57):
sideline of a team you might play, recording their signals
and then deciphering them at home so that you could use them
on the sideline to know what they were going to run.
Yeah, everybody got upset about this.
This also made headset to helmettechnology a thing that needed
to happen right then. Quick, fast, in a hurry and to
(03:17):
really drive this home, it's that the rest of the Big 10 was
so furious about this that Petiti and the Big 10 had to do
something about it from Graciano, Rutgers seemingly
tipping off Texas Christian in the 2022 national, excuse me,
College Football Playoff semi final, the Fiesta ball where
Texas Christian was able to sendsome dummy stuff in there and
really confuse Michigan put themselves in a ball game and
(03:39):
more importantly, they won that ball game.
Feels like every time Michigan had the signals, they won the
football game. Now, I realized that they had
basically been doing this since Connor Stallions started doing
it. 2021, give or take, joining staff around 2018.
But that 2023 season is the one that we're really focused on.
That's the one where they go 15 and O and undefeated.
(04:02):
OK. We're also talking about this at
a time when it dropped in October that this was a thing.
So by the time we get to November, Jim Harbaugh has
already sat out three games due to NCAA recruiting violations,
to say nothing of Sharon Moore also missing time during that.
And then the Big 10 came with another set of sanctions for Jim
(04:23):
Harbaugh, for which he was not on the sideline when they
played. Maryland was not on the sideline
when they played Ohio State. Didn't matter, right?
And it was really chilly when Michigan won the Big 10
championship that year as Jim Harbaugh was standing noticeably
several feet away from Tony Petiti because he believes that
he was fairly made the scapegoatfor other coaches being upset
(04:46):
until the process could be completed.
I during that time and during this time have said two things.
One, you cheated, you got caught, pay a penalty. 2 The
kids did not care. They they simply did not care.
They they went and they played like this was not affecting
their play on the football field.
Now knowing what what play to run is one thing.
(05:08):
Executing that play is somethingelse entirely.
There is nothing about that you could do when a man is going to
say I'm going to move you from point A to point B against your
will. That's called blocking.
I'm going to throw you on the ground against your will.
That's called tackling, right? I'm going to catch this
football. I'm going to break ankles with
this Juke move. We're going to play stifling
(05:30):
defense. These are things I got to give
Michigan credit for, and frankly, they played a game that
did not look dissimilar to the one that Georgia had been
playing for the previous two years.
They didn't need to throw the ball all over the yard to win.
They just need to run the ball well and play great defense.
That's the Michigan that we've come to know.
That is the Michigan that SharonMoore put on the field last year
(05:53):
and that is the one that would manage to go 8 and five without
the use of a frigging quarterback because they don't
really use frigging quarterbackslike that.
In the year where they won the national championship, they
played 15 games. JJ McCarthy didn't throw for
3000 yards. They they don't need to do that.
As a matter of fact, they've only had two 3000 yard passers
for single season and you can't tell me who they are because
(06:16):
they don't really rate at Michigan.
You run the ball, you play defense, and that's what you do
at Georgia. They don't need 1000 yard
receivers. They don't need 1000 yard
tailbacks. Matter of fact, they ain't had
1000 yard tailback at Georgia since Deandra Swift 2019.
They've only had 1000 yard receiver in their history and
Terrence Edwards at Georgia. At Michigan, you had this dude
named Braylon Edwards and you probably need to throw that dude
(06:36):
to rock unless that dude startedplaying running back for you.
I just don't see Braylon being that kind of dude and he was
still cold. He was so cold.
But I mean, that's one dude, right?
Colston Loveland was the leadingreceiver for this team last year
and the most attendable on that team in 2023, despite what you
might think about Roman Wilson and others.
And if the Big 10 wants this squash, then I there's nothing
(06:59):
to discuss anymore. I'm serious.
Like the Big 10 and the SEC are fast becoming the two entities
that run college football. Whether or not we want to admit
it or not doesn't really factor into it for me.
What does factor into it for me is hey, we, we decided that this
is no longer good for the sport.It's no longer good for
(07:20):
Michigan. It's no longer good for the Big
10. And if the Big 10 wants to just
say, hey, let bygones be bygones, then bygones, let
bygones be bygones. Because this has been dragging
out for so long, for so long. And I realized we're going to
have people in the comments and outside saying, hey, look, the
hammer was never going to fall. The hammer was never coming.
(07:41):
Fine. I mean, if that's if that's what
you got to do, cool. You still got to play football
come September, August, August got to play football come
August. And there are other teams that
still want to beat you. But that's the way that Michigan
wants it. Like they really don't mind
wearing the Black Hat. They don't mind being hated by
people. They are OK with it.
(08:02):
As a matter of fact, it's not good enough that Ohio State won
the national championship last year because Ohio State lost in
Michigan. Michigan beat Ohio State on the
way to a national championship and beat Ohio State without a
quarterback last year. I still maintain that if they
(08:23):
just throw the ball in the direction of Jeremiah Smith, the
score is different. I don't care if you're bracket
covering them or not, because ifyou're bracket covering them and
you're forcing them to rock, you're going to roll coverage
that way. You roll coverage that way.
You throw the Carnell tape brandin and that's, you take
advantage, right? You don't run into the teeth of
the best defensive line that you're going to see all year.
And that was what it was. They ran into the teeth of the
best defensive line that they saw all year because, well, Ohio
(08:47):
State's got some pride about them.
The one thing you will not say about Ohio State is that they
are soft. They they can't stand it and
they will run into that brick wall as often as they possibly
have to, to make the point knownthat no, we are we, we, we come
to run the football too. Turns out last year was not,
it's not the year to be doing that.
(09:07):
Last year you had Jeremiah Smith, which is like Michigan
having Braylon Edwards. Let's not, let's not make this
stupid, right? Let's go win the football game
and then talk about how hard or soft your team can be.
I'm with the TV on this because if he sent the letter, normally
a commissioner shows up to thesesorts of hearings.
But if he sent the letter and itstates what The Athletic says it
(09:28):
does, forget it, you know, because at this point, it's been
a year since that documentary came out on Netflix and nothing
has happened. We've had lots of humming and
Hawk and we've had lots of John.We had lots of talking season
about what this is going to be alot of it from this show.
But frankly, I'm also wanting tosee an end to this.
Like I will continue to do the segments for as long as we got
(09:51):
to keep doing the segments, which is to say until they give
us an end. But it feels like the Big 10
knows that it's two programs. Michigan and Ohio State are is
bread and butter. Two of the four founding
members. OK, let's, let's, let's do that.
Let's come back to the table as the Big 10 and go get what you
want, which is your 4 qualifyingbids for the College Football
(10:14):
Playoffs. It's really hard to do that if
you don't have Michigan on board.
Michigan also going through it in a number of ways, right?
But this is just the latest one.And it's something that the Big
10 could do, right? It's an olive branch.
It's a way of bringing them backinto the fold and making
everybody else understand, hey, it's family and we going to get,
we going to fight. We're going to get it going on
it once again and we'll handle on the football field.
(10:37):
I'm with him on this, right on the other side of this, As we're
going to take a break, I want totalk about what's the deal with
the valuations of some of these football teams and the
valuations of others, which is going to lead us, I promise, to
Memphis as we get into the show.Music back on adapt and respond
(11:23):
with me. RJ Young, thanks for joining us
here. We do this every day.
If you're new to the show, please hit that subscribe button
and follow us on Apple and Spotify where you can listen to
the audio podcast. If you're doing so now, thank
you. I hope you're enjoying your
commute to wherever and I hope that the sound of my voice is
doing something for you because I can't stand listening to the
(11:45):
sound of my voice as as often asas often as people want to point
it out. Like, Nah, I got to listen back
to these. Why would I?
And if you're Memphis probably wouldn't want to listen back to
this particular segment because we're talking about the
valuation of college football teams.
And I find it interesting, right?
I, I like this stuff. I like it as fear theory and
theoreticals because we're nevergoing to see the sell of a
(12:09):
college football team, we hope. But with private equity coming
in and teams and conferences never being more hungry for
money to pay out revenue sharingname, image and likeness, just a
name to new cost that you had toadd.
It's not out of the realm of possibility for a private equity
firm to want to take a large stake in a particular college
(12:29):
football program. But I was more interested in
methodology, for which The Athletic came up with the
numbers that I'm about to give to you.
So I'm going to give you their methodology.
Then I'm going to go through thelist and we're going to see who
who rates and who doesn't. So they said we use real life
pro transactions to gauge purchase price as relative to a
(12:51):
team's revenue. Over the past three available
years of data, NFLNBA sales guided our ratios in the SEC and
the Big 10, while MLB and NHL were our rough benchmarks in the
ACC and the Big 12. For each school in a Power 4
plus Notre Dame, we factored in everything from prestige and
(13:12):
championships to facility renovations, population trends
and realignment scenarios. That means treating Notre Dame
more like the Los Angeles Lakersand Boston College more like
Kansas City Royals. The Kansas City Royals, excuse
me. So it's kind of all over the
(13:32):
map, but it might make sense forthe individual teams themselves,
which, you know, I kind of that's how we, that's how we
treat college football, right? We don't rate Memphis the same
way that we rate Clemson, right?Clemson's won national
championships, plays in the ACC Memphis has gone from Conference
USA to the American and as I have alluded to, tried to join
(13:54):
the Big 12 not once, but twice. So what we have here is Texas at
the top, which I don't think shocks anybody because if you
looked at revenue sharing, excuse me, revenue sharing, you
make overall revenue. You would see Texas and Texas
A&M are two of the top five teams each year because those
athletic departments don't, theydon't lack donors and they don't
(14:17):
lack oil money. It's the closest thing that we
get to the PLF being a domestic as anything else in the world,
right? That's how we gauge Texas is
going to be about theirs. A&M is going to be about theirs.
So Texas comes in at a projectedprice of 2.3, eight, $2.38
(14:37):
billion, which is, again, an enormous number, but not as much
as you might expect for, say, what they contribute.
Like if you were to try to buy the Dallas Cowboys today, I
think you're looking at closer to 20 billion.
You know, I'm not, I'm not beingfacetious about that.
When you look at how much these teams are going for and how the
(15:00):
money has gotten so big as to seem intergalactic, $2.38
billion feels like a bargain forTexas Longhorns football team
given what you can do with all of it, right?
I'm not just talking about what you could do from a
merchandising standpoint, what you can do from sponsorships,
(15:20):
what if you could put more patches on jerseys, those sorts
of things, right? I think that if, if there was a
pool of people that saw that number and said, hey, is Texas
for sale, you would get a lot ofTexas businessmen go in on this
and probably 1 majority owner inparticular behind them.
You get Georgia at 1.92 billion,so only one team is above $2
(15:42):
billion, and that's University of Texas with Georgia trailing
them. Ohio State coming in at third
with 1.9, so just $200,000 behind Georgia.
But I think Ohio State would dispute all of this given the
economic impact of what Ohio State home games are, especially
when that team is really good. Ranked inside the top five means
for Columbus and the state of Ohio.
(16:03):
Notre Dame checks in at 4 at 1.85 billion.
Michigan at 5 at 1.83 billion, Alabama at six.
One point, 74 million, Oklahoma at seven, 1.49 billion.
The Sooners, more than any otherprogram in the entire country,
(16:23):
matter to the state. That's what that means to me.
You can talk about Nebraska, butNebraska's falling off.
You can talk about Arkansas. Arkansas is not one at the level
that Oklahoma has one. And when we talk about teams
that really don't have an NFL comp and only has one major team
comp, yeah, you're you're talking about the Sooners
(16:45):
because that's what this state is built on.
Nineteen O 7 is when Oklahoma received statehood.
By 1955, we're talking about a national championship.
So it took less than 50 years. You know, I'm saying that's what
we do here. We play football.
We play Sooner football. I realized that Oklahoma State
has had some things to say. I also know my alma mater,
(17:05):
University of Tulsa, has four Pro Football Hall of Farmers.
Hello. But if you're talking about what
runs the state and what the state is recognized for first
and foremost internationally, itis Sooner football.
Right after Oklahoma we get USC,which is interesting because SC
likes to think quite a bit of itself.
Tennessee, LSU, Penn State, Florida, Auburn, Oregon.
(17:28):
Oregon is the first team under abillion dollars here as Auburn.
Auburn having won that national championship 2010, probably
doing a lot of work there. Florida having won 2006, 2008,
urban Iowa years. The one that's kind of squirrely
to me here is Penn State. I get Tennessee.
I get Tennessee because of what they've been here lately and
(17:49):
making the College Football Playoff, having Niko Iya
Malayala Dr. Such a conversationa couple years ago with his NIL
signing. But Penn State hasn't won any
national championship in the 21st century, but neither is
Tennessee, for that matter. Tennessee also plays in a
tougher conference. And Penn State has been
operating like an independent for so long that it's still hard
(18:10):
for Penn Staters and people thatroot for Big 10 teams or even
college football to be like, is this really?
Are they really a part of the league?
Yeah, they are. They are.
But they also like to be known as Penn State before they want
to be known as a Big 10 member. And I understand that.
Whereas Auburn wants to be in the SEC, synonymous with the
SEC. Same thing with Tennessee.
(18:31):
It's the conference that is bigger than all of its teams,
which I think has made it a muchmore attractive conference.
When you still have teams in your league that want to operate
like independents, which is whatOklahoma and Texas were doing
toward the end of their years inthe Big 12, then you're going to
have a hard time. I thought thinking about Gene
Smith during the COVID year whenyou had Nebraska and Scott Frost
(18:54):
and others talking about we'll lead the Big 10 if y'all won't
let us play football. Gene Smith was steadfast.
When you know that we're always going to be Big 10 members.
That's not what this is about. We want to play football.
Everybody wants to play football.
But he stopped short of going, hey, look, we go back to the
19th century with this lead, which is to say it matters to
Ohio State that they are a part of the Big 10.
And it mattered more because SC,Oregon, Washington, UCLA decided
(19:17):
to join up. I find that pretty telling.
Oregon ranking ahead of A and MIdid not see coming.
But A&M has been not great for some time, right?
We're talking about really the biggest win that they've had is
upsetting A rank. Alabama as an unranked team with
Zach Calzada at quarterback and you keep going down the list,
(19:37):
you'll see teams that you expectto like Washington, Nebraska,
Florida State, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan State, Clemson,
Arkansas, Miami. We can keep going all the way
through here and we get the 25, Miami, Ole Miss, North Carolina,
South Carolina, Minnesota, Utah,Texas Christian, Texas Christian
I think edges into this thing at523 million the bottom because
(19:59):
they make the College Football Playoff national championship
game. Then they got sun to 65 to 7.
What is cool about this is I canmake an argument for almost
every program here. Say perhaps South Carolina,
North Carolina, excuse me, I can't I can't tell you that
(20:19):
North Carolina's been great playing new year 6 bowl game,
cool, great Matt Brown years awesome for you.
Minnesota had a great 2019 hasn't really reached that high
model, high watermark. But historically, the Gophers
have been a team that you have to contend with here in the last
few years. We know about Clemson, Michigan
State has made the College Football Playoff, Utah, one of
(20:40):
the more steady programs. Steady.
Your programs that we've seen inthe last 15 years, say last year
where you could just count on them to be there at the end
winning. And then South Carolina had a
great last year, like with Lenore Sellers.
And then the ability to beat Clemson, which is a national
champ in your backyard, being the state champs, that means
something to us, not just to them.
(21:03):
I think when I look at what the average football revenue might
be for some of these programs isis where you also kind of get
itchy because average football revenue, according to The
Athletic for Texas is $183 million.
After that, at #2 you drop down to 147.
There's, there's a chasm here. It's also why we end up beating
up on Texas so often. Texas is doing the least with
(21:28):
the most for years. When I look at the University of
Texas and I look at the money they have coming in and I look
at what the state of Texas produces in high school football
recruits. And remember, Oklahoma goes down
there often to go get players that don't want to go to Texas.
You feel like they should win a national championship every
other year instead. They've not played for a
national championship since 2009.
(21:50):
They've had Bjean Robinson come through.
Sam Ellinger is a folk hero to some when you or should be a
folk hero to many. Every great quarterback that has
grown up in Texas had a shot to get there.
I mean from Andrew Luck to Johnny Manziel to RG3 has two
Heisman winners and one of the most fallible college football
(22:10):
players of all time. They decided they wanted to go
another way each time. This might be just the second
time that they hit in the last seven years on who I think their
quarterbacks should be. Sam Ellinger turns out to be the
guy that could run Tom Herman's offense.
But I think about that 2019 yearwhere they just sold out to beat
(22:31):
LSU and it came up short, but LSU goes undefeated and they
were banged up the rest of the year.
What if you manage it differently?
And that's that's really the task with Texas.
Can you manage this this situation because you're going
to miss somebody. Jalen Melrose was committed to
Texas, wanted to go to Texas. Told me right here on this
channel. It's all I want to do.
(22:51):
RJ grew up going to Teddy, went to Katie Tompkins.
Mike Yersich decided that wasn'this guy.
Nick Saban said come on down andwhat do you get?
You get a quarterback that leadsyou to an SEC championship,
beats Georgia and makes the College Football Playoff.
If there wasn't a Jayden Daniels, there would have been a
Jaylen Melrose. Like that's how good that
(23:14):
school, that state is at producing talent and talent
again wants to go to Texas. So yeah, when you look at these
numbers and you see how much money they make and bring in, it
only stands to reason that we'rehard on them and we should
always be hard on them because they don't have any excuse.
There's there's no reason for them to not be great every
(23:35):
single year. Meanwhile, Oklahoma's average
annual football revenue is at $135 million.
Again, going from Big 8 dominance to Big 12 dominance to
not dominant in the SEC probablyhurt this.
But if they came out firing likeTexas did, probably top five
here in the valuations, that's could go up this year if
(23:55):
Oklahoma gets off on the good foot.
Really excited about what that can mean for Brent Venables
because I like Brent Venables. I want Brent Venables to keep
the job. And then there's Michigan,
right, that we have to mention here, bringing in 141 million in
average annual football revenue.And that's not too shabby,
especially given the the down years they had with Jim Harbaugh
(24:17):
before the up years that came. Remember, they restructured that
man's contract after the 2020 season, made him eat basically
incentive laden contract that I thought was much more of a slap
in the face. But he was also flirting with
the NFL then too. He takes that contract.
He built the program into what it is.
They go win a national championship and he says adios,
(24:38):
you know, I did what I came to do.
As he said at his post victory press conference Nash
championship game. Now I get to sit with the
grown-ups table because his his brother had won a Super Bowl.
His dad won national championships.
Now he gets to be one of the bigboys too, which I really much,
very much enjoyed. All right, come back.
I want to have this discussion about Memphis and what we
(25:01):
learned about what the Big 12 isactually looking for and how bad
Memphis desperately wants to play for national championships.
(25:34):
University of Memphis wanted to join the Big 12, came up with
proposal to join the Big 12. The Big 12 said we're not
interested honey, why adapter responding to the RJ Young if
you are new to the show, thanks for joining us here talk college
football year round. If you are so up for it, answer
(25:55):
the questions that are scrollingon the ticker and go get your
free sticker now. I found this report out of left
field because we're going into ayear where or show me a week
where the ACC and the Big 10 aregoing to hold media days.
So Monday to see the report coming from Ross Dillinger at
Yahoo Sports that Memphis had tried to join the Big 12 by
(26:18):
offering $200 million and the Big 12 saying no thanks.
I have said, huh, OK, so now we know why this story's out there.
They said no, but why did they say no?
So there's this part of Ross's column that you should go read.
But I thought this was the most important part.
(26:40):
Memphis President Bill Hargrave has spent at least 14 months
visiting the president's and topathletic administration
administrator, excuse me, of many Big 12 schools in
individual on campus meetings that have culminated in a
membership offer to the league that is expected to be as high
as $200 million over the next five years.
(27:02):
When Dellinger reached out to some people in the Big 12 about
this, he got one anonymous quoteback that I thought was pretty
good. We vetted Memphis when we added
the other 4, Cincinnati, CentralFlorida, Houston, BYU, and chose
not to add them. What's changed?
The layout of college football, perhaps?
(27:23):
You know, the the layout of the money that you need.
This again, second most important part of the story for
me for that. Ross wrote the industry has
never been in a more money hungry time.
Already, Big 12 schools are receiving roughly $1 million in
additional revenue from sponsorship with PayPal.
Memphis's proposal would have increased that by at least 2
(27:47):
million with sponsorship commitments from Michigan
Memphis partners. Excuse me?
The school is historically aligned with partners such as
FedEx, Lowe's and AutoZone. The school would also take zero
distribution for the final five years of the league's new deal
with ESPN and Fox, add sponsorships in excess of $150
(28:09):
million / / 5 years, and subjectitself to expulsion after 203031
if the Big 12 deems it's not adding value.
That was. That sounds like a found money
zero risk option for the Big 12.But if I'm playing devil's
(28:29):
advocate, which is to say what'sthe argument against adding
Memphis? You're going to create an
imbalance, right? Even teen versus odd teams.
That's going to mess up the mathwhen it comes to playing for
championships and or selection into the College Football
Playoff, which I'll get to. You're also going to add another
program that just got hit with, you know, some sanctions of
(28:53):
their own with Penny Hardaway and the basketball team.
But that's nothing new. If anybody's been following
Memphis basketball since it was Memphis State or even since John
Calipari was head coach there, what is new is that Memphis has
been playing football at a high level for about two decades now.
Like, I'm going all the way backto D'Angelo, you know, like, I
(29:15):
remember being scared of parts of Memphis, the football team.
Don't take that anywhere else. I like Memphis.
Memphis is great. Chill out.
I look at Memphis and I ask myself, why do they want it this
bad? Is, you know, that's the Big 12.
You know why they want it this bad?
Southern Methodist. So Southern Methodist asked to
(29:40):
join the ACC, get out of the American for one reason, one
reason only. To have a road to play in the
College Football Playoff period.You know that if you win the
conference championship, or at least make the conference
championship game, you have a greater than 0 chance of making
(30:01):
the College Football Playoff in a 12 team format.
It was worth it to Southern Methodists and its billion
dollar donors to forgo a lot of money from television revenue if
they can get into the league to which the ACC said yeah, why
not? Could not hurt.
We like adding the value you youwon a bunch of games in the
(30:21):
American and Southern Methodist is wanted to play big boy
football for some time. You take it back to the early
1980s, Southern Methodist was playing big boy football.
Then they got caught for cheating.
They got death penalty. They fought their way back.
They consistently have shown that they can win with different
coaches and that the administration is about its
business. Cool, we'll let them in.
They did not expect them to run through the regular season
(30:43):
undefeated and make the conference championship game in
Year 1. OK, maybe the SEC thought this
would happen with Texas in Oklahoma, but it wasn't enough
to upset the apple cart until itwas, right?
You get SMU in this thing and then Alabama ain't getting in
this thing because you already know Texas is going to get in
this thing, right? Add this if you are adding
(31:03):
Memphis to the Big 12 and you know that Memphis can fight at
the front right away. You've got Iowa State, you got
Kansas State, you've got Colorado, you got BYU, you've
got Oklahoma State. You've got so many programs that
just want to taste this College Football Playoff when you could
only get one team in last year 1and that was your conference
(31:24):
champion. Arizona State played well,
acquitted itself well, made the Big 12 look as tough as it is.
You add Memphis to this, even ifyou're not taking any money out
of their pockets, they're addingmoney to your pockets.
How much money is enough for youto feel bad about making the not
making the College Football playoffs?
After some time, the money is diminishing returns, right?
It's just keeping score. I don't think the Big 12 is
(31:47):
there yet. I think if they thought they
could get Memphis, then they think they can get Memphis now.
PAC 12 has made Memphis a reallyinteresting offer.
What Memphis knows what you know, and I know the PAC 12 does
not have a road to the College Football Playoff.
That is the most important part of this calculus.
You want to join a Power 4 conference because the Power 4
(32:10):
conferences still have a direct path to playing for the national
championship, and that is about playing for money.
OK, There is $8 billion that ESPN paid to air the rights to
these games. It's being distributed among the
teams that make the playoff and continue to win.
OK, this is what I think of sweetheart deal for Notre Dame,
(32:32):
because they're not in a conference.
They get to keep all the money that they make, whereas Ohio
State spread that money across the Big 10.
Memphis could be that right. But is that something you really
want to do? And then the last time that they
tried to add more teams, UConn and Gonzaga for basketball
(32:53):
failed, right? Failed.
Gonzaga ends up joining the PAC 12, which I thought was a better
fit anyway. No football presents to speak
of. And UConn had a really great
season last year. But I don't know how committed
they are to playing football period, at a high level, which
is why they're still independent, right?
I think that the Big 12 should have submitted its own offer.
(33:15):
That's what I think. I think the Big 12 should have
found another way. And because you're going to have
more realignment, you're going to have more teams that are
looking to join your conference.And eventually I think we're
going to get down to we only have this much room for what we
think of as FBS programs playingfor the national championship.
Not because I want it that way, but because that's the way it's
going. It's you're pricing out so many
(33:36):
other programs just by the moneycontinue to go up.
Like Boise State coming up is really going to help the PAC 12.
That's why they could lead the Mountain West, right?
And you look at Mountain West, it's being pillaged and I don't
like the PAC 12 was pillage and it was no more.
So you grow or die. And that is capitalism.
That's that's how you do business.
You don't get to stand still. You don't get to count the
(33:59):
money. You have to continue to make
money and get bigger and eat andeat and eat.
Memphis doesn't necessarily knowwhat it's going to do next, but
I guarantee you this. They want to win and they are
unafraid to spend the money necessary to win.
Somebody's going to take them upon that deal.
Don't know who it's going to be.I just know who they don't want
(34:19):
it to be. Sunbelt Conference USA, PAC 12,
Mountain West, none of the conferences that don't have a
direct path to the College Football Playoff because the Big
10, the SEC are holding all the cards.
They let the ACC in. The Big 12 have seats at the
table because they have to to form something like, you know,
fairness, at least to us in appearance.
(34:41):
But let's not get it twisted here.
The emphasis needs to be on getting as many teams into the
College Football Playoff from your league as humanly possible.
Memphis helps that. Memphis helps that.
The money that they're bringing in will also help that, because
(35:03):
that's more money you get to payout, more money you get to pay
out not just to coaches, players, assistants, but to
support staff. We're seeing front offices take
up more of the operating cost. You had to create one out of
whole cloth. In many cases.
You're having to recruit and evaluate and sign more lawyers,
more lawyer fees. A greater and bigger College
Football Playoff is great for you and me, and that's what the
(35:25):
game is about. But somebody's got to find a way
to fund this, and somebody will.I'm never, I'm never too far
from the point of college football is too big to fail, but
it isn't so big that the Big 12 can't fail.
Just take a look at the PAC 12. Memphis, I salute you for trying
to come up with a found money plan for the Big 12 that they
(35:48):
can't see themselves taking It can't do much about that.
But I know this, you got more opportunities this year.
You run through the American, you win the conference
championship, you make College Football Playoff and maybe you
might think about doing what wasunthinkable some years ago.
Just go independent, just get out of the American, put
together your own damn schedule,make sure that your barn burning
(36:11):
like Notre Dame, and then reap the benefits of what independent
barnstorming right opponents canbe like.
I think that's there for you. But that also means that you're
going to have to do this withouta net.
And that is what a league is. It's safety net for when you are
down, when you're not that good.It's betting on yourself, which
is something y'all tell us to do, but when it comes time for
(36:34):
the money to bet on itself, it says, hey man, I would much
rather we find a different way. All right, yeah, uh huh.
That's how it goes. All right, that's going to do it
for this episode of Adapt and respond.
If you like the show, remember to subscribe to the channel,
subscribe to the podcast on Apple and Spotify and I will see
(36:54):
y'all on the flip side doses.
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