If you want the job done right, do it yourself.

Looks like Rutgers is doing some job outsourcing to the Big Ten Network.

Two people familiar with the situation, who were not authorized to speak officially on Rutgers’ behalf, said Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany is expected to play a role in this search, which is why a preliminary list includes two deputy athletic directors from that conference: Sean Frazier of Wisconsin and Greg Ianni of Michigan State.

Rutgers will join the Big Ten for all sports in 2014, and will reap a financial windfall in future years from membership in the conference.

The only thing I can’t figure out there is why the school is being allowed to go through the motions of hiring an AD.  Eliminate the middleman and let Delany put one of his assistants in charge of Rutgers athletics.  Gotta protect that investment, after all.

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Jim Delany’s fear of spending

John Infante looks at where the Big Ten is on the NCAA’s push to deregulate recruiting and finds that the problem for that conference is that the SEC is more of a lean, mean footballin’ machine.

So while the SEC as a whole has more revenue and spends more on football, it potentially has more resources to redirect to football. Fewer teams means less overhead. Direct costs can be cut with roster restrictions, more regional and local scheduling, or straight budget cuts. Each new dollar that comes in has fewer mouths to feed. When the conference expands, the Big Ten has to divert more resources toward more nonrevenue sports for travel.

The problem is not that the Big Ten is already being outspent by the SEC, because at the top of the conference that is not true. The bigger issue for the Big Ten is that it already spends more on football but cannot overturn the other advantages the SEC has in terms of prestige, recruiting hotbeds, and attracting top coaches. And if schools are all of the sudden able to spend more on football, Big Ten schools appear less able to do so than SEC schools. Any increased revenue will potentially be fought over by more sports in the Big Ten.

Infante thinks this means that Delany’s comments about reclassifying the Big Ten to a DIII conference are more threat than bluff, because its schools are already structured more like schools on that level.  That begs two questions, though.

Infante raises one himself:

In that future, the Big Ten is philosophically closer to Division III or the Ivy League than it is to the SEC. To catch-up to the SEC, it would need to disband teams wholesale. A whole conference closing up teams in the way Maryland and Cal originally did over the last few years is a very tough sell. Then again, so is dropping between one and three levels of football and basketball competition. The real question would be just how much the Big Ten values competing against like-minded schools.  [Emphasis added.]

Yeah, that Ohio State home opener against Kenyon College doesn’t have quite the panache that, say, Texas would bring to the table.  This isn’t a cliff Jim Delany’s jumping off unless he’s holding hands with a fellow major conference commissioner or two – and that’s going to be a helluva sales job for a man who prefers the bully pulpit to sweet talk.

But here’s the second thing.  There’s no mandate requiring a formula about how Big Ten schools, or any other schools, have to spend money on their athletics.  All of them make choices, both on the micro level of allocating the departments’ revenues on various programs and on the macro level as each decides how much support all of their sports deserve.

On the first level, Dan Wetzel gets to the weakness of Delany’s position:

Within the huge budgets of a major university, athletic revenue remains a drop in the bucket. Delany’s assertion that football and men’s basketball must support non-revenue sports – rather than, say, the history department or the dorm heating bill – is an attempt to make a moral claim on what is really an accounting and control issue. He is protecting athletic fiefdoms, where ADs dole out every penny, from funding decisions being made with a campus-wide view.

But, still, some might say, that’s a school’s choice.  Why should that choice be taken away with the imposition of an economic model that Delany warns would lay waste to the financial status quo?

The answer to that is athletic budgets don’t operate in a closed universe.

The University of Michigan, for instance, is a Big Ten member with an endowment of about $8 billion. If it wants a field hockey team, it can most certainly afford one. Cutting football players past and present in on some of the tens of millions that program generates or allowing them to profit off their own likeness or to put a percentage of jersey sales into a trust fund, isn’t going to bankrupt the school. And if Title IX can’t be reworked (and it almost assuredly can), then Michigan would do just that to comply with federal law.

What Delany is saying is that left to its own decision, Michigan won’t see field hockey as worth the money. He’s acknowledging that outside the myopic prism of the athletic department, gold-plated, non-revenue sports don’t make much sense.

Right now Michigan athletics gets 100 percent of the revenue and things roll on. If the players get a cut, then it will have to “reduce opportunities for student-athletes overall.”

So it’s the players’ share of the revenue – the money the O’Bannon case is trying to divert – that is propping up the other sports … the same other sports that Delany doesn’t believe the university itself considers a sound investment.

And that’s really it – Big Ten schools want to have the programs; they just don’t want to pay for the programs with their own moneys.  And that gets to the heart of what’s being fought over in O’Bannon.  As Wetzel puts it, “if Michigan doesn’t think it should pay for a field hockey team, then why does it think Denard Robinson should?”

Now that’s a question I’d love to hear Delany answer.

Jim Delany needs a new pair of shoes.

Jim Delany’s offended shoe pusher Sonny Vaccaro with his escape to DIII comments?  Shit’s gettin’ real, dawg:

“It’s the most irrational statement I’ve ever seen from a person who’s in power to do something for the players,” Vaccaro said. “Pay-for-play is not a true statement. What it is and what it always will be is compensation for these kids when they’re no longer at the school so they’re part of the process.”

Vaccaro makes a good point about certain real world ramifications if Delany made good on his word to flee.

Vaccaro said Delany’s comments are “insane” given that conferences such as the Big Ten are “too big to fail.” Vaccaro questions what happens in a deemphasized model to contractual obligations with TV and shoe companies, not to mention how universities would pay off debt they’re running up to build athletic facilities.

“What I would have hoped is people like this in authority overlooking the athletes, because they have no legal representation, is let’s do the right thing by the participants,” Vaccaro said. “Let’s understand the world has changed. Basically, it was a threat so the public thinks the players are wrong.

“If that’s what they want to do, they should do it without funding new stadiums and paying millions of dollars to themselves. What Mr. Delany does not admit to is the value of the Big Ten Network to pay the salaries. If this happens, then Mr. Delany and his whole office will be out of work.”

Now that’s happening.  And the final word:

“I’m so glad Mr. Delany felt fit to talk about the student-athlete relationship vs. the university,” Vaccaro said. “He failed to mention the academic scandal at the University of Minnesota (in the 1990s). If you follow the bouncing ball, the Big Ten players have now started their three-week migration throughout America to play in a basketball tournament. It’s so hypocritical. I was happy by what he said so the public can understand they’re so blinded by the commitments they already started.”

It’s not easy to cede the moral high ground to Sonny Vaccaro.  Well played, Commissioner.

This time, Jim Delany really means it. Really.

Andy Staples catches Big Jim’s brief from the O’Bannon case:

“… it has been my longstanding belief that The Big Ten’s schools would forgo the revenues in those circumstances and instead take steps to downsize the scope, breadth and activity of their athletic programs,” Delany wrote. “Several alternatives to a ‘pay for play’ model exist, such as the Division III model, which does not offer any athletics-based grants-in-aid, and, among others, a need-based financial model. These alternatives would, in my view, be more consistent with The Big Ten’s philosophy that the educational and lifetime economic benefits associated with a university education are the appropriate quid pro quo for its student athletes.”

To Andy’s eternal credit, he follows up with Delany, who plays the part of reluctant warrior.

“It’s not that we want to go Division III or go to need-based aid,” Delany said. “It’s simply that in the plaintiff’s hypothetical — and if a court decided that Title IX is out and players must be paid — I don’t think we’d participate in that. I think we’d choose another option. … If that’s the law of the land, if you have to do that, I don’t think we would.”

Pardon me if I laugh at this point.  The list of major principles that Delany has brazenly pushed, only to abandon conveniently, is pretty easy to recall:  four-team playoff over my dead body; Rose Bowl über alles; Penn State and “moral authority”.  That’s just the recent stuff off the top of my head.

Now we’re supposed to believe that the man who’s behaved more like the head of network programming than a conference commissioner of late and who’s thrown ridiculous sums of money at Maryland in order to gain access to a big television market is suddenly going to chuck all that to avoid sharing with student-athletes if that becomes the law of the land?  Puh-leeze.  It’s just a damned shame Delany can’t talk down to a federal judge the way he can to Karl Benson.

By the way, how much does the commissioner of the Pioneer League get paid these days?

And by the way once more, does anybody detect a similarity between that first quote about the Big Ten’s philosophy and what will always be my favorite Delany pearl?

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UPDATE:  I digs me some of Brian Cook’s righteous indignation.

Stupid or deceitful? I think the latter given Jim Delany’s extremely malleable opinion on playoffs, but then again he is the man who gave us “Leaders and Legends” and wrote an open letter about how the SEC is poopy pants in 2007, thus dooming us to ALL THE SEC since. We may never know.

This is an organization that feels a university education is a sufficient quid pro quo for work that earns various people seven-figure salaries to play glorified secretary, and then fights lawsuits that would open up those university educations to more people because that might impinge on those seven figure salaries.

And this, of course, is a man who has spent the last twenty years thinking about nothing but money. He created a television network for money. He added Nebraska for money. He split Michigan and Ohio State in the vague hope of getting more money if they played twice. He added Rutgers and Maryland for money despite the fact that 11 of the 12 fanbases in the Big Ten would rather boil themselves in oil than play those teams in anything. Once he is presented with the idea he might have to share some of his money, he threatens to take the whole damn thing out of the system, into another system that will be exposed to the same legal precedent that prevents you from outrageously sharecropping athletes. The answer is probably “both.”

Translated into the original Holtzian, the man is a penith.

Network programming ain’t cheap these days.

To sweeten the pot to get Maryland to jump ship from the ACC, the Big Ten reportedly threw in a $20 million to $30 million travel subsidy.  As the move in conferences is expected to cost the Terps about $3 million per year more in travel expenses, that amounts to a pretty lengthy sweetener.  And now that’s out there, you can expect any new possibilities for Jim Delany’s reality shows to have their hands out for something similar.

Of course, none of that helps Maryland’s fans out with their increased travel expenses.  But they’ll be able to tune in to the Big Ten Network.  It’s a whole new tradition!

Is Notre Dame Jim Delany’s white whale?

I can’t help but be more than a little fascinated by the dynamic playing out between the Big Ten, the ACC and Notre Dame.  There’s little doubt that the Irish are the crown jewel of unaffiliated college programs.  There’s even less doubt that Jim Delany would give his left nut to bring ND into his conference sphere because of what the school would contribute in value to the Big Ten Network.

But for whatever reason, Notre Dame isn’t biting.  Instead, it’s casting its lot with the ACC.  There’s already the scheduling alignment that’s been cooked up for football.  And now comes news that Notre Dame will become a full-fledged member of the conference for basketball.  That’s certainly a welcome development for the ACC’s short-term survival.

But if rumors are to be believed, none of that is slowing Delany down.  Depending upon whom you hear from, the Big Ten has made overtures to several ACC schools to leave and join the Big Ten.  Nobody’s biting yet, but the uncertainty over Maryland’s $50 million exit fee has been cited as a factor.  Who knows what happens if that figure is reduced?  Anyway, if Delany’s strategy is to break down the ACC so that Notre Dame has to find a new home again, things could get a mite messy.

And who’s to say that if Delany pulls in a few more Maryland-like programs whose departures topple the ACC, Notre Dame doesn’t go running into the arms of anybody but Delany?  I’m sure there wouldn’t be a lack of suitors if that day came.  That would be quite the Pyrrhic victory.

Thursday morning buffet

Get ‘em while they’re hot.

• Are the NCAA natives getting restless about Mark Emmert’s leadership?  This article would indicate so.
• John Feinstein thinks Mike Krzyzewski has the answer for the NCAA’s problems:  there should be three separate organizations, not one, running college sports.  Oy, vey.
• Athens, Tennessee Chamber of Commerce invites Nick Saban to give a speech at its annual dinner.  A certain part of the Vol fan base objects.  But it’s worth noting that Saban’s on track to outdraw last year’s speaker by a margin of about 4-1.  That speaker?  Phil Fulmer.
• As the Big Ten allegedly pursues a 20-school conference strategy, John Pennington points out why there’s little to suggest that’ll succeed over the long haul.
• Smart Football takes a look at one of my favorite developments in offensive strategy, packaged plays.
• David Ching tracks 70 players from Georgia whom ESPN ranked as top-10 in-state prospects between 2006 and 2012.  The results, as they say, may surprise you.
• Greg McGarity is working hard on overriding those new NCAA recruiting guidelines.
• But if that doesn’t work, Gentry Estes is confident “Georgia’s football program will do what it needs to do to keep up”.  (Although he offers no specifics as to why that’s so.)

Paging Orrin Hatch!

You think we’ll hear anything from the fairness folks about this?

Dannen said this move by the Big Ten could be “significantly impactful” on FCS budgets.

“To me, it’s a $500,000 budget hit, and that is significant,” Dannen said. “It impacts our ability to generate money in football. It closes the ranks, it closes us out a little bit more. I understand why it’s happening, but at some point in time, the owners of these institutions — not just stakeholders, I’m talking owners, the state of Iowa — at what point in time do they step in and say, ‘You know what, the interests of a few as such a disservice to the whole that we have to start thinking about the whole again.’

“Money transferred between state institutions is different than money being paid to someone outside the state of Iowa.”

That’s actually not a bad argument to make to a state legislature.  I wonder what would happen if Iowa passed a law requiring its D-1 schools to continue scheduling football games with Northern Iowa.  It sure wouldn’t make Jim Delany happy.

Monetize the eschaton

Barry Alvarez lets another Big Ten cat out of the bag.

According to Alvarez, Big Ten officials recently agreed to stop scheduling nonconference games against FCS programs.

“The nonconference schedule in our league is ridiculous,” Alvarez said on WIBA-AM. “It’s not very appealing…

“So we’ve made an agreement that our future games will all be Division I schools. It will not be FCS schools.”

It’s not exactly a cupcake-free diet.  More like cupcake-lite.  But, still, it’s a step in the right direction.  Combine that with the almost given proposition that the conference will go to at least a nine-game conference schedule and it’s pretty clear that the Big Ten Network demands for more product are driving Jim Delany’s scheduling train.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

But it does make you wonder what might be in store for SEC schedules if Slive follows suit by creating his conference’s own network, which seems likely.  My guess is that if the TV money’s there, suddenly the coaches’ concerns about schedules being too tough and ADs’ concerns about that seventh home game will vanish into the mist.

And judging from this story about Georgia’s move to cut the student ticket allotment and create a new class of young alumni season ticket holders, don’t think it’ll take that much to move Slive.  Don’t get me wrong; I think what McGarity has come up with is a good idea.  But here’s the funny part of the tale:

Outgoing school president Michael Adams told the executive board that he had lunch on Monday with SEC commissioner Mike Slive, and that when Adams told Slive about the plan, the commissioner’s “eyes lit up.”

Sure they did.  In Mike Slive’s world, you can never have enough wallets to vacuum.

A compassionate Jim Delany?

The Big Ten is unhappy about the new liberalized recruiting rules the NCAA has promulgated, but not for the reason you, I or Urban Meyer might think.  Nah, the worry is for the children:

We have serious concerns whether these proposals, as currently written, are in the best interest of high school student-athletes, their families and their coaches…

We look forward to working with the NCAA toward improving the game, the recruiting process and the overall college football experience for all student-athletes.

Ain’t that the sweetest?

John Infante gets to the root of the matter here.

This is really the straw that broke the camel’s back regarding Big Ten claims of moral superiority. The Big Ten has no problem passing rules. It has a conference rule book that rivals the NCAA Division I Manual. But the Big Ten schools are saying they cannot or should not be required to develop either their own rules or their own reasonable model of recruiting. In effect, this statement asks the NCAA to protect the Big Ten schools from the bad influence that is the SEC.

No real surprise, that.  But I do wonder about something – if the big conferences ever decide to abandon the NCAA ship once and for all, exactly how would the Big Ten and SEC plan on adjudicating the inevitable spats between them that would arise?  Or would they really go all law of the jungle-y on us?  That might have enough entertainment value to make up for the depressing fallout from the next round of conference realignment.

Maybe there’s a place for Mark Emmert, warts and all, after all.  Shit.