Leadership, respect, and a great man in…

… Kevin Warren?

Greg Sankey is forming Gulf Coast Amazon and this is what the Big Ten sends to the podium? 🤡 https://t.co/F51yYZ3Dil

— Josh Pate (@LateKickJosh) July 22, 2021

Jim Delany, he ain’t.  And, as Pete Thamel indicates, Warren is going to have some tricky waters to navigate if this Oklahoma/Texas to the SEC deal becomes a reality.

All are new enough to their jobs where they haven’t done a college sports television contract. The Big Ten’s contract runs through 2022-23. The Pac-12’s goes through 2023-24. The ACC is buried by the untenable deal with ESPN that keeps it frozen in what’s already a second-tier deal until 2036.

This impacts all of those leagues in significant ways. ESPN is going all in on the SEC, as it’s expected to pay enough to get Oklahoma and Texas whole with the rest of the SEC, which is north of $60 million annually after 2023. That eats up money, inventory and the best television time slots for the SEC. The SEC wouldn’t be adding this without the extra $120 million a year for OU and Texas, and it’s reasonable to think there’d have to be a bit more sweetener to help the other SEC schools feel good.

“What happens if all of a sudden ESPN isn’t a bidder and Fox has less competition,” said an industry source. “The ripple effects are … PHEW!”

… There has long been a notion in college athletics that the Big Ten and SEC were pulling away from all the other leagues because of the financial success of their networks and the corresponding success on the field. Now, the Big Ten will go to market without the adrenaline jolt that the SEC got in its deal. The only corresponding move the Big Ten could make would be a play for Notre Dame, but that remains unlikely because of how secure Notre Dame’s future is in the new football playoff.

The issue for the Big Ten would be that Ohio State is isolated as the league’s power. Could the Big Ten leverage the potential of its next deal with a move to answer, adding Virginia, Georgia Tech, Florida State, North Carolina and Clemson to cover the league’s Eastern flank and fortify the Interstate 95 corridor? There will be pressure on Warren to be bold. But the ACC is protected by a grant of rights through the length of its TV deal.

What if Warren’s best move is to fight the 12-team playoff expansion proposal and push for something along the lines of the P4 arrangement I posted about yesterday?  That would have two benefits for the Big Ten, minimizing the impact of the SEC’s move and forcing Notre Dame to choose a conference.  And Warren would likely have an ally in that with the Pac-12.

This shit’s about to get seriously Machiavellian.

In America, anything’s possible.

How it started:

How it’s going:

Join us in welcoming back one of our own to the Big Red Family:

Trev Alberts, Athletic Director.#GBR pic.twitter.com/jPoCtAAKJt

— Nebraska Huskers (@Huskers) July 14, 2021

In Nebraska’s defense, Trev probably can’t be as bad at the job as Jeff Long’s been.

TFW your broadcast partner just isn’t that into you

Shot.

Statement from @soonerad on the OU-Nebraska football game: pic.twitter.com/p6fUJBwW5e

— Oklahoma Sooners (@OU_Athletics) May 27, 2021

Chaser.

Imagine telling someone from The Olden Days that Oklahoma-Nebraska was going to be such a boring football game that Fox would rather put a random baseball game in primetime instead https://t.co/Nuw0yUgtwY pic.twitter.com/Ru1H1PyDEU

— RedditCFB (@RedditCFB) May 27, 2021

Nebraska probably wouldn’t mind if Fox put the game on at eight in the morning.  What a sad commentary on what was once one of college football’s can’t miss rivalries.

“Anyway to go independent?”

So, Ohio State chafed under the Big Ten’s initial decision to shut down last year’s football regular season, enough so that the president asked the athletic director the question that is the post header.

And who could blame her, when the natives are restless like this?

“As an alumni I have slowly been losing my faith in the direction of Ohio State, oh to go back to the days of the leadership we had under Gordon Gee,” one emailer wrote, referring to the former Ohio State president, now at West Virginia University.

I do not think leadership means what he thinks it means, but it’s always good to see confirmation that dumbassery is not a regional characteristic limited to our neck of the woods.

What do you get when you cross an Urban Meyer-led program with sex?

Why, a masseuse with standards, of course.

A Cleveland-area massage therapist accused by Ohio State of targeting football players for sexual encounters has denied those allegations in a pair of interviews.

Speaking in a 20-minute radio interview on Cleveland’s FM-WMMS, Robyn Bassani, 41, said that while she did have sexual relationships with two Ohio State football players, she was not “acting for her own sexual gratification” as a report released by the university alleged…

… No NCAA violations occurred, and no crimes were committed. If a sexual relationship began, Bassani said, she would end the client-masseuse relationship.

The “client-masseuse relationship”.  Sounds incredibly classy.

What I’m trying to work out in my head is how getting a tat was a bigger NCAA problem for Ohio State than players getting laid in the course of a client-masseuse relationship.  What a country, eh?

A different sort of competitive advantage

It’s 2018.  Urban Meyer is forced to take administrative leave at Ohio State because of Zach Smith.  What about ‘crootin’, man?

Um… interesting coincidence here, since you ask.

A massage therapist has been barred from Ohio State’s campus and from having any interaction with Ohio State athletics members after an independent investigation found she had engaged in inappropriate and exploitative behavior targeting members of the Buckeyes football team.

The university released statements and a full report on the investigation, concluding that the massage therapist had no affiliation with the university or its athletics department and that the school does not believe any NCAA rules were violated. The massage therapist is a 41-year-old woman who lives roughly two hours north of campus and obtained her massage therapy license in 2009 in Ohio…

An investigation began after a complaint filed on March 14, 2020, with the State Medical Board of Ohio that alleged a female licensed massage therapist was offering free therapeutic massages to members of the Ohio State football team. She had been using the massages as a “means to initiate sexual interactions with some of the football student athletes, and then demanding payment,” according to the investigation report.

… The firm found that the massage therapist used two methods to attempt to initiate sexual encounters — isolating the student-athletes to get them in a vulnerable position or sending out “overtly sexual messages and see[ing] if she could engage their interest in a sexual encounter” — according to the report.

The report states that this scheme took place from 2018 to 2021, mainly in off-campus housing or in hotels, but that no current or former staff members for the Ohio State football team were aware of the massage therapist or of her communication with the student-athletes.

Sure, right.  Subject never came up.  For two solid years…

Bloggers who post in glass houses…

You know, I wasn’t going to mention the Rush Propst tape that popped up this weekend, in which he claims detailed knowledge about how Alabama and Georgia are paying recruits and players — for one thing, to observe that Propst has monumental credibility issues is almost an understatement, and for another, not being able to pronounce Nick Chubb’s name correctly just adds to that — but I can’t let this bit of unintentional comedy slide without saying something.

WHAT? NO WAY! I know this is going to come as a complete shock to all of you, but it looks like Georgia and Alabama are allegedly (this word was inserted at my lawyer’s request) swinging bags of cash to secure the talents of the nation’s top teens.

Do I believe pretty much every word of that without even blinking? Absolutely. Do I think Georgia and Alabama are the only schools doing that? Absolutely not. But I do know that Georgia is especially egregious.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen some out-of-state kid with absolutely no previous connection Georgia trend towards another school for months with the Bulldogs seemingly not even in the conversation only to suddenly commit to Georgia – sometimes even before stepping foot on campus. It could not be more obvious, and anyone who follows recruiting even a little bit could tell you. It ain’t exactly a secret.

Does my beloved alma mater do this, too? I genuinely don’t know. At the very least, they aren’t doing it in broad daylight and daring anybody to say something like Kirby’s been doing in Athens for years. So they’re either clean or much better at hiding it.

“I genuinely don’t know.”  Dude.  Ohio State hired Urban Meyer with the express purpose of bringing OSU’s recruiting up to SEC standards.  What exactly did y’all think that entailed?  But, sure, your program is as clean as the driven snow.  I’ll try to stop giggling now.

Paper Tigers

Dabo Swinney accomplished the biggest coaching miracle in college football history: getting people to root for Ohio State

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) January 2, 2021

Despite the lopsided loss, Dabo Swinney doubled down on ranking Ohio State No. 11, saying "I don't regret any of that. Polls have nothing to do with motivation." https://t.co/Qd79aF8xcX pic.twitter.com/zk8hEjrkze

— Eleven Warriors (@11W) January 2, 2021

I gotta say while Dabo getting his comeuppance was my favorite thing watching last night’s Sugar Bowl…

I’m confused. Is OSU beating the snot out of Clemson a reason for playoff expansion or nah?

— Senator Blutarsky (@MummePoll) January 2, 2021

… my second favorite was pondering the Venn diagram of people complaining that Ohio State shouldn’t be allowed in the CFP because of its shortened schedule with the people insisting that an expanded playoff wouldn’t water down the regular season.

College football is the best.

This could be fun. Ugly, but fun.

You know, between Dabo using a meaningless vote in a meaningless Coaches Poll to throw shade at Ohio State and now Ryan Day throwing shade right back at Clemson over its reputation for stealing signs, I’m beginning to think the Sugar Bowl has some real potential for a serious case of the chippies.

Dabo gonna Dabo.

Shot.

Dabo on if he has problem w/ Big Ten in CFP despite less games: "Shoot, in a year like this, no. It's a crazy year. Who knows how many games anybody is going to have? You have some of the best teams & coaches in that league. It's not their fault. They've worked their butt off."

— Anna Hickey (@AnnaH247) September 16, 2020

Chaser.

Asked by ESPN about ranking Ohio State 11th, Dabo Swinney said “I don’t think that it’s right that three teams have to play 13 games to win it all and one team has to play eight.” https://t.co/sPw2ewIUmU

— Eleven Warriors (@11W) December 27, 2020

Every time Dabo Swinney opens his mouth, an angel pulls his hair out.