What will the Big Ten-SEC partnership look to accomplish?
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Pete Thamel, ESPN
The most important thing to know about the burgeoning cooperation of the Big Ten and the SEC, announced late last week, is to not call it an alliance. Let alone The Alliance.
The ill-fated — and roundly mocked — conference alliance of August 2021 was a ham-handed move. But most notably, it was the ACC, Pac-12 and Big Ten acting defensively in response to the SEC’s acquisition of Oklahoma and Texas.
This “joint advisory group” announced last week between the Big Ten and the SEC should be viewed more as a bellwether for where college sports are going, and the desire of SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti to be proactive. It will be a consultant for the two leagues but won’t have the authority to implement changes.
While further details remain unclear, the Big Ten and SEC are sharing ideas to carve a path forward for college sports, something NCAA leadership has failed to do for a generation, capped by the recent flop of the transformation committee.
This isn’t a breakaway, a point Sankey and Petitti have done great gymnastics to point out. It’s rather an arrow pointing toward progress, ranging from micro issues such as squabbles in the College Football Playoff (governance, access and monetary distribution) to larger-scale issues all the way up to Congress.
Here’s what’s definitive about this new linking: These leagues don’t want Eastern Michigan having a say in what happens at Michigan or Florida International affecting Florida. They don’t, for example, want the Dartmouth basketball team’s unionization effort to impact the Auburn and Iowa football teams’ futures.
The SEC and Big Ten are cool on new NCAA president Charlie Baker’s proposal that calls for a new tier of Division I, which includes $30,000 payments to at least half of a school’s athletes and allows schools to make name, image and likeness deals directly with athletes.
One of the reasons the SEC and Big Ten breaking away isn’t rooted in reality comes from the Supreme Court ruling in 2021 in the NCAA v. Alston case. That ruling stresses time and again that conferences are free to forge individual paths forward.
So where could this SEC-Big Ten partnership show up to forge the future of college sports? The simple answers are lawsuit settlement and revenue share.
Multiple sources told ESPN there’s a lot of chatter that this SEC-Big Ten arm-linking could manifest itself amid the thicket of lawsuits facing the NCAA. Some of the wealthiest conferences want to find a way to settle those suits — particularly the billions in potential exposure of House v. NCAA — and use the settlement structure to create a path forward.
This is not simple, nor is it inevitable, as it’s a complicated play that likely would involve Congress. But as one industry source told ESPN on the building settlement chatter: “Congress doesn’t want to save us. They want to help us. There’s a big difference.”
Sources pointed to the House vs. NCAA case, a class-action lawsuit that has the NCAA facing a multibillion-dollar payout in damages to former athletes if a federal judge decides the association’s old prohibition on NIL deals violated federal antitrust laws. That case is scheduled to go to trial in January 2025, but it could be settled before then.
All of the so-called Power 5 conferences — SEC, Big Ten, ACC, Big 12 and Pac-12 — are listed as defendants in the House case, which is part of the reason they could be motivated to settle.
This spring appears to be the optimal window for settling.
The NCAA is also facing two other open antitrust complaints and a federal lawsuit that argues that all college athletes should be considered employees of their schools.
There’s no clean path to a settlement, and the circles around those talks are typically tight. But could the Big Ten and SEC spearheading some type of settlement — perhaps in multiple looming cases — mean they agree to pay some of the past damages and figure out an approved structure to revenue share with athletes going forward?
Other leagues could and will follow along. With revenue sharing with athletes seemingly inevitable at some point, would this be a way to instill it?
Gabe Feldman, director of the Tulane sports law program, warned of myriad complications but acknowledged a potential path through settlement that could create a framework going forward.
“It’s certainly plausible,” he said. “The realistic part is about the will of the parties. Are the parties willing and able to find a dollar amount to make these cases go away and able to find a structure that they would continue under? It’s certainly plausible.”
Some protection would likely be needed to slow or prevent future lawsuits from coming and challenging the structure. There are various opinions on how and whether that could be achieved, but that’s likely something that would need some type of government intervention. A settlement and some sort of revenue share could help encourage action from federal lawmakers, who have thus far made little tangible progress toward voting on the type of bill the NCAA and its members say they need.
“What they need from Congress, to be clear, is clarity,” said Mark S. Levinstein, senior counsel for Williams & Connolly, who has decades of experience in the sports space. “They need a lot of answers. For example, with respect to labor law, can the athletes unionize? If they unionize and choose the labor laws, is everything the universities did now protected from being challenged under the antitrust laws?”
Levinstein added: “The universities would also need some help with Title IX — if the football players receive a percentage of the university’s revenues, what do they have to do for the women’s rowing athletes? And they will need some clarity on any restrictions they impose on NIL. Can they prevent boosters from paying athletes to come to the university? Do you allow the quarterback to receive millions in NIL deals if they’re actually NIL deals and not payments to get him to enroll at a particular university?”
That’s a lengthy way to say there’s nothing linear here. But the settlement as a bridge to federal help is an idea being discussed, and it’s one the SEC and Big Ten appear set to dig in on once they determine which members — presidents, chancellors and athletic directors — will make up the advisory group.
We’ve seen plenty of committees, commissions and expert panels in college athletics over the years that have led to nothing more than additional committees, commissions and expert panels. What makes this partnership different is that the SEC and Big Ten have the financial muscle, alignment and leadership. But that doesn’t diminish the challenges.
Since Sankey took over at the SEC in 2015, we’ve learned that he’s calculating, the type of leader who measures many times before cutting. Sankey is, in general, a believer in the NCAA and the need for rules and a governing body. But there’s also a boiling point when Georgia State has the same juice as Georgia.
Sankey served as the co-chair of the transformation committee, a group that met for more than a year. It was formed in an effort to reshape Division I rules in the wake of the Supreme Court decision, and there were few tangible results. The time Sankey dedicated to it showed that he believed in some type of healthy NCAA for the future of college sports. But the reality is the transformation committee couldn’t transform anything. So here we are.
Petitti got hired in April of last year, and as he has gotten acclimated to all the issues in college sports, he has made the strategic decision to link with Sankey. Former Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren and Sankey had a poor relationship, summed up upon Warren’s departure by Sankey saying, “We saw the world differently.”
Alignment among leadership doesn’t mean they can change anything. The most gobsmacking thing about college sports is that, for as popular and profitable as they are at the highest levels, there has long been no one in charge. And those who do qualify as leaders can’t tell you with any confidence what the basic structure surrounding their business will be in five years. Truly, no one has any idea. Everyone is guessing.
With cohesion in the landscape’s two most powerful leagues, they will plow forward. The task is daunting, but luckily the last alliance for power conferences set the bar pretty low.
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David Hale, ESPN Staff Writer
It’s a new era for the College Football Playoff, with the field growing from four to 12 this season. That means three times as many programs will gain entry, but, beginning with Tuesday’s initial playoff rankings, there’s three times as much room for outrage, too.
Under the old rules, there was a simple line of demarcation that separated the elated from the angry: Who’s in?
Now, there are so many more reasons for nitpicking the committee’s decisions, from first-round byes to hosting a home game to whether your supposedly meaningful conference has been eclipsed by teams from the Group of 5.
And if the first rankings are any indication, it’s going to be a fun year for fury. There’s little logic to be taken from the initial top 25 beyond the committee’s clear love for the Big Ten. Penn State and Indiana make the top eight despite having only one win combined over an ESPN FPI top-40 team (Penn State over Iowa). That Ohio State checks in at No. 2 ahead of Georgia is the most inexplicable decision involving Georgia since Charlie Daniels suggested the devil lost that fiddle contest. Oregon is a reasonable No. 1, but the Ducks still came within a breath of losing to Boise State. Indeed, the Big Ten’s nonconference record against the Power 4 this season is 6-8, just a tick better than the ACC and well behind the SEC’s mark of 10-6.
But this is the fun of early November rankings. The committee is still finding its footing, figuring out what to prioritize and what to ignore, what’s signal and what’s noise. And that’s where the outrage really helps. It’s certainly not signal, but it can be a really loud noise.
This week’s Anger Index:
There are only two possible explanations for BYU’s treatment in this initial ranking. The first is that the committee members are too sleepy to watch games beyond the Central time zone. The second, and frankly, less rational one, is they simply didn’t do much homework.
It’s certainly possible the committee members are so enthralled with metrics such as the FPI (where BYU ranks 28th) or SP+ (22nd) that they’ve determined the Cougars’ actual record isn’t as important. This is incredibly foolish. The FPI and SP+ certainly have their value, but they’re probabilistic metrics, designed to gauge the likelihood of future success. They’re in no way a ranking of actual results. (That’s why USC is still No. 17 in the FPI, despite Lincoln Riley spending his days wistfully scrolling through old pictures of Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray and wondering if Oklahoma might want to get back together.)
To look at actual results paints a clear picture.
BYU (No. 4) has a better strength of record than Ohio State (No. 5), has played roughly the same quality schedule as Texas and has two wins against other teams ranked in the committee’s top 25 — as many as Ohio State, Texas, Penn State, Tennessee and Indiana (all ranked ahead of the Cougars) combined.
Indiana’s rags-to-riches story is wonderful, of course, but how can the committee compare what BYU has done (wins over SMU and Kansas State) against Indiana’s 103rd-ranked strength of schedule?
And this particular snub has significant effects. The difference between No. 8 and No. 9 is a home game in the first round, of course, though as a potential conference champion, that’s a moot point. But what if BYU loses a game — perhaps the Big 12 title game? That could not only doom the Cougars from getting a first-round bye, but it could quite likely set up a scenario in which the Big 12 is shuffled outside the top four conferences entirely, passed by upstart Boise State.
What’s clear from this first round of rankings is the committee absolutely loves the Big Ten — with four teams ranked ahead of a subjectively more accomplished BYU team — and the Big 12 is going to face some serious headwinds.
There’s a great, though little watched, TV show from the 2010s called “Rectify,” about a man who escapes death row after new evidence is found, only to be constantly harassed by the same system that fraudulently locked him away for 20 years. This is basically the story of SMU.
Let’s do a quick blind résumé here.
Team A: 8-1 record, No. 13 strength of record, two wins vs. ranked opponents, loss to SP+ No. 22, .578 opponent win percentage
Team B: 7-1 record, No. 15 strength of record, two wins vs. ranked opponents, loss to SP+ No. 91, .567 opponent win percentage
OK, you probably guessed Team A is SMU. The Mustangs have wins against Louisville and Pitt — both relatively emphatic — and their lone loss came to No. 9 BYU, which came before a quarterback change and included five red zone drives that amounted to only six total points.
Team B? That’s Notre Dame. The Irish have the worst loss by far (to Northern Illinois) of any team in the top 25, beat a common opponent by the same score (though, while SMU outgained Louisville by 20 yards, the Cardinals actually outgained Notre Dame by 115) and have played one fewer game.
The difference? SMU has the stigma — of the death penalty, of the upstart program new to the Power 4, of being unworthy. Notre Dame is the big brand, and that results in being ranked three spots higher and, if the playoff were held today, getting in, while the Mustangs are left out.
There are three two-loss SEC teams ranked ahead of Ole Miss, which seems to be a perfectly reasonable consensus if you look at the AP poll, too. But are we sure that’s so reasonable?
Two stats we like to look at to measure a team’s quality are success rate (how often does a team make a play that improves its odds of winning) and explosiveness. Measure the differentials in each between offense and defense, then plot those out, and you’ll get a pretty clear look of who’s truly dominant in college football this season.
Explosive Play differential vs. Successful Play differential
Auburn & Ark make no sense
Iowa & Iowa St are twinsies!
Is Ole Miss undervalued? pic.twitter.com/h87SKCdOtr— 💫🅰️♈️🆔 (@ADavidHaleJoint) November 3, 2024
That outer band that features Penn State, Texas, Miami, Ohio State and Indiana (and notably, not Oregon, Alabama, LSU or Texas A&M)? That’s where Ole Miss lives.
The Rebels have two losses this season, each by three points, both in games they outgained the winning team. They lost to LSU on the road and, yes, somehow lost to a dismal Kentucky team. But hey, LSU lost to USC, too. It has been a weird season.
SP+ loves Ole Miss. The Rebels check in at No. 4 there, behind only Ohio State, Texas and Georgia.
The FPI agrees, ranking the Rebels fifth.
In ESPN’s game control metric, no team is better. Ole Miss has the third-best average in-game win percentage. That suggests a lot of strange twists, and bad luck was involved with its losses. These are things the committee should be evaluating when comparing like teams.
But how about this comparison?
Team A: 7-2, 23 points per game scoring margin vs. FBS, 1 loss to unranked, three wins vs. SP+ top 40
Team B: 7-2, 19 points per game scoring margin vs. FBS, 1 loss to unranked, three wins vs. SP+ top 40
Pretty similar, eh?
Of course, one of them is Ole Miss. That’s Team A this time around.
Team B is Alabama, ranked five spots higher.
Sure, this situation can be resolved quite easily this weekend with a win over Georgia, but Ole Miss starting at the back of the pack of SEC contenders seems like a miss by the committee, even if the math will change substantially before the next rankings are revealed.
Oh, thanks so much for the No. 25 nod, committee. All Army has done is win every game without trailing the entire season. Last season, when Liberty waltzed through its weakest-in-the-nation schedule, the committee had no objections to giving the Flames enough love to make a New Year’s Six bowl. But Army? At No. 25? Thirteen spots behind Boise State, the Knights’ competition for the Group of 5’s bid? Something tells us some spies from Air Force have infiltrated the committee’s room in some sort of Manchurian Candidate scenario.
Sure, the Seminoles are terrible now, and yes, the committee this season has plenty of new faces, but that doesn’t mean folks in Tallahassee have forgiven or forgotten what happened a year ago. Before the committee’s playoff snub, FSU had won 19 straight games and averaged 39 points. Since the snub, the Noles are 1-9 and haven’t scored 21 points in any game. Who’s to blame for this? Mike Norvell? The coaching staff? DJ Uiagalelei and the other struggling QBs? Well, sure. But it’s much easier to just blame the committee. Those folks killed Florida State’s playoff hopes and ended their run of success. The least they could do this year is rank them No. 25 just for fun.
Also angry: South Carolina (5-3, unranked), Vanderbilt (6-3, unranked), Georgia (7-1, No. 3), Louisville (6-3, No. 22), everyone who is not in the Big Ten.
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Pete Thamel, ESPN
Nebraska is adding former Houston and West Virginia head coach Dana Holgorsen to the staff as an offensive consultant, sources told ESPN.
Holgorsen will work with the offensive staff in a role that will evolve as the season goes on, per sources. Holgorsen joins the staff after spending this season with TCU as an offensive consultant.
He joins Nebraska at a time when the offense — and freshman quarterback Dylan Raiola — have been mired in a rut of uneven play and the team is on a three-game losing streak.
In Nebraska’s six conference games, the Cornhuskers rank No. 12 in the Big Ten in offense, No. 14 in rushing offense and No. 11 in passing offense. Offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield has drawn criticism during Nebraska’s recent offensive slump, which has seen a dip in the passing game of Raiola, who was ESPN’s No. 11 recruit and the top pocket passer in the 2024 recruiting class.
Raiola has the third-most interceptions among Big Ten quarterbacks with eight, trailing Michigan State‘s Aidan Chiles (11) and USC‘s Miller Moss (9), who is being benched by the Trojans in favor of Jayden Maiava for next week’s matchup with the Cornhuskers.
In the past four games, Raiola has thrown just one touchdown and six interceptions. After starting 5-1, Nebraska is 5-4 and needs a win during a tough closing stretch to clinch the program’s first bowl game since 2016. That’s the longest drought of any team in power conference football.
Nebraska has a bye this week before next week’s visit to USC.
In adding Holgorsen, they are bringing in a coach who is a noted quarterback tutor and author of prolific offenses. Over the years he has worked with a slew of top college quarterbacks as an assistant and head coach — Graham Harrell, Case Keenum, Brandon Weeden, Geno Smith, Will Grier and Clayton Tune.
Holgorsen arrived in Lincoln on Monday, per sources.
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