Jon Joseph

The players on Dilfer's team are making NIL bank? Me thinks that Trent is confusing Birmingham with Tuscaloosa.

One wonders if the LA schools will adopt the John Madden approach and travel by bus. Over 15,000 miles each for the football teams in 2023 and this just in, non-revenue sports play a lot more games than the football teams.

But their travel agent in LA will be smiling like this cool cat. LOL!

The cord-cutting continues and Neil is one of the victims. Want to talk about media nonsense. Chris Fowler to his displeasure is making $3.5M a year. Yet it was reported that Pat McAfee will be paid $17M a year by Disney/ESPN. Righhhhhht. The SEC best be prepared for many of its games to be streamed. The future of sports broadcasting. And will games be broadcast on-site or from a stadium in Charlotte or Bristol? And will ESPN have the money to meet all of its broadcast obligations that go well beyond the deals with college football conferences? Do not laugh. Two Harvard dropouts almost took down IBM.

Happy, great take. Rufus should get the credit for the post on which I merely commented. Let's get together to recount all of the miserable business decisions made by conference "leaders" by commissions and omissions, going back to the days of Tom Hansen. I'm retired. If you are employed the time for the review will require you to take a week off. It's as if the folks in charge of the conference wanted to elevate the SEC and B1G while working their way toward Ivy League status. The LA schools were part and parcel of this ongoing decades-long fiasco and are escaping only due to an accident of geography and the desire of one network to injure another.

This take is not a diss on OOC scheduling but a take on the Texas Tech QB situation and Oregon meeting up with an old friend. Tyler Shough has been named Texas Tech's starting quarterback for the 3rd season in a row. Shough is 8-0 in games that he has started and finished at QB for Tech. Shough missed 4 games last season with a bad shoulder but came back and was the MVP of Tech's decisive Texas Bowl defeat of Ole Miss. In 2022 he helped Tech run the most plays from scrimmage in the G5/P5. This is Tyler's 6th season of college football! Shough played at Oregon for 3 seasons where he went 5-2 as a starter and led the team to a conference championship. No doubt Tyler will be fired up to face his old team.

Just another attack on the today's game. I don't see it stopping until much of the G5/P5 goes the route of the Ivy League/ Division 3. The recipients of NIL deals have to, of course, pay tax on the income. Now the payors won't be able to deduct the payment as a business expense? The lyrics to the Beatles' 'Tax Man' come to mind. This is in No Way intended to be a political statement. Don't 'these folks' understand that the baby is being thrown out with bath water? That these attacks on the college athletic model will hurt people of color and women the most? The Olympic sports medals for the USA will decline? SMH.

In this case, 2 out of 3 will be more than ain't bad. Go Ducks. And a blessing for all Forum members to have PA Duck back!

The B1G conference leaders acted with sense and purpose in restructuring the conference scheduling format when UCLA and USC come on board in 2024. 1st and foremost the B1G, unlike the ACC and the SEC, has to courage to remain at 9 conference games. Divisions are gone which will prevent B1G W division winners from being defeated, often handily, by the B1G E champion in the conference champ game. Tradition was upheld with, for example, Iowa having 3 permanent opponents while Penn State has no permanent opponents. Unlike the SEC, where Georgia has yet to play at Texas A+M, all 14 teams will play one another in a three-year time frame. The author does a terrific job of pointing out the winners and losers of this flex-fixed scheduling format. I am most happy to see UCLA among the losers. UCLA will be the Minnesota of B1G football. Along with USC, UCLA football will be traveling over 15,000 miles in 2024. UCLA also drew Michigan as its 2nd permanent opponent along with USC. Ohio State, Penn State, and Michigan are also winners. No longer will these 3 have to face one another in every regular season. This makes all the sense in the world with a 12-team playoff coming in 2024. It's not hard to envision all 3 of these teams being in the playoff field. I hope the Pac will come up with this kind of conference scheduling (I still find it difficult to believe that Hanks and the conference maintained the Cali scheduling agreement in 2023 and gave the Trojans an idle week the week before the champ game) come 2024. Oregon - Oregon State and UW as permanent opponents makes sense as does elevating the date and time of the Oregon/UW game in recognition of this game being the conference's annual premier game. Utah, for example, would have one permanent opponent, CU. And vice versa for the Buffs. Hickey: Winners, losers and a big takeaway from the new B1G scheduling format SATURDAYTRADITION.COM Saturday Tradition's Alex Hickey breaks down the winners, losers and other takeaways from the Big Ten's new football scheduling... By the way, my congrats to the B1G do not extend to the illegitimate offspring at FOX.

Thanks for nailing this HORRENDOUS number. The dismissed network executives claim in their wrongful termination suit against the conference that they told Larry in 2017 about this 'accounting' problem and Larry swept it under the rug. It will be an all-time legal blunder if the conference does not cross-claim against Larry. D+O Insurance should cover the damages if Larry is found to have covered up. Also standing in line as a defendant should be the conference's public accounting firm. The only problem? A suit against Larry will expose the folks that Larry reported to as being morons; this is probably unfair to morons. And why would the conference have paid Larry a $1,5M severance bonus if there were any problems with Larry's conduct? Pac-10 athletic departments can ill afford this hit. See the financial problems publicly reported by Washington and Washington State. Not as big a number, around $2+M, or even close but add San Francisco premises restoration to this Comcast debacle. Why in the heck did the conference ever move out of Mountain View, CA.? Why was the network headquartered in San Francisco; I guess even the conference 'leaders' recognized that Honolulu was too far to go. BRUTAL!

All-time AP Top 25. Oregon is in Others Receiving Votes. SC and UW make the top 25. https://collegefootballnews.com/rankings/ap-poll-top-25-all-time-preseason-college-football-rankings

Gold: One for the ages — Ducks pull off biggest baseball win in almost 7 decades SATURDAYOUTWEST.COM The Ducks pulled off their biggest win on the diamond in almost 70 years with a 9-8 comeback over Oral Roberts in their Friday...

Thank you, NJ, for all of these great updates. Of course, not over until the name is signed on the bottom line; we all know 'commitment' has a different meaning when it comes to truly committing to a program.

Great game. But the best game I ever witnessed in person was the 1976 6th game between the Red Sox and the Reds at Fenway where in extra innings Carlton Fiske waved for the ball to stay fair as it cleared the Monster and won the game in a walk-off From Good Will Hunting - 'I didn't know that Pudge was going to hit a home run.'. Unfortunately, I was also in Fenway for game 7 when Doggy Perez hit a Bill Lee Moon Ball pitch out of the park as the Reds took the series.

What an SEC 9 conference schedule could look like using the 2024 and forward B1G scheduling agreement. How a hypothetical nine-game SEC schedule would look based on Big Ten's new 'Flex Protect Plus' model - CBSSports.com WWW.CBSSPORTS.COM The SEC is staying at eight games for now, but we're still pondering what an adjusted slate would look like

SC and UCLA, get your No-Doz ready. Brutal travel numbers for football and think how this will affect non-revenue sports. Big Ten football schedule: Distance each team will travel in 2024 season when USC, UCLA join conference - CBSSports.com WWW.CBSSPORTS.COM A few teams in the Big Ten Conference will be racking up airline miles when the league expands in the 2024 season

Along with his recent Mailbag, Jon Wilner (paywall) reviewed the legal matters affecting the conference and college sports at large. It isn't pretty. No one under the age of 17 should read the following without parental guidance and permission. Here is a summary of the 6 matters. 1. Pac-12 vs DISH - The conference is, hold your breath, the Plaintiff in this action suing DISH for withholding distribution payments. This suit has nothing to do with the Comcast debacle. 2. The NLRB has filed a complaint against USC, the Pac-12, and the NCAA seeking to have college athletes recognized as employees of their respective schools. This is exactly the opposite of the precedent set by the NLRB six years ago when it found that Northwestern football players are not employees and therefore could not form a players' union. 3. Holiday Bowl vs UCLA and the Pac-12. The Holiday Bowl is seeking $3M in damages for UCLA canceling out of the Holiday Bowl due to COVID shortly before the game was set to kick off. I hope the conference as a whole has filed to be removed as a defendant in the matter. The conference had nothing to do with UCLA's decision. 4. AB 252 - The College Athlete Protection Act that would require all private and public schools in California to share revenue with student-athletes has passed the California State Assembly notwithstanding all entities in California directly affiliated with college athletics lobbying vehemently against this piece of legislation. The matter is now before the California Senate. Wilner - "As the law, AB 252 would make NIL look like amateur hour in terms of ramifications for college sports." 5. The Comcast Cover-Up - 2 executives were terminated by the Pac-12 Network for failure to disclose the Comcast accounting error, too much money was paid to the conference by Comcast, and have filed a Wrongful Termination suit claiming that they disclosed the error to Larry Scott in 2017 and Scott did not report this to his overseers. This fiasco is expected to cost each Pac-12 member at least $1M plus in diminished future revenues as the result of having to balance the books with Comcast, The conference has yet to cross-claim against Scott which I believe in itself is a breach of fiduciary duty. No way that conference member athletic departments should bear the brunt of this cover-up. 6. The Hubbard Matter - Chuba Hubbard who was a running back at Oklahoma State and now plays in the NFL, and other former student-athletes, have filed an anti-trust action against the NCAA claiming billions of dollars (anti-trust law allows for treble damages) in unpaid benefits based upon the Supreme Court's 9-0 ruling against the NCAA in the Alston case. The case is in front of the Northern California District Federal Judge Claudia Williams whose ruling in the O'Bannon case years ago sparked the era of economic changes across the NCAA. In effect, I think seeking damages retroactively based upon the Alston decision should not stand but I do not trust the NCAA to properly defend this case. It could take close to a decade for this case to reach the Supreme Court but if sustained this could destroy the operations of the vast majority of G5/P5 athletic departments. The good news? Ducks baseball just made an all-time comeback and football in Autzen kicks off in a couple of months.

Thanks, H. Kentucky was among the schools pushing to stay with 8 conference games. I guess Mark Stoops needs his bowl game bonus.

Thanks, Tan. I couldn't open the link but I subscribe to Mercury News and read this take elsewhere. Everything Jon says about the Oregon/UW game makes sense.

Neil Everett gets his World Wide Leader exit papers. Best of luck Neil at your new gig. FOX? Twitter Reactions: Oregon Ducks legend Neil Everett leaves ESPN DUCKSWIRE.USATODAY.COM “Bartender…Jack!” Oregon Duck legend Neil Everett will be leaving ESPN after 23 years. His departure left the sporting world...

Thank you, Charles, for the channel change heads-up! No country for old men watching the games on the Right Coast but Man, was I happy I hung in there last night. A comeback for the ages.

HUZZAH! Kept an old man up late but well worth it. GO DUCKS!

Without the LA schools, I also doubt, as I meant to indicate, $50M. I think with the LA schools $50M would have been a slam dunk. FOX is paying the LA schools $65M each per annum to move to the B1G. IMO, the Pac-10 will survive and with the right streaming partner will have the chance to thrive.

Yes, rushed to the tune, so far, of a promised $5M shortfall and games on Peacock with 20M subscribers. Kind of like Carol Folt rushed into the hiring of a now-disgraced AD, With the LA schools in place, the Pac-12 does a deal for $50M plus. So is $65M enough for SC to give up its place at the head of the table?

I think what the Pac-10 needs is the Atlantic-Pacific Conference merger with the ACC.