Jon Joseph

Mrs. P, I agree with you 100% in regard to Klatt. He is a front man for Fox so he is going to espouse the company line.

Based on the comments from many members of Congress I agree with your forecast.

CU changed its policy on transfer credits to enable Deion to raid the portal. But even Stanford does not have the same admissions standards for quality athletes. I know this because a former Stanford golf coach, Wally Goodwin, explained to me that he had close to carte blanche in taking in 2 golfers a year. These guys were not dummies but they did not have the grades and board scores of most applicants admitted to Stanford.

And the NLRB piling on does not help. Can't these people understand that they are throwing the baby out with the bathwater and that the people who will suffer the most from these are people of color and females? There is just no way IMO that a number of schools granting athletic scholarships today will continue to do so if athletes are found to be employees.

NCAA president Charlie Baker is trying but I guess that he will get no relief from Congress.

I replied to this great take by JC on his site. Briefly, the conference should have already filed a counter-claim against the terminated executives and cross-claimed against Scott. But paying this guy $1.5M in severance does not help if the conference ever goes against Scott. SMH at the continuing financial mismanagement of the conference with only (Eat) Crow and Block (Head) left from the gurus who hired the guy in the first place and then enabled his spendthrift ways.

Chun is rumored to be on the shortlist for the SC job. Does Rob have his hat in the ring? He did when the UGA and TX A+M jobs came up. BTW, take a look at Rob's Org Chart and tell me there aren't some savings there. Commissioner GK hired consultants to help with the media deal. If the 'commissioner's job' rotated among Pac-10 athletic directors an AD could do the same and would there be a drop-off in productivity and results? What does a conference commissioner do all day long?

The ship is at the dock still awaiting its cargo. Keep the baby Faith.

I don't know but I do know that I hope this 'problem' arises often in 2023.

I think we will see the games vs CU, and USC, in Seattle and in Salt Lake City in prime time on ESPN.

How do you make money in any business or as an individual? Buy low, sell high. And media companies have to buy inventory and flip it to advertisers at a profit. Not so easily accomplished in today's economy. Your great comment explains why I don't see a B1G bid coming for OR/UW before Fox knows the details of the new media deal.

Spot on. I very much doubt that ESPN wants to surrender the west coast market to arch-rival Fox and the LA market. Which will draw the most viewers? Purdue at UCLA or UW at Oregon?

An interesting dichotomy. East Coast fans may be asleep yet the networks want the inventory because it still draws more eyeballs than anything other than an NFL broadcast.

Tan, I think it depends on the opponent. A Friday night kick-off against USC, UW, Utah, UCLA, Oregon State, and a big-time OOC opponent, is going to sell out. Against Hawaii, I think there would be empty seats. This season's game versus Prime Time would definitely be a Friday night sell-out. But I feel the pain of people traveling from Portland and man, I miss when CFB was played in the sunshine.

Good take. But especially with the problems the B1G is having finalizing its new media deal does Fox really want to be spending more on B1G inventory? Fox just took it in the shorts with a close to a billion-dollar judgment against it from non-sports media activity. This is a big number for any business to swallow. And today's economy is not as robust as even a year ago. Fox is only the middle-man in its media deals. It has to sell off the conference media rights it has bought to advertisers to make a profit. The Pac-10 deal is obviously, taking a long time but this is not a seller's market and I'm certain that GK wants to have a deal fully nailed down before bringing the deal to the conference as a whole. The conference does not want to have a Kevin Warren-like egg on its face. As to Warren, this couldn't have happened any better. I wonder if the Pac-10 is reaching out to UCLA to see if the Bruins are having 2nd thoughts.

A lot of this depends on the site doing the rankings. I like that Charles uses Rivals but Rivals is often a tougher grader than the 247 composite rankings. Of course, at the end of the day, all of the highly-ranked kids arrive with potential and they have to be coached up.

College Football News has the Utes winning 9 regular season games. So much of the 2023 season is riding on whether QB Rising can make a full recovery from a bad ACL tear suffered against Penn State in the Rose Bowl. Even if Rising is healthy with out-of-conference games versus Florida and at Baylor and conference road games at Oregon State, USC, and UW, and with home games versus Oregon and UCLA, I see an 8 and not a 9-win regular season. https://collegefootballnews.com/cfn/utah-utes-college-football-preview-2023-breakdown-prediction-top-players-win-total Man, the Pac-12 is top to bottom loaded in 2023. No easy day.

Dan. has the first part down. You have to bring in big-time recruits. As I have mentioned before, no school without a Blue Chip Roster (BCR) won a BCS title and to date, no team without a BCR has won a playoff title. BCR = at least 50% of the roster being made up of 4* and 5* recruits. Dan Lanning is one coach on the verge of winning first national title DUCKSWIRE.USATODAY.COM Will Dan Lanning bring a national championship to Oregon? According to 247Sports, he isn’t far away.

Every draft prognostication I read before Nix decided to stay in Eugene had Nix going not later than the 2nd round and many had him in the 1st round. And there is a big difference between paying $1.5M to a guy straight out of high school and to a guy who has started in college ball for 4 seasons and had his best season in 2022.

It ain't over before the fat (and these days not so fat) media companies sing. It took the B1G 9 months to do its deal and apparently, the deal isn't done yet. Don't count your chickens. Kevin Warren is a lying backstabber who did not leave the B1G in the financial shape he promised the conference. And not only are there money issues, but there are also issues regarding how junior members CBS and NBC will fit in. The B1G has no streaming broadcast partner. Considering the direction in which sports media is headed, this is a mistake that I don't believe the Pac-10 will make. $5M short? Does the problem stop at $5M? Even at $5M, there goes a big chunk of the Trojans and Bruins travel budgets. And also perhaps the amount the Bruins will be required to pay in 'CAL tax' payments. $5M pays for a lot of private air travel. If one or both SC and UCLA were to decide to stay in the Pac I very much doubt they would be held liable. The B1G conference misrepresented the dollar amount. That's fraud in the inducement. Many UCLA fans, see Bill Walton, are not happy about the move. And also several SC fans. Yes, the money is nice but how does Traveler deal with not being the lead pony? That would be the horses out of Ann Arbor and Columbus.

New Brunswick, New Jersey is the promised land? Maybe for Tony Soprano. Kidding. Great comment.

Sirius radio today reported that the B1G deal is at least $5M short of the anticipated number of $70M a year.

Jon Wilner, who I trust along with Canzano to accurately report the situation reported the exact opposite of this article today. Rumor-mongering will continue until a deal is announced. ESPN needs late-night broadcast inventory. Fox has this with the LA market and SC does not.

We have met the enemy and they are us!

As Jon Wilner reports in a scathing article on his Pac-12 Hotline, Larry Scott will have been paid a total of $50M during his tenure as the Pac-12 commissioner. Larry was paid $4.1M for his last 6 months, January through July of 2021, as the leader of the Pac and notwithstanding his likely role in the Comcast foul-up, Larry was paid a $1.5M severance fee. Larry still owes $1.8M to the conference for a loan extended by the conference to facilitate his relocation from Florida. Meet the old boss, the same as the new boss. The only 2 conference presidents left from the 'gurus' who hired Larry are ASU's (Eat) Crow and UCLA's Block (Head.) The beat goes on.