Chris Kotsoglou

Colorado is headed to the Pac-10, Nebraska is headed to the Big Ten, six schools could potentially get up and head west, and the SEC is lurking to pick up the scraps.

Its enough moving around to make your head hurt.  And mine does.  The biggest fans of this realignment?  BP and David Stern.

Creating “Mega-Conferences” as they have been dubbed might be the most selfish actions colleges can get away with.  No one is even hiding the fact that this is a cash grab to create additional revenue though a conference television deal.

The schools get more money, but does it benefit the student-athletes?  A true college system should be one that benefits them, and it should be the first thought brought to the table.  It never is though.

There is so much going on Im even doing something that I hate, which is bullet-pointing to sort out my thoughts:

-The Pac-10 had to do something.  The East coast controls the country.  It has the highest population of media and academic institutions, and the Pac-10 was falling dangerously behind.  No one was waiting up until 10 or midnight EST to watch games on the west coast.

-I don’t understand the logic that you can expand the NCAA basketball tournament with no consequences, but you can’t expand football because of class.  Look at the logistics:  Basketball teams play multiple times a week, sometimes traveling.  Football players play once a week, usually Saturdays.  Basketball players are out of class much more than football, and a playoff would take place in the break between a fall and spring semester.  Basketball biggest tournament takes place right in the heart of the spring semester.

-The NCAA hammers USC for “striking at the heart of amateurism”, yet where do television deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars fit in?

-Why does it feel like a “good ol’ boy” network?  Kansas and Kansas State are left out in realignment talks between the Big Ten and Pac-10.

-You can’t be so strict on the rules, only to apply them when you see fit.  There is no unilateral function.  What applies to one does not apply to another.  And as a fan, I’m not stupid.  I see this.

-I’m the biggest problem.  I love college football.  Love it.  To me, its the best sports has to offer.  Long standing coaches, schools with storied histories, interwoven story-lines, young men laying it all on the line all make Saturdays the best day of the week.  But we hate the BCS.  Its broken and DMV-level complicated.  It rarely gives a consensus to who is the best.  But I still watch, with the exception of this year.  And because I watch, networks take my viewership, work the numbers, take it to advertisers, and make money to continue the process.

-Is the Pac-10 guaranteeing that they will have a team in the National Championship every year?  Automatically, they become the most powerful conference in the land.  That will boost computer rankings.  Is the conference only going to have one BCS bid coming from a conference championship game?  No.  What will happen is that the winner of that conference football game will have a boost in the numbers to get a much stronger shot at the national championship, and the loser will get another at-large bid, not to mention schools who finish second will get numbers boost from the conference strength.  The Pac-16 conference will eat up a lot of the at-large BCS bids.  Big schools got tired of being hammered by better teams on a national stage, even if they weren’t in one of the power conferences.  See, State, Boise and Christian, Texas.  This realignment keeps them away, and keeps the money in-house.

-Small conferences once again are getting hammered.  This realignment feels like Pro’s versus Joe’s.

What time does game four of the Finals tip tonight?

I never met John Wooden.  I was never close to seeing him in person.  A lot of people can say that.  But there aren’t a lot of people who can say that he didn’t somehow touch their lives, intentionally or unintentionally.

From a basketball standpoint, every player who has played organized basketball has had a coach incorporate some element of his system at UCLA.  From a leadership standpoint, owners, managers and the like have all used some of his quotes to motivate and teach.

Being in Los Angeles this last weekend, you couldn’t miss his influence around town.  The most amazing part was that every single person had a personal John Wooden story.  Michael Madden, who ran the conference I was at, told a story of his tough upbringing and how John Wooden brought him to one of his basketball camps and knew exactly who he was.

My favorite story came from Roger Lodge, who talked about his dad owning a sporting goods store that John Wooden used to buy UCLA uniforms from.  When Wooden would call and order, Roger would run upstairs, take the mic off the phone, and listen in.  Roger had a lot more, and I’m going to post my interview with him later today so you can hear it yourself.  But you could tell how much he meant to the community.

There was a lot more from people around town, but you cant deny the effect that John Wooden had on so many people on such a personal level.  His legacy transcended  so much more than UCLA basketball that often times, ten national championships is not the first thing brought up when talking about him.  That’s how incredible of a man John Wooden was.