Lots of news lately about possible conference realignments in the NCAA. I see the first official move was made today with Colorado agreeing to join the Pac-10. The Pac-10 is also looking at several other Big 12 schools. The Big Ten is looking at adding members with Nebraska and Notre Dame being mentioned.
So how will this affect college swimming? My gut tells me it's neutral or negative. I think football is the driving force in these realignments and it will just marginalize the non-revenue sports even more than they already are.
Any thoughts?
P.S. by the way, the Pac-10's possible realignment to a 16 team conference by adding six Big 12 teams will only increase the number of men's swim teams to seven in the conference (Texas and TAMU being the new ones). So the conference would go from 5/10 teams fielding men's teams to 7/16.
Former Member
It pains me to defend UT but this post is misleading. Look at all those sports they support, that is the most impressive thing to me. That is a lot of opportunities for a lot of kids.
Are you kidding? Texas supports comparatively few sports compared to Stanford (for example) - who spends less money. Texas throws a huge amount of money at football, basketball, and baseball. They pay all of their coaches top dollar. They have outstanding facilities for every sport. But the results do not match the spending.
You might find the link below interesting:
www.texastribune.org/.../
The top 20 in salaries is riddled with UT coaches.
Notre Dame can do well on its own - no other school can say that (though Texas thinks it can).
In a sense that is what Texas already does. Nebraska and Colorado just got tired of it so they left. The Big 12 TV contract was split 17 ways with Texas getting 4 shares (I don't have the exact details on this but I think it is about how it worked). From a swimming perspecitve Texas does a great job. But by NOT dividing TV revenues with the other conference schools those schools were unable to support the other sports. Some of you may know, but the Big 12 has only 3 men's swimming programs.
I am also certain that the Big 12 is courting Notre Dame. Basically it will be the Texas/Notre Dame Television Net Work conference.
