Pittsburgh coach Jeff Capel remembers coaching in the Big 12 when Texas was flirting with running what was then the Pac-10, a move that threatened to tear the Big 12 apart and potentially leave Kansas without shelter despite being a basketball blue blood.

The Longhorns stayed put for another 13 years, but this foreshadowed the chaos ahead in college sports – and the leading role of football in the sport.

There are only four power conferences left. Two of them – the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Big Ten – have coast-to-coast footprints requiring travel across the country after realignment. rushing for TV money. It focuses on football as the financial engine that fuels all other sports on campuses across the country.

The influence of men’s basketball has been reduced to a secondary role as opens the season Mondayeven with his lucrative television contract for the March Madness tournament and its hypnotic effect on the country each spring.

“I think we’re an afterthought right now,” said Capel, who was Oklahoma’s coach when Texas was considering switching dominoes in 2010 before the two schools met in the Conference. Southeast this year. “We are not at the forefront of thinking about what is best for college athletics. It’s all about football because it’s all about money.

Capel is not so much critical as affirming reality. The millions of dollars generated by televised conference deals and distributed to member schools come primarily from football, which in turn is the lifeblood of other sports. And this prompted speed dating couples between leagues and schools looking for long-term stability.

“If you look at the professional level, there’s the NFL and everyone else, with the NBA being second, but nowhere near in terms of revenue and popularity,” said Joe Favorito, professor at Columbia Universitysports and entertainment marketing consultant. “The NFL is American sport. That’s football.

A call to “modernize”

Basketball, both men’s and women’s, has been forced to adapt like the rest of the non-profit and Olympic sports programs despite its high visibility.

“If you’re not a little concerned in this day and age about where you stand or how you can make sure you have an advantage, then something’s wrong,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said. “We have to modernize our game. We have to make it attractive. We have to make it exciting beyond March and at different times of the year. That’s something that college football does a great job with. It simply is, and we need to do a better job.

The challenges are multiplying. The same goes for the expenses that motivate the race for money.

The NCAA has cleared the way in 2021 for athletes to profit from their athletic fame through name, image and likeness (NIL) agreements. This opened the door to Collectives financed by booster to offer payments that many college sports executives viewed as pay-to-play or recruiting incentives under the guise of endorsements.

There’s also the pending $2.8 billion legal settlement that will transform college sports by allowing schools to pay players. If finalized, it would allow larger schools to share up to $22 million annually with their athletes, a figure that is easier to achieve for schools with significant football-related revenue. compared to basketball-centric leagues and schools.

Basketball teams already travel more and play more games in longer seasons than football’s regular one-game-per-week pace. Today, these trips become a burden. This includes the Big 12 covering four time zones and the ACC adopts a scheduling model with the additions of Stanford, Cal and SMU that sends some teams on trips across the country. almost a week at a time.

“Sometimes we want to stay stuck in our ways, but we’re not going to be able to stay stuck in our ways,” Michigan State Hall of Fame coach Tom Izzo said as his Spartans prepare for the team’s additions. Big Ten from UCLA, USC. , Oregon and Washington. “So I’m going to accept that part. That doesn’t mean I have to like the fact of traveling from Los Angeles to here and getting here at 6 a.m. and getting the guys to class and getting the team ready for the next game. But other people need to do the same thing. »

Izzo added: “I just take pleasure in everyone who gets mad at football. I never get mad at football because I think they play a very important role in our athletic department.”

Tax documents from power conferences highlight Izzo’s point.

It starts with the Big Ten generating $879.9 million and paying an average of $60.3 million per school for the 2022-23 school year, followed by the SEC ($852.6 million, $51.3 million dollars). The ACC was next in generating $706.6 million in revenue and distributing $44.8 million to its football members, followed by the Big 12 ($510.7 million, $44.2 million) and finally from the Pac-12 ($603.9 million, $33.6 million).

By comparison, none of these leagues generated even $250 million in revenue or distributed even $21 million per school for the 2009-10 season when Texas considered its partnership toward ‘west. And those numbers don’t reflect the impact of this year’s realignment — which left the Pac-12 in tatters. and work to rebuild – nor larger future payments expanded playoffs.

Yet, as Favorito pointed out: “You don’t really make any money. You just bring in more money to spend. There is a big difference between the two.

What’s next for basketball

For basketball, the question is how to maintain your own position.

Capel supports expanding the NCAA tournaments beyond their 68-team format. He points out that the top tier of Division I football broke away in the Bowl Subdivision, above the old I-AA level now known as the Championship Subdivision, en route to the eventual launch of the four-way CFP teams for 2014 and now to 12 teams this year.

“They’ve expanded because they realize there’s more money to be made with this,” Capel said. “Why don’t we do this? Like, who thinks about basketball? »

The basketball issue could be of particular importance to the future of the Big 12 and the ACC.

The Big 12 lost its major football brands with the Longhorns and Sooners, and expanded to absorb the Pac-12 remnants of Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah – schools that are doing more to improve an already robust basketball league than boosting football.

“Look, I’ve talked about this before and since I’ve been here, I think basketball is undervalued,” Commissioner Brett Yormark said. -term and long term.

He noted that women’s basketball is also a key part of the mix: “You see those numbers from the WNBA – record ratings. You saw it last year in our tournament, the NCAA tournament. I think there is real potential and I’m looking to capture as much as possible in the short and long term.

The ACC is in a slightly different position by still having national football brands Florida State, Clemson and Miami teaming up with a tradition-rich basketball league featuring bluebloods Duke and North Carolina. But the league is engaged in a legal battle with FSU and Clemson after those schools filed lawsuits challenging the league’s ability to charge hundreds of millions of dollars for leaving the conference.

The league’s new incentive model, allowing teams to keep more of the money generated by their own playoff success, exemplifies football’s champion status: a team that achieves all season goals sports 2024-2025 could win about $25 million more in league payments, although $20 million is tied to winning the College Football Playoff.

ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips highlighted increased efforts to boost basketball over the past year, while recognizing the reality of a football-focused model.

“Basketball has never been more important to us than it is today,” Phillips said. “I would say we all understand the importance of football. But the shadow of football is probably bigger than it should be. We fully understand the economic engine that is football. But basketball, the season and the tournament, if you look at the numbers and that type of thing, it’s healthy, it’s a healthy sport within college sports.

“I think for all of us who run conferences or run schools,” Phillips added, “basketball has to be a priority.”

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AP Basketball Writer Dave Skretta and AP Sports Writer Larry Lage contributed to this report.

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