Morning Five: 02.25.10 Edition
Posted by rtmsf on February 25th, 2010
1. Texas AD DeLoss Dodds said yesterday that the Big Ten has not contacted the league about its expansion plans and that he currently likes their situation in the Big 12 and would be unlikely to leave. Which probably means that talks are already underway and if the Big Ten threw the Horns a sweetheart deal of some kind they’d drop the league in a heartbeat. Or not.
2. How much Seth Davis do you want today… because we have plenty to offer up. We love his scouting reports feature because it offers insights on teams from the trenches and exposes what their real strengths and weaknesses are beyond the typical coach-speak. He also gives us his ticket-punching games of the week (none came in last night) and answers a bunch of mail.
3. Here are this year’s disappointments in terms of conference, team and player, and we’d wager you can guess all three..
4. From a couple of weeks ago, but we just discovered it. Cameron Crazies, you might want to take a few notes from these guys at Utah State regarding choreography. Impressive.
5. To honor the 25th anniversary of the Jordan brand at Nike, the company developed silver uniforms that were worn by UNC last night against Florida State and will be on Cal and Georgetown players as well over the next few nights. Hideous or haute couture? Regardless, it didn’t help Jordan’s Heels win their game against FSU last night. Oh, and UNC forward David Wear is likely out for the season with a hip injury. Things are really getting weird in Chapel Hill.
For what it’s worth, the Winning Team, Losing Team chant has been around for a while in other places (not that it makes it any less cool.)
I went to Ohio University, and they started a new student section my freshman year (2001) — The O-Zone — and one of the assistant coaches (John Rhodes) taught winning team, losing team to the students who signed up. It turned out they used to do it when he played at Ohio U. back in the 1980s. It became a staple of the student section and they still do it to this day. I actually was there this weekend and heard them do it against Wright State in the closing seconds. (http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=winning+team+losing+team+ohio&search_type=&aq=f)
One of the videos actually says they’ve been doing it in spurts since the 1960s. Anyway, just thought you’d want a little background on it.
Agreed. It’s not only the chant itself that I found cool, but the choreography of it all. Thanks for the background info, though.
The Utah State fans were pretty impressive. I had friends who went to OU and I had heard of the winning team/losing team, but I haven’t seen it done on that scale. It seemed to catch the announcers a little off guard at first. Good find. Now I’m definitely going to try and catch Utah State games on at 1 am on ESPNU.
No question Utah State’s crowd was HUGE. Right now, the size of OU’s student section is kind of small compared to a few years ago when they won the MAC. They not only filled the lower bleachers but had to use the rows of seats behind them. It was definitely impressive. Wish there were better clips of it from those years on YouTube. (The Jon Sanderson one is close, because that was — I believe — the first year of the O-Zone when it was REALLY live.)
Texas is already in the Pac 10. Notice Dodds keep denying that Texas is talking with the Big 11. That means Texas has already signed with the Big 11 and is no longer talking to them or Texas has signed with the Pac 10 and is no longer talking to the Big 11.
Either way, Dodds statement is true. You have to read what he is not saying to understand what he is saying.
Bevo, I’m not close to the Texas program at all so please help me understand this a little better. What does the Big 11 or Pac-10 offer that the Big 12 cannot provide? Isn’t the Big 12 already a better conference in both football and basketball? Doesn’t it make geographic sense? Aren’t there historic rivalries that they care about (A&M and Oklahoma)?
I absolutely understand the benefit to the Big 11 and Pac-10, but I’m not necessarily seeing it from the other direction.
One thing Texas has to gain by leaving the Big12 for either of those conferences: TV$$$$$.
Big12 is locked into its current TV contract for something like 78million until 2016. Pac-10 TV is up this offseason and will be lucrative and could include a Pac-10 network. And of course, the Big Televen has the best TV contract out there even before you start talking about their own network.
The Big 11’s tv contract is more lucrative than the SEC’s with ESPN? That would surprise me, but I don’t have time now to look it up.
Yup. Big Televen’s works out to something like 240mil/annually (and let me correct that, I think that figure includes revenues from the B10 network, and a quick google search only turns this up as the best cite: http://westvirginia.scout.com/2/948903.html) to SEC’s 205/annually (http://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/article/59915)..
Both are vastly preferable to B12’s $78mil/annual contract.