This is the online version of our daily newsletter, The Morning Win. Subscribe to get irreverent and incisive sports stories, delivered to your mailbox every morning. Here’s Mike Sykes.
“Must be the money, that’s turnin’ them on.”
Those simple, yet wise, words come from one Deion Sanders. The song “Must be the Money” is the lone single released on his 1994 album “Prime Time.” The album wasn’t good, of course. Sanders had to be terrible at something as one of the world’s best multi-sport athletes. But… he had a point.
It must be the money. It’s all about the money.
Look no further than the imminent demise of the Pac-12 to prove it. The conference that once called dubbed itself the “Conference of Champions” is on the brink of no longer existing.
The conference is facing an existential crisis after Arizona, Arizona State, Utah, Oregon and Washington all applied for membership in other conferences. USC and UCLA were already headed to the Big Ten in 2024. Colorado is going back to the Big-12. The conference is left with just four member schools now: Stanford, California, Oregon State and Washington State. Hardly anything to write home about.
That ostensibly means that we have three super conferences in college football. The SEC, Big Ten and Big 12 are stacked. The ACC is just somewhere floating around on the periphery and the rest of the conferences just don’t matter.
With this new conference realignment, college sports as we know it will never be the same. We’ll have schools traveling clear across the country to play interconference games that no one will really care that much about. Is anyone lining up to watch Maryland play Oregon? No? Didn’t think so.
But that’s where we are now. There’s no familiarity between teams anymore. Just a bunch of teams hopping from state to state to play games and fulfill television agreements. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? It should. Because that’s what professional sports looks like.
That’s college athletics now. What was once about regions and rivalries is now all about cash and the spirit that schools are willing to sacrifice to make that cash grow.
Almost 30 years ago, Deion Sanders called it. He reminded us once again on Friday.
“All of this is about money,” he told reporters on Friday when asked about conference realignment. And you won’t find a single coach that’s going to complain about it. Sure, you’ll get a bit of hemming and hawing, but there’s a lot more understanding that comes with it regardless of the impact negative it’ll have on a coach’s players across sports.
Everyone wants that bag, man. And the more money that comes your school’s way in lieu of a new TV deal, the more money cash a coach might have on the back end of an extension.
Yes, it’s about the money. But it always has been. That’s the college sports world’s worst-kept secret.
We knew that when we were introduced to the bag men of college sports. We knew it when boosters were allowed to get involved in the NIL game. We also knew that every single time a shoddy TV deal changed the look of the conferences we loved.
It’s about time the NCAA stopped pretending like we don’t. It can start by finally cutting its players some checks.
Quick Hits: The GOAT for every NFL team … Carson Wentz is actually hilarious … and more
— Our Robert Zeglinski names the best player ever for every NFL team and some of these will definitely surprise you
— Can we get Carson Wentz on a new NFL team ASAP? I just need him to get another piece of gear to wear. Charles Curtis has more.
— Our Mary Clarke has the breakdown of the Erik Karlsson trade for you.
— This sinker from Abner Uribe makes absolutely no sense.