No, No, No, Not Today, UCLA

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Happy Friday, folks. 

I normally like to start with a funny bit, but today, I'd instead like to call for a moment of recognition of the tragedy that occurred this week in Charlottesville, Virginia. A former football player on the UVA football team, Christopher Jones Jr, was charged with the murder of three current team members and injuring of two others. The disgusting act was carried out in a parking garage following a school field trip, and the motive is currently unclear.

To the entire Cavaliers family, and particularly to the loved ones of Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr, and D'Sean Perry, our hearts are with you. Rest in peace.

The college football coaching carousel has already been turning, and it appears that Ole Miss is in line to get a ticket for the ride. Reports have surfaced earlier this week that Lane Kiffin has already agreed to be the next coach at Auburn with a deal reportedly worth $78 million. The contract (if true) would be fully guaranteed and for 7 years, a steady raise over the $7.25 million salary he is currently earning through 2025.

However, things might not be as concrete as you'd think. The latest news as of Thursday suggests that Ole Miss has pulled an Uno Reverse for its head man and offered Kiffin a new contract worth approximately $9.5M/year which would vault him into the top ten highest paid coaches in the country. Your move, Auburn.

Interesting tidbit: prior to the Tigers' job opening up, many had pencilled Kiffin in as the next HC at Alabama whenever (if ever???) The King of CFB Nick Saban retires. As such, many were shocked by the rumors that Lane might be interested in opting to jump now for the Tide's hated cross-state rival, shutting the door on any potential Kiffin-Tide reunion. Given the amount of Saban propaganda that Kiffin has tweeted over the past few months, a more competitive salary from his current employer might be the final convincing that Kiffin needs to wait it out a few more years.

A stupid consideration which might actually end up coming into play? There's a law in Mississippi preventing any state employee from receiving a contract for longer than four years... As Ole Miss is a public university, that makes any long-term deal for Kiffin illegal. This lack of security might actually be a detractor in the Rebels' attempts to keep Lane in Oxford. I bet a certain fanbase with Yell Leaders wishes that Texas had a similar tenure rule...

For those of you rocking Patagonia puffer vests at work, you might have noticed the clear lack of corporate M&A activity over the last few quarters, likely a result of market conditions which simply don't pass the vibe test. However, the oil barons down in Austin seem to have missed the memo. Must be all the money in their ears?

Prior to this week, the University of Texas had FIVE "official" NIL Collectives. Despite three of these groups focusing on different individual sports, not having a clearly designated organization in charge of handling booster money made fundraising more challenging than trying to sell turquoise rings via cold calls.

Luckily for the Horns, their collectives have decided to do some team-building breathing exercises, hold hands, and form a circle as they've merged into a single collective, the Texas One Fund. Combined with the newest NIL guidance from the NCAA which allows school athletic departments to officially endorse and aid in fundraising efforts for collectives, this should propel Texas' already successful money-grabbing efforts even further, potentially even far enough to win a game or two once they join the SEC.

The merger will allow the collective to operate much more efficiently through employing shared legal and financial resources such as accountants and lawyers to streamline the logistical aspect of the NIL process. Further, AD Chris Del Conte has already officially endorsed the collective to the athletic program's hundreds of thousands of followers, all of whom are now able to contribute to the group by either donating to a particular sport or to the general fund, not that they are likely hurting for cash. One of the individual collectives had already secured $10 million in commitments prior to the merger. I'm sure the newly-crowned richest school in the country is really struggling to make ends meet...

"Pods" has become a buzzword in SEC circles, much like "detail-oriented" on resumes and "cinematic universe" in movie studios. However, this rumored conference structure for when Texas and Oklahoma join in 2025, whereby there are four groups of four teams each, has been seemingly snuffed out with the latest announcement from SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey yesterday regarding divisions.

Instead, the conference is looking at a single division system where teams will be scheduled to cycle through opponents and venues to ensure that teams (and fans) get to travel to every other school in the conference over a few seasons. There's got to be an open relationship joke in there somewhere. To illustrate the lack of such scheduling thus far, Texas A&M and Missouri joined the SEC in 2012, and Missouri played at Auburn for the first time ever this season, and Georgia still has not played a game at Kyle Field in College Station.

Finally, onto the biggest story of the week. The University of California Board of Regents has been vocal in the past about its power to block UCLA's decision to follow crosstown rival USC to the Big Ten. However, the board must have watched one too many early 90s Nuggets highlights 'cause they're now strongly considering using the Dikembe Mutombo finger wag after all.

Many might actually be on the administration's side on this one. When the news broke earlier this year, even those unaffiliated with the school have criticized the decision to abandon tradition and join a conference in which the closest team is located in Lincoln, Nebraska. The decision was (shocker) about money as the revenue payout from the Big Ten looks to dwarf what the Bruins would receive in the Pac-12, but many opposed to the news are concerned over the travel effects on the athletes and impact on the rest of the Pac-12.

Conference Commissioner George Kliavkoff is echoing "yeah... what they said," too. He's actually the one who played the "I'm telling your mom" card in the first place when he wrote to the Board asking them to intervene. Frankly, I can't blame him as the departure of both schools in the LA market was expected to crush the conference's value by 40% (30% for USC and another 10% for the Bruins) and cost each remaining member school $13 million annually. While most of the blow comes from the Trojans (private school so not overseen by the Board), managing to hold onto UCLA would at least soften the blow.

The Board met yesterday to make an official decision, but in classic American bureaucratic fashion, it instead made an official "hmm... let me think about it" and pushed the final decision to next month.

The lack of clarity is not ideal for UCLA administration given the many logistical factors which have to be figured out between now and the school's planned move in 2024. The coaches are similarly not thrilled as the early national signing period for high school athletes opens up on December 21, and the transfer portal window on December 5. Coaches will have to try to convince SoCal players and their parents to rock the Blue and Gold and travel to either Seattle, Washington or... New Brunswick, New Jersey. Same thing?

Unsurprisingly, one of the biggest opponents of the move is UC Berkeley, the only UC system program remaining in the conference if the Bruins are to move. Berkeley would lose out on millions in annual media revenue, a huge blow to a program which already lags financially behind many of its opponents and suffers from an alumni commitment to athletics that is less enthusiastic than a 9 year old getting socks for Christmas.

The Bruins counter that the stiffer competition will be good for their athletes, and the increased national exposure will lead to greater revenue opportunities for players in the NIL era. I'm sure that revenue for the players is the only reason they're doing it...

The school has even already earmarked an additional $10 million in yearly spend for travel-imposed expenses, whether direct or for the additional athletic, nutritional, and mental health support that playing a snow game in Columbus on Saturday night and having an 8am Econ lecture on Monday morning would necessitate.

The Big Ten move provides more than enough to offset this additional expense. By the end of the newly signed Big Ten deal, each school will receive close to $100 million in annual payouts. UCLA earned just $33.6 million from the Pac-12 in 2020.

This money goes to more than just locker room slides and protein bars, though. For most schools, football tends to be the only profitable sport. In fact, for UCLA, its Olympic sports teams actually lost more than $100 million last year. As more schools begin to pull a Twitter and scrap certain sports, chasing the media revenue bag might prove necessary to allow thousands of athletes to continue to participate in the sports they love.

If the move does go through, things don't look great for the Pac-12. The conference has already struggled to remain nationally relevant as apart from an uncharacteristically strong group of teams this year, the conference has found itself wandering the plains of mediocrity for the better part of the decade. Without two of its biggest brands (particularly USC), this trend will only be further embraced. It's likely that other schools in the conference will also attempt to fly the coop (or wherever Ducks sleep...)

If it's blocked, something tells me that Kliavkoff won't be getting a Xmas card from UCLA AD Martin Jarmond. It might be a win for the Pac-12, but UCLA would lose out on millions of dollars, and USC would likely become the only nationally relevant team in the West given its increasingly superior resources and media coverage. The gap between USC and UCLA would grow, and rather than keep the conference intact like many hope, it might just lead to the Big Ten attempting to poach a replacement like Oregon or Washington.

Some are looking forward to Christmas with presents under the tree. I'll be obsessively refreshing my Twitter feed on December 14 waiting to see what the future college football landscape looks like.

A few big ranking movements from this past week:

• The SEC is looking reaaaally close to getting two teams in the playoffs with 3 of the top 6 (#1 UGA, #5 Tenn, #6 LSU)

• #4 TCU gets the final spot after holding off a heavily favored Texas in Austin

• #12 Oregon dropped six spots after falling to Washington, thus ending what some considered to be a playoff run (because a team that lost 49-3 in its first game deserved that...)

Arguably the biggest game of the year will be played in Lawrence, Kansas this week as the Texas Longhorns will travel to face the Kansas Jayhawks in the biggest revenge tour since Taylor Swift going platinum with Speak Now. An interesting twist: Kansas is actually good this year. Others:

• Yale @ Harvard... #RollCrim

• #7 USC @ #16 UCLA... timely

• #10 Utah @ #12 Oregon

If you want to stay up until midnight for some West Coast football, they've certainly got the enticing matchups to tempt you. If you'd rather watch some Ivy League football with your cornflakes, this weekend's slate has got you covered there, too. Still think the Bulldogs-Crimson game got robbed of College Gameday...

Only two more weeks of regular season football... I'm not crying you're crying. Enjoy it will it's here🥲

Cheers to another day,

Trey