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Message: [QUOTE="MSOrange, post: 4723655, member: 630"] So I've been holding my tongue for a couple days on the conference realignment, Round 2023. But now its nap time on the shores of beautiful Lake Walloon in Northern Michigan so here goes... Lets get the good stuff and the disclaimers out of the way: I have a tremendous respect for [URL='https://twitter.com/SantaJOno']@SantaJOno[/URL] and Warde Manuel when it comes to protecting the interests of the University of Michigan. Full stop. They are my guys, and I'm proud of the work they do. I also want to welcome [URL='https://twitter.com/uoregon']@uoregon[/URL] and [URL='https://twitter.com/UW']@UW[/URL] to the Big Ten Conference. They are tremendous institutions with fantastic fan bases, and I know they'll love coming to places like Ann Arbor, Madison, and Iowa City. But lets face some facts here: this expansion, like the several before it, has zero to do with the caliber of the school, the impact it would have on student athletes, tradition or rivalry. It has everything to do with TV dollars. But everyone knows that. It's utterly indefensible on any other grounds. FACT: It will take less time for our student athletes in non-chartered travel to go from Ann Arbor to London than it will to Eugene. Should we consider adding University College London to add another TV window? (Dont give any ideas) This is where I find the [URL='https://twitter.com/NCAA']@NCAA[/URL] and its behavior so wildly offensive. If this alleged oversight body, which claims it is high and mighty every time it runs to Congress demanding action, really cared about student athletes, they'd get this nonsense under control. Instead, they run around finding minor violations while ignoring the VERY real impact that a weeknight competition in Seattle would have on student athletes with classes in College Park. They're mall cops that are way in over their heads. The TV execs do their jobs, the Presidents protect their institutions. If the [URL='https://twitter.com/NCAA']@NCAA[/URL] were a real oversight body, it would be the grown up in the room. Instead, it sits around policing minor violations while 115 year old conferences are simply blown up. Now, lets get to the heart of it: these college leaders, from the Big Ten, to the SEC, to the ACC and beyond, again talking about how the biggest threats to college sports are the transfer portal and NIL, and then go transfer portal a conference in a week in August. If the Arguments for Congressional action had no merit before, now they look positively silly. In what world should student athletes be given a bigger grind (with almost no say into this massive change) with ZERO of the TV dollars going in their pockets? Instead, the concern was that every school would continue to get what they had. The students, who are not allowed to be employees or collect revenue sharing, while the schools are hyper focused on their own percentages. In what world does that make sense? It's not the lack of caring about regionalism and rivalry that get me (as a fan, of course they do). It's the enormous hypocrisy of claiming the NCAA or its member institutions remotely care about student athlete welfare when they're in front of congress.. While showing just absolute utter disregard for it when it comes to conference expansion. Congress should judge these leaders by their actions, and not by the words: It acts like a business, and should be treated like a business on all aspects, including compensation. The entire empire has no clothes. If the NCAA and its member institutions were actually even somewhat concerned about fairness, today would be a good day to start moving toward a revenue share. The second best day would be tomorrow. [/QUOTE]

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