How to Embiggen the Big Ten

The possibility of expanding the Big T1e1n (pronounced Tel-evan, or if you prefer, Ten-eleven) has become an off-season subject of blathering in the electronic and the dead-tree media. What’s at stake? Well, two things come to mind right away.

First of all, the college athletics cartel (that’s the NCAA, if your knowledge of sports comes from watching ESPN) requires conferences to have twelve members before they can hold a championship game in football. Football championships are big money, as anyone who has sat through the barrage of commercials that are broadcast during the Big 12 and Southeastern matchups will confirm. That money’s an incentive to any of the major conferences, and more than a few of the second- and third-tier ones as well.

Secondly, and I’m going to be very blunt about this, the level of competition in the Big Ten right now is pretty meh. Ohio State aside, the rest of the conference hasn’t lived up to its reputation during the regular season, and our bowl records haven’t been anything to write home about. On top of that, the stunning collapse of the Michigan football program in the last few years has left the Big Ten looking like the Pac-10, but with worse weather; essentially, a Big One with a bunch of average squads. Expansion can improve the image of the conference, if the right teams get the nod.

Someone who doesn’t know me might have to ask why I’m focusing on football. Well, to be honest, football is the college sport that matters the most. It’s why conferences were organized, and it’s also the most lucrative of college sports. Men’s basketball is next, but except for the NCAA tournament, it doesn’t draw the crowds that pigskin does. Nothing else counts from a revenue standpoint, not even women’s basketball at powerhouse schools such as Stanford or Tennessee. (Sisters, I’m not endorsing that situation; I’m just calling it as it is.)

Pacific Plans
Right now, the two majors that don’t have enough teams to offer one of these festivals of advertising are the Pacific-10 and the Big Ten. Let me get the first group out of the way, because it’s easy to discuss, and the Big Ten’s expansion is a more interesting puzzle in any event.

Utah and BYU are the most logical choices for an expansion of the Pac-10, and rumor has it that such a transfer is in the works. If they lack certain built-in recruiting incentives (such as easy access to women, or access to easy women), there is a geographic affinity, and both programs would fit in well with the existing teams’ level of play.

If anything, both schools have the advantage of altitude over their potential brethren. Remember, seven of the Pac-10 campuses (the California and Oregon members, and the U of Washington) are less than 250 feet above sea level. Wazzu and the Arizona schools are at somewhat higher altitudes, but none of them are even close to the 4000+ feet elevation of the Utah Basin. What advantage USC and the other coastal schools have in nicer weather is offset by the thinner air of Provo and Salt Lake.

Let’s move on to what ought to happen in the Big Ten.

Getting from T1e1n to Twelve (or More)
First, let’s settle some naming conventions. Yes, “Big T1e1n” mocks the choice the Big Ten made to keep its name when Penn State joined the lineup. That’s been an evergreen punchline, it needs to stop, and I have a plan.

The Big Ten started as the Western Conference, to stand apart from the so-called Ivy League. (The schools of the Ivy League didn’t organize under that name for almost 60 years after the Western Conference was organized.) It kept the Big Ten moniker even as Chicago dropped out and Michigan State and Penn State dropped in. There’s already a Big 12, so for the sake of this discussion, let’s call any expansion of the Big Ten the “First Conference.” (It’s fitting, IMHO, and I'm pretty sure that I have dibs on its use.)

No Irish Need Apply: The easiest answer to expanding the Big Ten is to get Notre Dame to sign up; but the Irish had a chance and turned it down in favor of playing the service academies year after year. Yes, Notre Dame has Michigan, Michigan State, and Purdue as regular rivals; but its leadership prefers to slate Pitt and Stanford to Northwestern or Illinois. Honestly, I don’t believe that Notre Dame deserves to be in the First Conference.

Goodbye, State College: I have been watching college football for the last 30 years, and although I respect and admire JoePa and his program immensely, I never liked having Penn State in the Big Ten. For starters, it’s too far away from Iowa City and Minneapolis and too remote for easy travel. Then there’s the Governor’s Cup, an artificial rivalry to end artificial rivalries; does anyone who didn’t go to MSU or PSU (or is a Sav-A-Lot Spartan/Less2Pay Lion) watch that game? I didn’t think so. Facts: the Big Ten is a Midwestern conference and Pennsylvania is an Eastern state. Remember, Penn State-Pitt was one of the great rivalries until PSU joined the Big Ten in 1993. Face it, Penn State belongs in the Big East for reasons of geography and history.

So now we’re back to ten teams. Where do two teams with decent football programs come from?

MAC Daddies: The Mid-American Conference has good football programs, and Lord knows that anyone of those teams is capable of unloading a can of whoopass on any Big Ten team, including Ohio State. But, week in and week out, the MAC teams are a notch below the Big Ten, and their histories support that description. Miami’s the only one of the conference that isn’t an overgrown teacher’s college.

On My Planet, 12-5=16: Naming issues aside, there are natural affinities with a couple of Big 12 schools, in particular, Iowa State and Missouri. However, I would hate to see Mizzou and KU’s rivalry go by the wayside. One way to create an instant super-conference would be to have Iowa State, KU, KSU, Mizzou, and Nebraska join the existing Big Ten. That would give the First Conference 16 teams, which would at least be an even number. But that plan leaves Colorado and the Oklahoma and Texas schools at a loose end, which isn’t going to please Disney.

Texas Mess: Dear God in Heaven, why does anyone who doesn’t work for a TV network think that Texas is a good fit for a group of Upper Midwestern schools? Austin is over 1000 miles away from the northernmost members of the Big Ten, and although I certainly want quality in any additional members of the First Conference, Texas would be a 900-pound fox in the henhouse. Texas would be a better fit for the SEC than for the First Conference. (Am I lying to anybody? I didn't think so.)

Ohio River Options: If you’re just trying to get to twelve schools and insist in keeping Penn State in the First Conference, Pitt is an obvious fit. But there are two other schools that are even better choices, especially if Penn State were to move to its natural home in the Big East: Cincinnati and Louisville. Both schools are public universities of decent size and standing, and are good fits from a geographic perspective.

Cincy Plus the ’Ville Is Smart for Both Conferences
Cincinnati has been playing football for longer than all but four Division I programs, and it produced Sid Gillman, who was running a West Coast Offense before anyone gave it that name. With plans to remodel its venerable stadium and back-to-back Big East titles, Bearcat football is back on the map.

Louisville has a recently-remodeled stadium and is located in a metro area that’s larger in population than Bloomington, Iowa City, Lafayette, or Lansing. They’ve had ups and downs recently, but have generally been playing pretty good football for many years. You might have heard of some guys named Ray Buchanan, Johnny Unitas and Ted Washington; all of them played for Louisville.

I admit that trading Cincinnati and Louisville for Penn State doesn’t help the Big East get any closer to its goal of a championship game of its own. But the Big East isn’t going to find another four or five schools to get to the cartel-mandated dozen in the foreseeable future, so I don’t know why anyone would raise that objection. (A Big East championship game is strictly a hypothetical, at least until the ACC dissolves under the weight of its own suck.) For football season, which has the greatest travel expenses due to the size of the squads, it saves the teams in both conferences a big chunk of money, so from that perspective, it’s a win-win.

With this plan, we have some natural rivalries of instant interest. Louisville-Cincinnati, Cincinnati-Ohio State, and Louisville-Indiana are the obvious ones, but there could be others. For starters, Michigan-Cincinnati would pair two of the five oldest programs in Division I. (Tell me that game would be any more artificial than Penn State-Northwestern, I dare you.) We’d also get some good Big East matchups out of the arrangement; Penn State-Pitt and Penn State-West (By God) Virginia used to be two automatic classics, while Rutgers-Penn State and UConn-Penn State would bring some regional powerhouses together.

But this switcheroo makes too much sense to get any support from the people who make these decisions. We’ll just have to live with the wishes of the athletic directors and Disney, since they’re the only ones whose opinions matter. Le sigh.

Blaming the environment, or the medium?

Brian Lam had an interesting retort here on Gizmodo, to Mike Elgan's recent post on Computerworld.com discussing the shortcomings of gadget blogs. Although he acknowledged the "tough love" in Mike's post, he went overboard by turing it into a diatribe on why print deserves to die.

Lord knows, print has its problems, but Brian managed to spend an awful lot of time complaining about things that are inherent to print, rather than acknowledging that almost all tech magazines today are focused on the Web first, with print surviving for those few titles where it's a necessary part of the business model. It doesn't help that Brian ignores that Mike was speaking to a business IT audience about gadget blogs, and it's not like he called out Brian, or Gizmodo, by name. So I don't really understand Brian's vitriol, racism and ageism. Let's face it, if I said "I can't relate to young Asian guys," I'd never work in this business again. But I guess he gets a free pass, thanks to Gawker Media's reputation for snark.

The following is a late draft of a posting that's awaiting moderation at Gizmodo. I don't know if Brian has the guts to post this or not on his site, so here it is for your enjoyment, with references to Brian's laundry list:


I don't even know why I'm bothering, since print magazines are dropping faster than banks. But as someone who hates to see misinformation, a technophile across four decades and a twenty-five year veteran of IT publishing who's worked for everyone meaningful except Conde Nast and Ziff, I have a few things to add to the conversation.

0) Mike's article was in Computerworld (a book I know well, though one I've never worked for) and I can tell you that he's not writing for the Engadget/Gizmodo audience. He's writing for high-end business IT, the people who spend millions of dollars a year on kit and services.

1) Of course print titles are going with blogs; the news operation is online-first for almost everybody, because that's the best way to make it work. It's always going to take longer to get something into print than online, unless the publication gets in bed with the vendor and gets early access. This is immutable -- production and mechanical deadlines are notoriously unforgiving. When you look around, it's clear that a print presence for tech is a luxury; we're just ahead of the curve in this industry.

2) Every company pressures the press to ignore things; some of us are better at resisting it than others. Personally, I've taken a few controversial stances along the way; I've never had my bosses tell me that a story was off-limits, even if it meant pissing off our biggest advertiser.

3) Charging for print subscriptions is strictly for the consumer market; the business IT books such as Computerworld do it all by controlled circulation and yearly qualification of the subscriber base. Traditionally, subscriptions have merely covered the costs of production and distribution: paper, ink and postage. The problem we face today is that ad revenues for online don't cover the cost of a proper news operation; print advertising has made up the difference. If you don't have a print component, that money has to come from somewhere, whether it's an event business, consulting, or overseas licensing of the magazine's brand.

4) This problem is common to most media sites, and only some of it is a limitation of the CMSes they use. There's a business angle as well: they've finally convinced advertisers that pageviews are a valid metric, and they're going with what actually pays. I agree that it's lame and annoying, but until we get a better way to measure success that advertisers will accept, that's what we're going to have.

5) Nice try at denying ageism, Brian. I'd like to hear more about the alleged economic, social and generational gaps -- how do you cite the latter without being ageist? In my experience, magazine staffs are as diverse as they want to be. I've worked with people from all walks of life. But I know your experience comes mostly out of Wired. I just wish you had broader experience to back up that broad statement. I've seen most of the big tech publishing groups peel off as many of their forty-somethings as they can without running afoul of lawsuits; the lower paychecks of the brave new online world don't help either.

Then again, there's a difference between the business-focused media and their consumer counterparts, whether print or gadget blogs: the target audience in the first space is generally older, many in their 40s and 50s. They're spending real money and value real-world experience over the opinion of people who don't understand their needs.

6) Just like you, we're trying to throw as much as we can online as fast as we can; the problem with many blogs is that they simply pass along the press release. Although I've rewritten many a press release, any serious story warranted serious reporting. Every book I've worked for surveyed its readers annually, if not continuously, to find out what they wanted to read. But ultimately, we put together editorial packages into which the advertisers are willing to buy.

7) I made a career out of product reviews from 1997 to 2005; I know I tried to present the bigger picture, but some of my best stuff never saw daylight, because print has space limitations. Again, some of this sense of context comes from experience, and all the snark in the world won't matter. That's where us geezer bloggers are most useful.

8) We try for error-free, and we don't always get there; neither do you. (You've already been schooled about "Type-Os" so I won't belabor that point.) We don't have two months to deliver the content at most books: there's usually a day at most to turn around an article that requires actual reporting. That's because they're trying to get content up on the Web as fast as possible. Copy editors are the first to go during layoffs, and it takes a long time to train one in technical subtleties; they have their hands full making articles conform to style, and are usually the ones actually moving stories into the queue for online. As far as fact-checkers go, Brian's talking about someone who only exists at the most elite titles; in twelve years in IT publishing, I've always been responsible for checking my own facts. (As an editor, if my writer puts something down that doesn't ring true, I'll ask him/her to confirm it, or grudgingly verify it myself.) Another problem along the road to accuracy is that a proper testing and review process is expensive enough that damn few are still able to do a credible job, and that's just for the consumer stuff that you write about. (Anything that involves serious IT infrastructure is another thing entirely. When someone says they're in a position to do a proper review of enterprise IT hardware or software, he/she is probably fudging it.)

9) The problem with the writing in most tech magazines is that it's hen's-teeth-rare to have a technical expert and a brilliant writer in the same person. It's hard to teach a good writer the subtleties of tech, but almost impossible to turn a skilled geek into a good writer. The other problem is that at many books, line editing is often done by junior staff, instead of people with an adequate background.

10) You couldn't be more mistaken: I've never worked with a book that didn't practice some form of collaborative, cross-title journalism. "Synergizing" with other titles in a group is second nature today; it's the idea of sending readers to direct competitors that gives us the heebie-jeebies. Aggregation online is something most tech journals accepted years ago; print-based aggregation is possible and has a long history, but you're right, it's very limited.

11) The pros and cons of the dead-tree editions have already been picked apart.

Trade shows circling the drain?

First Apple announced that it’s pulling out of Macworld Expo, then Novell said that it’s cancelled the 2009 BrainShare. If these things happen in threes, I’m wondering what’s next to go south? JavaOne? OracleWorld?

The events business is going to take a real beating over the next couple of years. Even industries that are relatively healthy can expect to see attendance at junkets drop off as businesses reel in their spending. January’s Detroit auto show is already looking to be a disaster, with many automakers declining to exhibit altogether, and the specter of bankruptcy hanging over GM, and possibly Chrysler.

I love trade shows, and I loathe them, and I’ll dodge them altogether if I can. But they serve at least one useful purpose -- putting large numbers of people face-to-face. Where else can you get two or three months of briefings in as many days?

Individual shows are in trouble, there’s no doubt of that. But the idea will survive this economy, and that a good thing for SF. As much as I hate tourists cluttering the sidewalk, they’re what keep The City afloat.

Macworld Expo used to be Apple’s winter announcement platform, but the company says that its retail stores are a more effective means of reaching the public. From a platform perspective, that certainly the case.

Macworld Expo was once necessary for hardware vendors because the platform was so idiosyncratic. These days, when Macs are designed around Intel processors and USB instead of Motorola chips and SCSI, it’s no longer mandatory. The last couple of years, I’ve only gone onto the floor to look at accessories.

BrainShare has its own baggage. Although I used to love the prospect of a ski trip on either side of the show -- whatever else I say about Salt Lake, it’s the best metropolis for a skier in North America -- I stopped enjoying that trip a few years ago, as the planes got smaller, and the press corps stopped showing up. On top of that, the organizers liked to schedule the show around St. Patrick’s Day -- although there are plenty of Irish in SLC, it’s still kind of like being at Disneyland, when I’m more used to Rush Street.

But this isn’t good for the Utah tourist business, and it’s another sign that Novell’s heart no longer lies in Zion. BrainScare was the second-biggest show at the Salt Lake convention complex, behind the LDS Church’s summer shindig.

Trade shows as a business aren’t going away for good. But many events -- e.g. those produced by a couple of my former employers -- won’t last the year. Niche gatherings such as NAB, which appeal to people who spend a lot of money at a time are likely to survive. But events aimed at people who don’t spend that much per capita -- I’m looking at you, Eclipse fans -- are doomed.

Thoughts on Blago, and Chicago politics in general

Before moving to SF in 1987, I lived in Chicagoland for six years, mostly in Evanston, with a few months in Chicago itself. I was the first member of my family to test the waters of the Windy City; since then, one cousin has raised a family in the western ’burbs, and my youngest sister is the only one of my siblings who’s never lived in the area. It was a fun time for local politics, because I had a chance to watch a great political drama: the rise of Harold Washington and the years of Council Wars.

My crony W., knowing I keep up on things back there, asked me yesterday at Job Club if the Blagojevich scandal came as a shock, and I didn’t even blink. Personally, I stopped being surprised during George Ryan’s turn in the tank, when (at the risk of a gross oversimplification) driver’s licenses were for sale. People who have never lived in the Midwest really don’t have any idea how corrupt and vicious Illinois politics are, Chicago’s in particular.

In many ways, this is might be seen as history’s payback to Blago’s family -- his father-in-law, Richard Mell, gave him his first exposure in politics, and was one of Darth Vrdolyak’s 29 aldermen who held the city hostage for four years. Mell was one of the first to change his loyalty to the mayor, after the 1986 elections, so he’s clearly an opportunist of the first rank. But Blago appears to have raised the bar to whole new level.

Of course, there will never be another Bathhouse John Coughlin or another Hinky-Dink Kenna.

(Ward-level politics haven’t changed a bit in twenty years, it seems. I’m addicted to a blog that’s tracking corruption and crime in the 49th Ward, which is best described as the Rogers Park neighborhood, which abuts Evanston, and where I lived for the fall of my senior year. MorseHellhole centers on the street where I lived, about a block from the L stop. If anything, it seems as if the neighborhood has actually gone downhill since ’84.)

Although it might not be the most corrupt state of our time (the NY Times points to Kentucky, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island and others as contenders) there’s no question that one has to have a strong moral compass to navigate the swamp of Chicago politics without running aground.

Rebooting life, please wait

Well, here I am again with time on my hands. Let's see if I can keep my fingers and wits nimble through another winter.

Back to the ballyard, 2006

I went down to PacSBCT&T Park last night for an exhibition game against the hated A's. Fisher thought I was crazy because it had been raining all day and only let up an hour or two before the game. But the tickets were free (thank you, Nelson, but I'm still sending you $8, being the fair market value of $2 plus a six of Bud) which offset the gouging I took at the concession stands. ($8.25 for a premium beer and PBR for $7.75, I kid you not.)

They've just started changing the signs to reflect the phone company's new name. I've been calling it the Phone Booth, even though there's already a bar of that name. But the acronym above does sort of roll off the tongue, doesn't it?

I'd steeled myself for the beer increase. What I wasn't prepared for was the new ticket-checking arrangement. The management has dumped the integrated scanner-turnstile combination. Now the ticket-takers use handhelds that I presume are linked to the database over 802.11b. I didn't get a real close look, but the handhelds looked like some sort of Windows Mobile (ex. Pocket PC) device. I just hope they remembered to use encryption.

I have to admit, I didn't have much of a problem using the scanner-turnstiles. I thought the idea was sound, but I know that in practice, they were user-hostile. No tears.

Fisher called me up during the game to give me a hard time, as the A's were up 4-0. I didn't hear the phone... at some point, I turned the ringer off, it seems. But the game ended 5-4, Giants. Too bad it was exhibition bases.

Photos later...

Humph. I knew it... blogging = masturbating

I've always had a problem with the self-indulgent nature of blogging. Some of the stuff I've seen reminds me of nothing more than public masturbation. This morning, I discovered that my suspicions are justified.

Andrew Orlowski of The Register picked up on a survey that sought to discover why Americans blog. 48.7 percent say it "serves as therapy" and another 40.8 percent use it as a means of keeping family and friends up to date. My inner snark adds to that second category "... without actually having to talk to them."

It also seems that a lot of people are blogging to be fashionable. This of course means that not a lot of them keep up their blogs, and abandon them like an Easter pet. I've seen a number of orphaned blogs floating around, like virtual ghost towns. It makes me wonder just how much of the Web is derelict; not just static, but abandoned. (But I digress...)

I love Andrew's comment on the universality of the results:

"It's hardly surprising that this most solipsistic and egotistical of communications tools attracts people looking for help. But the survey was conducted in the United States, where therapy doesn't have the social stigma that it does in Europe, and comes as naturally to an American as shooting a road sign." Heh heh...

Now it's my turn to get all self-righteous: I'm just doing this to keep my fingers nimble. Really.

The Register's link:
http://www.theregister.com/2005/09/22/blogging_is_therapy/

The original report at eMarketer:
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?1003595