<p>^^ Of course!!! However, not if it would result in so much pain and suffering for the young player(s) to have suicidal ideation or gone mental.</p>
<p>Why is Michigan so popular with rich kids from Harvard-Westlake?
[url=<a href=“Matriculation”>Matriculation]Matriculation[/url</a>]</p>
<p>^^Where did that come from?</p>
<p>^ No idea, UCB. But pound-for-pound, I’d say Penn and Wesleyan are at least as popular as Michigan.</p>
<p>Impressive, though, that Michigan easily outpaces UC Berkeley and UCLA at one of SoCal’s top schools. In fact, this year Michigan drew almost as many Harvard-Westlake grads as all the UCs combined (18 Michigan, 19 all UCs). I guess not all elite prep school grads buy the baloney frequently peddled on CC that it’s not worth paying OOS tuition at a top public university because all public universities are the same.</p>
<p>rjk, I stumbled across it this afternoon and thought this thread was a good place to solicit reaction.</p>
<p>clinton, I guess parents and kids want to go away and can easily afford it. Michigan has appeal and when you’ve been paying around $30k/year to send your kid to H-W, what’s another $160k?</p>
<p>Latest reports say Terrelle Pryor may be headed to the Saskatchewan Roughriders, who hold exclusive CFL bargaining rights for his services. The Roughriders play in Regina, Saskatchewan, a town of about 179,000 out on the Canadian prairie, about 200 miles north of Williston, North Dakota, the nearest U.S. town of any consequence. If you can call it that. Out there in the middle of North America’s Siberia. I guess the Roughriders figure there’s only so much trouble a guy like Pryor can get into in a town like Regina, and in a location so much like Siberia. That’s why both the Tsars and their Soviet successors used to send their enemies to towns like Regina.</p>
<p>Pryor wanted to declare for the NFL Supplemental Draft, but it’s now not even clear there will be a Supplemental Draft given the lockout, and if there is, it’s not clear Pryor would qualify, or that anyone would take him.</p>
<p>Personally, I’m rooting for him to end up in Siberia. Oops, I mean Saskatchewan.</p>
<p>"Pryor has other options. He could make himself available for an NFL supplemental draft, although there are questions about whether one will be held due to the labor unrest in the league.</p>
<p>He also could take a year off to heal from ankle surgery last January and prepare for next year’s NFL draft. Many experts think that might be the way to go.</p>
<p>“When we look at him athletically I think he’s a good athlete, but I don’t think he’s an athlete like (former Auburn QB and Heisman Trophy winner) Cam Newton,” said NFL draft analyst and former general manager of the Dallas Cowboys Gil Brandt.</p>
<p>Quarterback coach George Whitfield, who worked with Newton prior to the NFL draft, said Newton and Pryor share a number of on-field traits.</p>
<p>“Cam Newton and Terrelle Pryor are comparable,” Whitfield told ESPN.com’s Joe Schad. “Terrelle is a guy who is going to want to improve his mechanics and there’s no evidence to suggest he can’t. Cam seemed to have more confidence in his arm strength. But the tools and the ceiling for those two are comparable.”</p>
<p>Pryor could even join another player who fell into disfavor and did not finish his Ohio State career, running back Maurice Clarett, and sign with a team in the United Football League. Clarett plays for the Omaha Nighthawks."</p>
<p>Source: [CFL’s</a> Saskatchewan Roughriders acquire negotiating rights to former Ohio State Buckeyes quarterback Terrelle Pryor - ESPN](<a href=“Giants win 6th in row, beat Reds 4-2 in 10 innings to finish suspended game - ESPN”>CFL's Saskatchewan Roughriders acquire negotiating rights to former Ohio State Buckeyes quarterback Terrelle Pryor - ESPN)</p>
<p>One way or the other, I think Pryor will be fine. He just needs to settle down and seriously reflect and learn from his past mistakes!</p>
<p>On the other hand, it is my hope that perhaps someone from the Wolverine family would step-up or Brady Hoke could reach out to Forcier as Tressel did for Clarett and perhaps have him stay/return to Michigan to finish his degree if possible. The UM diploma will serve him better down the road than San Jose State imho (since I do not believe he is of NFL caliber, sorry…).</p>
<p>All in all, it is my opinion that these young men are still mentally somewhat immature and in need of guidance (certainly not from those money-driven agents as mentors) in order to truly become successful in life.</p>
<hr>
<p>P.S. I have recently agreed to take part in a researching/teaching project which will last throughout most of this year if not part of next as well. Therefore, I will not be able to be around CC starting next Monday. 
In short, it’s been a pleasure to be able to interact with many of you the last few years and I wish you all the best!! God Bless! :-)</p>
<p>Try to get back and post, Sparkeye. Best of luck in your project. Hopefully you haven’t agreed to be some isolated and tortured lab research subject…;)</p>
<p>“On the other hand, it is my hope that perhaps someone from the Wolverine family would step-up or Brady Hoke could reach out to Forcier as Tressel did for Clarett and perhaps have him stay/return to Michigan to finish his degree if possible.”</p>
<p>Forcier was not cutting it at Michigan academically. He was forced out because his grades were substandard. Michigan is not an easy school to graduate from. You do have to put forth some effort ans it was obvious that TF was not up to the challenge in the classroom. As for JT reaching out to Clarett… well nevermind.</p>
<p>Best of luck on your research Sparkeye7. :-)</p>
<p>“Try to get back and post, Sparkeye”</p>
<p>Thank You, UCBChemEGrad! :)</p>
<p>“Forcier was not cutting it at Michigan academically. He was forced out because his grades were substandard. Michigan is not an easy school to graduate from. You do have to put forth some effort ans it was obvious that TF was not up to the challenge in the classroom. As for JT reaching out to Clarett… well nevermind.”</p>
<p>I knew he was ineligible due to academic insufficiency since earlier this year. However, I tend to believe that was most likely due to the fact that he lost the starting QB job to Robinson. The kid needed and still needs counseling imho in order for him to really move forward in life even without sports. </p>
<p>Most big time football programs offer players unlimited access to tutors whenever they seek academic help. But, as I’ve alluded that what young Forcier needs is that of mental if not spiritual guidance. The fact that most counselors assigned to the players normally only show-up AFTER any issue had occurred. It’s extremely difficult to win the trust of these proud young men and thereby bonded with them when you are not involved their lives on regular basis. With proper mentorship, I believe that Forcier would have survived the courses (or course of action as well) after the fall while at UM. His academic ineligibility was most likely caused by mental depression rather than intellectual incapability, and there is always a second chance for the player if the school decides to reach out to the player imho (likewise at TOSU). Unfortunately, he just “wasn’t in demand” towards the end…</p>
<p>Not sure what was his major, but here is an alternative:</p>
<p>[University</a> of Michigan athletes’ ‘safe harbor’ is general studies | MLive.com](<a href=“http://www.mlive.com/wolverines/academics/stories/index.ssf/2008/03/athletes_safe_harbor_is_genera.html]University”>University of Michigan athletes' 'safe harbor' is general studies - mlive.com)</p>
<p>I am certain there are other similar programs specifically designed for the student athletes in most of the top sports schools. And yet, many still failed out, such as Durane Carter (now in bama), the son of buckeye lengend - Cris Carter.</p>
<p>Are Ohio State, USC too big to be hurt by NCAA penalties?</p>
<p>By Robyn Norwood, Special for USA TODAY</p>
<p>LOS ANGELES Staffers at the University of Southern California packed a $35,000 crystal football for shipment this week, returning the 2004 Bowl Championship Series national title trophy the Trojans won on the field but then lost in a hail of NCAA penalties.</p>
<p>Still ahead for one of college football’s elite programs: a second year without a bowl game and 30 fewer football scholarships over the next three years.</p>
<p>Even so, USC landed a top-five national recruiting class in February. Lane Kiffin, in his second year as coach, began managing his roster for the sanctions before a USC appeal was rejected last month, using redshirt years and midyear transfers to stock the Trojans for leaner times ahead.</p>
<p>Now, with Ohio State in the NCAA’s crosshairs because of a scandal involving alleged improper benefits to players that already has led to the departures of coach Jim Tressel and star quarterback Terrelle Pryor, the OSU program could face the same question as USC:</p>
<p>How do such powerhouse football programs ultimately fare after major NCAA sanctions? Are some simply too big to fail?</p>
<p>Recent cases suggest that. The Miami Hurricanes, hit with NCAA penalties for lack of institutional control in 1995, won the 2001 national title. And Alabama, sanctioned in 2002, won it in 2009.</p>
<p>USC penalized because the NCAA concluded former running back Reggie Bush and his family received improper benefits from prospective agents remains publicly cautious about its prospects on the field.</p>
<p>The Trojans’ defiance of what the school considered excessive NCAA penalties is shifting toward acceptance. As J.K. McKay, senior associate athletic director and a son of the late Trojans coach John McKay, told boosters in a gathering attended by a Los Angeles Times reporter: “This is USC. We’re going to be fine.”</p>
<p>Others including Larry Coker, coach of the 2001 Miami team and now of the fledgling program at the University of Texas at San Antonio echo that sentiment about Ohio State.</p>
<p>“With Ohio State, I think you’ll see the same thing, because so many good players in the state want to play at the school,” says Coker, an assistant coach in Columbus earlier in his career. “When I was recruiting there for Ohio State, a mother once told me: ‘Coach, my son was born to be a Buckeye.’”</p>
<p>Vacated victories don’t mean vacated futures.</p>
<p>Apart from Southern Methodist which in 1987 became the only school whose football program was halted under the NCAA’s “death penalty” and managed one winning season in the next 20 after the program was resumed many penalized schools do surprisingly well.</p>
<p>A 2007 study by Chad McEvoy, an associate professor of sport management at Illinois State, found that the five-year winning percentages of 35 teams sanctioned over a 15-year period ending in 2002 actually rose, from .547 to .566 in the five years after they were penalized by the NCAA.</p>
<p>Even among 10 schools hit with what were considered the most serious sanctions, the winning percentage dipped only slightly, from .634 to .614.</p>
<p>So are the NCAA’s penalties for rules violators severe enough?</p>
<p>Steve Morgan, a lawyer in the Overland Park, Kan., office of Bond Schoeneck & King, the most prominent firm representing schools in NCAA infractions cases, spent two decades working for the NCAA as an investigator and enforcement director.</p>
<p>“What is weathering the storm?” Morgan says. "If they continue to be successful competitively, does that mean the penalties have not had an impact?</p>
<p>“I work with college presidents. They’re not worried what the final penalties are going to be. They’re worried about their broad constituency that isn’t their maybe borderline-insane fan base all their alums, all the people who support the research and the academic programs of the institution, who on some level are going to have a negative reaction to the fact that the institution is making national headlines as a major violator of NCAA rules.”</p>
<p>Two powers rise again</p>
<p>Major NCAA penalties hardly mean dear old State U won’t win another national championship in an alum’s lifetime.</p>
<p>Alabama, hit with major penalties in 1995 and again in 2002, recovered both times. (A 2009 case involving widespread misuse of free textbooks resulted in the football team vacating 21 wins from 2005 to 2007 but no bowl ban or scholarship cuts.)</p>
<p>The resources and backing that mega-buck football factories enjoy appear to make a difference.</p>
<p>“That’s true in anything. General Motors obviously has weathered some storms,” says Gene Stallings, who coached the Crimson Tide from 1990 to 1996, including the 1992 national championship team. “Where smaller companies will go out of business” when facing trouble, “the larger ones will just tighten up their belts and they have resources and they’re eventually able to do it.”</p>
<p>Alabama was banned from bowls and stripped of several scholarships in 1995, when the school was cited for lack of institutional control in part for not responding swiftly enough to allegations a player received money from a sports agent after the 1993 Sugar Bowl. Alabama went 8-3 and 10-3 in the seasons that followed its sanctions.</p>
<p>“Losing two or three scholarships you always recruit three or four (players) who can’t play anyway,” Stallings says. “Now, you just got to be really, really good on who you recruit. Instead of having 25 and gambling on five of them, you’ve got to take 20 and make sure they’re the right people.”</p>
<p>Hit again in 2002 with a two-year bowl ban and scholarship losses for booster-related violations, the program went through a five-year dark period but returned to national prominence after hiring coach Nick Saban in 2007 for what initially was an eight-year, $32 million contract. (In a bit of creative scheduling, the team offset the bowl ban by booking season-ending games in Hawaii.)</p>
<p>By the end of the 2009 season, Saban’s Alabama team was the undefeated national champion.</p>
<p>Stallings imagines a similar scenario for Ohio State.</p>
<p>"They’re going to have some kind of sanctions, whether they’re bowl (bans) or scholarships (reductions). But I think Ohio State will be a good football team this year, and I think they’ll be a good football team next year.</p>
<p>“Obviously, there’s a certain amount of embarrassment. But I will assure you, if Ohio State performs at a high level next year, there won’t be near the grumbling there’d be if they win two and lose nine.”</p>
<p>Miami is another case study on the impact of sanctions.</p>
<p>The Hurricanes won four national championships in nine years during the 1980s and early '90s. But in 1995, the school was cited for lack of institutional control in a case that included a Pell Grant scandal. It received a one-year bowl ban and a loss of 31 scholarships over three years.</p>
<p>The low point came in 1997, when the team’s 5-6 record its first losing season since 1979 included a 47-0 loss to rival Florida State.</p>
<p>At the end of the 2001 season, the Hurricanes celebrated their fifth national championship.</p>
<p>“At Miami, it was very difficult at first,” said Coker, the coach in 2001 after being an assistant during the probation. "At one time, we were playing with 52 scholarship players (teams without sanctions are allowed up to 85) and some walk-ons. We really had a short stick, and it was very difficult to compete. And nobody was feeling sorry for Miami when we’d go play somebody.</p>
<p>“I still have the Sports Illustrated cover (“Why the University of Miami should drop football”) framed in my office. We knew we could come back, because you had so many good players in the area.”</p>
<p>TV ban would be crushing</p>
<p>The NCAA has at least two penalties in its arsenal it has used for football infractions in many years. One is the death penalty, in which it shuts down a program. The other is banning a school’s team from appearing on TV.</p>
<p>“You look at most of the major scandals, particularly at the big state schools, and within a couple of years they’re able to come back, and in a lot of cases the coaches have been able to resurrect their careers at other schools though I’m not sure if that will be the case with Coach Tressel,” says Richard Lapchick, a University of Central Florida professor and founder of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport. “I think we’ve got to make the penalties sufficiently big enough to be a deterrent.”</p>
<p>Lapchick says the NCAA effectively has shelved the death penalty “because it proved so devastating to the Southern Methodist program.” He says there is uneasiness about severe penalties on universities when violations involve third-party agents the school possibly wasn’t aware of.</p>
<p>A TV ban has not been imposed on a Division I team since one was imposed on Maine’s hockey team in 1996.</p>
<p>Josephine Potuto, a University of Nebraska law professor and former chairwoman of the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions, told USA TODAY in 2008 that an infractions subcommittee drew up recommendations for tougher penalties, including a return to TV bans. The recommendations went to the NCAA’s Division I Board of Directors, which has not acted on them.</p>
<p>NCAA President Mark Emmert said at this year’s men’s Final Four won by a Connecticut basketball team facing penalties for rules violations that a review of the penalty structure is needed to deter those who might be making “cost-benefit analyses” about whether cheating is worth the risk.</p>
<p>The most common calls for tougher penalties involve sanctions that hit a school’s bank account, such as returning postseason earnings or imposing TV bans.</p>
<p>Gary Williams, the former Maryland basketball coach who resurrected that program after NCAA penalties in 1990, said a one-year television ban was one of the most difficult aspects of a probation that included two years without postseason play, the loss of two scholarships and returning revenue Maryland had received for playing in the 1988 NCAA tournament.</p>
<p>“Players feel they need the exposure, so they’re going to go to a school where they can be on television, so it hurt in that regard,” says Williams, who went on to guide Maryland to the NCAA title in 2002. “It hurts you down the road. It’s not just that one year you’re not on television, it’s that year where you maybe didn’t get great recruits and now all of a sudden you’re two years behind.”</p>
<p>Television is a pocketbook issue that affects not only the penalized school but also members of its conference who share TV revenue. Although former Pacific 10 commissioner Tom Hansen says conference contracts typically include language that rights fees would not be diminished if teams were banned from TV, the use of such bans could undermine the market value of future TV contracts.</p>
<p>Kiffin, the USC coach, says a TV ban “would be crushing.”</p>
<p>Kiffin who must appear at an NCAA Committee on Infractions hearing Saturday in Indianapolis to face allegations of recruiting violations while he was the football coach at the University of Tennessee also called rules that allow players to transfer without sitting out a season because of sanctions an underestimated penalty.</p>
<p>“That’s free agency in college,” Kiffin says. “Other schools could call our players and say, ‘Come here and play right away.’”</p>
<p>After an 8-5 season at USC, Kiffin says he is concerned about his team’s depth with scholarship reductions on the way. But overall, “what I’ve said is, I’m happy it’s over.”</p>
<p>His recruiting pitch continues to emphasize “education at a private university, playing at USC in the (Los Angeles Memorial) Coliseum, NFL-style coaching,” plus the bowl ban expires before the next signing day. But in addition to “Fight on,” the USC mantra has become “Move on.”</p>
<p>“Everybody wants to talk about what Ohio State’s going to get,” Kiffin says. “That doesn’t matter.”</p>
<p>Williams, the former Maryland basketball coach who also coached at Ohio State, predicts one thing will not change for the Buckeyes:</p>
<p>“They’re going to have their first football game of the year,” he says, and “they’ll have 105,000 people in the stands.”</p>
<p>Source: [Are</a> Ohio State, USC too big to be hurt by NCAA penalties? - USATODAY.com](<a href=“http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/football/2011-06-09-cover-too-big-to-fail-ohio-state-usc_n.htm]Are”>http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/football/2011-06-09-cover-too-big-to-fail-ohio-state-usc_n.htm)</p>
<p>Sparkeye7, good luck with your research project. You have brought a entertaining and informative mix of scarlet and green to cc. You are a credit to both TOSU and MSU.</p>
<p>"Not sure what was his major, but here is an alternative:</p>
<p>University of Michigan athletes’ ‘safe harbor’ is general studies | MLive.com"</p>
<p>Here is a brief sampling of some highlights of a graduate of the General Studies major at Michigan:</p>
<p>Snyder was born in Battle Creek, Michigan and studied at the University of Michigan, where he earned a Bachelor of General Studies with high distinction in 1977, then a MBA from the University of Michigan Business School with distinction in 1979, and a Juris Doctor from the University of Michigan Law School in 1982. Snyder also served as an adjunct assistant professor of accounting at the University of Michigan…Snyder joined Gateway in 1991 as the executive vice president and was named president and chief operating officer in January 1996, a position he held until leaving the company as an employee in August 1997…Richard Dale “Rick” Snyder<a href=“born%20August%2019,%201958”>2</a>, is an American businessman and Republican Party politician. He assumed office as the 48th governor of Michigan on January 1, 2011.</p>
<p>Not too shabby for a BGS degree.</p>
<p>Of course Michigan could have just let him slide by. Some schools have a history of that:</p>
<p><a href=“http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1016173/index.htm[/url]”>http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1016173/index.htm</a></p>
<p>It’s fun to cut and paste. lol</p>
<p>The best you can do is a 12 year old article?</p>
<p>Gordon Gee Says NCAA Investigation is Complete</p>
<p>Written By: Craig Lyndall
6/10/11</p>
<p>One of the strangest parts about the events of the last few weeks with Jim Tressel and Terrelle Pryor is that neither one will actually be around for the NCAA ruling. It still seems backwards to me that media scrutiny over a set of rules that are stricter than the criminal laws in the state and nation could yield more change than the organization itself. But so it goes.</p>
<p>ESPN’s report from Gordon Gee indicates that the NCAA has completed its investigation and left campus. In the report he also indicated that despite his resignation Jim Tressel will not be able to skirt that little issue of the quarter of a million dollars that he was fined by the university before he tendered his resignation.</p>
<p>As for the second shoe to drop, Terrelle Pryor, will apparently not be interested in playing Canadian football. Pryor released that statement through his attorney along with the news that he will be seeking entry into the NFL via the supplemental draft. Regardless of how much you blame Terrelle Pryor for the situation he finds himself in, it is tough to think of worse timing for all this to unfold in terms of propelling his career as a quarterback forward.</p>
<p>Then again, timing is just one of those things that you can’t always control. I can’t help but wonder how this would have turned out differently if the NCAA had been more expedient with their investigation into the wrongdoings of Jim Tressel and his players. Wouldn’t have changed the fact of what they did, but it might have changed the situations that he and Pryor found themselves in over the last few weeks that resulted in their respective exits from the university. Then again, maybe not.</p>
<p>Source: <a href=“http://www.waitingfornextyear.com/2011/06/gordon-gee-says-ncaa-investigation-is-complete/[/url]”>http://www.waitingfornextyear.com/2011/06/gordon-gee-says-ncaa-investigation-is-complete/</a></p>
<hr>
<p>“Sparkeye7, good luck with your research project.”</p>
<p>Thanks, res ipsa!! & Byeee all~ :)</p>
<p>“The best you can do is a 12 year old article?”</p>
<p>He’s the first person that popped into my mind to be honest. I figure an article from a now defunct newspaper that’s over three years old is equivalent to one from a well known source that is still in business.</p>
<p>"Sparkeye:</p>
<p>USC did not give the money to Reggie Bush as you stated."</p>
<p>Yes, tsdad. I stand corrected my mistake after little research based on the facts.</p>
<hr>
<p>P.S. I’ve replied “MSU over Michigan?” at Michigan’s forum per request! Later!~ ;p</p>
<p>Notre Dame AD Swarbrick: ND Will Launch Its Own Network</p>
<p>By Jim Sheridan
(Notre Dame Featured Columnist) on June 10, 2011</p>
<p>In a radio interview with radio station WSBT AM 960 out of South Bend, via the Chicago Tribune, Notre Dame Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick stated that the University would in fact have it’s own digital network in the future.</p>
<p>Swarbrick stated, "There will be a Notre Dame Network, but people sort of envision that in traditional terms of something dramatic and new. Youll sort of grow into it as you produce more and more digital programming and distribute it more broadly, and were committed to that.</p>
<p>What is central to our ability to really build out of a viable network is the increased delivery of broadband video to homes. Texas is a cable platform, because they have dense geography. Ours is the inverse of that. We have fans everywherenot a huge concentration in one cable market. And so were going to be really well-positioned, as technology advances here, and were spending our time now building our digital programming"</p>
<p>Notre Dame shook up the college football world back in 1991 when it signed an exclusive television contract with NBC. The deal gave NBC exclusive television rights to all Notre Dame home games. This deal irked many, including Penn State head coach Joe Paterno, who was still holding a grudge in 2008 when he said the Notre Dame would not be welcome in the Big Ten.</p>
<p>NBC and Notre Dame are bound by contract through the 2015 season, which will be the 25th anniversary of their union. Money from the NBC contract has been used to finance non-athletic scholarships. From 1991 through 2008, 2,400 students received more that $26 million in aid.</p>
<p>While Notre Dame was bashed for their alliance with NBC back in '91, others have followed suit. The Big Ten launched its own network in 2007 becoming the first conference to make such a move. The network is available in over 40 million households.</p>
<p>It is estimated that the Big Ten network pays each school over $26 million a year which is more than what it is estimated that Notre Dame makes a year from the NBC contract.</p>
<p>It was announced in January 2011 that ESPN and the Texas Longhorns will join forces on a 24-hour network, in a deal that will be worth $300 million over 20 years. Later that same week, it was announced that the Oklahoma Sooners would launch their own network in conjunction with ESPN under the same terms.</p>
<p>This is a no-lose situation for the Fighting Irish. Notre Dame fans from coast to coast can tune in to everything from Irish baseball to lacrosse. And Notre Dame will not have to share the revenue with NBC or 11 other teams as they do in the Big Ten.</p>
<p>With a fanbase that reaches coast to coast and beyond, there will be no shortage of subscriptions. Notre Dame athletics has had a great run over the past few years. The women’s soccer team won the national championship, the women’s basketball team was in the finals. Men’s hockey reached the frozen four and the men’s basketball team had a great regular season. Not to mention the fencing team were champions.</p>
<p>Notre Dame launching its own network is a little overdue but a very welcome situation. While Notre Dame has been compared to the New York Yankees in the past, it would be wise to study the way that the Yankees have used their own network to make revenue without the burden of passing it around to smaller market teams.</p>
<p>When the Notre Dame network does air, most likely after the 2015 season, it will be yet another milestone in the Jack Swarbrick era. </p>
<p>Source: [Notre</a> Dame AD Swarbrick: ND Will Launch Its Own Network | Bleacher Report](<a href=“Notre Dame AD Swarbrick: ND Will Launch Its Own Network | News, Scores, Highlights, Stats, and Rumors | Bleacher Report”>Notre Dame AD Swarbrick: ND Will Launch Its Own Network | News, Scores, Highlights, Stats, and Rumors | Bleacher Report)</p>
<p>ESPN’s ‘lowball’ offer triggered Big Ten expansion</p>
<p>Failed negotiation also led to Big Ten Network</p>
<p>By Teddy Greenstein, Chicago Tribune reporter</p>
<p>July 1, 2011
The conventional Big Ten expansion timeline begins Dec. 15, 2009, when the conference released a statement calling for a “thorough evaluation of options.”</p>
<p>But uncovering the true origin of Nebraska joining the Big Ten which becomes official Friday requires a trip in the way-back machine and involves champagne and bruised egos.</p>
<p>The date: April 30, 2004. That’s when a posse of ESPN executives, led by Mark Shapiro, John Wildhack, Loren Matthews and Chuck Gerber, met with conference honchos at Big Ten headquarters in Park Ridge.</p>
<p>The Big Ten’s long-term deal with the network had three years remaining, but Commissioner Jim Delany wanted to dip his toe in the pool. Turns out the water was ice cold. And shark-infested.</p>
<p>In his early 30s, Shapiro had risen to executive vice president of programming and production after spearheading the “SportsCentury” series and boosting ratings with shows such as “Pardon the Interruption,” “Around the Horn,” “Dream Job,” “Playmakers” and the World Series of Poker.</p>
<p>Shapiro also was a cutthroat negotiator, as chronicled in the book “Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN,” and his style rankled the likes of NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman and the NBA’s David Stern.</p>
<p>An amiable session in which the Big Ten and ESPN cleaned up “housekeeping matters” schedules and announcers took a nasty turn at the one-hour mark. That’s when talk turned to a contract extension, a negotiating session that went nowhere. Fast.</p>
<p>“The shortest one I ever had,” Delany told the Tribune. "He lowballed us and said: ‘Take it or leave it. If you don’t take our offer, you are rolling the dice.’ I said: ‘Consider them rolled.’ "</p>
<p>Delany had warned ESPN officials that without a significant rights-fee increase, he would try to launch a new channel that would pose competition both for TV viewers and the Big Ten’s inventory of games: the Big Ten Network.</p>
<p>“He threw his weight around,” Shapiro said in a telephone interview, “and said, ‘I’m going to get my big (rights-fee) increase and start my own network.’ Had ESPN stepped up and paid BCS-type dollars, I think we could have prevented the network. In retrospect, that might have been the right thing to do. Jim is making a nice penny on that.”</p>
<p>Said Delany: “If Mark had presented a fair offer, we would have signed it. And there would not be a Big Ten Network.”</p>
<p>The BTN, profitable in its second year, doled out about $7 million to each Big Ten school in 2009-10. Without that chunk of a $22 million per school TV revenue distribution pie, the conference might not have had schools such as Nebraska thirsting for an invitation.</p>
<p>The network’s formation also encouraged new thinking from the universities’ typically conservative presidents and chancellors. A 12th team would lead to two divisions and a conference championship game in football and another giant payday. Fox purchased the rights to the first six title games for between $20 million and $25 million per season.</p>
<p>Said Delany: “The Big Ten Network was a factor, but I think we still would have expanded. You can take a different tack.”</p>
<p>Shapiro, an Iowa and Glenbrook South alumnus, called adding Nebraska a “genius” move: “You’re taking one of the most storied institutions in the history of college football and plunking it into one of the best conferences. Iowa-Nebraska will become a rivalry overnight, and Michigan and Ohio State will play every year. It’s a dream showcase.”</p>
<p>Shapiro left ESPN in October 2005 for a $10 million signing bonus from Redskins owner Dan Snyder to run the Six Flags amusement parks. He’s now the CEO of Dick Clark Productions and consults for the NFL Network and sits on the board of the Tribune Company.</p>
<p>In 2006, Delany went back to the negotiating table with Wildhack and executives George Bodenheimer and John Skipper. They hammered out a 10-year, $1 billion deal for roughly 40 football and 60 men’s basketball games. Another 35 to 36 football games and more than 100 men’s basketball games went to the BTN, which launched Aug. 30, 2007.</p>
<p>Feeling emboldened, Delany sent a package to Shapiro that included champagne and a note. Shapiro said the note read: “See, I did it.”</p>
<p>“My reaction was: Who does that?” Shapiro said. “It was so juvenile. I sent the note to Bodenheimer and poured the champagne down the drain.”</p>
<p>Delany said Shapiro’s recollection of the note isn’t accurate: "That’s not how I would express myself. What I wrote was tongue-in-cheek. I believe it was: ‘Enjoy the champagne while enjoying the network.’</p>
<p>“It wasn’t juvenile at all. We did toast to Mark, and I was thanking him. If it hadn’t been for him, we never would have pushed ourselves to do (the Big Ten Network). It was a continuation of the conversation. He left (ESPN), so I didn’t get to tell him that in person.”</p>
<p>Said Shapiro: “In every negotiation with Jim, there is a potential for fireworks. He’s incapable of ordering a la carte. And in terms of this deal with ESPN and bringing Nebraska in and launching the network, he got the buffet. To his credit, he got it all.”</p>
<p>He didn’t even have to spring for the champagne.</p>
<p>“It was a pre-existing bottle in a cooler,” Delany said. “It was a re-gift.”</p>
<p>Source: [Big</a> Ten: ESPN’s lowball offer triggered Big Ten expansion - chicagotribune.com](<a href=“College Sports News - Chicago Tribune”>http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/college/ct-spt-0701-big-ten-nebraska--20110701,0,5568175.story)</p>