Conference Realignment

USA Today’s Matt Zemek writes about the chess moves for the conferences:

Money is what this is all about, like it or not. The Four Corners schools need to sit back, wait, and see if a Pac-12 offer for all 10 member schools could match or exceed what the Big 12 offers. Given the media rights value of the Bay Area market, the Pac-12 could make a competitive offer. If the money is similar to the Big 12, there’s really no point in leaving and dealing with any litigation, exit fees, or other hassles. The Big 12 would need to make a substantially bigger offer to make it worthwhile for the Four Corners schools to exit the Pac-12 … and that bigger offer likely only comes with adding eight teams (with bigger markets) to form a 22-team mega-conference, not four teams to form a conference with great basketball value but minimal football value.

To add to this, Jason Scheer who runs the Arizona Wildcats 24/7 Sports site tweeted this last night:

One of major issues right now is that ESPN offer is low and Oregon and Washington want unequal sharing. They want a certain percentage more. Numbers don’t make survival possible within the conference. Big fracture within the conference and other schools won’t budge.

— Jason Scheer (@jasonscheer) July 24, 2022

This sounds a lot like Texas and Oklahoma wanting a bigger share, but this seems like more of a window for the Four Corner programs to want to take what’s there rather than give up an equal share. And Wilner and Mandel are not talking about this item which makes me think that there’s a lot happening in the media and from a public discourse standpoint, a sort of jockeying of sorts for the third big conference..

Tennis

Just trying to cover the big things, Texas Tech has hired Adam Herendeen as the new women’s tennis coach. Herendeen previously coached at Furman and has an overall record of 139-44 and was at Presbyterian before than. A career record of 218-86 in 11 seasons as a head coach.

Basketball

CBS Sorts’ Matt Norlander writes about how Kansas head coach Bill Self and assistant coach Kurtis Townsend were held off the road for the live recruiting period for June and July:

Kansas is still awaiting its critical and long-overdue hearing with the IARP’s decision makers, sources said. The NCAA is also in the process of overhauling its enforcement process as a part of the greater restructuring of Division I with the transformation committee.

An absentee Self has stirred conversation in coaching circles, particularly as he and Townsend weren’t on hand at the recruiting calendar’s crown-jewel event, Nike EYBL’s Peach Jam in North Augusta, South Carolina. As the weekend wore on and Self was nowhere to be seen, speculation increased further.

Self is essentially teflon at this point and whatever this has done, I don’t think anything sticks to him at all.

Football

Danny Amendola’s agent texted Adam Schefter to let him know that Amendola would be retiring after 13 years, 617 catches, 6,212 yards and 24 touchdowns in 13 years calls it a day and will retire from the NFL. Just think that he was an undrafted free agent with the Cowboys who was cut and then went on to a terrific career with the Patriots.

Housekeeping item. I’m driving back today from Durango. There’s a better than zero chance that I’ll just throw up an open thread tomorrow.