[
HIS SPACE] editorial Business As Usual
Expect more musical chairs when it comes to conference realignment — and for lacrosse to survive the shuffle
O
verheard in November:
“They’re a bunch of idiots in College
Park! They’re throwing away 60 years of tradition and they’ll have to pay a $50 million fine to get out of the ACC. They’ll be leaving the best lacrosse conference in the country.”
Whew! The speaker, a good friend of mine, was obviously enraged. He happens to have been a star on a championship lacrosse team at Maryland in the 1960s.
I heard outbursts like his every day following the announcement Thanksgiving weekend that Maryland would leave the Atlantic Coast Conference and join the Big Ten in 2014. A few days later, Rutgers announced it would quit the Big East for the Big Ten. I’ve never thought people who run major universities are idiots. Still, when Maryland’s president, Dr. Wallace D. Loh, declared the $50 million fine would be thrown out of court, I wondered how an educator could be such an expert on the law.
After some research, I found that Dr. Loh is a graduate of the Yale Law
School, ranked No. 1 in the country. That reinforced my theory that university presidents tend not to be idiots.
Why would Maryland want the Big Ten? I looked at it the other way. Why would the Big Ten want Maryland? The school’s athletic department is in a financial crisis and the football program is anemic. Sure, Maryland would bring the Washington- Baltimore TV market, the fourth-largest in the United States, into the Big Ten network. And Rutgers would entail the No. 1 market, New York.
But in both regions, the passion is for pro sports, not college games.
It seems to me that joining the Big Ten is like marrying royalty. You get a shot at that, you take it.
I don’t think conference switching is the end of the
world, anyway. I realize it’s crazy for San Diego State even to be rumored about in the Big East. As this issue of Lacrosse Magazine went to press, Big East commissioner Mike Aresco said the Aztecs’ preference was to remain in the Mountain West.
But San Diego State still attended Big East meetings in Dallas in January. Boise State also considered joining the party.
And the Big Ten will look like it can’t count now with its 14 conference members. So schools are going where the money is. What’s so surprising about that? Businesses do it all the time. A multi-million dollar college athletic department has to be run like a business or it will soon be out of business — or it will be trying to join the long-established (1917) and TV-rich Big Ten.
So schools are going where the money is. What’s so surprising about that? Businesses do it all the time. A multi-million dollar college athletic department has to be run like a business or it will soon be out of business.
The numerous conference changes taking place nowadays are being made for the long haul. No one can know what the landscape will look like when all the dust settles.
There could be more ACC schools that join the Big Ten, and the latter could one day become the premier lacrosse conference in the country.
What will sports look like 10 years from now? How about in 50 years?
Nobody knows, of course. What we do know is things will change. They always do. Some of the changes will make switching conferences seem minor. LM
— Bill Tanton
btanton@uslacrosse.org A Publication of US Lacrosse February 2013 >> LACROSSE MAGAZINE 21
©JOHN STROHSACKER
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