Bob Bowlsby joined SicEm365 Radio on Thursday afternoon to discuss the College Football Playoffs, Big 12 expansion possibilities, and more.
SicEm365 Radio: How much does the college football expansion delay affect in any way, one way or the other, the Big 12?
Bob Bowlsby: Well, first of all, let me say that this is my second ice storm of the winter and I thought I got out of this when I left Iowa. Not withstanding that, this the CFP, there isn't any other way to say it, I've been frustrated. I think the long and the short of it is, if you don't want to do something, one excuse is as good as another and I'm not real happy with where we landed, but it is what it is. I think the the playoff will expand. The silly part of this is that, you know, another 12 months from now, or maybe 15 months from now we're gonna have to reengage on these very same issues. And so it's not like we've solved anything, and I don't think we're going to find a period of real calm waters in the future. There were those who thought it was just a terrible time to expand the playoff and I disagree with that mostly because I'm skeptical that we are headed for a period of calm water. I think we're going to continue to have student athlete advocacy. There are going to be continued court cases, I think there are going to be continued litigation, there's going to be continued interest by elected officials. We're gonna have to go right back to this again in a very short period of time and we'll be on the clock that time because when we get through the next four playoff games, we don't have a playoff after that.
SicEm365 Radio: Why don't we go ahead and say here's the playoff going forward? Wouldn't that have been productive? If you couldn't get it done for two years? At least get it done four years from now?
Bob Bowlsby: Well, that would have been just fine if they'd have agreed that, Yeah, we're not gonna we're not going to capture the extra $450 million in years 11 and 12, but this is going to be the model going forward. We actually spent some time talking about that. And there were there were still objections and still concerns and still assertions that wasn't the right time, or we hadn't satisfactorily taken into account certain people's interests. It's a fair question, it's the essence of my frustration, but I don't have the prerogative to stay frustrated. We have to go about the process of working through it. And now we're going to delay it for a while and then we're going to have to work through it, then we're going to be on the clock.
SicEm365 Radio: How much does the voting bloc, or that that alliance, so to speak, make things more difficult in terms of voting?
Bob Bowlsby: Well, not really very much. They each have their own reasons. Each of their reasons are different. I don't see them as a voting bloc. They do have some business relationships together, just as you know, we do with the SEC on the Sugar Bowl. They do have some things where they have similar interests, but in this particular case, each of their objections are different from the others. And so I don't know that they're acting in concert on this occasion.
SicEm365 Radio: There is talk about when you do add Brigham Young, and then the other three for the American football American Conference, or whenever the timeline eventually of what happened with Texas and Oklahoma, regardless of that, are you wanting divisions? Or do you want the top two teams to play for a championship in football?
Bob Bowlsby: Well, it doesn't matter what I want. It matters what our athletic directors want to put in place, and they're going to listen to our football coaches as well. And they'll ask me for my opinion at some point in time, but it's really an athletic director's decision. And there there are strengths and weaknesses of any model. We've talked about the number of games whether or not we want to stay at nine or want to drop down and play eight games and have four nonconference games. We've talked about divisions. We've talked about, in some sports, we might not play divisions and other sports we may very well play divisions. So we have half a dozen subgroups of our athletics directors and our basketball operations, football operations, folks that are working on those topics now. And eventually we're little by little, we're snapping in the new members and getting them started so that we hear what their thoughts are on it. But I don't have any doubt we'll come to a conclusion on it and we typically announced our football seasons about a year ahead of time. Usually it's in October, and I don't see us having any problem meeting that deadline come into this year. But there there are still a lot of decisions to be made.
SicEm365 Radio: Do you think that every conference has the good of the overall college football picture as their goal? Or do you think some of them will continue to put their own interests over the good of sustaining what a model would be to have college athletics the way that we can understand them?
Bob Bowlsby: Well, I wouldn't make any accusations around that. You'd have to ask others what they're thinking. But I think part of the reason why we got to where we got to with the current playoff, and I was in the room at the time, and I was the only one of the A5 commissioners that was in the room. And it was kind of inspiring to see Jim Delaney and Mike Slive sort of lay down their weapons and say, Okay, I'm going to live with this, if you can live with that. And there was a lot of give and take. And ultimately, we ended up with a 14 playoff that I think was a huge step forward. It's better than any of the predecessor structures. We have learned that the larger and more access and more resources, maybe getting more networks involved with the televising of the playoffs is going to be a good thing for us and a good thing for college football in general. You'd like to do what you can for your own league, but we all have to kind of keep our eyes on the prize and make sure that we don't do anything that's detrimental to our conference, certainly, but we we also need to be thinking about what's in the best interest of the game
SicEm365 Radio: Name, Image, Likeness, obviously a very hot topic. How has it unfolded compared to what maybe your original expectations were?
Bob Bowlsby: Well, as you may know, I was co-chair of a group that was looking at a whole bunch of information and trying to put some plans in place, and I guess guardrails, if you will. We were still working on it in the last week of June with the July 1st deadline looming over us and, and ultimately, the NCAA legal team and leadership decided that they didn't want to get sued again, so they weren't going to put any guardrails in place. Obviously, I was disappointed with that. I thought it was a mistake. But we feel like we owe our membership a little more guidance than that, but in the end, it's easy to look back now, and say I told you so. We have a lot of issues and a lot of problems and a lot of new enterprises, that would have been manageable in some measure, or at least would have been better off had we put some guardrails around it. So whether or not we can go back now and unring the bell, or put the toothpaste back in the tube or whatever analogy you want to want to put. Obviously we're not going to compete with state law, we have to yield the state law where it exists, but you've even seen some states that have come back and said, Whoa, this is way more complicated than we realized. And they've deregulated their rules. It's very much in flux. The thing you have to remember about it, though that July 1st came and went and the sky didn't fall, we still are playing football games and basketball games. There are a few people that are highly publicized, that have that have made big deals, but generally speaking, you look at an average college football team or college, men's or women's basketball team, there's there's maybe 10 or 15 kids on the football team that are making any serious money, and three or four kids on the basketball teams. It isn't the end of the world that everybody thought it might be but with the transfer portal and some of those things, it was explicitly said in our discussions that NIL was not supposed to be arranged by the institution. It was not supposed to be an inducement for transfer or for initial enrollment. Those things were in the guardrails that we we had put forth. They're still what everybody believes, but there are no specific rules that prohibit those kinds of things for happening. There are there are places that have taken advantage of it and there are places that are waiting and seeing and there's everything in between. There's a lot of evolution in the in the NIL space that's gonna take place in the years.
SicEm365 Radio: Bob, the Sun Belt Conference is losing teams to the American Conference, and some are trying to get out others. There's schedules and now there's lawsuits or whatever. With what is happening with the teams joining the Big 12, Brigham Young is independent, they have their own timeline, but the others with UCF, Houston, and Cincinnati, how has that gone about their timeline? And is that going pretty smoothly with what they want to be able to do to get to your conference as soon as possible?
Bob Bowlsby: In BYU's case, they do have a conference that they have to extricate themselves from. They're in the West Coast Conference with Gonzaga, St. Mary's and Santa Clara and those guys. They wanted to be respectful of the WC and they have been, but they've told us they're going to come in and in July of 23. The others all three of them have said not later than July 1st, 2024, but they all are working with the AAC to get themselves here on July 1st of 2023. There are stipulations for extrication that involves money and waiting periods and notice periods and those kinds of things. They're working their way through it. We just made a visit to, we being my senior staff and I at the conference, to BYU last Thursday and Friday and they're going to be a terrific new member. As the Baylor faithful found out last fall, they have a good following and they do things the right way at BYU. After visiting, I'm very excited about them coming in and I'm confident that the others will come in at 2023 as well. We expect to have them playing a full schedule by the time, July 1st 2023 comes around, but they still do have some things to work out with their other conference,
SicEm365 Radio: There has been discussion at times about super conferences, whether that ever gets to that point or not. You would then have 12 obviously with Texas and Oklahoma still a part of the mix, it would be 14. Do you ever see the Big 12 looking further to get to 16? Or do you feel like you just need to make sure you get the 12?
Bob Bowlsby: Well, I think it's probably the latter, although, you know, there could be circumstances that would lead us in a different direction. We've probably got all the change we can manage right now, but that notwithstanding, there may be opportunities down the road. It's hard to tell where those operating opportunities could come from, but when when we were doing the press conference for the four new members, I said very clearly, this may not be the last tranche of schools that we take. So whether we would go to 16, or whether we go to 20, who knows, might be something in between. I don't know that there is a clear indication at this point in time that larger is specifically better. There's always been a lot of talk about the Super Conferences, but you lose a lot when you get into the bigger alignments. You lose traditional rivals, which I think contribute greatly to in house attendance. I think that's one of the real strengths that the Big 12 has had over the years is we play to a full round robin in football and a full double round robin in men's and women's basketball. We play each other a lot and as a result, I think our our league is strong from top to bottom. I think the Big 12 is better from first place to last place than any other of the major conferences. I think we have very good balance in our major sports. Name one where there isn't great competition. Larger isn't necessarily better, but if we started to get indications that we could be helped by a larger alignment, we're certainly not going to foreclose on that at this point.
SicEm365 Radio: How are things going with Texas and you owe us exit? Are you still expecting 2025 to be that drop dead day at this point?
Bob Bowlsby: That's what they've told us and that's what our grant of rights would indicate. So we don't have any reason to expect otherwise. But it has its rough points. There are things we talk about that perhaps you wouldn't want the party members to be discussing with you. On the other hand, it's my responsibility to make sure that the student athletes and the coaches of those two universities get fair competition however long they're here, and that we do the things that are appropriate in college athletics, and I take that responsibility very seriously. We're gonna make darn sure that they're treated properly and that we do for them, what we do for others. That doesn't mean there aren't going to be some sharp edges and that there aren't going to be some times where there are abrasions, but we're going to work very hard to make whatever time they have in the league as productive for them and for us as it possibly can be.
SicEm365 Radio: Bob, take a look at basketball season. Obviously, there's been a lot of attention on the Big 12 Four teams in the top 20 right now, Baylor, Texas Tech, Texas and obviously Kansas as well in good position and there'll be some other teams obviously in the postseason. You got four teams on the women's side. How do you feel like hoop season has gone so far on both the men's and women's side?
Bob Bowlsby: Pursuant to my earlier comment, on the men's side you got the West Virginia, at the bottom, and they've got three wins in the league and Oklahoma's got four and Iowa State's got five. The amazing thing about Iowa State, I guess they're six and nine in the league right now, but I think they have nine wins over quartile one teams. It's really indicative of what I was talking about from top to bottom. We've got good basketball teams. And I think the same is true on the women's side. As you mentioned, we've got four in the in the top 20. By the way, you got a big day in Waco on Saturday with Baylor and Kansas on the women's side and Baylor and (Kansas). It's a big day in Waco and the Ferrell Center. And that doesn't get any better than that. It's nice to have both men and women competing for the championship.
SicEm365 Radio: Bob, one more thing on the TV contracts, the grant of rights, you mentioned that different conferences have different end dates. We know the ACC has a very long timeline. Do you ever and have you ever been worried about that big huge chunk of money drying up? Is it always gonna keep going up even with what you now have with the changes in the Big 12? Is it just always going to have a large chunk of money?
Bob Bowlsby: It's a really good question and it's one that we pose to ourselves and to our consultants frequently. But the one thing about it that I would say is about as comforting as anything is that live content, particularly live sports content, is kind of the coin of the realm. If you own live content, it's valuable. There seems to be an almost insatiable appetite for it, particularly at the highest level, and we're going to continue to play at a very high level. I think that while details change and some of the players change, as we've considered how we might market the expanded playoff to the broader audience, one of the indications we've got is that there are a lot of broadcast entities that would like to get into college football on a greater basis. That would include regular season and the postseason as well. We play at a high level, we recruit at a high level, and I think live content is always going to be a really valuable. You never know how valuable until you get into the marketplace and start looking at how many suitors you have. Ideally you'd have liked to have multiple organizations that are that are interested in your product. It's going to be like any other auction it drives price. I feel good about where we are. I say I feel good about our future alignment. We've got a little more time but in March of 2024 we have a mandated negotiation with our current partners, ESPN and Fox, and we will either come to terms with them or we will end up taking it to the open marketplace. But I feel good about the content we have and the level of competition. The environment is changing. The migration from linear cable to streaming is alive and well. And yet live content is always going to be valuable.
SicEm365 Radio: Did you ever believe that at any time, any time at all, where you felt like that you were still gonna end up on the other side with a really good situation for all the members of theBbig 12?
Bob Bowlsby: Well, you know, you don't lose big brands like Oklahoma, Texas, and have no impact. It would be foolish to believe that there won't be some impact, but where we went out and brought in the four best that we could find that were available. They all compete at a high level. They're big schools, they are in great areas, they are in great recruiting areas. And I just think that we did as well as we could possibly do. There may be a reduction as a result of the inventory that Oklahoma and Texas take with them, but we're also bringing valuable content into the league. We'll be back to 12 in a few years and I like the 12. I think our competition is going to be as good as any other country.
