← No Offseason: The Athletic Women's Basketball Show
No Offseason: The Athletic Women's Basketball Show
Nicole Auerbach Talks Conference Realignment & WBB
00:39:47
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- [00:00]
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Zena Kaeda
For the Athletic. I'm Zena Kaeda and this is the Athletic Women's Basketball show presented by Michelob Ultra. Welcome back to the Athletic Women's Basketball show presented by Michelob Ultra. Joining me today is our senior writer, Nicole Auerbach. Nicole, welcome to the show.
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Nicole Auerbach
Thanks for having me. Very excited to be here and for the season to finally be here.
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Zena Kaeda
I know we are talking right now as The South Carolina and Notre Dame game is in France. I cannot say how much I love this Affleck. We play. Great pun on French language there for aflac. Absolutely phenomenal game. So we're taking a pause here to have a really important conversation today about conference realignment. And Nicole, I know that you've been covering this for the athletic and really from a football perspective, because that's usually what people think about when they think about conference realignment. They think about these big football programs and how they're going to be able to piece together as puzzles to be able to make the most amount of money, get in front of the most amount of fans. All of the above. And I want to have a conversation today about what that looks like, but also get into how it impacts women's basketball. Of course. So before we get into that, I want to kind of go backwards. If you, if you guys have been listening to me, you know, I like historic context. Right. Historical context is always important. So I was curious, I wanted to ask you, Nicole, like, when you think about the last big realignment that we're seeing right now, when was that that you remember to be the most impactful realignment? I guess.
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Nicole Auerbach
Yeah. Well, we're definitely in a wave right now. We're going to see a new world order next year. I know we're going to get to all of that. And so I guess it depends on who you talk to about, like what you feel like are the significant waves. But I would go back to the Big Ten, adding Rutgers in Maryland and sort of the impact of all of that, which I guess then you could go one step further back about the acc and you could go into, you know, Miami and Louisville and Virginia Tech and. Well, okay, so you could keep going back further. I was like Syracuse, then we could go back to Virginia Tech. So basically, let's just kind of group in the early, like 2010s together. So that was when the Big east as we knew it essentially turned into the American Athletic Conference. And then the basketball schools, who at the time were the Catholic seven banded together, and then they got the Big east name and the branding and the history books and all of that. So that was a shift, certainly. And then Maryland, a long time ACC stalwart, goes Big Ten, Big Ten now stretches into the east coast, and then the ACC is now all the way from Boston College and Syracuse and Pitt all the way down to FSU in Maryland. So that's probably what I would kind of put a benchmark on. You know, I think that there are A bit. There were a lot of what ifs also kind of around that time about, you know, super conferences or whether the PAC12, PAC10 at the time was going to add Texas. And so there were a lot of, like potential roads down potential paths, but I think the Big Ten going eastward and then adding Nebraska impact on that and what that meant for the Big 12 was probably like the last great round. And we were kind of living in that world where we're getting used to the Big east as a basketball centric conference, the American as one of the stronger group of five football leagues. And, you know, we saw Cincinnati and UCF and some of those teams really, you know, get up there in terms of national relevance. But you had a big 10 that was sitting at 14 members, a big 12 that was sitting at 10 members, a PAC 12 that was 12 at that point, because they've gone from There.
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Zena Kaeda
You go, 12 shout out to PAC12.
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Nicole Auerbach
For being added Colorado and Utah. So we were kind of living in that world for, let's round it to like about a decade before this latest round, which did get started with Oklahoma and Texas bolting the Big 12 for the SEC. But throughout the history of college sports, there has been these periods of realignment and reorganization that really have a massive impact on the entire landscape.
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Zena Kaeda
I mean, Nicole, girl, that is a lot of information to hold. I'm very happy we're talking to you, because I can't. I do remember that period of time, particularly in the 2010s, being from North Carolina, growing up, watching the ACC. I do remember that shift of having some Biggie schools join the ACC and being like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is strange. And also thinking about what it would be like for a unc, a Duke, a state awake to now having to go all the way up to the tip top of the country and all the way down to the bottom tip top of the country to go play Miami as a part of this, you know, ACC extension. But what is interesting about what you're mentioning, and it's also triggering in my mind is that I remember this from a men's basketball perspective, right? And now there's this. It's a big football aspect. I think around it, maybe I'm just biased because I was paying attention to men's basketball a little bit more than I was paying attention to college football. But I'm curious, with this now being a really big football conversation in the past, it's been a big basketball conversation, what is it that prompts colleges to want to do this, at least in the past, I know we're talking right now there is a big wave and we're gonna talk about some of the factors contributing to that. But in the past, has it been the same factors around TV rights and things of that sort?
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Nicole Auerbach
It's a good question, because there were definitely other factors that played into it or why certain schools were in certain parts of, of the country or attractive targets. And, you know, for, as you mentioned, I mean, the, the basketball impact in the ACC was a big deal, and it has been. And that's a league that is just kind of wrestling with its identity as it's historically had, you know, this basketball identity and, and these roots and obviously Tobacco Road and all of these things. And now you're in a world that football is driving a lot of these decisions, and they need to make sure that they are competing and investing in football at the highest level. But, you know, I, we, as we were kind of blitzing through a lot of the moves. I mean, Mizzou in Texas, A and M going to the SEC and then Nebraska going to the Big Ten, like these were significant football moves. Right. And so those are more football fan bases, you know, in terms of, you know, reacting to or feeling the impact of these things. And, you know, it's just as a fun fact, the go to example of how big these conferences have gotten is that Georgia and A and M have been in the same conference since A and M joined, and they've never played a game at College Station in football. Like, it's the scheduling. Yeah. The scheduling on football in particular has been really challenging. Right. Because these leagues have gotten so big and so bloated and a lot of them have been operating in division. So you do not always get to everyone that is technically your conference mate. But back to your question, like some of these moves in the past, in the more recent past, you know, yes, there's TV money that is part of it or like what TV partners might be interested in. But if you think about, like, let's go back to the Big Ten, adding Rutgers in Maryland, so much of that move was getting into different markets. So it was the idea that, like, hey, we have the Big Ten Network and we want it to be part of cable packages. Well, if you add Rutgers and you add Maryland, you can have the argument and push to get it added to all of these cable packages in New York City, in D.C. and Philadelphia and everything in between. Right. So you're trying to add. Because at that point, people are still big into cable, everyone still paying for cable, everyone needed to be able to watch their teams. So markets were really important. And nowadays we think more about, okay, brand value. And like, are you. Is your brand value strong enough that, like, people will seek out where you're playing and pay for a streamer to watch your games? That's a very different calculation than Rutgers in Maryland being in metro areas and markets and then wanting to make sure that the Big Ten network was there and leaning into that as part of their conference footprint. So, yes, there have been different factors that have played in. And I think it's taken people a little while over these last, like, three years or so to realize what is. What makes somebody an attractive candidate in this go around is different than just where you're located and how many TVs and households there are in your market.
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Zena Kaeda
This is fascinating. And you're right when you think about all of this over the top streaming and all the different programs you can possibly have. I mean, I'm literally watching the South Carolina Notre Dame game on a YouTube TV that was not in existence back then. Right. But that is something that allows you to skip markets through that streaming capability. And so it is fascinating how the business elements of just new technology can also impact all of this. And then not only new technology, but new legislation, obviously, nil being a huge factor of which teams can we associate ourselves with or align ourselves with? Who can I go play for that has a really large platform that you can take advantage of? And of course, not only who do you play for, but who do you play against? I want to ask one more question before we kind of transition. Why in the world would the NCAA allow this? Like, why would they not be the ones to put a hand over each conference and say, you're not going.
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Nicole Auerbach
I mean, they can't stop this. These are conference decisions. Like, this is one of the things where the NCAA says, like, we are a membership organization. We have thousands of schools that are part of us. You do defer to conferences on certain decisions, and membership is one of them. You know, there are rules for becoming a conference, for sending automatic qualifiers to different NCAA championships, but you don't control who's in the conferences. So this is something that, you know, we've heard new NCAA president Charlie Baker talk about and express, like, disgust, right. Of some of the moves and how challenging they're going to be for some of the athletes themselves to be playing conference games that are coast to coast. But they can't do anything to stop it because they don't control the conferences. So, like, when you think about college sports and why decisions get made or why there's, like, nonsensical things or like, it's hard to advance. The WHO Enterprise board. It's a lot of. It's because you have a lot of different people in power and they're in charge of different things. So you have like the Power 5, and I'll use that term, even though the Pac 12 is going away as we know it, but the Power 5 conference jobs were more powerful, arguably are still are more powerful than the NCAA president. Right. The SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, Big Ten commissioner Tony Pattini, like, those jobs wield more power because those conferences are so powerful and they bring in so much money and they can really push and dictate a lot of policy. And the NCAA is, again, everybody has a say. There's a lot of committees. There's committees on top of committees. So it's really hard to actually lead or direct things from a position like that where it's not like Commissioner Roger Goodell, where he can make the NFL do things. It's not that way for the ncaa. So you don't have that circumstance and that dynamic. And he just has to watch all of this happen like we all did this summer.
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Zena Kaeda
Man, this is very reminiscent of a particular political setup in the United States. When you think about who has power and who's able to wield power, it seems like the NCAA and also these conferences are set up in a very similar way that you would see our House and Senate and our vice president and president and who actually can be able to impact and influence types of things. You mentioned Charlie Baker and you also mentioned the PAC12. Perfect transition. Appreciate the ally here, Nicole, because one of the things that I saw recently, he mentioned in an exclusive interview with NBC News, he said the speed with which the PAC 12 sort of came apart was an enormous surprise to everybody. But I certainly believe we're going to see. We're going to continue to see realignment within college sports. And that is a really powerful quote because you wouldn't expect the NCAA president to be saying that. But with the context that you just gave, that makes sense as to why he's like, whoa, this feels like it's out of my control. It's an enormous shock. But this concept in the conversation around the PAC 12 is very particularly interesting, especially when we're talking about it from a football perspective and particularly a women's basketball perspective, because, I mean, if you've been paying attention to college football, I feel like the Pac 12 is having a Farewell tour. They are killing it right now with the competition, the caliber of their quarterbacks, the caliber of their coaching. Everything has just been really, really on display for the PAC 12. And it's like, really in your last year, this is what you're going to do. But then you think about, you know, women's college basketball season just started today as the time that we're talking. And so you think about the powerful programs in the PAC 12, UCLA, of course, Stanford, the historical program of Stanford, Cal, Berkeley. Like there's some really, I mean, when you think about some of the biggest, the biggest stars, Sabrina Unescu in Oregon, you think about Kelsey Plum in Washington, like these are really, really great programs that are producing great talent. And now they're leaving and going to other conferences. And so I definitely want to spend a little time on the PAC 12. It's been around for over 100 years and next year it will become a two team conference and facing extinction. Because I believe the rule is, and I know you know the rule, so I appreciate you being here to correct me if not. But I believe the rule is that they're able to exist as a two team conference until 2025 unless. And if they're able to create, you know, new relationships and bring back teams, they could re exist in 2025. But if not, they'll have to, you know, bow out essentially gracefully. I'm very curious about what this is going to look like, not from just a football perspective, but particularly the women's basketball perspective. Knowing you have more games and thinking of a Stanford potentially joining an acc. Whoa. Like Stanford going across the country to play Duke in the middle of a season? As an academic and athletic powerhouse, I cannot wrap my mind around it. So let's start there with the PAC 12. What is the breakout move so far? Like right now? Where are the schools going?
- [19:41]
Nicole Auerbach
Okay, so yeah, we. And we'll get into like the concepts of like a two team conference in a second. But true, recap, USC, UCLA go to the Big Ten and then Colorado announces it's going to the Big 12. So the Colorado piece is what got this summer rolling again because we knew usc, ucla, that was last summer. So Colorado goes to the Big 12. Ultimately, Utah, Arizona and Arizona State also joining them. So four PAC 12 schools are going to the Big 12. Washington, Oregon, join USC, UCLA, they're coming to the Big Ten. And then we went through that period of time for about a month of weighing and wondering if the ACC was going to act. The ACC is adding Stanford talent, SMU and all of those moves are happening next summer. So all of those teams are moving next summer. And right now it's just Washington State and Oregon State who were not wanted by those conferences or not perceived to have bring enough value to add to those conferences. So they are right now fighting for control of what's left of the PAC12. So they took legal action against the conference and the commissioner and they're essentially trying to get control, governance, control and control of the assets and liabilities to determine like if they could rebuild, as you mentioned, like from backfill or like kind of the idea has been like a reverse merger with Mountain west schools, but like basically preserving the assets and the brand of the PAC12 conference. But like this legal proceeding is still playing out right now as we sit here in November. Like there's no football schedule for these two teams next year. Like they have non conference games and they have a game against each other. But what does that look like? What does that look like for other sports? So very much in the up in the air about what, what 2024 season is going to look like and that whole academic year next year for athletes in those two campuses. And it's not really determined yet. And even though, yes, there was a grace period for the NCAA of like existing as a conference, things do get affected, like automatic qualification to the men's basketball tournament, the women's basketball tournament. So there's still so much up in the air for those two schools in particular, but everybody else has a landing place. Some of these schools took partial shares or not very much money to find somewhere else to go. So yes, it's going to be extremely weird to have Stanford and Cal in the ecc. It's going to be extremely weird to have four west coast schools in a conference with Rutgers in Maryland. But all of this is coming next summer and we're going to have to get used to it because it's like right around the corner at this point.
- [22:17]
Zena Kaeda
That's crazy. Have you talked to any of the student athletes or the coaches to discuss what it would look like to with the travel, just trying to keep the aspect of being a student athlete, emphasis on student alive while these kids are essentially playing sports and also trying to go to school?
- [22:36]
Nicole Auerbach
Yeah, so I've talked to coaches and administrators who are trying to figure out the plans for all of this. We've heard from athletes directly, some Olympic sport athletes, especially at Washington and Oregon, they were chiming in about the travel and just sort of especially I feel for the athletes who are already on these campuses because next year, like the recruits now, they know what they're going to be walking into. They know the travel and like their family would be knowing what that would be like if they're going to try to go to games. Right? But a lot of that the current athletes were not aware of and not part of. So a lot of these schools, you know, are trying to listen to those athletes, hear from them what's most important. And I did a story earlier this summer about usc, UCLA coming to the Big Ten and everything that was going into this. So the logistical part of this is like, okay, what does the conference do, the schedule? So how many games are you protecting on an annual basis? And then how are you coordinating the travel? So all of the existing Big Ten members, the current members, now didn't want to go out west more than once per season. So you're trying to figure that out from a football scheduling standpoint. And then for basketball, whatever that threshold is, like, you know, one trip or not back to back or whatever it is, right? You decide whatever that benchmark is. And then for the, the west coast schools, you're trying to be careful about their travel. So we just got the Big Ten football schedule actually for next season. And what they did was again, no one goes out west more than once. There's a lot of buys or home games right after a trip out West. And they also tried to front loads those bigger trips in the early part of the schedule, not when everyone's worn down and exhausted towards the end of the year. You also saw the west coast teams do not have back to back road games out west or to the Midwest or the East Coast. So they're trying to limit or decrease, shorten the trips as much as physically possible. And a lot of the PAC 12 schools did have a decent amount of travel because, you know, Washington is not right around the corner from Arizona. Like these are longer trips anyway. So you know, when you talk to officials there, they, they've compared it to what they were doing, but that's going to be a big challenge. You know, they were, a lot of them were talking about how do you do nutrition, how do you do sleep, how do you plan? Do you need to go in a day early to acclimate a little bit better to these to when you have longer trips there. I'm sure all of these schools are going to be traveling more academic advisors because they might need to have like testing and different things on the road more. But I think each sport is going to be different. The ACC has talked about using Dallas, where SMU is as kind of a hub and maybe you have some multi team events in that area and you can kind of knock out some conference games there in like maybe a round robin format. And if you think about sports like soccer or softball, when we were all kids, like that is how you played. You did play a number of games that way, so it's not unusual. So I think people are going to have to continue to think creatively and probably think differently personally. Sport and basketball has its own challenges because of the amount of games and like the length and that you play during the week. So I think you have to be even more careful and cognizant of how to do that. And then I think if you're going to go like, maybe you have a travel partner, which the PAC 12 used to do, but so maybe like Duke and Carolina are traveling out and playing Stanford and Cal and then flipping right, and you do things like that to try to again maximize the, you know, ability to play the games at everyone's, you know, highest potential. That where they feel supported and they feel like they're, they're rest in their, like they're physically ready for this. They're mentally, you know, as much as you can be supported in these circumstances. And then on the other side, you know, just again, trying to minimize the length of the travel or the amount of time that it takes to do the travel. So it's, it's, it's very chaotic and again, everyone has to do this in a really compressed timeframe because these moves happened so late. And the Pac12 media rights deal, which is, it was not satisfactory, which is why all this happened, right? Everyone wanted out because they didn't feel like they were going to be making enough money to sustain themselves at the highest level. And that expires next summer. So that's why this all came down when it did. It was while they were trying to negotiate their next deal and it expires next year, which is why everyone's got to make those moves next July and next August in to start in their new conferences. So it's been very chaotic. And to go back to your earlier point about, you know, what drives realignment, like this round has very much been about that dollar figure because schools feel that they need to be making as much money as possible from their media partners so that they can compete in football at the highest level. They can pay their coaches what they need, they can have the facilities. And then again, men's basketball, women's basketball, like all these sports that are growing too. But you, the bar to clear to enter one of these conferences is so high, the Big Ten in the SEC are going to be paying out their schools $60 million per year just from the media rights. You have to be a school that is at least $60 million per year valuable. So it's really, it was really hard to watch all of this unfold, but the money is so great that there's such a risk of falling behind and the fears that happen between falling behind. So it's been a fascinating couple of years watching these things drive the decisions.
- [27:58]
Zena Kaeda
There is so much that you just said that I'm like number one. When you think about these conferences and you realize which conferences we're talking about, these are like you said, the Power 5. These athletes are planning to go play professionally, right? For the most part, you're gonna see more kids in these conferences aspire for professional careers. More so than someone like me that was just happy to play basketball in college. Right? And so when you think about taking seriously their nutrition, their sleep, their recovery, their, you know, making sure their injuries, all these things, that's what comes to mind for me. And I know if I'm a parent and my kid is being recruited to these schools, these are the questions I'm asking. I had a conversation recently with a young soccer player that is a redshirt junior at Cal and it was very interesting to me just to give perspective as to what some of the, the younger players are thinking. And when you talk about brand and value, she tore ACL and she's going to have to sit out a year. And she was like, I'm actually happy that it actually worked out this way, like trying to find the positives in her injury. She said, because I've gotten two years to play in the Pac12 and now I get to play in the ACC. And that's only going to help my brand and my ability to be seen by professional, you know, coaches and scouts. And I was like, oh snap. Like, so these student athletes are well aware of the value of being able to merge into these larger platforms and these larger schools. The fact of that schools right now are being paid $60 million for TV rights. The money is wild. It's almost inconceivable, but when you think about some of these programs. I went to a mid major school. I vividly remember getting hurt playing against Baylor and I think I like rolled my ankle or something. I can't remember what it was, but they brought me to the back of their, like their training room right in my School. It was a very small room, like probably the size of my apartment, one level Baylor. I felt like I walked into a basketball dream. There were hot tubs and jacuzzis out. It was just like, it was beautiful. And I could not feel fathom how much this could have cost them to have as their normal training facilities. And so to be able to recruit top tier talent, to be able to keep them throughout the year, especially now that you've got this crazy transfer portal, these schools need money to be able to keep these student athletes intrigued, engaged and representing their schools and adding that value that some schools are being perceived as not having to be able to join these big conferences. Oh, I'm learning so much. Thank you, Nicole. This is just absolutely fascinating, especially when you think about from a women's basketball perspective and you look at this year and all of these big time transfers that are happening and have happened and you hear, I mean, Andrea Carter on ESPN just did an interview with Zakiya Walker, the new transfer at South Carolina. Andrea Carter asked her, why did you choose South Carolina? She said, I knew it was the right platform. What? I wasn't saying platform when I was getting recruited. We didn't even know what that meant. What platform? You know, what do you mean? But this is how these players are thinking. And schools know that. They know they have to be the ones to create these platforms. And that requires money, that requires visibility, that requires being in multiple markets, as you said, Nicole. And this is, it's just really interesting to put all these pieces together because it is way bigger than just football.
- [31:33]
Nicole Auerbach
It is. And you know, when I hear that, I think also about. So yeah, it's, it's. Who are your media partners? Right. So when you're picking a conference, you know where your games are going to be broadcast and you know who's going to be invested in telling your stories. Like that's a huge part of it. You know, the SEC is going to be like, ESPN is going to have exclusive rights to the sec. They're clearly going to go all in on all of their top brands and their big stories. And yeah, does that mean that they'll probably go to more South Carolina events and do more events with Don Staley and showcase them or do more SportsCenter hits from their practices? Yeah, like probably right. You're going to lean into your strengths. And of course, Don is like the face of college basketball right now. You've had so many retirements on the men's side and like she is that person. But that type of dynamic and that type of calculation is absolutely part of this as you're thinking about it. And on the transfer front, you know, not outside of nil. Right. Because you think big schools, who's got good nil programs and organization there, but also transfers. So you know, a lot of mid major coaches are worried about this but also I would even say coaches in. So again like the two pack school pack schools that are going to be left or you know, what about Big 12 schools or you know, what about some of the middle or bottom tier ecc? What if you worry about falling behind a power to, you know, you go from a Power 5 world. What if the Big 10 in the SEC because they are going to be making so much more money than everyone else by the end of the decade. What if that's just the step up? So what if the good coaches want to get to those two leagues? What are the best players want to get to those two leagues? And that's where the transfer, everyone tries to transfer up. All of those dynamics are going to come into play here as we get into the kind of this new world where you know, the SEC and the Big Ten A, they're going to be bigger conferences, they're going to, they are adding big brands next year. But also like if they are making $30 million more per school than some of their rivals in state, if you're Florida State versus Florida or whatever it looks like, well then aren't you worried that your best player is going to want to go to the highest level in college sports in every sport if you are not in the Big Ten or the sec? So that's really what I think a lot of people are thinking about wrestling with, trying to figure out. It's not just recruiting, it's retention, it's nil. It's all those things to try to continue to compete against those schools even though you know you're going to be bringing in less money?
- [34:00]
Zena Kaeda
Wow. Yeah. And when you think about recruitment and retention, that word extends to just beyond student athletes. It also is the students at these schools. There was a very interesting stat as a part of working with the Wake Forest School of Business. There's conversations every single year that we have around how do we get more students to come to Wake Forest? Right. This is a school of business. This isn't even in the undergrad in the school of business. And conversations are had every single board meeting of sports. How do sports impact and attract people to come to our programs? Again, this is a business school. These people are not coming to play sports they're not even playing, they're not even going to the undergrad. This is how much sports has an impact on your ability to recruit and attain. And so when you talk about potentially dropping to a power to and those schools losing the ability to attract people because they're not playing against big time schools or they aren't a big time school, that can have drastic impact on the school's ability to just recruit students, not even just student athletes. There's a crazy statistic that was mentioned that college enrollment is about, is down about 20% since 2010 according to the Education Data Initiative. And very interestingly enough, but it makes sense when you consider the factors of the world. America's declining birth rate right now is down about 20% since 2007. So there are just less students to go around as well. And remember, students pay tuition. Student athletes usually don't. Students pay tuition. And those universities absolutely need those tuition dollars to be able to fund their schools in general. And the way you create boosters, you create really great undergraduate experiences where people want to give back to their colleges. And so this sports thing goes way beyond just the athletes being recruited and retained. It's also the students themselves.
- [35:58]
Nicole Auerbach
And just one more other wrinkle because obviously we're focusing on other sports that are beyond football. A lot of these other sports, the college programs have been the Olympic pipeline. They have been the way that like wrestlers and basketball players and swimmers. This is where they come from. We don't have like in a lot of other countries they have like these professional, these like Olympic programs, right, where you take youth athletes and you, you know, they work in that world. So that's been a huge factor. And the USOC has gotten very involved and there's a committee of college administrators that have been working with them because like, that's a very real risk of, you know, are you going to, with some of this realignment or, you know, if the business model changes and athletes become employees, you know, are people going to have to cut sports? Are they going to have to make hard decisions? All of this plays into it as well. And when you think about who has resources, FCC doesn't sponsor as many sports. Also bringing in a lot of money, right? So you can invest and have incredible facilities for women's basketball, for softball, because you've also had some powerhouse programs in softball. You can do that for gymnastics. So it's like again, and then what happens to the have nots? How does that play out? All of these are interconnected. And we also still, we haven't even hit on it. It's connected, but it's a totally separate conversation that we need like hours and hours for about like athletes, employees. Because wherever you're going with this, you want to be somewhere where you're, you have money to pay whatever you're going to need to do and still be able to operate at the highest level. So you have a lot of fears related to that. And that impacts Olympics. That impacts all of these other sports that are not just football, but it does impact football too. So there's a lot of like these major, major questions that everyone's facing right now, which is part of that rush to find a conference that makes more money or find a conference that secures your future. And I think that's really also what was related to some of the panic that we saw this summer for those Pac 12 schools trying to find new homes where they felt like they could secure their future better.
- [38:04]
Zena Kaeda
And we talked about this. I mean, I brought it up as one of my off the script segments. I can't remember what show about the Dartmouth case in which the men's basketball team has made a complaint to unionize. And still that's playing out right now. We'll get updates on that. But we will absolutely have you back to talk about that because it's a huge one anytime, for sure. I mean, this is, I will say this episode is just so representative of the essence of the athletic, where you can truly understand the context, the pillars that kind of uphold some of these big time sports stories that on the surface seem pretty, not necessarily simple, but they seem categorical, like, okay, this is happening in college sports, there's conference realignment, or this is happening, there's a scandal over here, or this is happening where this school is doing really well and it's like, okay, cool. But there's so many tentacles to these topics and they overlap. They overlap. I don't know if there's any college football fans on here that did not expect us to have this deep of a conversation, but as you can see, there is such a connection between all of these things of cross sports across the impact of the student athlete, the administrations, the coaches, the students of the schools. I love the fact that you brought up the Olympics as well, because this is for people who don't go play in the big four sports in this country, professional sporting leagues in the country that do need these platforms to be able to be seen by scouts to go to the Olympics or to go play overseas, or to go play these sports professionally in a place where there's not a professional league in America, like volleyball, for example, or track and field or, you know, crew. I mean, I didn't even know what crew was until I graduated high school. So there's so much out there that, you know, I really believe if you do the research and you're reading what Nicole is putting out and what the athletic's putting out, you'll start to put the pieces together and see that this women's basketball conversation and this conference realignment conversation is much closer than you think. It's not just the football thing. So, Nicole, I cannot thank you enough for this conversation, the context, the information. Super, super helpful to have you break it down like this for us. We will continue to reach out to you about this as this continues to develop. I know you are busy with a particular incident right now in football, but so we'll let you go to be able to handle that. Thank you so much for your insight here.
- [40:26]
Nicole Auerbach
Absolutely. Happy to come back anytime.
- [40:28]
Zena Kaeda
Awesome. And, you know, you gave me two alleys already, and you gave me another one now talking about the Olympics, because it's time for me to go off the script. So for today's off the script, I want to talk about. Yeah, the Olympics. They're happening next summer in Paris, my birthplace, folks. I'm so excited about it. I really want to find a way to get there. But Team USA women's team is already preparing. They're trying to find out their roster, and one of the things that they did was set up a couple of exhibition matchups and, you know, kind of just get ready and get tuned up for these Olympic Games that are coming up. So on November 5, they played against Tennessee. They did route them, you know, 95, 59 in an exhibition game, but it was a fun game. One of the biggest things that came out of that was rekia Jackson scored 15 against seasoned WNBA vets. So you could tell she's going to have quite the season and also is ready to get to the next level. But I really wanted to talk about this concept of Team USA playing these college teams, because on the surface, it seems silly, maybe, in the sense of, like, this is, you know, again, seasoned veterans, people that are future hall of Famers, absolute killers in the women's basketball game, going up against young, developing talent in college. But there's been a history of this for years. They actually started doing this since 1995. They've played against Team USA basketball, has played against Stanford, Oregon State, Texas A and M, Oregon, UConn, Louisville, all, and then also going into the 2020 Olympics. So there is a big history of these sort of matchups and they just play Tennessee. They're going to play Duke on November 12th as well. So definitely don't miss out on that. But I just thought it was a really, really cool tradition that maybe, you know, people that are new to women's basketball or haven't been that close to Team USA Women's basketball have, you know, are aware of. So I just wanted to share that. That's a really cool tradition and you can definitely check out the the Team USA versus Duke matchup. I thought it was also dope that the Lady Vols have actually won one game against the USA National Team. They were 1 and 2 going into the battle and now they're 1 in 3. But hey, if I'm a collegiate player and I have beat the USA or potentials for the USA National Team, like, that is really, really cool. I love that USA has tapped in with the NCAA Division won programs to help kind of prepare for these major international competitions. And their quote was saying that they are grateful to Duke and Tennessee for adding these games to their preseason slates. Because just as the USA team is using this to kind of weed out who they want on their roster for the Paris Games, College teams, Division 1 programs need these exhibition games to be able to figure out what mixes and rotations they want for their upcoming rosters for the season. And so having their exhibition game so close of the season and being able to utilize that to kind of say who's ready for, you know, to start the season, who's ready to be a starter on a roster. I think that's a very, very cool, mutually beneficial, symbiotic type of relationship between Team USA basketball and Division 1 program. So that's my off the script for today. I want to say thanks again to Nicole. Make sure to follow her content on the Athletic as she continues to cover these conference shifts. Again, it's going to look on the surface as if it's just a conversation about college football, but it's bigger than that and that is what we've learned about today. I appreciate you all for joining us as always encouraging you to subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss out on all the women's hoops action this NCAA season and this WNBA off season. All right, this is a full women's basketball podcast, so we want to cover it all. I love, love, love these types of conversations that allow us to get some contextual facts around things that are happening and impacting women's basketball that don't seem direct on the surface. So make sure to continue to tune in. We're going to have more conversations like this. We'll definitely have Nicole back. But for the athletic, I'm Zena Keda encouraging you to keep listening, keep learning like I did today, and keep loving the game because that's the only way it's going to keep growing. All right, until next time.
- [44:42]
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Nicole Auerbach
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Zena Kaeda
New McCrispy strips now at McDonald's this.
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