College conferences are evolving, so where are they heading?

College football is wild, man. It is maybe the best unscripted drama that we have in sports. And like, it doesn't even matter if the football is good or not.

I actually think the football this year has been very good, but it really doesn't matter whether the football is good or not. Although in years past, the national championship playoff, college football playoff, which has been four teams now for, I don't know what, eight years or so. It's been basically the same three teams with maybe one, like one team gets switched out every, every once in a while Washington shows up. A couple of years ago, it was Cincinnati playing out of the American Athletic Conference. A few years before that, while Houston didn't make it, man, if they didn't kind of scare people. Well, Mike Oresko is the commissioner of the American Athletic Conference. And if I have heard him or read a quote from him once, I have read it a thousand times where he calls it the power six.

Well, we only have two teams in the back 12 now, so maybe it's the power five again. And Mike Oresko joins us on the Adam Gold show, commissioner of the American. I appreciate your time, sir. Thank you very much for giving us some time. And I want to just open this up in a very broad way to you, and then we'll go from there. And what do you think the future is of college football as it pertains to conference structure? Well, first of all, great to be on with you, Adam.

Thanks for having me. As far as your first question, I mean, that is a $64 question. I think at this point, probably more consolidation, if I had to guess, especially at the top, you know, with potentially the Big Ten in the SEC. You know, there's a lot of turmoil right now in the ACC. We're not sure where that's going. Pac 12 will not exist after this year.

And that's a shocking thing. I mean, no one thought a hundred year old conference would collapse that quickly. A lot of things led up to it, you know, sort of reminds one of the Hemingway quote in The Sun Also Rises regarding bankruptcy.

So I asked, how'd you go bankrupt? And the fellow says, well, gradually and then suddenly, you know, it was a series of issues and maybe you could argue missteps by the Pac 12. And then all of a sudden, a complete collapse. But I think there'll be more consolidation, Adam, if I had to guess.

Michael Resco, commissioner of the American Athletic Conference, is joining us here on the Adam Gold show. Another simple question. Is that good? Well, it depends on how you look at it. You know, I think for traditionalists, it probably is. You know, I, I still think the golden age of college football, for example, was the CFA era in the 80s and 90s. I was part of that when I was at ESPN.

And I, I thought it was terrific. You know, you had regional conferences, and they had, there were a lot of rivalries. And you had a pretty balanced TV schedule. Chuck Ninus ran the CFA back then. We had great schedules.

The highest rated, I think, year of college football that ESPN's had, in terms of ratings, not necessarily audience, because the network grew after, you know, 94, was 94. And I remember, you know, I was involved in that. And it was, it was spectacular, the ratings we were getting and the great games.

It was a terrific era. And it started to fray when Notre Dame left the CFA and then the Big East and SEC did their own deal. And next thing you know, everybody's, you know, out for themselves. And that's what led to this realignment. Every conference is now pretty much looking at the bottom line.

There isn't the kind of collective approach that you had during those CFA days. And that's the nature of college sports now. And it's not going to, it's not going to change.

You know, you're not going to roll back the ocean. So I think, is it good? I mean, the games will be fine. You know, next year you're going to see Oregon play Ohio State and you're going to see Washington play Michigan and all those games. People love those games.

You know, they're great games. So I don't think interest in college football, for example, and probably college basketball too, will, will wane at all. It's just that if you like the idea of regional conferences with those rivalries and, um, that, that was, uh, you know, great. Now the other aspect though, is the student athlete wellbeing, you know, the idea of all this travel, how's that going to work? You know, you've got Stanford Cal going across the country for literally every away game. And then you have those teams on the West coast going to the big 10, you've got the big 12 spread out all over the country. No, we thought we had a tough footprint in the sense that we do have some schools in the East as well as the Midwest. We look pretty, pretty consolidated in terms of our footprint compared to geographically, we're more cohesive. So that's another issue.

And when you say, is this good? I mean, maybe that's not good in that sense. We'll see how that works. You know, some of those conferences will have enough money at them to, uh, to pay for that travel and do charters and make it easier on the kids, but it's still a lot of travel. And we looked at Washington state, Oregon state, as you know, and we said, we don't have the revenue and neither are they going to have it to, to charter all these Olympic sports. We don't want our kids making 22, 24 hour trips, you know, getting caught in airports, you know, commercial flights, the volleyball team, the softball team, the baseball team, you know, the soccer team. And we, we decided it just didn't make sense. And we didn't think it would necessarily make sense for, for those two teams that had to come to our, our footprint, even though we're not all in the, in the East.

So, uh, you know, I think that's another aspect that you have to look at and I'm not sure that's going to be good in the end. Mike Oresko, commissioner of the American athletic conference is joining us here on the Adam Gold show. I want to get back to this, the athlete wellbeing, uh, in a minute. Uh, but all of the things we're talking about, all the worries about that are really about the, um, is sports not named football.

I mean, uh, there's a lot of travel for basketball and less travel and certain, but, but at the same time, more arduous travel, uh, for the non revenue sports or the Olympic sports as I know a lot of the universities like to call them. Uh, but can you see a day where football separates itself from the other sports? Well, you know, I guess it depends on how you view that and what separation really means because this has all been driven by football and that, and football drives revenue. So it's all been driven by revenue. It's all been driven by trying to get the last dollar, trying to get the most money, the biggest payouts. And that's, that's caught the Olympic sports and basketball in the web here.

Uh, they, they, you know, they didn't necessarily ask for this or bargain for this. It's all about football. And yet the after effects are significant for those other sports, uh, Adam. And so consequently, if football were separate, uh, you know, that would mean that conferences would, would essentially be football conferences. And then you'd have these other sports playing in their region, you know, that kind of thing. And to be honest, you could do that under the conference umbrella that we currently have. And I think that's what you might start seeing. You might start seeing Olympic sports go to regionalized schedules that were a lot of games outside the conference that, you know, during the regular season, if the NCAA starts permitting that, because right now you have to play a certain number of games and Olympic sports within your conference.

I think you might see that. And in terms of football separating, there's a larger issue of will FBS football, you know, go out on its own, you know, Adam, it's almost on its own now in that sense. Uh, you know, even rulemaking now is concentrated more in FBS, uh, the commissioners, uh, control the play off, uh, you know, commissioners have a, a, a big voice in, in, in what's happening in terms of obviously not only realignment, but other things. And so, you know, the NCAA handles enforcement, the NCAA has some committees that deal with, with rules and things of that nature. Uh, and I'm not sure that FBS football needs to take on those kinds of things. Um, you know, there's going to be a new executive director of the, uh, the college football playoff and maybe, you know, maybe that person will have a little more responsibility for college football. I don't think the, uh, conferences Adam are going to give up their, you know, their autonomy.

I don't think they're going to give up their, their ability to call their own shots. So you're not going to have a czar of, of football, which you might have though, as somebody who has the so-called bully pulpit and can talk about all the issues, whether it's NIL, the transfer portal, you know, uh, realignment, uh, pay to play employee status, all the things that are roiling college sports at the moment, you might, you might have somebody who can address those or you can address those things at least publicly. But I don't know that there's necessarily going to be any, any true, you know, separation conferences, like the idea of their autonomy. And I don't think they're going to, you know, break off into different sports specific conferences. I just don't necessarily see that Michael Resco commissioner of the American athletic conference is joining us here in the Adam gold show. Uh, as you're talking, I have like 15 different questions that are popping into my head.

And I know we don't have enough time to get to all of those, especially since I'm going to have more questions, but this is the way I have looked at what we have had. The big 10 didn't need to expand even to Southern Cal and UCLA and now Oregon and Washington and the sec certainly didn't need Oklahoma and Texas. They were going to make a lot of money. And what this ultimately does is, uh, it damages Iowa state, Kansas state, Oregon statewide. It, it does damage more damage to those schools. Um, is there, I mean, how do you kind of balance from your position as the commissioner of the American who has lost schools to power conferences now to the big 12, not to the sec or the big 10, how do you view the, the amount of greed? Cause it means to me, it's like the banking industry, the banks are just trying to get bigger to compete with the bigger banks and they don't care about the small banks.

Yeah. I think, I think conferences are pretty much on their own now. They're looking out for their own interests. Uh, but probably, uh, there's, there's again, less worrying about the, uh, uh, health of the whole, maybe there was 20 or 30 years ago from what I can see from my vantage point, I've been at this around 40 years. And, uh, so I think you're right about that. I also think that, uh, in terms of they're looking to compete at a high level, but also to, to generate as much, you know, revenue as they can. And to do that sometimes, you know, you, you need to get bigger. Sometimes you don't necessarily need to get bigger in terms of your per capita share.

Right. Um, you know, I think you could have gone two ways on this. Obviously you could have stayed the way it was. I mean, let's say, uh, USC, UCLA approached the big 10, which I guess they did. I guess the big 10, like you said, could have said, no, could have said, look, that's, it's not good for college sports.

You know, it's not good to have you coming across the country. It's not good to, to, you know, to essentially, you know, hurt the PAC 12 in a significant way because, you know, the beginning of the end for the PAC 12 started with that, obviously that was such a huge blow so that they could have said that, but they didn't, they looked at it and said, this could strengthen our conference. Uh, it's, it's, it's good for us. And, and ultimately, uh, maybe they viewed it as, as somehow good for college sports in the long term. I don't know, but the point is they decided to do it and that we, we crossed the Rubicon with that one, um, uh, Adam, and here's why Texas, Oklahoma are contiguous States to, to the SEC.

They share the same cultural identity. They love football. They have that tremendous emphasis on football, but they really are very similar to a lot of the, uh, you know, SEC teams and, and, and, and, you know, uh, that culture.

So that wasn't that, you know, sure. It's a major thing when two schools like that, which were the heart and soul of the big 12 go and ensure the SEC could have said no, but in Greg Sankey's case, he knew they were going somewhere. They, they might've gone to the big 10. They might've gone to the ACC. So he's got to protect the SEC and I can't fault them one bit for now for taking them, but they were contiguous States and, and again, share the culture, USC, UCLA.

That was very dramatic as you know, and, uh, and I, I'm not passing judgment. I'm just saying it, it, it, we crossed the Rubicon. It, it ended the notion of a geographic geographical conference, you know, even the big 12, if you looked at their, their footprint, wasn't, you know, it was mainly based in the, in the Midwest and the SEC was still based in the Southeast, even with Texas and, uh, you know, Texas and, uh, Oklahoma. And, you know, you still had the big 10 obviously was, you know, had moved a little toward the East, but overall it wasn't, wasn't, you know, these weren't national conferences. Now, if you look at the big 12, I mean, you've got a Florida team team in West Virginia, Cincinnati, all the way to Utah, down to Arizona, over to Texas, up to Kansas and Iowa.

I mean, you're talking about, again, a national footprint. You're talking about a national footprint with, uh, the big 10, and then you have something that we never could have foreseen where you have a team on the West coast playing all its away games on the East coast. And you now have the bi-coastal conference, you know, which was something that was unthinkable. So now you even have that, and that's a direct result of realignment and what's happened is the fallout from realignment.

And then you have musical chairs where when that stops, you're out of luck. And that's unfortunately what's happened to, uh, to Washington state, Oregon state, but it is not Adam unprecedented. They've been saying recently, this is unprecedented. It's not, uh, if you look at history, four teams from the old Southwest conference were cut loose. Yep. Remember that?

Yeah, I do. And they had to fight their way into various conferences and deal with it. And also five of my schools, when we were bit the big East, we were, we were knocked out of the BCS before we lost Rutgers. And before we lost Louisville, they'd already kind of, you know, put us into this so-called group of five and we had lost our designation as a BCS conference.

And that happened while we still had five schools that were, that had been BCS members. So this is hardly unprecedented. It's just unfortunate. It happens. You have to deal with it.

The election's over, you got to move on, you know, you have to accept it. That's, that's just, that's just, it's, it's an unfortunate thing, but that's life. And so, you know, that's what we're all dealing with. We have to deal with realignment. No, no, no conferences have been hit, uh, like mine, my old big East, and now the American by realignment card, as much as we have, because we're kind of, you know, we've been kind of in the middle and therefore, you know, those so-called P five conferences won our teams and it shows we've been a P five all along, uh, P six, rather, you know, I I've written about the designation and you probably should just drop it, you know, as you know, I don't need it. It's been needed.

It's been harmful to college boards, autonomy, non-autonomy, all this nonsense. But the point is we still felt we were a so-called power conference and fought for years with the P six. And we had gone to the commissioners of the other conferences. We were ready to go to the board and then Oklahoma, Texas happened. And that kind of set us back a bit. We're going to try to, you know, renew that, that push again. Uh, we think we should be an autonomous conference, but that's, um, that divide has been, I think, disruptive for, for college sports in many, many ways, but that's the world we live in and you gotta, you gotta adapt to it. All right.

Well, you answered the last question I was going to ask you how it impacts the American. So I'm gonna ask you one more thing. As you mentioned, I said, I wanted to get back to it. This, this will have to be the last one.

I appreciate your time. Uh, I can't believe you haven't hung up on us already. Um, the Michael Resco from the American athletic conferences here, cause you mentioned student athlete or athlete wellbeing. How do we, how do we say that knowing that we're asking college students to play 12 football games and we're expanding the playoff and we're playing conference championship games, pros who make millions of dollars are playing about the same number of games. How do we, how do we balance that? Uh, and Oh, by the way, you have to continue going to class and doing all of those things. Okay, auto parts yeah well first of all adam i'm happy to stay with you as long as you want i carved out the time now whenever i do these interviews you know it's always uh it'd be unfair to to you and whoever does the interviews should not carve out i appreciate it because you know no seriously i don't i'd be happy to to be with you as long as you need and often you have your own time right that's it yeah but you know it's a good question it's it's a really it's a huge question and i'm acutely aware that we potentially are asking teams to play four playoff games to win the championship if you don't get a buy and you could easily be in that championship game without getting a buy because as you know last year alabama would have been in the playoff without a buy and they were a top team ohio state was there without a buy with you know top team uh tcu would not have had a buy they didn't win their conference and you had some other teams that were really strong that's a lot of games you're playing that on top of a championship game right an intense conference championship game you may prior prior to that have had your annual rivalry game like alabama auburn michigan ohio state that's asking a lot uh no question about it that's 17 games that's that's essentially the pro regular season schedule a couple of things one the kids really love the competition and want to want to win championships and they and they want to have that opportunity what this expanded playoff does it gives you know hundreds and hundreds of players a chance to compete for a championship who couldn't do it before as you know especially in our league and we had some really worthy teams ucf and and euston and uh you know and others in cincinnati of course they did actually make it almost a miracle in view of all the odds stacked against us but um you know we had some worthy teams didn't make it now they'll be able to potentially participate so the players you'll want to do it and and and second there is more player compensation now than there once was i'm not suggesting anything like the pros right but with nil and with who knows what else is coming you know there is some compensation now having said that i mean i still worry we're gonna have to see how this plays out that's a lot of games right it's it's a lot of uh wear and tear i think we've made some progress by by yeah it may seem small but by by not having uh the clock stop on first downs you have eliminated you know several minutes of the game you've eliminated plays somebody i think recently uh our research showed that you've basically eliminated the equivalent of one game during the season if you add up all all the games and the number of plays that you've reduced the game by and so that's good that's healthy i think we need to do that i think we need to kind of reduce the wear and tear during the regular season if we go to week zero adam we may be able to provide everybody with two buys and keep the calendar the same and that would would certainly help and remember you know you know unfortunately it's a tough situation because you're only talking about two teams that would play those four games the rest of college football is not playing as many games and so you're talking about a couple of teams and yet it's real for those teams and and you have to be cognizant of that what you don't want to do is is kind of change everything for 130 schools that aren't going to participate you know in that in that championship game or you know go deeply into the into the tournament but i i do think football is a rough sport you know i think you know it's not the same the pros and cons to everything in life their trade-offs everything in life nothing's perfect what this does is give opportunity where there wasn't any we'll have to wait and see how it pans out maybe it turns out that most times the teams with the buys will get to the championship game and they'll only play one additional game than they play now but no that's you you point out some some real issues and we just have to wait and see how it turns out you know what we favored the 12-team playoff we still do because it gives opportunity where there wasn't any and it gives you know look at this year i mean you've got a bunch of worthy teams yep and i know some people love the idea that you don't know who's going to make that 14 playoffs and the regular season has more intensity and more drama because of it and then that's true you can't argue that i think on the other hand look at all these great teams that will now in the future have a chance to compete for a national championship whereas now you know there might be 10 or 12 teams that are pretty darn good and could could win the whole thing and you're only going to have four that are going to have that opportunity so it's all a balancing act and then we'll just have to see how it goes i do find it i almost deliciously funny that the pac-12 is having the best season so far uh and the league is unfortunately going to scatter michael resco the commissioner of the american athletic conference i do appreciate your time uh hope to have you back and we'll talk maybe i don't know maybe we'll talk uh i don't know fishing or something well anything you want adam hey thanks for having me really appreciate it and all the best to you and your listeners you