One conference for all and all for one

By BRUCE LOWITT

The Big Ten Conference, Big 12 Conference, Atlantic Coast Conference and Southeastern Conference, determined to solidify their monopoly of televised college football and complete their hostile takover of the sport from the NCAA, announced a merger and expansion for 2025 to become the 80-team Biggest Freaking Football Conference Anywhere Ever.

The Big Ten, already a misnomer since it has 14 members, will expand to 18 in 2024 and the Big 12 will grow to 16. The ACC and SEC currently have 14 members apiece but Texas and Oklahoma are joining the SEC next year while Stanford and Cal are trying to join the ACC if they can squeeze one more yes vote out of the current schools.

That leaves 16 remaining slots – for the moment – to be filled by schools stolen from smaller conferences “or by South American and European universities that will field football teams as soon as they can figure out how the game is played,” said Tony Petitti, soon to be former Big Ten commissioner and the future BFCCAE commissioner when all the contracts are signed.

Petitti said surveys of American college football players – “I’m talking about North American players,” he said with a laugh – revealed that 43 percent were able to identify at least two major countries in South America or Europe “and when we showed them pictures they got all excited about going on 5,000-or-more-mile road trips to, say, Rio de Janeiro or Amsterdam.”

The BFFCAE already has tentative contracts to televise all its games on NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX, ESPN, AT&T SportsNet, Bally Sports and Spectrum Sports, plus Television Espanola, Rai Italia, Grupo Televisa, Sistema Brasileiro de Televisao, Chilevision, Ecuavisa, RTL Nederland and Deutsche Welle. It also is negotiating to add Sling, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Nickelodeon, CNN, Animal Planet, Cartoon Network, MSNBC, Food Network, History Channel and C-SPAN.

“But that’s only temporary,” said Lachlan Murdoch, who has resigned as executive chairman and chief executive officer of Fox Corp., to take over as chairman, president, CEO, COO, CBO and CFO of the BFFCAE Worldwide Broadcast System, still in its developmental stage. “When we’re finished, we’ll own the television rights to every freaking sport at every freaking college in the world,” Murdoch said, adding, “Mwa-ha-ha-ha!”

With the former Pacific-12 Conference now reduced to the Pac-4, Cal, Stanford, Washington State and Oregon State are desperate to get into the BFFCAE. “We can’t just play each other like half a dozen times each year and fill out our schedule with shithole con- … sorry, with Big Sky and Mountain West Conference teams like Weber State and New Mexico,” Oregon State President Jayathi Murthy said.

MWC Commissioner Gloria Nevarez expressed similar concern, to put it mildly. “We’re fucked,” she said. “Who’s going to want to go to an exciting game like, say, Wyoming at Boise State on the Broncos’ gorgeous blue football field when fans can watch Ohio State playing in – and probably blowing out – I dunno, Barcelona?”

Marquette, Gonzaga, DePaul, and Drexel universities said they will resuscitate their long-dormant football programs if the BFFCAE will promise to add them as members.

“I’ve heard it’s planning to expand to ninety or a hundred members by 2030 and I don’t see why we can’t be included then,” said Robert L. Manuel, president of DePaul, which hasn’t fielded a football team since 1939.

The University of Phoenix also has applied for BFFCAE membership although it has no sports programs and its main campus is an office building. “Just because we’re only an online college doesn’t mean we can’t put a team together,” President Chris Lynne said. “I mean, have you seen our admission requirements? I bet there’s a thousand football players who could never get into a real college and would be thrilled to suit up for us and play in the BCFE … the BEAFC … whatever the hell that big fucking conference is called.”

Jonathan Gannon, head coach of the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals, also sent an exploratory letter to BFFCAE Commissioner Petitti, asking for a membership application. “I think we could be pretty respectable,” Gannon said, “probably beat Rutgers like two out of three.”