The Big Ten’s interest in UVA and North Carolina is more real than anybody is letting on publicly, which makes a News & Observer column telling us that UNC AD Bubba Cunningham told his staff that his school isn’t leaving the ACC all the more interesting.
“When the news cycle starts spinning like this, I have the obligation to let our staff know what I know and reassure them we’re going to be OK, that I value what they do, that the university values what they do. That’s my role, to reassure them that things are going to be fine,” Cunningham was quoted as saying in the column.
Hmmm.
The backstory here is the published reports from Thursday that had Big Ten chancellors authorizing Tony Petitti to talk with four schools to gauge interest in joining the league, naming two – Washington and Oregon – that have since accepted invites.
The other two schools were not named in the published reports, but there was speculation about interest in UVA and UNC, which have been linked to possible Big Ten expansion efforts in the past year.
I’m hearing more than speculation. Folks that I know who would know are saying that the ball is essentially in the court of Virginia and Carolina, and that the leverage being used is, if UVA and UNC don’t want in, the conference will move on to add Stanford and Cal, who are in obvious need of a new home with the implosion of the Pac-12.
Assuming that what the people that I know who would know aren’t being misled, we would seem to be at a loggerheads here.
With what I’ve been led to believe is going on, it’s hard to reconcile that with how over the top Cunningham has been in distancing Carolina from any interest in bolting from the ACC, including going on a Raleigh radio station on Thursday to blast higher-ups at Florida State for going public with their desire to leave the ACC.
And then, there’s this column, which feels, like the radio interview, like a plant.
Maybe I’m just reading things into what Cunningham has been saying, but it seems to me that if he is playing the PR game, it’s about trying to gain some leverage on his side with the Big Ten, which low-balled Washington and Oregon with their invites this week.
Those two schools will only get partial media-rights shares, basically a little more than what they’d been getting from the Pac-12, through the end of the decade.
If I’m UNC, or UVA, whose leaders have been, quite noticeably, silent the past few days, I’m not leaving the ACC for anything less than a full Big Ten share.
Which might put into context this other Bubba Cunningham quote from the News & Observer column.
“We have a $137 million budget. We have 285 employees. Eight hundred student-athletes. We’re going to host 200 events this year. Over a million people are going to come to our games. We’re in good shape,” Cunningham said.
You can read that two ways – to support the notion that, we’re not leaving, or to buttress the point, if you want us, show me the money.
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Chris Graham
