Fortuna Files: Strange times in strange places
USC tried to do what? Also, what's up with Clemson and Oklahoma State? And will the Nike factor come into play at the White Out?
Emptying the weekly notebook ahead of the most anticipated September Saturday that I can recall:
1. John Ourand had a fascinating story on Puck this week centered on USC’s attempt to move a future neutral site game against Notre Dame to Netflix. This is notable for a number of reasons, notably the fact that Fox, CBS and NBC own the Big Ten’s media rights, and NBC owns Notre Dame’s media rights. Also: There are no currently scheduled USC-Notre Dame matchups beyond this year.
2. But the idea of anyone, let alone a conference newcomer like USC, trying to circumvent its league’s billion-dollar-per-year media rights agreements is quite a chore to wrap your head around. As Ourand, a sports media expert, writes: “It seems extraordinarily naive that the school thought that it had the rights to get this kind of deal done.”
3. So what exactly happened here? And how has this flown under the radar? Calls around the Big Ten this week were largely met with surprise, as a majority of the sources reached for this column were unaware of the story and were every bit as shocked to read it after the fact as I was. One conference source who was aware of USC’s attempt theorized that this was more about ambition on USC’s end than it was malicious intent to pull a fast one, but still expressed bewilderment at the idea of the Trojans attempting to get this done.