Roundtable: Huskies, Ducks, realignment and Heisman campaigns

Tyson Alger, Matt Fortuna and I discuss Washington and Oregon moving to the Big Ten.

Tyson made the jump first, leaving The Athletic and launching his new site, the I-5 Corridor, on Substack in August 2021. He writes about Oregon, Oregon State and other interesting stories in between.

I was next, launching On Montlake in March of this year after The Athletic chose to become more nimble by streamlining its headcount in the face of unpredictable industry headwinds.

Matt Fortuna chose to branch out on his own earlier this summer, bringing his intelligent, well-connected brand of national college football coverage to his own site, The Inside Zone.

We all realigned, I suppose you could say.

So here we are, three former colleagues whose respective purviews suddenly overlap in a meaningful enough way that it makes sense to yap about it via roundtable, or whatever name might exist for a triangular table. Except this time, there probably won’t be anybody in the comments section asking when our employer is going to hire a damn UCLA writer.

Subscribe to Tyson. Subscribe to Matt. Hope you enjoy the discussion.

FORTUNA: When I started The Inside Zone, I was encouraged by my former colleagues’ success on Substack. What I did not realize was that within a week of my launch, I would be granted the opportunity to see both Christian and Tyson much more frequently, as Washington and Oregon are now, incredibly enough, Big Ten schools. (I am located in Chicago, the former heart of Big Ten country.)

Now that we have allowed the news to marinate for two weeks — and there haven’t been any other dominoes that have fallen elsewhere, yet — I was curious to hear how you guys are processing the moves. Did you ever see this coming? Are the fanbases excited about this? And, if you have any insight that isn’t already out there, what can you share about how this came to be?