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Realignment talk not going away


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51 minutes ago, notre dame joe said:

If the Western schools formed a league, they could really put the squeeze on SC/UCLA.  They would become known as the schools where you don't get to play anyone in the region.

They’re joining the B10. They’re going to be in the league that pays twice as much for stars and ten times as much for spares (as opposed to whichever conference remains for the others).  

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This talk of the Pac-10 poaching Big 12 members is a head-scratcher without the flagships in LA. What motivation does OSU, KU, or TCU have to make that move if the money is comparable? IMO, they're gonna have to backfill with the likes of SDSU, Boise St, Fresno St, or UNLV if they stick together and expand.

Yes, UW and UO are big brands who draw more eyeballs on average than anyone in the Big 12. But, only marginally so and I wouldn't consider either "anchors", not that the Big 12 has any either. Maybe the Pac-12 and Big 12 should merge while adding the Top 2 MWC options and be first to 24?

This "loose partnership" proposed between the Pac-12 and ACC also looks like a nothingburger. ESPN doesn't have to do shit for the ACC to boost their payouts.

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30 minutes ago, DFW Horn said:

This talk of the Pac-10 poaching Big 12 members is a head-scratcher without the flagships in LA. What motivation does OSU, KU, or TCU have to make that move if the money is comparable? IMO, they're gonna have to backfill with the likes of SDSU, Boise St, Fresno St, or UNLV if they stick together and expand.

Yes, UW and UO are big brands who draw more eyeballs on average than anyone in the Big 12. But, only marginally so and I wouldn't consider either "anchors", not that the Big 12 has any either. Maybe the Pac-12 and Big 12 should merge while adding the Top 2 MWC options and be first to 24?

This "loose partnership" proposed between the Pac-12 and ACC also looks like a nothingburger. ESPN doesn't have to do shit for the ACC to boost their payouts.

All I know is both sides words are oak

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4 minutes ago, DFW Horn said:

This talk of the Pac-10 poaching Big 12 members is a head-scratcher without the flagships in LA. What motivation does OSU, KU, or TCU have to make that move if the money is comparable? IMO, they're gonna have to backfill with the likes of SDSU, Boise St, Fresno St, or UNLV if they stick together and expand.

Yes, UW and UO are big brands who draw more eyeballs on average than anyone in the Big 12. But, only marginally so and I wouldn't consider either "anchors", not that the Big 12 has any either. Maybe the Pac-12 and Big 12 should merge while adding the Top 2 MWC options and be first to 24?

This "loose partnership" proposed between the Pac-12 and ACC also looks like a nothingburger. ESPN doesn't have to do shit for the ACC to boost their payouts.

Jon Wilner is probably the most plugged in sports journalist in PAC territory and his twitter account reads like someone going through the five stages of grief.  

The remaining PAC brands are going to turn their nose up at inviting Big 12 schools, joining up with them, and especially expanding with MWC schools.  But it's going to be a big hole in the boat if they stick together and don't have a flag planted in the southern part of California.  Assuming they get over the idea of adding SDSU, there's still the problem of SDSU likely being non-additive financially.  They will need to be willing to sign a GOR to improve their money, at least marginally, and it is unlikely they'll be able to get anyone to agree to that.    

The PAC Presidents probably wouldn't mind associating with ACC schools.  Maybe that's where the loose partnership stuff is coming from.  But how does that work financially?  Or logistically?  Maybe you can sell Disney on a pod of PAC schools, ACCN carriage on the west coast, etc., but that probably doesn't work financially unless you limit the schools making the move to as few as possible.  That still leaves the Four Corners schools in the Big 12 at some point.  

If I'm at Washington State, I'm hoping that Disney charges in at the last minute and throws a lot of money at a new deal to hold the PAC together.  But I'm not sure why they would do that.  FOX appears to be pushing for a PAC break-up based on the stuff their media talking heads are saying publicly.  

 

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11 minutes ago, camel at sea said:

Jon Wilner is probably the most plugged in sports journalist in PAC territory and his twitter account reads like someone going through the five stages of grief.  

The remaining PAC brands are going to turn their nose up at inviting Big 12 schools, joining up with them, and especially expanding with MWC schools.  But it's going to be a big hole in the boat if they stick together and don't have a flag planted in the southern part of California.  Assuming they get over the idea of adding SDSU, there's still the problem of SDSU likely being non-additive financially.  They will need to be willing to sign a GOR to improve their money, at least marginally, and it is unlikely they'll be able to get anyone to agree to that.    

The PAC Presidents probably wouldn't mind associating with ACC schools.  Maybe that's where the loose partnership stuff is coming from.  But how does that work financially?  Or logistically?  Maybe you can sell Disney on a pod of PAC schools, ACCN carriage on the west coast, etc., but that probably doesn't work financially unless you limit the schools making the move to as few as possible.  That still leaves the Four Corners schools in the Big 12 at some point.  

If I'm at Washington State, I'm hoping that Disney charges in at the last minute and throws a lot of money at a new deal to hold the PAC together.  But I'm not sure why they would do that.  FOX appears to be pushing for a PAC break-up based on the stuff their media talking heads are saying publicly.  

 

And who wants to see UNC-Stanford?  There's just no ties or value in a scheduling alliance.  ACC is much better off scheduling Big 10 or SEC schools.  Or even Big 12 schools.

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On 7/6/2022 at 1:03 AM, Vertigo said:

Stanford is the only school to have fully endowed their athletics program including football. They have the largest overall endowment of any non ivy league school. They give no shits about anything having to do with money. They get to keep their pomp, pretense, and ivory tower thinking and get applauded by other people with no concept of earning money.

Incorrect. Texas has the third largest endowment. Stanford is third among private schools.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_United_States_by_endowment

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57 minutes ago, camel at sea said:

If I'm at Washington State, I'm hoping that Disney charges in at the last minute and throws a lot of money at a new deal to hold the PAC together.  But I'm not sure why they would do that.  FOX appears to be pushing for a PAC break-up based on the stuff their media talking heads are saying publicly.  

Well, Disney/ESPN did it before to keep the Big 12 afloat by granting pro rata increases for the additions of TCU and WVU. But, we know that was to keep UT & OU from bolting to the Pac with FOX. SDSU doesn't have the cache of either of those, so they'd be betting on their potential.

It doesn't appear that CBS or NBC are interested, either, so they're probably screwed.

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Don't remember seeing this posted here from David Teel-a Carolina journalist.

https://richmond.com/sports/college/teel-three-fold-challenge-for-imperiled-acc-in-wake-of-latest-conference-realignment/article_c0737dd0-4ca2-5de2-a1ad-13796d7d22c9.html

 

"...Notre Dame, the staunchest and most valuable football independent, is coveted by every league, and since the Fighting Irish receive only about $7 million a year in ACC television revenue, the grant of rights is far less onerous for them. Translation: If Notre Dame wants to join the Big Ten or SEC, the ACC is virtually powerless to stop the move.

The consensus is this latest round of realignment will pause until the Fighting Irish chart their course. If they remain independent, everyone might well stand down.

If they join a conference, the Richter scale will go haywire and movement will commence anew.

“We’re getting to a two solar system model here,” Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said as he emerged from the final session of the ACC’s spring meetings in Florida. “You have two suns with all the gravitational pull — the Big Ten and the SEC. People are going to have to figure out how to align with one or the other.”

Yes, an ACC AD, mere moments after huddling with his colleagues on league business, essentially forecasted the group’s splintering. It was remarkable to hear and in no way coerced.

Swarbrick’s candor also spoke to residual anger over the ACC helping to derail the College Football Playoff expansion plan that he, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and others spent years crafting.

The 12-team format, which precluded independents such as Notre Dame from receiving a first-round bye, appeared destined for approval and 2024 implementation before the ACC, Pac-12 and Big Ten insisted on a pause.

Was it frustrating to have countless hours of work, conducted during the heart of a pandemic, suddenly upended?

“You have no idea,” Swarbrick said that morning in Florida...."

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10 minutes ago, bullet said:

Don't remember seeing this posted here from David Teel-a Carolina journalist.

https://richmond.com/sports/college/teel-three-fold-challenge-for-imperiled-acc-in-wake-of-latest-conference-realignment/article_c0737dd0-4ca2-5de2-a1ad-13796d7d22c9.html

 

"...Notre Dame, the staunchest and most valuable football independent, is coveted by every league, and since the Fighting Irish receive only about $7 million a year in ACC television revenue, the grant of rights is far less onerous for them. Translation: If Notre Dame wants to join the Big Ten or SEC, the ACC is virtually powerless to stop the move.

The consensus is this latest round of realignment will pause until the Fighting Irish chart their course. If they remain independent, everyone might well stand down.

If they join a conference, the Richter scale will go haywire and movement will commence anew.

“We’re getting to a two solar system model here,” Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said as he emerged from the final session of the ACC’s spring meetings in Florida. “You have two suns with all the gravitational pull — the Big Ten and the SEC. People are going to have to figure out how to align with one or the other.”

Yes, an ACC AD, mere moments after huddling with his colleagues on league business, essentially forecasted the group’s splintering. It was remarkable to hear and in no way coerced.

Swarbrick’s candor also spoke to residual anger over the ACC helping to derail the College Football Playoff expansion plan that he, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and others spent years crafting.

The 12-team format, which precluded independents such as Notre Dame from receiving a first-round bye, appeared destined for approval and 2024 implementation before the ACC, Pac-12 and Big Ten insisted on a pause.

Was it frustrating to have countless hours of work, conducted during the heart of a pandemic, suddenly upended?

“You have no idea,” Swarbrick said that morning in Florida...."

Love that there’s blowback from that bitch move 

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1 hour ago, bullet said:

And who wants to see UNC-Stanford?  There's just no ties or value in a scheduling alliance.  ACC is much better off scheduling Big 10 or SEC schools.  Or even Big 12 schools.

Oregon/Stanford vs. Clemson/FSU/etc. is probably better Tier 1 inventory than the ACC has now.  The real value would be in cable carriage on the west coast.  But that's a short-term play both because cable is a dying revenue model and because everyone involved will be trying to get into the B1G/SEC as soon as possible. 

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For the SEC haters. Please go to a road game. We joined the right conference. Every game is electric.
Any of us would join the SEC if we had an invite. It's not even in question. We don't have an invite though and won't be getting one so here we are trying to figure out how to survive with what's left.
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5 minutes ago, DFW Horn said:

 

 

From the article:

 

Quote

One industry source said it might take $500 million for a school to exit the ACC given the league's ironclad grant of rights that keeps schools in the conference until 2036. You can buy a lot of superstar coaches, $1 million coordinators, facilities and swag copters for that kind of money.

 

 

 

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The ACC will likely be the turd in the punch bowl until their GOR comes due. But it may be more detrimental to those schools to "win" this round of realignment as the money of their regional competitors will get much bigger, which drives up facilities, salaries, and other resources. They will be playing with a short stack every year with nothing that will possibly alter the math. The gap will widen significantly by the time their GOR is up, and they may be so underfunded that they become the new big east.

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1 hour ago, Okie State said:
5 hours ago, billfromlaketravis said:
For the SEC haters. Please go to a road game. We joined the right conference. Every game is electric.

Any of us would join the SEC if we had an invite. It's not even in question. We don't have an invite though and won't be getting one so here we are trying to figure out how to survive with what's left.

I’m a hater. Have never been a fan of the MAGA Conference and didn’t become one just because UT and OU joined.

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So, invitations to Sewanee and Tulane have already been issued, right?

Well, Sewanee is DIII, so not a possibility.

And I bet I’m not alone in being fine with welcoming Tulane back. They have more SEC championships than -

Mississippi State
Kentucky
Vanderbilt
Arkansas
South Carolina
Missouri
Texas A&M
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I think the SoCal to the BUG broke the absurdity barrier.  There is no real reason ND can't join the SEC. 

lol except for the fact that every single SEC team despises Notre Dame and I could not imagine a worse fit for the SEC than ND.

And after the recent abysmal showings against top SEC teams, I can’t imagine ND wants any part of joining.
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On 7/7/2022 at 10:50 AM, Uncle Nate said:

Not to cloak room this thread, but does anyone else feel we (fans, schools, etc) are nothing but the puppets at the end of the strings being pulled by two mega, mega media conglomerates?

If Standard Oil and Ma Bell were considered dangerous monopolies that had to be broken up for the common good, what does that make ESPN/Disney and Fox?  ALL of this realignment stuff is being completely manipulated by these two companies.

I’m getting the whole industrial media complex vibe and I don’t see it being a good thing in the end. 

Sauron and Sauroman?

8 hours ago, statsman said:

They’re joining the B10. They’re going to be in the league that pays twice as much for stars and ten times as much for spares (as opposed to whichever conference remains for the others).  

In CR risk, geographic islands do not last long.  C.F. Miami in the big east, WVU in the Big12.  UCF in the MAC!

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10 hours ago, Vertigo said:

The ACC will likely be the turd in the punch bowl until their GOR comes due. But it may be more detrimental to those schools to "win" this round of realignment as the money of their regional competitors will get much bigger, which drives up facilities, salaries, and other resources. They will be playing with a short stack every year with nothing that will possibly alter the math. The gap will widen significantly by the time their GOR is up, and they may be so underfunded that they become the new big east.

They’ll be the only one that has to drink the punch though

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On 7/8/2022 at 9:09 PM, BluTechsan said:

Unless games being rated are all from the same network in the same time slot, the eyeball data is skewed

Yeah it’s pretty amazing to me that I’ve seen better analysis on this front from posters on this board than national sports writers who just take raw numbers and post them without any context.

Even something as simple as removing USC/UCLA and OU/Texas games from remaining PAC and Big 12 schools’ results would be more informative than just showing the raw numbers that include games against teams that won’t be in the respective conferences any more.

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11 minutes ago, oSuJeff97 said:

 

Even something as simple as removing USC/UCLA and OU/Texas games from remaining PAC and Big 12 schools’ results would be more informative than just showing the raw numbers that include games against teams that won’t be in the respective conferences any more.

Uh, that's exactly what the article being cited did.

"With Oklahoma and Texas still in the Big 12 and USC and UCLA still in the Pac-12, how do we use the data from those games? It’s probably best to throw them out and measure the schools based on who wants to see them when they aren’t playing a team either in or headed to the Big Ten or SEC. So that’s what I did....

I then examined the games between teams that aren’t in or headed to the Big Ten or SEC (and aren’t Notre Dame) when they played other teams that aren’t in or headed to the Big Ten or SEC (and aren’t Notre Dame)."

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6 minutes ago, LTbear said:

Uh, that's exactly what the article being cited did.

"With Oklahoma and Texas still in the Big 12 and USC and UCLA still in the Pac-12, how do we use the data from those games? It’s probably best to throw them out and measure the schools based on who wants to see them when they aren’t playing a team either in or headed to the Big Ten or SEC. So that’s what I did....

I then examined the games between teams that aren’t in or headed to the Big Ten or SEC (and aren’t Notre Dame) when they played other teams that aren’t in or headed to the Big Ten or SEC (and aren’t Notre Dame)."

I was told there would be no reading.  :D

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On 7/8/2022 at 12:00 PM, Valmy77 said:

I actually preferred the 2012 onwards Big 12 because of the round robin. That felt like a real conference, the old one was two mini-conferences and it was kind of shitty because the South was generally better than the North. 

But the original Big 12 had more prestige and all that.

The original Big 12 minus Baylor and K State would have been a perfect conference.  The ten-team round robin is by far the best setup.

Not many dud matchups when you have these as your ten teams -- and I think Nebraska playing Texas, OU, and A&M every year would have helped them out so much in recruiting (and to a lesser extent CU would have benefitted).  The original sin of the Big 12 was killing off OU and Nebraska as an annual rivalry game.  I think OU is most at fault for that as they had been getting their ass kicked by NU at the time.

Texas

OU

Nebraska

A&M

Colorado

Texas Tech

Okie Lite

Missouri

ISU

KU

When all 10 play a round robin that is a lot of good inventory.

What really should happen now is that schools should be in one conference for Football and Men's basketball.  And then regional conferences for nonrevenue sports.

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1 minute ago, Johnny Sack said:

The original Big 12 minus Baylor and K State would have been a perfect conference.  The ten-team round robin is by far the best setup.

 

Disagree, Kansas state was tough as nails in the mid 90s to mid2000s. They were perfect for the big 12.

 

Baylor,  besides the rape issues, has been holding their own the last decade. 

 

I think the big12 was just fine but needed an innovator at the helm and needed some type of loyalty among all the schools... should have expanded with ideas and value by adding the Arizona schools and then west Virginia and Louisville. Once that was established move on to BYU/Utah or Bosie and Cincinnati. Or hell all 4 

 

What could have been... 

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3 hours ago, mdmost said:

They can look around but it's going to cost them a ton if they leave the ACC. The only way out of that conference is to implode it or sue your way out. There's too many schools about to get relegated to let it die. 

If the ACC is making $50 million a year for their schools then the 12 year (24-36) payout/exit fee would be $600 million. While that seems like a daunting number when you calculate the the Big Ten and SEC will be making $1.2billion during that timeframe, then FSU would ultimately still receive then same amount of TV revenue in either conference.  Even if you disregard the increased exposure, ticket sales, merchandise that likely come along with moving to a better conference, and assume FSU won’t do any better in the short term, the long term benefits of joining the SEC/BigTen and securing a spot now means it’s worth whatever headaches come with breaking the GOR.

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17 minutes ago, nineliveslost said:

Disagree, Kansas state was tough as nails in the mid 90s to mid2000s. They were perfect for the big 12.

 

Baylor,  besides the rape issues, has been holding their own the last decade. 

 

I think the big12 was just fine but needed an innovator at the helm and needed some type of loyalty among all the schools... should have expanded with ideas and value by adding the Arizona schools and then west Virginia and Louisville. Once that was established move on to BYU/Utah or Bosie and Cincinnati. Or hell all 4 

 

What could have been... 

I disagree.  Neither school was worth enough to end or prevent great annual matchups like Texas-Nebraska, Nebraska-OU, CU-OU, CU-Texas, Neb-Ags, CU-Ags, etc.  Nebraska and CU would have had a much easier time recruiting in a ten team conference where they played the southern schools every year.

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1 minute ago, Johnny Sack said:

I disagree.  Neither school was worth enough to end or prevent great annual matchups like Texas-Nebraska, Nebraska-OU, CU-OU, CU-Texas, Neb-Ags, CU-Ags, etc.  Nebraska and CU would have had a much easier time recruiting in a ten team conference where they played the southern schools every year.

I see your logic for recruiting and agree. 

I still would want an expanding conference to ground all schools (happily) to fend off the pressure when SEC and BIG expand.  We would want our own turf and make it attractive for others to join. Bigger is stronger. More TV viewers is stronger. Keeping it small wouldn't keep the wolves at bay.  I think it would make it easier to be poached. 

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24 minutes ago, Gidnik said:

One of those is not like the others

Yeah. I'm not going to take time to listen to it, so apologies if I'm misunderstanding something. But if you're taking Oregon, Stanford, and ND, offering TCU in lieu of Washington makes no sense from a financial or academic perspective. 

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43 minutes ago, nineliveslost said:

Disagree, Kansas state was tough as nails in the mid 90s to mid2000s. They were perfect for the big 12.

 

Baylor,  besides the rape issues, has been holding their own the last decade. 

 

I think the big12 was just fine but needed an innovator at the helm and needed some type of loyalty among all the schools... should have expanded with ideas and value by adding the Arizona schools and then west Virginia and Louisville. Once that was established move on to BYU/Utah or Bosie and Cincinnati. Or hell all 4 

 

What could have been... 

Original Big XII was a great conference. Would have been better without divisions and a few perma-rivals. 

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6 minutes ago, LTbear said:

Original Big XII was a great conference. Would have been better without divisions and a few perma-rivals. 

Hell,  11 conference round robin schedule (6 home games) with one out conference game (possible 7th home game).  Top 2 teams face of in championship game ... 

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12 minutes ago, honolulu horn said:

Yeah. I'm not going to take time to listen to it, so apologies if I'm misunderstanding something. But if you're taking Oregon, Stanford, and ND, offering TCU in lieu of Washington makes no sense from a financial or academic perspective. 

It’s because they want a presence in Texas, nothing more…so if they want something in Texas  they take Tech, rape, UH, or TCU. Tech is impossible to get too, rape has too much baggage (they already have Penn St and MSU). Leaves UH and TCU.

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1 hour ago, nineliveslost said:

Disagree, Kansas state was tough as nails in the mid 90s to mid2000s. They were perfect for the big 12.

 

Baylor,  besides the rape issues, has been holding their own the last decade. 

 

I think the big12 was just fine but needed an innovator at the helm and needed some type of loyalty among all the schools... should have expanded with ideas and value by adding the Arizona schools and then west Virginia and Louisville. Once that was established move on to BYU/Utah or Bosie and Cincinnati. Or hell all 4 

 

What could have been... 

Yeah, the original B12 as good with the potential to be great. It’s a shame member schools never thought so.

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28 minutes ago, tx ind said:

It’s because they want a presence in Texas, nothing more…so if they want something in Texas  they take Tech, rape, UH, or TCU. Tech is impossible to get too, rape has too much baggage (they already have Penn St and MSU). Leaves UH and TCU.

what?

Not any more difficult than any other college town.

You know most teams visiting College Station fly into Bush and bus to aggy.  You think that's easier than flying in on a 737 to Lubbock? It's a 15 minute ride, at most from the airport to campus.

 

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4 hours ago, closetohumping said:

Writer seems to think there’s an easy way out of the GOR.  Doesn’t seem to be the case

Let the GOR expire and don't renew it, easy-peasey.

 

1 hour ago, Johnny Sack said:

The original Big 12 minus Baylor and K State would have been a perfect conference.  The ten-team round robin is by far the best setup.

Not many dud matchups when you have these as your ten teams -- and I think Nebraska playing Texas, OU, and A&M every year would have helped them out so much in recruiting (and to a lesser extent CU would have benefitted).  The original sin of the Big 12 was killing off OU and Nebraska as an annual rivalry game.  I think OU is most at fault for that as they had been getting their ass kicked by NU at the time.

Texas

OU

Nebraska

A&M

Colorado

Texas Tech

Okie Lite

Missouri

ISU

KU

When all 10 play a round robin that is a lot of good inventory.

What really should happen now is that schools should be in one conference for Football and Men's basketball.  And then regional conferences for nonrevenue sports.

End the year with OU-NU and UT-A&M.

Instead of looking to join the PAC, now you know you could have poached from it. 

 

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College football was betrayed by the adults who were supposed to protect it

The current state of college football is this: Across the nation, paunchy over-exalted ticket managers who title themselves athletic directors are racing in ungainly circles trying to find a padded, covering seat for their butts in a game of musical chairs. For years they cried that name, image and likeness payments to playerswould be a threat to the game’s tradition and uniqueness. It’s nothing compared to the destruction wrought by these administrative gluttons with their combination of treachery and ineptitude, who would give away a century to grab a television minute.

The 101-year-old Rose Bowl is in danger of collapsing into one of those tumbled-down structures you see on the slopes of old Rome, while the supposed business geniuses turn college football into something sickish that looks like three different tumors stuck together. They have arrived at a situation where Stanford, Texas Christian, Cincinnati and Central Florida could all wind up clapped into the same distended conference, in which players must take red eye flights home from games, just so said administrators can claim to be media honchos while covering their years of overdrafts.

 

All the people saying college football would lose the character that made it distinct if players were ever allowed NIL payments? They didn’t recognize that the real people leeching it of originality and distinctiveness were the ones sitting in the corner offices.

These functionaries would do any kind of business, no matter how unseemly, rather than do the most fundamental thing: balance sensible budgets in the name of academia. College athletics is supposed to be a break-even proposition, a nonprofit endeavor with education as its aim. Amateurism was never required for that. Simple integrity was. The right intention.

Instead, they have ruled college football with market panic and predatory practices. These continental leaps by schools toward creating bloated “superconferences” are not the result of the “rapidly changing sports media and college athletic landscapes,” as Southern Cal President Carol Folt tried to sell it disingenuously to her constituency. They are the result of the slow gathering of lousy practices over decades, which were the furthest thing from well-intentioned.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/08/college-football-realignment-big-ten-se

UCLA is frantically clutching at the end of a rope and swinging across the country to the Big Ten because it has apparently run up a $102.8 million deficit, which the Big Ten’s media rake-off will help alleviate. A good deal of the deficit is the inheritance left by former athletic director Dan Guerrero when he retired rich in 2020. As The Washington Post’s Will Hobson revealed in a devastating expose of college sports fiscal practices in 2015, Guerrero increased his salary from $299,00 to $920,000 between 2004 and 2014, though his duties remained the same.

Another of Guerrero’s bequests to the world of college athletics was to grow UCLA’s administrative staff from 97 to 141 employees and its non-coaching payroll from $9.1 million to $16 million in that span, after adjusting for inflation. On his watch, football coach Chip Kelly was allowed to increase the “nutrition” budget for his team from $1 million to $5.4 million. Such excesses put these schools on a path toward catastrophe, even before a real one arrived with the coronavirus pandemic.

But the frenzied economic climate goes back much further than this kind of disastrous bloating of athletic departments in the past 20 years, the $50 million gross misallocations to indoor waterfalls and locker rooms like first-class yacht cabins.

It dates to the powers schools’ subversion of Supreme Court’s 1984 antitrust ruling in the case of NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, which stripped the NCAA of its ability to regulate college football’s TV contracts and team appearances on the air. The ruling was intended to be a corrective to the NCAA’s overbearing exercise of its powers, but it didn’t recognize that there is a legitimate state regulatory interest in curbing the excess profiteering of athletic department scoundrels who are simply using the kids for skim.

The University of Georgia’s president at the time, Fred Davison, made clear why the big football schools were suing to strip the NCAA of regulatory control over TV rights: He wanted an end to “a tyranny of the majority to impose itself on the commercial enterprise.” Why should Georgia have to split airtime and media profits with a mass of smaller colleges? Even then, the ministers at the power schools were talking about forming a single “superconference,” in which the peons would be brushed aside so the giants could compete solely against giants — and not have to profit-share with Rutgers or Hofstra or Vanderbilt. They’ve been trying to get to this consolidated-wealth point for decades and decades.

In a dissent, Justices Byron “Whizzer” White and William Rehnquist recognized this ulterior motive and where it led. White wrote that the court was “subjugating the NCAA’s educational goals” to “purely competitive commercialism.” And the end game would be total cannibalism. They were exactly right?

So now Virginia, North Carolina, Clemson and Florida State may be flirting with the Southeastern Conference, and the Big 12 may try to swallow half a dozen Pac-12 schools, not because it’s good for the players or the student body or will lead to interesting and uplifting competition, but because of the mega-broadcasting rights deals. And for those who are left out, it could mean the gutting of entire athletic departments.

If college football is anything more than pageantry and fevered boosterism, it’s because there is something worth teaching in it. It doesn’t make you naive to say college athletics can and should have a genuine moral-educational component. In the right hands, the game is a discipline that has absolutely nothing to do with money or amateurism. It teaches a certain brand of, for lack of a better word, citizenship. It’s all about restraint of selfish desires for a larger goal, in the name of a collective prideful endeavor. When you strip the final vestiges of that away, now the game truly does become unrecognizable.

This “new landscape” of college football is not new at all but rather the black decay of a half century of totally unrestrained commercialization by the administrators. And the game they’re blighting is likely to be a lot less captivating and worthwhile as a result. That’s what will ultimately kill interest in the sport, not the cash in the pockets of the kids.

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59 minutes ago, slorch said:

what?

Not any more difficult than any other college town.

You know most teams visiting College Station fly into Bush and bus to aggy.  You think that's easier than flying in on a 737 to Lubbock? It's a 15 minute ride, at most from the airport to campus.

 

Indeed

 

Jones Stadium, or a nearby team hotel is easier to get to than almost any B1G school's facility.   It might even be easier than any of them.  It's literally about a ten minute bus ride from an airport that can land a 747.  I don't know where people come up with crap like this 

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1 hour ago, closetohumping said:

2036 is a long time from now 

Its really up to ESPN.  They can keep the ACC whole financially while stripping it of parts.  No damages.  The ACC isn't going to fight ESPN to keep the rights of schools ESPN is trying to move.  Not if they want to survive in 2036.

But does it make financial sense for ESPN?  Everybody in the business is working those numbers.

 

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