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Realignment talk not going away


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1 hour ago, MNLonghornFUKM said:

Anyone think the brilliance that was college sports, specifically football, is dying in front of our eyes? Christ.

The 4 Horsemen of shitty college football:

  1. "College football should be a safe family focused event were I can bring my 5 yr old and toddler"
  2. "I like the NFL experience, games should be more focused on amenities like skyboxes, recliners, massive screens, and music!"
  3. "Let's speed the game time up so we can have more commercials in the same window!"
  4. "playing smaller schools helps us get practice reps for depth and helps them pay for athletics!  It's a win/win!"

Then when they've ripped the soul out of the game they blame the students for not showing up.  Pretty selfish of them, don't you think?

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38 minutes ago, Mitch Cumsteen said:

I know it's a bit unseemly for some of you, but all of this is good for college football. We have been fed dogshit matchups for decades and told to shut up and like it. As much as all of this is a money grab, there is no bigger money grab than the bullshit schedules we have been fed and told to shut up and like it.

Every week in the fall, I check the schedule and there are a handful of great matchups that are must see TV for me. The teams that are getting left behind are rarely, if ever, on that must see list. Yes, please, for the sake of nostalgia give us more Texas games against Baylor and Tech and TCU when we could be playing Bama and Georgia and Florida. Who is more excited to see Oregon play Cal or Washington State instead of Michigan or Penn State? 

Yes, a good litmus test is looking at how it would be if things changed in the other direction.  The vast majority of people would be up in arms. 

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14 minutes ago, 'stache said:

I think pods would be useful for scheduling purposes. Play your pod every season, and two from each other pods that rotate. CCG is two highest ranked, like other conferences are going to it seems.

The only question mark would be who would be the fourth team in the east pod. I think it should be UH since they have history with Cincy and UCF, and OSU has history with TCU, BU, and Tech, and ISU has history with CU, KU, and KSU. It should be

West: BYU, UU, AU, ASU

East: WVU, Cincy, UCF, UH

South: TCU, Tech, BU, OSU

North: CU, KU, KSU, ISU

That's how I would do it.  Houston also would have direct flights to the other east locations.

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21 minutes ago, LTtxfan said:

The crying from PAC 12 fans now coming out of the woodwork is glorious...  terrible home fan attendance for games at ucla, stanford, and cal showed what a shitty CFB market existed in that conference.

The PAC 12 fans are getting what they deserve... that conference has sucked for years in fan support for CFB.  

 

Stanford November game...

Screen_Shot_2016_11_26_at_8.32.41_PM.0.p

 

Sept Cal home game

berkeley-california-usa-15th-sep-2018-ca

 

 

Was out there for OU/UCLA.  OU had maybe 40K fans and the UCLA side looked like Friends & Family.  I think they were giving away tickets but I could be wrong and that was the marquee game on their schedule that year.

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5 minutes ago, Aqua Buddha said:

Was out there for OU/UCLA.  OU had maybe 40K fans and the UCLA side looked like Friends & Family.  I think they were giving away tickets but I could be wrong and that was the marquee game on their schedule that year.

To be fair, it's not like a lot of the Okies would have been able to get into UCLA to end up converting to Bruin fans after Grapes of Wrathing their way out there. My relatives that went from Nebraska were able to pull that off so they at least would wear blue and gold if they went to a game 

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52 minutes ago, Mitch Cumsteen said:

I know it's a bit unseemly for some of you, but all of this is good for college football. We have been fed dogshit matchups for decades and told to shut up and like it. As much as all of this is a money grab, there is no bigger money grab than the bullshit schedules we have been fed and told to shut up and like it.

Every week in the fall, I check the schedule and there are a handful of great matchups that are must see TV for me. The teams that are getting left behind are rarely, if ever, on that must see list. Yes, please, for the sake of nostalgia give us more Texas games against Baylor and Tech and TCU when we could be playing Bama and Georgia and Florida. Who is more excited to see Oregon play Cal or Washington State instead of Michigan or Penn State? 

Also, nostalgia tends to overlook a few other minor details about the “good ol’ days” of cfb. Like the lack of a national championship game, like extremely limited availability of tv viewing of most games, like our hands tied behind our back while fedex and the pony cash express bought players, like segregation, like no helmets. There was never a time when cfb was “right” back to which it needs to revert. 

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It'll be potentially interesting to be able to put together an entire season's worth of stats for b10 west coast players when they travel east. The rule of thumb is that for every time zone an athlete travels through from west to east, they need at least 1 day of rest per each time zone change in order to perform at peak levels. West coast teams traveling east would theoretically have to depart their home schools on a Tuesday or very early on a Wednesday morning in order to give their athletes the adjustment period necessary to play at peak level on a Saturday. A year or multiple years of game film and stats could give SEC schools some potentially effective ammo when it comes to recruiting west coast high school players.

Most if not all of the published research has been on track and field athletes afaik but I believe it's something athletic trainers take for granted https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28719491/

edit - although all of that is probably moot if the west coast schools will be playing each other every season and won't be traveling to the eastern time zone as often

 

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5 minutes ago, TKthunder2 said:

Its not bad, but would be so much better if they could send those Eastern teams to the ACC. Not going to convince me otherwise.

Agree, but it is what it is at this point. I also wish UNM was worth a shit for symmetry and roadtrip purposes.

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2 hours ago, Al_4_ISU said:

I’m definitely concerned the SEC will feel the need to add a couple Big 12 schools that don’t really make financial sense just to keep up appearances

That won’t happen, the SEC is perfect as it is. Thank God UT is set in the SEC. I’d hate to be in the B1G with 20 schools from LA to Piscataway. Culture matters and we are in the best when it comes to football programs and fanbases.

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23 minutes ago, Chopper said:

It'll be potentially interesting to be able to put together an entire season's worth of stats for b10 west coast players when they travel east. The rule of thumb is that for every time zone an athlete travels through from west to east, they need at least 1 day of rest per each time zone change in order to perform at peak levels. West coast teams traveling east would theoretically have to depart their home schools on a Tuesday or very early on a Wednesday morning in order to give their athletes the adjustment period necessary to play at peak level on a Saturday. A year or multiple years of game film and stats could give SEC schools some potentially effective ammo when it comes to recruiting west coast high school players.

Most if not all of the published research has been on track and field athletes afaik but I believe it's something athletic trainers take for granted https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28719491/

edit - although all of that is probably moot if the west coast schools will be playing each other every season and won't be traveling to the eastern time zone as often

 

Look at Hawaii's stats.  I know in football they struggle when they play east of California.

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One item that hasn’t been discussed much is how Fox and ESPN have allowed their partners to concentrate their power into fewer, more powerful conferences. This will give the Big 10 and SEC even more negotiating power down the line. 

For a long time, the poaching of schools didn’t happen because the two networks didn’t want that consolidation to happen. But when steamers like Apple step into the market, it forced both Fox and ESPN to go scramble to get the premium assets before the other got them. They panicked  

Fox, CBS and ESPN tried to rein in pay using the PAC 12 as the test. But they failed to give the Pac 12 a deal better than Apple, so that the conference wouldn’t implode. Maybe the math just didn’t work. This will still hurt them long term. It looks like they had no choice. They had to scramble. 

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5 minutes ago, bullet said:

Look at Hawaii's stats.  I know in football they struggle when they play east of California.

Semirelated, but I really hope Florida is heading to SLC a few days early to acclimate somewhat to the altitude.

First game of the year, they should have extra time.

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6 minutes ago, camel at sea said:

The Big 12 is a couple moves from being able to rebrand as the Border Conference or the SWC.

It's like the Border Conference, SWC, Mountain West, WAC, PAC, Big 8, Big East, and AAC attended and orgy and this was the result.  

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4 minutes ago, Dbeasy said:

One item that hasn’t been discussed much is how Fox and ESPN have allowed their partners to concentrate their power into fewer, more powerful conferences. This will give the Big 10 and SEC even more negotiating power down the line. 

For a long time, the poaching of schools didn’t happen because the two networks didn’t want that consolidation to happen. But when steamers like Apple step into the market, it forced both Fox and ESPN to go scramble to get the premium assets before the other got them. They panicked  

Fox, CBS and ESPN tried to rein in pay using the PAC 12 as the test. But they failed to give the Pac 12 a deal better than Apple, so that the conference wouldn’t implode. Maybe the math just didn’t work. This will still hurt them long term. It looks like they had no choice. They had to scramble. 

I don't see it this way at all. ESPN and FOX were willing to pay the SEC and the BIG more money in part because they knew they weren’t going to pay the PAC. And now they get all of the best teams from the PAC anyway.

That Apple deal was so shitty that the PAC decided to disband instead. Maybe they will be in the future, but Apple isn’t a threat to ESPN or FOX yet. 

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5 minutes ago, Huckleberry said:

I know we've seen the tweets, not sure if it's been mentioned but the UO/UW move is now certain enough that ESPN is putting it as their front page lead story based on "sources." But I haven't seen them do that and then the thing not happen that I can recall.

Yeah, seems to be done.

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4 minutes ago, Lonestar88 said:

I don't see it this way at all. ESPN and FOX were willing to pay the SEC and the BIG more money in part because they knew they weren’t going to pay the PAC. And now they get all of the best teams from the PAC anyway.

That Apple deal was so shitty that the PAC decided to disband instead. Maybe they will be in the future, but Apple isn’t a threat to ESPN or FOX yet. 

I think this is what ESPN and FOX wanted. The clear implication here seems to be that ORST, WSU, Cal, and Stanford were dragging down values. UCLA maybe too, but they got to tag along with USC. 

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1 hour ago, Royalfan5 said:

To be fair, it's not like a lot of the Okies would have been able to get into UCLA to end up converting to Bruin fans after Grapes of Wrathing their way out there. My relatives that went from Nebraska were able to pull that off so they at least would wear blue and gold if they went to a game 

The best part was that even if you took the branded clothing away from the fans, you could tell who was who.

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8 minutes ago, Deej said:

Looking at that map, they really should dump UCF, West Virginia, Cincinnati, and Iowa State.

Way too much Big 8 history with ISU. The perfect map would exclude UCF, WVU, and Cincy, and add New Mexico, Nebraska, Mizzou, Arky, and LSU. But it's just never meant to be. 

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33 minutes ago, Dbeasy said:

One item that hasn’t been discussed much is how Fox and ESPN have allowed their partners to concentrate their power into fewer, more powerful conferences. This will give the Big 10 and SEC even more negotiating power down the line. 

For a long time, the poaching of schools didn’t happen because the two networks didn’t want that consolidation to happen. But when steamers like Apple step into the market, it forced both Fox and ESPN to go scramble to get the premium assets before the other got them. They panicked  

Fox, CBS and ESPN tried to rein in pay using the PAC 12 as the test. But they failed to give the Pac 12 a deal better than Apple, so that the conference wouldn’t implode. Maybe the math just didn’t work. This will still hurt them long term. It looks like they had no choice. They had to scramble. 

Yes, but in a way, it is also a good market rebalancing. The P12 only had a handful of teams worth continuing to invest the kind of dollars into that they would have to do in future deals. The B12 did a good job of grabbing quality programs that were in the second tier, placing them on firm footing as the #3 conference with very little fat in the conference respectively.

But the PAC had 12 schools, only 4 of which really drove the conference from a financial perspective as it relates to football. So instead of having to pay 40 or 50 million to 8 schools that don't mean and don't really care about football that much just to keep USC/UCLA/UW/UO, they blow the conference apart and save a ton of money on the 8 remaining schools while driving higher ratings with more quality games. 

The B12 represents the only real lifeboat in this scenario for tier 2 teams, which is why it is so funny to see ASU and Utah being such elitist bitches. We will also do it again as soon as the ACC starts to blow apart. At the top of that conference is FSU, Clemson, UNC, and Miami. The remaining schools will most likely be left to engage in a battle of survivor for the remaining 2 to 4 spots in the B12. The others will be relegated to G5 status just as Oregon State and Washington State are now. 

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Way too much Big 8 history with ISU. The perfect map would exclude UCF, WVU, and Cincy, and add New Mexico, Nebraska, Mizzou, Arky, and LSU. But it's just never meant to be. 

Not just history, but fit. Ames and Stillwater are remarkably similar towns, and aren’t even that far from each other. When I visited Stillwater in ‘14, we had breakfast in Des Moines and lunch at Eskimo Joe’s. Deej just doesn’t like me.
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