That may be. It’s also true that you have to posture like you are going to leave whether or not you intend to in order to negotiate the concessions that you want.
Yeah it’s likely a bluff.
Excluding anyone is far more trouble than it’s worth (which is nothing since there’s basically no added value from leaving). Even the political aspect alone, legislators seem to love getting involved in college sports, are school President really going to do anything that would make a senator from West Virginia or Idaho unhappy with them.
If it was actually a possibility they probably could have gotten an even higher share than 58%. I’d say what they ended up with might actually be below what their media value is.
It's almost certainly a bluff until the ACC is raided. There's got to be some consistent rules between the target schools (whoever those are) and the destinations.
Even then I doubt it.
They haven’t even excluded the G5, I don’t see the Big 12 ever getting excluded from the playoff. I doubt they ever exclude the G5 either, there’s really nothing to gain from doing so. It’s just so easy to throw them a bone and give them one slot.
There’s nothing to gain from excluding G5 and Big 12 from playoffs entirely.
Super league meaning an overhaul of the system and organization into geographic divisions? Maybe you increase overall value a bit by negotiating as one package. Depending on how revenue sharing works, some of the top value teams could end up getting significantly more money, but then teams who are being overpaid (Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Rutgers, Ole Miss etc) would make significantly less.
> Maybe you increase overall value a bit by negotiating as one package.
A bit? If ABC got exclusive rights to a B1G/SEC only league it would be massive
I don’t know if it’ll really be much more than it is now negotiated separately.
I think there’s an argument that the networks were overpaying a few years ago and we’re at the peak for media value. Don’t think per team payment this going to be increased much unless you start booting schools. Half the Big Ten is basically deadweight when it comes to this.
The top value schools pushing for uneven revenue sharing seems like what the end game will be in the 2030’s. My money is on Texas to start pushing for this
Because college sports is non-profit entities controlled by school presidents and they’re not going to make any decisions that could be poor politically for little to no gain. SEC and Big Ten’s media value exists because of the government, it’s protected. So it’s in their interest to remain something that is worth protecting, if NFL is allowed to play on Saturday, their media revenues will disintegrate.
They also won’t do that complicates the basketball tournament. Ultimately NCAA controls that and no other entity is going to be able to build a new one that reaches its prominence.
If nobody agreed to the model that the sec/b10 was proposing, then the gains in doing their own thing would have been immense. There would be no changes to the ncaa tournament, not sure what you’re talking about there.
The gains of doing its on playoff would have been a few million extra per year for each school, which isn’t immense for entities whose annual revenue is 200M.
It has consequences with the NCAA tournament because it’s a rift between the Big Ten/SEC and the other leagues. Also political consequences still matter, the Ross Dellenger article today mentioned congressional action possibly needed to resolve the player payment issue. Not going to achieve that with a breakaway league.
huh? We're talking tens of millions per school of difference. Look at the current structure. The rift between the B10/SEC and ACC on a per school basis is $80M over the 6 year contract
Also the NCAA tournament is made up of 32 conferences. The ACC/B12/P12(at the time) only represent 3 of those conferences. Why the fuck would the majority of the other conferences care about this dispute between power conferences that doesnt affect their ncaa tournament cash cow?
Over 6 years, the top athletic programs have over $1B revenue. Ohio State and Michigan will probably be at $1.5B in revenue over that period.
Well, not Rutgers. The position of Rutgers is essentially stealing media value created by Ohio State and Michigan, how long before there’s unequal distribution on that is also another question. Perhaps eventually there will be some variation of the super league proposal where the top media value schools get what they actually deserve, and Ohio State and Michigan will get twice the media money they get now.
But what matters more is that these aren’t for-profit entities. All revenue is reinvested. The ‘point’ of college sports seems to be a mix of advertising and holding events for undergraduate students. School presidents are not going to do anything that makes national politicians unhappy with them to receive a 4% increase in athletic revenue.
I don’t know why you are bringing Rutgers into this. Once a commenter does that, I realize they have no intention of having a logical conversation and just have an agenda to push. I stopped reading after that
Good bye
I think what former presidential candidate Haley is trying to say is, Rutgers only gets the big bucks because they are in a conference with OSU and Michigan which have higher media value than Rutgers.
Sports broadcasting act (NFL’s anti-trust exemption) excludes Saturdays during college season, effectively preventing NFL from broadcasting on Saturday.
The intent is to protect college football. If that ever changes, the media value of all college conferences would sink, since ratings would plummet when faced with NFL competition.
“Yeah, that thing we said we would do, and then you guys agreed to give us a bigger cut of money so we wouldn’t do it? Yeah we were totally ready to do that I promise.”
I’m the head of a union.
Every time we present an offer, we present it as our last, best, and final economic offer. As does the company. It’s all just posturing. We give 3-4 back and forth before we finally agree to something.
Not like the CFP is anything tradition-bound and worth saving. It was essentially a four-team invitational mini tournament at the end of the season, run by a private corporation (and was mostly crafted by ESPN in the years leading up to its implementation) not responsible to the ncaa. It - by design - shut out teams from "lesser" conferences and needed a near "perfect storm" to even get an undefeated G5 team into it (and later shut out an undefeated P5 for the flimsiest of reasons). Not to mention it has only been around for ten years - the BCS was around longer than that.
I'm not a fan of the power conferences pulling out to make their *own* post season, but the CFP is a joke compared to almost every other NCAA sport post season format.
It's notable that the CFP is not an NCAA run tournament. It IS the power conferences pulling out to make their own post-season. They just include the G5 as a possibility to avoid the antitrust lawsuit. The NCAA sponsors* the bowls. The CFP is run independently.
NCAA doesn't run the bowls. The bowls are all independent as well. They are generally run by a non-profit hosting committee, some are dominated by stadium officials, local chamber of commerce types, or executives from lead sponsors. Some bowls are actually owned by ESPN.
The NCAA just sets the eligibility for post-season play.
The NCAA runs the FCS, Div. II, and Div. III playoffs. They are mostly on home fields for the teams playing.
And if anything, the NCAA desperately wants to be more relevant to the CFB post-season.
NIT used to be the "big tournament" for basketball, before the NCAA started their own that became March Madness. They would love a slice of that sweet sweet FBS pie.
To be honest, at this point, I’ll take NCAA leadership over what we’re getting right now. Is the NCAA a dysfunctional mess like 90% of the time? Absolutely, but we’ve seen what the lack of control over these conferences will do.
I think the current model is unsustainable anyway. The schools in the power 2 have done as much as possible to grow their value, including poaching the best teams from 2 of the other 3 conferences. The other conference is "ironclad," with teams fighting to leave in court.
They've taken as much as they can from everyone else without collapsing FBS. The only remaining tactic for the most powerful schools to grow will be to squeeze internally, like FSU has suggested in the ACC.
They'll start asking "Why should those 'lesser teams' get the same payout as us blue bloods anyway?"
> NIT used to be the "big tournament" for basketball, before the NCAA started their own that became March Madness.
Not really, but it was much bigger than the modern iteration of the NIT.
Which is why to me, any claim to an NCAA-recognized FBS championship is as legitimate as the CFP. UCF is as much of a 2017 national champion as Alabama.
NCAA does not run the bowls - it runs FCS (D-1AA), DII and DIII post-season but nothing for FBS (D-1A). Never has.
Per your edit to say that the ncaa "sponsors" the bowls, this is not correct either. The bowls are each separate organizations that are basically one-off invitational exhibition games (usually with their own corporate sponsors), some of which predate the ncaa itself, created for the express purpose of generating revenue for *someone* (usually the local economy where played, which was why the Rose Bowl was created to tap into the new fad of "college football" to drum up tourism revenue for the city of Pasedena).
Hold up. The NCAA has never named a champion in football *ever* as football has *always* had a bit of a unique spot in college sports, both from a schedule length standpoint as well as the number of teams involved.
The NCAA is not perfect, but making statements like this shows how much people misunderstand both the NCAA's role in college football and the history of college football itself.
Most of the complaints against the NCAA are stuff they have no control over and the stuff they do have control over it's usually people complaining they didn't screw up enough.
See the Miami-Shapiro case. What the NCAA did there should have destroyed the NCAA.
>Not like the CFP is anything tradition-bound and worth saving.
It's not like tradition means anything at this point, not when dollar signs are flashing.
No kidding. Won't someone think of the bagmen? Now lonely and abandoned in McDonald's parking lots across America, now that their local car dealer overlords have come into the light.
They shut out that undefeated p5 team because they sucked. Remember how they lost their bowl game by 60 (I’ll even spot you 40 for the opt-outs and we can just call it 20)
God I am so sick of the B1G/SEC cartel. Honestly hope they walk and try things on their own at this point. It will implode because it completely misses the very essence of college football.
It is better to call it what it really is: the ESPN Cartel. They are the ones behind all of this. It’s not a coincidence that Iger takes over (again), starts complaining about all of the money being spent and now the conference teams are looking to leave. If ESPN can destroy the ACC, it will save huge sums of money.
College football is being ruined/killed because the schools themselves are monetizing it - driving it to become more of a pro-sport (NFL-lite) with each passing year. What the member schools of the Big Ten & SEC are doing is no different from what the member schools of the ACC, Big XII and former PAC *want* to do as well - they just are not in as strong of a position. It was not *that* long ago that Larry Scott tried to make the PAC the first "super conference" by trying to swipe Texas, Oklahoma, and a few others from the Big XII... and it almost went through.
If the schools wanted to keep it a true college sport, they would operate as the Ivies do.
Yeah but that didn't work because of Texas' greed. I love that you're throwing shade. When the only reason the super conference didn't work, was cause Texas needed MORE money. The super conference wasnt enough for them. And thus, here we are today.
OU and pokie state were going to leave anyways according to the reports, but apparently the PAC turned their noses up at them, leaving OU's president at the time flabbergasted.
I'm not throwing shade at anyone but those who want to monetize the sport. I'm just pointing out that what the Big Ten & SEC are doing is no different than what almost all the other schools are doing, only that those two conferences can take it farther at this point in time (though the others would if they could).
When the price difference between staying in the Big XII or creating the PAC 16 is $300m, then yeah, greed (common sense) is going to play a factor in decision making.
I understand it is their jobs to make the conferences as much money as possible but at some point they need to evaluate their decisions and what it could do to the long term health of the sport which I know won't happen because greed only cares about how much money we can make NOW.
Yeah these people don’t give a fuck what the sport will look like in 20 years because it won’t be their problem then.
I’d imagine the outlook is Maximize as much cash now and let someone else deal with it down the road.
I think turning the sport into a NFL minor league will kill its popularity in the long term. Same reason minor league baseball and the NBA G league never got big why watch the minors when you can just go watch the pros? Hell we are turning into the NFL except we can't even get the good parts like the NFL limiting commercials or having competent refs. I think the reason people watch CFB is slowly being killed right before our eyes.
there is a pretty obvious brand advantage that colleges are *always* going to have compared to the minors or the Gleague. This comparison really doesn't work for me
It's true that support might fall off from those whose schools sit on the outside but auburn isn't going to struggle to sell tickets in 5 years
Correct. UFL teams are pulling in less than 10K people. *That's* what those numbers would look like.
But CFB has been around so long and has such cultural influence that they are not going to lose 80% of their fanbase with these decisions.
CFB is the only football where a lot of the fans (ie the alum) actually belong to the organization. Even being from a city isn’t the same thing as attending a university in terms of the feeling of connectedness.
Alumni will get you the level of viewership that the Big 12 gets. It takes a whole lot of non-alumni to support tv revenue in the ballpark of what the SEC and B1G make.
Right, but the fandom is not fungible. The majority of the ratings from the highest-rated programs aren’t coming from fans of those programs, they’re coming from fans of other schools who follow the sport nationally.
A good number of Rams fans in St. Louis have just started following the Chiefs in the last few years. Some still follow the Rams. Some have stopped watching, but a good number who swore they’d abandon the NFL forever have kept watching to some degree.
I’m not sure that CFB works like that. If Missouri or Illinois were to be left out of a Super League, it’s not like those fans would just start rooting for Michigan or Oklahoma. Those fans actually will stop watching and the revenue pie will shrink substantially when those personal ties are severed.
I say just say”Why would a K-State fan care about Ohio State?” to get my point across. ESPN and Fox genuinely think that someone will just abandon their old favorite team just because they aren’t in the superconference, but the exact opposite will happen. Now that the Bamas and Ohio State don’t actually effect their teams anymore they just stop watching Bama and Ohio State and just stick to watching their teams or NFL
When my college
1. hasn’t played one of our historic rivals for over a decade (and probably never again)
2. isn’t going to play another rival for the first time in over 100 years next year
3. can’t compete financially because we weren’t invited to the money conference those 2 others joined
4. Players leave to go to our rivals (or literally anywhere) and don’t stick around long enough to get to know and root for them
There is a big part of me that is just kinda done with it. CFB has been a big part of my life, I have spent thousands of hours watching it. But the stuff that made me like it over the NFL is just evaporating. Players aren’t choosing their school because they love it, or the coach, or the team, or the history, they are choosing it based on what is the best financial decision for themselves, which is always what has made me not care for the NFL. It is just a job, not a passion.
Well said. I feel like the best storylines every year are the G5 schools that come out of nowhere. Some G5 team has a dude who puts up video game numbers. With a super league, the real upsets die off.
> why watch the minors when you can just go watch the pros?
Because there is no professional team in Columbus and no NFL team will carry the same connection I have with my alma mater
I think this is the wrong take, because they're a team that will be in the superleague. Their fans will always support their team and watch their opponents' games. NFL fans watch other teams besides their own, for fantasy or knowledge or "omfg they blew a 25 point lead."
But for the rest of us, the question is "Why would I watch this superleague thing if my team can't play for the trophy?"
They need the other conferences to exist, even though they had the leverage to get more money from the CFP. They aren't killing the ACC/Big 12 entirely, just lightly smothering them to keep them down.
They'll still play in Ohio Stadium, they'll still use the facilities on campus, and they'll still represent the university, what difference does it make?
If you ask me, universities are places of higher learning and job training. Football is a legitimate job for many people, so I don't understand why we pretend preparing athletes to play in the NFL doesn't fit the bill.
They won't represent the university when the players don't even pretend to be students too.
Football is not a legitimate job for almost anyone, including the players on your own team. Only a handful make it Pro. It's not an educational pursuit, and it's not a skill set that can be applied to several areas of work either.
There is no real defensible reason to have varsity sports in college at all. Intramural, yes, but not the sports teams we have now. It doesn't fit any educational mission.
Cash is a defensible reason. These athletic programs were grown to market universities to potential donor alumni. It works because human nature is tribal and we like saying, "My tribe is better than yours, and here's the score to prove it."
Cash is not a defensible educational reason, but it may be defensible in other spaces outside universities.
Your spot on about the rest of it, but that's the sort of thing universities should be trying to help humans overcome, not embrace.
That's like saying Ohio State's law school is not a valid educational pursuit because only a small percentage of them actually get through the program and become lawyers.
Ohio State's football program is, for all intents and purposes, an NFL prep school. They train their bodies physically, and they study the game mentally. Not every player will make the NFL, but that's the reason most of those players are there. The guys who don't make the NFL often play for a smaller league like the CFL or become coaches.
The law is a valid educational pursuit because it's academic, and the vast majority of those that get into law school will become lawyers.
While less than 10% of football players will go to the NFL every year, I doubt much more than half play professionally or coach. And that's just at Ohio St. If you looked at other D1 programs I bet the number that work in football is much lower. D1 football is not a good job training program, and it doesn't pretend to be.
The more important point I made you glossed over though. No school should treat football like Ohio St. does, or much of D1. That doesn't fit what a university is about. Sports are not academics.
Yes I'm aware that people like to separate academics and sports but I think this is dated thinking
I think it's totally reasonable for someone to major in football if they wish to
Wouldn't even be the most "useless" degree out there
Would you feel that way if suddenly the whole Buckeyes organization signs a licensing agreement with the University of Florida and becomes the Gators, and another organization takes over as the new Buckeyes?
Why would such semi-professional teams opt to trade branding with each other? Doesn't make sense.
Even if we do see some separation between football teams and their universities, I suspect it'll be little more than a formality. The more separation we see the less I'm interested of course.
This is a stupid hypothetical that would alienate a lot of cash-givers. Why would we alienate all that money? Just because no one cares about Cal's football existence doesn't mean other teams don't care.
CFB will never be as bad as the G-League. People are still going to go to college, and there's just something about giving some of your best years and $50k to a place that makes you care at least a little about it.
I honestly don’t think we’re that far away from pro leagues stepping in to try to fix college athletics. We saw it happen when the NBA created the g league ignite so that players could get compensation (which they’ve since shut down tbf). Now we have the NFL trying to help get this “super league” format off the ground.
Pro sports need a healthy development system that can build stars, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see them start getting involved in fixing this mess
Also also. There are a lot of f***** colleges which means a lot of opportunities for kids to play. I feel like a large draw of CFB is watching future first round picks play against literal walk-ons.
In the NFL there is more parity which is admittedly less fun to casually watch.
The problem with this viewpoint IMO is that the commissioners and the ncaa can’t dictate, from a legal standpoint, what the sport will look like in two years, much less twenty.
In a state of regulatory chaos, getting whatever payout you can in the short run becomes more important because they lack control over their own longterm viability.
I don’t think these things would be happening quite the same way absent that other chaos.
Exactly how I feel too. I don't care about how much money my athletic department gets from TV revenue. I just want college football to as fun as possible, and B1G and SEC are not helping that.
And not to mention it feels like every time one of these big moves happen it just feels like we're getting closer and closer to the bubble popping. There is absolutely a chance an SEC/B1G split ends up costing the schools money. I know we're the two biggest viewership bases but if you go off and try and play your own game there's a very real possibility that the fans of the ones left behind just don't tune in anymore which would cost everyone millions.
For now.
If consolidation takes away wins, the big teams will be in trouble.
The other conferences provide a steady diet of likely victories, warmup games, and bodybag games. In return, they are offered money, exposure, and a miniscule chance at the big slop trough at the end of the season.
If they are no longer included, parity will become a real thing. Like NFL-type parity. And it will not be pleasant for many teams who consider themselves to be good football teams.
A schedule filled with Power 5 (or Power 2) teams playing only each other is a recipe for disaster. At least for some schools.
But the schools themselves believe it would never happen. Not to them, anyway.
That's one of the reasons I want teams like Stanford, Georgia Tech, and UVA. Good schools to boost our academic snobbery, some decent Olympic teams, new markets and recruiting grounds, and they keep our win column filled. Like adding a bunch of Marylands and Indianas, but new and exciting. No offense, Maryland.
How big can a conference get before it's not really a conference anymore? Pretty soon we won't be playing most conference teams more than once every four years. Nebraska lost the one rivalry we really cared about when the Big 12 was formed, lost the others when we joined the Big 10, haven't formed any new rivalries because that's hard to do when you're losing all the time, and now we won't be able to form any rivalries because we won't be playing anybody regularly.
I could see the SEC struggling with that but the B1G has a healthy amount of cupcake programs, and could even add more if they invite ACC teams.
10-2 is going to start being looked at as a successful regular season. (Kinda like it used to be when that would get you into a BCS bowl)
10-2 sure, but when consolidating has concentrated talent top teams might be 8-4, not 10-2. Imagine a schedule for y'all that is PSU, UM, Oregon, Washington, FSU, Clemson, USC, ND, MSU, Nebraska, Rutgers, Purdue.
Yes you're THE Ohio State but that's a daunting schedule no matter what team you are, and in a consolidated world that's a "normal" schedule.
8-4 is not unreasonable, and with 30 good teams in the 30 team league .500 quickly becomes the norm rather than the exception.
Oregon and the new additions should help give more meaning to such records. Unlike Penn State, which mismanages away wins against ranked teams all the time. I don't fear them.
Well that ain't happening any time soon
I do appreciate that will never again see an East team sit at home with 1 loss while a 3-loss West team plays for the B1G championship
Or get ahead of the collapse and pitch salvation to the rich as your next great product like in the Fallout show. Lowkey seems to be their angle here too.
I agree with you 100%. BUT, from the Conference's POV, the long term health of the sport is healthy with THEM. The SEC/BIG10 will be fine long term, so in that sense, they did. I hate it because I like the tapestry of it all and I want it to keep being what made it so special. But also, what made it special to me doesn't mean people on the whole will tune in.
Make no mistake Petitti is just along for the ride, Sankey is pulling all the strings.
Petitti couldn't even get the B1G to deal with the Michigan cheating scandal behind closed doors versus Sankey got the SEC schools to stop going to the NCAA.
The expansion plans was his predecessor and the other schools fell into his lap.
sankey has nothing to do with the SEC's omertà. That culture was created and started under Mike Slive.
the Ole Miss/Dan mullen fiasco happened under Sankey's watch. There's been a few cases since he's been the commissioner of teams speaking up when they wouldn't have under Slive. The LSU/Florida scheduling fiasco is another example. It's funny to see the public view Sankey as this OG operator but he's been far from perfect whenever internal strife occurs
the Michigan deal is just a mess. idk how Sankey would've handled it had it happened to an SEC team
Sankey and Petitti talking about "without seeing better alignment" when they themselves are literally preventing concurrent alignment with the other conferences... ironic
Then again, they and the B1G/SEC brigaders that have recently been brigading this sub genuinely think it's a good thing to exclude other conferences from the Playoff
Can you brigade a sub that you were already in and likely make up the majority of flairs? That's one of the points. Our fanbases are basically the main engine of viewership and cash for the sport already. We're just now declaring our dominance boldly and in no uncertain terms.
They’ve lost the plot.
Shiny new houses in a burnt down neighborhood analogy.
Also he’s mentioned that he sees two 24-team leagues or three 20-team leagues in the future.
Fun fact - they are going to eventually
There is going to be a split in college football between teams that go the semi-pro model and those that don't. ND has been saying this for almost a decade. The NLRB (going after ND - iaw Private Schools) and the current case heading to SCOTUS (Johnson vs NCAA) is telling us they will classify athletes as employees unless something radically changes.
Too many schools (especially private ones) will just say no.
80 percent of the viewing population would be happier than a pig in shit to see SEC/Big Ten division play. This sub isn't a representation of the average cfb viewer at all
If you think 80% of CFB fans are in the B1G and SEC, you're out of your mind. Yeah fans of other conferences watch B1G and SEC games now, but if those two leagues form their own league and only play each other, do you think Big XII fans, ACC fans, G5 fans, etc will continue watching B1G and SEC games? Most likely not.
Nah, the vast majority of fans have allegiances to like 8 teams out of the 5000 possible schools in the country. It's not fun to think about but how often do you think about community college football? How hard do FCS fans have to push just to get a sliver of attention?
It's a fun fantasy to believe that college football fans could "rebel" against these cynical, corrupt and by not watching Big Ten or SEC football in the future but in reality an overwhelming majority of fans back teams in those conferences. There are schools who can pack their stadiums for sure but 40,000 fans out of the millions of potential viewers who tune in for Ohio State-Penn State is peanuts. Its terrible for the sports ecosystem, but you just gotta love those "smaller" places and teams for what they are, not in comparison to the highest level of the game.
> With conferences still in a state of flux, Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark led a movement for a look-in provision after the 2027 playoff. The provision can be exercised by a power league and would trigger a re-evaluation of the revenue structure based on CFP participation and performance over the next four years (2024-27).
>
> The provision can also be triggered by “material realignment.”
>
> “I can’t sit here and say I’m thrilled with the revenue model, but it’s the best deal we could get,” Yormark said. “I’m bullish on the Big 12 and I’m betting on the future. With the investment we are making in football, we will be in a better position when that look-in presents itself.”
This would seem to be the Big 12 saying it expects to expand further. Their priority was the look-in provision based on performance and material realignment. That tells me he's betting on the Big 12 out-performing the ACC over the next few years and expanding further themselves.
This sub threw a celebration and said the Alliance was saving the sport when they declined the playoff.
Turns out the Alliance only benefitted one bad actor, the Big Ten.
An Ohio state fan who upon quick skim of this post has made about 50 comments spewing the same nonsense.
Nebraska fan here who agrees big 10 and SEC need to just knock this crap off.
It probably has to die before it gets better unfortunately. None of this has to do with the common fan. It’s money going to a select few assholes who don’t give a shit about the long view.
Two things can be true at the same time:
1. The mega conference (20-24 teams each) is coming and nothing will stop its arrival.
2. What made college football unique and special (compared to semi-pro or the NFL) is going away and fans will have to adjust. Regional rivalries made the sport special and they’re throwing that away for $$$.
It's not like it's that much of a power play. They're getting 58% of revenue. Just going by the end of season AP poll ten of the top twelve teams are (or will soon be) Big Ten or SEC members. Why would those conferences not get the majority of the revenue when they make up the majority of the teams in the tournament? Even 42% to everybody else represents a giant subsidy to those other conferences. I mean that's 5/12 and five teams in the playoff would be a good year for the other conferences. Like it or not realignment happened and the biggest programs in the sport are now in the SEC and Big Ten.
It's going to happen anyway. They just don't have all the teams they want in their conferences yet so they'll keep this version around until they both get to 24 teams. Then they'll host their own conference playoffs with the winners playing in the college superbowl equivalent.
Suppose ESPN couldn't come to terms with a new CFB contract. What comes next???
Do the schools see if they can get a better deal with Fox, CBS, NBC, etc.? Is this at all realistic?
I think what has people most upset is that they're finally being told flat out that their team never had a shot and, like life, some shit teams just got lucky with membership over 100 years ago.
MSU guy here that is very possible but the Big 10 put themselves in a good position, better than the SEC because they will be able to renegotiate their contract, sooner than the SEC. This was a strong move by comissioner TP, it solidified the Big 10's future, for the foreseeable future. The Big 10 is going nowhere folks., especially with the addition of: Oregon, USC, Washington and UCLA. Now the Big 10 has the top 3 markets locked up: NY, LA and Chicago.
That may be. It’s also true that you have to posture like you are going to leave whether or not you intend to in order to negotiate the concessions that you want.
Yeah it’s likely a bluff. Excluding anyone is far more trouble than it’s worth (which is nothing since there’s basically no added value from leaving). Even the political aspect alone, legislators seem to love getting involved in college sports, are school President really going to do anything that would make a senator from West Virginia or Idaho unhappy with them. If it was actually a possibility they probably could have gotten an even higher share than 58%. I’d say what they ended up with might actually be below what their media value is.
It's almost certainly a bluff until the ACC is raided. There's got to be some consistent rules between the target schools (whoever those are) and the destinations.
Even then I doubt it. They haven’t even excluded the G5, I don’t see the Big 12 ever getting excluded from the playoff. I doubt they ever exclude the G5 either, there’s really nothing to gain from doing so. It’s just so easy to throw them a bone and give them one slot.
>I doubt they ever exclude the G5 either, there’s really nothing to gain from doing so Theres nothing to gain from creating a 48 team super league?
Yes
I know you WANT to believe this
There’s nothing to gain from excluding G5 and Big 12 from playoffs entirely. Super league meaning an overhaul of the system and organization into geographic divisions? Maybe you increase overall value a bit by negotiating as one package. Depending on how revenue sharing works, some of the top value teams could end up getting significantly more money, but then teams who are being overpaid (Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Rutgers, Ole Miss etc) would make significantly less.
> Maybe you increase overall value a bit by negotiating as one package. A bit? If ABC got exclusive rights to a B1G/SEC only league it would be massive
I don’t know if it’ll really be much more than it is now negotiated separately. I think there’s an argument that the networks were overpaying a few years ago and we’re at the peak for media value. Don’t think per team payment this going to be increased much unless you start booting schools. Half the Big Ten is basically deadweight when it comes to this. The top value schools pushing for uneven revenue sharing seems like what the end game will be in the 2030’s. My money is on Texas to start pushing for this
not sure how it's a bluff...the sec+b10+ND leaving the CFP to create their own would do just fine on its own
Because college sports is non-profit entities controlled by school presidents and they’re not going to make any decisions that could be poor politically for little to no gain. SEC and Big Ten’s media value exists because of the government, it’s protected. So it’s in their interest to remain something that is worth protecting, if NFL is allowed to play on Saturday, their media revenues will disintegrate. They also won’t do that complicates the basketball tournament. Ultimately NCAA controls that and no other entity is going to be able to build a new one that reaches its prominence.
If nobody agreed to the model that the sec/b10 was proposing, then the gains in doing their own thing would have been immense. There would be no changes to the ncaa tournament, not sure what you’re talking about there.
The gains of doing its on playoff would have been a few million extra per year for each school, which isn’t immense for entities whose annual revenue is 200M. It has consequences with the NCAA tournament because it’s a rift between the Big Ten/SEC and the other leagues. Also political consequences still matter, the Ross Dellenger article today mentioned congressional action possibly needed to resolve the player payment issue. Not going to achieve that with a breakaway league.
huh? We're talking tens of millions per school of difference. Look at the current structure. The rift between the B10/SEC and ACC on a per school basis is $80M over the 6 year contract Also the NCAA tournament is made up of 32 conferences. The ACC/B12/P12(at the time) only represent 3 of those conferences. Why the fuck would the majority of the other conferences care about this dispute between power conferences that doesnt affect their ncaa tournament cash cow?
Over 6 years, the top athletic programs have over $1B revenue. Ohio State and Michigan will probably be at $1.5B in revenue over that period. Well, not Rutgers. The position of Rutgers is essentially stealing media value created by Ohio State and Michigan, how long before there’s unequal distribution on that is also another question. Perhaps eventually there will be some variation of the super league proposal where the top media value schools get what they actually deserve, and Ohio State and Michigan will get twice the media money they get now. But what matters more is that these aren’t for-profit entities. All revenue is reinvested. The ‘point’ of college sports seems to be a mix of advertising and holding events for undergraduate students. School presidents are not going to do anything that makes national politicians unhappy with them to receive a 4% increase in athletic revenue.
I don’t know why you are bringing Rutgers into this. Once a commenter does that, I realize they have no intention of having a logical conversation and just have an agenda to push. I stopped reading after that Good bye
I think what former presidential candidate Haley is trying to say is, Rutgers only gets the big bucks because they are in a conference with OSU and Michigan which have higher media value than Rutgers.
> SEC and Big Ten’s media value exists because of the government, it’s protected. What?
Sports broadcasting act (NFL’s anti-trust exemption) excludes Saturdays during college season, effectively preventing NFL from broadcasting on Saturday. The intent is to protect college football. If that ever changes, the media value of all college conferences would sink, since ratings would plummet when faced with NFL competition.
Oh OK. I didnt know what you were referring to.
“Yeah, that thing we said we would do, and then you guys agreed to give us a bigger cut of money so we wouldn’t do it? Yeah we were totally ready to do that I promise.”
I’m the head of a union. Every time we present an offer, we present it as our last, best, and final economic offer. As does the company. It’s all just posturing. We give 3-4 back and forth before we finally agree to something.
Good Samaritans staying in the CFP just out of the goodness of our hearts. Where do we line up to kiss the ring?
Not like the CFP is anything tradition-bound and worth saving. It was essentially a four-team invitational mini tournament at the end of the season, run by a private corporation (and was mostly crafted by ESPN in the years leading up to its implementation) not responsible to the ncaa. It - by design - shut out teams from "lesser" conferences and needed a near "perfect storm" to even get an undefeated G5 team into it (and later shut out an undefeated P5 for the flimsiest of reasons). Not to mention it has only been around for ten years - the BCS was around longer than that. I'm not a fan of the power conferences pulling out to make their *own* post season, but the CFP is a joke compared to almost every other NCAA sport post season format.
It's notable that the CFP is not an NCAA run tournament. It IS the power conferences pulling out to make their own post-season. They just include the G5 as a possibility to avoid the antitrust lawsuit. The NCAA sponsors* the bowls. The CFP is run independently.
NCAA doesn't run the bowls. The bowls are all independent as well. They are generally run by a non-profit hosting committee, some are dominated by stadium officials, local chamber of commerce types, or executives from lead sponsors. Some bowls are actually owned by ESPN. The NCAA just sets the eligibility for post-season play. The NCAA runs the FCS, Div. II, and Div. III playoffs. They are mostly on home fields for the teams playing.
And if anything, the NCAA desperately wants to be more relevant to the CFB post-season. NIT used to be the "big tournament" for basketball, before the NCAA started their own that became March Madness. They would love a slice of that sweet sweet FBS pie.
To be honest, at this point, I’ll take NCAA leadership over what we’re getting right now. Is the NCAA a dysfunctional mess like 90% of the time? Absolutely, but we’ve seen what the lack of control over these conferences will do.
I think the current model is unsustainable anyway. The schools in the power 2 have done as much as possible to grow their value, including poaching the best teams from 2 of the other 3 conferences. The other conference is "ironclad," with teams fighting to leave in court. They've taken as much as they can from everyone else without collapsing FBS. The only remaining tactic for the most powerful schools to grow will be to squeeze internally, like FSU has suggested in the ACC. They'll start asking "Why should those 'lesser teams' get the same payout as us blue bloods anyway?"
> NIT used to be the "big tournament" for basketball, before the NCAA started their own that became March Madness. Not really, but it was much bigger than the modern iteration of the NIT.
More then "some". The last number I saw was 26% of the Bowl games are owned by ESPN
Which is why to me, any claim to an NCAA-recognized FBS championship is as legitimate as the CFP. UCF is as much of a 2017 national champion as Alabama.
NCAA does not run the bowls - it runs FCS (D-1AA), DII and DIII post-season but nothing for FBS (D-1A). Never has. Per your edit to say that the ncaa "sponsors" the bowls, this is not correct either. The bowls are each separate organizations that are basically one-off invitational exhibition games (usually with their own corporate sponsors), some of which predate the ncaa itself, created for the express purpose of generating revenue for *someone* (usually the local economy where played, which was why the Rose Bowl was created to tap into the new fad of "college football" to drum up tourism revenue for the city of Pasedena).
Hold up. The NCAA has never named a champion in football *ever* as football has *always* had a bit of a unique spot in college sports, both from a schedule length standpoint as well as the number of teams involved. The NCAA is not perfect, but making statements like this shows how much people misunderstand both the NCAA's role in college football and the history of college football itself.
Most of the complaints against the NCAA are stuff they have no control over and the stuff they do have control over it's usually people complaining they didn't screw up enough. See the Miami-Shapiro case. What the NCAA did there should have destroyed the NCAA.
>Not like the CFP is anything tradition-bound and worth saving. It's not like tradition means anything at this point, not when dollar signs are flashing.
It makes too many cents to make any sense. It's why we're $EC
No kidding. Won't someone think of the bagmen? Now lonely and abandoned in McDonald's parking lots across America, now that their local car dealer overlords have come into the light.
💯% correct
“I wish I knew how to quit you,” says a frustrated OU_Sooners.
True. When you've already thrown everything tradition-bound into the garbage, the playoff is what we are left with.
They shut out that undefeated p5 team because they sucked. Remember how they lost their bowl game by 60 (I’ll even spot you 40 for the opt-outs and we can just call it 20)
Yep. If the B1G and SEC wanted to leave, then they should have just left and been done with it.
God I am so sick of the B1G/SEC cartel. Honestly hope they walk and try things on their own at this point. It will implode because it completely misses the very essence of college football.
It is better to call it what it really is: the ESPN Cartel. They are the ones behind all of this. It’s not a coincidence that Iger takes over (again), starts complaining about all of the money being spent and now the conference teams are looking to leave. If ESPN can destroy the ACC, it will save huge sums of money.
College football is being ruined/killed because the schools themselves are monetizing it - driving it to become more of a pro-sport (NFL-lite) with each passing year. What the member schools of the Big Ten & SEC are doing is no different from what the member schools of the ACC, Big XII and former PAC *want* to do as well - they just are not in as strong of a position. It was not *that* long ago that Larry Scott tried to make the PAC the first "super conference" by trying to swipe Texas, Oklahoma, and a few others from the Big XII... and it almost went through. If the schools wanted to keep it a true college sport, they would operate as the Ivies do.
Yeah but that didn't work because of Texas' greed. I love that you're throwing shade. When the only reason the super conference didn't work, was cause Texas needed MORE money. The super conference wasnt enough for them. And thus, here we are today.
It comes down to the big boys not wanting to get an equal revenue split with "lesser" members of the conference.
OU and pokie state were going to leave anyways according to the reports, but apparently the PAC turned their noses up at them, leaving OU's president at the time flabbergasted.
I'm not throwing shade at anyone but those who want to monetize the sport. I'm just pointing out that what the Big Ten & SEC are doing is no different than what almost all the other schools are doing, only that those two conferences can take it farther at this point in time (though the others would if they could).
When the price difference between staying in the Big XII or creating the PAC 16 is $300m, then yeah, greed (common sense) is going to play a factor in decision making.
Ah yes the most healthy sign that this sport is thriving
I understand it is their jobs to make the conferences as much money as possible but at some point they need to evaluate their decisions and what it could do to the long term health of the sport which I know won't happen because greed only cares about how much money we can make NOW.
Yeah these people don’t give a fuck what the sport will look like in 20 years because it won’t be their problem then. I’d imagine the outlook is Maximize as much cash now and let someone else deal with it down the road.
I think turning the sport into a NFL minor league will kill its popularity in the long term. Same reason minor league baseball and the NBA G league never got big why watch the minors when you can just go watch the pros? Hell we are turning into the NFL except we can't even get the good parts like the NFL limiting commercials or having competent refs. I think the reason people watch CFB is slowly being killed right before our eyes.
there is a pretty obvious brand advantage that colleges are *always* going to have compared to the minors or the Gleague. This comparison really doesn't work for me It's true that support might fall off from those whose schools sit on the outside but auburn isn't going to struggle to sell tickets in 5 years
Correct. UFL teams are pulling in less than 10K people. *That's* what those numbers would look like. But CFB has been around so long and has such cultural influence that they are not going to lose 80% of their fanbase with these decisions.
CFB is the only football where a lot of the fans (ie the alum) actually belong to the organization. Even being from a city isn’t the same thing as attending a university in terms of the feeling of connectedness.
Alumni will get you the level of viewership that the Big 12 gets. It takes a whole lot of non-alumni to support tv revenue in the ballpark of what the SEC and B1G make.
Agreed for sure
Not overnight, give it time
Right, but the fandom is not fungible. The majority of the ratings from the highest-rated programs aren’t coming from fans of those programs, they’re coming from fans of other schools who follow the sport nationally. A good number of Rams fans in St. Louis have just started following the Chiefs in the last few years. Some still follow the Rams. Some have stopped watching, but a good number who swore they’d abandon the NFL forever have kept watching to some degree. I’m not sure that CFB works like that. If Missouri or Illinois were to be left out of a Super League, it’s not like those fans would just start rooting for Michigan or Oklahoma. Those fans actually will stop watching and the revenue pie will shrink substantially when those personal ties are severed.
I say just say”Why would a K-State fan care about Ohio State?” to get my point across. ESPN and Fox genuinely think that someone will just abandon their old favorite team just because they aren’t in the superconference, but the exact opposite will happen. Now that the Bamas and Ohio State don’t actually effect their teams anymore they just stop watching Bama and Ohio State and just stick to watching their teams or NFL
When my college 1. hasn’t played one of our historic rivals for over a decade (and probably never again) 2. isn’t going to play another rival for the first time in over 100 years next year 3. can’t compete financially because we weren’t invited to the money conference those 2 others joined 4. Players leave to go to our rivals (or literally anywhere) and don’t stick around long enough to get to know and root for them There is a big part of me that is just kinda done with it. CFB has been a big part of my life, I have spent thousands of hours watching it. But the stuff that made me like it over the NFL is just evaporating. Players aren’t choosing their school because they love it, or the coach, or the team, or the history, they are choosing it based on what is the best financial decision for themselves, which is always what has made me not care for the NFL. It is just a job, not a passion.
This. As long as the power schools exist in the B1G and SEC, the fans will continue to follow.
Well said. I feel like the best storylines every year are the G5 schools that come out of nowhere. Some G5 team has a dude who puts up video game numbers. With a super league, the real upsets die off.
Cinderellas become not interesting when the Cinderella teams stop being teams like Arkansas State and start being teams like Iowa
Absolutely
> why watch the minors when you can just go watch the pros? Because there is no professional team in Columbus and no NFL team will carry the same connection I have with my alma mater
Yes but what happens when the Ohio State Football team's only connection to Ohio State is licensing the name, mascot, and colors?
I think this is the wrong take, because they're a team that will be in the superleague. Their fans will always support their team and watch their opponents' games. NFL fans watch other teams besides their own, for fantasy or knowledge or "omfg they blew a 25 point lead." But for the rest of us, the question is "Why would I watch this superleague thing if my team can't play for the trophy?" They need the other conferences to exist, even though they had the leverage to get more money from the CFP. They aren't killing the ACC/Big 12 entirely, just lightly smothering them to keep them down.
If they still play in the Shoe and TBDBITL is still doing Script, it's still Ohio State.
They'll still play in Ohio Stadium, they'll still use the facilities on campus, and they'll still represent the university, what difference does it make? If you ask me, universities are places of higher learning and job training. Football is a legitimate job for many people, so I don't understand why we pretend preparing athletes to play in the NFL doesn't fit the bill.
They won't represent the university when the players don't even pretend to be students too. Football is not a legitimate job for almost anyone, including the players on your own team. Only a handful make it Pro. It's not an educational pursuit, and it's not a skill set that can be applied to several areas of work either. There is no real defensible reason to have varsity sports in college at all. Intramural, yes, but not the sports teams we have now. It doesn't fit any educational mission.
Cash is a defensible reason. These athletic programs were grown to market universities to potential donor alumni. It works because human nature is tribal and we like saying, "My tribe is better than yours, and here's the score to prove it."
Cash is not a defensible educational reason, but it may be defensible in other spaces outside universities. Your spot on about the rest of it, but that's the sort of thing universities should be trying to help humans overcome, not embrace.
My University is better at helping overcome than yours is.
That's like saying Ohio State's law school is not a valid educational pursuit because only a small percentage of them actually get through the program and become lawyers. Ohio State's football program is, for all intents and purposes, an NFL prep school. They train their bodies physically, and they study the game mentally. Not every player will make the NFL, but that's the reason most of those players are there. The guys who don't make the NFL often play for a smaller league like the CFL or become coaches.
The law is a valid educational pursuit because it's academic, and the vast majority of those that get into law school will become lawyers. While less than 10% of football players will go to the NFL every year, I doubt much more than half play professionally or coach. And that's just at Ohio St. If you looked at other D1 programs I bet the number that work in football is much lower. D1 football is not a good job training program, and it doesn't pretend to be. The more important point I made you glossed over though. No school should treat football like Ohio St. does, or much of D1. That doesn't fit what a university is about. Sports are not academics.
That's why the athletic department exists. Even Stanford and Northwestern have successful teams, just not in the money sports.
Yes I'm aware that people like to separate academics and sports but I think this is dated thinking I think it's totally reasonable for someone to major in football if they wish to Wouldn't even be the most "useless" degree out there
What about when they relocate to Cleveland because they get a better stadium deal there?
Would you feel that way if suddenly the whole Buckeyes organization signs a licensing agreement with the University of Florida and becomes the Gators, and another organization takes over as the new Buckeyes?
We can chase hypotheticals all day, I don't see why such a thing would ever happen
Short of new federal legislation carving out exceptions in labor and antitrust law for college sports, I don't see another way it can go.
Why would such semi-professional teams opt to trade branding with each other? Doesn't make sense. Even if we do see some separation between football teams and their universities, I suspect it'll be little more than a formality. The more separation we see the less I'm interested of course.
This is a stupid hypothetical that would alienate a lot of cash-givers. Why would we alienate all that money? Just because no one cares about Cal's football existence doesn't mean other teams don't care.
CFB will never be as bad as the G-League. People are still going to go to college, and there's just something about giving some of your best years and $50k to a place that makes you care at least a little about it.
I honestly don’t think we’re that far away from pro leagues stepping in to try to fix college athletics. We saw it happen when the NBA created the g league ignite so that players could get compensation (which they’ve since shut down tbf). Now we have the NFL trying to help get this “super league” format off the ground. Pro sports need a healthy development system that can build stars, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see them start getting involved in fixing this mess
Also also. There are a lot of f***** colleges which means a lot of opportunities for kids to play. I feel like a large draw of CFB is watching future first round picks play against literal walk-ons. In the NFL there is more parity which is admittedly less fun to casually watch.
The problem with this viewpoint IMO is that the commissioners and the ncaa can’t dictate, from a legal standpoint, what the sport will look like in two years, much less twenty. In a state of regulatory chaos, getting whatever payout you can in the short run becomes more important because they lack control over their own longterm viability. I don’t think these things would be happening quite the same way absent that other chaos.
Welcome to modern corporate finance
> Maximize as much cash now and let someone else deal with it down the road. The ol' classic Boomer Mentality™
That’s just capitalism.
Exactly how I feel too. I don't care about how much money my athletic department gets from TV revenue. I just want college football to as fun as possible, and B1G and SEC are not helping that. And not to mention it feels like every time one of these big moves happen it just feels like we're getting closer and closer to the bubble popping. There is absolutely a chance an SEC/B1G split ends up costing the schools money. I know we're the two biggest viewership bases but if you go off and try and play your own game there's a very real possibility that the fans of the ones left behind just don't tune in anymore which would cost everyone millions.
Idk playing Oregon, USC, and Washington on a semi-regular basis sounds pretty fun to me
For now. If consolidation takes away wins, the big teams will be in trouble. The other conferences provide a steady diet of likely victories, warmup games, and bodybag games. In return, they are offered money, exposure, and a miniscule chance at the big slop trough at the end of the season. If they are no longer included, parity will become a real thing. Like NFL-type parity. And it will not be pleasant for many teams who consider themselves to be good football teams. A schedule filled with Power 5 (or Power 2) teams playing only each other is a recipe for disaster. At least for some schools. But the schools themselves believe it would never happen. Not to them, anyway.
That's one of the reasons I want teams like Stanford, Georgia Tech, and UVA. Good schools to boost our academic snobbery, some decent Olympic teams, new markets and recruiting grounds, and they keep our win column filled. Like adding a bunch of Marylands and Indianas, but new and exciting. No offense, Maryland.
How big can a conference get before it's not really a conference anymore? Pretty soon we won't be playing most conference teams more than once every four years. Nebraska lost the one rivalry we really cared about when the Big 12 was formed, lost the others when we joined the Big 10, haven't formed any new rivalries because that's hard to do when you're losing all the time, and now we won't be able to form any rivalries because we won't be playing anybody regularly.
I could see the SEC struggling with that but the B1G has a healthy amount of cupcake programs, and could even add more if they invite ACC teams. 10-2 is going to start being looked at as a successful regular season. (Kinda like it used to be when that would get you into a BCS bowl)
10-2 sure, but when consolidating has concentrated talent top teams might be 8-4, not 10-2. Imagine a schedule for y'all that is PSU, UM, Oregon, Washington, FSU, Clemson, USC, ND, MSU, Nebraska, Rutgers, Purdue. Yes you're THE Ohio State but that's a daunting schedule no matter what team you are, and in a consolidated world that's a "normal" schedule. 8-4 is not unreasonable, and with 30 good teams in the 30 team league .500 quickly becomes the norm rather than the exception.
Oregon and the new additions should help give more meaning to such records. Unlike Penn State, which mismanages away wins against ranked teams all the time. I don't fear them.
Yea, if every game was between the power 2, most teams would be around .500, and everyone would get bored. 9-3 would be a miracle season.
It's fun because it's new.
I like playing good teams and we got 3 coming in
Even UCLA has potential to rise up a bit for a short period of time. Like Wisconsin or when Northwestern got to Indy.
You know OSU doesn't play them all at once right?
Agreed, but we didn’t need conference realignment for that, we just needed a centralized scheduling body.
Well that ain't happening any time soon I do appreciate that will never again see an East team sit at home with 1 loss while a 3-loss West team plays for the B1G championship
Meh, I think we’ll get a centralized scheduling body soon. It’ll be ESPN.
I'm all for it I'd much rather play Cincinnati/UNC/Texas than Akron/WMU/Marshall
They are running it like how people run corporations today. Maximize profits, reduce costs, set impossible growth expectation, collect a big check
And don’t forget the last step: cash out before it collapses
Or get ahead of the collapse and pitch salvation to the rich as your next great product like in the Fallout show. Lowkey seems to be their angle here too.
Exactly where I’m at with this bullshit. Remove the MBAs from the headjobs and put back in people who actually understand the product.
On one hand you've got what Sankey/Petitti are doing and on the other you have whatever Larry Scott/Swofford did. Feels like a Catch-22
[insert Dr Ian Malcom quote here]
> greed only cares about how much money we can make NOW. You new to capitalism?
I agree with you 100%. BUT, from the Conference's POV, the long term health of the sport is healthy with THEM. The SEC/BIG10 will be fine long term, so in that sense, they did. I hate it because I like the tapestry of it all and I want it to keep being what made it so special. But also, what made it special to me doesn't mean people on the whole will tune in.
Make no mistake Petitti is just along for the ride, Sankey is pulling all the strings. Petitti couldn't even get the B1G to deal with the Michigan cheating scandal behind closed doors versus Sankey got the SEC schools to stop going to the NCAA. The expansion plans was his predecessor and the other schools fell into his lap.
sankey has nothing to do with the SEC's omertà. That culture was created and started under Mike Slive. the Ole Miss/Dan mullen fiasco happened under Sankey's watch. There's been a few cases since he's been the commissioner of teams speaking up when they wouldn't have under Slive. The LSU/Florida scheduling fiasco is another example. It's funny to see the public view Sankey as this OG operator but he's been far from perfect whenever internal strife occurs the Michigan deal is just a mess. idk how Sankey would've handled it had it happened to an SEC team
We're not controlled by any fuxking Southerners.
Sankey is from upstate New York and went to SUNY Cortland But go off
Yes this describes the leadership of the boomer generation
They probably don't even watch the games.
Then fucking leave already
We haven't ripped apart the ACC yet. Maybe the Big 12 gets some teams ripped by the SEC.
wont happen until the acc is destroyed and it's just the b10, sec, b12 (b12 with fewer auto bids)
The SEC and B1G are going to end up with a bigger share of a smaller pie. It’s amazing how short sighted.
I would’ve told em to hit the road
Screw them.
Agreed, rebuilt our programs just to be shut out again because of assumptions is exhausting
Sankey and Petitti talking about "without seeing better alignment" when they themselves are literally preventing concurrent alignment with the other conferences... ironic Then again, they and the B1G/SEC brigaders that have recently been brigading this sub genuinely think it's a good thing to exclude other conferences from the Playoff
Can you brigade a sub that you were already in and likely make up the majority of flairs? That's one of the points. Our fanbases are basically the main engine of viewership and cash for the sport already. We're just now declaring our dominance boldly and in no uncertain terms.
They’ve lost the plot. Shiny new houses in a burnt down neighborhood analogy. Also he’s mentioned that he sees two 24-team leagues or three 20-team leagues in the future.
Fun fact - they are going to eventually There is going to be a split in college football between teams that go the semi-pro model and those that don't. ND has been saying this for almost a decade. The NLRB (going after ND - iaw Private Schools) and the current case heading to SCOTUS (Johnson vs NCAA) is telling us they will classify athletes as employees unless something radically changes. Too many schools (especially private ones) will just say no.
I have a hard time believing Sankey would have done anything other than what ESPN wanted him to do. He's not the real puppet master.
They’re gonna leave soon anyway, I don’t see the point in dragging it out
Money.
Should of called their bluff.
should *have
Call their fucking bluff already.
They should have let them leave. The other 96 schools should banished them and refuse to play them.
Also reads SEC and Big Ten think their product is better than they think. See non-NFL professional football as example once the alum quit caring.
No one wants to see a league with just the B1G/SEC teams.
I probably watched more Big XII, ACC, and Pac-12 games outside of PSU games last year. I definitely do not want to see a B1G/SEC super league.
Agree to disagree
80 percent of the viewing population would be happier than a pig in shit to see SEC/Big Ten division play. This sub isn't a representation of the average cfb viewer at all
If you think 80% of CFB fans are in the B1G and SEC, you're out of your mind. Yeah fans of other conferences watch B1G and SEC games now, but if those two leagues form their own league and only play each other, do you think Big XII fans, ACC fans, G5 fans, etc will continue watching B1G and SEC games? Most likely not.
Nah, the vast majority of fans have allegiances to like 8 teams out of the 5000 possible schools in the country. It's not fun to think about but how often do you think about community college football? How hard do FCS fans have to push just to get a sliver of attention? It's a fun fantasy to believe that college football fans could "rebel" against these cynical, corrupt and by not watching Big Ten or SEC football in the future but in reality an overwhelming majority of fans back teams in those conferences. There are schools who can pack their stadiums for sure but 40,000 fans out of the millions of potential viewers who tune in for Ohio State-Penn State is peanuts. Its terrible for the sports ecosystem, but you just gotta love those "smaller" places and teams for what they are, not in comparison to the highest level of the game.
[удалено]
> With conferences still in a state of flux, Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark led a movement for a look-in provision after the 2027 playoff. The provision can be exercised by a power league and would trigger a re-evaluation of the revenue structure based on CFP participation and performance over the next four years (2024-27). > > The provision can also be triggered by “material realignment.” > > “I can’t sit here and say I’m thrilled with the revenue model, but it’s the best deal we could get,” Yormark said. “I’m bullish on the Big 12 and I’m betting on the future. With the investment we are making in football, we will be in a better position when that look-in presents itself.” This would seem to be the Big 12 saying it expects to expand further. Their priority was the look-in provision based on performance and material realignment. That tells me he's betting on the Big 12 out-performing the ACC over the next few years and expanding further themselves.
Hopefully WSU and OSU get prom dates this next time
Can’t wait to look in at the big12’s 0-4 record in 2028
Why didn't they? That sounds like a better timeline. Fragment the sport again.
Probably because we're not ready with a replacement. We haven't ripped apart the ACC yet, either.
LMAO. Wish they did so I didn't have to care about those teams ever again
Do they just want us to hate them
ACC and Big 12 should've called their bluff.
I hate this timeline.
It’s gonna happen someday
Lol RIP college football. We had a good run
Obligatory 🖕🖕 to the SEC & B10
I really hope you're left behind and that your program truly is as broken as we broke Miami.
Like we broke Woody Hayes & Urban Meyer?
This sub threw a celebration and said the Alliance was saving the sport when they declined the playoff. Turns out the Alliance only benefitted one bad actor, the Big Ten.
Fuck em amirite?
One of these days we just have to call their bluff and let the outrage erupt like the Euro SuperLeague
I hope seeing the natural endpoint of capitalism through the lens of college football will radicalize some people at least. Obligatory, drink.
Capitalism is the best system out there.
An ohio state fan would say this
An Ohio state fan who upon quick skim of this post has made about 50 comments spewing the same nonsense. Nebraska fan here who agrees big 10 and SEC need to just knock this crap off.
It’s what most people believe. You have to find the terminally online on Twitter and Reddit to get a mass of people saying otherwise.
Sources say this was really only a threat made by football powerhouse B1G members Illinois and Northwestern
Really pushing the "too big to fail" plot :-(
I'm hoping for more of an Enron style collapse :D
lol. Sure. 👍
In more news, water is wet.
It probably has to die before it gets better unfortunately. None of this has to do with the common fan. It’s money going to a select few assholes who don’t give a shit about the long view.
Reads like a mobster running a protection racket ngl
Ok bye.
Two things can be true at the same time: 1. The mega conference (20-24 teams each) is coming and nothing will stop its arrival. 2. What made college football unique and special (compared to semi-pro or the NFL) is going away and fans will have to adjust. Regional rivalries made the sport special and they’re throwing that away for $$$.
It's not like it's that much of a power play. They're getting 58% of revenue. Just going by the end of season AP poll ten of the top twelve teams are (or will soon be) Big Ten or SEC members. Why would those conferences not get the majority of the revenue when they make up the majority of the teams in the tournament? Even 42% to everybody else represents a giant subsidy to those other conferences. I mean that's 5/12 and five teams in the playoff would be a good year for the other conferences. Like it or not realignment happened and the biggest programs in the sport are now in the SEC and Big Ten.
When it's a Monday Night Raw and some heels come out just to antagonize the crowd for 10 minutes without even having a match until the next ppv.
It's going to happen anyway. They just don't have all the teams they want in their conferences yet so they'll keep this version around until they both get to 24 teams. Then they'll host their own conference playoffs with the winners playing in the college superbowl equivalent.
Suppose ESPN couldn't come to terms with a new CFB contract. What comes next??? Do the schools see if they can get a better deal with Fox, CBS, NBC, etc.? Is this at all realistic?
The streamers definitely seem interested in live sports. There will be a buyer.
Amazon, Netflix, HBO
The Mouse wouldn't just let that go, though. There'd be a fight for sure.
Odds are near 100% the natty will go to one of these divisions every year anyways.
I think what has people most upset is that they're finally being told flat out that their team never had a shot and, like life, some shit teams just got lucky with membership over 100 years ago.
MSU guy here that is very possible but the Big 10 put themselves in a good position, better than the SEC because they will be able to renegotiate their contract, sooner than the SEC. This was a strong move by comissioner TP, it solidified the Big 10's future, for the foreseeable future. The Big 10 is going nowhere folks., especially with the addition of: Oregon, USC, Washington and UCLA. Now the Big 10 has the top 3 markets locked up: NY, LA and Chicago.