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If I was the Big 10 I'd be looking at it as a "what does a league need to survive long-term" and I think geographical dispersion is an advantage. In thirty years, an SEC that's purely southeast+Texas seems to be a much less nationally-marketable product with a much lower potential population to...

A Big 10 that would be willing to take Oregon/Washington/Cal/Stanford seems like one that would be interested in GT if FSU shows a way to leave the ACC. I live in CA and honestly it often seems like the midwest Big 10 schools are more popular here than at least 3 of those 4!

Assuming the SEC wanted FSU (or any other ACC school)... That would be an interesting test of who holds the real power these days, the SEC or ESPN. When all the money was getting better all the time, it seemed like the SEC had all the power, and ESPN threw money at them to lock up more games...

Streaming apps are still pretty sports-unfriendly. I think this is going to be a big hurdle. Part is a blind spot: A lot of product managers at the companies making them aren’t exactly big sports fans. Part is “user friendliness”: instead of getting hit with a channel and commercials the...

The impact of a bigger playoff wouldn’t be the #12 team winning it all, but just the chances for more upsets helping out various top-8 teams. Like how the 4 seed almost beat the 1 seed last year, and the 3 seed knocked out the 2. And if you say “well they shouldn’t have been seeded like that”...

Another fun one was the 2005 Miami game which was especially sweet after the “just because we’re in your league now doesn’t mean you’re in ours” shirts and all. Defense and tactics win - great punting and I think they went for it on fourth several times when FGs would’ve helped them in the end.

True, I think if ESPN gets into big trouble they would go to the conferences and say something like “you can agree with us to cut this by X percent or you can take your chances getting anything close to that if we go bankrupt.” The ability of people to not pay contracts and eventually get away...

ESPN gets spun out of Disney and goes bankrupt CFB programs across the country drowning in debt without the TV money Gambling companies swoop in but in exchange for giving schools/conferences new $$$ broadcast deals they insist on more actual parity-encouraging measures The surprise anti-hero...

The conference system prevents other things that work well in US pro leagues too, like taxes on high spending going to revenue sharing programs, since the haves can operate much more freely from the have-nots.

Johnson @GT did far better than lower-level programs with similar schemes, what explains that other than investments of money+coaching+recruiting+PR? I don't see any reason to believe that he'd absolutely maxed out that ceiling when GT was falling so far behind everyone else money-wise. You...

Proposing a bill to give the NCAA oversight powers over NIL when they aren't exercising their oversight powers over schools/programs/coaches really isn't a good look motivation-wise. It's pitched in terms of "help the players" and "fairness" but in reality seems just like "put limits on players...

The arrogance of thinking GT was too good for Johnson while falling so far behind money- and facility-wise behind everyone else is certainly something special. Nobody was writing checks big enough to justify impatience with Johnson’s results, for whatever reason. If you believe some of the...

"What if Gailey's recruiting was on an ongoing upward trend" is a much more interesting what-if about Johnson than any sort of comparison of Johnson/Collins is, but it's also very hard to argue that Gailey's record deserved an extension - 1 season above 9 wins, a clear decline from the previous...

I think the ESPN agreement might turn out to be less bad than feared but I don’t see it ever being an advantage over other conferences. In any world where ESPN survives throughout the deal without bankruptcy and can afford to pay the ACC contract rates I gotta think they - or someone else -...

I'm about a decade older than you, so can't speak for pre-2000, but the "arguing for the sake of arguing" has been going on since at least the early 2000s. Just like the politics shows. Once you have a 24/7 channel to fill up but not that much actual *news* happening per hour, the bull****...

2004 @Clemson, Reggie Ball -> Calvin Johnson after the muffed punt snap. That whole fourth quarter was a tense shootout after a low scoring first three, GT kept cutting into the lead just to have Clemson push it back to 2 scores. A bunch of the fans around us left after Clemson got the ball...

There’s a list that brings back memories. What ended up going on with Threet transferring anyway? After Gailey’s struggles to develop any other QBs I was initially more optimistic about Threet than Nesbit in the class, coming in as more of a passer, but then only ever saw him as an early...

I don't disagree with any of this: We were ready for change, and it was a good time for Johnson to retire. But there were more recent successes and wins to play off for both immediate recruiting and enough talent to figure out how to beat the damn Citadel. But many many coaches could've done...

I think Collins was terrible, I think it's also just funny that here the transition-apologists are talking a LOT about how the changed roster needs means coming off a winning season with a couple of recent 9+ win seasons is actually "the hardest transition in college football" but aren't doing...

Would you rather have players who have been developed in a program that’s won recently, thst you’re gonna have to figure out how to best use, or players who win 3 games a year for four years (throwing out the Key results here). In normal circumstances I’m going with the former. Like how Johnson...