Conference Realignment

[Vespidae]

The only way that works is if all of FBS blows up and a new league/level is formed. That means dropping teams like Vandy, Mississippi State, Rutgers, Northwestern, and other lesser quality teams. I don’t see that happening. There are a ton of overrated teams in both the B1G and SEC that wouldn’t or shouldn’t be invited to that dance just because they’re already in the conference. There’s too much power in the hands of the guys in charge now for them to willingly consolidate.

No, that's not the ONLY way.

 

[Vespidae]

I’m not talking BGSU and Alcorn. If the 18-20 team SEC and BIG combine for a 36 -40 team league of “major college” football (which is the leading presumption of fans and media) you’ve dropped fans of schools like GT, VT, NCSU, most of the B12 and anything that’s left of the PAC.
If the goal is eyeballs and / or subscription, that alone cuts 1/2 of the potential audience.
Doesn’t seem like a sound path to what they’re trying to achieve in my mind...

Do a Pareto on the money and it is highly concentrated. It is highly likely most teams will shakeout.

 

[cpf2001]

Oh, some of you might like this:

If you hate what's happening to college football, here's the team to root for this season

With TV executives firmly in control of a sport that's fracturing more and more by the day, it's easy to be a jaded fan. And if you're one of those fans, you should be pulling for a school that just got left behind.

sports.yahoo.com

That’s the real trick, ain’t it? “If you hate what’s happening, root for this team” instead of “if you hate what’s happening, stop watching”.

I think both the Big 10 and SEC strategies have enormous “we burned the whole sport down just to stay on top of the ashes” risks. It was hidden some by the good-times-free-money-machine of billion dollar media companies getting sucked into their own fears of irrelevancy in the future, but is now alarmingly visible.

Or I’m overreacting, it wasn’t that long ago I thought the ACC had the worst of all possible media deals instead.

 

[BurdellJacket]

It will be curious to see how a program like Oregon State responds. The fact that just a few days ago their AD was banking on a ~$30M year media contract to pay the bills is now all of a sudden gone… Imagine if Tech finds itself the odd man out in a similar situation if the ACC implodes. I guess that’s why Cabrera and J Batt are paid the big bucks to worry about those things.

While FSU’s bluster may not amount to much, if they are successful and somehow figure out a way to void the GOR, the flood gates will open and I hope Tech has a plan to avoid being stuck on the outside looking in. For these reasons, I think the next couple years of Tech football are crucial for our brand and storied tradition.

That's a BIG "IF". If an elephant had wings, it would bust it's a$s every time it landed.

 

[stech81]

If the SEC want fan interest then they need uga, Auburn, LSU, Alabama, and UF play each other EVERY year and not schedule cupcakes on out of conference games.
But with their schedules they can have 8 teams with 8 or 9 wins and talk about how great they are each year. ( and ESPN believes them)

 

[forensicbuzz]

But don’t you think fans of Vandy, Mississippi state, Rutgers, and Northwestern think the same thing about us?
We criticize other teams but are we any better the last few years.
I’m not picking on you I like your posts but if you go back and look everyone feels their team is better.

I didn’t say anything about us.

 

[stech81]

I didn’t say anything about us.

I know I just think other teams think of us being weak.

 

[CEB]

Do a Pareto on the money and it is highly concentrated. It is highly likely most teams will shakeout.

Always has been. Difference now is there is a new pot of money that the blue bloods don’t want to split any longer.

Not arguing your point or their intent, I just foresee a major contraction in fans if you have a major contraction in teams

 

[Oldgoldandwhite]

I’d the SEC stays regional, their growth will eventually stagnate.

I agree. I think CFB in its entirety will stagnate. Attendance is almost maxed out by the traditional powers, Donations are probably capped. TV, with cord cutting, is maybe maxed, and the younger generation slowly going toward other sources of entertainment.

 

[roadkill]

You’re thinking things stay at the conference level. It won’t. There will be a Super Conference eventually. And it will be outside of the NCAA.

Agree. And while most regular-season college games don’t tend to approach NFL viewership numbers, the Championships do. To your point about quality matchups driving viewership - the CFP Semi’s ranged from 15.7M to 28.3M, and the Championship games from 17.3M to 33.9M (not surprisingly, last year’s uga vs. TCU matchup was the least compelling and least watched). Those are NFL-like numbers (average NFL regular season viewership was 16.7M).

A D1 super-conference with a 24-team playoff would capture a lot of eyeballs, and could also accommodate all teams in the remaining power conferences. Letting governance be outside of the NCAA would address a lot of issues as well.

 

[forensicbuzz]

I didn't say that. I said their strategy was to increase fan interest. There are multiple ways to do that, such as scheduling. The reality is that CFB is not as popular on the West Coast as it is elsewhere.

I understand. But all the talk around the SEC has been that they’re interested in owning their region.

 

[GoJacketsInRaleigh]

You’re thinking things stay at the conference level. It won’t. There will be a Super Conference eventually. And it will be outside of the NCAA.

OKay, let's say the SEC and B1G form two super conferences and everyone else is the equivalent of the Mountain West or Sun Belt right now making a tiny fraction of the money with basically zero chance to recruit the best players and compete.

I don't want to argue which teams get in and which ones don't but let's just pick the biggest schools and brands.

ESPN Division:
Alabama
Georgia
Tennessee
LSU
Texas
Florida
Texas A&M
Auburn
Arkansas
Ole Miss
Oklahoma
Kentucky
South Carolina
Mississippi St.
Vanderbilt
Missouri

Fox Division:
Ohio State
Michigan
Penn State
Michigan State
USC
Oregon
UCLA
Washington
Nebraska
Wisconsin
Iowa
Illinois
Indiana
Northwestern
Minnesota
Maryland
Purdue
Rutgers
Notre Dame
Miami

Will be included and could go either way:
Clemson
FSU
UVA
UNC


Let's just assume the TV/money providers do not pay for Georgia Tech, Louisville, Va. Tech, NC State, Pittsburgh, Oklahoma State, TCU, Baylor, Texas Tech, or anyone else from the B12 or ACC to be included. The above 40 teams are the top division and making a gazillion dollars a year and control all playoffs. Everyone else makes $10M-$20M a year and can't compete with them. I know my interest in the above will be basically non-existent. I have zero ties to any of those schools. I'd rather carve my football watching out for the NFL in that scenario and find something better to do with my Saturday's. And if a conference formed with GT, Louisville, VT, NCSU, WF, Duke and even included passionate sports schools like App. State, JMU, WVU, UCF or whatever other combination of nonsense you want to cobble together, I'd still rather watch & attend that because of my ties to Georgia Tech. I would have zero interest in watching a $10M/Yr Georgia Tech play a $75M/Yr Georgia. I already basically have no interest in watching the current GT/UGA football games because there's nothing fair about them at all. It is what it is. TV will destroy college football over the next 10 years as they destroy all these rivalries and men aged 40-60 care less and less and people aged 20-40 already care less about college sports.

 

[Vespidae]

Always has been. Difference now is there is a new pot of money that the blue bloods don’t want to split any longer.

Not arguing your point or their intent, I just foresee a major contraction in fans if you have a major contraction in teams

The NFL experience has proven just the opposite. Fan bevavior is being changed.

 

[cpf2001]

Do a Pareto on the money and it is highly concentrated. It is highly likely most teams will shakeout.

I would love to see numbers on second order analysis of eyeballs and such. Here I'm purely speculating and don't know how well the conferences or networks themselves even have a handle on this, but I've been thinking about a few different sort of big game types, maybe well-exemplified by: Tenn(1)-UGA(3) in 2022, Alabama(5)-Ole Miss(nr) from 2022, or Stanford(14)-Oregon(1) from 2012. The UGA/Tenn game did 13.1M viewers, the Alabama/Miss game did 8.7 Milion viewers in 2022, the 2012 Stanford(14)/Oregon(1) game did 8.3M viewers. So that Stanford-Oregon game did very respectably, but mid-level Alabama games these days can do as well or better today. And lets handwave away differences in cable subscriber counts and such too for now.

Question is just where those viewers come from? The UGA, Tenn, Bama, Miss, fan bases are all bigger than Stanford's, and all likely bigger than Oregon's IMO too, so there's definitely a lot of secondary interest in these numbers, but that holds for the SEC games too, since it's not every SEC game or even every Bama game putting up those numbers.

How many are coming from midwestern/southeastern fans checking out Oregon or Bama or whatever other teams are just highly ranked any given year?

How many are coming from casual CFB-as-a-sport fans outside of the SEC/Big 10 footprints?

How many are coming from fans of specific non-SEC/Big 10 CFB teams?

The problem with a Pareto approach on revenue without taking those factors into consideration is that if UGA/Bama are bringing in 80% of viewers today because they've been the best for the last decade or two but a big portion of the viewers are more fans of the sport than the SEC itself, then it's possible to both:

1. keep the 20% of teams that bring in the top 80% of revenue
2. shrink top-line revenue to be significantly lower than 80% of the pre-shakeup number

And the risk is particularly acute right now because everyone in the country, geographically is currently paying for college football channels on cable. But that could change quite dramatically in the next 10-20 years.

 

[GoJacketsInRaleigh]

The NFL experience has proven just the opposite. Fan bevavior is being changed.

NBA-Lite and AAA baseball have gazillions of fans and games splattered all over TV!!!! What makes you think NFL-lite will when the top 30% alienate everyone else? How much do you think those "factory" fans are going to care when their team is 4-8 every year because they don't get 6 free 48-7 wins every season and now they are basically the Arizona Cardinals?

 

[takethepoints]

That’s the real trick, ain’t it? “If you hate what’s happening, root for this team” instead of “if you hate what’s happening, stop watching”.

I think both the Big 10 and SEC strategies have enormous “we burned the whole sport down just to stay on top of the ashes” risks. It was hidden some by the good-times-free-money-machine of billion dollar media companies getting sucked into their own fears of irrelevancy in the future, but is now alarmingly visible.

Or I’m overreacting, it wasn’t that long ago I thought the ACC had the worst of all possible media deals instead.

I remember that 2000 OSU team. Erikson got the school, just like Miami, to let in anybody he wanted. And he got the most athletically talented team I've ever seen. Those guys were - shall we say? - academically challenged, but, Laws, could they play football. I watched the Civil War that year and it was like watching a match between chickens and wolverines.

 

[Vespidae]

I understand. But all the talk around the SEC has been that they’re interested in owning their region.

And why not? Classic marketing strategy. But would the SEC welcome Notre Dame? You bet.

The most common view I'm familiar with is the formation of the Super Conference. There was an NCAA study group on that and Sankey has said conferences can do it far faster than the NCAA.

 

[forensicbuzz]

The NFL experience has proven just the opposite. Fan bevavior is being changed.

The NFL fan and the CFB fan are nothing alike. Their behavior and what drives them are not the same.

College football fans are not going to change allegiances just because there’s a super-conference. When their team loses the chance to even be an also-ran, they’ll stop watching. Not everyone will, but a huge portion will.

And why not? Classic marketing strategy. But would the SEC welcome Notre Dame? You bet.

The most common view I'm familiar with is the formation of the Super Conference. There was an NCAA study group on that and Sankey has said conferences can do it far faster than the NCAA.

SEC has to expand beyond the SE to continue growing. People in other regions won’t care about SEC if it’s not relevant to them. CFB fans are fans of their schools first and foremost.

 

[UgaBlows]

Then I would think that the Institute would do anything necessary to avoid a bankruptcy. Losing that chunk of real estate in the middle of campus would be an embarrassment...

We own what $280 million? They just raised 200 million to renovate the Edge center, I think the GT faithful would raise the funds if it ever came down to that

 

[Vespidae]

The NFL fan and the CFB fan are nothing alike. Their behavior and what drives them are not the same.

College football fans are not going to change allegiances just because there’s a super-conference. When their team loses the chance to even be an also-ran, they’ll stop watching. Not everyone will, but a huge portion will.

SEC has to expand beyond the SE to continue growing. People in other regions won’t care about SEC if it’s not relevant to them. CFB fans are fans of their schools first and foremost.

Neither of your points are true. The NFL shook out in the 1950's and has a limited number of teams. It has done nothing but grow.

As to team allegiances, that's also false. Since the new playoff system, most teams are fully eliminated but fan's adjusted by having two favorites now. Studies confirm this as does viewership.