Conference Realignment

[GTJake]

Bowl Games are now basically meaningless exhibition games. This year for GT the Bowl Game meant a lot as we have been a very bad team for several years and saw real improvement this year!

If we had been to Bowl Games 10 straight year's the Gasparella Bowl would not have been much of a thrill! It was great this year.

Our players haven't experienced a Bowl Game. New experience and it seemed fun. What is of interest to FSU or Georgia players this year as both expected to be in the CFP. The ones who can are moving on to the next phase of life. Logical but it does suck for fans!

I agree with this as far as the Top Tier of bowl games with players opting out on teams not making the CFP. If the situation leading up to the once mighty Orange Bowl doesn't catch the NCAA's attention nothing will. Expand the CFP to 16 or even 32 teams, make it like March Madness. Go back to 10-11 regular season games and regular season Champions and no Conference Championship games.
As far as the mid-to-lower tier Bowls, I watched a lot of these games, the teams show up to play and it was fun to watch. For me, they were more entertaining to watch then some of the recent opt-out games ...

 

[billga99]

I agree with this as far as the Top Tier of bowl games with players opting out on teams not making the CFP. If the situation leading up to the once mighty Orange Bowl doesn't catch the NCAA's attention nothing will. Expand the CFP to 16 or even 32 teams, make it like March Madness. Go back to 10-11 regular season games and regular season Champions and no Conference Championship games.
As far as the mid-to-lower tier Bowls, I watched a lot of these games, the teams show up to play and it was fun to watch. For me, they were more entertaining to watch then some of the recent opt-out games ...

Teams will not want to cutback games since they would lose too much revenue. Same problem as pro sports. But it could be a lot of games for seeds 5 thru 12. It could be 12 regular season, 1 possibly for conference championship and up to 4 for playoffs. That becomes a 17 game schedule.

 

[orientalnc]

The current raft of bowl games is of almost no interest to me. Partly because I care almost nothing for either team, but also because whichever team wins is of no consequence. I watched our game and planned to watch the NC State game before my son & his family arrived earlier than we expected. Given all the opt outs, whatever interest I might have had simply faded away. An expanded playoff would likely fix that problem. A 32 team playoff would add only one weekend to the 2024 CFP. And the 31 games would all matter to most fans.

 

[GTJake]

Teams will not want to cutback games since they would lose too much revenue. Same problem as pro sports. But it could be a lot of games for seeds 5 thru 12. It could be 12 regular season, 1 possibly for conference championship and up to 4 for playoffs. That becomes a 17 game schedule.

Good point on the loss of revenue, but how else are you going to make these games relevant. It'll be interesting to see what the TV ratings end up. In terms of revenue if they drastically drop, that'll get the Media Execs attention.

 

[stinger78]

To me the issue is threefold:
First, the bowls have been "NITized" (and the coming expansion of the "playoff" will do it even more). The NIT used to be a prestigious tournament for great teams that were not conference champs. Now it's an afterthought. The expansion of the NCAAT has left the NIT with teams considered to be underachievers - the focus is on the NC and the NIT doesn't carry that. It's the same with bowls. The proliferation of minor bowls hasn't helped that image.
Second, the binary thinking that you have to win the NC to have a successful season has spread far and wide - far further than it ought to. Not long ago, the teams that considered a season less than satisfactory w/o an NC numbered only about 6-8. (If this is truly the case, then only one team can have a satisfactory season and that's bogus). Now days it seems to have spread to most P5 teams, and they often give up on the chance to put a cherry on top of their season with a bowl victory. Our bowl this year was important (to us and UCF) because we all had the intermediate goal of the winning season that would represent solid progress out of the wilderness. Will we feel the same next year? I dunno.
Third, athletics has developed a me-first attitude, really from top to bottom. Values like responsibility, loyalty, esprit decor, doing one's best, etc. have fallen below what I might make at the next stop. We see football as entertainment. What if a band realized that they weren't going to be the top-attended concert band in a given year and half the band just refused to show for their final concert or two of that year - even though their fans were paying top dollar for their tickets? How long would that band's following last beyond just the hard-core?

 

[slugboy]

Pop Tart bowl looked cool.

Sadly, the Wasabi Bowl has no wasabi

 

[orientalnc]

Third, athletics has developed a me-first attitude, really from top to bottom. Values like responsibility, loyalty, esprit decor, doing one's best, etc. have fallen below what I might make at the next stop. We see football as entertainment. What if a band realized that they weren't going to be the top-attended concert band in a given year and half the band just refused to show for their final concert or two of that year - even though their fans were paying top dollar for their tickets? How long would that band's following last beyond just the hard-core?

Amen to this. The firing of Jimbo Fisher is a perfect example. A&M has never had much more success in football than they enjoyed while Jimbo was their coach. But the attitude among their boosters was that they should be in the picture for the NC. The last coach to have an undefeated season at A&M was Bear Bryant in 1956.

 

[orientalnc]

To me the issue is threefold:
First, the bowls have been "NITized" (and the coming expansion of the "playoff" will do it even more). The NIT used to be a prestigious tournament for great teams that were not conference champs. Now it's an afterthought. The expansion of the NCAAT has left the NIT with teams considered to be underachievers - the focus is on the NC and the NIT doesn't carry that. It's the same with bowls. The proliferation of minor bowls hasn't helped that image.

There are games today that I would definitely watch if they were part of the playoffs. But its going to be 60 degrees and sunny today in eastern NC. My two granddaughters are going to the beach with me and we're having lunch at El's Drive-in. El's was started in 1959 and it is pretty much unchanged after almost 65 years. The treat for these two girls will be genuine chocolate milk shakes. The shrimp burgers with locally caught shrimp are also good.

I will read about the games later.

 

[Vespidae]

Amen to this. The firing of Jimbo Fisher is a perfect example. A&M has never had much more success in football than they enjoyed while Jimbo was their coach. But the attitude among their boosters was that they should be in the picture for the NC. The last coach to have an undefeated season at A&M was Bear Bryant in 1956.

Jimbo, with a wpt of 63% was even less successful than his predecessor, Sumlin … who had a wpt of 69.3%.

TAMU has virtually unlimited resources and believes, passionately, that with their money, fanbase, and Texas recruits … they should be a Top 5 Power.

And they have believed that since 1936. It just never happens.

 

[stinger78]

Jimbo, with a wpt of 63% was even less successful than his predecessor, Sumlin … who had a wpt of 69.3%.

TAMU has virtually unlimited resources and believes, passionately, that with their money, fanbase, and Texas recruits … they should be a Top 5 Power.

And they have believed that since 1936. It just never happens.

They have to do it the UGAg way - throw academics to the wind. You see TAMU still retains the notion that they are a school as well, a shackle that UGAg liberated themselves from when they fired Richt (w/a 70%+ WO) and replaced him with Karby.

 

[yeti92]

They have to do it the UGAg way - throw academics to the wind. You see TAMU still retains the notion that they are a school as well, a shackle that UGAg liberated themselves from when they fired Richt (w/a 70%+ WO) and replaced him with Karby.

To be fair, those "shackles" under Richt were more like rubber bands.

 

[RonJohn]

They have to do it the UGAg way - throw academics to the wind. You see TAMU still retains the notion that they are a school as well, a shackle that UGAg liberated themselves from when they fired Richt (w/a 70%+ WO) and replaced him with Karby.

Jan Kemp would have said that they didn't have that shackle at least back to the 80s.

 

[stinger78]

Jan Kemp would have said that they didn't have that shackle at least back to the 80s.

I believe they reimposed some academic “rigor” after Jan Kemp and then Richt realized his thugs weren’t going to win championships and self-corrected a bit. It was his undoing. Enter Karby.

 

[roadkill]

Teams will not want to cutback games since they would lose too much revenue. Same problem as pro sports. But it could be a lot of games for seeds 5 thru 12. It could be 12 regular season, 1 possibly for conference championship and up to 4 for playoffs. That becomes a 17 game schedule.

As far as the revenue loss of an 11-game regular season is concerned, I don’t see it as a big deal. For one, the dropped game would likely be one of the rent-a-win, lower-watched OOC games that are relatively revenue-neutral to the P5 schools. Second, even the first-round playoff game in a field of 32 is likely to have a greater media audience share than a corresponding meaningless bowl game this year, and have corresponding greater revenue potential.

As @stinger78 mentioned, the already marginal popularity of the non-CFP bowls is diminished even more by the playoffs. An expanded playoff that includes more bowls can offset some of this, although it will depend on how many games are played at the higher-seeded team’s home stadium. There will still be exceptions like our Gasparilla Bowl this year, where the teams still had something to play for. Since ESPN owns most of the lower-tier bowls as well as the media rights to the CFP, it will be up to them to decide which properties will survive.

 

[forensicbuzz]

Teams will not want to cutback games since they would lose too much revenue. Same problem as pro sports. But it could be a lot of games for seeds 5 thru 12. It could be 12 regular season, 1 possibly for conference championship and up to 4 for playoffs. That becomes a 17 game schedule.

Drop the FBS game.

 

[slugboy]

Paywall $$ , but worth a read if you are a subscriber

How Conference USA survived realignment, rebuilt itself and reached a Fiesta Bowl

Over 11 days in 2021, CUSA dwindled from 14 members to five. Now, two years later, its finishing its arguably most successful calendar year.

theathletic.com

 

[Towaliga]

They have to do it the UGAg way - throw academics to the wind. You see TAMU still retains the notion that they are a school as well, a shackle that UGAg liberated themselves from when they fired Richt (w/a 70%+ WO) and replaced him with Karby.

This may have been addressed somewhere else, but I didn’t see it, so the mods can delete it if it’s repetitively redundant over and over again.
Per NCAA data, u(sic)ga’s Graduation Success Rate (GSR) for football players is dead last among:

1. NCAA schools in Georgia
2. The SEC (more than 30 points below the 2nd worst)
3. All P5 teams
4. and All FBS teams.

I will give them credit for the fact that out of 260 teams that play NCAA football at one level or another, they are not dead last. Their GSR is 259th.

 

[stinger 1957]

Something that I have felt has been important for CFB over the years is all the conversation that has gone on who is best, who belongs where etc. With this in mind does it make sense that we do away with conference divisions, conference championships and pick 12, 16, 20 teams for the playoff from the 60+/- or so teams across the country for the championship brackets? If so, maybe the best plan is to work ourselves towards that end, beginning with conference champions plus 8 and eventually expand the number and end conference championship games. This could eventually happen if we end up with one conference for major CFB which I see as a possibility down the road.

 

[iceeater1969]

As a place holder for the advertisers and what they think is worth paying big $ to tv guys:
Big bowls and playoff games.
ACC =1,
SEC =7,
Big 10 = 6

As a place holder for a deeper dive about the future of gt going to patriot conference / shrevport bowl or sniff big bowl country conference.

Since getting accn tv money gt alums continue to donate at the bottom feeder level in ACC.

When we go 7-5 next year ag as inst 11 teams that went to bowl this year, we need BATT get us to double so we are at least in middle. If 7-5, much easier 25 schedule, big increase in donations, being a part of ATL, we have a great chance of being very football relevant.

As a place holder for Prez and Batt
We had a famous singer ( Ludicrous) sing at pregame on a city street that ATL let us block off. The tv guys told Prez to get with it. Clearly doing his thing.

Place holder for alumns
Will we show ($) gt alumns want football?

 

[forensicbuzz]

Something that I have felt has been important for CFB over the years is all the conversation that has gone on who is best, who belongs where etc. With this in mind does it make sense that we do away with conference divisions, conference championships and pick 12, 16, 20 teams for the playoff from the 60+/- or so teams across the country for the championship brackets? If so, maybe the best plan is to work ourselves towards that end, beginning with conference champions plus 8 and eventually expand the number and end conference championship games. This could eventually happen if we end up with one conference for major CFB which I see as a possibility down the road.

Can you imagine scheduling if this happened? The original reason for conferences was scheduling.