For the good of college football

[Vespidae]

Interesting.... wouldn’t it be something if all of these TV deals broke up college football and then all of these TV deals crumbled? Wow.
Honestly, this plays into my initial concern somewhat.... if there is a “superconference” taking up all the major broadcast air time, the likes of ESPN can buy “the rest” on the cheap and stick it all on streaming services. I think that’s ultimately the death knell of college football broadcast.... but looking in the bright side, maybe that’ll fill stadiums!

Wouldn't the conferences just create a "Saturday Ticket" package and market directly to cable tv and streaming services? I know Greg Sankey is studying the NFL as a model for how to increase exposure and revenue ... he's a big fan of marketing broadcast rights to multiple entities, not just one.

As to attendance, it's going to continue to decline. I think Tech (and many others) would be better off building a revenue model around a steady state attendance of 30,000 and really wow them with convenience, Game Day experience, and amenities. The days of full stadiums, other than big state schools in non-urban settings, is over.

 

[slugboy]

Wouldn't the conferences just create a "Saturday Ticket" package and market directly to cable tv and streaming services? I know Greg Sankey is studying the NFL as a model for how to increase exposure and revenue ... he's a big fan of marketing broadcast rights to multiple entities, not just one.

As to attendance, it's going to continue to decline. I think Tech (and many others) would be better off building a revenue model around a steady state attendance of 30,000 and really wow them with convenience, Game Day experience, and amenities. The days of full stadiums, other than big state schools in non-urban settings, is over.

I agree with this, and I think Stansbury probably agrees with everything but the 30k attendance (his success is probably tied to getting that number up). I'd also focus on getting people buying tech gear and making the licensing work like it does at other schools.

 

[Vespidae]

I agree with this, and I think Stansbury probably agrees with everything but the 30k attendance (his success is probably tied to getting that number up). I'd also focus on getting people buying tech gear and making the licensing work like it does at other schools.

Agreed on the merchandising.

As to attendance, prior to Covid, Tech's average attendance (reported) was 46,556 with a filled stadium capacity of 85%. (I don't think this is "actual" attendance, but the tickets actually sold ... and may include a lot of free, donated tickets that no one used.) I had the actual numbers at one time ... will see if I can dig them up. There are a lot of games where the attendance is <35,000 and in some cases, <31,000. It all depends on the opponent and Tech's record that year.

I recall Stansbury saying he wasn't worried about attendance as much as they used to, because fans have so many options ... so now, they look at a composite number that takes all the options in ... streaming, mobile, live, etc ... to see what fan engagement is. Probably makes sense.

The problem for sports is ... time. No one wants to spend 4-5 hours at a football game when they can stream it at home. My golf club is building a really nice 18 hole Par 3 course because many casual players don't want to spend 4.5 hours on the course ... they want to play in 2 hours, so this is the current trend in golf design. I think you'll see the same trend in many other sports and if football wanted to get more viewers, they would speed the game up. Some of them are just ridiculous in how much time they chew up.

Tech has a core group of 22,000 season ticket holders that they should be marketing to like crazy and trying to extract every dollar they can. If Collins goes 3-9 again, they will lose 10-15% of them.

College Football Attendance 5-Year Average For Every School

Why does attendance matter so much? For college football – far more than the pro sports – the ticket revenue and the money generated from having fans in the stands means everything to m…

collegefootballnews.com

 

[TooTall]

Agreed on the merchandising.

As to attendance, prior to Covid, Tech's average attendance (reported) was 46,556 with a filled stadium capacity of 85%. (I don't think this is "actual" attendance, but the tickets actually sold ... and may include a lot of free, donated tickets that no one used.) I had the actual numbers at one time ... will see if I can dig them up. There are a lot of games where the attendance is <35,000 and in some cases, <31,000. It all depends on the opponent and Tech's record that year.

I recall Stansbury saying he wasn't worried about attendance as much as they used to, because fans have so many options ... so now, they look at a composite number that takes all the options in ... streaming, mobile, live, etc ... to see what fan engagement is. Probably makes sense.

The problem for sports is ... time. No one wants to spend 4-5 hours at a football game when they can stream it at home. My golf club is building a really nice 18 hole Par 3 course because many casual players don't want to spend 4.5 hours on the course ... they want to play in 2 hours, so this is the current trend in golf design. I think you'll see the same trend in many other sports and if football wanted to get more viewers, they would speed the game up. Some of them are just ridiculous in how much time they chew up.

Tech has a core group of 22,000 season ticket holders that they should be marketing to like crazy and trying to extract every dollar they can. If Collins goes 3-9 again, they will lose 10-15% of them.

College Football Attendance 5-Year Average For Every School

Why does attendance matter so much? For college football – far more than the pro sports – the ticket revenue and the money generated from having fans in the stands means everything to m…

collegefootballnews.com

To add on here, with the new Edge Center, Some of the upper North will be lost, which will lower capacity . And if I recall, ADTS was/is on the side of "party decks" and other premium/unique seating options that would lower capacity as well. Not sure if those plans are at the GBoR or still in "just talking stage", but I know there is a Master Plan for DBS@HGF that has been in the works for some time now. Main point is, I think we may be in the last year or 2 of a 55,000 capacity stadium.

 

[FlatsLander]

I hope so... really hope so! Maybe I'm down on it because some fun rivalries would go away (Clemson, UGA, FSU) but honestly, maybe I need to let it go... if they were to approach it with an NFL-esque 32 team model, there would be plenty of good football left. I don't think supercon could go any bigger than 32, and that would allow essentially two 16-team "divisions" that (outside of football) could basically function the same way conferences do today in all other sports. Whether or not there is a trickle down effect in other sports is another debate....

Start filling out the 32-team list... its not easy. Football is the driver, and I wonder if any big "basketball first" schools would consider, although a couple may take their football lumps just to gain revenue for basketball. There may be a few hold outs for "academic" reasons also, but I think revenue will win out there. So:

Big Ten departures - Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan, Wisconsin, Mich State (honestly, I think Michigan and Michigan St could be on the fence. Michigan likes to tout their academics and not that Mich St would base their decision on anything done in Ann Arbor, but I feel like they'd think twice if Michigan didn't jump... but lets assume revenues and major football rivalries win out and they both go)

SEC departs - Bama, UGAg, aTm, Florida, Tennessee, Auburn, LSU(Auburn is a toss up, but I think if both Bama and UGAg are coming off the schedule, they're in)

Big 12 Departs - Texas, Oklahoma, OSU, Kansas? (Tx and OU are already gone and obviously going as big as possible, I think OSU would be primed. Kansas is intriguing. I almost think they would entertain it just because they DON'T care about football and the revenue would be huge for basketball. the supercon would be no slouch in basketball, and out of conference bball games would be easy enough to swing... if the conference would have the Kansas football program)

PAC Departs - USC, Oregon? Washington? (Admittedly, I don't know a heck of a lot about sentiment in the pac ten, but I just don't see a lot of schools that fit the bill here)

ACC - FSU, Clemson, Miami, UNC? NCSt? (UNC is kind of like Kansas with a more respectable football program. They're obviously basketball first but would jump on the revenue. NCSt I could see also...)

Others - UCF, Cincy?, ND? (have the Bearcats gotten a taste for football; is ND finally going to join a conference? )

With all of those teams, I am at 26 (if I counted right). That leaves 6 slots with no OBVIOUS candidates remaining, and even a few of the 26 questionable. I'd say the most likely would be Kentucky, Arkansas, Mizzou and maybe Maryland or the Mississippi schools? The takeaway; there would be some eyebrow raising schools involved in the new supercon (in my opinion), but more importantly, there are a LOT of really good schools and competition left in the restructure of college athletics.

Yes, this is all RAMPANT speculation, but putting a little more thought into it gives me some hope... Maybe I am underestimating how may schools would jump at the chance, but don't prove me wrong... I am slowly talking myself into this now!

Oh in my perfect CFB world, the top teams wouldn't leave, just the top 500 players or whatever would be scraped off the top into NFL Jr. All the rivalries of today would remain, and I think the overall product and average fan experience would improve.

 

[Richard7125]

Oh in my perfect CFB world, the top teams wouldn't leave, just the top 500 players or whatever would be scraped off the top into NFL Jr. All the rivalries of today would remain, and I think the overall product and average fan experience would improve.

I'm not sure i understand this. Removing the top 500 players wouldn't do anything. Players #501 and up would still be entitled to NIL money; the portal isn't going away; rich alumni will still pay big dollars to see their team win - nothing would be different. You might argue the TV dollars might be smaller, but I doubt it. You don't see big TV dollars for the NBA G League. This is not a "top player" issue.

 

[FlatsLander]

I'm not sure i understand this. Removing the top 500 players wouldn't do anything. Players #501 and up would still be entitled to NIL money; the portal isn't going away; rich alumni will still pay big dollars to see their team win - nothing would be different. You might argue the TV dollars might be smaller, but I doubt it. You don't see big TV dollars for the NBA G League. This is not a "top player" issue.

Right, but the NIL money would be more widely and evenly spread out. You wouldn't have that tOSU QB get a $1MM deal before he ever took a snap while our QB1 gets $1000 or whatever. There are a lot more players at the 3-star level than there are probably 4- and 5-star combined. Right now, the big budget schools can basically hoard the top players (some not even playing, just effectively blocked from other schools), which makes teams like us lose the few extra talented guys we can get to come here. If all the super stars were gone, there wouldn't really be anything to hoard.

 

[g0lftime]

Are these kids signing a contract? One big hit to a $1M QB who is done and backup beats him out. There will be some problems we haven't thought of yet.

 

[Roswellgoldmember]

Right, but the NIL money would be more widely and evenly spread out. You wouldn't have that tOSU QB get a $1MM deal before he ever took a snap while our QB1 gets $1000 or whatever. There are a lot more players at the 3-star level than there are probably 4- and 5-star combined. Right now, the big budget schools can basically hoard the top players (some not even playing, just effectively blocked from other schools), which makes teams like us lose the few extra talented guys we can get to come here. If all the super stars were gone, there wouldn't really be anything to hoard.

I agree with this. It's all a pipe dream anyway but I think it's the concentration of elite players that have led to lack of parity or really even competitive games between the top teams and everyone else. Because of summer football/camps and the measurable nature of football, the elite players are more easily identified than they used to be, and concentrated at elite schools instead of spread out regionally. I don't think that you would need 500 players though, skimming off the top 100 or even just the 5 stars would have a huge impact in overall parity.

 

[Richard7125]

Right, but the NIL money would be more widely and evenly spread out. You wouldn't have that tOSU QB get a $1MM deal before he ever took a snap while our QB1 gets $1000 or whatever. There are a lot more players at the 3-star level than there are probably 4- and 5-star combined. Right now, the big budget schools can basically hoard the top players (some not even playing, just effectively blocked from other schools), which makes teams like us lose the few extra talented guys we can get to come here. If all the super stars were gone, there wouldn't really be anything to hoard.

I disagree with your position on removing the top 500 players. The recruiting services are big business and they will simply stratify the next tier of players. That being said, even if you are correct and the top 500 flatten out the recruiting that won’t solve the problem because there will be players that develop and emerge at the smaller schools. The big schools will simply poach those players via NIL/Portal. Again, nothing has changed.

 

[JacketFan137]

they need to try to limit the portal combined with the NIL a little to really make it effective. make it so transferring means you sit out from NIL for a year. that alone would stop a lot of this. players would still get transferred and there would be handshake deals/money under the table im sure but this would stop a ton of it.

 

[Vespidae]

they need to try to limit the portal combined with the NIL a little to really make it effective. make it so transferring means you sit out from NIL for a year. that alone would stop a lot of this. players would still get transferred and there would be handshake deals/money under the table im sure but this would stop a ton of it.

"They" don't want to stop it. No one does ... there is too much money to be made. We are not in Kansas anymore.

 

[SOWEGA Jacket]

Concentrate on merchandising? I swear its like some of you just woke up from a 40 year nap. Our own bookstore can’t get our colors right. The people who run our athletics, merchandising, marketing all suck at their jobs. GT has no plan and no intention to get a plan. If anything, the intention is to let our athletics just whither away until it’s gone. Then they create a green safe place where Bobby Dodd once stood. We are all being played for our dollar bills.

 

[takethepoints]

That doesn't necessarily have to be true across the board. Some sports, Golf for instance, would be just fine. Baseball would probably be ok as well. For instance, Augusta University in Augusta, GA is a Division II school without a football team. Their Golf team competes in Division I and won the 2010 and 2011 DI National Championship in the sport. Since there is a fully funded endowment for Golf scholarships at GT, we could easily stay DI there. With the money Texiera is pouring into baseball, we likely could stay DI there as well. Even a lesser amount of football and basketball revenue will pay for Tennis, Track, and Volleyball.

Eggackley. The assumption behind all of this ai that the NIL deals will automatically load up some schools with all the talent. Would that all of human life were that predictable. My guess is that schools that don't look like perenial contenders will turn out to be just that due to a combination of good coaching and the serendipity of talent.

An example, you say. Here you go: Russel Wilson. Russel was a two star recruit with Rivals and wasn't even listed by 247. I mean really: here's a guy that's 5'11", 215 and played for a small private school in Virginia. What program that is looking to "prepare players for the NFL" would touch him? And, of course, he turned out to be the best college QB in recent football history. Indeed, his ratings after his senior year were the highest ever recorded by the quantitative football sites. My guess: NIL wouldn't even have been mentioned during his recruiting.

Is all the NIL hoopla important and likely to have bad effects on the rest of college football? Yes. Does it mean that the USCs of thew world will completely dominate (I mean more then they already do) college football? I doubt it, but it's too early to tell. And, yes, I'm not against a "superconference"; let the big schools turn pro and let the rest of us get back to a more realistic version of college football.

 

[takethepoints]

Eggackley. The assumption behind all of this ai that the NIL deals will automatically load up some schools with all the talent. Would that all of human life were that predictable. My guess is that schools that don't look like perenial contenders will turn out to be just that due to a combination of good coaching and the serendipity of talent.

An example, you say. Here you go: Russel Wilson. Russel was a two star recruit with Rivals and wasn't even listed by 247. I mean really: here's a guy that's 5'11", 215 and played for a small private school in Virginia. What program that is looking to "prepare players for the NFL" would touch him? And, of course, he turned out to be the best college QB in recent football history. Indeed, his ratings after his senior year were the highest ever recorded by the quantitative football sites. My guess: NIL wouldn't even have been mentioned during his recruiting.

Is all the NIL hoopla important and likely to have bad effects on the rest of college football? Yes. Does it mean that the USCs of thew world will completely dominate (I mean more then they already do) college football? I doubt it, but it's too early to tell. And, yes, I'm not against a "superconference"; let the big schools turn pro and let the rest of us get back to a more realistic version of college football.

 

[iceeater1969]

1. We are the ncaa.
2. We control the number of scholsrships.

Go ahead and buy players w NIL and portal so u can excessively win in the playoffs .
3. For excessive playoff wins as ncaa we will significantly cut your scholarships limit spread over next few years

Got to make it expensive to do crazy nil.

Can ncaa do that to level the field.

 

[FlatsLander]

I disagree with your position on removing the top 500 players. The recruiting services are big business and they will simply stratify the next tier of players. That being said, even if you are correct and the top 500 flatten out the recruiting that won’t solve the problem because there will be players that develop and emerge at the smaller schools. The big schools will simply poach those players via NIL/Portal. Again, nothing has changed.

I agree that the big budget schools would still poach players, but I think the talent gap between the top 50 3-stars and the rest of the 3-stars is much smaller than the talent gap between the top 50 overall players and the rest of the players. In other words, there would be less to gain from poaching.

 

[Roswellgoldmember]

I agree that the big budget schools would still poach players, but I think the talent gap between the top 50 3-stars and the rest of the 3-stars is much smaller than the talent gap between the top 50 overall players and the rest of the players. In other words, there would be less to gain from poaching.

This is obviously true and the gap is large. In 2021 UGA for example had 19 5 stars on their roster. With the exception of Alabama (14) and Clemson (10), the teams they played had significantly less - Auburn (2), Florida (6), Michigan (3), Tennessee (3), South Carolina (2), Arkansas (0), UK (0), GT (0).

 

[Randy Carson]

For a very brief moment this morning I found myself on a sports talk station. They were talking college football and actually weren’t slobbering all over the Dwags, so I stopped to see what they were saying.
They were talking NIL, recent Saban / Jimbo / Deion chatter and started talking about Pitt losing Addison to USC. Their position essentially is that it’s all for the good of college football because ALL of college football benefits more from having USC be a contender instead of Pitt. Pitt isn’t set up to be a perennial contender so who cares about them? USC on the other hand has the location, the fan base, the history, etc and all of college football benefits from their success.
Set aside the likelihood of either school contending, and just give your thoughts on that notion... Big “Brand” schools being perennial contenders is best for the game (even if it comes at the expense of other programs). Is college football better off?
Maybe a distinction without a difference but is college football better when the same 10 or so programs dominate playoff contention / spots annually?
Tipping my hand here but I view the “super conference” notion in much the same way... how does college football benefit by openly and intentionally relegating the 90% of D1, including the majority of current P5 programs, to second tier status?

Don't we already have teams divided into regional groupings, athletes being paid, brand endorsements, big tv contracts, players moving from one team to the next, etc?

Oh, yeah...it's called the NFL.

This can't be good for college football. Now, get off my lawn.