down the road
- Thread starter acrow
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Shhhh... dont expose the plan too soon. Ideally the SEC and Big 10 ( after they poach the ACC )will form their own league independent of the rules of the NCAA and hold independent playoffs and championships... super 6A..
Everyone says this is the end game....but those conferences don't want to deal with an anti-trust suit which is exactly what will happen. They've thrown just enough money at the G5s to keep them from filing a suit now, but if it goes down the way you describe, you'll have conferences and schools filing suit against those 2 and the networks.
Not to mention all the fans they would lose because they eliminated their school from the conversation. Certain fans of one of the teams in those conferences will even be mad and spend less money and give less support. You know, those fans who don't like what those two leagues have done to the institution of college sports. Many fans may just completely lose interest over the next few years. If they are not careful through their greed they will gradually dilapidate many streams of money that used to be much more plentiful. It will be interesting to look at what the sport has become in 15 or 20 years. They may have cut their nose to spite their face.
If they form their own league separate from the NCAA . then there is no anti trust issue.. the outside schools can still play for an NCAA natty just not the Collegiate Super League (tm) world title.
Regardless, I hope the NCAA sticks it out and caters to the schools not included. Remove their Olympic sports from contention as well. I think in the long run the NCAA would prevail and many schools would be coming back. Disney and ESPN is hemorrhaging money bad. Stop signing deals with ESPN and find a network dedicated to the "left behinds" the issue will fix itself and a lot of us will be better because of it.
I think this is the best case. Watching Georgia-LSU already feels the same to me as watching the Falcons play the Saints. That's fine but Georgia-LSU is a different product than Tulsa-Tulane, or even Minnesota-Illinois. Separate NFL Jr. into one league/product and let the real college programs focus on doing what they're good at.
Interesting question is what happens to the Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri's of the world who will have no chance of winning anything or even getting to .500 if non-conference games go away. Will there be some way to get parity or is it really just going to be 8 - 10 teams always competing for the championship and a bunch of Washington Generals, kind of like MLB?
I don't think there's any question that it's a monopoly in an economics sense but that isn't important, what matters is, does it violate US anti-trust laws, which are intended to prevent a variety of free market distortions some of which are not an economic monopoly. I don't know much about anti-trust law to know if this would be an issue.
Seems like it will be a major issue to have regulations/restrictions on players tho unless the players unionize.
That's not quite how it works. And right now there is plenty of evidence of collusion to close the market place off for more than half of the current D1 teams. The case for an antitrust suit and winning is pretty strong. It has nothing to do with the NCAA. It has everything to do with the business of college football.
This article for whatever it's worth doesn't mention Tulsa in the list of AAC schools, however does mention Rice.
Gotta be solely based on academics….right ? Rice athletics has been a dumpster fire for as long as I can remember.
He's not even giving our conference the time of day in bringing in the Pac schools. He's just throwing crap against the wall.
The argument will be made about the USFL and XFL coexisting with the NFL and the courts will toss it out..
The media is paying for product.. the Alabama vs OU matchup makes more money than the Tulsa v Tulane game.. in the end the argument that a separate league of giants owes something to the smaller league of midgets is a losing one.. esp if the new super league keeps the games in house..
Labor laws are wher it will have trouble as players unionize..
The 3 I saw mentioned have tv Markets.. Rice (houston), SMU (Dallas FW) .. Tulane (NOLA)
But if Rice falls in the forest can anyone hear it ?
No one in those markets watches those teams...so in essence it's irrelevant if they're in a huge market.
Doesn't change their locations.. potential viewership in those areas is more than the Tulsa metro... AAA vs AA
Some might say the same for us... if we dropped football, would more than 30,000 people care..
Unfortunately we dont exist in a huge media market and we have done a terrible job growing the fanbase in our fishbowl it let alone nationwide..
Market size doesn’t matter any more. It used to matter when conferences could leverage cable companies to give them in essence a percentage of the cost of each cable box rented in a market regardless of whether the viewer watched the game or not. Those days are over. The secret is out that it was basically a shake down operation where conferences could leverage ever higher fees from local governments who didn’t mind passing along higher costs to cable box renters if it meant they didn’t have to deal with frustrated and motivated fans at the ballot box.
The more important value is brand perception and hard costs. The three schools you mentioned are located near major airports. Two of the three have relatively new stadiums that were constructed with broadcast costs in mind. If you believe the internet, USC is already complaining about potential travel headaches as they are being faced with proposals like having to split charters to places like Indianapolis with high school soccer teams, then take vans over to Purdue.
Tulsa is the smallest school, in a notoriously underserved airport with frequent weather delays and built their renovated stadium on the cheap adding costs to broadcasters for televised games. We blamed it on some faculty campus architecture committee when we didn’t build out some things that were needed but the reality is we just didn’t want to spend the money. Compare that to schools like Houston, UCF and SDSU who essentially have plug and play operations. It’s not that big a deal for broadcasters but it is and the pennies do add up. And it helps explain who is going up and who isn’t.
The more important value is brand perception and hard costs. The three schools you mentioned are located near major airports. Two of the three have relatively new stadiums that were constructed with broadcast costs in mind. If you believe the internet, USC is already complaining about potential travel headaches as they are being faced with proposals like having to split charters to places like Indianapolis with high school soccer teams, then take vans over to Purdue.
Tulsa is the smallest school, in a notoriously underserved airport with frequent weather delays and built their renovated stadium on the cheap adding costs to broadcasters for televised games. We blamed it on some faculty campus architecture committee when we didn’t build out some things that were needed but the reality is we just didn’t want to spend the money. Compare that to schools like Houston, UCF and SDSU who essentially have plug and play operations. It’s not that big a deal for broadcasters but it is and the pennies do add up. And it helps explain who is going up and who isn’t.
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I 100% guarantee you that Rice, SMU and Tulane are the only 3 AAC schools he knows and he didn't want to Google AAC.
If anyone could pull a rabbit out of a hat, I think it would be Brad. He seems creative and very aggressive and he seems to think that anything that increases TU's profile and makes a better college experience is good for TU. I just wish he had a couple more years before this all went down.
I was unsure about him at first.. now i am quietly optimistic.. he faces a huge tide of preconceived public opinion in the Tulsa area. We have not done a good job of demonstrating our value to the Tulsa Metro, our region and the state as a whole. But, he seems determined to face it, hold his ground and push back against it. For those efforts, if nothing else, he deserves our support. At first, I thought he was merely looking for a resume enhancement, but now, I think he feels a mission calling. He seems to have embraced our Academic mission and given support to our Presbyterian roots. Time will tell. But for now, he has my support.
Don't you live in Nevada? Listening to you talk about the Tulsa market is a joke.
It would be suitable for Tulsa to be in a Conference with Tulane, SMU, Rice, Stanford, Cal, and Air Force and bring the Navy and Army along.
I always thought it would be cool to have all three academies together. If we dropped in the right MWC schools. Now, that would be good stuff. But I HATE the idea of coast-to-coast leagues and travel for students and fans.
Is anyone sick of talking about conference realignment year in and out? I feel like it is just a sick game feature of college football. Some sick people like it, but it is ruining the sport. The rivalries are getting utterly destroyed, and people are too much of wussies to play hard non-conference games (see OU vs OSU). No one on the west coast gives a toss about Penn State, and their athletes now get to travel 8 or more hours round trip for games. Congrats admins! You did it!
If the playoffs had come a lot sooner, this would be much different. 16 teams would have straightened a lot of this BS out.
Let's get real. This is just the minor leagues of the NFL with huge, huge money involved.
Sure.. i live in a mega mansion overlooking Lake Tahoe and spend my summers boating on the lake in my yacht with its crew of bikini models who transform into hot tub snow bunnies when the first flakes fly.. then i fly down to Vegas in my G6 for a quick bite at Sinatras before jetting off to the Maldives for lunch with Leo and George.
with everyone making money but the players..
16 teams honestly wouldnt make difference... 10 of them would still come from 2 conferences...
Big 12s path as a conference gets harder with every program they add..
Interesting. Not sure I agree as the more teams one has the more likely you’re going to have several elite teams. You will also have the situation where they don’t have to play each other or at the most play each other once. I also anticipate the playoff qualification rules will almost certainly change.
The big 12 has added castoffs, also rans and G5's... the mediocrity factor has done nothing but grow... the parity in this new league will make it difficult for more than the champion and the runner up to stand out..
Getting more than one team in from a ten team league seems problematic most years. The teams all play each other with the best two teams playing each other twice. Too many built in losses imo. In any event, three 20 plus team leagues seems to be the direction we’re headed once the ACC implodes.
Once the SEC and Big 10 finish with the kill what will be left for the Big 12 to feast on? Wake? BC? GT? Pitt? VaTech? NCST?.. More mediocrity and second tier bowl brands.
Seriously.. i doubt the big 12 survives the end of the ACC contract as its flagships attempt to get invites to the big stage.
There’s no way the networks want to consolidate the sport to 60. Try 36.