Here comes the doomsday thread, sorry

[MugNight]

Turning to a super league is simply bad business, the regular season would mean nothing then and more importantly you can’t cash in on a massive playoff without more teams than a super league can provide. We’re already in a weird place next year where teams like michiagn can get 2 losses and easily make the playoffs. You think that isn’t going to effect regular season rantings over time as those games matter less and less?

Also where in the world is ESPN getting the money from to form such a league. They are under mandates to cut sports licensing not increase it as Disney stock tanks.

Yep I agree we’re going to end up in a weird spot when the ACC dissolves but the key point people keep overlooking is that for all the realignment there have actually been 3 teams added to the overall count of the P4, still no real contraction.

You mention rankings, and I think those become a self fulfilling prophecy for certain teams. A team like LSU has a down year at 8-4 and they come in preseason top 10 next year because of recruiting and prestige. I’d argue they have a harder time dropping out of the top 15 than an ACC or XII team entering the top 15 with the same record if they started the season unranked.

You get certain schools that get to stay top 15 if they don’t lose (or only lose to other top 15 teams). On the flip side, a team outside the Top 25 has to win each week to crack that top 15.

My point is, preseason rankings are BS and give undue influence in final rankings before any games are even played. And with larger conferences I fully expect scheduling will be optimized so there are multiple 1 or 2 loss teams in both the SEC and B1G who will pass the “Eye Test” to make the CFP.

In the expanded playoff, the best spot to be is a 1 loss team that doesn’t make the conference title game, ala Ohio State this season.

 

[Clonehomer]

You add an additional $50 to season tickets. That is $7 more per game. The rest of it comes out of TV revenue. The bottom line that a $30,000 trust investment for each student athlete is relatively cheap compared to simply not existing in the top tier of college sports.

But that’s just the starting point. NIL is above and beyond that $30,000.

 

[Clonehomer]

Problem is if ESPN cuts out big 12 and ACC, who will watch their super league? A lot of people, but a lot more will have zero interest if those games dont matrter to their rooting interest.

Sure WVU v Pitt or WVU v VT may only be 3 million, whereas ohio State v michigan is 9, but take away all the wvu, pitt, vt fns etc and i bet that OSU v Mich number drops to 6 million or lower.

Agreed. During the PAC implosion I think the point to ask was, did this result in more fans or less fans of CFB? I can’t see how moving the West coast teams added any new fans. If they were fans of the school before, they’re fans of the school now. But, dropping OSU and WSU certainly has caused and will cause you to lose interest from those fanbases. OSU fans aren’t going to cheer for Oregon now. You lost those fans from your viewership.

A super league will only do more of that. College fans aren’t the same as NFL fans. They don’t change allegiance’s as teams move into and out of your city. If you drop the Big12 to a lower division, you’ll lose a lot of those fans. Not all, but enough to hurt your bottom line. ISU sports is the only reason I still have a YTTV subscription with ESPN. If they drop out of the top division, I’m not paying $80 / month to fund this super league.

 

[ZRF]

You mention rankings, and I think those become a self fulfilling prophecy for certain teams. A team like LSU has a down year at 8-4 and they come in preseason top 10 next year because of recruiting and prestige. I’d argue they have a harder time dropping out of the top 15 than an ACC or XII team entering the top 15 with the same record if they started the season unranked.

You get certain schools that get to stay top 15 if they don’t lose (or only lose to other top 15 teams). On the flip side, a team outside the Top 25 has to win each week to crack that top 15.

My point is, preseason rankings are BS and give undue influence in final rankings before any games are even played. And with larger conferences I fully expect scheduling will be optimized so there are multiple 1 or 2 loss teams in both the SEC and B1G who will pass the “Eye Test” to make the CFP.

In the expanded playoff, the best spot to be is a 1 loss team that doesn’t make the conference title game, ala Ohio State this season.

There's also a lot of bias in the rankings. When biased asshats like Paul Finebaum (not sure if he's a voter or not) gets soapboxes and display outright biases, it gives you an idea of how prevalent it is within the industry,

The SEC also lucked out with the combination of bringing Nick Saban to the conference while having ESPN as their media partner. As much as I hate Saban he's the best organization builder college football has ever seen. He directly built up two schools (LSU and Bama) and indirectly built up a 3rd (Smart was his coordinator and is now thriving at GA). It's allowed ESPN to hype the machine (how great the SEC is), which gives (often undue) early season hype, then teams get credit for beating each other, even when it turns out an early season ranking that might have vaulted an opponent up the ladder turns out to be bogus.

Unfortunately, at some point, the hype becomes somewhat real as viewers, players, etc buy in. It also doesn't help that the conference, basically across the board, has no ethical standards when it comes to hiring coaches or going after players. Kiffin, Beard, Freeze, Wade, Pearl...the list goes on and on. Once it becomes tangible...with money, media, viewers and players it becomes hard to stop.

 

[Cyclonsin]

Agreed. During the PAC implosion I think the point to ask was, did this result in more fans or less fans of CFB? I can’t see how moving the West coast teams added any new fans. If they were fans of the school before, they’re fans of the school now. But, dropping OSU and WSU certainly has caused and will cause you to lose interest from those fanbases. OSU fans aren’t going to cheer for Oregon now. You lost those fans from your viewership.

A super league will only do more of that. College fans aren’t the same as NFL fans. They don’t change allegiance’s as teams move into and out of your city. If you drop the Big12 to a lower division, you’ll lose a lot of those fans. Not all, but enough to hurt your bottom line. ISU sports is the only reason I still have a YTTV subscription with ESPN. If they drop out of the top division, I’m not paying $80 / month to fund this super league.

I bet that giving the former PAC schools more high-profile games that appeal to fans East of the Rockies more than makes up for losing the OSU/WSU fan bases, unfortunately.

Also, we all need to remember that 1 game with 10 million viewers isn't worth the same as 4 games with 2.5 million each. The single game with huge viewership is worth exponentially more to the networks. This isn't about maximizing the total number of fans, it's about getting as many eye balls on the same game at the same time and putting one of those into every time slot.

 

[ClubCy]

I said it yesterday but with all due respect a super league is only hypothetical at this point. Could be proven wrong down the road but what is being proposed right now is a buy-in that I would guess 90-95% of the current P4 would be involved in. Iowa State included.

NCCA is grasping at its last straw before being left in the dust.

 

[MugNight]

There's also a lot of bias in the rankings. When biased asshats like Paul Finebaum (not sure if he's a voter or not) gets soapboxes and display outright biases, it gives you an idea of how prevalent it is within the industry,

The SEC also lucked out with the combination of bringing Nick Saban to the conference while having ESPN as their media partner. As much as I hate Saban he's the best organization builder college football has ever seen. He directly built up two schools (LSU and Bama) and indirectly built up a 3rd (Smart was his coordinator and is now thriving at GA). It's allowed ESPN to hype the machine (how great the SEC is), which gives (often undue) early season hype, then teams get credit for beating each other, even when it turns out an early season ranking that might have vaulted an opponent up the ladder turns out to be bogus.

Unfortunately, at some point, the hype becomes somewhat real as viewers, players, etc buy in. It also doesn't help that the conference, basically across the board, has no ethical standards when it comes to hiring coaches or going after players. Kiffin, Beard, Freeze, Wade, Pearl...the list goes on and on. Once it becomes tangible...with money, media, viewers and players it becomes hard to stop.

Really well said. Over the past decade or two I’ve also seen the rise of conference loyalty. There’s the classic case of like a Kentucky fan chanting S-E-C at a bar while Alabama football runs all over some PAC school in a bowl game. Plenty of coattail riding, and 15 years of propaganda has turned it into a machine the media just eats up. College Football really is a religion in the South.

I generally root for XII schools in bowl games, but I’ve never thought of the league as some insular juggernaut immune from criticism.

Is the SEC really the best conference? Or does it have the benefit of having some of the best top teams this century, ie the ones you included plus the Urban Meyer Gators?

 

[FriendlySpartan]

You mention rankings, and I think those become a self fulfilling prophecy for certain teams. A team like LSU has a down year at 8-4 and they come in preseason top 10 next year because of recruiting and prestige. I’d argue they have a harder time dropping out of the top 15 than an ACC or XII team entering the top 15 with the same record if they started the season unranked.

You get certain schools that get to stay top 15 if they don’t lose (or only lose to other top 15 teams). On the flip side, a team outside the Top 25 has to win each week to crack that top 15.

My point is, preseason rankings are BS and give undue influence in final rankings before any games are even played. And with larger conferences I fully expect scheduling will be optimized so there are multiple 1 or 2 loss teams in both the SEC and B1G who will pass the “Eye Test” to make the CFP.

In the expanded playoff, the best spot to be is a 1 loss team that doesn’t make the conference title game, ala Ohio State this season.

I said ratings not rankings but yeah the rankings have been a joke for a long time. That’s nothing new. That’s why it’s going to affect “ratings” because now a team like Michigan can lose the OSU game and drop another game to some other squad and still be in the playoffs no problem. Takes a lot of the tension out of the games. Does the Game this year get 19mil if both teams are just meeting again in the big ten title and automatically in the playoffs? Probably not.

I want an expanded playoff but I wanted 6 teams not 12, it’s going to have a negative effect on the regular season

 

[FriendlySpartan]

Agreed. During the PAC implosion I think the point to ask was, did this result in more fans or less fans of CFB? I can’t see how moving the West coast teams added any new fans. If they were fans of the school before, they’re fans of the school now. But, dropping OSU and WSU certainly has caused and will cause you to lose interest from those fanbases. OSU fans aren’t going to cheer for Oregon now. You lost those fans from your viewership.

A super league will only do more of that. College fans aren’t the same as NFL fans. They don’t change allegiance’s as teams move into and out of your city. If you drop the Big12 to a lower division, you’ll lose a lot of those fans. Not all, but enough to hurt your bottom line. ISU sports is the only reason I still have a YTTV subscription with ESPN. If they drop out of the top division, I’m not paying $80 / month to fund this super league.

It 100% added more fans because you lose the very small alumni networks of the PNW second tier teams and add the big ten massive alumni bases.

Agreed though that a super league nukes that but again for all the realignment talk there are more teams in the P4 then we’re in the P5.

 

[ZRF]

Really well said. Over the past decade or two I’ve also seen the rise of conference loyalty. There’s the classic case of like a Kentucky fan chanting S-E-C at a bar while Alabama football runs all over some PAC school in a bowl game. Plenty of coattail riding, and 15 years of propaganda has turned it into a machine the media just eats up. College Football really is a religion in the South.

I generally root for XII schools in bowl games, but I’ve never thought of the league as some insular juggernaut immune from criticism.

Is the SEC really the best conference? Or does it have the benefit of having some of the best top teams this century, ie the ones you included plus the Urban Meyer Gators

One area where I will give the league a lot of credit is that, at many schools, they have hired more cutting edge (innovative) coaches for it's time. In the 90s it was Spurrier, early 2000s Saban and Meyer, and more recently you have Smart.

A lot of the other powers across the P5, your traditional stalwarts, really failed with a lot of hires over the last 20 years. Ohio State, from a competitive perspective, has probably done it best with Meyer and then Day. OU made great hires with Stoops and Reilly. But everyone else? Michigan threw up a lot of airballs before Harbaugh. PSU did the same before Franklin. USC had bad hires after Carroll, FSU before and after Jimbo (who is a POS), Miami after Davis/Coker built the program back up, Nebraska after Osborne...the list goes on.

The SEC capitalized on a perfect storm and had some luck. Auburn winning a title with a player who never should have been eligible is probably one of the biggest flukes in college history. With Cheesedick as their coach no less.

 

[Die4Cy]

Whether the SEC has the best football teams is only partially relevant. They deliver eyeballs on Saturdays and can start the season ranked higher than any other league. The conference knows they can schedule them through the rest and let their media partners clean up when they falter, because let's face it, they are partners with these teams, not just reporting on them.

My main issue is with people like Finebaum who pretend this is not the case.

I'm coming around on the idea that a conference-less division for football could work much better. Get rid of these all these conflicted parties with outside interests in college football and let's just play.

 

[ISU_Guy]

Not sure what your point is here. How do you know that there is no "committment" from those schools? Is it their record? If so, then why didn't you list Purdue, Wake Forest, Colorado, Kansas, Iowa State, etc?

I spent all of 30 seconds looking at the chart I missed a couple. I didn't list ISU because this is an ISU Board and it's kind of obvious.
My point is it's not going to work to include all those teams that suck balls (minus a few good years) and then keep out good teams based off their revenue.
nobody can look me straight in the eyes and tell me Vandy should be lumped into this group and Texas Tech and Utah gets left out.

Some of these people need a heat check on the decisions that are being made. we are literally trying to burn down something that has been awesome for 100+ years all in a 5 year span. I hope they know what they are doing.

 

[FriendlySpartan]

I spent all of 30 seconds looking at the chart I missed a couple. I didn't list ISU because this is an ISU Board and it's kind of obvious.
My point is it's not going to work to include all those teams that suck balls (minus a few good years) and then keep out good teams based off their revenue.
nobody can look me straight in the eyes and tell me Vandy should be lumped into this group and Texas Tech and Utah gets left out.

Some of these people need a heat check on the decisions that are being made. we are literally trying to burn down something that has been awesome for 100+ years all in a 5 year span. I hope they know what they are doing.

Texas tech is almost a completely irrelevant team so not the example I would use but I get your points.

The point of this new division is about funneling money towards players and cutting out the G5. Think of it more like a country club than a public course. Not everyone (or even most) of the cc golfers are going to be the best but they just paid to play the same course of those that are.


Also with the limited information we have just about every P4 team that wants to would be able to get in.

 

[DrShip]

It's not accurate. This account is very anti-Big 12 and has acted like an insider throughout the last few rounds of realignment, despite being less accurate than say MHVer3.

This is someone with an agenda wishcasting.

Citing a Tony Altimore chart as well. I don't know why that guy hates the Big XII so much, but whatever. I swear the way those two accounts compliment each other it's got to be his secret alt.

 

[KnappShack]

Citing a Tony Altimore chart as well. I don't know why that guy hates the Big XII so much, but whatever. I swear the way those two accounts compliment each other it's got to be his secret alt.

The two words I'd include in any description of Altimore would include "gaping" and "prolapsed"

The guy compared Big 12 fans to sex offenders.

 

[Al_4_State]

Citing a Tony Altimore chart as well. I don't know why that guy hates the Big XII so much, but whatever. I swear the way those two accounts compliment each other it's got to be his secret alt.

I had forgotten about that dork too.

 

[WooBadger18]

Until & unless they decide they would like even LESS mouths to feed...

It's a bell curve on value. There are 20ish TOP brands that have 80% of the value. There are 10ish bottom feeders with about zero value (Rutgers, Vandy, Wake, etc). And about 40 schools in the middle worth about 20%.

I would estimate those top brands are worth $100-150M each annual media deal. The middles are worth more like $20M per team.

The calculations will be about inventory needed, and the value of having 1 diverse large sport vs a two-tiered system. I don't think they really need the inventory - there are only so many high-value timeslots. The other part... who knows what they think. It may not come to pass, but it’s absolutely possible.

Especially if networks aren’t able to provide as much money in the future.

It’s easier for Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, etc. to want to stay in the Big 10 if they’re continuously making more money. But would they still want to be in the Big 10 if the networks came and said that the bubble was bursting and their payouts were going to get cut by 10 million?

 

[clonechemist]

Citing a Tony Altimore chart as well. I don't know why that guy hates the Big XII so much, but whatever. I swear the way those two accounts compliment each other it's got to be his secret alt.

Lol when did Tony get to be such a big account? Hung out with the guy a bit during grad school, he’s always been a character...

 

[stewart092284]

Not sure what your point is here. How do you know that there is no "committment" from those schools? Is it their record? If so, then why didn't you list Purdue, Wake Forest, Colorado, Kansas, Iowa State, etc?

Agree... and Indiana has been very vocal about spending more money both in NIL and overal

 

[PickSix]