College athletics 10 yrs from now...

[cymonw1980]

I have been thinking about worst case scenario since the UCLA, USC news broke. What if the P2 decide to break away and slowly increase the competitive gap with the rules they establish?

Below is an example, not meant to be exactly what unfolds but something along these lines. Key point is, the teams with money have always established the rules to favor themselves (think P5 v. G5 in the past - but this will be a much bigger gap).

1) P2 focuses on collecting top brands and ends up with a power group of 24-32 teams. (Teams will not necessarily be part of a "conference" but it would be more like a mini NCAA... but with actual power to set and enforce rules.)

2) Some teams in the current 32 are kicked out, some are added from the ACC, ND, maybe some of the remaining PAC get picked up and teams like Rutgers, NW, Vandy are dropped.... not going to define who is "in" here... not really important. Net is you have about 100 or so schools in the FBS that are left out.

3) The P2 makes significantly more than the non-P2 (+$100M or so per year), and use this money to set salary caps for "College" athletics... but at this point it's more like semi-pro football. They also allow athletes from non-P2 schools to transfer to P2 programs (do not recognize lower level contracts; just buy players out of whatever deal they are in as needed); however, P2 contracts are recognized and athletes may not move freely between P2 schools. They must be cut from the team to get out of their P2 contract and play at another P2 (think NFL style contracts).

If something along these lines plays out... maybe the "left over 100" could actually do something about it....

1) Establish a new college football league (could be forced to do so if P2 decide to stop playing them at some point)

2) Create regional groupings that mean something to fans

3) Split TV rights revenue evenly between schools and set salary caps based on this revenue to pay players directly (still could lose players to P2, but you would have contracts in place that prevent players and coaches from moving around - again NFL style contracts for players and coaches)

4) Create a playoff that provides access to everyone

5) Stop playing all P2 schools (even if they still allow match-ups between P2 and others) - force them to only play each other and see what happens to interest in 24 brands vs. a regionally relevant league with a true playoff and champion - basically what college football should be if it wasn't for teams like texas, tosu, etc. that want to make sure that the money they bring in gives them a competitive advantage.

The P2 could have an interesting league, but if the "leftovers" were to organize and address the real issues with college athletics, I believe they could drive more total value (less per school). In the long run, the "brands" may see the value of regionally relevant college athletics... who knows, if successful, maybe the "brands" come crawling back after a failed semi-pro experiment!

I know this is probably just a dream. But I guess my hope is that the P2 go too far and eliminate 100+ teams that have "no value" to them and those teams band together and create a more valuable league that fans actually want to watch.

 

[CysDoc]

If I can watch all ISU games, I wouldn't be unhappy about this outcome. I wouldn't watch the G-League of the NFL and only care about the 100+ league.

 

[intrepid27]

I'm waiting for the day when somebody gets "pushed out" of a conference due to lack of media appeal. TO me that is the next step in this fiasco. Would not be surpirsed if teams donlt start getting quotas for viewership.

 

[Urbandale2013]

The thing is the P2 leagues is going to fail. The quicker that happens the better for everyone. A true single league is what needs to happen. You replace the old regional rivalries and rebuild college football.

 

[Cloneon]

I have been thinking about worst case scenario since the UCLA, USC news broke. What if the P2 decide to break away and slowly increase the competitive gap with the rules they establish?

Below is an example, not meant to be exactly what unfolds but something along these lines. Key point is, the teams with money have always established the rules to favor themselves (think P5 v. G5 in the past - but this will be a much bigger gap).

1) P2 focuses on collecting top brands and ends up with a power group of 24-32 teams. (Teams will not necessarily be part of a "conference" but it would be more like a mini NCAA... but with actual power to set and enforce rules.)

2) Some teams in the current 32 are kicked out, some are added from the ACC, ND, maybe some of the remaining PAC get picked up and teams like Rutgers, NW, Vandy are dropped.... not going to define who is "in" here... not really important. Net is you have about 100 or so schools in the FBS that are left out.

3) The P2 makes significantly more than the non-P2 (+$100M or so per year), and use this money to set salary caps for "College" athletics... but at this point it's more like semi-pro football. They also allow athletes from non-P2 schools to transfer to P2 programs (do not recognize lower level contracts; just buy players out of whatever deal they are in as needed); however, P2 contracts are recognized and athletes may not move freely between P2 schools. They must be cut from the team to get out of their P2 contract and play at another P2 (think NFL style contracts).

If something along these lines plays out... maybe the "left over 100" could actually do something about it....

1) Establish a new college football league (could be forced to do so if P2 decide to stop playing them at some point)

2) Create regional groupings that mean something to fans

3) Split TV rights revenue evenly between schools and set salary caps based on this revenue to pay players directly (still could lose players to P2, but you would have contracts in place that prevent players and coaches from moving around - again NFL style contracts for players and coaches)

4) Create a playoff that provides access to everyone

5) Stop playing all P2 schools (even if they still allow match-ups between P2 and others) - force them to only play each other and see what happens to interest in 24 brands vs. a regionally relevant league with a true playoff and champion - basically what college football should be if it wasn't for teams like texas, tosu, etc. that want to make sure that the money they bring in gives them a competitive advantage.

The P2 could have an interesting league, but if the "leftovers" were to organize and address the real issues with college athletics, I believe they could drive more total value (less per school). In the long run, the "brands" may see the value of regionally relevant college athletics... who knows, if successful, maybe the "brands" come crawling back after a failed semi-pro experiment!

I know this is probably just a dream. But I guess my hope is that the P2 go too far and eliminate 100+ teams that have "no value" to them and those teams band together and create a more valuable league that fans actually want to watch.

Your entire premise is that the P2 will further distance itself. There's no way on earth they'll have a market big enough to compete with the NFL or the rest of college football. They'll, in essence, be suffocating themselves under their own egotistical greed. One could argue it already happened to Texas when they moved because their stature has suffered so much by being beaten by the rising lower class. It's going to happen again and again, until their market suffers under their self fabricated mediocre record. I think the next go around of media contracts will be the end of sports broadcasting as we know it.

 

[CascadeClone]

The thing is the P2 leagues is going to fail. The quicker that happens the better for everyone. A true single league is what needs to happen. You replace the old regional rivalries and rebuild college football.

They won't "fail" per se, but I see the Top 20ish TV brands in the B1G and SEC going to a Premier League. Then the Illinois, Miss St, Minnesota types fall back to "Division 2" with the rest of the Big12 and PAC/ACC rumps.

The It will be around 50-60 schools, with a chance to focus on what made it great in the first place, and it will be a ton of fun. Just will take time to evolve.

 

[Cloneon]

They won't "fail" per se, but I see the Top 20ish TV brands in the B1G and SEC going to a Premier League. Then the Illinois, Miss St, Minnesota types fall back to "Division 2" with the rest of the Big12 and PAC/ACC rumps.

The It will be around 50-60 schools, with a chance to focus on what made it great in the first place, and it will be a ton of fun. Just will take time to evolve.

Again '20' teams is way too small of a market to continue to demand those payouts. Especially, as they don't have the odds to make it into everyone else's national championship. If they tapped NON-NFL markets, maybe it could be justified as a minor NFL league, but either way they won't have the same payout. Pride goes way BEYOND the football teams. The loyalty is 9 times out of 10 to those sports 'representing' their university. There's not a large enough audience 'outside' that to maintain the moneys they think they deserve.

 

[CascadeClone]

Again '20' teams is way too small of a market to continue to demand those payouts. Especially, as they don't have the odds to make it into everyone else's national championship. If they tapped NON-NFL markets, maybe it could be justified as a minor NFL league, but either way they won't have the same payout. Pride goes way BEYOND the football teams. The loyalty is 9 times out of 10 to those sports 'representing' their university. There's not a large enough audience 'outside' that to maintain the moneys they think they deserve.

Why?
It's the highest viewership games that drive the value - 400k people watching Rutgers vs Northwestern doesn't bring any more ad revenue than bowling, and thus not adding to the TV contract price.

So you're getting a higher percentage of higher value games, and splitting among fewer teams. If 80% of the B1G TV value comes from 20% of the games... why not just buy the 20% of the games for 80% of the cost, and have 50% less teams to split it with? Plus the broadcaster will keep a little more too. So ESPN will propose it, and the big brands will jump on it and leave the rest behind.

To put numbers on that, let's say the B1G and SEC contracts are $100M per school (round number) and you have 32 schools. So that's $3.2B. Now dump 12 of those schools, which reduces your inventory (the lowest valued inventory though) and markets some, so you reduce the total payout by 25% down to $2.4B. Divided by 20 schools that is $120M each, which is a win.

Similarly, the playoff money is going to be astronomical, why not just keep it all amongst the Premier League teams? Why give any of that to the also-rans at all? That's an even bigger bonus prize.

Will overall viewership go down? Yes. But concentrating the best product gets you most of the pie and you split it up into less pieces to boot. Plus I expect most of the TV execs think viewership will go UP, not DOWN, because most of them don't really understand college football anyway. I am sure they are probably modelling increases in their projections, even though we all think they are wrong about that.

 

[Urbandale2013]

Why?
It's the highest viewership games that drive the value - 400k people watching Rutgers vs Northwestern doesn't bring any more ad revenue than bowling, and thus not adding to the TV contract price.

So you're getting a higher percentage of higher value games, and splitting among fewer teams. If 80% of the B1G TV value comes from 20% of the games... why not just buy the 20% of the games for 80% of the cost, and have 50% less teams to split it with? Plus the broadcaster will keep a little more too. So ESPN will propose it, and the big brands will jump on it and leave the rest behind.

To put numbers on that, let's say the B1G and SEC contracts are $100M per school (round number) and you have 32 schools. So that's $3.2B. Now dump 12 of those schools, which reduces your inventory (the lowest valued inventory though) and markets some, so you reduce the total payout by 25% down to $2.4B. Divided by 20 schools that is $120M each, which is a win.

Similarly, the playoff money is going to be astronomical, why not just keep it all amongst the Premier League teams? Why give any of that to the also-rans at all? That's an even bigger bonus prize.

Will overall viewership go down? Yes. But concentrating the best product gets you most of the pie and you split it up into less pieces to boot. Plus I expect most of the TV execs think viewership will go UP, not DOWN, because most of them don't really understand college football anyway. I am sure they are probably modelling increases in their projections, even though we all think they are wrong about that.

It won’t be the best product though. Those schools have built their huge fan followings by beating the lower tier teams. Somebody has to lose and when Texas is regularly a losing record eventually people are going to stop caring. It’s not going to be good enough to compete with the NFL for people who want to watch the best of the best. Fans of the other schools aren’t going to watch either.

The reason the Ohio States and Alabamas of the world garner so much interest is they have their own interest that has grown because of their dominance. There also is the casual fan of other schools who want to watch the top of their level and how it impacts them. When most schools are disconnected they aren’t going to care.

 

[brianhos]

I will switch to the NBA and NFL. I am really close to being done with college athletics right now.

 

[isucy86]

IMO realignment COULD be fools gold over the long term. Adding USC, UCLA or even Notre Dame makes perfect sense with today's college football structure.

But what happens if:

• Courts decide athletes can unionize/collectively bargain.
• What if we see pay-for-play and team salary caps.
• Does the Federal Government determine that Title IX means more than just equal opportunity. It means equal spending.
• Do CTE lawsuit's trickle down from the NFL to CFB?
• Long-term structure & implications of NIL

The above might not happen or their impact is subtle. But there is a chance they could cause tidal waves.

Notre Dame's AD mentioned in a recent interview there could be 2 tiers of college sport. Not a P2 vs. everyone else, but what I would call minor league vs student athletes. He thought ND would choose the later.

 

[Cyforce]

I'm seriously thinking places like IMG will jump to the collegiate level and become major players.

 

[cymonw1980]

I do think the top 24 - 32 teams have a lot of value, but on their own they will suffer... How many people who are not fans of Wis v. Mich tune in today when that game is between two 7-1 or 8-0 teams ranked in the top 10? When it's two 4-4 teams battling it out for a middle of the pack finish in a super conf that your team may or may not be part of, how many non-Wis/Mich fans watch? How many fans of non-super conf teams wtach? The problem, is someone has to lose. There will be a lot of 0.500, sub-0.500 teams playing each other (if the others stop playing them - see b10 2020 football).

So, that is what I would like to see... super conf / others separate (again this is not short term this is long term). Yes, the P2 will make huge money. Even if the money drops, it will be more than what is generated outside the super conf on a per team basis. But all that money is just going to pay higher coaching salaries, higher player salaries, bigger/better facilities, etc.

Do fans care? Fans want to play rivals, play games that they can attend, play for a chance to compete for a title. If they want a pro league they watch the NFL.

All these things can be done better if you are playing in a league that prioritizes the value of the sport over the value extracted by individual institutions.

 

[NWICY]

I'll watch where ever ISU ends up The super league really won't hold much interest for me unless ISU is in it. I'd rather watch competitive games no matter how much money ISU is or is not making.

I guess the NIL is great, but I'm not going to be big on subsidizing it.

 

[exCyDing]

I think something like this is kind of an inevitability, but I don't see schools getting "kicked out" of the Big 10 or SEC per se. I see the teams that want to/get invited to leaving those conferences to start something new from scratch outside the NCAA. A big part of maintaining a conference name is tied to P5 status/CFP and Bowl access. If the big dogs would be giving all of that the finger and will do their own thing. They don't need to conference names.

I'm guessing it will be a 24 team super league (24$L). Hot take: Notre Dame does not join up. I don't think they want to be associated with a semi-pro football league, and they've been fine with leaving money on the table and doing their own thing forever. They may be a leader it maintaining the tradition of "college football." The just might be holier than thou enough to do this.

That leaves 43 teams with a P5 history. Find one more program to elevate, and you've got an even 44 to break out into four 11-team divisions/conferences/pods with regional and geographic variance (maybe break some of the Texas schools up - recruiting!), but some coherence. Put some traditional rivals back together. Having learned the lesson of creating haves and have-nots, share the wealth and negotiate TV deals as a group with equal revenue sharing. Establish a strong administrative structure to look out for the welfare of all 44 members and enforce rules. Everyone plays a 10 game division/conference schedule plus two OOC. Eight team playoff taking the top two from each conference.

It's not going to make nearly as much as the Super League, but there's more than enough interest and fan support to make something like this happen and be profitable/sustainable.

 

[HFCS]

The thing is the P2 leagues is going to fail. The quicker that happens the better for everyone. A true single league is what needs to happen. You replace the old regional rivalries and rebuild college football.

It definitely will not grow the sport if they try to split off 20-30 teams.

There’s not some massive fan growth potential among Bama, Michigan and Ohio St fans. It’s sort of maxed out.

It would be short term cash grab for a few and sacrificing what made it unique.

Growth in college football looks like ISU/ksu now vs 1988 ISU/ksu or Boise St coming up from nothing. Sidelining those alumni and fan bases is the opposite of growth. UCF is growth. Utah is growth. The next Oregon brand isn’t going to rise up from this small hypothetical super league and maybe won’t come at all,

 

[cayin]

This simplest way to fix college football is for the pay out to be the same for all P5 teams. It is so messed up some programs like Rutgers, Northwestern, Vandy, Indiana, Missouri, etc..are grandfathered into this deal and others like Virginia Tech, Clemson, Okie State, etc..are not. What made college football great was the regional rivalries, tradition, and the pageantry unique to each area. I know this will never happen, but I think having 7 ten team leagues across the country where everyone goes round robin would be awesome. You could have the Big East (With Penn State), The Big 10, SEC, ACC, A midwest/high plains league, a mountain conference with some Texas schools, and the old Pac 10.

 

[CascadeClone]

This simplest way to fix college football is for the pay out to be the same for all P5 teams. It is so messed up some programs like Rutgers, Northwestern, Vandy, Indiana, Missouri, etc..are grandfathered into this deal and others like Virginia Tech, Clemson, Okie State, etc..are not. What made college football great was the regional rivalries, tradition, and the pageantry unique to each area. I know this will never happen, but I think having 7 ten team leagues across the country where everyone goes round robin would be awesome. You could have the Big East (With Penn State), The Big 10, SEC, ACC, A midwest/high plains league, a mountain conference with some Texas schools, and the old Pac 10.

It wont happen for all, but i agree with exCyDing above that the 40 or 50 have nots will band together in a tier2 league with a single governance system, with revenue sharing, reasonable nil and transfer rules, divisions that make sense, and less money. And we will love it, and wont miss texas, bama, and ohio st.

 

[exCyDing]

It wont happen for all, but i agree with exCyDing above that the 40 or 50 have nots will band together in a tier2 league with a single governance system, with revenue sharing, reasonable nil and transfer rules, divisions that make sense, and less money. And we will love it, and wont miss texas, bama, and ohio st.

I really don't think letting the blue bloods go do their thing is going to change college football much. There's still plenty of programs with sufficient fanbases to have a "traditional" college football league that is profitable and sustainable. There will still be plenty of talented players to fill the rosters. Lots of these programs (like Iowa St) already build their programs around 3* recruits with a few 4 and 5* here and there. That's not going to change one bit. Both team still line up 11 at a time and at some point, roster sizes become unmanageable. There will be transfers both ways between the two tiers, but that's just a reality that we're going to have to live with.

If everything shakes out this way, I hope this second-tier conference/affiliation/league or whatever it is can learn some lessons from the past ~15 years and structure things so it doesn't happen again. Mostly, there needs to be a common governing structure that can actually tell schools and conferences no. Second, media deals should be negotiation collectively and revenues distributed equally. There will still be haves and have-nots, but that's going to come from donors, ticket sales, merch sales and NIL. All those are outside the conference purview.

 

[cymonw1980]

I really don't think letting the blue bloods go do their thing is going to change college football much. There's still plenty of programs with sufficient fanbases to have a "traditional" college football league that is profitable and sustainable. There will still be plenty of talented players to fill the rosters. Lots of these programs (like Iowa St) already build their programs around 3* recruits with a few 4 and 5* here and there. That's not going to change one bit. Both team still line up 11 at a time and at some point, roster sizes become unmanageable. There will be transfers both ways between the two tiers, but that's just a reality that we're going to have to live with.

If everything shakes out this way, I hope this second-tier conference/affiliation/league or whatever it is can learn some lessons from the past ~15 years and structure things so it doesn't happen again. Mostly, there needs to be a common governing structure that can actually tell schools and conferences no. Second, media deals should be negotiation collectively and revenues distributed equally. There will still be haves and have-nots, but that's going to come from donors, ticket sales, merch sales and NIL. All those are outside the conference purview.

Yes, I think the key is to drive money out of competition as much as possible.

If you focus on competitive balance, you will end up with a really fun league that drives significant interest across the country.

I live in NC now. There are many ECU fans that love competing with UNC, NCST, South Carolina, VT, etc. But the rules in college athletics have provided huge advantages to the P5. Create competitive parity between teams and you will drive significantly more interest and value in the sport.

The other thing you have to do is cut off the P2. Even if they allow games between the two leagues, you have to eliminate these games... I really believe their value will drop significantly if they are only playing each other. If money is eliminated from competitive balance, I believe some of these teams will find the non-P2 model more appealing than going 5-7 every year. Start to chip away at the P2 and their value deteriorates further... I really think if you set it up right, you can slowly reverse this.... It will take a long time, and require uniting all the "leftovers". But fans don't care if your athletic budget is $100M or $300M, they care about beating rivals and winning championships. If you can force competitive balance regardless of revenue you open the door for P2 teams to reconsider this. Today, you have to chase the $... but I think that if there was a viable alternative many teams would prefer to move back to the old model.