CU has rejoined the Big 12 and broken college football - talking out asses continues

[Not Sure]

As much as the networks may love the idea, the schools and their fans have no interest at places like USC or Texas or Bama or Michigan or Notre Dame to play a schedule where an 8-4 record represents a damn fine season.

This is my point. A 30 team league will eat itself alive. You need the Vanderbilts, Mississippi States, Rutgers and Indianas to do a couple things: first, to give Michigan and Georgia a week off, but also to make for a great story when those schools break out and do well.

30 is way too low, 80 is way too high. 64 is a good number that provides for a lot of schools to have a seat at the table while everybody gets ridiculously rich. If you believe, as I do, that we are eventually heading to a 14-game season and a 16-team playoff, 64 is the perfect number. The entertainment over the next 10-15 years will be watching the teams right on that bubble fight each other like rats in a sock.

 

[Bison]

As much as the networks may love the idea, the schools and their fans have no interest at places like USC or Texas or Bama or Michigan or Notre Dame to play a schedule where an 8-4 record represents a damn fine season.

While other conference championship winning teams would have better records than 8-4 most years.

It would take a paradigm shift within those fanbases to be conditioned to accept those 8-4 records when part of their bragging rights revolves around the all-time wins and losses record which is worthless pre-WW2.

 

[Bison]

This is my point. A 30 team league will eat itself alive. You need the Vanderbilts, Mississippi States, Rutgers and Indianas to do a couple things: first, to give Michigan and Georgia a week off, but also to make for a great story when those schools break out and do well.

30 is way too low, 80 is way too high. 64 is a good number that provides for a lot of schools to have a seat at the table while everybody gets ridiculously rich. If you believe, as I do, that we are eventually heading to a 14-game season and a 16-team playoff, 64 is the perfect number. The entertainment over the next 10-15 years will be watching the teams right on that bubble fight each other like rats in a sock.

Totally agree with what you are saying. FSU and ND might be the last blue bloods to get into either the B1G or SEC then schools that appear to be cannon fodder for the blue bloods will be added.

 

[Not Sure]

Totally agree with what you are saying. FSU and ND might be the last blue bloods to get into either the B1G or SEC then schools that appear to be cannon fodder for the blue bloods will be added.

Beyond that, you need better geographical distribution. Having 4 west coast teams won’t cut it. Needs to be at least 24 teams physically located west of the Mississippi to accommodate scheduling.

This can be done. What concerns me is that the people who can pull it off haven’t figured out that it’s in their best interest to do so.

 

[Boulder]

Basement dwellers are just as important as the best teams for the health of a league. Centralizing and spinning off football under a new college league of around 60 programs is the best for everyone involved. The issue is that none of the stakeholders want to make the first move or upset the apple cart. CU is lucky to have gotten the Big XII invite and it is up the athletic department to spin the success of Coach Prime to a seat at the eventual college football super league.

 

[Not Sure]

Here’s another reason 64 is the right number: if you have 8 divisions of 8 teams each, in a 14-game regular season, each team plays all its division teams plus one school from each of the other divisions. Scheduling just got a lot easier. You keep regionality and add in some nationally appealing games. In a 16-team playoff, each division winner is in, plus 8 wild cards. You’d never get more than three teams from any division into the playoff.

Any arguments against the increased games are overcome by the fact that the majority of teams play 13 games now anyway. It’s not that much of a leap.

This would work. It would work really well, IMO.

 

[Big Jim]

Here’s another reason 64 is the right number: if you have 8 divisions of 8 teams each, in a 14-game regular season, each team plays all its division teams plus one school from each of the other divisions. Scheduling just got a lot easier. You keep regionality and add in some nationally appealing games. In a 16-team playoff, each division winner is in, plus 8 wild cards. You’d never get more than three teams from any division into the playoff.

Any arguments against the increased games are overcome by the fact that the majority of teams play 13 games now anyway. It’s not that much of a leap.

This would work. It would work really well, IMO.

Why would Alabama or Georgia or Ohio State want to give up three cupcake home games a year? Why would those schools want to share the $$$ with 63 other schools when they can keep a lot more for themselves in a 36 or so sized serup?

 

[Not Sure]

Why would Alabama or Georgia or Ohio State want to give up three cupcake home games a year? Why would those schools want to share the $$$ with 63 other schools when they can keep a lot more for themselves in a 36 or so sized serup?

Why would they give up cupcake games? They’ll still play South Carolina, Mississippi State and Vanderbilt.

The money with this would be way, WAY more than anybody is making now.
And this would actually help the long term health of college football. That’s where the snag comes in. Short term gains often overshadow long term benefits.

 

[The Alabaster Yak]

Why would they give up cupcake games? They’ll still play South Carolina, Mississippi State and Vanderbilt.

The money with this would be way, WAY more than anybody is making now.
And this would actually help the long term health of college football. That’s where the snag comes in. Short term gains often overshadow long term benefits.

I actually agree that there is more money to be had in a format like this. Let's assume the number per school is around $100m x 64 schools = $6.4B/year. For comparison, the NFL currently has about $10B/year in media deals split across the 32 teams, so it's still significantly less for the Networks and streamers for the second most watched sport in the country.

The real question, though, is why Alabama, Ohio State, Georgia, etc would allow the other programs to be on equal financial footing as them. I agree that if everyone is taking a long term view, this is a no brainer as it maximizes revenue into what would be a truly national sport, engaging millions more people than are currently engaged.

This would absolutely require a central governing body and creation of one "league" that collectively opens up media rights negotiations. At current, it feels like the networks are driving the bus, not the conferences, so something drastic has to change on that front before any of this becomes reality.

 

[MtnBuff]

You can’t have a bunch of blue bloods fighting each other every week. They need a “league” that’s big enough to provide for scheduling a variety of opponents. 64 might be too high. It might be too low. It’s a number that would allow for a geographically disbursed group of schools. This is all pure conjecture, but 64 seems about right to me.

Money makes all those concerns go away.

They are looking at the NFL model. The big revenue generating schools want to maximize the money coming to them and they don't care a lot about tradition or history to get there.

Let's say for example the number ends at 40. If the choice presented to schools 30-40 is you can keep doing what you are doing and make $15-20 million per year with the schools left out while you are winning 6-7 games per year or you can make $115-$120 million per year getting beat up in the super conference I know which answer most schools would pick.

A very few schools (like Stanford) can afford to pass on $100 million per year, most would gladly go buy some knee pads.

As it stands now almost all schools play one or two opponents from lower level programs be it G5 or even FCS. That wouldn't end so you would still have well over half of the schools end up at or above .500

Continue to copy the NFL mindset and a 40 team league with a 12 team playoff means that the majority of teams are in contention for a playoff spot for the majority of the season.

I much prefer what college football was a few decades ago but that isn't coming back. Network TV money drives the decision making and if they don't want the bottom schools from the B1G and the SEC in then they will figure out how to get rid of them.

 

[Beavis]

It’s pretty difficult to guess what’s coming down the road. Until now, it’s mostly been TV networks driving the bus. As higher education goes through some very lean times due to the drop in K-12 students and a deemphasis on degrees in hiring plus the high cost of attendance, there are also many legal battles that will fundamentally change the calculus. Student athletes becoming employees and eligible to unionize is just one, but it’s the one likely to bring down elements of college athletics as we know it. Not all sports or schools will come out of this intact.

All this to say, I don’t think the next step is future expansion or creation of a super conference. I think it’ll be a question of who is still standing and how to structure a system with unions and employees replacing current day student athletes.

Or the Big SEC Saudi super league could be announced tomorrow. Nothing would surprise me.

 

[Not Sure]

I actually agree that there is more money to be had in a format like this. Let's assume the number per school is around $100m x 64 schools = $6.4B/year. For comparison, the NFL currently has about $10B/year in media deals split across the 32 teams, so it's still significantly less for the Networks and streamers for the second most watched sport in the country.

The real question, though, is why Alabama, Ohio State, Georgia, etc would allow the other programs to be on equal financial footing as them. I agree that if everyone is taking a long term view, this is a no brainer as it maximizes revenue into what would be a truly national sport, engaging millions more people than are currently engaged.

This would absolutely require a central governing body and creation of one "league" that collectively opens up media rights negotiations. At current, it feels like the networks are driving the bus, not the conferences, so something drastic has to change on that front before any of this becomes reality.

Yeah, but they wouldn’t be on equal financial footing. Alabama, Georgia, Michigan, et al all have 100,000+ stadiums with huge alumni networks and merchandising opportunities that schools like Rutgers can only dream about. Just because everybody is making the same amount from their media contract doesn’t mean they’re all making the same amount of money.

 

[The Alabaster Yak]

Yeah, but they wouldn’t be on equal financial footing. Alabama, Georgia, Michigan, et al all have 100,000+ stadiums with huge alumni networks and merchandising opportunities that schools like Rutgers can only dream about. Just because everybody is making the same amount from their media contract doesn’t mean they’re all making the same amount of money.

I guess if you keep profit sharing/gate/merch separate unlike NFL, they might be in for it. It would still only happen if a central league forms and then opens media rights for bidding.

 

[Not Sure]

I guess if you keep profit sharing/gate/merch separate unlike NFL, they might be in for it. It would still only happen if a central league forms and then opens media rights for bidding.

Yup. That’s critical to the entire thing. As much as it pains me to admit, it needs to be Notre Dame leading this effort. It is the one school who has the pull to get everybody on the same page. There needs to be a pain point for them to agree to lead the charge. I am of the opinion that the pain point is developing rapidly. Swarbick does not appreciate how the landscape of college athletics is changing.

 

[patebuff]

None of this matters until the Schools decide that the networks driving all of this no longer have the power. Until that happens, whatever the networks want, is what they will get.

 

[Buffnik]

None of this matters until the Schools decide that the networks driving all of this no longer have the power. Until that happens, whatever the networks want, is what they will get.

Or use the networks properly. For example, the downfall of boxing was that they didn't make it so there was HBO & Showtime setting cards & whatnot for winning the championships with a fight card media schedule. Instead, it was about PPV & short-term maxing of events. MMA structure kicked its ass.

CFB has to have a unified structure, rules, scheduling, etc.

 

[MtnBuff]

None of this matters until the Schools decide that the networks driving all of this no longer have the power. Until that happens, whatever the networks want, is what they will get.

And it also needs to be understood that the schools that are driving the network dollars aren't necessarily interested in being charitable. Share and share alike doesn't fit when one school is selling out 100,000 seats and drawing big TV numbers and another is discounting tickets to get to 30,000 and draws a fraction of the TV viewers.

Ohio State would rather have $20 million extra than to share with Northwestern. If Notre Dame cared about having everyone on the same page they would have been in a conference year ago.

The golden rule of college sports, those who have the gold make the rules.

 

[Jens1893]

Yeah, but they wouldn’t be on equal financial footing. Alabama, Georgia, Michigan, et al all have 100,000+ stadiums with huge alumni networks and merchandising opportunities that schools like Rutgers can only dream about. Just because everybody is making the same amount from their media contract doesn’t mean they’re all making the same amount of money.

That will not be the case much longer.

 

[Not Sure]

That will not be the case much longer.

It’s not the case now. That’s what we are hoping to accomplish, though.

 

[Bison]

Yeah, but they wouldn’t be on equal financial footing. Alabama, Georgia, Michigan, et al all have 100,000+ stadiums with huge alumni networks and merchandising opportunities that schools like Rutgers can only dream about. Just because everybody is making the same amount from their media contract doesn’t mean they’re all making the same amount of money.

Truth.

If you look at all the tax filings for all of those schools and when you look at the ticket revenues where a huge chunk of them are from football, it's pretty obvious that those schools with large stadiums and alumni networks are leagues above the likes of Rutgers. I think CU is somewhere in the middle and I'm looking forward to those 2023 ticket revenue numbers from CU given that all home games sold out last season. I'm curious to see how CU compares to those B1G and SEC programs because I think CU is pretty much near the top when it comes to the B12 and that was before the 2023 season.

 

[Jens1893]

It’s not the case now. That’s what we are hoping to accomplish, though.

There largely is within the conferences. That will not be the case much longer.

 

[Bison]

It’s not the case now. That’s what we are hoping to accomplish, though.

You mean the decoupling of college football from the rest of college athletics? I can see that happening.

 

[Not Sure]

There largely is within the conferences. That will not be the case much longer.

We will see. I see a real problem if (for instance) Alabama starts telling South Carolina it has to take a smaller share of the TV revenue. That’s the kind of thing that kills conferences (remember Texas?).

The decoupling of big time college football from the other sports is largely inevitable. There are good ways to pull that off and bad ways.

 

[Buffnik]

Truth.

If you look at all the tax filings for all of those schools and when you look at the ticket revenues where a huge chunk of them are from football, it's pretty obvious that those schools with large stadiums and alumni networks are leagues above the likes of Rutgers. I think CU is somewhere in the middle and I'm looking forward to those 2023 ticket revenue numbers from CU given that all home games sold out last season. I'm curious to see how CU compares to those B1G and SEC programs because I think CU is pretty much near the top when it comes to the B12 and that was before the 2023 season.

What cannot hold for long is the reality of CU being able to compete against programs that earn double the conference revenue as us while also earning twice the gameday revenue. Particularly while being in a high cost location where every employee and maintenance/ improvement project comes at a 50% premium to competitors.

CU needs a bigger stadium and a path to B1G or we are going to be to a South Carolina what we've been to a New Mexico.

 

[leftybuff]

CU needs a bigger stadium and a path to B1G or we are going to be to a South Carolina what we've been to a New Mexico.

Wait, South Carolina is going to eat our peppers?

 

[Not Sure]

What cannot hold for long is the reality of CU being able to compete against programs that earn double the conference revenue as us while also earning twice the gameday revenue. Particularly while being in a high cost location where every employee and maintenance/ improvement project comes at a 50% premium to competitors.

CU needs a bigger stadium and a path to B1G or we are going to be to a South Carolina what we've been to a New Mexico.

I would disagree that we need a path to the B1G. If this plays out a certain way, there won’t be a B1G or an SEC. It’ll all be one college football league with one governing body. The two major conferences are doing their level best to hasten this process, IMO. None of what is going on there is sustainable long term (again, IMO). At some point, somebody (likely Notre Dame) is going to lead the effort at a complete restructuring of major D-1 college football.

 

[Buffnik]

I would disagree that we need a path to the B1G. If this plays out a certain way, there won’t be a B1G or an SEC. It’ll all be one college football league with one governing body. The two major conferences are doing their level best to hasten this process, IMO. None of what is going on there is sustainable long term (again, IMO). At some point, somebody (likely Notre Dame) is going to lead the effort at a complete restructuring of major D-1 college football.

Probably better stated by me would have been to say that CU needs to have the gameday revenue base, on-field success and booster strength to ensure that CU has a seat at the big boy table for whatever the next iteration may be - otherwise no CU fan will ever be able to hope to ever again see a run like the late 80s thru early 2000s of being nationally relevant.

 

[leftybuff]

Probably better stated by me would have been to say that CU needs to have the gameday revenue base, on-field success and booster strength to ensure that CU has a seat at the big boy table for whatever the next iteration may be - otherwise no CU fan will ever be able to hope to ever again see a run like the late 80s thru early 2000s of being nationally relevant.

I understand and agree, but I think it is much more likely the fun ends when Prime leaves. We will be clunking around with Wazzu, UNM and Wyoming shortly thereafter.

 

[Not Sure]

Probably better stated by me would have been to say that CU needs to have the gameday revenue base, on-field success and booster strength to ensure that CU has a seat at the big boy table for whatever the next iteration may be - otherwise no CU fan will ever be able to hope to ever again see a run like the late 80s thru early 2000s of being nationally relevant.

Agreed. I believe game day revenue, booster support and merchandising will be the differentiating financial element going forward. There’s a big gap there between the haves and the have nots. As has been stated, the big boy league cannot be entirely populated by blue bloods. There will be some bottom dwellers that hit a big payday and don’t do anything to improve themselves.

 

[Jens1893]

We will see. I see a real problem if (for instance) Alabama starts telling South Carolina it has to take a smaller share of the TV revenue. That’s the kind of thing that kills conferences (remember Texas?).

The decoupling of big time college football from the other sports is largely inevitable. There are good ways to pull that off and bad ways.

That implies that Alabama a) wants a conference and b) wants South Carolina to be a part of it and I have doubts about both.

I have seen this exact same thing play out elsewhere. The big teams will keep pushing for a bigger piece of the pie as they win more, contribute more and attract more people and at one point break away from the rest and do their own thing where they can decide who's part of it and make the rules as they see fit.