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CU has rejoined the Big 12 and broken college football - talking out asses continues
- Thread starter InTheBuff
- Start date
So the Pac 12 leadership incompetence kept the Big 12 alive, killed the Pac 12, killed the MWC, and is probably going to kill the ACC as we know it at some point in the next few years.
Nothing from Brett McMurphy yet.
Air Force needs to get over to the AAC with Navy and Army, it is common sense
UNLV is such a sleeping giant, the PAC has to get them.
The PAC should just form a League, not just a conference. Merge with the AAC and create the league just below the Superleague, think big and think as a package deal.
Leadership had less to do with it than TV ratings and money. The more the money goes up the more the ratings need to be high too in order for TV to pay bigly. If one or two in conference have that problem, no big deal. The rest of the conference will pull them up. If most of your conference has that problem you need to come to jesus and accept low money or leave. The Pac12 had a ratings problem going into the negotiation period with the notion that each school deserved double or more there current payout. The Presidents were unreasonable. This after USC and UCLA already decided to exit. There were only three networks left that broadcast college sports? It was a losing situation.
We could change the P12 leadership a bunch of different ways and nothing would change the outcome unless we expanded with teams that continually kept saying no to us.
the MWC has the same problem but they dont beg for more money. And now a few of their members are tired of it all.
Clemson and FSU are the UCLA and USC in the ACC. ESPN might have money problems that kill the ACC after killing the P12
Trogdor
Soy Boy
How do you figure? They'll just grab Utep and NMSU or Sac St. They have tons of options. And that's only necessary if they lose more teams to the Pac(or AFA to the AAC). The Pac is paying them something like 28 million per team they poach. The MWC could end up with $168,000,000 to play with.
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The remaining members may get a windfall on the way out, but I don’t think the roster of MWC schools can command any TV money, and with the House settlement I have low confidence it will make financial sense. I think most people are vastly underestimating how costly it’s going to be for schools to remain FBS.
The cost of moving from FCS to FBS is now $5 million and that is something that the MWC can help the Montana & Dakota schools if they are interested. That's probably more than what it would cost for those schools to leave their conferences. UTEP & NMSU would be the obvious choices before thinking about those FCS schools.
You are overlooking the war chest that the MWC will have (as Trogdor pointed out) thanks to those poaching fees that the PAC (not OSU & WSU) has to pay the MWC.
Also people are underestimating the ability & desire for those G5 schools to come up with the money to pay their athletes because they don't bother to look at the revenue data provided by USA Today. Would you complain about only making $1,000 per month from revenue sharing after all your housing & food has been taken care of by the school? Even Wyoming had $50M in revenues back in 2022 and revenue sharing is being capped for FBS schools in that case...up to $20M to start with depending on the conference and if you deducted Wyoming's $8M scholarship expense from that $20M, assuming that they had 300 student-athletes to pay; that amounts to about $40,000 per student athlete. Now that's about more than $3,000 of free money each student athlete could spend per month because their lodging & meal expenses are already taken care of. If it's just $1,000 per month for 300 student-athletes, it's a $3.6M expense that a school like Wyoming could afford. Maybe even Northern Colorado can afford it since their total revenues for the same year is $22.43M and the school has about the same student body size as Wyoming.
Wyoming Revenue and Finances - USA TODAY
How much does the Wyoming college athletic program make each year? See their entire revenue picture, including ticket sales and expenses.
sportsdata.usatoday.com
I believe the concern about whether schools can afford those things is overblown. Ohio State and Texas will not be able to pay their athletes $100,000 per year due to those revenue sharing caps and the most that a school with 600 student athletes could pay would be $40,000 per year based on that $20M revenue sharing cap. Going back to UNC's figures, they had a nearly $200M budget for the entire school. That $3.6M revenue sharing expense would not be even 2% of UNC's total budget.
AFA would be only joining for football. Summit is where AFA likely would go for their non-football sports.
Are those two programs desirable to see?
In many years, yes.
And, already discussed, the XII hoops schedule is going to be
I'm hoping the PAC 12 adds some good basketball schools before this is done. Make the Front Range the basketball hotbed of the Western US!!!
Temple? Temple? This ain't the John Chaney era!
Crazy.
I had a work colleague who lives in Knoxville and is a UT alumn who had season tickets up until last season; they raised the price of the "required donation" in order to purchase season tickets to something obscene like $2K per ticket, that was on top of the season ticket price. The total cost was something like $2.5K per seat per season. These were for bleacher seats; nothing crazy.
$5K for two season tickets that are bleacher seats is wild.
SEC: It Just Means More ($$$)
I think cutting through all the finances is a difficult job without having a complete picture. I admit I really have both limited data and not enough personal time to parse through the public info. Below is back of the envelope Buffalo math, so take it for what it’s worth.The cost of moving from FCS to FBS is now $5 million and that is something that the MWC can help the Montana & Dakota schools if they are interested. That's probably more than what it would cost for those schools to leave their conferences. UTEP & NMSU would be the obvious choices before thinking about those FCS schools.
You are overlooking the war chest that the MWC will have (as Trogdor pointed out) thanks to those poaching fees that the PAC (not OSU & WSU) has to pay the MWC.
Also people are underestimating the ability & desire for those G5 schools to come up with the money to pay their athletes because they don't bother to look at the revenue data provided by USA Today. Would you complain about only making $1,000 per month from revenue sharing after all your housing & food has been taken care of by the school? Even Wyoming had $50M in revenues back in 2022 and revenue sharing is being capped for FBS schools in that case...up to $20M to start with depending on the conference and if you deducted Wyoming's $8M scholarship expense from that $20M, assuming that they had 300 student-athletes to pay; that amounts to about $40,000 per student athlete. Now that's about more than $3,000 of free money each student athlete could spend per month because their lodging & meal expenses are already taken care of. If it's just $1,000 per month for 300 student-athletes, it's a $3.6M expense that a school like Wyoming could afford. Maybe even Northern Colorado can afford it since their total revenues for the same year is $22.43M and the school has about the same student body size as Wyoming.
Wyoming Revenue and Finances - USA TODAY
How much does the Wyoming college athletic program make each year? See their entire revenue picture, including ticket sales and expenses.sportsdata.usatoday.com
I believe the concern about whether schools can afford those things is overblown. Ohio State and Texas will not be able to pay their athletes $100,000 per year due to those revenue sharing caps and the most that a school with 600 student athletes could pay would be $40,000 per year based on that $20M revenue sharing cap. Going back to UNC's figures, they had a nearly $200M budget for the entire school. That $3.6M revenue sharing expense would not be even 2% of UNC's total budget.
With that in mind, when I look at the $50 million in revenue figure for Wyoming that you linked, I see about $25 million in outside revenue through ticket sales, media rights & licensing, and contributions. A huge portion, $20 million, is through student fees and school subsidies.
For the fiscal year ending 6/30/22, the Wyoming AD reported $3.1 million excess in revenues over expenses. However, if you back out the $20 million in school support & fees, the number becomes a $17 million deficit. Also, I think the new media deal that the MWC would receive without Boise, SDSU, CSU, Fresno (and likely AFA and UNLV) will be significantly lower than their current $45 million per year. This further erodes revenue. And then, once you start paying players, it gins up the operating expenses even more.
In sum, my theory is that MWC schools massively subsidize their athletic departments as is, revenues will likely decrease because the best value teams have departed, and operating expense are forecasted to increase due to future required financial comp paid to players in the FBS. The fiscal sustainability seems questionable and therefore the future of the conference altogether.
By comparison, on the complete other end of the spectrum, Ohio State has zero student fees and typically has $0 to $100,000 in school support, far less than the $20 million little old Wyoming shells out.
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We are just going to have to see what happens. The Big 12 was thought to be taking a major hit in media rights after OU & UT left and that didn't happen. In addition to ESPN+, there's Paramount+ and Max (was called HBO Max). The MWC currently has a deal with several of those platforms (CBS & TruTV/Max). Heck even OSU & WSU from the Pac-12 signed up with CW for this season.
Tennessee just announced a talent fee on their season tickets for next season and that is one way G5 schools can get the money for their athletes. A $5 talent fee for a full 25,000 seat stadium would be enough to pay every player nearly $1,200 and that is with a 105 player roster. A $5 per credit hour athletic talent fee would really help with that. Schools of any size will find a way to come up with the money to pay the players.
Wyoming isn't a great example for other reasons, including very strong state support (paid for via state oil, gas, coal extraction revenues), and a large amount of private wealth support (again due to private oil, gas, and coal wealth among a few of the residents/alumni) - the other "snow belt" state schools simply don't have that level of support at either the state or the private level (e.g. UND estranged their wealthiest donor with their mascot change a few years ago).
I think a few people aren't looking soberly at long term ongoing costs vs revenues, and are overly focused on current revenues, costs and potential one-off lump sums.
We're a long way from any sort of stability in college football.
Ultimately, I think we're going to see the highest tier continue to reshuffle and shrink, and that is going to cause a major reshuffle at the "lower" tiers.
I think it could go two ways:
1. We just see a cascade effect, where each group of schools that gets pushed out (or drops out - everyone should keep in mind that during the last really major reshuffling late 70s/early 80s, which was also driven by court cases and changes in the legal landscape, several formerly "top tier" schools and even entire conferences voluntarily chose to step down a level). Anyway, the schools that go down a level end up pushing other schools down a level and/or they drop football entirely.
2. Instead of a cascade down, we see kind of a bell curve result: the "elite" grouping gets smaller, the "mid" grouping gets larger, and the "small" grouping also gets smaller. Basically, once it become obvious that the mid grouping has no chance to keep up with the revenue/spending of the elite group, the revenue/spending budgets are such that a number of current FCS schools say "hey, we can swing those budgets and compete in the next level up." [And the schools moving down breath a sigh of relief that they can lower their budgets and remain quite competitive.]
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Very good points. The bell curve scenario is not one I really considered but that is a possibility.
There are significant downward pressures on revenue, in part from media partners having significant difficulty navigating the streaming ecosystem, but also from the general budgets of schools facing issues with lack of state support, tuition affordability, and an enrollment cliff. And there is upward pressure on operating expenses as players demand something above the current standard.
Hard to say where it all lands, but suggesting the conference will be fine if they back fill with UTEP wouldn’t exactly inspire me if I’m managing an AD budget in the MWC.
ACC potentially staying intact until 2030-31 when B1G & B12 media rights expire.
www.espn.com
Sources: ACC, Clemson, FSU renew revenue talks
Talks between Clemson, Florida State and the ACC have ramped up in recent weeks, sources told ESPN, on a revenue distribution model based on brand valuation and television ratings in exchange for the schools dropping their lawsuits against the conference.
Would be good. But I think that ESPN's decision is what will drive things.ACC potentially staying intact until 2030-31 when B1G & B12 media rights expire.
Sources: ACC, Clemson, FSU renew revenue talks
Talks between Clemson, Florida State and the ACC have ramped up in recent weeks, sources told ESPN, on a revenue distribution model based on brand valuation and television ratings in exchange for the schools dropping their lawsuits against the conference.
BerkeleyBuff
Well-Known Member
Add in UTSA + 1 more (UNLV? Another Texas school) and that's clearly the best G5 league by a wide margin.
Rep for Mitch
no wonder their tailgates are so insane. If you spend $1000/ticket/game you better spend all day to get your money's worth.