The future of college football

[MtnBuff]

This taken from the Troy Calhoun thread got me thinking:

AFA games are fun. Go when you can cheer for the home team.

It may be in the future that as much as I love CU football I may end up putting my time and my emotional energy into programs like AFA and CSU-Pueblo.

The top end of major college football seems to be in a race to destruction. More and more the money generated and the money invested seems to be concentrating in the top 30-40 programs leaving the rest to fall further behind.

For a school like CU to hire an inexperienced new head coach, pay him $3 million a year and lose him because another school that isn't even in the top 5 of their conference can double his salary and his assistant coaches pool is unsustainable for the sport.

Pay for play, turning players into professionals is right around the corner. How many schools will be able to keep up when the arguments start allowing the top money schools to start increasing what they pay.

As the talent becomes more concentrated the TV money will also in those schools that are more interested in being a professional sports organization than an educational institution. I don't see CU going that way (or competing if they do,) meaning they get left behind.

As that happens those of us who want to support a competitive program without all the things connected turning it into a minor league professional game will need to look elsewhere.

There will always be room for the D2 programs and I think some programs like AFA will find a place to compete without moving into the compromised situation.

For teams that have been and expect to be competing at the top level like CU that transition will be much harder and less certain in outcome.

I have already lost a lot of interest in the NFL and other pro sports as they end up more and more driven by commercial outcomes.

 

[hokiehead]

This taken from the Troy Calhoun thread got me thinking:



It may be in the future that as much as I love CU football I may end up putting my time and my emotional energy into programs like AFA and CSU-Pueblo.

The top end of major college football seems to be in a race to destruction. More and more the money generated and the money invested seems to be concentrating in the top 30-40 programs leaving the rest to fall further behind.

For a school like CU to hire an inexperienced new head coach, pay him $3 million a year and lose him because another school that isn't even in the top 5 of their conference can double his salary and his assistant coaches pool is unsustainable for the sport.

Pay for play, turning players into professionals is right around the corner. How many schools will be able to keep up when the arguments start allowing the top money schools to start increasing what they pay.

As the talent becomes more concentrated the TV money will also in those schools that are more interested in being a professional sports organization than an educational institution. I don't see CU going that way (or competing if they do,) meaning they get left behind.

As that happens those of us who want to support a competitive program without all the things connected turning it into a minor league professional game will need to look elsewhere.

There will always be room for the D2 programs and I think some programs like AFA will find a place to compete without moving into the compromised situation.

For teams that have been and expect to be competing at the top level like CU that transition will be much harder and less certain in outcome.

I have already lost a lot of interest in the NFL and other pro sports as they end up more and more driven by commercial outcomes.

I don't even think it's the top 30 - 40. it's the top 6 - 12.

Only six teams have made the playoffs in six years. that's 24 total slots that have been occupied by six total teams.

beyond those six, there's maybe another six to eight that can compete near the same level: Florida, Michigan, Notre Dame, Texas, A&M, Oklahoma. I struggle to even include Auburn and Penn State in this list of "also rans".

as much as it pains me to pose the question, why should Clemson keep funding Virginia Tech's program, much less Wake Forest's? Why should Alabama and LSU keep funding Vanderbilt? Ohio State funding Rutgers? Right now, the playoff teams still need their respective conferences given the structure that exists today, but I think that has a good chance of changing. There's little stopping the top 12 - 16 football schools from breaking away and dividing all that money by a much smaller denominator.

I think the landscape of college football is going to change significantly over the next ten years.

 

[Bufffan68]

One of the many things the NFL does well is revenue sharing, and they are the #1 sports brand in the country because smaller markets like Green Bay or Indianiapolis can compete with the NYs and LAs. Wealth and power concentration is certainly our zeitgeist, but it unsustainable in all its incarnations.

 

[InTheBuff]

Now than ever CU needs our support.

 

[Creebuzz]

If your point is that college football is broken, then I think most of us agree with you.

CU has little to do with it. If I were an Alabama alumnus, I would also agree that college football is broken.

My quick fix: pass a universal rule that no athletic department can pay more than ten times the average full professor salary at the given university. (For example, if Michigan State wants to raise its average professor salary to $530,000, then it can pay out the $5.3MM per year to Tucker).

 

[Bison]

I do feel like what MtnBuff is feeling when it comes to college football.

I'm going to either subscribe to ESPN+ or Sling TV and then determine what teams I'll watch. At this point, I'm leaning towards ESPN+'s annual subscription and following the likes of the Sun Belt (Georgia Southern & Coastal Carolina to be specific), MVFC especially with the Dakota schools being reunited under one conference banner, and perhaps something else. UNC football is always a possibility.

But I'm going to be curious to see what the new MWC TV schedule is going to be like as well so I might end up going with Sling TV for football only.

 

[The Alabaster Yak]

If your point is that college football is broken, then I think most of us agree with you.

CU has little to do with it. If I were an Alabama alumnus, I would also agree that college football is broken.

My quick fix: pass a universal rule that no athletic department can pay more than ten times the average full professor salary at the given university. (For example, if Michigan State wants to raise its average professor salary to $530,000, then it can pay out the $5.3MM per year to Tucker).

I don't think that solution is going to have the desired affect. All that does is make it so the best professors will flock to the BIG and SEC too because those programs aren't just going to bow out and decide not to pay for coaches anymore. They'll just contribute more to the general University fund and enrich professors.

The only solution to bring more competitive balance is creating a semblance of equal revenue sharing and/or capping HC and AC salary pools at reasonable levels that middling P5 programs can be somewhat competitive with.

 

[skibum]

I don't think that solution is going to have the desired affect. All that does is make it so the best professors will flock to the BIG and SEC too because those programs aren't just going to bow out and decide not to pay for coaches anymore. They'll just contribute more to the general University fund and enrich professors.

The only solution to bring more competitive balance is creating a semblance of equal revenue sharing and/or capping HC and AC salary pools at reasonable levels that middling P5 programs can be somewhat competitive with.

Don't be silly, they won't pay professors more, they'll just reclassified adjuncts and not hire as many "professors."

It's all too easy to **** with averages.

AD budget caps. $X per sport (different X for different sports). Adjustments to X for tuition and travel costs.

If the AD generates more money than their total X, they can add additional sports or send the difference to the school's general scholarship fund.

Done.

I'll go work out a Palestinian peace plan now.

 

[The Alabaster Yak]

Don't be silly, they won't pay professors more, they'll just reclassified adjuncts and not hire as many "professors."

It's all too easy to **** with averages.

What do you mean by this? Serious question and I am not familiar.

 

[MtnBuff]

Don't be silly, they won't pay professors more, they'll just reclassified adjuncts and not hire as many "professors."

It's all too easy to **** with averages.

AD budget caps. $X per sport (different X for different sports). Adjustments to X for tuition and travel costs.

If the AD generates more money than their total X, they can add additional sports or send the difference to the school's general scholarship fund.

Done.

I'll go work out a Palestinian peace plan now.

Or more likely than that they will simply find a way to pay the coaches outside of the university system, some of this already happens.

This may mean that while a coach has a contract with the school that pays him $1.3 million per year he is getting another $2 million per year for "appearance fees" with the booster club and the President's Club. Then he gets another $2 million for doing his coaches show every week and doing commercials for Bubba's Ford.

The assistant's will also be getting money from these same sources and once they start paying players they will be added to the list.

 

[Buffnik]

College football moves slowly. So much tradition with money tied to it (i.e., the bowl game issues). It was also a regional sport for so much of its history.

Some of that, frankly, is what I like about it. Rivalry games are on a different level than with pro sports. Conference/region/state pride attached to it is on a whole other level.

Eventually, we'll re-shuffle this to be more of an NFL model. Probably 64 teams in an upper division that doesn't share with everyone else -- and the media folks will tell us which schools they want.

My guess would be that those 64 would be some mashup of SEC & ACC being the "South" and "East" with the B1G & a merged Big 12/ Pac-12 being the "Central" and "West". Then a full playoff system. It will probably take a long time to get there, but I think it's where we are heading and have been ever since FSU joined the ACC & PSU joined the Big Ten 30 years ago.

 

[skibum]

What do you mean by this? Serious question and I am not familiar.

What Happens to Students When Their Professors Are on Welfare

The plight of non-tenured professors is widely known, but what about the impact they have on the students they’re hired to instruct?

www.theatlantic.com

A place to start.

A lot of "real" professors (I. E. Tenure track) are actually paid fairly well. The adjuncts are paid like ****.

The easy way around your idea is to not count adjuncts when you calculate your "average professor salary." It'd be fairly easy to do because they're not "real" professors anyway.

You could also reduce the number of tenured professors by simply replacing them with adjuncts when they retire (this is already happening btw), which again can artificially drive up your "average."

No amount of rule creating will prevent this - and the more complex the rules, the easier it is find loopholes.

Keep it simple: budget caps. You can spend whatever you want and allocate it however you want, just keep the total under x amount.

 

[NewEra 2014]

This taken from the Troy Calhoun thread got me thinking:



It may be in the future that as much as I love CU football I may end up putting my time and my emotional energy into programs like AFA and CSU-Pueblo.

The top end of major college football seems to be in a race to destruction. More and more the money generated and the money invested seems to be concentrating in the top 30-40 programs leaving the rest to fall further behind.

For a school like CU to hire an inexperienced new head coach, pay him $3 million a year and lose him because another school that isn't even in the top 5 of their conference can double his salary and his assistant coaches pool is unsustainable for the sport.

Pay for play, turning players into professionals is right around the corner. How many schools will be able to keep up when the arguments start allowing the top money schools to start increasing what they pay.

As the talent becomes more concentrated the TV money will also in those schools that are more interested in being a professional sports organization than an educational institution. I don't see CU going that way (or competing if they do,) meaning they get left behind.

As that happens those of us who want to support a competitive program without all the things connected turning it into a minor league professional game will need to look elsewhere.

There will always be room for the D2 programs and I think some programs like AFA will find a place to compete without moving into the compromised situation.

For teams that have been and expect to be competing at the top level like CU that transition will be much harder and less certain in outcome.

I have already lost a lot of interest in the NFL and other pro sports as they end up more and more driven by commercial outcomes.

This is a pathetic post and is full of such crybaby BS that I don’t know where to start. Mel Tucker is a one-off situation. MSU wildly overpaid for the guy because they were desperate. I’m glad that CU didn’t overpay the guy to stay. MSU will regret hiring Mel Tucker by the end of 2021, if not sooner.

The reason you are crying like a school girl is because CU has not been competitive in the PAC 12, and there is no excuse for CU to not be competitive within its own conference. The rest of the teams in the conference are in the same boat. CU needs to get its act together and win some games, and all will be well.

Maybe then you will quit your whining.

 

[Buffnik]

One thing we should take a step back on is that for a good number of years it has not been our non-conference record that has held CU back from going to bowl games. The problem has been our record in Pac-12 games where we compete with others who have have the same exact conference revenue as we do.

We have sucked where the playing field is level.

Hard to cry too much about how our revenue compares with B1G schools when it's not our non-conference, bowl or playoff performance that has been our issue.

 

[MtnBuff]

This is a pathetic post and is full of such crybaby BS that I don’t know where to start. Mel Tucker is a one-off situation. MSU wildly overpaid for the guy because they were desperate. I’m glad that CU didn’t overpay the guy to stay. MSU will regret hiring Mel Tucker by the end of 2021, if not sooner.

The reason you are crying like a school girl is because CU has not been competitive in the PAC 12, and there is no excuse for CU to not be competitive within its own conference. The rest of the teams in the conference are in the same boat. CU needs to get its act together and win some games, and all will be well.

Maybe then you will quit your whining.

No, your post is a pathetic ignoring of the realities of modern college football.

Yes, CU needs to win some games, we should be better than some of the teams who have been ahead of us.

The fact is though that as described above we have had 6 teams make the playoff in six years. We have maybe another 6-8 teams that have any reasonable hope of doing so in the next couple years.

The revenue differences are getting wider and the teams that have more are winning more.

I am hoping for a revival of CU football. With the right coach and a supportive administration CU could aspire to be first a top 25 program and eventually get into the top 10 a few times before falling off again.

The odds though of that happening for CU and for most programs now are getting longer.

Not whining, just addressing realities.

 

[Buffnik]

No, your post is a pathetic ignoring of the realities of modern college football.

Yes, CU needs to win some games, we should be better than some of the teams who have been ahead of us.

The fact is though that as described above we have had 6 teams make the playoff in six years. We have maybe another 6-8 teams that have any reasonable hope of doing so in the next couple years.

The revenue differences are getting wider and the teams that have more are winning more.

I am hoping for a revival of CU football. With the right coach and a supportive administration CU could aspire to be first a top 25 program and eventually get into the top 10 a few times before falling off again.

The odds though of that happening for CU and for most programs now are getting longer.

Not whining, just addressing realities.

Dude. We can't beat Arizona and Washington State. This has had nothing to do with CU's revenue stream compared to Maryland.

 

[MtnBuff]

Dude. We can't beat Arizona and Washington State. This has had nothing to do with CU's revenue stream compared to Maryland.

I'm not arguing that. There is no excuse for us to have finished last in the South more often since joining the PAC than all the other teams in the division combined.

This is a program that not to long ago was on of the top 20 programs in history in wins.

My issue is that if the goal is to be a nice program that goes to some bowls and occasionally may compete to win the conference we can and should be there. If the goal though is to be able to truly compete for the playoffs, to be one of the elite programs in college football then like most programs we are getting further away.

 

[Creebuzz]

It really doesn’t have anything to do with CU specifically.

But, I do have issues with college coaches achieving baronial wealth in a few short years from unpaid athletes at educational institutions. And if a dude like me is finding it all too unseemly, then imagine what others may think.

Oh well, carry on. Free market and ****.