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The mother of all conference realignment blogs

Buffnik

Buffnik

Real name isn't Nik
Club Member
Junta Member
http://www.thechaosindex.com/cest-l...-to-change-a-whole-lot-more-than-you-realize/

A very believable scenario of realignment driven completely by tv money & media markets.

Basically:
4 conferences with 16 teams each (2 8-team divisions)
D1 becomes 3 divisions (P4, G4, FCS)
Relegation like we have in European soccer to keep crappy P4 late season games interesting and add a lot more interest to G4 games that are televised
Each P4 would be paired with a G4 - last place Pac-16 team would get relegated the next season while the MWC champ would get promoted the next season
P4 championship games become the national quarterfinals with the playoffs becoming the 4 conference champs
Elimination of P4 v FCS games unless it's treated like a preseason exhibition game as an extra date with very few P4 v G4 matchups
 
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Buffnik said:
http://www.thechaosindex.com/cest-l...-to-change-a-whole-lot-more-than-you-realize/

A very believable scenario of realignment driven completely by tv money & media markets.

Basically:
4 conferences with 16 teams each (2 8-team divisions)
D1 becomes 3 divisions (P4, G4, FCS)
Relegation like we have in European soccer to keep crappy P4 late season games interesting and add a lot more interest to G4 games that are televised
Each P4 would be paired with a G4 - last place Pac-12 team would get relegated the next season while the MWC champ would get promoted the next season
P4 championship games become the national quarterfinals with the playoffs becoming the 4 conference champs
Elimination of P4 v FCS games unless it's treated like a preseason exhibition game as an extra date with very few P4 v G4 matchups
Click to expand...
I'm soooooo sick of the realignment process, but this makes sense.
 
Well... relegation would suck

I don't see how conference teams would tolerate the chance of getting dumped into a lower conference. There is too much money invested in stadiums and marketing for a school to want to risk that kind of fall
 
dio said:
Well... relegation would suck

I don't see how conference teams would tolerate the chance of getting dumped into a lower conference. There is too much money invested in stadiums and marketing for a school to want to risk that kind of fall
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I can't see why the P4 teams/conferences would agree to that. For instance no SEC team is going to want to drop down to the Sunbelt to make room for Arkansas St. No B1G team would be willing to drop on down to the MAC to see northern Illinois take their spot.
 
onealcd said:
Relegation will never work in college sports because the system itself is based on academics and amateurism. Cheating would be even more prevalent than it is today.
Click to expand...

This brings up the point that I think many miss when they only consider the tv money. For most of these universities, the athletic revenues are not all that significant. Even if they bring in a lot, they end up spending everything and more on athletics. The value of athletics is as a marketing arm for interesting high schoolers in undergrad applications and in connecting alumni/community in order to drive donations.

Focusing only on tv money discounts how few ****s the presidents & chancellors give about whether there's an additional $10 million a year in athletics revenue which will go straight to facility upgrades, increased coach salaries and other athletics budget items.
 
0% chance that presidents allow for a relegation system. Would be fun, but will never ever happen.
 
Relegation is DOA. It's a fantasy dreamed up by folks at places like CSU to keep their meager dreams of P5 status alive. The conferences wouldn't want it anyway. It doesn't add anything to their bottom line. a school that is terrible in one sport like football might be really good in others. Dropping a school with a bottom feeding football program but a consistent NCAA tournament participant for a middle of the road football program with no hoops program is a net loss for the conference. It's a stupid idea thought up by desperate people.
 
I'm a big fan of relegation, even if it would likely have kept the Buffs out of the top tier for most of the last decade. It creates more meaningful games.
 
Relegation could result in scheduling nightmares.

8 team divisions means 7 divisional games per year, plus at least 2 cross-division contests. Relegation could throw a kink in the number of home games the very next year - a loss of revenue no school wants to see.

Additionally, can you see the $ec giving up their current format? That being a "marquee" conference game during ooc plus a home game against a nobody sometime in late october/early november.

How about the teams that want to play in a particular area at least once a year, for recruiting, exposure, and alumni (think Washington and whoregon tripping to SoCal)? Relegation may impact this as well, and folks would not happy.
 
There are so many reasons why it won't happen that it's absurd to talk about it like its a real possibility.
 
Yeah I didn't even think about the multiple sports thing and how that would work. There is no way in hell.
 
StormTrooper said:
I'm a big fan of relegation, even if it would likely have kept the Buffs out of the top tier for most of the last decade. It creates more meaningful games.
Click to expand...

Size of TV audience = meaningfulness.

A MWC schedule, even under relegation, is still not very meaningful. CU v Nevada or Utah State might have stakes that matter to several dozen fans aligned to those programs, but the rest of the country isn't going to tune into that nonsense. Having CU get mudholed by USC is much more meaningful because it matters to millions of people tuning into see USC.

Hell. Even Wazzou v Oregon State or Utah v Colorado are not very meaningful games under good circumstance simply because of the small market viewership.

Mississippi State vs Vanderbilt is not going to get watched for similar reasons.
 
dio said:
Well... relegation would suck

I don't see how conference teams would tolerate the chance of getting dumped into a lower conference. There is too much money invested in stadiums and marketing for a school to want to risk that kind of fall
Click to expand...

You mean they'd actually take their football seriously for a change?
 
J.R. Ewing said:
Watch Kansas basketball relegated to Conf-USA because their football team stunk up the joint.
Click to expand...
Or Kentucky. Or Indiana. Or (until recently) Duke.

Really, it's just an ill-conceived idea floated by desperate people.
 
The concept of relegation really doesn't have a place here because of the author's assertion that TV market size drives everything due to eyeballs and dollar signs. Advertisers would lose it if they thought they wouldn't be reaching the Denver market if CU was relegated and New Mexico State was promoted. More so if they were potentially losing Cal for Boise State (for example). Those aren't fair trades in their minds, so no matter how intriguing it would be to have a relegation system to make late season games more interesting it is a nonstarter.
 
The only way for it to work is to treat the conference affiliations of the revenue sports differently from both each other and from the non-revenue sports. While it's conceivable: see ND and the ACC, or all the schools that participate in D1 skiing and/or hockey; it's probably a bridge too far for college administrators who are conservative by nature.

And don't forget: for every Indiana or Vanderbilt that doesn't want to risk relegation, there's a tOSU and Bama that would really prefer to keep them on the schedule.
 
onealcd said:
Damn European-socialist, capitalist sport leagues causing issues across the pond.
Click to expand...

Yep. Yep. Yep.
Most disturbing thing I've ever heard at Folsom was when a couple of CU students behind me were talking about their fandom for Manchester United in one breath and then failing to correctly identify the CU running back in the next.
 
Skidmark said:
Yep. Yep. Yep.
Most disturbing thing I've ever heard at Folsom was when a couple of CU students behind me were talking about their fandom for Manchester United in one breath and then failing to correctly identify the CU running back in the next.
Click to expand...
Soccer is growing like crazy around Colorado it is really surprising. My high school buddy who was a huge football fan (Chiefs) went to grad school in England and now follows nothing but European soccer. I have never seen someone switch like that so quickly.

I think the concept of relegation can work in some pro league (the nba needs this desperately) but in college sports there is just no way for it to work.
 
relegation. like it is some kind of any equal system and the p5 will want to share their ice cream.
 
onealcd said:
Soccer is growing like crazy around Colorado it is really surprising. My high school buddy who was a huge football fan (Chiefs) went to grad school in England and now follows nothing but European soccer. I have never seen someone switch like that so quickly.

I think the concept of relegation can work in some pro league (the nba needs this desperately) but in college sports there is just no way for it to work.
Click to expand...

For the record, I also went to grad school in England, yet came back less impressed with soccer.

It's just kicking the ball around with your feet, and covering your nuts during a penalty kick.

What people see in that sport is beyond my comprehension.
 
Creebuzz said:
A more likely scenario is that much of the big TV money starts to dry up when the old cable/dish model washes out, and then conference realignment won't get so much run.
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This is accurate. Churn of video subscribers in the cable industry is frankly alarming. The well is rapidly drying up for the wild spending on contracts with the college conferences. ESPN won't be subsidized by non-sports viewers for much longer.
 
BuffaloSoldier76 said:
This is accurate. Churn of video subscribers in the cable industry is frankly alarming. The well is rapidly drying up for the wild spending on contracts with the college conferences. ESPN won't be subsidized by non-sports viewers for much longer.
Click to expand...

Yup. The Skinny Package has arrived. And it generally excludes ESPN.


the latest cable network “Universe Estimates” report from the Nielsen Company, which looks at how many households subscribe to pay television services and which services carry specific networks. The quarterly report for April 2016 showed a median household-subscriber decline of 2.5 percent across the cable landscape.

Disney-owned networks (ESPN) were among the hardest hit, declining 3.6 percent, while Viacom networks declined 3.1 percent. Faring much better was 21st Century Fox, whose networks saw a median decline of only 0.9 percent.

“Cord-shaving disproportionately impacts networks that are either particularly expensive or which distributors are willing to go without.”

Specifically, Wieser singled out the Walt Disney Company and Viacom Inc. as the media giants that face the biggest threat from skinny bundles. Disney-owned ESPN is by far the most expensive network for pay TV operators to carry,
 
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While it isn't a "formal" process, college sports HAS been doing promotion/relegation for a long time. But it involves more than just athletic success/failure, it also involves financial drivers as well (viewership/attendance,etc) and academics. It just takes a longer-period view than just the most recent year.

For example:
Why aren't Montana and Idaho still in the "Pac-8/10/12" conference?
How about Drake, Grinnell, and Washington-St. Louis still in the Big 8/12?
U of Chicago in the Big Ten?
Sewanee in the SEC?
Washington & Lee, William and Mary, and VMI in the what would have been the ACC?
Western Reserve in the MAC?

Instead, Arizona State and Arizona were promoted from the Border Conference to the WAC to the Pac-10/12.
Look at Utah who went from RMAC/MSC to WAC to MWC to Pac-12 all because of the growth and success of their program, TV market, and facilities (special thanks to the Olympics for that, eh Utes?).
CU has done similar going from RMAC/MSC to Big-6/8/12 now to Pac-12.
Most of the old SWC were "relegated" to mid-major status when that conference folded after Big XII was formed.
Since then TCU has been able to go from SWC to WAC to C-USA to MWC then to Big XII
Boise State has certainly "promoted" themselves from I-AA all the way up to MWC.
Temple was "relegated" out of the Big East before the whole conference realignment earthquake hit, then were able to "promote" themselves back into what is now the AAC.
UMass was asked to leave the MAC conference after last season.

Teams like Texas State, UTSA, South Alabama, Georgia State, Appalachian State, Georgia Southern, Old Dominion, Charlotte are all new to D-I football in less than the last 5 years.

If a school falls behind in competitiveness, popularity, and financial impact compared to their peers in conference; things will change. Maybe it's the next TV contract 5-10 years down the road, maybe it is 20-30 years down the road? The bottom line is that despite recent upheaval college conference affiliation is fairly stable, but there is certainly volatility over time; which is fitting to use the earthquake analogy. The plate tectonics will inexorably move things around but in any given moment change doesn't seem to be happening as fast as we think it should.
 
Tulane used to be in the SEC once upon a time as well.

The posts above indicating this all about and really only about TV money is correct. Realignment has ushered in newer and vastly larger TV deals because they were compelling in terms of size and scope of potential new viewers.

Its also clear that the ESPN juggernaut of spending has gotten it into deep financial trouble. When those contracts end its highly unlikely the next round of contracts will be record breaking. But you never know. The question at that point is whats next? Its conceivable that conferences put their broadcast behind a paywall. But I doubt that since its so important for recruiting students and alumni giving that they would go completely off free network TV. My thinking is there will be contracts with ABC, CBS, FOX, or NBC with the best 2 or 3 games being on free tv with the rest behind the paywall. Free TV has been thus far unwilling to pay the stratospheric fees ESPN was willing to.

Because of the above I dont think we see much more realignment other than the BigXII getting picked apart to divide those big TV markets up.
 
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