I don’t see any conference expanding until ND, Whorn, or OU decide they want to make a move.
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Conference Re-Alignments
- Thread starter MadRat
- Start date
I've lived in NC or other ACC states my entire life. Practically my entire family are either UNC or Clemson alumni. Many are boosters and hold season tickets. Other than most of the nonsense that was being floated around the internet, of which about 2% had any accuracy, I've never seen or heard anything that indicated UNC or Virginia were legitimately pretty far down the road with the Big Ten. Doesn't mean they didn't listen. But UNC is ACC through and through like Michigan and Ohio State are Big Ten. Administrators would literally get tarred and fethered by their own fans if they tried to leave. Virginia's state legislature played a prominent role in VT coming to the ACC. They aren't leaving Virginia and Virginia isn't leaving UNC. And Clemson is situated perfectly in the ACC. Right in their recruiting footprint with an easier path to trophies. Not going to happen.
I agree the only way you could get deep into the ACC would be a bold move like offering all 4 NC schools. Which is the real basketball power of the conference. Other than that the only onesy twosy schools you might be able to get is Syracuse and BC. Which makes sense geographically and TV revenue wise. Also educationally as both are very highly rated schools. However competitively in football they might make Rutgers look good.
Syracuse and BC are private schools, and the B1G likes huge, flagship state schools. That's also where there would be a problem with Miami, Duke, and Wake Forest.
Fair enough, but I'm curious: did you think it was "nonsense" that Maryland would join the B1G before it was confirmed? If something happens with the ACC, it would most likely be a package deal where several teams join together. I don't think that it's going to happen anytime soon (next couple of years), but things are going to start shaking up pretty drastically if some of these revenue expectations don't start to look similar. The Big 12's contract expires in 6 years, I think, so I'd expect the rumors and dealing to get going in about 4 years or so.
I agree that those three are the biggest prizes among the most likely movers. I think that Texas will lean heavily to the Pac 12 because they will want to be catered to, and neither the B1G nor the SEC is likely to do that. Oklahoma is a guessing game. ND will stay independent as long as possible. If they can rewrite the playoff rules to give more weight to conference champions, and leave ND to fend for itself among the best of the others, that might change things for them.
If that is so then why do they covet ND so much? Here is the thing. Neither the state of New York or the State of Massachusetts have public schools with big sports programs. They are both big research universities. The B1G loves those.
Notre Dame is the exception to so many rules. First, how many people--including big college football fans--are aware that Notre Dame has only 8,000 undergrad students? With grad school added in, they're still under 12,000. Notre Dame is one of those schools who have boosters and fans galore who never went there. It really does NOT fit anything that I said above,... but they're Notre Dame. The B1G has been sending love letters their way for decades, and it's an unrequited love.
B.C. and Syracuse make sense in almost every other way except that they're private, and it's not like they've kicked Northwestern out for being private. If they were to add Syracuse and B.C., the B1G would own pretty much every TV that subscribes to a sports package in the most densely populated part of the country. Both schools have lots of football tradition, especially Syracuse.
Pittsburgh is another one in more or less the same mold, but it has very little to offer. Forty years ago, they seemed like one of the bluest of blue bloods in college football, but all they've done since then is upset a handful of teams that were better than them.
This brings up a related question: Is there a future for college football in the northeastern U.S.? I haven't seen the numbers broken down by state, but I'd guess that New England and the West Coast are two of the main regions where parents are no longer letting their kids play football at the same rates that they did in the past due to fear of injuries. That will hurt college football more than almost anything else could. We can tell which universities will crank out the most alums based on current enrollment, but if you want to see where the future players are, that would be wherever there's still as strong of a push for youth football. Does anyone think that Ivy League moms or Cal-Berkeley/Stanford moms are going to want their little boys to play football? It starts to affect the whole region, sooner or later.
A lot to unpack.
You are still thinking B1G expansion has to do with anything other than adding TV sets to base package. Pitt does not do that as PSU and Pitt share the same market. Now Syracuse adds up state NY. Rutgers added NYC not upstate. BC adds all of New England. So not just Boston but NH, RI, Maine. So again 3 bucks per subscription in all of that area.
Your question about Football in those areas are correct. The funny thing is that those areas Have the highest rate of participation in sports like Hockey, Lacrosse, Rugby and Soccer. Those sports are not far off Football for concussion rates. As a matter of fact women's Hockey is a higher rate in practice and just behind football in game related concussions. So it shows that parents are just reacting to societal panic. Much like the immunization causes autism scare. https://completeconcussions.com/2018/12/05/concussion-rates-what-sport-most-concussions/ Actually for youth sports the study found Rugby and Hockey blow football out of the water for concussions. (I am assuming that for Rugby they are talking full contact Rugby. The league my grandson plays in is touch)
Going to four power conferences for the purpose of creating a "pro football structure" will never happen. The NFL is the only level of football working with that structure where they get to control the number of teams in the divisions, who is in the division, how they get their players and who they play every year. The NCAA will never have that power and thus will have equity issues with any playoff structure that utilizes conferences to determine playoffs. They don't do it at the high school level or Division 2 or 3 or whatever they call those divisions now. Fans would be better served developing a fair system that models other levels besides the pro's and get over conference champions as an automatic bid. It certainly needs to be a strong qualification but not a mandatory.
For those that want conference champions in, make it a high priority but put enough other qualifications attached to it to prevent those "fluke/undeserving" occurrences from making them automatic. Keep in mind the conferences were never designed for the purpose of being a playoff step. They were designed because they shared geographical and institutional educational values. Many of those traits will always be part of the structure and thus creating a playoff structure based on that will always have faults that will bigger than the faults they have right now.
I laugh at the quotes of people who say it is "settling it on the field" when you use automatic conference qualifiers as it is usually settled off the field with the AD's making out the schedule. There is a reason that playoff committee's are pushing for teams in all areas of the NCAA to upgrade their non-conference schedule to re-enforce their resume. And some on here don't even want the non-conference games to be included in the qualifying process. :Cautious:
For those that want conference champions in, make it a high priority but put enough other qualifications attached to it to prevent those "fluke/undeserving" occurrences from making them automatic. Keep in mind the conferences were never designed for the purpose of being a playoff step. They were designed because they shared geographical and institutional educational values. Many of those traits will always be part of the structure and thus creating a playoff structure based on that will always have faults that will bigger than the faults they have right now.
I laugh at the quotes of people who say it is "settling it on the field" when you use automatic conference qualifiers as it is usually settled off the field with the AD's making out the schedule. There is a reason that playoff committee's are pushing for teams in all areas of the NCAA to upgrade their non-conference schedule to re-enforce their resume. And some on here don't even want the non-conference games to be included in the qualifying process. :Cautious:
More market share of the greater NYC area is by far the most bang for your buck, but I wonder how that compares with other options? In theory there is still a potential future for Rutgers and Maryland football (especially Maryland), but Syracuse, Rutgers, and B.C. would be overlapping so much that I don't think it's possible for even 2 of those three to rise up above .500 if they're in the same conference, competing for the same players. Yes, there are a lot of TVs in that area, but a bigger slice of NYC is worth more than everything else you mentioned, combined.
Texas, on the other hand ...
Not sure how much market share there is to be had in college football for NYC or throughout New England.
My perception is their #1 passion is to the NFL vice the college game which is #1 here in $EC country and through much of B1G & Big XII footprints.
My perception is their #1 passion is to the NFL vice the college game which is #1 here in $EC country and through much of B1G & Big XII footprints.
New England adds 14 million. New York city is 8 million.
They ‘treat’ each of their member schools with about $40 M per year.
Yes, this is generally true, still, there are SO MANY people in the NYC area that if only 10% care about college football, you're talking about millions of dollars in TV contract money. I don't know how you could measure the actual percentage of people who are college football fans, especially when you start factoring in how deeply they care and/or are they willing to spend anything to follow it.
SEC country is a strange beast. Yes, they are passionate about their local teams and local high school talent,... but little else. This is often portrayed as some sort of strength of the SEC--it's so awesome that they don't care about anything else--but I see it more as a regional pried in culture that ties in very well with almost every other stereotype about southerners hanging onto their past and their culture. The SEC has been so good for so long that people don't remember (or haven't been alive long enough to realize) that they're also very bandwagon-ish. Look at what happens to the SEC teams' home attendance numbers when their teams are even slightly down. A school like Tennessee has a bedrock of support that is basically unwavering,... but that doesn't mean that the alums were flying home to watch Butch Jones' teams get beat badly. Everybody loves to talk about how college football-crazy the state of Alabama is, but it's not as strong when their teams are down. It's just been so long since they've been down that nobody remembers. Yes, the Iron Bowl will always be standing room only, but those home games against Murray State and the Citadel don't sell out when Alabama is outside of the top 10. Look at what Florida just went through. It's not like they were suddenly horrible, but when they weren't in the conversation for SEC championship games, a lot of people stop caring.
I don't remember what year it was, but I want to say that it was 2014 when someone posted the results of how closely fans follow college teams based on the number of Facebook profiles that included something about a college team in their banner or profile pic or something similar. (I can't remember exactly how they measured it.) What was interesting, though, was who the top 2 states were for fanatical fans. Alabama was #1, divided east from west by Auburn and Alabama fans. This surprised nobody since Auburn had won a NC in '10, played for another in '14, and 'Bama filled in the blanks for everything in-between and after. Who was #2? Nebraska. I don't remember who was #3, but it wasn't very close. What had Nebraska done recently, circa 2014? We got blown out in the B1G championship game in 2012, and we choked in the Big 12 championship game in 2010. That's about it. We hadn't done much for 5 years, but we still had the 2nd most rabid fans in the country. If both Alabama and Auburn are out of the top 10, especially if it happens for a couple of years in a row? They drop from "most fanatical fans" to also-rans. Meanwhile, Nebraska probably took over #1 a year ago just by hiring Scott Frost.
It is undoubtedly true that "it just means more" in SEC country, but it's even more undoubtedly true that it means even more than that in Nebraska.
What's also interesting for both the SEC and the ACC that, again, shows that their support is a cultural regional phenomenon is that the interest in their schools doesn't travel very well when their alums leave the region. Why is the B1G getting more TV sets than the SEC? Because a Nebraska or Iowa or Wisconsin fan who moves to Arizona or Texas or NYC still wants to watch their team. That doesn't seem to happen as much with the SEC or ACC people, especially when you compare apples to apples and look at how many fans of parallel teams as far as recent success--Tennessee, South Carolina, or Missouri--are paying to watch their teams on TV when they move away.
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