But the more ridiculous it is, the faster the breakup happens. With all the geographic issues and the peaking of TV money this time around, I fully expect a complete collapse and reshuffle in the next round.
Realignment Megathread (All The Moves)
- Thread starter ISUcyclones11
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But the more ridiculous it is, the faster the breakup happens. With all the geographic issues and the peaking of TV money this time around, I fully expect a complete collapse and reshuffle in the next round.
Yep, seems inevitable at this point. Going to ruin what made collegiate sports so big in the first place.
Maybe it’ll lead to getting back to geographically sensible conferences? It’d be nice if we could ignore the Oklahoma lawsuit and have an NCAA wide TV contract so we can avoid this mess of everyone trying to get more than their neighbor.
I think if Duke and Miami are somehow left out of Big Ten/SEC they come running to the Big 12 and the Big 12 throws a victory party to invite both. They are great fits for the Big 12 if they fall to Big 12, totally different situation than Cal/Stanford that have zero real fandom and are not really sports brands.
A conference anchored by Duke/Miami/Wake/BC with two elite non-sports-fan academic schools on the opposite coast is nonsensical.
The Big Ten and SEC might invite both Duke and Miami as brands just because of how much it would elevate the Big 12 if they don't invite them.
I agree that this is ridiculous and stupid.
But props to the ACC for basically spitting in the face of their big brands and trying to do what’s best for the conference. They basically told FSU, Chapel Hill, and Clemson “you ******** are going to leave eventually regardless, we’re adding these schools to try and survive”. It seems they learned from the Big 12 and PAC 12’s mistakes
But props to the ACC for basically spitting in the face of their big brands and trying to do what’s best for the conference. They basically told FSU, Chapel Hill, and Clemson “you ******** are going to leave eventually regardless, we’re adding these schools to try and survive”. It seems they learned from the Big 12 and PAC 12’s mistakes
Those four don't competitively make the Big Ten worse in any way unless they fall off from where they have been in either major sport.
3 of the 4 have big thriving fandoms that fill up iconic stadiums, the other has an iconic empty football stadium Big Ten fans will vacation at and iconic basketball history.
Cal/Stan is none of that. They make the ACC worse, add worse logistics, and decrease the actual fans per team significantly.
While this move is stupid from a classical college athletics perspective, we moved long past that starting in the summer of 2009. Let's slow roll some of these "this is horrible for the sport" takes in this thread and save that for the PAC 12 media still catching up.
They put BC, Syracuse and Wake Forest in a stronger position than the Pac put Cal, Stanford, WSU and Oregon State.
Combine that with how they have courted Notre Dame all these years and they've played the game far better than the Pac and far better than the Big 12 in the early days of this.
Agreed. The others made the right call for preservation of that league. Even if Clemson, FSU, Carolina (and Virginia?) bolt there's enough there to get a reasonable TV deal and hang together without being spread all over the country any more than they already are.
I agree and it makes it much harder for those three teams to break the GOR.
Logistically you could make the argument that 2 satellites aren't as much of a chore as 4 (big ten)
...but the Big Ten's four bring so much more for football and also improve Big Ten basketball.
Notre Dame probably likes that Stanford is on board. Cal really is the lucky one in all of this, they are just squeaking by basically doing nothing to show any value at any stage in any of this.
I was told earlier in the thread that new schools won't get vote on GOR?
If they do it is a massive move to bring them in and make that GOR so much stronger.
We're headed for 2 super conferences with no more that 40 teams total. Pat Forde mentioned this outcome in last year's college football preview issue of Sports Illustrated. In that article he interviewed a long time P5 athletic director who said this is what is to come. He had another article on SI.com this week speculating on who would be in and who would be out if there were only 40 teams. Iowa State ended at #43 on the list.
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Guess that would make sense that they wouldn't get a vote. Will be interesting to see what FSU, Clemson and UNC's next move will be. It seems all of FSU's grandstanding caused this move so they have themselves to blame.
This is all 100% right I think.
Despite where he's from, CascadeClone is a good poster here. Rational and coherent, especially when it comes to this realignment circus.
I just don't know that a 3rd conference will be weak enough to be swept under the rug...or if those 40 teams cover enough of the country like the old 65-75ish did.
If it was 40 teams starting from scratch, possibly, but you have to remember that Rutgers, Vandy, NW, etc are essentially dead weight taking up spots that don't actually have significant fanbases. 40 teams from the original base of Big Ten/SEC is really just going to be about 30-35 passionate fanbases and you're leaving out some that are bigger and more successful programs.
Look at Utah last night, they manhandled Florida in a packed stadium on meager Pac media money. The media payout didn't matter.
Indiana football has already had some time making the most media money and they still suck. Same for several other Big Ten programs. I have a feeling some on the outside will be just as good as most on the inside no matter the media $ discrepancy.
Again unless they truly start over from scratch as just a football league and strategically try to get the biggest fan bases that truly cover the whole country the way college football always had for 100+ years.
The problem with it is this superconference will be a subsidiary of one of a handful of tv networks. It's so backwards and bad for the sport. But here we are.
KidSilverhair
Well-Known Member
Great point. What gets overlooked in a lot of this is that the networks have a finite number of windows for their games. Adding members to conferences they have deals with means more competition for those windows. Would ESPN prefer NC State-Stanford for a late window on ESPN2, relegating Iowa State-Arizona or Baylor-Colorado to ESPN+?
There‘s only so much airtime to go around, and with ESPN/Fox adding more ACC/B1G ”after dark” content to their plates, that’s not necessarily good for the B12.