B10 could go to 21 teams with 3 divisions of 7 teams. 4 team playoff could be winners of each division plus a wild card team.
I know there's been talk about doing away with divisions, but assuming only USC and UCLA are added in 2004, would there be some merit in simply adding them to the Big 10 West, with Purdue sliding over to the BIg 10 East? Schedule 7 conference games within the division and 2 in the other?
I hope not.I know there's been talk about doing away with divisions, but assuming only USC and UCLA are added in 2004, would there be some merit in simply adding them to the Big 10 West, with Purdue sliding over to the BIg 10 East? Schedule 7 conference games within the division and 2 in the other?
If there are pods, I can see a push to have the rep from each pod but I would prefer picking the top 4 teams overall. If it's protected rivals and rotating games, I would assume the top 4 teams would join the mini-playoff.I like the idea of a 4 team big ten playoff. Do you need divisions though? I see no non-con rivals IL has that I'd want to face more than conference schools. If you did 12 conference games you almost play everyone in conference already even with 16 teams. then just have the top 4 in the standings go to a playoff.
That's an excellent analogy to describe the exact opposite of what's happening here.We're still not discussing this enough in 21st century terms. What's happening is the Amazonification/Teslafication of college football. It's not revenue streams, it's control over markets. Amazon lost multiple billions in its first four years as a public company. Tesla took eleven years before finally turning a profit in 2020. But their stock prices soared anyway because it was not about earnings. The value in poaching a particular school is measured not so much by the revenue it brings but the leverage gained on the conference it left. Hard to believe this process is anywhere near complete.
Riffing on your Euro soccer comparison...I think it's because a lot of people on here have never had to suffer the "indignity" of rooting for a team below the highest level of a given sport. Relegation has come up a lot so I'll use English soccer as a example. Millwall is a storied English soccer club. It has also never made it to the Premier League since the genesis of that league and has often found itself relegated to multiple levels below the top league. Yet rathet than "wither on the vine and become extinct," it has retained a notoriously passionate fanbase. There was even a fairly popular Elijah Wood movie that came out in 2005 about English soccer hooligans, and they used the Millwall firm as the protagonist group.
Well that hits a little too close to home there Gritty! However, I agree with your takes on these changes more than I want to.That's an excellent analogy to describe the exact opposite of what's happening here.
Tesla and Amazon eschew profit to invest heavily in new lines of business and innovate in the explosively growing areas of the future.
Major college football, correctly considered as a whole, is downsizing struggling markets and watering down its service in order to prop up profitability in the fewer remaining markets, extracting the maximum possible dollars out of the settled habits of the aging existing customer base while it lasts.
That's K-Mart. That's Blockbuster Video.
You know how there are combination Taco Bell/KFC/Pizza Hut's now? Concentrating brands with lesser menus in one building to save on labor and overhead? THAT'S the Big Ten. USC vs Purdue is getting a side of mashed potatoes with your Crunchwrap Supreme.
Uber is sort of the classic example of that business model.Some say Tesla and Amazon eschewed profit to invest heavily in new lines of business and innovate in the explosively growing areas of the future. (No doubt Amazon and Tesla say that.) Others say Tesla and Amazon eschewed profit to build market share until they could manipulate pricing and bury potential competitors underfoot.
Exactly!!I guess consolidation is how you get more out of something that people want less. But I don’t see indications that people want less.
Wow, insane is correct... this is a crazy video from some random fan on the internet. He has me sold on Stanford being in the next round of expansion, whenever that happens.If you have 15 minutes, watch this video in full. The data is insane and covers factors I didn’t even think of.
Take the University of Washington for example. The conversation here and elsewhere tends to focus on that program's current revenues and whether adding them would increase the profit share for each member school. But I don't see why the B1G would care about that. UW's revenue picture will be altered anyway the minute you add them. So the operative question is, by not adding them, are you lowering the price you can demand on a per-team average basis in future contract negotiations if you don't control that particular segment of the market. That's what I meant by Amazonification. It doesn't matter what your profits are now. It matters which competitors you need to eliminate to maximize your leverage someday in the future. From that perspective, I don't think the B1G/SEC consortium's task was complete just by flipping Texas/Oklahoma and USC/UCLA. There are still enough bits out there left to drive down prices and raise costs. It will serve the interest of the superconferneces to get those schools off the open market, the sooner the better.Uber is sort of the classic example of that business model.
Not sure how to tie that analogy into this, tbh.
That's why I originally drew the analogy to local newspapers. It's end of life cycle profit harvesting for a completely viable business. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Washington State football. Wiping it off the map to consolidate revenue in the remainder is purely an act of destruction, even leaving aside the deadweight loss of burning up decades of tradition within the Big Ten.
You're left with fewer eyeballs on TV's and fewer butts in seats for the sport as a whole. That's just objective fact. And subjectively, feel free to disagree but I'm telling ya, you're presenting a less interesting product unmoored from the things that made the sport popular in the first place, for which the audience is always going to be anchored upon those who grew up caring about the real Big Ten, which is to say an ever older cohort.
I’m just kinda jacked up thinking the quality of B1G cheerleading is going to go way up
Thanks for articulating what I was trying to say convey earlier and making it way more understandable! I don’t think anyone has a clear picture of what the kingmakers are thinking despite the strong opinions on this board. My guess is the same arguments are being had behind closed doors.Take the University of Washington for example. The conversation here and elsewhere tends to focus on that program's current revenues and whether adding them would increase the profit share for each member school. But I don't see why the B1G would care about that. UW's revenue picture will be altered anyway the minute you add them. So the operative question is, by not adding them, are you lowering the price you can demand on a per-team average basis in future contract negotiations if you don't control that particular segment of the market. That's what I meant by Amazonification. It doesn't matter what your profits are now. It matters which competitors you need to eliminate to maximize your leverage someday in the future. From that perspective, I don't think the B1G/SEC consortium's task was complete just by flipping Texas/Oklahoma and USC/UCLA. There are still enough bits out there left to drive down prices and raise costs. It will serve the interest of the superconferneces to get those schools off the open market, the sooner the better.
I gotcha. But I don't think it's the right framing to look at the Big Ten as the unit of measurement rather than big time college football as a whole.Take the University of Washington for example. The conversation here and elsewhere tends to focus on that program's current revenues and whether adding them would increase the profit share for each member school. But I don't see why the B1G would care about that. UW's revenue picture will be altered anyway the minute you add them. So the operative question is, by not adding them, are you lowering the price you can demand on a per-team average basis in future contract negotiations if you don't control that particular segment of the market. That's what I meant by Amazonification. It doesn't matter what your profits are now. It matters which competitors you need to eliminate to maximize your leverage someday in the future. From that perspective, I don't think the B1G/SEC consortium's task was complete just by flipping Texas/Oklahoma and USC/UCLA. There are still enough bits out there left to drive down prices and raise costs. It will serve the interest of the superconferneces to get those schools off the open market, the sooner the better.
That's not true at all.But below the power five, programs aren't especially struggling financially or otherwise
That's kind of the point I've been making. Between the level of drawing its revenue from declining and increasingly non-viable cable TV structures and a lack of penetration into emerging media, college sports are in as vulnerable of a position as any major American sports entity besides baseball.Besides, my sense is that the real driving force here is not the traditional NCAA revenue streams (TV contracts, mainly) but the more amorphous concept of engagement with content across all platforms, something inscrutable that I admit at my age I do not really understand well. To the markets, the Ohio State Buckeyes aren't Friends or The Sopranos. They're a youtuber with 90 million subscribers. They're MrBeast, which is something I only know exists because I have an eight year old son. I have no idea who monetizes MrBeast or the process by which it's even done, but I'm sure the guy is worth a half-billion dollars, or that amount in NFTs or bitcoin, and more words that have no meaning to me. We see this as well with other sports. We saw this with international soccer. Even Formula One is a thing in America now. I'm not sure major college football needs the old-man version of me to still be watching their specialty network on channel 472 of Spectrum Cable ten years from now. They might be broadcasting on Instagram TV to a demographic of Austrian teenagers.
The FSU Chief will become a traveling symbol for all SEC schools......With the NCAA'S power grip dwindling and 2 conferences governing themselves, does that mean the Chief could be coming back? Please let it be!
i don't disagree but I want ND to be "forced" (for want of a better word) into a conference such as the Big 10. They are always overrated at least 10 positions higher than they should be and play a weak schedule I mean, c'mon, playing Navy every year. Just have to look at this year's schedule, they start with OSU but it is the first game of the season and anything can happen in the first game of a season. In the Big Ten that game would be scheduled later when things are more settled, weaknesses are addressed, etc. Their next few opponents, Marshall, California, North Carolina, BYU, Stanford, and UNLV. I don't follow football much so I don't know if these teams are good this year but I still see this as a pretty weak schedule. I seem to remember that when Penn State joined the Big Ten Joe Paterno was all for it because he thought PSU football would dominate the Big Ten and they would win many championships. Didn't exactly work out although I am not saying PSU hasn't done well, just not as well as they thought and PSU is generally ranked where they should be. I think this will happen to ND. They will be good (in football) just not as good as they are usually regarded (wrongly). ND would just be another good football team but would not be overrated like they are every year. Sorry, just my rant about ND football.I think I saw this same sentiment during the LAST expansion... The more we pine away about waiting for ND, the more they know they own us... NO to ND... Now and forever !
the same can be said about Nebraska when they joined. They all thought they were going to be perennial champs too.. I seem to remember that when Penn State joined the Big Ten Joe Paterno was all for it because he thought PSU football would dominate the Big Ten and they would win many championships. Didn't exactly work out although I am not saying PSU hasn't done well, just not as well as they thought and PSU is generally ranked where they should be. I think this will happen to ND. They will be good (in football) just not as good as they are usually regarded (wrongly). ND would just be another good football team but would not be overrated like they are every year. Sorry, just my rant about ND football.
the same can be said about Nebraska when they joined. They all thought they were going to be perennial champs too.
Not sure if that is what ND secretly fears, but they will find it real hard to go through a B1G schedule with less than 3 losses every year, should they every join
Agreed!Regardless of which side of the Amazon debate you fall on, I’d just like to express my thanks for the thoughtful, respectful, and informative discussion here. A+ stuff. Props to @ChiefGritty and @AutoPoster 3000 and all on the site.