Usually no issue with some of the classic Gritty hot takes but to use high tech engineering stuff and Alabama in the same sentence is pushing it. There is only one half decent southern school with respect to engineering.
Conference Realignment
- Status
I say this as a generalization, but...
It's not the schools so much as the researchers. The schools hire the people who have the reputation, connections, experience, etc., and then provide the support. Some schools hire teachers, but most of the BIG hires researchers. If the chairs were rearranged today, they would change who they retain and hire, and you'd get a similar result 5 years from now. Influence helps, but the schools would chase the money whichever way they needed to.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
It's applied aerospace and defense stuff with the big federal facilities that are there and the related private contractors. UAH doesn't even have that many students, it's just sort of an academic R&D arm of that aerospace cluster, which incidentally makes Huntsville a very wealthy and highly educated little city, sorta like Los Alamos, NM.
Georgia Tech is a different thing.
The point is that if you combine Tuscaloosa, Birmingham, and Huntsville you have slightly more research dollars than Vanderbilt, an institution where those three functions are combined in one location, so that's an apples-to-apples comparison.
And if that leads you to ponder "wait a minute, research funding must be somewhat unrelated to academic rigor and prestige" you are beginning to head down the right path.
We're almost getting there.
The AAU is a lobbying organization. Lobbying is forbidden by law to influence individual grant making decisions, but major research Universities have all sorts of needs relating to the process and administration of these massive flows of money, especially as they evolve and change. And it's a two-way conduit of information, the Universities also get valuable insight into what the grant-making agencies are thinking.
To repeat and reemphasize, the relationship to sports here is ZERO WHATSOEVER PERIOD
But that's the idea and the spirit behind something like the AAU presenting and maintaining itself as "Big Research U"
Joel Goodson
- respect my decision™
Haven't listened to this yet, but if Frank the Tank says it's interesting, it is:
I don’t think that’s correct regarding penalty. Grant of Rights is separate.
Notre Dame is obligated to join ACC before they join other conference in football.
1. They join ACC; ACC inherits their GoR
2. They exit ACC immediately and pay $100 million fee
3. ACC retains ND GoR for football and all sports
The whole point of the clause is so that ND can’t wait for a better conference deal to come along. ND football obligation to ACC is consideration to the accommodations ACC made in permitting football independence exception.
Last edited:
I haven't either, but I think people underestimate the defensive nature of realignment for certain schools. It's not a strict calculation of improving a school's situation. The power brokers are figuring out what *might* happen if they don't make a move, vs whatever the move is. You could make a case for a small step back if it prevents a worse step back.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
That's a sound rubric to think about this under (and a smarter one than many of the decision makers are actually using), but when you really apply that you see that the UT/OU move that ended the Big XII and then the USC/UCLA move that ended the Pac 12 really simplifies the game.
No combination of the leftovers is a meaningful competitor to the B1G/SEC duopoly now. That is the sealed, final, permanent outcome of the last two summers.
So the only question defensively speaking is whether the B1G should be scared of the SEC adding given schools. Notre Dame clearly yes, certain ACC schools present a potential strategic challenge, but going west? It doesn't really make a lot of sense that "Washington, Oregon to join SEC" would be a headline that scares us.
Now, under the actual thought process the actual decision makers are working under, Oregon is desperate and well funded and might very well be willing to sweeten the pot and accept a different financial status of some sort to get in the door. That's where the interests of Illinois and Ohio State start to sharply diverge, in my view. That's a door we do not want opened.
Joel Goodson
- respect my decision™
I mean if they do revenue sharing the SEC will be close behind. They would have to.
At the risk of sounding redundant I think the B1G is aiming to replace and privatize the NCAA at the highest level of collegiate sports. I suspect this is the long term legacy plan for Delaney and Warren.
The stars have aligned to make it happen:
1. NIL permits player compensation while retaining amateur eligibility
2. Coast to Coast expansion with top schools/draws in most of the top markets; which geographically limits further SEC expansion.
3. NFL style TV contract puts 3 B1G football games on every home in USA every week of the season
4. B1G TV license 50% higher than SEC deal with ESPN, 200% higher than 3rd place per school distribution which insurmountably stratifies the entire NCAA
5. B1G TV deal expires 3 years prior to SEC deal allowing B1G to further stratify the NCAA for those 3 years while also taking the best TV time slots off the table for the SEC.
The B1G has every advantage over the SEC right now except for the players. They’re trying to buy the players now too; makes perfect sense.
ESPN is in financial trouble regarding long term outlook. By their own disclosure to remain solvent through cord cutting phase, they’ll need to charge $30 per month from 15% of cord-cut households when their cable TV subscriber base drops below 50 million. They believe 15% of the households are super fans willing to a pay for a sports exclusive streaming package. To justify the $30 per month fee ESPN has been trying to monopolize rights forcing anyone who likes sports to need ESPN. I think the B1G, FOX, and other networks just blew up ESPNs plans.
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
People talk a lot about the high revenue schools during expansion, so I had a little fun pulling revenue for each Big Ten school from this database. Some interesting stuff. I assume "2020" refers to each school's fiscal year, which (in absent of other information) I assume covers the 2019-2020 academic year in whole:
Total Operating Revenue (2020)
Ohio State: 233.9M
Michigan: 192.4M
Penn State: 165.1M
Wisconsin: 148.2M
Iowa: 145.6M
Nebraska: 133.6M
Michigan State: 130.6M
Illinois: 122.6M
Indiana: 121.2M
Minnesota: 119.3M
Rutgers: 103.6M
Purdue: 102.2M
Maryland: 92.3M
For context, this is during a year where Illinois sold an abysmal number of football tickets compared to our peers ... while we are a nice middle of the pack program in terms of overall revenue, we were 12th out of 13th (Northwestern doesn't report) in ticket sales revenue, with just 14.2M - barely ahead of Rutgers' 13.8M. By comparison, OSU brought in almost 66M, and programs like Iowa, Michigan State and Minnesota brought in between 22M and 25M. Those three are programs we should be in the neighborhood of in this regard, and if we had another 7M in ticket revenues due to selling out our stadium, we would have overall revenues comparable to Michigan State - a program that absolutely nobody would doubt brings immense value to the Big Ten.
Another point in our favor is that we are fifth in the Big Ten in "Contributions" (which I assume includes money from donors). The potential is certainly there, and it's encouraging that even when our football program was at the absolute worst it's been (from a revenue standpoint) in DECADES, we are still near the middle of the conference in revenue. This would be an E-X-C-E-L-L-E-N-T (and pivotal) time for Bret and Co. to turn us into a respectable football program. No reason Illinois shouldn't be as valuable - check that, MORE valuable - to the Big Ten than a Wisconsin or Michigan State.
Total Operating Revenue (2020)
Ohio State: 233.9M
Michigan: 192.4M
Penn State: 165.1M
Wisconsin: 148.2M
Iowa: 145.6M
Nebraska: 133.6M
Michigan State: 130.6M
Illinois: 122.6M
Indiana: 121.2M
Minnesota: 119.3M
Rutgers: 103.6M
Purdue: 102.2M
Maryland: 92.3M
For context, this is during a year where Illinois sold an abysmal number of football tickets compared to our peers ... while we are a nice middle of the pack program in terms of overall revenue, we were 12th out of 13th (Northwestern doesn't report) in ticket sales revenue, with just 14.2M - barely ahead of Rutgers' 13.8M. By comparison, OSU brought in almost 66M, and programs like Iowa, Michigan State and Minnesota brought in between 22M and 25M. Those three are programs we should be in the neighborhood of in this regard, and if we had another 7M in ticket revenues due to selling out our stadium, we would have overall revenues comparable to Michigan State - a program that absolutely nobody would doubt brings immense value to the Big Ten.
Another point in our favor is that we are fifth in the Big Ten in "Contributions" (which I assume includes money from donors). The potential is certainly there, and it's encouraging that even when our football program was at the absolute worst it's been (from a revenue standpoint) in DECADES, we are still near the middle of the conference in revenue. This would be an E-X-C-E-L-L-E-N-T (and pivotal) time for Bret and Co. to turn us into a respectable football program. No reason Illinois shouldn't be as valuable - check that, MORE valuable - to the Big Ten than a Wisconsin or Michigan State.
Is anyone surprised to see Maryland so far behind everyone else? They aren't a juggernaut but 30 mil behind us is a lot of money.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
They weren't getting a full share of the Big Ten money yet in 2019-20. That was right around where Under Armour started falling apart too.
Joel Goodson
- respect my decision™
We don't know the answer to this because a case like this has never made it completely through the court system, to my knowledge, and these kinds of things will be litigated on. My opinion is that the schools can easily pay players differently in different sports if they wanted to, they just prefer to use title IX as an excuse to keep it at zero. My rationale is that the school can pay the men's basketball coach significantly more than the women's basketball coach because of differences in skill and revenue while both are employees of the school. By this same logic, men's basketball players could be paid more than women's basketball players if they have disparate skill and revenue production assuming that they are all employees of the school.
I think this could really hurt the non-revenue and women's athletes in totality. It is not so hard to imagine paying players at the expense of their scholarships. If, as an example, you paid MBB players 50% of their gate revenue this is a ton more than women's soccer players being paid 50% of their gate revenue.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
Boy, Merton Hanks is really sticking his neck out with those comments
They have major scientific research at the Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU).
Where Should The Big Ten Expand Next? We Crunched The Numbers.
Which schools should the Big Ten poach next?
fivethirtyeight.com
It would be interesting to see how it's litigated. I think you could make an argument on both sides, but tying wages to the revenue seems like a pretty strong way to present the argument.
sacraig
- The desert
I was just coming here to post this. It's an interesting dive into the various factors that the Big Ten would allegedly be considering and which schools make the most sense. The results seems pretty realistic to me.Where Should The Big Ten Expand Next? We Crunched The Numbers.
Which schools should the Big Ten poach next?
New Big Ten TV deals spell out increase in price should Notre Dame join league
CBS, Fox and NBC know exactly how much extra they will have to pay as part of their rights deals with the Big Ten if Notre Dame were to join within seven years.
www.sportsbusinessjournal.com
6. B1G already negotiated ND’s next TV deal (haha)
The ND fans are using this to boast over the B1Gs lust for ND, but the B1G just put a pricetag and ceiling on NDs value to NBC. The way I see it they denied ND the ability to represent its own vested interest because the lower the value of ND in the B1G media contract the better for the B1G, and worse for ND‘s independence.
The first few years, at least, after joining the B1G the ND games will be HUGE draws. ND vs any B1G team will draw significantly more viewers than ND’s current schedule.
Last year ND on NBC drew 14 million viewers TOTAL all year; OSU/MI drew 16 million, PSU/ILL drew 4 million, MSU/PU drew 4 million, for some scattered examples. There were numerous other games drawing 7+ million in the B1G.
A few primetime ND B1G games per year will likely be worth more to NBC than seven 3pm ACC games playing opposite one of the top B1G games of the week. I can only see NBC offering significantly less than what’s in the B1G contract already.
- Status