SEC considers nuclear option. Could walk away from NCAA, fix things itself
An SEC breakaway has more legs than anyone in the league cares to (publicly) admit.
www.usatoday.com
College Sports (Football)
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Joel Goodson
- it's all ball bearings, nowadays
next level snark:
He's also the same guy that scolded everyone when it was suggested Feagin wasn't a RB. Quite a marginal track record he has....
In general, I'll say it again, the bulk of college football programs aren't going anywhere. They will continue to compete against either other, albeit, somewhat unlevel playing field......the way it's always been.
More teams will have the opportunity to continue their season beyond a 1 game bowl. Bowls will continue.
Players will continue to get paid, like you and I do, via a 1099 (or similar).
Congress will make a token effort, maybe.
A super league (say 40 teams or less) will NOT happen.
We will all continue to pay more. Both watching on TV and attending games in person.
I personally think the funny thing about using the word "unsustainable" in these circumstances is that it makes it seem as though the old status quo was "sustainable" which is demonstrably false in that it was literally unable to be sustained.
I don't even think there has ever been such a thing as stability for college sports. The entire venture has been in a state of flux from the beginning, because the traditional notion of student athletics has always been in tension with the fact that people care deeply about athletic competition and want to win, and some of those people have vast resources and a great deal of school pride. This isn't new stuff. In the 1890s, Hall of Famer Walter Camp, the "Father of American Football," operated a secret $100k slush fund, funded by alumni, to pay Yale's star football players (btw, the CPI inflation calculator only goes back to 1913, but as a rough comparison, $100k in January 1913 equals approximately $3.4 million today).
It's been unsustainable for coming up on 200 years now. This is just a new kind of unsustainability.
Matt Hayes (Florida Gator Alum) is clearly a SEC Homer.Just when you think the sec cant get anymore ridiculousSEC considers nuclear option. Could walk away from NCAA, fix things itself
An SEC breakaway has more legs than anyone in the league cares to (publicly) admit.www.usatoday.com
"The SEC sends more teams to the football, basketball, baseball and softball tournaments — the revenue-producing sports — than any other league in college sports."
Since when are college baseball & softball "revenue producing sports"? Unless I missed that the SEC negotiated a flagship softball deal on The Ocho
And here is this doozy: "Look, desperate times call for the biggest, baddest conference in college sports to lead or get out of the way."
The SEC has lost their top spot in the college conference pecking order and are in no place to go-it alone.
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ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
Humbly I think that's a fairly ridiculous statement for such a tradition-drenched pastime.
It has changed an order of magnitude more in the last 6 years than the prior 60, no reasonable person could deny that.
From the day they first started charging money for tickets it was a scam that the players weren't getting paid. What has been done first in an effort to prevent that (people forget and obfuscate how much of this was an attempt to avoid paying players) and then to account and adapt to is the dictionary definition of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
A bit of an exaggeration, right?
When they first started charging money for tickets, ticket sales didn’t begin to cover program expenses. Media money arguably set the train wreck in motion, not ticket revenue.
Many high schools charge admission to see major sports. Should high school athletes be paid too? Even though taxpayers subsidize those sports by providing facilities and paying staff? Where does it end?
It took college football 33 years before the fist bowl game was established, 66 before the second, 96 before we had 10 bowl games. 127 years after the founding of college football we had 18 bowl games (this would be 1996). In a 10 year span that number ballooned to 32 by 2006. By 2015 there were 41 bowls.
I'd argue the rapid bowl expansion in the late 90s and early aughts, along with BCS, was every bit as transformative to the sport as what is going on now.
You could also argue that the NCAA implementation of D-1A criteria 1981 (minimum stadium size and attendance standards - a major step in the commercialization of college football), which forced the Ivy League out of top tier football was in the same category.
Or the rise of athletic scholarships, which were not standard until the 1950s?
Or the shift of broadcast rights from the NCAA to the conferences, forced by a Supreme Court ruling in 1984?
College football in 1869 was vastly different from college football in 1910, which was vastly different from college football in 1950, which was vastly different from college football in 1980, which was vastly different from college football in 2010.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
When I said the last 6 years had an order of magnitude greater change than the previous 60, that's the time period I was aiming at, the advent of recruiting and scholarships and the hardening and nationalization of the conference system.
College football in 2013, the last pre-playoff season, had more in common with college football in 1960 than college football in 2027.
The proliferation of bowl games is a meaningless trifle compared to what the transfer portal and the death of the conference system have done.
That's the original sin. That lit the fuse that blew the whole thing up. But in terms of actual on the ground change, it didn't do a whole lot immediately.
Nah. The game strategies and certainly the player equipment changed a lot (the evolution of the game of football itself is a whole other topic), but the basic infrastructure barely changed at all.
The time between 1950 and 1980 is actually when money started to change the landscape drastically. You see this with which programs were able to be competitive. Here are a list of teams that were in the AP top-20 during the 1950 season, that are no longer in FBS football:
Cornell (high ranking of #9)
Princeton (high of #7)
Penn (high of #13)
Lehigh (high of #19)
Washington and Lee (high of #19)
Loyola Marymount* (high of #20)
* No longer has football program
And here are teams that are not in a major conference that were top-25 teams at some point in 1950:
Army (high ranking of #1, final ranking #2)
Wyoming (high of #13)
Tulane (high of #19)
Rice (high of #15)
Tulsa (high of #20)
In the 1980 season, with one exception every single team in every single poll (the sole exception is a Southern Miss team that snuck in as #25 in week 7 and was knocked out of the poll in week 8) is a team that is currently in the Big 10, SEC, ACC, Big-12 plus Notre Dame. The number of programs that could legitimately compete on the national stage drastically constricted between 1950 and 1980. Consolidation of the power/talent in the sport occurring as a result of profit motives and differences in resources is hardly new.
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
I guess I don’t understand the rationale from a strict “fan enjoyment” perspective to oppose more teams in the CFP. March Madness is infinitely superior to all other postseasons precisely because of the larger pool, more upsets and less conventional “make-sure-the-actual-best-team-wins!” setup. Is it to protect bowls? The actually special ones like the Rose Bowl are long gone. Is it to preserve the opportunity for teams like 2025 Illinois to end the season on a win? I wouldn’t trade any Illini basketball season (none of which ended in a National Championship) for some vacation to Nashville where we play another #4 seed-caliber team in a consolation game in an NBA arena while the big guys get to keep playing until they lose.
TentakilRex
- Land O Insects between Quincy-Macomb-Jacksonville
Here is some levity for everyone here.
Utah fans on Twitter/X are actually this delusional and took Bill Walton's "Truck Stop Conference" line way too seriouslu.
Utah fans on Twitter/X are actually this delusional and took Bill Walton's "Truck Stop Conference" line way too seriouslu.
TentakilRex
- Land O Insects between Quincy-Macomb-Jacksonville
We don't like participation trophies
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
Like playing in non-CFP bowl games?
RabidDawgClassic
- Los Angeles, CA
If the B1G takes private equity money, fans will be the ones who immediately notice the difference. Think ticket prices are high right now? They’ll double or triple once PE money is involved. The next price to raise will be parking. And concessions will be through the roof. Private Equity firms don’t put money into companies or organizations for fun. They expect an immediate return on investment.. and the quickest way to do that is to raise prices, cut staff then eventually sell the scraps of what remain.
Look no further than Las Vegas (MGM and Caeser’s properties) to see how private equity involvement changes the consumer experience.
Look no further than Las Vegas (MGM and Caeser’s properties) to see how private equity involvement changes the consumer experience.
RabidDawgClassic
- Los Angeles, CA
Well… as disgusting as it sounds, we can thank Michigan for quashing (at least for now) the B1G’s private equity dalliances.. private equity is a HUGE mistake when you are already getting 70 million per school per year
it may be attractive for B12 & ACC schools , but not B1G or SEC schools
once PE gets involved , they will call all the shots .
Not to confuse what the B1G was looking at prior, that was a private capital deal.
it may be attractive for B12 & ACC schools , but not B1G or SEC schools
once PE gets involved , they will call all the shots .
Also, for at least some of Illinois athletics, they've already dumped employees and use 3rd party companies to do the work.
False, I couldn't post quick enough.
sbillini
- st petersburg, fl
From the coverage I’ve seen of the proposed big ten deal and the caveat that a lot of the coverage has been confusing (probably because most sports writers don’t know the nuances of investment deals and don’t talk about them quite right), it certainly seemed like a private equity deal. The investor would get a share of profits from the newly created BTE, effectively holding an equity stake in BTE.
The main nuance was that BTE would only hold commercial rights (tv, merchandise, etc stuff that sits at the conference level) and not have say over sporting matters (rules, scheduling etc). So the big ten and schools would still control the product put on the field/court, etc but BTE, of which the PE firm would be a stakeholder, would control how that product is monetized.
In fact, the B12 deal isn’t really a private equity deal at all. There’s no direct economics Redbird receives. It’s more of a capital service program where it helps the conference better monetize its commercial opportunities and also provide school level financing arrangements.
I have no issues with privatizing some services .
contracting for many things that can be done more efficiently is smart . however, that has nothing to do really with trading control of assets for a payout of revenue
I LOVE and RELY on $100-$250 lower bowl Season Tickets, $3 hot dogs and drinks before games, and $25 parking.
VERY affordable family fun. Any higher, and you lose the true fans, and cater to the wealthy (less fandom), like the NBA in-arena crowd.
No harm in private SPONSORSHIPS of Schools or Conferences, but please no equity.
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