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Maybe sanity rules in the end

MtnBuff

Not allowed in Barzil 2
Club Member
Just thinking with some of the comments from Bruce Benson and others if all the talk of 16 team superconferences ends up getting blocked.

The Big 10 seems very happy with 12, the SEC now has 13 (assuming A&M goes through) they are struggling to find one more good member for their needs. A number of schools in the PAC can't be happy with the idea of 16, the Arizona schools don't want to get stuck in the east, Utah as well.

I still think that a major re-alignment is innevitable but no law says it has to be 4 conferences of 16. Instead they go to 5 conferences of 12-14 schools. This allows for true divisions in each conference plus some cross divisional play.

If, and I am not in favor of a playoff, they go to a playoff. This gives you a natural 8 team playoff with one representative from each conference plus three at-large teams which could include an independant or school from a non-power conference. This would prevent anti-trust lawsuits and allow schools like Notre Dame, BYU, Texas to choose to be independant is they wanted to be.
 
I hope you are right...I'm almost ready to quit college sports altogether and focus exclusively on pro sports especially the Broncos. I'll trade in my copy of NCAA Football 12 for Madden NFL 12 if the Pac-12 expands with the intention of going to 16 schools.
 
true, no inevitability about 4/16. if it's going to be 64 teams, my overwhelming preference would be 8/8, everybody plays each other in conference, you have a true champ and home-home in basketball. and you've got a bracket ready-made for playoffs whenever the people currently blocking it figure out how to squeeze as much profit out of fans doing it without losing their grip on the process.
 
So far the SEC has not extended the invitation to aTm which may end of up saving the day. They were originally moving towards it without appearing to poach so they would not get sued, but now because of the impending meltdown of the Big 12 they may not extend the invite because the litigation fears are now very real. I'm with you, I like to think that now that everybody is getting an idea of what the new super-conferences would look like, they are having second thoughts because for the most part everybody sees some pretty crappy realities that just don't make sense.
 
Money rules. If 16 is more valuable as a conference business model than 12, we'll get to 16. All the other considerations (academics, culture, rivalries, travel, etc.) will modify which teams expansion happens with and what form the alignments & scheduling will take. But money drives this train.
 
I hope you are right...I'm almost ready to quit college sports altogether and focus exclusively on pro sports especially the Broncos. I'll trade in my copy of NCAA Football 12 for Madden NFL 12 if the Pac-12 expands with the intention of going to 16 schools.

This post makes no sense when compared against the knob-slobbering you were doing over a possible pac-16.
 
Money rules. If 16 is more valuable as a conference business model than 12, we'll get to 16. All the other considerations (academics, culture, rivalries, travel, etc.) will modify which teams expansion happens with and what form the alignments & scheduling will take. But money drives this train.

I agree 100% that money drives the train. What I am seeing here, or just speculating about to an extent, is that some of the people at the top are taking a closer look and realizing that 16 is not the ideal number for a number of reasons including the most important one which is money.

How does going to 16 make Michigan or Ohio State more money. You could argue that the schools available to them with the possible exception of Notre Dame and Texas would result in an increase in confernce revenue but a smaller share for each school since the gains would not balance the extra shares dispersed.

Same holds true for the SEC, in order to stay even each school coming in would have to increase the conference revenues by an amount equal to the share they would eventually recieve, somewhere in the range of $25-30 million, that is a hard order to fill.

At the same time while these are all business decisions these are still academic institutions. The PAC presidents have been very clear as have the Big 10 presidents (allowing in Nebraska withstanding) that their image as academic conferences is very valuable to them, this translates into financial return as well in the form of non-athletic donations that are influenced by athletic publicity and success.

Donations, publicity, ticket selling, etc. are all also influenced heavily by success on the field. A model with four conferences instead of five means four conference champs instead of 5 and 8 division champs in divisions of 8 instead of 10 division champs in divisions of 6-7 teams.

Some simple realizations. 16 team conferences mean that you will not be playing some of your conference mates very often, this is important to a lot of schools. Colorado, Utah, the Arizona schools all have big alumni bases in Southern California. Football games there provide a tremendous platform to connect with these alumni (and turn them into active donors.) It also means significant increases in travel expenses for non-revenue sports which can add up very quickly. For schools like Colorado and Utah this has been a reality but for the California schools it could make a major dent in their budgets. These concepts apply to other conferences as well with expansion.

It may be wishful thinking on my part but I am getting a little bit of a sense that the school presidents and governing boards are starting to take a look at this stuff and not being completely excited about the overall ramifications.
 
It may be wishful thinking on my part but I am getting a little bit of a sense that the school presidents and governing boards are starting to take a look at this stuff and not being completely excited about the overall ramifications.

university administrators are creatures of low risk. big moves mean their job is on the line based on the outcomes (i think this is a big reason Benson/DiStep wobbled on canning Hawk....they were thinking "10 wins" or at least a bowl game and then Hawk crapped his trousers and by the end of the fall they would have had to make a choice that had their name attached to a last-second hire they were utterly unprepared to make. better to let Hawk fall on his sword the next season, absorb the blame, and they could pat themselves on the back about being committed to academics). they'd rather just smile, be tanned, and make public appearances when necessary.
 
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