AAC not ACC
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Official realignment thread - SEC formally invites OU and Texas to join the conference in 2025
Iceberg, Goldberg…
BerkeleyBuff
Well-Known Member
Never had autocorrect change a conference name on me before. I see I upset @hokiehead with the mistake.
Why would it make it easier? They chose to stay in conjunction with Boise
I don't see CSU nor AFA leaving the MWC as just those two.
They stayed in the MWC because of who would have been with in a western AAC division at that time. Now with those new AAC schools, that would be helpful in terms of oly sports scheduling & travel. This is what the WAC is doing.
Being in a conference is about who you are associated with not only sports but academics as well. It is understandable that CSU & AFA want to get away from Boise State and it's not football related. I even saw an internal Baylor powerpoint slide related with the recent Big 12 invite and Boise State has no hope of joining the Big 12 due to their academic rankings. Very fascinating stuff to look at and I will post here once I find it.
The internal Baylor PowerPoint slide on Big 12 expansion: https://www.dropbox.com/s/j2sdsqbm5qtu160/SicEm365_Big12_Discussion_2021-09-30.pdf?dl=0
Worth a look at and that will show you why Boise State and Memphis were passed over for Big 12 expansion. There are slides that shows every FBS and P5 team and where they stand when it comes to the Big 12. Honestly the only difference between the Pac-12 and Big 12 is the number of AAU schools.
Worth a look at and that will show you why Boise State and Memphis were passed over for Big 12 expansion. There are slides that shows every FBS and P5 team and where they stand when it comes to the Big 12. Honestly the only difference between the Pac-12 and Big 12 is the number of AAU schools.
They can claim academic rankings and anything else they want. The reason Boise isn't going to a P5 conference has everything to do with money.
Boise used to be on the same level as Idaho State and Idaho, a nice program that was on the fringe of the bottom of what is now BCS or the top of FCS. Then along came a couple of Boise based corporations that were flush with money at the right time and the Boise program became the recipient. With that money Boise became one of the top G5 programs in the country pumping out coaches and winning nationally noted games against P5 schools.
Since then some things have happened. Albertson's continues to do well but isn't upping their contributions. Meanwhile Micron PC which was the big driver bit the dust as did the millions they were putting into the program.
The Micron collapse along with the Albertson's merger with Safeway which moved a lot of operations out of Boise has had a significant impact on the economy of Boise as well. The school has been subsidizing the program with millions of dollars per year (last I looked it was around $15 million per) and with state budgets tightening there are some loud voices calling to cut that back.
Bottom line to all this is that despite years of winning games the financial potential of Boise has topped out. Their TV market continues to grow but it is still very limited. Boise is the 101st ranked TV market in the US. Other Idaho TV markets are numbers 158 and 189. They don't have a substantial alumni base elsewhere. Simply put if they aren't winning and drawing viewers with the David vs. Goliath story they don't add media value to a conference.
AFA in contrast has some real measurable financial value to a conference. The Colorado Springs media market is number 82 which is in line with many P5 programs primary markets. More importantly because of the military connection AF draws a national audience.
AF though has seen some interest from P5 conferences but has been hesitant because they know that to compete at the P5 level they would have to make some significant compromises in terms of recruiting and admissions, compromises they aren't willing to make.
CSU would love to go P5 but that has been discussed here plenty of times before. They need a bigger fan base than some Texas high schools have first. Not likely.
You need to take the time to look at that PowerPoint link I posted. Albertson & Micron's money would have not made a difference in getting BSU into the Big 12 and it largely is on the academic side.
Boise State is not going to be an Automatic 5 team anytime soon even if they got all the money in the world for that football team based on that PP.
As for Baylor, that PP does say every metric is not going to determine whether a team gets into an A5 conference and despite Baylor having higher academic rankings than CU, it is obvious that CU's cultural fit and research prestige got CU into the Pac-12 over Baylor. This shows why Baylor's admins believed that they were a better fit academically over CU which appears to be true but academics isn't everything.
Again, look at that PowerPoint presentation...it's awesome information.
No question that Boise isn't on a level that would be something power conferences want but make no mistake, if adding Boise meant adding $5-10 million a year per school they would be welcomed with open arms.
LOL at Baylor's academic rankings. I will admit, however, that their academics are top notch for schools who once had science professors who didn't believe in evolution.
Based on the last round of expansion and what I read, the B1G and Pac focus 3 places when measuring their academic dicks:
1. AAU membership
2. ARWU rank
3. Carnegie classification
Despite that, I see so many articles on the topic that cite things like USNWR when they bring up academic fit - a rating those institutions give zero fvcks about beyond knowing it's something the general public will use so it influences applications.
1. AAU membership
2. ARWU rank
3. Carnegie classification
Despite that, I see so many articles on the topic that cite things like USNWR when they bring up academic fit - a rating those institutions give zero fvcks about beyond knowing it's something the general public will use so it influences applications.
What about all the junk mail from Tulane?
One of the interesting criteria related to AAU membership in that PP was if AAU membership was re-done today, there would be some schools that are not AAU getting AAU membership and CSU is one of those schools. USC would be the only Pac-12 school to not be an AAU school in that case while Penn State & NW would be the only B1G schools not being AAU members. Look at pages 65-68 in the PP.
As for USNWR, it is not necessarily a requirement but given where the A5 schools are normally ranked, it does give the impression that it is a requirement when it might not be after all. That is something I never used when evaluating schools for potential conference membership. In the Frank The Tank blogs about realignment (again guy was connected to University of Illinois President office as a lawyer), he stressed AAU membership and R1 tier membership which was the criteria that I used the whole time.
If the Big 12 isn't going to take Boise State in, it is obvious that money does not matter as much as you think it does.
It's interesting that those schools such as BYU, Baylor, and TCU rank highly in the sciences given their backgrounds.
Six schools accept invitations to join American
Six schools -- Florida Atlantic, Charlotte, North Texas, UTSA, Rice and UAB -- have accepted invitations to join the American Athletic Conference.
It's official. Six C-USA schools going to the AAC...not the ACC!
JMU, Liberty, ODU could be moving to new conferences
The conference realignment wave that began this summer among Power Five conferences has crashed into Group of Five leagues, with James Madison, Liberty and Old Dominion potentially affected.
C-USA could soon join the conference graveyard. Marshall, ODU, and Southern Miss to Sun Belt? James Madison could move up and join to give SBC 14 members.
I would actually highly recommend downloading the sides that @Jalapeno posted.
It's one of the more interesting documents I've read in a while, and sorry Jalapeno, but I think you are neither pulling out the most interesting ideas and concepts nor representing some of those ideas with 100% accuracy.
I think the biggest thing that stood out to me was that if you graph schools with "athletic success and /or commitment" on one scale and "academic success and /or commitment" on the other that almost no matter how you measured those things (usnwr, research $, athletic spend, sports championships, etc) , the schools in each conference were generally clustered together (of course there are outliers, with vandy being the biggest).
And, if you went a little further, to the new "alliance" between P12, B1G & ACC, it was stark - those three conferences are very clearly separate from the SEC & B12.
Another really interesting bit was about the BTAA the "Big Ten Academic Alliance." A separate but parallel entity to the sports conference. They do things like pool purchase agreements giving the group negotiating power that they would not have on their own (everything from library subscription packages to rental cars) - a setup that literally saves each school tens of millions of dollars annually. They also give preference to graduates from other schools in the alliance in grad school admissions, hiring decisions, etc. Hold academic conferences together and a myriad of other things that directly and indirectly bring money and meaningful other benefits to every single university.
The benefits are such that talk of B1G schools bolting to the SEC simply for more football money are kind of ridiculous.
Anyway the whole slide deck is worth a read, and it will certainly up anyone's knowledge who takes the time to read through it.
(I will note that I loved the "P12, B1G, & ACC all go to 16 and create a scheduling alliance with promotion and relegation between tiers" scenario they laid out. They are absolutely right that it would be a TV ratings and $ bonanza that even the SEC would have trouble matching.)
It's one of the more interesting documents I've read in a while, and sorry Jalapeno, but I think you are neither pulling out the most interesting ideas and concepts nor representing some of those ideas with 100% accuracy.
I think the biggest thing that stood out to me was that if you graph schools with "athletic success and /or commitment" on one scale and "academic success and /or commitment" on the other that almost no matter how you measured those things (usnwr, research $, athletic spend, sports championships, etc) , the schools in each conference were generally clustered together (of course there are outliers, with vandy being the biggest).
And, if you went a little further, to the new "alliance" between P12, B1G & ACC, it was stark - those three conferences are very clearly separate from the SEC & B12.
Another really interesting bit was about the BTAA the "Big Ten Academic Alliance." A separate but parallel entity to the sports conference. They do things like pool purchase agreements giving the group negotiating power that they would not have on their own (everything from library subscription packages to rental cars) - a setup that literally saves each school tens of millions of dollars annually. They also give preference to graduates from other schools in the alliance in grad school admissions, hiring decisions, etc. Hold academic conferences together and a myriad of other things that directly and indirectly bring money and meaningful other benefits to every single university.
The benefits are such that talk of B1G schools bolting to the SEC simply for more football money are kind of ridiculous.
Anyway the whole slide deck is worth a read, and it will certainly up anyone's knowledge who takes the time to read through it.
(I will note that I loved the "P12, B1G, & ACC all go to 16 and create a scheduling alliance with promotion and relegation between tiers" scenario they laid out. They are absolutely right that it would be a TV ratings and $ bonanza that even the SEC would have trouble matching.)
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You have missed the entire point with Boise.
The money is the deciding factor. College football is first and foremost big business.
Boise could be the Harvard of the West and wouldn't get into a major conference.
The reason is financial. Even at their strongest, even when they had the Micron and Albertson's money coming in they were not going to be a bigger financial contributor to a conference than they would be a financial draw.
Anytime a conference looks at adding members question #1 is always going to be for the other schools is does our share of conference revenue go up or does it go down.
Boise at their best would be neutral to negative.
I would highly recommend reading the slide deck. The central point is that it's not "first and foremost about the money," but rather that while money is definitely a big part of the picture, there is another big part as well, and that's the academic stuff. *Especially in the P5.*
Once you add the other dimension, a lot of historic decisions and alignments are a lot more clear.
Football and money might explain 50-60% of what you see, but the other 40-50% makes the picture a lot more clear.
Boise and even Memphis aren't getting into one of the 5 "autonomous" conferences anytime soon, and it's *much* more a case of academic misalignment than $.
The analysis from that deck also puts the MWC as one of the most closely aligned of the G5, and they point to that as one of the reasons it's proven to be more inoculated against its members getting picked off.
Read the slide deck, don't buy it.
Remember this is Baylor, the school who tried to do everything they could including dumping on CU to get included in a potential move to the PAC. They have a real and founded fear that if the B12 falls apart as current members go other directions that they will be left behind, and in fact they will.
Even if the B12 manages to stay one of the A5 conferences there is no guarantee that they will continue to share in the financial benefits of being part of the top end of college football. If the B12 effectively dissolves and is reconstituted as including a bunch of current G5 programs Baylor stands to lose tens of millions of dollars per year.
They can talk all they want about academic rankings and culture and everything else. Despite their flashy powerpoint I have zero question that if adding Boise would keep Baylors conference payout close the $30+ million per year instead of the sub $10 million per year the MWC and other G5 conferences pay they would be able to produce a highly convincing slide presentation justifying the inclusion of Boise.
I don't think bailer wrote the deck. They paid a consultant for it.
The reason I "buy it" is because it very clearly and easily explains quite a few past decisions (and non decisions) that are only convolutedly explained by money alone.
When something brings clarity "oh, that decision is so much more obvious when you look at _____ AND _____ than it is if you just look at ______" it's a better model.
The first variable may explain some, or even most, of what you see, but when the combination of the first and second variable easily explain almost all of it, it's pretty dumb to dismiss the second variable out of hand.
The 4 schools that the AAC lost vs the 6 that it has added make a heck of a contrast. Wow.
Truth is, we're going to see the B1G and SEC on their own revenue level, the Pac moving into a clear 3rd place in 2024 while the ACC and Big 12 are falling due to, respectively, an increasingly bad long-term media deal and the loss of UT & OU (80% of its national media eyeballs) with a much lesser media deal coming in 2025.
Every ACC and B12 program will be lobbying hard to get into the SEC or B1G, the Pac to a lesser but still highly interested extent.
Absolutely could see this happening.
The PAC badly needs a team to step up to dominance level and make a legitimate argument each year for inclusion in the playoff. Oregon has been close but continues to stumble. PAC also badly needs USC to become relevant again.
ACC likewise needs Clemson to return to a level justifying playoff inclusion. They also for media value purposes need Florida State to become a national name program again.
The ACC failing to do this faces sinking into obscurity.
The B12 has already lost their name programs. Their remaining appeal for broadcast contracts is much more limited than the big three (or big 2 and semi big 1) you mention.
Wild Card is Notre Dame. They may stick with the ACC for scheduling convenience but could also choose to go to the B1G or the PAC depending on conference media money. Don't see them going SEC because of they can get similar money without compromising their desired reputation with the other two.
Notre Dame aside, the ACC as a conference is well positioned but their problem is the media deal with ESPN runs thru 2036.
The ACC faces sinking into obscurity? Wtf?
Presumably that addition to the conference would reopen negotiations in that media deal.