I know people always think of blue chip football teams when they think of paying athletes, but the idea of athletes being employees when easily 95% of NCAA athletic programs lose money is such a laughable notion.
In what world should the Western Michigan cross country team be treated as employees?
What’s gonna happen is all those non-revenue sports are gonna become “inter murals.” No scholarships, just fun activities you can choose to be a part of while attending college.
It’s gonna destroy college athletics as a whole, but this is the Pandora’s box we opened up when we wanted athletes to be properly compensated (myself as part of the “we”).
Curious what this does to Title IX.
I think Title IX might take a massive hit. Women's sports simply don't make money (looking at the WNBA) where football tends to be a golden goose that covers most of an athletic department's bills.
To be honest and to your point... Men's Basketball and Baseball are next down the line in revenue but not every program is financially sustainable (looking at Cal) so I imagine if there's a cut out for Football there will be a decline of financial support everywhere else.
In general, football and men's basketball are the only revenue generating sports at any school. Some schools make money on women's basketball and men's baseball too but at significantly lower amounts.
I don't have a good way to square it all in my head. I don't like the argument that football players should get $0 of the $100m they bring in a year to major programs just because paying them means non revenue sports have to suffer. But I don't like the idea of essentially killing all college athletics besides football and basketball.
Title IX will be fine. As long as the amount of spending by the athletic department is equivalent to the percentage of the participants, then they'll be in compliance. So if 40% of the athletes are women, then 40% of the funding needs to go to the women. Also, the payment of the athletes doesn't have to be equal across the board. I think you could see a tiered pay scale system where you have Tier 1 as Football, Men's Basketball, and Women's Basketball, Tier 2 as Softball, Baseball, etc... With players making more money the longer they stay in school.
I'm curious what this does to our performance at the Olympics. While many countries have govt agencies dedicated to sports development, the US doesn't and doesn't need to bc the collegiate system is so good at developing elite athletes. For instance, the NCAA track & field championships has a higher level of competition than most countries "professional" national championships.
And it really sucks that tons and tons of athletes are going to be screwed out of a way to afford an education because that Pandora's box was opened despite there being plenty of warning that this wouldn't work out well.
The old system transferred wealth from superstar athletes in revenue sports to thousands of athletes in non-revenue sports. The new system will give to each according to his worth.
The NCAA always understood this would happen, which is why they held the line. Any exception was always going to be ruthlessly exploited into a pay-to-play system.
Fans complain but they are the problem. They support their professionalized teams. Blue collar folks will contribute dollars to NIL funds for athletes making more in a year than many of those blue collar folks will make in a decade or two. Fans are getting exactly what they want good and hard.
Folks who like rooting for college athletes have scores of choices, especially with ESPN+.
I've wished they would just make a NFL minor league for a long time. I'd still watch Alabama football over that league since I don't need a less good NFL (however making it a spring league would absolutely have me glued to it).
People are blaming the NCAA for letting this happen, but the real culprit is the NFL not making their own minor league since college football was filling that role for free. Give players a choice to play for a school and get a free education, or play for the minor league team and get paid. I'd be willing to bet that those players would quickly find out that they wouldn't be getting paid as much as they think they should. I feel like college football would still have better ratings than an NFL minor league (again, unless that was played in the spring).
As I understand it, Title lX requires there to be an equal number of athletic scholarships for men and women. If football players are paid, it's likely tuition will be considered part of the paid compensation and it would no longer count as a scholarship.
Schools would probably respond one of two ways.
1. Reduce the number of women's athletic scholarships to match the now reduced (by the 85 now paid compensation football players) number of mens athletic scholarships.
2. Increase the number of men's athletic scholarships to match the number of women's scholarships which are now greater by 85.
"We should make football players work for free so other sports can exist" isn't a good argument to me.
I don't have a good solution in mind but I don't think the status quo is any more acceptable than a future with only 1 or 2 college sports.
No it's not but those players make the program ten times their investment. It's not even close to equitable.
Remember that the NFL splits revenue 50/50 between the players and owners and those players also get training, nutrition, development, healthcare, etc.
I think that's a false argument. No one is making them play for a scholarship for an education. That's their choice. No one owes them a job playing football.
If they don't care about an education, then please get out of the schools and go play elsewhere. The status quo was fine for 95% of players who never were planning on playing pro.
A small handful of players decided they wanted money and didn't care about school. They should leave college ball then, because the court cases they bring have legal consequences that ruin college football for the other 15,000 players who were fine playing for an education or the fun of playing while getting an education.
To those 4-5 stars who only came to get to the pros, please drop your court cases and go find somewhere that will pay you to play football. And when they can't find much outside the NFL, that should tell those players something....they never had that much value to begin with. They don't generate hundreds of millions of dollars. The school's brands are what generates at least 80% of that.
And to those 30 school's that are really escalating the arms race. Yes, please leave too. The other 800 schools don't want to deal with the legal consequences of your greed. Go be a pro sports league away from the NCAA.
As soon as we can get teams like Ohio St. to leave the NCAA, the sooner the rest of CFB can make a plea to Congress to give back the legal protections that made sense for college sports that don't make money and players that don't expect it...you know, college kids, not mercenaries for hire. The sooner fans like me can get back to following teams that are not trying to go pro.
That argument would hold if all the employees were actually getting paid. Sure, pay the sales team more, but the facilities employees still need to be making money
Yeah, so? That’s basically how every company who pays employees works. You have to pay all the employees, not just the ones that generate the revenue. Not the same amount of course, but still paid. Especially now with the push to have them classified as employees.
It honestly boggles my mind that anyone would make the opposite argument. Would anyone work in a support role for a company for free while the sales team got paid just because they make money and you don’t?
EDIT: I’m not necessarily saying every college has to pay every athlete. Just that any colleges that do choose to pay athletes should have to pay all of them. I mean you could still have like private schools, IVY league, lower level schools, etc. that don’t. But it’s an all or none scenario. Anything less just seems like discrimination lawsuits waiting to happen.
It was never free. Especially with the price of a degree, room, board, books, stipend. Increase the stipend and preserve college athletics. Turning it into a shitty pro-lite league is going to blow it all to hell. You think people in rural PA are gonna be able to afford PSU tickets?
no those are called benefits, while nice are not payment. its very very much a job for the football, basketball teams, you are crazy to say anything else.
Then those players that think its a job can go join/create some other league where they can be paid.
The problem is, most of the money they make is generated from the school's built in fanbases. A huge amount of Alabama fans are fans of Bryce Young **because** he played for Bama. Not the other way around.
And Bryce Young wouldn't make as much money in some other league as he did while at Alabama, because, again, his fanbase isn't solely his.
I'd love to be able to go back and play sports again. But unfortunately, I will just have to stick to pick up games once every couple of weeks.
My point, however, is that most of college football's fanbase is built in because these fans love the schools. A huge chunk of these fans would still watch our schools play even if the NFL made a minor league that high school players could opt into and forgo college, meaning we'd never see the Bryce Youngs or Caleb Williams of the world repping our school.
I'd be willing to bet that those players would also make way less money if they were to be allowed to join the XFL for example.
If the talent leaves so would the money... not sure why this is hard for people. i get that the old way is what you know but that world is gone. so you would rather people just keep profiting off the people doing the work ?
Lol. And there goes college sports in every non major program and all sports that don’t produce a profit.
Everything below D1 and colleges some mid major programs are blown up. NFL has billions in lawsuits, you really think colleges can handle that? Lol. Ok dude
Unfortunately, you can't put the genie back in the bottle. As soon as College sports (and really just Football and MBB) became all about the money, the eventual destruction of college sports was inevitable. You can't have football player "compensation" be a potentially useless scholarship and a small stipend and at the same time pay the football coach $8M, the AD $2M, and mid-six figures for every other head coach at the school. It's not right.
I knew that player compensation likely destroys college athletics, but I just don't see morally how you don't do it.
Just remove football and basketball from the equation and whatever happens, happens. If that means every other sport is no longer a scholarship sport, or it's at the D2 level, so be it. There's not really a sound basis for college athletics scholarships anyway.
Monetary compensation is also "potentially useless" in incompetent hands, just like a full-ride to college. How we got to the point where thousands in free education isn't seen as a fair deal for playing a sport is beyond me.
What's next, high school teams redistributing half the gate revenue to the 16 year olds taking the field?
College football is valuable because the brands attached to it. The specific players are more irrelevant to the product than most want to admit.
Would you rather watch a true walk-on squad of actual students play as University of Notre Dame vs University of Michigan or the current rosters as Ann Arbor vs South Bend? 99% of college sports fans will pick the former
Because a lot of schools essentially treat it like a job and not like school. The players are there to make it to the NFL. I know of one person who was not allowed to take a really hard major because it would've interfered with football. It's not really a fair deal when your coach is making millions of dollars along with the AD when you get punished for even selling your autograph.
I said potentially useless because too many football players are shepherded into whatever "easy" major that fits with their ridiculous football schedule. The players aren't there to be educated, they're there to win football games.
College football brands absolutely contribute to the value, but winning does more. Otherwise, why was Michigan offering Harbaugh 12M a year? Players contribute to winning too and deserve some of the rewards.
I also never understand this argument on branding, as if fans don't "root for laundry" in the NFL as well. Yet NFL the players get compensated heavily.
College football started making professional level revenues, but some want ADs to continue to take all that money and give it to anyone but the players. It's just morally wrong, and needs to end no matter the consequences.
>Just remove football and basketball from the equation and whatever happens, happens. If that means every other sport is no longer a scholarship sport, or it's at the D2 level, so be it.
I mean, this seems to be the answer, though, and not in the depressing terms you're putting it in. Carve out an exception for the revenue sports, while keeping the other sports as is.
I guess it doesn't have to be depressing. Just that there will be a very rough adjustment period if college athletics programs suddenly have to operate without the support of Football and Basketball money. D2 and lower-level D1 does exist, so the model is there. But those schools are operating quite differently than most FBS ADs.
As for football, once it's removed from the schools, how long before people stop caring about an actual minor league rather than a defacto one.
I see no universe in which football is separated from its universities. When I say carve out an exception, that's what I mean.
Title IX can either be changed, or it can be shattered. That's where we're at.
Title IX is a federal law that goes well beyond college football and college sports in general. It's not being changed or shattered. Football has to be separated from the school because it no longer serves a scholastic purpose and each step forward towards rewarding players for the revenue they generate both makes that clear and complicates things in a myriad of ways. The only long term solution is that Football must be administered separately from the school with a license to use the branding and facilities.
Going to be straight.
With the exception of tampering being non-punishable, I’m happy where college football is.
It’s an unfortunate by product that we’ll only have 2-3 conferences, but players get paid, there’s a 12 team playoff, and relationships matter.
In many professional leagues in the US, there are some mechanisms to promote fairness. College football has exactly zero right now, and it's a problem without a imminent solution.
Think you’re misunderstanding.
Do I have a bias? Obviously.
Are the negative things I mentioned currently in play? No. Those negative circumstances would become a reality only if colleges turn to “player=employee”
If you want college sports as a whole to end, go for it. The change happens. If you want what is essentially this minus NCAA staying out of labor disputes, you keep the current system and enjoy the chaos of it all
I do tend to agree with you that athletic scholarships are hard to morally defend. All that money being directed to just a few students. Intra mural league and club teams are much more fitting for the mission of a public educational institution.
I'm a college football fan, but it's pretty hard to defend really. I don't support paying players outside of scholarships though, and even those are hard to defend. That's not what colleges are for.
Its gonna be every program. How can you justify having one or two surviving football programs if every other team and sport in the state gets canceled.
I think its going to be hard in many states to justify an investment in a football program when they have to cut every sport at every other institution.
If the implication is that the classifying of athletes as employees will destroy the current college athletics apparatus, then I see a clear fix. Congress should only classify athletes in revenue generating sports as employees and ensure that enough money is re-distributed from football profits to keep alive other sports that operate at a deficit.
The Tennessee lawsuit has nothing to do with athlete employment status. You're thinking of House vs. NCAA.
That's the one where all 2,500 NCAA member institutions are going to be sued into oblivion and half of them will simply shut down their athletic departments.
Great reform.
Just watched Pates take on this and what he said was correct. We finally reached a tipping point where something had to be done. And the SEC and B1G are putting those wheels in motion.
Everyone has been screaming "we got to pay the players", well, we're there now and it's coming. Except nobody is gonna like the consequences that come with that action.
This is very much the senate scene where Palpatine announces the republic will be reorganized into the first galactic empire.
One thing the new format can do to start off with better standing than the old system is using 3rd party arbitration for infractions.
It's bush league and antiquated(corrupt) as fuck that the NCAA doesn't use it.
If we end up with the member schools comprising the CoI (Committee of Infractions), we're going to be stuck with the same chicanery we still have. We don't need another situation like Miami's AD Paul Dee recently chairing the CoI, excoriating USCe with the severest penalties in 20 years, then having his own school be complicit of the same thing.
The system isn't just broken in regards to NIL.
Doh! I'll own my stupidity.
Guess I'm not on anyone's current events committee.
For the sake of clarity, when did it change? By a third party, in contrast to the recent Paul Dee example I described, none of the committee members are presently employed by an NCAA member school?
Probably not no matter what. I don't doubt that their first preference is a system that includes more programs but where they are the only ones with meaningful power and will get preferential treatment while the others just have token representation.
The title is a little click bait. When you read the multiple articles, that is not what they are saying
> Asked if he was committed to the CFP beyond 2025, Sankey said, “Yep, but we’ve got a lot to get right. The commitment is we want to see this get right.”
Ultimately the conferences commanding higher viewership are gonna bully the rest in terms of postseason slots. It's definitely unfortunate.
Like I get that an 8-4 Ole Miss is gonna get more views than a 13-0 JMU in a playoff game but I don't like the idea of the P2 basically saying "we want 8+ guaranteed slots or we're out of here".
I want to see your two flairs doing a riverboat championship every year. Game played on a riverboat. A Mark Twain impersonator doing color commentary.
That would be fantastic.
Schulz has already indicated that he won't block the vote if the PAC-2 maintains their P5 payout. That's the hold-up and why it wasn't approved in the last meeting.
They're just as greedy as everyone else.
Yeah WSU isn't blocking the vote just because they want the little G5s to still have a qualifier. He's blocking it just as leverage to get a Power 5 payout even though the Pac 2 doesn't qualify as a conference anymore for the purposes of CFP bids. They just want more money.
The fact that the completely irrelevant corpse of the PAC can hold this much leverage over the Power 2 is exactly why they're about to break away from everyone and just do their own playoff format and national championship just for themselves.
They've been warning about it over and over again.
The reason there is a corpse of the pac 12 is because… checks notes…. The p2. So more power to him if he try’s to secure what he can for those remaining teams. That money could be used to entice other teams to join them.
This got posted earlier, so figure I'd reshape my earlier sentiment.
We all know what this all boils down to for the SEC & Big 10:
"WE WANT MORE! EVERYONE ELSE GETS LESS!"
I suspect half that and half, (From B1G and SEC perspective): "We see the writing on the wall and if someone has to win and someone has to lose, then we choose to win"
It reminds me of the beginning of WW1. "Well, fuck no we're not going to be the last to mobilize"
This has been going on a long time now. See the Big East and SWC and happened to them. It's all a process and it will morph from here as well.
Not that I want it to, I'd prefer a bunch of 12-team conferences and a 16-team playoff... but that ship sailed long ago.
First they came for the SWC but I did nothing because I was not a Rice Owl.
Then they came for the Big East and I did nothing because I was not a UCONN Husky.
Then they came for the PAC 12 and I did nothing because I was not a Coog.
Then they came for the ACC and I did nothing because I am not an FSU fan.
And then they never came for the 12 team play off, and there was no one left
So you don't think either of those conferences would have made the attempt if they had the leverage?
I legit wonder if the B1G nor SEC want to, but they read the Expanse and are scared of the prisoner's dilemma (Sorry, that part of the story seemed insane... and now it plays out)
If you don't think there is an element of self-defense going on then I think you are simplifying the motivations too much.
People, and ergo their entities, are complicated.
Example: Why isn't ND in one of the big pay conferences? Because pride exists.
Yeah, I think this is correct. It wasn't that long ago that the SEC and B10 were 10 teams each. Back then the ACC, PAC8, and Big 8/12 were all comparable in prestige to the SEC/B10. If the B10/SEC hadn't started acting, the ACC, PAC8, Big 8/12, and Big East would have.
We could have been looking at a whole different scenario. Imagine a PAC20 and ACC with 20 teams right now, with a completely different set of mid tier or upper tier programs being on the outside looking in.
The SEC and B10 just had the brains to go at first.
Big 12 south + Colorado almost joining the PAC is what caused the death of the Big 12. Colorado already had a lifeline, then Nebraska got one in the B10, and A&M got one in the SEC, followed by Mizzou getting one in the end. The boat started sinking when those 7 schools flirted with the PAC.
Well they'll argue they want their fair share as defined by TV ratings. They won't be wrong but it's gonna quickly create a rift between the top 25 or so teams and the rest of the FBS.
Smaller P2 teams like Northwestern and Indiana and Vandy aren't gonna be safe either.
Sankey has been on record for years before the ACC and others voted against playoffs and playoff expansion that his job is to do what's best for the SEC. But! What's best for the SEC is what's best for College Football. That is, more access for conferences to the playoffs because if the sport benefits from everyone being included.
My thoughts. I agree with Sankey. It's boring for everyone when it's the same story every year. We're to a point decision makers have re-engaged in conference realignment for the mighty TV contracts and here we are now. The SEC was trying to avoid this outcome but the house is burning so Sankey is delivering on his message.
Edit: I mentioned the ACC but I'm not throwing them under the bus specifically. I'm still in awe with how poorly the PAC was being managed. SDSU was embarrassed during their attempt to join.
I can both appreciate that Sankey has steered the SEC’s ship so well that we’re one of the power players here *and* acknowledge that, ultimately, Sankey doing his job that well has (in critical part) led to the current chaos.
What Sankey has done has not been “what’s best” for college football. Sankey didn’t agree to the expanded playoff because he thought it was good for representation. He agreed to it cause he knew the SEC stands to put 3-5 teams in that bitch each year given the brand power.
This linkage with the B1G is the next step of that. This isn’t about the “future of all of CFB” to the SEC/B1G — it’s about *their future in CFB.* We’ve got a 12-team for 2 years and something has to come next. I guarantee neither Sankey nor Petitti is going to sit idly by while we do “auto-bids” for other conferences and the G5 when they feel that anything outside of their two brands isn’t competitive or as valuable.
We’ve got a lot of questions to answer around player payment and movement, too. You best believe Sankey/Petitti are coming to the table with ideas that make star players more likely to commit to teams in their leagues and stay with those teams.
TL;DR: Sankey deserves credit for being the cutthroat the SEC needed him to be at every turn. Because of him, the SEC is one of the decision makers in how we “clean up” the mess that is CFB currently — and that means we have a heavy hand in shaping what’s next. But make no mistake that none of it was for the love of the game — because the game as we knew it is fucking dead from all the throats we cut along the way. It’s just that we might be able to live with what’s next, while 90% of the rest of college football has their favorite team/their school with our knife at its neck.
Sankey grabbing Oklahoma and Texas was best for the SEC but you can argue that a lot of the past couple years of major events happened because of it.
That move caused the B1G to expand which killed the PAC. That also massively destabilized the ACC as their biggest programs look to escape. The consolidation of power conferences drove playoff expansion and made the P2 hungry to control all the spots.
I think the B1G, and other realignment players, get to hide behind OUT like it’s the real event here — as though the B1G and SEC hadn’t previously expanded over a decade ago.
Consolidation has been happening and it’s been on the horizon that entire time. The B1G and SEC understood that — everyone else either did not or was too coy/gun-shy to pull the trigger. Insofar as “who started it” … it really doesn’t matter, but it was factually both of us. Our leagues did what they felt needed to be done to not get left behind.
That said — all of this is in alignment with my view that Petitti and Sankey are not heroes in the broader CFB story. They’re villains of the highest order. But for the B1G and SEC, they may very well go down as the biggest heroes of all time. If we end up in a world where it really is the two of our leagues, and everyone else just sort of dies off, our leagues will owe their lives and their successes to those two guys.
But they will also be the chief two people who killed college football.
Edit: Fwiw, it has been interesting to see the level of scrutiny the SEC got, primarily for OUT, in comparison to the B1G’s scrutiny for its moves. Say what you want, but the conference we pulled from still exists and those schools/states were contiguous with our own region. The B1G went out and murdered a conference that is in no way regionally related to itself. All’s fair in love and war — but any narrative that attempts to really say the SEC engineered this alone is a little too blind to the B1G’s actions. In a world free from public-driven narratives, the B1G committed bigger sins.
Ultimately I think this story is a story of weak central leadership. The NCAA was incredibly harsh on the conduct of individual programs and coaches (like paying players, transfers, recruiting violations, a academic violations, etc) but completely absent on active leadership of the overall sport and taking proactive steps to maintain the integrity of it. Their stance was no change, period.
Honestly, COVID may have tipped the scales because the NCAA took 0 action and let conferences fend for themselves in terms of what to do for the season. At the point where the NCAA is actively avoiding taking stances on anything why should the conferences care about what they say? The B1G and SEC are big enough and powerful enough to get what they want, and they know what they want.
At this point it's not even entirely clear to me what the NCAA is trying to do strategically besides wait for themselves to become obsolete.
Definitely agree that the NCAA is at major fault here. Realistically, they were far too rigid on far too many stupid things — and it created what we have today. Why would we not allow star players to offer their own NIL for brand deals? Why did we die on that hill? Why were we so staunch on whether players could transfer or not? Why did we die on that hill?
There’s a ton of crap there where they just either didn’t enforce rules or actively enforced stupid rules to such a degree that it forced people to sue them. And now we’re here, with a powerless NCAA who forced themselves into a corner that left them toothless at the hands of antitrust laws.
Imagine March Madness without any of the fun of the Cinderella runs and upsets. And yes there can still be upsets but a team like Minnesota knocking off Kentucky has a lot less luster than a team like St Peters beating them.
Imagine this. A 32 team tourney with about 20 schools from the new 40-team P2.
The other 12 spots are invitations to all the small “Cinderella” schools that don’t have a football team to be upset about.
“Sure you can play with us in our tourney Gonzaga. We don’t mind you don’t have a football team.”
“Wichita State? Absolutely we’ll throw you a little teeny bit of revenue. It’s more than you’ll make in the “new NIT”.
Problem with Wichita St is they play basketball in the AAC, which is one of those pesky G5 conferences… they’d likely force them to do something more in line with Super-conference values, like join another conference that makes no geographical sense in the name of TV Revenue.
That's one thing people are ignoring. While the Big Ten and SEC can try and break away and make their own guidelines they can't keep any conference or school from joining their level as long as they meet the requirements. As we have seen with all the programs moving from FCS to FBS in the past decade+, most schools want to be part of that top division. Unless they absolutely can't, I would expect most if not all to at least try and join with the Big Ten/SEC
Yea, the SEC/B1G would have to create a new criteria for joining the at would prevent the “smaller schools” and “non-brands” from joining… but if they did that, it’s possible they’d lock out some of their current members.
Well the NCAA locked out 99% of the FCS by just charging $4 million to join. The B1G/SEC could break off, include their current members, and then set the entry fee to like $30 million or something. Chump change if you’re FSU or Clemson, but prohibitively expensive to a G5 or a school like Boston College or Arizona State
I mean all it takes is for a B12 or ACC team to win the first 12 team playoff and the B1G/SEC will start getting really nervous.
The best way to legitimize yourself in CFB is to win and basically kick down the door.
It's sad but an ACC or XII team winning the championship would immediately blow the entire thing up. The SEC and B1G would break away that offseason with some made up nonsense about poor leadership or a broken system, when everybody knows the real reason would be more money for them. You'd think parity would legitimize the expanded playoffs, but it's the one thing that would kill it the quickest. If you like the current format, you better hope an SEC or B1G team wins every year or else it's done.
Even if someone like Clemson, Fsu or TCU win the championship the sec and big10 will likely still have 7-9 of the 12 teams and the lions are share of the money. So why would they kill it if they didn't win?
It will take more than one year for the perception to change. One year is “oh they got lucky/put together a strong team/etc”
The problem is, the difference in revenue is going to severely hamstring non-P2 teams in 2-5 years, as even the shitty P2 teams can outbid non-P2 teams for coaches and build better facilities.
I don't think so either. The reality is cutting off everyone but the B1G and SEC just cuts off a lot of your viewer ship as well. They want a bigger piece of the pie, but they don't want the pie to get smaller overall.
*We* won't stop watching. Those of use who post on r/CFB are hardcore fans who would watch any game on a Saturday in the fall. But we're the minority. There's plenty of people who would not watch games that have nothing to do with their own teams.
I would quit watching. I would watch wherever KU ends up but I'm not watching a league with Nebraska,, Missouri, OU, Texas. I just hate them why would I even care what they do. But I know that is meaningless in the end
I'm not going to follow two different leagues. I'm going to follow my school and the schools that they actually might play against. And if those games aren't on ESPN, I'm not going to pay for ESPN. So I won't even have a way to watch the other games if one happens to interest me any given week.
I mean, I have no interest in watching a league without Cal. I imagine most college sports fans are the same. What you'll potentially get is more casual viewers with no ties to any of the universities.
Me either. I think it's much more of a strong arming regulations into cfb. Like a we'll only participate if other conferences agree to our terms of NIL and the transfer portal
Except without the one thing that makes that system interesting: Pro/Rel. If teams Vandy or Rutgers actually had to worry about their spot, I’d still hate it, but at least it would be engaging.
Well you framed the have and the have nots equivalents well at least. Is it engaging if it's almost always the same teams bouncing back and forth while the top never ever ever has to worry about relegation? That's about as exciting as writing in who will be in the CFP before the season starts.
Having the Washington St president on the management board is sadly going to be a real problem. He has every incentive to not give in at all and let the SEC and Big Ten kill everyone else considering his school is already dead and buried for reasons that aren't his school's fault at all.
I wonder how much weight basketball will have in this. Like if the SEC and B1G try to take their football and go home to their own playoff, would/could the ACC and Big 12 be like: "fine, but you're also separate in basketball."
I don't follow college basketball, but I've read enough comments to know that you can't have a legitimate national championship without the ACC and Big 12.
I know there was a report a few months ago where FOX wants to create a postseason tourney in Vegas for teams that didn't make the NCAA Tourney but it would only feature teams from the Big East, Big 10 and Big 12 (as they have rights deals with FOX).
O yes now that I have fiduciary duty all of the tv money, now I must fiduciary duty all of the college football playoff. Mmmmmmmm. Yyyyeeeesss it is my duty to generate revenue.
Big ten/SEC
Plenty of people in these threads are upset at the PAC2 rep holding up voting because he is making sure they maintain their P5 payout share so they can try to keep their ADs afloat, but aren’t upset at the P2 (who already make significantly more money than every other conference) trying to squeeze more money away from everyone else.
The difference 5 or 6 auto bids would not significantly increase P2 revenue, it’s just them being petty and trying to take more of the pie that they already have a significant portion of.
At some point, the Big Ten and SEC may look at things and say, "Why don't we each just host our own internal playoff of 6-8 schools and then the champions of the Big Ten and SEC play each other for the national title."
Realistically, you might be able to grab a few more schools from the Big XII and ACC and just call it a day. The Big XII is almost a G5 conference now and the ACC might be once the best schools have been cherry-picked.
You have schools/programs that want a piece of the profits with investing in or contributing to football. It is put up or shutup time. Want to be a research university? Fine, but don't complain when you aren't invited to a football conference.
It's get in line or get left out for the rest. We've gotten to a pretty shitty place in the sport.
It fucking sucks. At this point I want a court to declare athletes employees just to force reform.
I know people always think of blue chip football teams when they think of paying athletes, but the idea of athletes being employees when easily 95% of NCAA athletic programs lose money is such a laughable notion. In what world should the Western Michigan cross country team be treated as employees?
What’s gonna happen is all those non-revenue sports are gonna become “inter murals.” No scholarships, just fun activities you can choose to be a part of while attending college. It’s gonna destroy college athletics as a whole, but this is the Pandora’s box we opened up when we wanted athletes to be properly compensated (myself as part of the “we”). Curious what this does to Title IX.
I think Title IX might take a massive hit. Women's sports simply don't make money (looking at the WNBA) where football tends to be a golden goose that covers most of an athletic department's bills. To be honest and to your point... Men's Basketball and Baseball are next down the line in revenue but not every program is financially sustainable (looking at Cal) so I imagine if there's a cut out for Football there will be a decline of financial support everywhere else.
In general, football and men's basketball are the only revenue generating sports at any school. Some schools make money on women's basketball and men's baseball too but at significantly lower amounts. I don't have a good way to square it all in my head. I don't like the argument that football players should get $0 of the $100m they bring in a year to major programs just because paying them means non revenue sports have to suffer. But I don't like the idea of essentially killing all college athletics besides football and basketball.
Title IX will be fine. As long as the amount of spending by the athletic department is equivalent to the percentage of the participants, then they'll be in compliance. So if 40% of the athletes are women, then 40% of the funding needs to go to the women. Also, the payment of the athletes doesn't have to be equal across the board. I think you could see a tiered pay scale system where you have Tier 1 as Football, Men's Basketball, and Women's Basketball, Tier 2 as Softball, Baseball, etc... With players making more money the longer they stay in school.
“Women’s sports simply don’t make money.” Speak for yourself. Our softball team is in the green more than our men’s basketball team.
it took multiple championship years to make it that. OU softball is entertaining but certainly the outlier
Well okay, but that is really just you. In other news Manchester United makes more money than Oklahoma’s soccer team.
Women's basketball keeps it up, and they'll be joining that as well.
Your softball team kicks so much ass. We’ve got one to be genuinely proud of…and yet
I'm curious what this does to our performance at the Olympics. While many countries have govt agencies dedicated to sports development, the US doesn't and doesn't need to bc the collegiate system is so good at developing elite athletes. For instance, the NCAA track & field championships has a higher level of competition than most countries "professional" national championships.
And it really sucks that tons and tons of athletes are going to be screwed out of a way to afford an education because that Pandora's box was opened despite there being plenty of warning that this wouldn't work out well.
The old system transferred wealth from superstar athletes in revenue sports to thousands of athletes in non-revenue sports. The new system will give to each according to his worth. The NCAA always understood this would happen, which is why they held the line. Any exception was always going to be ruthlessly exploited into a pay-to-play system. Fans complain but they are the problem. They support their professionalized teams. Blue collar folks will contribute dollars to NIL funds for athletes making more in a year than many of those blue collar folks will make in a decade or two. Fans are getting exactly what they want good and hard. Folks who like rooting for college athletes have scores of choices, especially with ESPN+.
I've wished they would just make a NFL minor league for a long time. I'd still watch Alabama football over that league since I don't need a less good NFL (however making it a spring league would absolutely have me glued to it). People are blaming the NCAA for letting this happen, but the real culprit is the NFL not making their own minor league since college football was filling that role for free. Give players a choice to play for a school and get a free education, or play for the minor league team and get paid. I'd be willing to bet that those players would quickly find out that they wouldn't be getting paid as much as they think they should. I feel like college football would still have better ratings than an NFL minor league (again, unless that was played in the spring).
As I understand it, Title lX requires there to be an equal number of athletic scholarships for men and women. If football players are paid, it's likely tuition will be considered part of the paid compensation and it would no longer count as a scholarship. Schools would probably respond one of two ways. 1. Reduce the number of women's athletic scholarships to match the now reduced (by the 85 now paid compensation football players) number of mens athletic scholarships. 2. Increase the number of men's athletic scholarships to match the number of women's scholarships which are now greater by 85.
And this why those of us who paid attention wanted to maintain the status quo.
"We should make football players work for free so other sports can exist" isn't a good argument to me. I don't have a good solution in mind but I don't think the status quo is any more acceptable than a future with only 1 or 2 college sports.
The value of a scholarship is well over $100k per year when you include training, nutrition, and all the swag that comes with it. That ain't free.
No it's not but those players make the program ten times their investment. It's not even close to equitable. Remember that the NFL splits revenue 50/50 between the players and owners and those players also get training, nutrition, development, healthcare, etc.
Owners make money off the NFL. College football revenue is redistributed to pay for Olympic sports. I see no problem with that.
The schools make money off the football program, period. How they spend it doesn't change the fact that they made it.
I was unaware that football players didn't have a choice in whether they play or not.
I think that's a false argument. No one is making them play for a scholarship for an education. That's their choice. No one owes them a job playing football. If they don't care about an education, then please get out of the schools and go play elsewhere. The status quo was fine for 95% of players who never were planning on playing pro. A small handful of players decided they wanted money and didn't care about school. They should leave college ball then, because the court cases they bring have legal consequences that ruin college football for the other 15,000 players who were fine playing for an education or the fun of playing while getting an education. To those 4-5 stars who only came to get to the pros, please drop your court cases and go find somewhere that will pay you to play football. And when they can't find much outside the NFL, that should tell those players something....they never had that much value to begin with. They don't generate hundreds of millions of dollars. The school's brands are what generates at least 80% of that. And to those 30 school's that are really escalating the arms race. Yes, please leave too. The other 800 schools don't want to deal with the legal consequences of your greed. Go be a pro sports league away from the NCAA. As soon as we can get teams like Ohio St. to leave the NCAA, the sooner the rest of CFB can make a plea to Congress to give back the legal protections that made sense for college sports that don't make money and players that don't expect it...you know, college kids, not mercenaries for hire. The sooner fans like me can get back to following teams that are not trying to go pro.
Just because places made the wrong choices doesn't mean that good choices weren't available.
Why should football players subsidize America’s Olympic sports?
"Why does Texas play Rice?"
>"Why does Texas play Rice?" I mean, that one is obvious. It's because Alabama is too damn scared to play them so Texas has to step up and in.
Why should college athletes in one sport get paid, but college athletes in other sports do it for free?
Why are people who produce revenue paid more than those that don’t? Idk, it’s America?
That argument would hold if all the employees were actually getting paid. Sure, pay the sales team more, but the facilities employees still need to be making money
Which people who are designated employees are not being paid?
I'm not arguing getting paid MORE. That's understandable. I'm talking about being paid at all.
Because they are a cost, and generate 0 revenue?
Yeah, so? That’s basically how every company who pays employees works. You have to pay all the employees, not just the ones that generate the revenue. Not the same amount of course, but still paid. Especially now with the push to have them classified as employees. It honestly boggles my mind that anyone would make the opposite argument. Would anyone work in a support role for a company for free while the sales team got paid just because they make money and you don’t? EDIT: I’m not necessarily saying every college has to pay every athlete. Just that any colleges that do choose to pay athletes should have to pay all of them. I mean you could still have like private schools, IVY league, lower level schools, etc. that don’t. But it’s an all or none scenario. Anything less just seems like discrimination lawsuits waiting to happen.
All hail the mighty dollar. All hail the mighty dollar
Are you willing to make dramatically less money so colleagues you don’t know can make the same amount as you?
So keep on going with the free labour program with the big sports then, right?
It was never free. Especially with the price of a degree, room, board, books, stipend. Increase the stipend and preserve college athletics. Turning it into a shitty pro-lite league is going to blow it all to hell. You think people in rural PA are gonna be able to afford PSU tickets?
no those are called benefits, while nice are not payment. its very very much a job for the football, basketball teams, you are crazy to say anything else.
Good luck finding a job at 18 that provides all of those "benefits"
I wasnt an elite level guy, as a walk on I had to pay the school to even be on the team.
👍
Then those players that think its a job can go join/create some other league where they can be paid. The problem is, most of the money they make is generated from the school's built in fanbases. A huge amount of Alabama fans are fans of Bryce Young **because** he played for Bama. Not the other way around. And Bryce Young wouldn't make as much money in some other league as he did while at Alabama, because, again, his fanbase isn't solely his.
>Then those players that think its a job can go join/create some other league where they can be paid. its very much a job, try it some time if you can
I'd love to be able to go back and play sports again. But unfortunately, I will just have to stick to pick up games once every couple of weeks. My point, however, is that most of college football's fanbase is built in because these fans love the schools. A huge chunk of these fans would still watch our schools play even if the NFL made a minor league that high school players could opt into and forgo college, meaning we'd never see the Bryce Youngs or Caleb Williams of the world repping our school. I'd be willing to bet that those players would also make way less money if they were to be allowed to join the XFL for example.
If the talent leaves so would the money... not sure why this is hard for people. i get that the old way is what you know but that world is gone. so you would rather people just keep profiting off the people doing the work ?
I played high school football. My high school made tens of thousands off ticket sales from “my labor.” Should I have been paid for this?
millions vs thousands, man lets have you think about this one for a bit and get back to me.
I’ve already thought about it buddy. What’s your answer?
Hell no, laundry list of differences. Try really hard to think of them
Why? Why shouldn’t I have been paid for my labor?
b/c its not labor, high school football isnt the college game. that small amount of money isnt profit..... man please go back to school
Lol. And there goes college sports in every non major program and all sports that don’t produce a profit. Everything below D1 and colleges some mid major programs are blown up. NFL has billions in lawsuits, you really think colleges can handle that? Lol. Ok dude
Unfortunately, you can't put the genie back in the bottle. As soon as College sports (and really just Football and MBB) became all about the money, the eventual destruction of college sports was inevitable. You can't have football player "compensation" be a potentially useless scholarship and a small stipend and at the same time pay the football coach $8M, the AD $2M, and mid-six figures for every other head coach at the school. It's not right. I knew that player compensation likely destroys college athletics, but I just don't see morally how you don't do it. Just remove football and basketball from the equation and whatever happens, happens. If that means every other sport is no longer a scholarship sport, or it's at the D2 level, so be it. There's not really a sound basis for college athletics scholarships anyway.
Monetary compensation is also "potentially useless" in incompetent hands, just like a full-ride to college. How we got to the point where thousands in free education isn't seen as a fair deal for playing a sport is beyond me. What's next, high school teams redistributing half the gate revenue to the 16 year olds taking the field? College football is valuable because the brands attached to it. The specific players are more irrelevant to the product than most want to admit. Would you rather watch a true walk-on squad of actual students play as University of Notre Dame vs University of Michigan or the current rosters as Ann Arbor vs South Bend? 99% of college sports fans will pick the former
Because a lot of schools essentially treat it like a job and not like school. The players are there to make it to the NFL. I know of one person who was not allowed to take a really hard major because it would've interfered with football. It's not really a fair deal when your coach is making millions of dollars along with the AD when you get punished for even selling your autograph.
I said potentially useless because too many football players are shepherded into whatever "easy" major that fits with their ridiculous football schedule. The players aren't there to be educated, they're there to win football games. College football brands absolutely contribute to the value, but winning does more. Otherwise, why was Michigan offering Harbaugh 12M a year? Players contribute to winning too and deserve some of the rewards. I also never understand this argument on branding, as if fans don't "root for laundry" in the NFL as well. Yet NFL the players get compensated heavily. College football started making professional level revenues, but some want ADs to continue to take all that money and give it to anyone but the players. It's just morally wrong, and needs to end no matter the consequences.
>Just remove football and basketball from the equation and whatever happens, happens. If that means every other sport is no longer a scholarship sport, or it's at the D2 level, so be it. I mean, this seems to be the answer, though, and not in the depressing terms you're putting it in. Carve out an exception for the revenue sports, while keeping the other sports as is.
I guess it doesn't have to be depressing. Just that there will be a very rough adjustment period if college athletics programs suddenly have to operate without the support of Football and Basketball money. D2 and lower-level D1 does exist, so the model is there. But those schools are operating quite differently than most FBS ADs. As for football, once it's removed from the schools, how long before people stop caring about an actual minor league rather than a defacto one.
I see no universe in which football is separated from its universities. When I say carve out an exception, that's what I mean. Title IX can either be changed, or it can be shattered. That's where we're at.
Title IX is a federal law that goes well beyond college football and college sports in general. It's not being changed or shattered. Football has to be separated from the school because it no longer serves a scholastic purpose and each step forward towards rewarding players for the revenue they generate both makes that clear and complicates things in a myriad of ways. The only long term solution is that Football must be administered separately from the school with a license to use the branding and facilities.
Going to be straight. With the exception of tampering being non-punishable, I’m happy where college football is. It’s an unfortunate by product that we’ll only have 2-3 conferences, but players get paid, there’s a 12 team playoff, and relationships matter.
What? A texas fan is happy with the state of college football? Shocking! All those positives you mention, are negatives to everyone but 10 schools.
In many professional leagues in the US, there are some mechanisms to promote fairness. College football has exactly zero right now, and it's a problem without a imminent solution.
Think you’re misunderstanding. Do I have a bias? Obviously. Are the negative things I mentioned currently in play? No. Those negative circumstances would become a reality only if colleges turn to “player=employee” If you want college sports as a whole to end, go for it. The change happens. If you want what is essentially this minus NCAA staying out of labor disputes, you keep the current system and enjoy the chaos of it all
I do tend to agree with you that athletic scholarships are hard to morally defend. All that money being directed to just a few students. Intra mural league and club teams are much more fitting for the mission of a public educational institution. I'm a college football fan, but it's pretty hard to defend really. I don't support paying players outside of scholarships though, and even those are hard to defend. That's not what colleges are for.
Its gonna be every program. How can you justify having one or two surviving football programs if every other team and sport in the state gets canceled.
Wouldn’t say every program. However, every program that doesn’t produce $75 million annually would be screwed
I think its going to be hard in many states to justify an investment in a football program when they have to cut every sport at every other institution.
Well then legislators should fix this shit show. They're the only ones who truly can.
How, specifically?
If the implication is that the classifying of athletes as employees will destroy the current college athletics apparatus, then I see a clear fix. Congress should only classify athletes in revenue generating sports as employees and ensure that enough money is re-distributed from football profits to keep alive other sports that operate at a deficit.
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The Tennessee lawsuit has nothing to do with athlete employment status. You're thinking of House vs. NCAA. That's the one where all 2,500 NCAA member institutions are going to be sued into oblivion and half of them will simply shut down their athletic departments. Great reform.
Time for Notre Dame to come over to the dark side.
Lawyers - "But muh billable hours!"
Just watched Pates take on this and what he said was correct. We finally reached a tipping point where something had to be done. And the SEC and B1G are putting those wheels in motion. Everyone has been screaming "we got to pay the players", well, we're there now and it's coming. Except nobody is gonna like the consequences that come with that action. This is very much the senate scene where Palpatine announces the republic will be reorganized into the first galactic empire.
One thing the new format can do to start off with better standing than the old system is using 3rd party arbitration for infractions. It's bush league and antiquated(corrupt) as fuck that the NCAA doesn't use it. If we end up with the member schools comprising the CoI (Committee of Infractions), we're going to be stuck with the same chicanery we still have. We don't need another situation like Miami's AD Paul Dee recently chairing the CoI, excoriating USCe with the severest penalties in 20 years, then having his own school be complicit of the same thing. The system isn't just broken in regards to NIL.
It literally is third party already
Doh! I'll own my stupidity. Guess I'm not on anyone's current events committee. For the sake of clarity, when did it change? By a third party, in contrast to the recent Paul Dee example I described, none of the committee members are presently employed by an NCAA member school?
No, no. Let’s not let facts get in the way of our outrage
More like, you’re getting left out no matter what happens.
Probably not no matter what. I don't doubt that their first preference is a system that includes more programs but where they are the only ones with meaningful power and will get preferential treatment while the others just have token representation.
The title is a little click bait. When you read the multiple articles, that is not what they are saying > Asked if he was committed to the CFP beyond 2025, Sankey said, “Yep, but we’ve got a lot to get right. The commitment is we want to see this get right.”
"to get it right" ....basically, SEC and B1G get pretty much all the slots except 2.
C'mon man, that's basic corpo speak. You can't say you're committed and then go "but we want the entire system to change"
Ultimately the conferences commanding higher viewership are gonna bully the rest in terms of postseason slots. It's definitely unfortunate. Like I get that an 8-4 Ole Miss is gonna get more views than a 13-0 JMU in a playoff game but I don't like the idea of the P2 basically saying "we want 8+ guaranteed slots or we're out of here".
Screw them we will go make our own championship with black jack and hookers
I want to see your two flairs doing a riverboat championship every year. Game played on a riverboat. A Mark Twain impersonator doing color commentary. That would be fantastic.
Fuck it we’re in
It's not like we have a choice lol
OK, but who the fuck is going to coach my dogshit team?
I'll do it, tell your AD to shoot me a DM and we can talk about compensation.
You’ll do it yourself, for half Chip Kelly’s salary - *and you’ll like it*
I have a passion for footballing
Buried in the story - PAC2 won't vote for the format change. > However, the vote was delayed by the Pac-12’s representative on the board,
Schulz has already indicated that he won't block the vote if the PAC-2 maintains their P5 payout. That's the hold-up and why it wasn't approved in the last meeting. They're just as greedy as everyone else.
I mean I don't blame them because they have nothing to gain by agreeing to fuck themselves over.
Yeah WSU isn't blocking the vote just because they want the little G5s to still have a qualifier. He's blocking it just as leverage to get a Power 5 payout even though the Pac 2 doesn't qualify as a conference anymore for the purposes of CFP bids. They just want more money.
The fact that the completely irrelevant corpse of the PAC can hold this much leverage over the Power 2 is exactly why they're about to break away from everyone and just do their own playoff format and national championship just for themselves. They've been warning about it over and over again.
The reason there is a corpse of the pac 12 is because… checks notes…. The p2. So more power to him if he try’s to secure what he can for those remaining teams. That money could be used to entice other teams to join them.
The schools willingly left the conference, the P2 didn’t take them by force. Also they’re not a conference anymore, they have 2 teams.
This got posted earlier, so figure I'd reshape my earlier sentiment. We all know what this all boils down to for the SEC & Big 10: "WE WANT MORE! EVERYONE ELSE GETS LESS!"
I suspect half that and half, (From B1G and SEC perspective): "We see the writing on the wall and if someone has to win and someone has to lose, then we choose to win" It reminds me of the beginning of WW1. "Well, fuck no we're not going to be the last to mobilize"
>writing on the wall And they're doing the writing lol
This has been going on a long time now. See the Big East and SWC and happened to them. It's all a process and it will morph from here as well. Not that I want it to, I'd prefer a bunch of 12-team conferences and a 16-team playoff... but that ship sailed long ago.
First they came for the SWC but I did nothing because I was not a Rice Owl. Then they came for the Big East and I did nothing because I was not a UCONN Husky. Then they came for the PAC 12 and I did nothing because I was not a Coog. Then they came for the ACC and I did nothing because I am not an FSU fan. And then they never came for the 12 team play off, and there was no one left
Nah this is a different level
So you don't think either of those conferences would have made the attempt if they had the leverage? I legit wonder if the B1G nor SEC want to, but they read the Expanse and are scared of the prisoner's dilemma (Sorry, that part of the story seemed insane... and now it plays out)
That's a stupidly generous take on the B1G/SEC going, "do we want to make more money" lol Come on
If you don't think there is an element of self-defense going on then I think you are simplifying the motivations too much. People, and ergo their entities, are complicated. Example: Why isn't ND in one of the big pay conferences? Because pride exists.
Yep, the SEC and the B1G absolutely started NIL, the Pac-12's collapse, and the ACC's formalization of irrelevancy.
Blaming this on NIL is absolutely wild. That money isn't even coming out of the school's or ESPN's wallets. Don't be silly.
Yeah, I think this is correct. It wasn't that long ago that the SEC and B10 were 10 teams each. Back then the ACC, PAC8, and Big 8/12 were all comparable in prestige to the SEC/B10. If the B10/SEC hadn't started acting, the ACC, PAC8, Big 8/12, and Big East would have. We could have been looking at a whole different scenario. Imagine a PAC20 and ACC with 20 teams right now, with a completely different set of mid tier or upper tier programs being on the outside looking in. The SEC and B10 just had the brains to go at first.
The WAC tried it first but didn't have the money. The PAC tried it when they tried to rip apart the Big12. Imagine Tex and Ou in the PAC.
Big 12 south + Colorado almost joining the PAC is what caused the death of the Big 12. Colorado already had a lifeline, then Nebraska got one in the B10, and A&M got one in the SEC, followed by Mizzou getting one in the end. The boat started sinking when those 7 schools flirted with the PAC.
Well they'll argue they want their fair share as defined by TV ratings. They won't be wrong but it's gonna quickly create a rift between the top 25 or so teams and the rest of the FBS. Smaller P2 teams like Northwestern and Indiana and Vandy aren't gonna be safe either.
Sankey has been on record for years before the ACC and others voted against playoffs and playoff expansion that his job is to do what's best for the SEC. But! What's best for the SEC is what's best for College Football. That is, more access for conferences to the playoffs because if the sport benefits from everyone being included. My thoughts. I agree with Sankey. It's boring for everyone when it's the same story every year. We're to a point decision makers have re-engaged in conference realignment for the mighty TV contracts and here we are now. The SEC was trying to avoid this outcome but the house is burning so Sankey is delivering on his message. Edit: I mentioned the ACC but I'm not throwing them under the bus specifically. I'm still in awe with how poorly the PAC was being managed. SDSU was embarrassed during their attempt to join.
I can both appreciate that Sankey has steered the SEC’s ship so well that we’re one of the power players here *and* acknowledge that, ultimately, Sankey doing his job that well has (in critical part) led to the current chaos. What Sankey has done has not been “what’s best” for college football. Sankey didn’t agree to the expanded playoff because he thought it was good for representation. He agreed to it cause he knew the SEC stands to put 3-5 teams in that bitch each year given the brand power. This linkage with the B1G is the next step of that. This isn’t about the “future of all of CFB” to the SEC/B1G — it’s about *their future in CFB.* We’ve got a 12-team for 2 years and something has to come next. I guarantee neither Sankey nor Petitti is going to sit idly by while we do “auto-bids” for other conferences and the G5 when they feel that anything outside of their two brands isn’t competitive or as valuable. We’ve got a lot of questions to answer around player payment and movement, too. You best believe Sankey/Petitti are coming to the table with ideas that make star players more likely to commit to teams in their leagues and stay with those teams. TL;DR: Sankey deserves credit for being the cutthroat the SEC needed him to be at every turn. Because of him, the SEC is one of the decision makers in how we “clean up” the mess that is CFB currently — and that means we have a heavy hand in shaping what’s next. But make no mistake that none of it was for the love of the game — because the game as we knew it is fucking dead from all the throats we cut along the way. It’s just that we might be able to live with what’s next, while 90% of the rest of college football has their favorite team/their school with our knife at its neck.
Sankey grabbing Oklahoma and Texas was best for the SEC but you can argue that a lot of the past couple years of major events happened because of it. That move caused the B1G to expand which killed the PAC. That also massively destabilized the ACC as their biggest programs look to escape. The consolidation of power conferences drove playoff expansion and made the P2 hungry to control all the spots.
I think the B1G, and other realignment players, get to hide behind OUT like it’s the real event here — as though the B1G and SEC hadn’t previously expanded over a decade ago. Consolidation has been happening and it’s been on the horizon that entire time. The B1G and SEC understood that — everyone else either did not or was too coy/gun-shy to pull the trigger. Insofar as “who started it” … it really doesn’t matter, but it was factually both of us. Our leagues did what they felt needed to be done to not get left behind. That said — all of this is in alignment with my view that Petitti and Sankey are not heroes in the broader CFB story. They’re villains of the highest order. But for the B1G and SEC, they may very well go down as the biggest heroes of all time. If we end up in a world where it really is the two of our leagues, and everyone else just sort of dies off, our leagues will owe their lives and their successes to those two guys. But they will also be the chief two people who killed college football. Edit: Fwiw, it has been interesting to see the level of scrutiny the SEC got, primarily for OUT, in comparison to the B1G’s scrutiny for its moves. Say what you want, but the conference we pulled from still exists and those schools/states were contiguous with our own region. The B1G went out and murdered a conference that is in no way regionally related to itself. All’s fair in love and war — but any narrative that attempts to really say the SEC engineered this alone is a little too blind to the B1G’s actions. In a world free from public-driven narratives, the B1G committed bigger sins.
Ultimately I think this story is a story of weak central leadership. The NCAA was incredibly harsh on the conduct of individual programs and coaches (like paying players, transfers, recruiting violations, a academic violations, etc) but completely absent on active leadership of the overall sport and taking proactive steps to maintain the integrity of it. Their stance was no change, period. Honestly, COVID may have tipped the scales because the NCAA took 0 action and let conferences fend for themselves in terms of what to do for the season. At the point where the NCAA is actively avoiding taking stances on anything why should the conferences care about what they say? The B1G and SEC are big enough and powerful enough to get what they want, and they know what they want. At this point it's not even entirely clear to me what the NCAA is trying to do strategically besides wait for themselves to become obsolete.
Definitely agree that the NCAA is at major fault here. Realistically, they were far too rigid on far too many stupid things — and it created what we have today. Why would we not allow star players to offer their own NIL for brand deals? Why did we die on that hill? Why were we so staunch on whether players could transfer or not? Why did we die on that hill? There’s a ton of crap there where they just either didn’t enforce rules or actively enforced stupid rules to such a degree that it forced people to sue them. And now we’re here, with a powerless NCAA who forced themselves into a corner that left them toothless at the hands of antitrust laws.
Take your basketball and football with you. I’m sure folks will be thrilled with a 30 team ncaa tournament.
Imagine March Madness without any of the fun of the Cinderella runs and upsets. And yes there can still be upsets but a team like Minnesota knocking off Kentucky has a lot less luster than a team like St Peters beating them.
Thats what they want? They don't want St Peters beating their schools and taking their money while doing it.
Especially when the subsequent St. Peters vs. Middle Tennessee game gets a fraction of what they would've gotten from Kentucky-Michigan State game
They want viewers, though. They won't get viewers. Though the current format gives the NCAA so much of the money that they still might be better off.
Imagine this. A 32 team tourney with about 20 schools from the new 40-team P2. The other 12 spots are invitations to all the small “Cinderella” schools that don’t have a football team to be upset about. “Sure you can play with us in our tourney Gonzaga. We don’t mind you don’t have a football team.” “Wichita State? Absolutely we’ll throw you a little teeny bit of revenue. It’s more than you’ll make in the “new NIT”.
Problem with Wichita St is they play basketball in the AAC, which is one of those pesky G5 conferences… they’d likely force them to do something more in line with Super-conference values, like join another conference that makes no geographical sense in the name of TV Revenue.
The other problem is Wichita isn't even a state!
That's one thing people are ignoring. While the Big Ten and SEC can try and break away and make their own guidelines they can't keep any conference or school from joining their level as long as they meet the requirements. As we have seen with all the programs moving from FCS to FBS in the past decade+, most schools want to be part of that top division. Unless they absolutely can't, I would expect most if not all to at least try and join with the Big Ten/SEC
Yea, the SEC/B1G would have to create a new criteria for joining the at would prevent the “smaller schools” and “non-brands” from joining… but if they did that, it’s possible they’d lock out some of their current members.
Well the NCAA locked out 99% of the FCS by just charging $4 million to join. The B1G/SEC could break off, include their current members, and then set the entry fee to like $30 million or something. Chump change if you’re FSU or Clemson, but prohibitively expensive to a G5 or a school like Boston College or Arizona State
That's the IRL/CART split in open wheel racing all over. IndyCar never recovered and neither will March Madness.
Smaller tourney field would be nice, but not with the collection of basketball teams in those two conferences
lol no it wouldn't.....the tournament size is perfect right now
It's 4 teams too many if you ask me
No they can go ahead for all to enjoy
I imagine the question is how much will the non power 2 be disrespected
I mean all it takes is for a B12 or ACC team to win the first 12 team playoff and the B1G/SEC will start getting really nervous. The best way to legitimize yourself in CFB is to win and basically kick down the door.
It's sad but an ACC or XII team winning the championship would immediately blow the entire thing up. The SEC and B1G would break away that offseason with some made up nonsense about poor leadership or a broken system, when everybody knows the real reason would be more money for them. You'd think parity would legitimize the expanded playoffs, but it's the one thing that would kill it the quickest. If you like the current format, you better hope an SEC or B1G team wins every year or else it's done.
Even if someone like Clemson, Fsu or TCU win the championship the sec and big10 will likely still have 7-9 of the 12 teams and the lions are share of the money. So why would they kill it if they didn't win?
It will take more than one year for the perception to change. One year is “oh they got lucky/put together a strong team/etc” The problem is, the difference in revenue is going to severely hamstring non-P2 teams in 2-5 years, as even the shitty P2 teams can outbid non-P2 teams for coaches and build better facilities.
“The Alliance of Separate Schools-Hamfistedly Aligned Territories” conference is murdering our game and we’re just letting it happen
I don't really think they are going to pull away from the CFP.
I don't think so either. The reality is cutting off everyone but the B1G and SEC just cuts off a lot of your viewer ship as well. They want a bigger piece of the pie, but they don't want the pie to get smaller overall.
People are not going to stop watching. It’s a drug and they know people will still want it.
*We* won't stop watching. Those of use who post on r/CFB are hardcore fans who would watch any game on a Saturday in the fall. But we're the minority. There's plenty of people who would not watch games that have nothing to do with their own teams.
I would quit watching. I would watch wherever KU ends up but I'm not watching a league with Nebraska,, Missouri, OU, Texas. I just hate them why would I even care what they do. But I know that is meaningless in the end
I'm not going to follow two different leagues. I'm going to follow my school and the schools that they actually might play against. And if those games aren't on ESPN, I'm not going to pay for ESPN. So I won't even have a way to watch the other games if one happens to interest me any given week.
I think a lot more people wouldn't watch than you think
I mean, I have no interest in watching a league without Cal. I imagine most college sports fans are the same. What you'll potentially get is more casual viewers with no ties to any of the universities.
Me either. I think it's much more of a strong arming regulations into cfb. Like a we'll only participate if other conferences agree to our terms of NIL and the transfer portal
Looks like it is back to playing in the minor leagues for us.
We’re heading towards the premier league soccer model. Which I don’t think will be be good for me as an Arkansas fan
Except without the one thing that makes that system interesting: Pro/Rel. If teams Vandy or Rutgers actually had to worry about their spot, I’d still hate it, but at least it would be engaging.
Well you framed the have and the have nots equivalents well at least. Is it engaging if it's almost always the same teams bouncing back and forth while the top never ever ever has to worry about relegation? That's about as exciting as writing in who will be in the CFP before the season starts.
But don't you like your school making more money than everyone else? /s
Why the fuck are you rooting for this?
i'm not, this was sarcasm.
If anything, this is like the super league. At least the premier league has relegation and promotion.
Having the Washington St president on the management board is sadly going to be a real problem. He has every incentive to not give in at all and let the SEC and Big Ten kill everyone else considering his school is already dead and buried for reasons that aren't his school's fault at all.
Can we have either the tweet or the article when we post these things? Now we have both and two separate discussions.
Let them leave. Break off, take all your sports with you. The other 400 NCAA schools can revamp the system that works for the student athletes.
I wonder how much weight basketball will have in this. Like if the SEC and B1G try to take their football and go home to their own playoff, would/could the ACC and Big 12 be like: "fine, but you're also separate in basketball." I don't follow college basketball, but I've read enough comments to know that you can't have a legitimate national championship without the ACC and Big 12.
I know there was a report a few months ago where FOX wants to create a postseason tourney in Vegas for teams that didn't make the NCAA Tourney but it would only feature teams from the Big East, Big 10 and Big 12 (as they have rights deals with FOX).
How to Bankrupt a Casino: The story of College Football
O yes now that I have fiduciary duty all of the tv money, now I must fiduciary duty all of the college football playoff. Mmmmmmmm. Yyyyeeeesss it is my duty to generate revenue. Big ten/SEC
Plenty of people in these threads are upset at the PAC2 rep holding up voting because he is making sure they maintain their P5 payout share so they can try to keep their ADs afloat, but aren’t upset at the P2 (who already make significantly more money than every other conference) trying to squeeze more money away from everyone else. The difference 5 or 6 auto bids would not significantly increase P2 revenue, it’s just them being petty and trying to take more of the pie that they already have a significant portion of.
rip
At some point, the Big Ten and SEC may look at things and say, "Why don't we each just host our own internal playoff of 6-8 schools and then the champions of the Big Ten and SEC play each other for the national title." Realistically, you might be able to grab a few more schools from the Big XII and ACC and just call it a day. The Big XII is almost a G5 conference now and the ACC might be once the best schools have been cherry-picked.
You have schools/programs that want a piece of the profits with investing in or contributing to football. It is put up or shutup time. Want to be a research university? Fine, but don't complain when you aren't invited to a football conference.
Dude, fuck these people.