Superconferences & Realignment

[Irishize]

Didn’t Oklahoma’s state legislature mandate that OU can’t leave w/o Okla St? IIRC, they are a package deal.

 

[NorthDakota]

Didn’t Oklahoma’s state legislature mandate that OU can’t leave w/o Okla St? IIRC, they are a package deal.

Eh..legislatures can pass new legislation.

 

[calvegas04]

Didn’t Oklahoma’s state legislature mandate that OU can’t leave w/o Okla St? IIRC, they are a package deal.

Something about if it's for the better of one of them then the Governor can over rule

 

[greyhammer90]

Thanks I hate it.

Will be interesting to see how this affects the playoff committee recommendation. What's the point of having the 4 auto-bids tied to champion if the only Big 12 schools worth a shit just became part of the SEC?

 

[SouthSideChiDomer]

Didn’t Oklahoma’s state legislature mandate that OU can’t leave w/o Okla St? IIRC, they are a package deal.

Athletic article says there is nothing official, and any legal challenge would likely fail in court.

 

[SouthSideChiDomer]

The death of the Big 12 could be just what the ACC needed. It will likely lose even more ground to the SEC, but if it can add some teams, it could potentially get out of its media rights contract which could set it up better for the next round of realignment. One interesting proposal I heard was for the ACC to expand to 20 teams and then form two divisions with an upper and lower with promotion & relegation. It would provide a unique selling point, good season long story lines, and a high level of competition.

 

[TNUtoNotreDame]

Jason Whitely
@JasonWhitely
#BREAKING:

SOURCES: After notifying the @Big12Conference early next week, @TexasLonghorns and @UofOklahoma will petition the @SEC for membership.

-more-
7:55 PM · Jul 21, 2021



Jason Whitely
@JasonWhitely
·
54m
#BREAKING:

Early next week, the
@TexasLonghorns
and
@UofOklahoma
will send a letter to the
@Big12Conference
stating that neither school will renew their media contracts when they expire in 2025.

 

[Bishop2b5]

Oklahoma has long seemed like a good fit in many ways for the SEC, but I'm not sold on UT. They're used to throwing their weight around and having their way about everything, which has long been a problem, and there's no way that will go over as the new kid on the block in the SEC. If they join the SEC, there's going to be some major upheaval in the divisions. The SECW is already top-heavy and significantly stronger than the East. Realignment will play havoc with some of the traditional rivalries.

 

[Ndaccountant]

Oklahoma has long seemed like a good fit in many ways for the SEC, but I'm not sold on UT. They're used to throwing their weight around and having their way about everything, which has long been a problem, and there's no way that will go over as the new kid on the block in the SEC. If they join the SEC, there's going to be some major upheaval in the divisions. The SECW is already top-heavy and significantly stronger than the East. Realignment will play havoc with some of the traditional rivalries.

I think this could be the old smoke and mirrors trick.

I think Texas and OU will ultimately land with the Pac 12 and they are using this as a way to leverage more money/power. The TV rights for the conference expires after 2023 season.

 

[Polish Leppy 22]

If Texas can't win 10 games in the Big 12, wait till they get to the SEC

 

[Irish#1]

Vandy yes. UK is NOT qualified to be in the B1G.

I thought UK was a research school? Evidently Nebraska isn't a AAU school, so there could be exceptions.

Big Ten member institutions are major research universities with large financial endowments and strong academic reputations. All institutions except full member University of Nebraska and associate member Notre Dame are members of the Association of American Universities.

Given everyone is chasing the almighty dollar. I can see inducements being made to allow multiple FL or TX schools into the SEC or expand the B1G with a few more schools that aren't AAU members.

 

[Irish#1]

What do you consider a national power?

If you consider that a top 3 team, yes I would agree.

But I can't think of 10 other programs that are better situated at the moment than A&M. 1A is clearly Bama, Clemson and OSU. But 1B has the likes of UGA, OU, ND, etc. I would put A&M in 1B right now. To me, once you are in that grouping, it takes a once in a decade type year to win a tittle It's possible, just like LSU did. But the stars must align. But they are not in the camp where there is no shot (Michigan, USC, etc) To me, that is a national power.

If you're talking historically and into today I don't consider A&M a national power. They had one good year with Johnny Football, but they've fallen back to the "just above average" category IMO. Since 2000, they've only had one double digit win season. Only ten seasons with double digit wins in the last 80 years.

 

[Irish#1]

I think this could be the old smoke and mirrors trick.

I think Texas and OU will ultimately land with the Pac 12 and they are using this as a way to leverage more money/power. The TV rights for the conference expires after 2023 season.

Given the stature of the Pac 12, this makes a lot of sense. It's always been USC and then everyone else.

 

[IrishLion]

Oklahoma has long seemed like a good fit in many ways for the SEC, but I'm not sold on UT. They're used to throwing their weight around and having their way about everything, which has long been a problem, and there's no way that will go over as the new kid on the block in the SEC. If they join the SEC, there's going to be some major upheaval in the divisions. The SECW is already top-heavy and significantly stronger than the East. Realignment will play havoc with some of the traditional rivalries.

If you go to 16-team super conferences, you'd probably get pods.

You play your pod (3 games), plus the next pod (4 games), then you play one team each from the remaining pods (2 games). That gives you a 9-game conference schedule, and allows for at least one regular-season matchup with every other team in the conferences over a 4-year period. You could exchange one of the single-pod games for a set rivalry, and protect some of the traditional matchups to give extra flexibility when creating the pods/divisions, but then it's not a guarantee that you play every other team in the conference at some point over four years.

You could even split the Texas teams into different pods, to both appease the angry A&M fan base, and to make the once-every-four-years Texas matchup a huge thing to look forward to for those fanbases.

Pod 1 (The Old Pod)
1. Texas
2. Oklahoma
3. Missouri
4. Arkansas

Pod 2 (The Power Pod)
1. Bama
2. LSU
3. Auburn
4. A&M

Pod 3 (The South and Eastern Pod)
1. Florida
2. Georgia
3. Ole Miss
4. Miss St

Pod 4 (The Stepchildren Pod)
1. Kentucky
2. Tennessee
3. Vandy
4. South Carolina

Pod 2 is overly strong, and pod 4 would need a historic resurgence from Tennessee to make things interesting, so you could do some flip-flopping, but this makes the most sense in terms of regional games... I think.

 

[zelezo vlk]

I hate this, not gonna lie

 

[NorthDakota]

Sounds like A&M has no interest in having Texas join.

 

[BobbyMac]

I thought UK was a research school? Evidently Nebraska isn't a AAU school, so there could be exceptions.



Given everyone is chasing the almighty dollar. I can see inducements being made to allow multiple FL or TX schools into the SEC or expand the B1G with a few more schools that aren't AAU members.

Nebraska was an AAU member when they were invited in. The AAU changed the way they grade public vs private research money and no longer gave Nebraska credit for their Med School which is in Omaha at UNO. I don't understand that part cuz IU's Med School is in Indy at IUPUI.

 

[GowerND11]

I get why this stuff is happening...

However, it's a slap in the face to the history of the sport, fandom, and what college football has meant for fans. The college football landscape would actually be so much better if all the teams that left the Big XII returned and WVU joined somewhere else (or even independent). The ramifications this would also have on the likes of even basketball are huge. What does Kansas do with their basketball program... Yeah I know B1G comes calling probably, but that's besides the point.

 

[NorthDakota]

Nebraska was an AAU member when they were invited in. The AAU changed the way they grade public vs private research money and no longer gave Nebraska credit for their Med School which is in Omaha at UNO. I don't understand that part cuz IU's Med School is in Indy at IUPUI.

I believe the AAU also changed how they count agricultural research. Or maybe that was a different group....I know NDSU got our "research level" classification dropped because of changes to how agricultural research was counted.

 

[mango4]

Sounds like A&M has no interest in having Texas join.

No one in the SEC cares what A&M thinks though.

 

[Irish#1]

Nebraska was an AAU member when they were invited in. The AAU changed the way they grade public vs private research money and no longer gave Nebraska credit for their Med School which is in Omaha at UNO. I don't understand that part cuz IU's Med School is in Indy at IUPUI.

I would guess the distance isn't the factor. That would seem absurd. Probably more inline with some operational policies, procedures or studies the med school made? Maybe they need to have a minimum number of research studies at all times, possibly funding levels? Just spit balling.

Can we go back to the good old days?
Big Ten with 10 schools
Southwest Conference
Pac 8
SEC
ACC
Atlantic 10
WAC
Big 8

Indies ND, PSU, FSU, UM

 

[Pops Freshenmeyer]

Nebraska was an AAU member when they were invited in. The AAU changed the way they grade public vs private research money and no longer gave Nebraska credit for their Med School which is in Omaha at UNO. I don't understand that part cuz IU's Med School is in Indy at IUPUI.

It's based on research expenditures and certain criteria for faculty. The med school issue is that Nebraska apparently needed those faculty and expenditures to be in their totals because they were scraping by at the bottom of the list. IU is well above it and doesn't need to count resources at other schools' campuses.

 

[Rogue219]

History. Tradition. Fans.

The people making these decisions see these terms as punchlines. They literally laugh out loud at the notion that they should give a rat's ass about any of this when it comes to college football. We're not talking about a sticker on a helmet, artificial grass fields or last names on the backs of jerseys. This is big time money. It stopped being about academics (LOL), tradition and history a long time ago.

 

[Irishize]

No one in the SEC cares what A&M thinks though.

Imagine how Arkansas & Missouri feel. They are basically dead weight in the SEC as far as footprint & competitiveness.

 

[Pops Freshenmeyer]

History. Tradition. Fans.

The people making these decisions see these terms as punchlines. They literally laugh out loud at the notion that they should give a rat's ass about any of this when it comes to college football. We're not talking about a sticker on a helmet, artificial grass fields or last names on the backs of jerseys. This is big time money. It stopped being about academics (LOL), tradition and history a long time ago.

Yeah but incentives didn't get so weirdly misaligned until more recently. In ye olde days you wanted to fill your stadium to maximize your dollars.

Now it's about TV money. More specifically, it's not even viewership; it's cable carriage fees. So conferences have the incentive to add disconnected markets which is basically at odds with every enjoyable part of conferences from a fan POV.

Cord-cutting has ironically made the influences of cable TV money worse than before. Sports are the most important live programming for cable TV providers to keep their customer base so the value to the rights owners is even greater than the viewership they generate.

 

[Dale]

Imagine how Arkansas & Missouri feel. They are basically dead weight in the SEC as far as footprint & competitiveness.

Doesn’t mean they don’t have a vote though.

Id say Mizzou people very much disagree with that as well. They overall feel joining SEC was right move, as B12 possibly crumbling somewhat validates that. It could also be worse they’ve had limited football and basketball success but have somewhat come out of some institutional messes that brought down athletics with it

 

[Rogue219]

Yeah but incentives didn't get so weirdly misaligned until more recently. In ye olde days you wanted to fill your stadium to maximize your dollars.

Now it's about TV money. More specifically, it's not even viewership; it's cable carriage fees. So conferences have the incentive to add disconnected markets which is basically at odds with every enjoyable part of conferences from a fan POV.

Cord-cutting has ironically made the influences of cable TV money worse than before. Sports are the most important live programming for cable TV providers to keep their customer base so the value to the rights owners is even greater than the viewership they generate.

I think folks are wasting their time longing for ye olde days. That ship set sail long ago.

 

[SouthSideChiDomer]

Yeah but incentives didn't get so weirdly misaligned until more recently. In ye olde days you wanted to fill your stadium to maximize your dollars.

Now it's about TV money. More specifically, it's not even viewership; it's cable carriage fees. So conferences have the incentive to add disconnected markets which is basically at odds with every enjoyable part of conferences from a fan POV.

Cord-cutting has ironically made the influences of cable TV money worse than before. Sports are the most important live programming for cable TV providers to keep their customer base so the value to the rights owners is even greater than the viewership they generate.

This is true to an extent. A lot of the articles talking about this round of realignment are saying the same thing which is that it isn't about geographical markets anymore. That was the last round where cable bundles still ruled, so forcing a market to pay a carriage fee was what everyone was after.

Now its all about eyes. Like you said, live sports are the most important programming now because its the only thing people won't record and then skip ads while also being willing to pay for the ability to watch even if its outside your normal cable/streaming package. The leagues still want to get the carriage fee where possible, but with people moving away from cable, they also need big games that everyone will want to watch.

Kind of ironically, this might also help the fan experience. It could mean fewer cupcake games and more interesting/big match ups. It doesn't solve the price problem that keeps many fans away, but it does effect the other side of the equation by making the games more desirable.

 

[Pops Freshenmeyer]

I think folks are wasting their time longing for ye olde days. That ship set sail long ago.

True. I am feeling increasingly disconnected from CFB as a whole.

I still watch ND due to my family connections to it but I used to watch a LOT of random games but I've lost interest for a variety of reasons.

It's hard to see where the shakeup of conference realignment, nationalized recruiting via social media, NIL, other forms of compensation, free transfers, etc. are going to take things but I suspect the sport is not going to get any less top heavy. And that's going to be a big problem, IMO.

 

[RDU Irish]

The death of the Big 12 could be just what the ACC needed. It will likely lose even more ground to the SEC, but if it can add some teams, it could potentially get out of its media rights contract which could set it up better for the next round of realignment. One interesting proposal I heard was for the ACC to expand to 20 teams and then form two divisions with an upper and lower with promotion & relegation. It would provide a unique selling point, good season long story lines, and a high level of competition.

I think this would be the best outcome if the four super conferences had something like this. Give most of D1 a chance to work in to a top tier and restrict top tier from playing more than 3 or 4 games per year against lower tier opponents including FCS or whatever DII is called. Expand to 12 per division for 48 total in each and you have room for the Central Florida, Boise State, BYUs of the world to work their way up more than they do today. Indiana/Illinois/Purdue/BC/Syracuse/Vandy/Mizzou/Oregon State/Washington State and many others can suck in the bottom tier and we don't have to worry about top conference players wasting games on them every year.

I would also cut regular season back to 10 games, conference championship and four team playoff of each conference winner. Max 13 game season. So much better weekly competition and a championship that makes sense.

Of course that is all fantasy.