Heh. Who said I was a fan of a lesser bowl? I could give a damn about any of 'em unless FSU is playing. Personally, I think they should scrap the idea of using the bowls for playoff games.
Leave and go where? PAC won’t take 'em with the Longhorn Network in place, SEC ditto (and doesn’t want them anymore anyway). The ACC? Already at 13 and saving a spot for the Golden Domers in a couple of years. BIG1G? *Maybe, but again, the LN has to go. Go Independent? Get real, that ship has long sailed. It would cost Texas more to leave than to stay at this point. Okie may be in a slightly better spot in terms of relationships with other conferences, but I still don’t see a good landing place
I don’t see any of the current conferences in a big hurry to expand again. Especially with someone who would expect the kind of concessions that UT would.
As it was, it worked out well for Michigan State and the Big Ten. I’d rather play Baylor than Georgia Tech. And the way it worked out, apparently one of the Big Ten’s bowlbound teams would have had to stay home had MSU gone to the Citrus and not the Cotton.
I think the committee should release votes in the last month, but they should also defend the logic of what propelled a team up or down. When two teams don’t play in the final week and one leapfrogs the other, we can’t help but wonder WTF.
I heard him the other day, and he repeatedly talked about the "whole body of work,"and said head-to-head was A factor. He did not say that was the decisive element.
The fans of those teams and those conferences will care. National TV money is important, but so is booster money. And boosters care as much if not more about conference/regional championships as they do about the national picture. Not that they’d trade a conference championship for a national, but in contemplating a national system, they’re not going to want one that eliminates the conference.
Think here especially of all the schools – the vast majority of them – that are not year-in-year out national contenders; your Iowas and Missouris and Oregon States and Syracuses. For them, the national title picture is nigh-fantastical. But they do think realistically about beating their traditional rivals on the way to a 10-2 kind of season, and having the tiebreakers go their way and going to their first Rose/Sugar/Cotton Bowl in umpty-leven years and then possibly winning it.
You’re asking them to give that up in favor of the hope that that 10-2 season gets them into an 8 team playoff (which would likely require they get picked over a tradtional power that also went 10-2) – a playoff in which they will have to beat three traditional powers in a row, or else have the season end in a loss. There are way more of those kinds of schools than there are Alabama/USC/Notre Dame types that have national title orientations, and they won’t go for it.
As I explained, it does make sense money-wise: the conference game now is about 1) Getting the money for a CC game, 2) having a large footprint for maximum TV revenue and 3) having a national brand. Those are the reasons the Pac-10 became the Pac-12, the SEC added TAMU, and the Big 10 added Maryland and Rutgers. The Big 12 is the outlier with only 10 teams and no CC, a small and not-especially-populous footprint, and (I bet) an inferior TV package to the SEC/Big 10/PAC/ACC.
Adding 2 AAC teams isn’t their ideal choice; I’m sure they’d rather bring back Nebraska and TAMU, and then kick out Iowa State and add Notre Dame. But they gotta work in the possible.
Adding teams/markets from Florida and Ohio makes them a stronger conference, IMO.
To be fair, the Big Ten didn’t add Rutgers and Maryland to get a CC game, we already had the requisite 12 teams. They were added to add NYC to the BTN market in the case of Rutgers, and in the case of Maryland- well I’m still working on that.
Yeah, there is that. I guess it’s hard to think of a better TV market in a reasonable potential Big Ten state. Perhaps BC or BU could bring in New England.
BU? Boston Univ disbanded their football team in 1997. You would be better adding HAH-Vahd to the league.
Seriously, College Football is far down the totem pole of in New England. I grew up in the Northeast (New England and upstate NY) and CFB was not on the radar. I watched NFL games, but I don’t think I ever watched a regular season CFB game. Perhaps a few of the bowl games. The B1G might get a bigger footprint by adding Boston College to the league, but few in New England are going to care.
If the B1G is looking to add a team from New England, UConn is probably its best bet. Football program is in its infancy but they should be competitive in everything else. Not sure how it stands up academically to the other teams in the B1G.
Sources have said thatUConn was considered n place of Rutgers. Still have gotten them into the NYC TV market, and been a better basketball choice, and fine academically. Syracuse was a possibility, too, though it is not a state flagship. MD was the key piece, as they have DC/Balt all to themselves.
Can’t see them expanding again, though. 15 is enough.
The Big 12 actually paid the second highest payouts for their tv contract, only the Big 10 paid more. http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1659845-big-12s-per-team-payout-isnt-too-shabby. Why would they want to split the money 12 ways when CFU and Cincinnati bring little to the total pot? Cincinnati isn’t even the most popular college team in Cincinnati and CFU is fighting for the fourth most popular team in its state.
The idea that you can remain relevant as a conference by desperatly picking up far off schools with comparatively small fan bases because they should be valuable based on nearby population has been tried before. It was called the Big East and it failed. It was probably doomed from the get go since it lacked a cohesive set of rivalries and history tieing the schools together. The Big 12 is not the SEC or Big 10, but it does have a lot of more cohesiveness and rivalries than the Big East ever had. Why give that up for less money?
The Big 12 may be doomed anyways due to its central geography and relative lack of league history tieing teams together, but expansion for the sake of adding a title game will only hasten it’s demise. BYU might be a good choice for expansion, but they are considered to be too difficult to work with.
Actual numbers from tax returns for season 2013, reported in 2014 for each conf:
Pac 12: $334 million
B1G: $318 million
SEC: $314 million
ACC: $291 million
Big 12: $221 million (reported as 2013-2014 season but I believe that is a typo)
I think the upside of a New England entry would be that it’s a pretty untapped market. They’re more into pro sports but if you had teams like Michigan and Ohio State tramping into Boston on a regular basis you might start building interest in college sports. Patriot fans have to do something on Saturday, Red Sox fans need to have something after October. BC would also add a 7th hockey team to the Big Ten, something we could use.
Sorry, I’m more than a bit skeptical of those numbers. For one, it’s a Bleacher Report article that’s drawing data from multiple sources, so I’m not confident its truly apples to apples. For two, the numbers are inflated by counting half-shares for TCU and WV; going forward that won’t be the case. But biggest of all, it’s looking at (afaict) 2012 revenue not looking forward (I mean, not counting the SEC network money or including the Big 10’s revenue from MD/NYC is kind of a big miss).
The relative popularity of the teams isn’t all that relevant: it’s about the *total * popularity, and about getting on TV. Maryland sports is not that big a deal in DC … but the Big 10 network is now on basic cable here, and wasn’t three years ago.
Don’t see that as remotely relevant. For one, the landscape has changed in the last 10 years. For two, if lacking cohesive rivalries is fatal, then all of the conferences are doomed, as they’ve all done it. For three, the Big East was run by basketball-first schools.
What does that mean, it’s doomed? All the teams are going to disappear? Become unaffiliated independants? Be absorbed into the SEC? What?
3-6 of the schools would be attractive additions if one of the other conferences wants to go to 16 teams (I’m thinking the Pac-16, with a coastal and a mountain division, the latter including Texas). But unless that happens the only real alternatives are:
Stay at ten teams, and live without a CC game and remain a regional conference (with that weird WV extension)
Add two teams
I’m betting on #2, and UCF and Cincy would be my top choices.
You’re right that BYU would be great, but their institutional mission is best served as an independant.
I’m sure Michigan wouldn’t have been too much for BC or UConn this year. But to see the big name programs in every sport come in year after year might start to turn New England from a pro sports region to one that supports college sports as well. The West coast and Rust Belt seems to be able to support pro and college sports, why not New England?
I think we can somewhat attribute that to tons of folks around the country REALLLY wanting to see Florida State lose.
In addition, at the time, neither Ohio State nor Wisconsin was in the Top 4 - and no one predicted what OSU was about to do (esp since they were on their 3rd string), so it wasn’t seen as a potential playoff team preview.
Because New England (and the Mid Atlantic for that matter) has another major sport to contend with that other areas aren’t as invested in - baseball. I grew up in New Jersey. No one cared about college football - they still really don’t even with Rutgers’ success. Folks do root for the Giants/Eagles and even some Jets, but the main focus, sporting wise, is the Yankees/Phillies/Mets. Even the West coast isn’t as invested in their baseball teams as the North East is.
And, of course, during the Big East’s day, major programs DID come to BC. Miami and Virginia Tech were highly ranked teams and BC played them often (as did Syracuse and Rutgers). It didn’t help. Even Syracuse’s great successes in the mid-late 90s didn’t transform the area of Northern NY into a pro and college area.
