(04-26-2014 12:49 PM)lumberpack4 Wrote:  

(04-26-2014 12:26 PM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  

(04-26-2014 11:58 AM)lumberpack4 Wrote:  Woad, UNC could not make it over the football hump despite massive cheating over the last two decades. Now that most of that is shut down, how do you expect UNC to do something it never has done? UNC could not make it over the football hump when Choo Choo was bought and paid for back in the 40's. Do you think the faculty will roll over in the future given the extreme embarrassment of the last 4 years? I don't.

Dick Crum said it best, "UNC wants to be Harvard Sunday through Friday and Oklahoma on Saturday". It's not going to work. You and I both know that for UNC and NC State to be successful at a high level in football, they academic competition from Wake Forest and Duke has to be removed.

A Carolina degree does not match a Duke, or WF, or UVa degree in public perception outside NC. So you are going to lose a handful of recruits you could have used every year to Duke, WF, or UVa on academic grounds. Then if it's a straight up football choice, you can't out-recruit VT, SC, and Clemson on your boarder, and like us you have proven you can't recruit west of Asheville (due to Tennessee and Clemson).

UNC will never get over the hump. Nor will we. Not as long as Wake Forest, Duke, and ECU are playing major college football as well.

Outside Carolina, few know anything about Wake. It's size makes it obscure. Outside of the region, most people probably don't even know what state it is located in. UNC-CH has a very good national reputation and it hasn't been impacted much by any scandal. Sports scandals seldom impact academic reputations.

Paco, you are wrong about UNC not being impacted. Perhaps you will not hear about it until you next set of conferences, but it's a real problem and the faculty is talking about the problem. Once the books come out this summer it will become worse.

Certainly what is coming might be worse, but until I see their admission statistics or faculty recruitment and retention being impacted, it remains to be seen. Attention spans are short, and most people just shake their heads and then return to their busy academic schedules.

Almost no athletic scandals impact the academic side of the schools. USC, Baylor, Michigan, Ohio State, Miami, BC...none of their athletic scandals had any real impact on the academic sides of those universities. PSU was an exception, but it was an exceptional scandal well beyond what UNC is facing, or really, any of the others. And PSU is recovering quickly thanks to a major marketing blitz that they've run through the 3 or 4 PR firms that they've hired (and US News changing their methodology so they got a 10 place jump in the rankings this past year didn't hurt either as far as general popular perception).

All of my UNC fellow students have had no trouble getting jobs, and let me assure you none of my assignments were as described in the "scandal". The other "normal" students took real and very difficult classes, and still do to this day. Look USC is good academically right? Stanford? Michigan? They are good in football,if they can so can UNC DUKE AND UVA. It depends on perception and coaching.

Anyway, I'm ready for this scandal about UNC to be over with. Also congrats to Notre Dame for beating maryland in a great game in lacrosse yesterday

(04-26-2014 12:26 PM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  

(04-26-2014 11:58 AM)lumberpack4 Wrote:  Woad, UNC could not make it over the football hump despite massive cheating over the last two decades. Now that most of that is shut down, how do you expect UNC to do something it never has done? UNC could not make it over the football hump when Choo Choo was bought and paid for back in the 40's. Do you think the faculty will roll over in the future given the extreme embarrassment of the last 4 years? I don't.

Dick Crum said it best, "UNC wants to be Harvard Sunday through Friday and Oklahoma on Saturday". It's not going to work. You and I both know that for UNC and NC State to be successful at a high level in football, they academic competition from Wake Forest and Duke has to be removed.

A Carolina degree does not match a Duke, or WF, or UVa degree in public perception outside NC. So you are going to lose a handful of recruits you could have used every year to Duke, WF, or UVa on academic grounds. Then if it's a straight up football choice, you can't out-recruit VT, SC, and Clemson on your boarder, and like us you have proven you can't recruit west of Asheville (due to Tennessee and Clemson).

UNC will never get over the hump. Nor will we. Not as long as Wake Forest, Duke, and ECU are playing major college football as well.

Outside Carolina, few know anything about Wake. It's size makes it obscure. Outside of the region, most people probably don't even know what state it is located in. UNC-CH has a very good national reputation and it hasn't been impacted much by any scandal. Sports scandals seldom impact academic reputations.

Lumberpack is easily among the most sane and reasonable 1% of Moo fans online. That is a way to highlight why I now would be happy to see UNC leave the ACC for the SEC.

He is correct that UNC has a vocal group of faculty that would love nothing better than to see UNC sports become so restrictive academically that we are Ivy League with scholarships. There has been such a group in place wielding major clout since at least 1950, and its #1 target, that is more important to it than all other UNC sports combined, is football. That original group succeed in gutting UNC football starting in 1950, and soon thereafter made the compromise to allow basketball more leeway.

That anti-footballl group of UNC faculty will use any opening to try to browbeat the university into downsizing UNC football. Add to that proven history of being willing to make mountains of molehills and to bite the hand that feeds it, to do things that harm the entire university, to get what it wants, the anti-football faculty faction tends to be hardcore Leftists in electoral politics. And that means it is always tight allies with things like 'black studies.'

So UNC's AFAM having a native African conman as chair who ran directed study classes that padded his pockets and secured more and more finding for his department proved the ideal mess for UNC's anti-football faculty. Kill 2 birds with 1 stone: They would take down football and defend the honor of far left of center identity politics as academic course work by making the leftist conman AFAM chair the victim of an out of control athletics department.

Ole Julius playing the race card constantly, as he did, would have done what he did at any university in the country. And that goes double at any university in the South, where the charge of racism invariably works, even when rather obviously hurled to deflect prying eyes from seeing black guilt.

Athletes nationwide who are happy to scoot by in school with the easiest courses they can find do exactly that. They are adults and have that right. At UNC, they found a totally corrupt AFAM that allowed them to get grades for being PC. Human nature being what it is means they would gravitate there in large numbers.

What most schools in the country do not want is their versions of AFAM highlighted, with the media talking about the numbers of athletes who take those classes and the As and Bs they get even when they get Ds and Fs and a few Cs in most other classes.

Ole Julius is worse than most, but the problem of leftist identity group politics running departments in universities that give A grades to students like pushers give samples of dope, which draws large numbers of (especially black) athletes, is national.

The anti-football UNC faculty are true believers. I think they, like the abstracted fools in the Drake Group, believe that if only there were no scholarship athletes, then the university would improve its standards across the board, and have more and better black students, and AFAM would be a beacon of the highest competence and selfless honesty.

So, I think 2 things are going on: the anti-football UNC faculty intends to keep pushing the fight, and other UNC faculty and administration are seeing that the anti-football crowd is like Captain Ahab in that they will be happy to destroy the boat and kill everyone to hunt that white whale to the death.

UNC is not going to lose any academic status from this mess, because only an idiot fancies that an AFAM is something other than a PC toy. UNC's departments of history, Poli Sci, geography, economics, English, foreign languages, etc. are not harmed because AFAM is totally corrupt and incompetent, any more than the reputations of Bloomfield Hills, Grosse Pointe, and Ann Arbor are ruined by Detroit being Detroit.

But the key for our interests here is UNC football. It remains to be seen what the long term results are. Short term, it has persuaded many UNC boosters who are basketball-first of the dangers of the anti-football faculty and alums.

The actions of Moo fans and their allies in the media also are working to persuade many UNC sports boosters of the need, for the first time ever, to keep an open mind to SEC overtures.

(04-26-2014 07:24 AM)omniorange Wrote:  

(04-25-2014 12:48 PM)ChrisLords Wrote:  It's not the TV revenue I'm worried about. ESPN will keep that within 85% of other leagues just to keep the ACC from breaking up. It's the bowl revenue discrepancy, the apparels deals, tier 3 content, and championship game revenue that have me worried. With the SEC and B1G getting a seat as the ACC opponent in the Orange bowl they are both looking at getting way more bowl revenue not counting putting extra members in the CFP. Alabama's recent media right's deal for $150-$160 million over 10 years should be a concern to everyone because that's over and above the regular TV rights and more than 1 1/2 times what Texas is making from the LHN. With Louisville recently signing a $40 million dollar 5 year apparels deal is good because it's an ACC team but what's this going to do to the other deals on the market. I'd think at least 9 SEC schools would expect more money than that. The ACC championship game is dwarfed in revenue by the SEC and B1G. At least we can still support a neutral site event unlike the Pac 12 and may command $20 million in sponsorship fees some day but we're still way behind the SEC and B1G on that too. In addition to those concerns are the big 2 advantages that the SEC and B1G will always have and that's ticket sales to there huge stadiums and Alumni donation to get those premium seats. There's almost nothing that can be done about those advantages. Conference TV revenue is the least of the things to worry about falling behind the revenues of other conferences.

Excellent post. But what can the conference do to address the majority of things mentioned? Doesn't that go to the nature of the make-up of the conference's individual schools?

Cheers,
Neil

Not much. The 15% that Marge is not happy with is something you can't worry about because there is nothing we can do about it. Whether or not we get a network, we'll still be trailing the SEC and B1G by an estimated 15%.

The Bowl revenue discrepancy is going to be bad for a long time. Those tie ins for ND, the B1G and SEC to the Orange are for 15? years. So there's nothing we can do about the bowl discrepancy except put 2 teams in the CFP.

The Apparels deals and Tier 3 content are dependent on the marketability of the individual school. So, there's not much we can do about that except win a lot. From a conference standpoint, we didn't need to give every thing to ESPN but once again; that's locked in for 15? years or so.

The only thing we can really improve upon is the Championship game. And every thing is in place. We have a successful destination location that gets great attendance and local fan support. All we need to do is have a series of nationally relevant matchups where the winner makes it to the CFP. That should be enough for Dr. Pepper or some new sponsor to up the the payout to the $20 million that the SEC and B1G make. Really that's only an extra $13 million a year difference but it's the only thing we can improve on as a conference. Unfortunately that's dwarfed by all the other factors.

(04-27-2014 09:10 AM)ChrisLords Wrote:  

(04-26-2014 07:24 AM)omniorange Wrote:  

(04-25-2014 12:48 PM)ChrisLords Wrote:  It's not the TV revenue I'm worried about. ESPN will keep that within 85% of other leagues just to keep the ACC from breaking up. It's the bowl revenue discrepancy, the apparels deals, tier 3 content, and championship game revenue that have me worried. With the SEC and B1G getting a seat as the ACC opponent in the Orange bowl they are both looking at getting way more bowl revenue not counting putting extra members in the CFP. Alabama's recent media right's deal for $150-$160 million over 10 years should be a concern to everyone because that's over and above the regular TV rights and more than 1 1/2 times what Texas is making from the LHN. With Louisville recently signing a $40 million dollar 5 year apparels deal is good because it's an ACC team but what's this going to do to the other deals on the market. I'd think at least 9 SEC schools would expect more money than that. The ACC championship game is dwarfed in revenue by the SEC and B1G. At least we can still support a neutral site event unlike the Pac 12 and may command $20 million in sponsorship fees some day but we're still way behind the SEC and B1G on that too. In addition to those concerns are the big 2 advantages that the SEC and B1G will always have and that's ticket sales to there huge stadiums and Alumni donation to get those premium seats. There's almost nothing that can be done about those advantages. Conference TV revenue is the least of the things to worry about falling behind the revenues of other conferences.

Excellent post. But what can the conference do to address the majority of things mentioned? Doesn't that go to the nature of the make-up of the conference's individual schools?

Cheers,
Neil

Not much. The 15% that Marge is not happy with is something you can't worry about because there is nothing we can do about it. Whether or not we get a network, we'll still be trailing the SEC and B1G by an estimated 15%.

The Bowl revenue discrepancy is going to be bad for a long time. Those tie ins for ND, the B1G and SEC to the Orange are for 15? years. So there's nothing we can do about the bowl discrepancy except put 2 teams in the CFP.

The Apparels deals and Tier 3 content are dependent on the marketability of the individual school. So, there's not much we can do about that except win a lot. From a conference standpoint, we didn't need to give every thing to ESPN but once again; that's locked in for 15? years or so.

The only thing we can really improve upon is the Championship game. And every thing is in place. We have a successful destination location that gets great attendance and local fan support. All we need to do is have a series of nationally relevant matchups where the winner makes it to the CFP. That should be enough for Dr. Pepper or some new sponsor to up the the payout to the $20 million that the SEC and B1G make. Really that's only an extra $13 million a year difference but it's the only thing we can improve on as a conference. Unfortunately that's dwarfed by all the other factors.

I am not the one that brought up the "15%". You did when you mentioned "85%". I questioned your general assertion that ESPN would be willing to subsidize non-tv revenue deficits on the ACC's behalf just to keep conference payouts "close". And if you are talking about "85%" of tv revenue only, then that's even more meaningless because of the ACC lagging behind in other areas that you yourself mention.

I've said that schools' tier 3 rights are a school issue, not a conference one and that it's hard to compare those rights from one school to the next because there's no uniformity in which rights schools are selling. I had a discussion with HokieMark in another thread recently about FSU's booster contributions, ticket sales, and other ways of increasing revenue. Those are school issues. That's why I'm talking about conference payouts, not individual schools' total athletic budgets.

Yes, the ACC CG is one area in which the ACC can improve its product and cash flow and may prove to do so with a new scheduling setup. But as you mentioned, it would not be the windfall that playoff/bowl money and network money is. Neither would the ACC earning more basketball credits than other conferences, if it indeed earns more in the coming years.

You say there's not much that can be done for another 15 years, and therein lies the problem.

(04-27-2014 07:09 PM)Marge Schott Wrote:  ...I had a discussion with HokieMark in another thread recently about FSU's booster contributions, ticket sales, and other ways of increasing revenue. Those are school issues. That's why I'm talking about conference payouts, not individual schools' total athletic budgets.

Yes, the ACC CG is one area in which the ACC can improve its product and cash flow and may prove to do so with a new scheduling setup. But as you mentioned, it would not be the windfall that playoff/bowl money and network money is. Neither would the ACC earning more basketball credits than other conferences, if it indeed earns more in the coming years.

You say there's not much that can be done for another 15 years, and therein lies the problem.

I believe the 15% discrepancy that ChrisLords is describing can NEVER be fixed by the ACC - not in 15 years or EVER. Having said that, there are still things the ACC can do as a group to help:

1) get multiple teams into the top 12 - in the BCS system you could only get 2 teams in (though the ACC only did so twice); in the new CFP system you can place 3 or 4 - and that's even if you don't have ANY in the actual playoffs themselves. Of course, the best way to do this would be to have:
* 1 team in the playoffs
* 1 team in the Orange Bowl
* 1 at-large team in the Peach, Cotton or Fiesta

2) get better ACC CG matchups so the tickets won't go so cheap - the attendance has been there, but some tickets have sold for less than $10, which is just embarrassing.

3) get better regular season matchups, which will help with ticket sales.