(08-12-2016 09:41 AM)MplsBison Wrote: Not in the Big Ten. Never will happen.
Obviously the situation with pro-rated shares for new members is only temporary. They all know they're building up to equal shares.
The Big Ten is an egalitarian society. Purdue and Northwestern deserve -- and get -- the exact same as Michigan and Ohio State. That's the way it is and the way it always will be.
The end.
I'll save your second part (Purdue and Northwestern "deserving" the same payout as Michigan and Ohio State) for a different post. But I would like to address the first part, as I think that may be more shaky and more susceptible to manipulation.
First, look at the Big 10 football championship game. There may well be people on this board who have all the information, and if so, please chime in. Here are some facts that I see in regard to the Big 10 championship game:
- It takes money to transport 85 football players to a game + Staff
- The coaches probably have a bonus for making the title game
- The Big 10 makes a bunch of money off the game, in the tens of millions
- Universities in the championship game will lose money unless there is some funding to pay for their expenses.
Let's take round numbers, and assume that it costs a university $1M to travel on relatively short notice to the championship game. How much do they get for going? Here are some options:
- $0
- $0.5 M
- $1 M (cost parity)
- $2M (a little extra)
- $10M (a big reward)
If the Big 10 practices "straight equal sharing," then the right amount should be $0 - the conference sponsors the game, so every conference member shares. If the conference only supports "bare bones, players eat Raman" costs, the half-million answer may be correct, but you have already violated the principle of equal sharing. Reasonable sharing may would indicate that the teams that make the championship have a decent budget to travel and not stay in Motel 6, so the $1M dollar figure is reasonable to give to the participants. However, Ohio State and Michigan could argue that since they are bigger schools with higher paid coaches and more people to bring, the "compensation" should be bumped to $2M. Now, we have left the realm of pure compensation and equal revenue sharing, and the bigger schools are getting more of it. Finally, we come to the $10M figure. The teams argue that since they are the ones playing in a game that makes ~4 times that, the teams playing should get half the revenue from the game. The principle of "equal sharing" is thus destroyed, but their is a larger issue of fair compensation that comes into play for those teams participating.
The example I used was the Big 10 championship game. However, the same reasoning can be applied (and probably is) to bowl games, football games televised over the air, the basketball tournament, and the big dance. The conference could break out the "$10M" in the example as "compensation," then split the rest of the conference money evenly and say "everyone gets the same amount" and in some ways do so in good conscience.
I don't know the inner workings of the big 10, so I don't know how they figure "compensation" into the equation. But, I could definitely see Michigan and Ohio State wanting to bump that compensation from $0 or $1M to the $10M figure, and I'm not sure that Purdue or Northwestern would have a good argument for why that shouldn't happen when the remaining money is "shared equally."