(05-02-2017 10:32 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  OU and Kansas to the Big Ten -- 16 teams
WVU and TCU (or Oklahoma St) to the SEC -- 16 teams
Texas Tech and Iowa State to the Pac-14 -- 14 teams
CFP discusses going champs only, which prompts
Notre Dame to join the ACC (along with Cincinnati) -- 16 teams

Maybe the Pac-12 adds two more, maybe they don't.
Maybe Baylor, Oklahoma St (or TCU) and Kansas St find homes, maybe they don't

Nobody is going to force the Pac-12 to take any school they don't want.

I doubt that the B1G will take Oklahoma AND Kansas without Texas as part of the package, nor is the conference interested in Kansas much at all.

If they expand, it'll be Texas and Oklahoma. The only way Kansas gets in would be in a package with Texas.

(05-03-2017 03:16 PM)TerryD Wrote:  Back to the Future and Same As It Ever Was.

It may turn out that ND's OTA contract with NBC is and will be always a good deal for both.

The "cable box" idea may be dying and only those programs with the fan base and national appeal may bring in big media deals in the future.

The others? Not a very bright television financial future.

If "cord cutting" and other trends negate much of the reason for TV driven conference expansion since 2010 or so, what will happen to these "Made for TV" conferences in the future?

The idea of "bundling" a cable network like the BTN and extorting carriage fees may go the way of the dodo bird.

I sure hope so. I never liked that idea at all, ever.


So, I agree with some of your post, just not the political content.

Even with the BTN and SECN going away that doesn't mean that technology won't continue to advance. It won't go completely back to the days of a national game of the week and a bunch of regional channels showing other games. With apps you could have all types of games available at the tip of your fingers. The network model might still be necessary for wide audience games. Think of the Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl, etc.

Or the old networks are replaced by media companies that mimic the national coverage of the networks without the infrastructure of affiliates, retransmission fees, etc..

Even if I have $4 and you have $8 there are going to be companies interested in selling me for my $4. With technology companies would be better able to reach people they want to reach much more efficiently than in the past.

But of course, you want to go back to when only certain programs matter. I understand why.

(05-03-2017 01:49 PM)orangefan Wrote:  

(05-03-2017 01:27 PM)YNot Wrote:  

(05-03-2017 12:46 PM)Insane_Baboon Wrote:  Is independence even a viable option anymore? Even ND put their non-football sports in the ACC.

ND's Olympic sports were in the Big East before the ACC and ND football was part of the Big East's football bowl lineup....

The indicator that football independence is possibly tougher now than in the past is that ND plays 5 annual football games against ACC opponents. But, many of the ACC schools made frequent appearances against the Irish before the ACC deal, such as Syracuse, Pitt, Boston College, Miami, and Georgia Tech. And, ND likely enjoys facing Florida St. and Clemson every 3 years and playing frequent games in Virginia and North Carolina.

So, I'm not certain that Notre Dame's deal with the ACC reflects much on the viability of independence as many think. IMO, it has more to do with the limited number of independents...and that pool seems to be growing again, rather than shrinking.

There is no doubt that ND's deal with the ACC reflects its view on the difficulty of remaining a "pure" independent. In particular, ND recognized that 1) it was going to be extremely difficult to fill its schedule with quality opponents during those weeks in which the P5 conferences are playing their conference schedules, i.e., October and November and 2) it was going to be extremely difficult to arrange quality bowl tie ins outside of the NY6. The ACC deal solves both of these problems.

I'm guessing that UMass, BYU and NM St. all face the same basic problems and would likely benefit from some kind of scheduling arrangement with an appropriate conference.

But, his point was that ND joined the Big East for all sports but football and hockey in 1995.

So, the original poster's assertion that independence may not be viable and pointed to ND joining the ACC for other sports as evidence of this, is not accurate.

(05-03-2017 04:24 PM)Transic_nyc Wrote:  

(05-03-2017 03:16 PM)TerryD Wrote:  Back to the Future and Same As It Ever Was.

It may turn out that ND's OTA contract with NBC is and will be always a good deal for both.

The "cable box" idea may be dying and only those programs with the fan base and national appeal may bring in big media deals in the future.

The others? Not a very bright television financial future.

If "cord cutting" and other trends negate much of the reason for TV driven conference expansion since 2010 or so, what will happen to these "Made for TV" conferences in the future?

The idea of "bundling" a cable network like the BTN and extorting carriage fees may go the way of the dodo bird.

I sure hope so. I never liked that idea at all, ever.


So, I agree with some of your post, just not the political content.

Even with the BTN and SECN going away that doesn't mean that technology won't continue to advance. It won't go completely back to the days of a national game of the week and a bunch of regional channels showing other games. With apps you could have all types of games available at the tip of your fingers. The network model might still be necessary for wide audience games. Think of the Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl, etc.

Or the old networks are replaced by media companies that mimic the national coverage of the networks without the infrastructure of affiliates, retransmission fees, etc..

Even if I have $4 and you have $8 there are going to be companies interested in selling me for my $4. With technology companies would be better able to reach people they want to reach much more efficiently than in the past.

But of course, you want to go back to when only certain programs matter. I understand why.

You misunderstand. Regarding TV, I went from antenna to cable to satellite to streaming.

With phones, I went from a Treo 170 to a Treo 300 to a iPhone and, just last week, to a Samsung Galaxy 8.

I love technological advances. I don't want to go back, technology wise.

I just think that large fan bases matter.

Those schools without large TV audiences may not be able to "bundle" with schools like Ohio State and Alabama for huge extorted cable box paydays.

(05-03-2017 02:46 PM)MplsBison Wrote:  Nothing wrong with the logic of the hypothesis that the Big Ten with Nebraska increases the per school payout of the primary rights broadcasting deal. It's just flat wrong.

The value of the Big Ten's primary deal comes mostly from Michigan, Ohio St, Penn St, and a little bit from schools like Mich St and Wisconsin ... when they're ranked. That's it.

Nebraska adds no value. No one outside Nebraska fans gives a rip about Nebraska. They're a red Iowa.

I think the TV channels that the national media partners place games and TV ratings are fairly useful competents to the discussion of Nebraska's value. Nebraska is consistently selected for multiple ABC broadcasts and gets over 1 million viewers even when they play the likes of Illinois and Wyoming on ESPN2 (which is more than many other B1G broadcasts on ESPN2).

Here's the number of 2016 regular season games on ABC and other OTA channels for the B1G teams:

Ohio St. (6)
Michigan (5)
Nebraska (5)
Wisconsin (5)
Penn St. (4)
Purdue (3)
Michigan St. (2)
Iowa (2)
Indiana (2)
Northwestern (1)
Rutgers (0)
Maryland (0)
Minnesota (0)
Illinois (0)

Here are the numbers for 2015:

Ohio St. (9)
Michigan (5)
Nebraska (4)
Iowa (4)
Michigan St. (4)
Indiana (3)
Wisconsin (2)
Penn St. (2)
Illinois (1)
Minnesota (1)
Maryland (1)
Rutgers (1)
Northwestern (1)
Purdue (0)

I think that fairly clearly shows that Nebraska is one of the more valuable B1G entities. Not as valuable as Ohio St. and Michigan, but definitely in the next tier and well ahead of the majority of other B1G schools.

(05-03-2017 03:28 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  JRec,

The reality is P5 is a club, and there is a confluence of research and academics. But this is not surprising as these are measures of resources. High resource schools dominate P5. Of the 65 P5 schools, 33 are AAU, 2 are leading candidates to join (Miami and Utah; conversely Oregon is the most likely to be dropped). Further 58 of 65 are Carnegie R1 Very High Level Research Universities (Oklahoma State, Mississippi State, Alabama, Auburn, Baylor, Texas Christian, and Wake Forest are R2; note Mississippi State is on the borderline out just like Dartmouth of the Ivy, who are also the only non-AAU member of the Ivy). High research schools dominate in funding and in donations. It is also why the G5 with the best shot at ever crossing over to P5 are R1 schools (Temple, South Florida, Central Florida, Hawaii, New Mexico, Colorado State, Cincinnati, Houston, Connecticut, Rice, Tulane, Buffalo ... if that looks like most of the Big XII finalists its no mistake). The reality is power status and research increasingly go together. Even in the SEC Florida and Vandy directed expansion for the SEC to add 2 R1 AAU schools.

MplsBison,

You are usually wrong, but you are correct on Kansas and the SEC. People need to realize that should KU and OU join the SEC it would be reconfigured and the West would include Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Texas A&M, Arkansas all from the old Big 12, except Arkansas who would be from the SWC. I'm not sure if the SEC would configure the West with Vanderbilt, Kentucky, and Tennessee (Basically be "greater Appalachia" and "upper south" league) or with Louisiana State, Mississippi State, and Mississippi. Either way, Alabama and Auburn would move to the East with Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina. The point being Kansas would not find themselves in a predominantly deep south division, rather one with familiar foes. They would likely keep K State as a permanent OOC opponent. Basketball is not the dramatic off the cliff scenario FTT tries to paint either. They would have to play the likes of Oklahoma, Kentucky, Florida and South Carolina every year, while gaining better access to Southern recruiting. The SEC however would no longer look like a solid confederacy any more.

All that said, I think FOX will do everything possible to push Oklahoma to the B1G and with them Kansas. T

I understood the old paradigm. And any school that a separate Big 10 Athletic Conference would consider would be one in an existing P5 conference anyway. I was merely pointing out that perhaps a Virginia Tech might have been a better addition for your athletics than a Rutgers. Or a West Virginia might have been better than a Maryland.

In just looking at the region, the ability to segregate the two approaches would only strengthen your options for both.

Athletics are not, and haven't been for quite a while, related to higher academic pursuits in any of our schools. The days of finding a Knute Rockne in the chemistry lab are long gone with very rare exceptions. I just find the need to keep up the illusion to be hypocritical in practice. With stipends amateurism gets the final nail in the coffin. We should apologize to Jim Thorpe.

BTW I did my post graduate work in one of those high resource AAU research schools, but one that had few athletic teams. The lack of sports didn't hurt their mission, but having them would not have either. It's time to get our heads out of the sand. Sharing grants are great, but being a member of the club in a world where far flung associations are well enabled is archaic.

(05-03-2017 05:08 PM)JRsec Wrote:  I understood the old paradigm. And any school that a separate Big 10 Athletic Conference would consider would be one in an existing P5 conference anyway. I was merely pointing out that perhaps a Virginia Tech might have been a better addition for your athletics than a Rutgers. Or a West Virginia might have been better than a Maryland.

In just looking at the region, the ability to segregate the two approaches would only strengthen your options for both.

Athletics are not, and haven't been for quite a while, related to higher academic pursuits in any of our schools. The days of finding a Knute Rockne in the chemistry lab are long gone with very rare exceptions. I just find the need to keep up the illusion to be hypocritical in practice. With stipends amateurism gets the final nail in the coffin. We should apologize to Jim Thorpe.

BTW I did my post graduate work in one of those high resource AAU research schools, but one that had few athletic teams. The lack of sports didn't hurt their mission, but having them would not have either. It's time to get our heads out of the sand. Sharing grants are great, but being a member of the club in a world where far flung associations are well enabled is archaic.

Believe me. The ideal of the student-athlete, where participation is just part of one's growth as a well-rounded individual and where the old college try still actually matters is very romantic. However, with the passage of time, one would be to be completely blind or ideologically rigid to not see what's underneath the hood of the car, so to speak. To compound it further, much of that ideological rigidity resides in certain regions of the country, which stops programs living there from being completely honest about the enterprise. And so we continue this magical realism.

That and me getting tired of the bashing from fans of original teams upon admission to the Big 10.

(05-03-2017 05:34 PM)Transic_nyc Wrote:  

(05-03-2017 05:08 PM)JRsec Wrote:  I understood the old paradigm. And any school that a separate Big 10 Athletic Conference would consider would be one in an existing P5 conference anyway. I was merely pointing out that perhaps a Virginia Tech might have been a better addition for your athletics than a Rutgers. Or a West Virginia might have been better than a Maryland.

In just looking at the region, the ability to segregate the two approaches would only strengthen your options for both.

Athletics are not, and haven't been for quite a while, related to higher academic pursuits in any of our schools. The days of finding a Knute Rockne in the chemistry lab are long gone with very rare exceptions. I just find the need to keep up the illusion to be hypocritical in practice. With stipends amateurism gets the final nail in the coffin. We should apologize to Jim Thorpe.

BTW I did my post graduate work in one of those high resource AAU research schools, but one that had few athletic teams. The lack of sports didn't hurt their mission, but having them would not have either. It's time to get our heads out of the sand. Sharing grants are great, but being a member of the club in a world where far flung associations are well enabled is archaic.

Believe me. The ideal of the student-athlete, where participation is just part of one's growth as a well-rounded individual and where the old college try still actually matters is very romantic. However, with the passage of time, one would be to be completely blind or ideologically rigid to not see what's underneath the hood of the car, so to speak. To compound it further, much of that ideological rigidity resides in certain regions of the country, which stops programs living there from being completely honest about the enterprise. And so we continue this magical realism.

That and me getting tired of the bashing from fans of original teams upon admission to the Big 10.

I wish I could say that the bashing of the newbies didn't happen in the SEC, but Missouri has suffered. A&M is like the other kid that sneaked in while everyone was whipping up on Missouri and just hopes they avoid the tussle until enough time has passed for it not to be noticed. In '91 it took some time for folks to warm up to Arkansas and South Carolina. But their fans and schools are old family now. Missouri people have been great but the campus issues have hurt them some. The only thing strange to all of us about the Aggies are the male yell leaders. We feel cheated! The T.C.U. cheerleaders are so cute!

Rutgers and Maryland will be fine. They just walked into the Big 10 at a time when conference image was kind of priority for the old core fans. I think that hurt. But it is much like the remarks Stugray2 made about Kansas and Oklahoma shifting Alabama and Auburn East to be a part of a group that they would be more comfortable with than the old core SEC. If the Big 10 expands again from the East the growing pains of Maryland and Rutgers would be ameliorated by familiar neighbors.

(05-03-2017 04:56 PM)YNot Wrote:  I think the TV channels that the national media partners place games and TV ratings are fairly useful competents to the discussion of Nebraska's value. Nebraska is consistently selected for multiple ABC broadcasts and gets over 1 million viewers even when they play the likes of Illinois and Wyoming on ESPN2 (which is more than many other B1G broadcasts on ESPN2).

Here's the number of 2016 regular season games on ABC and other OTA channels for the B1G teams:

Ohio St. (6)
Michigan (5)
Nebraska (5)
Wisconsin (5)
Penn St. (4)
Purdue (3)
Michigan St. (2)
Iowa (2)
Indiana (2)
Northwestern (1)
Rutgers (0)
Maryland (0)
Minnesota (0)
Illinois (0)

Here are the numbers for 2015:

Ohio St. (9)
Michigan (5)
Nebraska (4)
Iowa (4)
Michigan St. (4)
Indiana (3)
Wisconsin (2)
Penn St. (2)
Illinois (1)
Minnesota (1)
Maryland (1)
Rutgers (1)
Northwestern (1)
Purdue (0)

I think that fairly clearly shows that Nebraska is one of the more valuable B1G entities. Not as valuable as Ohio St. and Michigan, but definitely in the next tier and well ahead of the majority of other B1G schools.

Big Ten doesn't have a contract with ABC. It has a contract with ESPN.

Re-do your analysis for games on ABC/ESPN/ESPN2/ESPNU, and you'll see that Nebraska is no special treat for the national to feast their eyes upon.

(05-03-2017 03:36 PM)orangefan Wrote:  The interfaces offered by the new Slim Bundle packages are pretty slick and I would argue are better than those offered by traditional satellite and cable. You can customize your home screen so the first thing you see are icons for the shows, movies and games that you are most likely to be interested in.

Are you talking about a Verizon skinny bundle? Or an online streaming service?

Yes, I agree that sounds nice. Doubt something like that couldn't be implemented on cable/sat box.

(05-03-2017 01:49 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(05-03-2017 01:27 PM)YNot Wrote:  

(05-03-2017 12:46 PM)Insane_Baboon Wrote:  Is independence even a viable option anymore? Even ND put their non-football sports in the ACC.

ND's Olympic sports were in the Big East before the ACC and ND football was part of the Big East's football bowl lineup....

The indicator that football independence is possibly tougher now than in the past is that ND plays 5 annual football games against ACC opponents. But, many of the ACC schools made frequent appearances against the Irish before the ACC deal, such as Syracuse, Pitt, Boston College, Miami, and Georgia Tech. And, ND likely enjoys facing Florida St. and Clemson every 3 years and playing frequent games in Virginia and North Carolina.

So, I'm not certain that Notre Dame's deal with the ACC reflects much on the viability of independence as many think. IMO, it has more to do with the limited number of independents...and that pool seems to be growing again, rather than shrinking.

It would be interesting if teams prefer independence over conference membership simply because they like independence better, but that's not what has been happening recently -- UMass, NMSU, and Liberty are indies only because they are unable to get into an FBS conference of their liking.

Yes, and BYU too. BYU doesn't want to be Indy, they want in the big 12 or the PAC. They don't want to be in the 2 conferences that would take them, the AAC or their old conference, the MWC, because of the pride thing with Utah. They'll never get in the PAC because of their politics and no Sunday play and probably won't get in to the Big 12* for the same reasons.

*the Big 12 as it is now.

(05-03-2017 05:56 PM)MplsBison Wrote:  Big Ten doesn't have a contract with ABC. It has a contract with ESPN.

Re-do your analysis for games on ABC/ESPN/ESPN2/ESPNU, and you'll see that Nebraska is no special treat for the national to feast their eyes upon.

Uhhhhhhh, ABC is ESPN's national showcase platform. Nebraska is clearly one of the primary B1G schools that ESPN uses for its national showcase. Those national games are what drive value for the B1G. A game on ABC is not the same as a game on ESPN2 or especially ESPNU. Indiana, Rutgers, and Minnesota lead the ESPNU list; Ohio St., Michigan, and Nebraska didn't play on ESPNU once.

Slice it up anyway you want to, the facts clearly show that ESPN values Nebraska broadcasts over most other B1G schools not named Michigan or Ohio St.

ABC + ESPN
Ohio St. (10)
Michigan (9)
Wisconsin (7)
Nebraska (6)
Penn St. (6)
Michigan St. (5)
Indiana (4)
Purdue (3)
Iowa (3)
Northwestern (2)
Maryland (2)
Rutgers (0)
Minnesota (0)
Illinois (0)

ABC+ESPN+ESPN2
Ohio St. (10)
Michigan (10)
Wisconsin (8)
Nebraska (8)
Iowa (7)
Penn St. (6)
Michigan St. (5)
Indiana (4)
Purdue (4)
Northwestern (2)
Maryland (2)
Rutgers (2)
Illinois (2)
Minnesota (1)

ABC
Ohio St. (6)
Michigan (5)
Nebraska (5)
Wisconsin (5)
Penn St. (4)
Purdue (3)
Michigan St. (2)
Iowa (2)
Indiana (2)
Northwestern (1)
Rutgers (0)
Maryland (0)
Minnesota (0)
Illinois (0)

ESPN
Ohio St. (4)
Michigan (4)
Michigan St. (3)
Penn St. (2)
Indiana (2)
Maryland (2)
Wisconsin (2)
Nebraska (1)
Northwestern (1)
Iowa (1)

ESPN2
Iowa (4)
Illinois (2)
Nebraska (2)
Rutgers (2)
Wisconsin (1)
Purdue (1)
Michigan (1)
Minnesota (1)

ESPNU
Indiana (3)
Minnesota (3)
Maryland (2)
Northwestern (2)
Iowa (2)
Purdue (1)
Rutgers (1)