(07-26-2022 03:47 PM)Gamenole Wrote:  Hey now, unless our school leaders are fools and extend that abomination, even in a worst case scenario of having to wait out the whole thing we'd be free after only 3 more Presidential elections - 2024, 2028 & 2032. The GoR expires 6/30/36 and the election won't be until that November.

LOL

Time to man up and bust out of jail

(07-26-2022 03:39 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(07-26-2022 03:22 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(07-26-2022 02:42 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(07-26-2022 01:43 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(07-26-2022 01:33 PM)Scoochpooch1 Wrote:  Exactly but that won't be the case. I was so excited for consolidation in 2003 but it never came. Instead Big East refused to fold and more teams entered FBS. I think we'll need to wait at least until 2036.

Consolidation might very well happen, but I feel that it's more likely in a fight between the Pac-12 and Big 12 as opposed to more schools heading to the Big Ten or SEC until we get closer to the ACC GOR date.

It's clear that the Big Ten and SEC aren't just expanding for the sake of expanding. That should be *abundantly* clear when schools like Stanford, Cal, Washington and Oregon are just sitting there without Big Ten invites. If they aren't adding value to the Big Ten (when it's actually pretty direct for the B1G via markets with the BTN), then the list of schools that could actually add any more value to the league at this point basically consists of Notre Dame plus a friend.

We need to wrap our minds around the fact that the bar for expansion for both the Big Ten and SEC just got MUCH MUCH MUCH higher compared to a year ago. Accordingly, we need to adjust our perceptions of what's an expansion target for those leagues. Stanford and Cal just sitting there should be instructive to anyone. "Good academic schools in good markets" are no longer enough when Stanford/Cal are better academic schools sitting there with better academics in a better market without any GOR restrictions.

The 2010s were the Land Grab phase of conference realignment. Leagues could leverage large media markets directly into revenue with conference TV networks.

The 2020s, on the other hand, are the Brand Grab phrase... and what's a "brand" is MUCH more elitist and limited of a definition than ever before. If Oregon isn't getting picked up, why should anyone other than ND feel confident at all that they'd make more money for the Big Ten or SEC as of now? No one should feel that way at all.

Frank, you make some fundamental assertions about realignment which were heretofore true but were built upon a paradigm which has shifted.

The bar for inclusion is not higher, but rather lower, because the value being added is a value external that of the individual school being considered. It is based upon the commercial value of a fixed upper tier and its expanded playoff, and upon a basketball tournament controlled by the network(s) and not the NCAA.

The Big Ten and SEC conferences aren't expanding to build their own values as much as they are expanding to reach inventory levels, brand associations, and market demographics which will sustain the upper tier concept of 2 super leagues capable of holding weekly national attention and loosely billed as rivals using one of the oldest and most proven tags in the country, North vs South.

Splitting an estimated 4 plus billion from the expanded playoffs and earning 2.25 times more on an NCAA-less hoops tourney is where the money is.

Scheduling flexibility between the two will help preserve border rivalries and divisions will preserve regional ones. Eliminating redundant conference overhead will help as well.

You missed, and will continue to miss, seeing what is actually happening as long as you cling to the notion of a school's value metrics having to meet a conference's mean threshold of profitability. They don't. They just have to help the networks reach their targeted brands and markets and with sufficient inventory to cover their windows. The value is in external objectives and not internal each school.

The networks are building a vista and each school need only add a small patch of color to the landscape.

You need to step back from the individual details to see the bigger picture taking shape.

Only 3 schools paid their own way in, and you know it because you calculated it. It's no accident that 3 of the first five moves were for them. Oklahoma and Texas to the SEC and Notre Dame to the B1G. UCLA and USC held the largest available market. It is the first brushstroke of what is to follow.

This is the final organizing movement the networks will make to attempt a self-perpetuating national product launch built from a diffuse and haphazard region-specific NCAA model.

I would have believed you until June 30th. My wrong assumption until that date was that it would take the Big Ten annexing at least half of the Pac-12 in order to get USC/UCLA, but it wasn't necessary.

There are 7 to 8 institutions in the Pac-12 with the brands, academic profiles and markets that meet the Big Ten's quite high standards on the criteria that you've noted. We don't even have to get into the ACC GOR and whether it will hold or not - the Pac-12 HAS a bunch of schools that fit what you're talking about here.

If the Big Ten really wanted to do what you stated, then it wouldn't have just added USC and UCLA. It would have annexed 6 or more schools from the Pac-12 at one time.

I mean, if we were to reverse the clock and UT and OU would have come *alone* to the SEC back in 2010, would the SEC even have bothered with adding Missouri? (I still see the value of Texas A&M regardless.) Call me crazy, but I don't think so. That's essentially what you're arguing here: the Big Ten is going to start adding other lower value Pac-12 schools even though they already got the two most valuable marquee brands from there. I don't agree with that notion.

Even if we give credence to your argument about the TV networks wanting some type of consolidated vista in college football, why would the Big Ten and/or SEC need to be sole two vessels, anyway? It makes more sense that would be achieved by having the Pac-12, Big 12 and ACC end up consolidating into 1 or 2 leagues. When the ACC GOR ends, maybe UNC, FSU, Clemson and a couple of others head to the Big Ten and/or SEC, but that just further supports that there would still be a third and/or fourth league that contains the "good brands that are valuable enough to stick around in the power system but not valuable enough to make more money for the Big Ten and SEC." The Big Ten and SEC are the super premium fuel, the 3rd/4th leftover league(s) is/are the mid-grade fuel, and everyone else is regular unleaded. That seems pretty consolidated for the TV networks there.

The total number of "power schools" in the system has always been around 65 schools. I just don't the Big Ten and SEC having 30+ schools each to encompass everyone that is considered to be a power school, so that's going to require a 3rd or 4th league. Otherwise, what's the point of expansion? We'll just end up with leagues that are so massive that they split up into geographic divisions that essentially just look like the BCS conferences as of 1996. (Maybe that's not a bad thing.)

The money is in a well-conceived 48 schools. The SEC and B1G simply have the most solid framework to build around.

Tell me, what does the NFL want from Indianapolis or Cleveland? Do they want their inclusion because of the value of each franchise, or because they want those markets in their nexus?

The NFL migrates with the people. Their product is the collective. They thrive amid dynasties and without them.

We'll see, but it seems to me this is where we are headed. I do anticipate that we will initially have a third lesser compensated conference with access which will be absorbed in part as some inevitably drop out. College ball will require more schools be included than the NFL has teams. When the system is instituted the tweener will allow tinkering with the number and mix to get the eventual product mix correct.

I would argue that the taking of USC/UCLA was an indelible signal of the death of the P5 when the economic disparity already indicated only two.

I've heard ESPN's offer to the PAC was 24.5 million per school. Do the math on the B12 and it will be similar. The only thing remaining is the ACC and time, pressure and economic disparity have done their work there as well. There's simply too much money to be lost between now and 2036 to believe that GOR remains in place. It will fall from within their conference if that third conference eclipses present revenue by even a tiny bit and those left behind have some access in that third conference.

I agree with how you characterize the NFL model with markets to a certain degree.

I disagree that 48 schools is the number for college football that fully covers the national scope of the sport. I see where you're going with this as envisioning the SEC and Big Ten each having 24 schools each in a tidy and orderly top level of college football (similar to how fans have long tried to wedge everyone into 4 16-team superconferences with relatively comparable strength). However, I think that's cutting the number of power schools to the bone as opposed to simply cutting fat. The 65-ish power schools is really the equilibrium that you're talking about in terms of covering all of the relevant markets and regions of the sports (at least in my mind).

It's when we get above that 65-ish level that we inevitably see *some* culling of the herd but not a full scale 20-30% RIF. In 1996 at the start of the BCS system, there were 64 schools in 6 power conferences plus independent ND. After the ACC took Miami/VT/BC, the Big East backfilled and expanded the total power ranks to 67 for a few years. The realignment wave of the early-2010s left us with the Big East eradicated and the total power ranks were reduced back down to 65.

Still, that was a consolidation of almost entirely the same schools within the initial 6 BCS conferences into the now-P5 as opposed to a mass reduction in the total number of power schools. If we were to just skip over the first decade of the 2000s with all of the realignment and the complete elimination of an entire power conference and simply look at Day 1 of the BCS system and Day 1 of current CFP system, the total number of power schools changed by a grand total of ONE: Temple lost its power status (and it wasn't even a full member of its conference) while Utah and TCU gained power status (and in the case of TCU, it arguably *regained* its power status since it was part of the SWC dissolution of the 1990s).

With the Big 12 expansion last year, we're up to 69 total power school members, which is more than what we saw in the immediate aftermath of the post-Miami Big East. So, you could argue that we're currently above the norm of what's standard for the "power ranks" in college football, but not to the point where we'd be cutting 20-plus schools from that group.

For instance, the Pac-12 adding the 4 Texas-based Big 12 schools plus Oklahoma State and Kansas would get us back down to 63 total power schools. (The Big 12 could conceivably pull a reverse move on the Pac-12, but I've explained elsewhere why I don't think that will happen.) THAT seems to be the consolidation that we're headed toward and it's consistent with the equilibrium of what constitutes the total number of power schools in college football. Consolidation is one thing (and I agree that's happening), but the actual elimination of a mass amount of schools from the power ranks is a completely different matter to me.

The NFL sticks to major media markets. College football has teams in Alabama and South Carolina. It has two (even 3) teams in states like Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Alabama and Mississippi.
48 is not enough and its not what, as Frank points out, they have settled at.

Even going back to the early 90s there were 67 in 7 conferences. The ones out are Temple, Rice and SMU. Added were Utah, BYU, UCF, Cincinnati and Louisville. TCU and Houston were dropped and then returned. Cincinnati was in and out and back in. BYU has always been a semi-power team. Utah and UCF are growing states.

(07-26-2022 05:18 PM)cubucks Wrote:  

Those 6 are not necessarily the "handful." He could be talking about Georgia, Florida, Alabama, LSU and Texas.

This also explains why the 4 corners are the ones talking to the Big 12 and not Cal, Stanford, Oregon and Washington.

(07-26-2022 03:30 PM)GarnetAndBlue Wrote:  

(07-26-2022 02:15 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  UNC, Duke, Kansas, & Syracuse basketball arguably have higher brand value than any of the football teams outside the SEC/B1G right now.

Absurd take. Football is king right now, by miles over basketball. Syracuse??

Read my whole post.

"Right now the basketball brand value is mostly harvested by the NCAA tournament rather than conferences. But TV ratings for the NCAA tournament are too high to be ignored forever in conference realignment."


Measure it any way you want. T-shirt fans, tv ratings, anything. The NCAA basketball tournament is vastly more popular (and more valuable) than the CFB regular season.

More people watched the NCAA basketball championship game this year than any CFB game except the championship game.

More people watched the NCAA tournament than watched every CFB regular season game combined.

Eventually, that value will be captured by the basketball powerhouse schools. It is inevitable.

(07-26-2022 05:18 PM)cubucks Wrote:  

I mean, yes - if FSU and Miami want to join the Big Ten (and putting aside all ACC GOR restrictions), then the Big Ten needs to take them. I'm as much of a Big Ten academics guy as anyone, but the State of Florida is the most important source of football talent next to the State of Texas (and actually better on a per capita basis).

I'm still having a hard time understanding why the Big Ten would be taking any other Pac-12 schools when they are negotiating their new TV deal NOW. It was also always still surprising that the Big Ten was able to get USC and UCLA without having to take anyone else from that league in the first place. My initial thought when the Big Ten expanded with USC/UCLA was, "Why aren't they taking at least Stanford and Cal, too?" Why are they spending weeks getting pilfered publicly by the Governor of California if the plan is to take Cal, anyway?

To be clear, for all that I have written here, I don't *personally* object to the Big Ten adding Stanford, Cal, Washington and/or Oregon at all. I actually think that's a better cohesive conference for the long-term because, eventually, USC and UCLA are going to need something more than money to make them happy. I'm a pretty staunch defender of the value of Stanford in particular. However, this goes against so much against the grain of what is seemingly an elite brand acquisition exercise with much more needed than large markets.

(07-26-2022 05:23 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(07-26-2022 05:18 PM)cubucks Wrote:  

Those 6 are not necessarily the "handful." He could be talking about Georgia, Florida, Alabama, LSU and Texas.

When did you go off the deep end?

(07-26-2022 05:23 PM)bullet Wrote:  Those 6 are not necessarily the "handful." He could be talking about Georgia, Florida, Alabama, LSU and Texas.

Perhaps.

But what is more valuable: the Big Ten adding those 6, or the SEC adding Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan, Wisconsin, USC, and Iowa?

I don't know the answer.

However, I think that the core schools in both conferences gain too much from regional domination to consider leaving unless the money difference is gigantic.

(07-26-2022 05:37 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(07-26-2022 05:23 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(07-26-2022 05:18 PM)cubucks Wrote:  

Those 6 are not necessarily the "handful." He could be talking about Georgia, Florida, Alabama, LSU and Texas.

When did you go off the deep end?

It mentioned 6 schools they were looking at.
Warren said there were a handful of schools that could add value.
I was simply pointing out that those two categories could be mutually exclusive.
Oregon, Washington, Cal, Stanford and Miami may not add value.
None of the SEC schools would move, but they would add value.

(07-26-2022 05:38 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  

(07-26-2022 05:23 PM)bullet Wrote:  Those 6 are not necessarily the "handful." He could be talking about Georgia, Florida, Alabama, LSU and Texas.

Perhaps.

But what is more valuable: the Big Ten adding those 6, or the SEC adding Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan, Wisconsin, USC, and Iowa?

I don't know the answer.

However, I think that the core schools in both conferences gain too much from regional domination to consider leaving unless the money difference is gigantic.

FOX and ESPN don't want industry standards screwing up their brands. These schools anchor what they are trying to build around. This whole line of discussion is absurd.

(07-26-2022 05:24 PM)bullet Wrote:  This also explains why the 4 corners are the ones talking to the Big 12 and not Cal, Stanford, Oregon and Washington.

If that is actually happening> The PAC1O+? a better conference than the4 BIG12. Yep, the BIG12 are now celebrating USC and UCLA to the BIG. Here are some facts, however:

1. UCLA is not the second best FB program in the PAC. Oregon is better and Washington has better support.
2. The BIG12 has already lost their two best programs in Texas and OK. They backfilled with G5 programs. The PAC has yet to respond. The BIG12 begins negotiations will begin in the next couple of years. They want to celebrate what PAC lost but they are going to be hit just as hard.
3. The PAC10 can lose one more school, be it OU or Stanford, and still survive., backfilling with SDSU. IF they lose 2 (From OU, UW and Stanford) they likely will see an exodus of schools to the BIG12. Cal, OSU and WSU are completely screwed and could be homeless. Not even the MWC would want them, they add nothing to the MWC and Cal would be one hell of a ***** to be relegated to a conference such as the MWC. Cal is the flagship school of the UC system. They fought to keep UCLA from being elevated to UC distinction. Snobs? That perfectly describes that school.

(07-26-2022 05:37 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(07-26-2022 05:23 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(07-26-2022 05:18 PM)cubucks Wrote:  

Those 6 are not necessarily the "handful." He could be talking about Georgia, Florida, Alabama, LSU and Texas.

When did you go off the deep end?

Headline 23': Fla and UGa join the B1G!
Headline 24': OSU UM join SEC!

Yeah, that's when I finally jump off the bridge.

(07-26-2022 05:40 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(07-26-2022 05:38 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  

(07-26-2022 05:23 PM)bullet Wrote:  Those 6 are not necessarily the "handful." He could be talking about Georgia, Florida, Alabama, LSU and Texas.

Perhaps.

But what is more valuable: the Big Ten adding those 6, or the SEC adding Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan, Wisconsin, USC, and Iowa?

I don't know the answer.

However, I think that the core schools in both conferences gain too much from regional domination to consider leaving unless the money difference is gigantic.

FOX and ESPN don't want industry standards screwing up their brands. These schools anchor what they are trying to build around. This whole line of discussion is absurd.

What's your thoughts on neither the North Carolina or Virginia schools being mentioned in McMurphys tweet. I know it could be absolutely nothing, just thought it was interesting.

(07-26-2022 05:48 PM)cubucks Wrote:  

(07-26-2022 05:40 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(07-26-2022 05:38 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  

(07-26-2022 05:23 PM)bullet Wrote:  Those 6 are not necessarily the "handful." He could be talking about Georgia, Florida, Alabama, LSU and Texas.

Perhaps.

But what is more valuable: the Big Ten adding those 6, or the SEC adding Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan, Wisconsin, USC, and Iowa?

I don't know the answer.

However, I think that the core schools in both conferences gain too much from regional domination to consider leaving unless the money difference is gigantic.

FOX and ESPN don't want industry standards screwing up their brands. These schools anchor what they are trying to build around. This whole line of discussion is absurd.

What's your thoughts on neither the North Carolina or Virginia schools being mentioned in McMurphys tweet. I know it could be absolutely nothing, just thought it was interesting.

I personally think they leaked those schools to make some others nervous about their position.

(07-26-2022 05:01 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(07-26-2022 03:39 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(07-26-2022 03:22 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(07-26-2022 02:42 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(07-26-2022 01:43 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  Consolidation might very well happen, but I feel that it's more likely in a fight between the Pac-12 and Big 12 as opposed to more schools heading to the Big Ten or SEC until we get closer to the ACC GOR date.

It's clear that the Big Ten and SEC aren't just expanding for the sake of expanding. That should be *abundantly* clear when schools like Stanford, Cal, Washington and Oregon are just sitting there without Big Ten invites. If they aren't adding value to the Big Ten (when it's actually pretty direct for the B1G via markets with the BTN), then the list of schools that could actually add any more value to the league at this point basically consists of Notre Dame plus a friend.

We need to wrap our minds around the fact that the bar for expansion for both the Big Ten and SEC just got MUCH MUCH MUCH higher compared to a year ago. Accordingly, we need to adjust our perceptions of what's an expansion target for those leagues. Stanford and Cal just sitting there should be instructive to anyone. "Good academic schools in good markets" are no longer enough when Stanford/Cal are better academic schools sitting there with better academics in a better market without any GOR restrictions.

The 2010s were the Land Grab phase of conference realignment. Leagues could leverage large media markets directly into revenue with conference TV networks.

The 2020s, on the other hand, are the Brand Grab phrase... and what's a "brand" is MUCH more elitist and limited of a definition than ever before. If Oregon isn't getting picked up, why should anyone other than ND feel confident at all that they'd make more money for the Big Ten or SEC as of now? No one should feel that way at all.

Frank, you make some fundamental assertions about realignment which were heretofore true but were built upon a paradigm which has shifted.

The bar for inclusion is not higher, but rather lower, because the value being added is a value external that of the individual school being considered. It is based upon the commercial value of a fixed upper tier and its expanded playoff, and upon a basketball tournament controlled by the network(s) and not the NCAA.

The Big Ten and SEC conferences aren't expanding to build their own values as much as they are expanding to reach inventory levels, brand associations, and market demographics which will sustain the upper tier concept of 2 super leagues capable of holding weekly national attention and loosely billed as rivals using one of the oldest and most proven tags in the country, North vs South.

Splitting an estimated 4 plus billion from the expanded playoffs and earning 2.25 times more on an NCAA-less hoops tourney is where the money is.

Scheduling flexibility between the two will help preserve border rivalries and divisions will preserve regional ones. Eliminating redundant conference overhead will help as well.

You missed, and will continue to miss, seeing what is actually happening as long as you cling to the notion of a school's value metrics having to meet a conference's mean threshold of profitability. They don't. They just have to help the networks reach their targeted brands and markets and with sufficient inventory to cover their windows. The value is in external objectives and not internal each school.

The networks are building a vista and each school need only add a small patch of color to the landscape.

You need to step back from the individual details to see the bigger picture taking shape.

Only 3 schools paid their own way in, and you know it because you calculated it. It's no accident that 3 of the first five moves were for them. Oklahoma and Texas to the SEC and Notre Dame to the B1G. UCLA and USC held the largest available market. It is the first brushstroke of what is to follow.

This is the final organizing movement the networks will make to attempt a self-perpetuating national product launch built from a diffuse and haphazard region-specific NCAA model.

I would have believed you until June 30th. My wrong assumption until that date was that it would take the Big Ten annexing at least half of the Pac-12 in order to get USC/UCLA, but it wasn't necessary.

There are 7 to 8 institutions in the Pac-12 with the brands, academic profiles and markets that meet the Big Ten's quite high standards on the criteria that you've noted. We don't even have to get into the ACC GOR and whether it will hold or not - the Pac-12 HAS a bunch of schools that fit what you're talking about here.

If the Big Ten really wanted to do what you stated, then it wouldn't have just added USC and UCLA. It would have annexed 6 or more schools from the Pac-12 at one time.

I mean, if we were to reverse the clock and UT and OU would have come *alone* to the SEC back in 2010, would the SEC even have bothered with adding Missouri? (I still see the value of Texas A&M regardless.) Call me crazy, but I don't think so. That's essentially what you're arguing here: the Big Ten is going to start adding other lower value Pac-12 schools even though they already got the two most valuable marquee brands from there. I don't agree with that notion.

Even if we give credence to your argument about the TV networks wanting some type of consolidated vista in college football, why would the Big Ten and/or SEC need to be sole two vessels, anyway? It makes more sense that would be achieved by having the Pac-12, Big 12 and ACC end up consolidating into 1 or 2 leagues. When the ACC GOR ends, maybe UNC, FSU, Clemson and a couple of others head to the Big Ten and/or SEC, but that just further supports that there would still be a third and/or fourth league that contains the "good brands that are valuable enough to stick around in the power system but not valuable enough to make more money for the Big Ten and SEC." The Big Ten and SEC are the super premium fuel, the 3rd/4th leftover league(s) is/are the mid-grade fuel, and everyone else is regular unleaded. That seems pretty consolidated for the TV networks there.

The total number of "power schools" in the system has always been around 65 schools. I just don't the Big Ten and SEC having 30+ schools each to encompass everyone that is considered to be a power school, so that's going to require a 3rd or 4th league. Otherwise, what's the point of expansion? We'll just end up with leagues that are so massive that they split up into geographic divisions that essentially just look like the BCS conferences as of 1996. (Maybe that's not a bad thing.)

The money is in a well-conceived 48 schools. The SEC and B1G simply have the most solid framework to build around.

Tell me, what does the NFL want from Indianapolis or Cleveland? Do they want their inclusion because of the value of each franchise, or because they want those markets in their nexus?

The NFL migrates with the people. Their product is the collective. They thrive amid dynasties and without them.

We'll see, but it seems to me this is where we are headed. I do anticipate that we will initially have a third lesser compensated conference with access which will be absorbed in part as some inevitably drop out. College ball will require more schools be included than the NFL has teams. When the system is instituted the tweener will allow tinkering with the number and mix to get the eventual product mix correct.

I would argue that the taking of USC/UCLA was an indelible signal of the death of the P5 when the economic disparity already indicated only two.

I've heard ESPN's offer to the PAC was 24.5 million per school. Do the math on the B12 and it will be similar. The only thing remaining is the ACC and time, pressure and economic disparity have done their work there as well. There's simply too much money to be lost between now and 2036 to believe that GOR remains in place. It will fall from within their conference if that third conference eclipses present revenue by even a tiny bit and those left behind have some access in that third conference.

I agree with how you characterize the NFL model with markets to a certain degree.

I disagree that 48 schools is the number for college football that fully covers the national scope of the sport. I see where you're going with this as envisioning the SEC and Big Ten each having 24 schools each in a tidy and orderly top level of college football (similar to how fans have long tried to wedge everyone into 4 16-team superconferences with relatively comparable strength). However, I think that's cutting the number of power schools to the bone as opposed to simply cutting fat. The 65-ish power schools is really the equilibrium that you're talking about in terms of covering all of the relevant markets and regions of the sports (at least in my mind).

It's when we get above that 65-ish level that we inevitably see *some* culling of the herd but not a full scale 20-30% RIF. In 1996 at the start of the BCS system, there were 64 schools in 6 power conferences plus independent ND. After the ACC took Miami/VT/BC, the Big East backfilled and expanded the total power ranks to 67 for a few years. The realignment wave of the early-2010s left us with the Big East eradicated and the total power ranks were reduced back down to 65.

Still, that was a consolidation of almost entirely the same schools within the initial 6 BCS conferences into the now-P5 as opposed to a mass reduction in the total number of power schools. If we were to just skip over the first decade of the 2000s with all of the realignment and the complete elimination of an entire power conference and simply look at Day 1 of the BCS system and Day 1 of current CFP system, the total number of power schools changed by a grand total of ONE: Temple lost its power status (and it wasn't even a full member of its conference) while Utah and TCU gained power status (and in the case of TCU, it arguably *regained* its power status since it was part of the SWC dissolution of the 1990s).

With the Big 12 expansion last year, we're up to 69 total power school members, which is more than what we saw in the immediate aftermath of the post-Miami Big East. So, you could argue that we're currently above the norm of what's standard for the "power ranks" in college football, but not to the point where we'd be cutting 20-plus schools from that group.

For instance, the Pac-12 adding the 4 Texas-based Big 12 schools plus Oklahoma State and Kansas would get us back down to 63 total power schools. (The Big 12 could conceivably pull a reverse move on the Pac-12, but I've explained elsewhere why I don't think that will happen.) THAT seems to be the consolidation that we're headed toward and it's consistent with the equilibrium of what constitutes the total number of power schools in college football. Consolidation is one thing (and I agree that's happening), but the actual elimination of a mass amount of schools from the power ranks is a completely different matter to me.

Starting in 2024, there are 33 power schools. SEC + Big Ten + Notre Dame. The ACC/PAC/Big 12 are now mid-majors.

The money difference is now so large that no one outside the SEC & Big 10 will be able to compete with Rutgers or Mississippi State for coaches.

Or players, now that NIL money is around. If Vanderbilt & Indiana & Florida State & Oregon all want the same player, he'll land at either Indiana or Vanderbilt because those schools will pay him twice as much as FSU or Oregon.

(07-26-2022 05:18 PM)cubucks Wrote:  

And there’s the quote that keeps any Big 12 school from answering a call from a number with a San Francisco area code.

(07-26-2022 05:01 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  The total number of "power schools" in the system has always been around 65 schools. I just don't the Big Ten and SEC having 30+ schools each to encompass everyone that is considered to be a power school, so that's going to require a 3rd or 4th league. Otherwise, what's the point of expansion? We'll just end up with leagues that are so massive that they split up into geographic divisions that essentially just look like the BCS conferences as of 1996. (Maybe that's not a bad thing.)

Well, I think it's less than 60 in the 1980s. BAsed on who had access to major bowls, it was the PAC-10, Big 10, Big 8, SWC and the SEC. That's 10+10+8+9+10 =47 plus maybe a dozen major independents--Boston College, Syracuse, PEnn STate, Pitt, Miami, Florida State, maybe you would have counted Army and Navy. (If you want your school on that list, let me know what major Rose Sugar Cotton Orange Fiesta Bowl they went to on what New YEars Day)

Which, yeah that still adds up to about 60.

(07-26-2022 06:11 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(07-26-2022 05:01 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  The total number of "power schools" in the system has always been around 65 schools. I just don't the Big Ten and SEC having 30+ schools each to encompass everyone that is considered to be a power school, so that's going to require a 3rd or 4th league. Otherwise, what's the point of expansion? We'll just end up with leagues that are so massive that they split up into geographic divisions that essentially just look like the BCS conferences as of 1996. (Maybe that's not a bad thing.)

Well, I think it's less than 60 in the 1980s. BAsed on who had access to major bowls, it was the PAC-10, Big 10, Big 8, SWC and the SEC. That's 10+10+8+9+10 =47 plus maybe a dozen major independents--Boston College, Syracuse, PEnn STate, Pitt, Miami, Florida State, maybe you would have counted Army and Navy. (If you want your school on that list, let me know what major Rose Sugar Cotton Orange Fiesta Bowl they went to on what New YEars Day)

Which, yeah that still adds up to about 60.

Well the ACC 8 could get in with a good year.
WAC was kind of mezzanine.