(02-23-2023 07:40 AM)Gitanole Wrote: True, top-down coordination has not been a hallmark of American college sport. But we all just saw it make the new 12-team CFP structure happen in one day. Quite the revelation it was, after months of people screwing around.
An overnight success, 10+ years in the making.
And we still don't have the Rose Bowl situation worked out for the next CFP deal, and nothing is signed.
Quote:When presidents flex, commissioners hop to it and sports networks deal with it.
That's some PAC 12 Larry Scott type thinking. Not working out well for them.
Quote:What stops presidents, circa 2032, from saying they're sick and tired of the ongoing institutional trauma over which schools 'move the needle' for this or that media company? They've got new court rulings to comply with, new expenses, new liabilities involving labour—and they still have schools to run.
What stops it, for one thing, is the very real fact that different college athletic programs have very different economic weights.
As the old joke ran, when Lone Ranger and Tonto were surrounded by a billion zillion Apaches or Comanches (whichever one Tonto wasn't)
Lone Ranger: We're in trouble, old friend
Tonto: What you mean "we", white man?
Alignment and consensus is tough enough at the pro level. The economic gap betwen Buckeye sports and Boilermaker sports may be comparable to the Yankees-Cardinals gap. But college sports, even with just the P5 you're talking about 70 institutions now. And if you're okay throwing Marshall and Miami-Ohio over the side, what about Washington State and Syracuse?
Quote:By then they will be benefiting from CFP revenues that exist pretty much independent of conference membership and will still be there whatever they decide.
The next CFP isn't signed yet, so almost anything can happen. but the indications are a bias towards continuity, and the current one is a contract between Notre Dame and the 10 FBS conferences.
Quote:What stops presidents from forming a commission that redraws the map? One that takes effect as soon as all the media deals run out?
For one thing, the media deals dont run out at the same time. That's probably a manageable detail of the transition though.
Quote:The media people will wait outside
This is where everything falls apart, as far as I'm concerned. The media companies aren't paying billions of dollars a year to wait outside.
I mean, *IF* the college presidents had a consensus, and presented a unified front, then they could negotiate advantageously with the media companies. (Maybe, if you don't trip antitrust tripwires). But that's a big if.
Quote:and the conference commissioners will re-apply for re-defined jobs when the meeting is over.
The thing that tips the scales could turn out to be the ACC situation, coming on the heels of this LA mayhem. If the usual way of doing things can't resolve some long-standing problems on the east coast by that date, what stops presidents from calling other presidents and saying 'Hey, why don't we just meet and decide how we need it to be?'
If you're talking about a de novo breakaway, then there might be somethign to what you're saying. An invitation-only College Sports Association of the top 20 or 40 or 100 programs, breaking away from the NCAA and existing-conference baggage.
I don't know how well that goes over with the fans and boosters, in an industry built on tribal loyalty and on devotion to traditional rivalries and hatreds and sense-of-place.
But I feel like this seems like a great idea to a Florida State fan, whose position in the current firmament is pretty screwed. I don't know how great it sounds to the Ohio States and Alabamas and LSUs and Texas's and Floridas and USCs. "The ACC situation" is actually several situations--FSU and Clemson being locked out of their "natural homes" in the ACC, North Carolina as a pivot player with options, and the majority of the ACC trying to hang on to a pretense of equality with the Big Ten and SEC and avoid relegation.
A bromance between Sankey and the next Big Ten commish seems more likely and less complicated.