JRsec
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RE: Group of executives floats “Super League” plan
(04-09-2024 02:48 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote: (04-09-2024 02:27 PM)JRsec Wrote: (04-09-2024 01:53 PM)bryanw1995 Wrote: (04-09-2024 01:00 PM)JRsec Wrote: (04-09-2024 12:49 PM)bill dazzle Wrote: Frank the Tank's new catch phrase seems to be "either adapt or die."
I kind of miss his "think like a university president."
Yes, but it never was "think like a university president" Bill. I was always "think like a CEO of a network" and hire a Sports rights attorney as your Commissioner.
Given the times Adapt or Die works just fine. Or as the Marine Corps teaches, and perhaps even better, "Adapt, Innovate, Overcome!"
They're both the same thing though. University Presidents c. 2009, especially B1G Presidents, thought much like the Presidents of Old. Today, they do need to adapt or risk seeing what happened to Stanford, Cal, WSU and OSU happen to them, too. The Big 12 Presidents Adapted and survived. The ACC Presidents? I don't know yet, but I suspect that they'll choose the Big 12 rather than Pac 12 route. But the P2 Presidents are not immune to this. We can no longer look at our footprints from 1990 and say "this is where we shall remain". We can no longer hold on to old expansion plans with a death grip, though they could certainly inform our new plans. So, the B1G didn't get Texas, they went to Plan B. The SEC already got most of our Plan A, UNC is the only one left. Where do we go from there? I don't know, but an astute observer would think like a modern-day University President and "Adapt, Innovate, Overcome!" as you say.
In the SEC in 1991 Kramer convinced the presidents to expand their market size. It was a CEO move, not a president move. In the Big 10 they hampered their initial selections by thinking like college presidents protecting their academic associations. Ditto in the PAC with even less business acumen influencing the organization of the PAC12N thereby turning a money maker into a money loser by their ideas which weren't recommended by people who knew marketing. Think like a president failed.
With the SWC you had a market footprint of 2 states and were DOA under any system regardless of what CEOs or presidents thought. The Big 12 took two similarly challenged conferences and merged them minus Arkansas. It was a CEO approach but one liked by the presidents which still ignored the total eyes in the combined marketplace. Texas schools could have merged anywhere the Big 12 suited UT better than anyone else in Texas. Great sports, reasonable driving distances for most, low total population outside of Texas.
My point? Thinking like a president screwed up the PAC 12, is screwing up the ACC especially in 2011, didn't help or further hurt the Big 12, and hampered the initial development of the Big 10's expansion. I'm just grateful the SEC presidents paid the commissioner to do his job and then let them do it. Schiller, Kramer, Slive and Sankey were four aces in succession IMO. And all of them worked with the CEOs of the networks we were dealing with at the time. And that I believe is why the SEC is in sound shape. We had a solid and dominant core for our old footprint. North Carolina and a Virginia school are our market desires and Kansas to the West more for ESPN than for us. But the SEC has no desire for outliers and wants a compact footprint. I advise you to go to a map of the United States and draw a longitude from DFW to the Northern border of Kansas, and then a latitude to Northern Virginia. That is our boundary. The top of Nebraska is way too far North for the SEC, and their Southern border is beyond our Northernmost latitude.
Colorado is the only push and I think the SEC presidents would stiffen on that one.
But it has always been "think like a Network CEO" because they offer the revenue and conferences either cooperate and negotiate or suffer when you don't think in terms of maximizing revenue for your benefactor.
Thinking like presidents is why Frank whiffed on a lot of realignment even though he was smart enough to calculate values which sometimes indicated otherwise.
I actually agree with a lot that you’ve stated, although I would quibble with a couple of points with respect to the Big Ten. First, where was the Big Ten hampering itself due to academic associations? Penn State was added in the 1990s (and remember that at the time that this was considered to be a ground-breaking move beyond geography). The only real big brand school that may have caused any academic heartburn to the Big Ten would have been Oklahoma. Otherwise, the most valuable schools to the Big Ten have always met the academic requirements, anyway, so it has ended being a moot (or at least circular) point. The academic point was more about telling a school like, say, West Virginia to not even bother applying.
Second, my analysis back in 2009 where I stated to think like a university president was incorporating the fact that the Big Ten presidents were running a TV network. That’s why I included TV market size in the Big Ten Expansion Index criteria. They *were* - and still *are* - TV network executives under their job definition. It is the primary reason why the Big Ten went ahead of the SEC in TV money despite the SEC having better ratings in general - the Big Ten was the first mover in taking the risk of actually owning a TV network and that has paid off up until this day. The Big Ten might be total traditionalists academically, but they were WAY ahead of everyone else in understanding the changing TV rights market.
Having strict academic requirements impeded your ability to do what was necessary for Texas and perhaps a little more saturation in New England. It may yet impede your ability to pursue any ACC properties.
Don't disagree about the BTN at all. It was clearly Delany's best move. Divesting from the shares however might be wise now, depending upon what streaming options can pay for any conference network.
The SEC's strength has and will remain regional fanaticism and a family like history with each other and trust in the Commissioners to do their jobs and we've had a string of very competent commissioners. The flexibility of the SEC to work through the commissioner to obtain objectives important to our carriers and which could be supported by the presidents has been key to our success in growth. The SEC has been thinking like a CEO a lot longer than any of the others. The Big 10 network was your business venture and presidents your shareholder representatives. They did do a good job. But they were still presidents. Only in this last set of additions has it even appeared that the Big 10 presidents were cooperating with their network partners and that ended abruptly whether it had anything to do with Warren's ease with the networks or not.
Oh, and Frank, the only reason the Big 10 expanded out of the PAC 12 and is looking at the ACC is because you could not expand regionally and keep up with the SEC, at least not after Texas and Oklahoma, and should the SEC acquire schools in North Carolina and Virginia that distance in valuation will only grow. Notre Dame can cut the gap almost in half, and outside of Florida State nobody left can get you close enough. That's why national market strategy has had to be employed. And thus far, it hasn't really worked at the collegiate level due to non revenue sports and the loss of regionalism. We'll see.
(This post was last modified: 04-09-2024 03:16 PM by JRsec.)
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