(04-09-2024 11:01 AM)esayem Wrote:  

(04-09-2024 10:13 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  I know you’re committed to this “super bundle”, but all you’re effectively saying is that there will be more marquee non-conference games. That’s simply not what the TV networks have shown themselves to be interested in. Otherwise, the Pac-12 would have survived with USC playing ND and another big name non-conference opponent annually and the ACC would be getting more revenue credit for its 3 or so non-conference games per year in its TV package involving ND. The TV networks actually don’t want flexibility - they want guaranteed regular pairings of those top brands.

I realize you have a very linear approach to looking at everything happening so let me break this down.

TV cares about elite games. We are headed towards a super-bundle under the umbrella of a single network and conference. The conference structure just became the easiest way to bundle because a lot of what makes college sports great already existed there: regionalism, rivalries, traditions etc. The college game is different than the NFL, as much as you or anybody else tries to compare it to the pros, it is fundamentally different. When else in a person's life do they first move away from home, attend school, and commit to a higher identity? Do they do that with the Chicago Bears?

Regardless, I'm not sure what an out of conference regular scheduling body of top brands does differently vs an in-confernece? It certainly provides flexibility and regular top brand matchups.

You've not addressed the fact Michigan has high ratings regardless. TV did not care they stomped through a non-existent OOC and then steamrolled a weak Big Ten. I must have missed FOX throwing tantrums.

(04-09-2024 10:13 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  Is it possible in the “super bundle” structure that you’re referring to? Sure. The issue is that it’s a much more circuitous and indirect route to getting to that outcome in a super bundle compared to just aggregating those brands into the Big Ten and SEC and/or a separate Super League of only the elite brands. You’re proposing a more difficult and indirect mechanism when the conference structure is super straight forward and direct. History leans toward taking the shortest distance between two points and, in this case, that’s called a conference.

True, and I'm on record as saying we aren't there yet. It will be more likely an option as trajectory continues and the only other alternative is a super-conference bundle, a P1 if you will.

What do you think happens if FSU, Clemson, and Carolina end up in the SEC or Big Ten? The attention switches to "how can we aggregate the best brands into a single entity and maximize revenue?" More Flougie fodder, if you will.

(04-09-2024 10:13 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  You asked me before what my preference was for Illinois and my point is that it doesn’t matter. I have my own biases as with any human, but I truly do try to look at each situation from the perspective of those that have the leverage and decision-making power as opposed to personal wish fulfillment. On this issue, it doesn’t matter what’s best for Illinois because Illinois and its similarly situated peers aren’t going to be the decision-makers (as you yourself have made it plainly clear). It’s about what’s best for Michigan, Ohio State, Alabama, Texas, etc. The proposal here simply isn’t what’s best for those elite brands - they maximize their value by playing each other regardless of geography. Just taking a greater share from the lower tier schools in order to keep a regional schedule isn’t good enough or else Texas would never have left the Big 12. That’s why USC left the Pac-12, too - the whole point is that a West Coast schedule simply *isn’t* valuable in a maximized way and TV networks are voting with their pocketbooks that they would rather have those brands playing Rutgers or Illinois to goose the ratings in important markets like NYC and Chicago along with the marquee brands than to have them play a Deion-less Colorado or even Utah.

I think it's perfectly acceptable to both want and believe two very different things can and will happen. Don't you? Surely you don't go through life without desires and you only look at situations with the practicality of a mathematician?

I'm not trying to get sidetracked here, but if everyone only looked at what they believe will happen rather than what they want, nothing would change, nothing would improve, and we'd be worse off stuck in the mire of stagnation.

(04-09-2024 10:13 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  So, I would grant (as I have done seemingly dozens of times already) that the lower halves of the Big Ten and SEC are vulnerable to an elite brand Super League (as opposed to the “Super League” proposed here that really isn’t anything more than a P4 breakaway with an attempt to reorganize everyone back to the alignment of 1990). If you’re saying that the networks don’t care about USC vs. Illinois, you might be right, but the networks have also been clear that they don’t care about USC vs. Arizona. The TV revenue maximization point for the elite brands isn’t to swap those games around, but rather eliminate all of those lower tier games entirely. That certainly doesn’t point to the concept proposed in the OP article.

Regionalism is dead in entertainment. The fact that it lasted this long in college football is actually an anomaly compared to much larger global forces. People that are still thinking in terms of the South or Midwest or West Coast are speaking a language that honestly died in virtually all other parts of entertainment already. Top team brands are national and top stars are global. The women’s national title game didn’t just draw over 18 million viewers because of regionalism or even that it was a Big Ten-SEC matchup with huge fan bases, but that a megastar transcends all regionalism completely where people from NYC to LA to Florida are watching a women’s basketball team from the middle of Iowa. THAT is what the TV networks are shooting for in all of these conference realignment moves. People don’t have to like it, but that force won’t be stopped. They want star power, which comes in the form of top brands, top individual stars, and optimally a high combination of both. It’s possible that Illinois will become a victim of that someday as opposed to the beneficiary, but my personal fandom doesn’t and shouldn’t impact my analysis on this subject if I’m trying to be an objective observer. (If anything, I’m presenting a clear statement against my own self-interest.)

The simple fact high up execs are talking about this, floating it out there, and going as far as presenting it has no resonation alluding to the fork up ahead?

Regionalism is NOT dead. While it may be tossed aside for college football—except of course almost every SEC game and the majority of Big Ten rivalries—Olympic sports are still tied to football and nobody can look at anybody else in the room with a straight face and say it's a good thing for USC to send their Olympic sports teams across the country half the season.

If the execs had actually included the Big Ten and SEC, then we can say that they were “talking about it” in earnest. The fact that they didn’t include anyone from the Big Ten and SEC, who are the ones with the actual decision-making power, means that the proposal has about as much credence as the “fantasy conference lineups” that we post on this forum. The Big Ten and SEC are imposing whatever system that they want on everyone else as opposed to the other way around. I think even the most hardened ACC or Big 12 fan would need to acknowledge this at this point.

And to this argument that regionalism isn’t dead… what the heck have we all been watching in conference realignment for the past 25 years? Every decision is being made by an handful of people in an handful of offices in NYC and LA. The only “rural” place that they even understand might be Bristol, CT. I’m trying to imagine if Disney CEO Bob Iger has ever set foot in Tuscaloosa or any SEC stadium, for that matter. I can’t imagine anyone saying with a straight face, “That guy understands the South!”

Yet, he’s literally more important to SEC power than any single person anywhere. He’s not interested in the SEC because of regionalism. The Walt Disney Company invests in the SEC because Disney is in the business of showcasing huge national (and optimally international) forms of entertainment and the SEC has had a proven track record of doing that. We’re seriously arguing the motivations of The Walt Disney Company, which is the single biggest exporter of IP of any company in America? So many posters here subscribe to grandiose claims about what ESPN wants and will do, yet somehow go “small” in missing the basic point that Disney’s entire business is mass market national and international entertainment. That’s the whole definition of Disney! Disney isn’t interested in regional media properties just like it isn’t interested in regional Six Flags-type theme parks. They look at things on a MUCH bigger scale.

(04-09-2024 11:35 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  And to this argument that regionalism isn’t dead… what the heck have we all been watching in conference realignment for the past 25 years? Every decision is being made by an handful of people in an handful of offices in NYC and LA. The only “rural” place that they even understand might be Bristol, CT. I’m trying to imagine if Disney CEO Bob Iger has ever set foot in Tuscaloosa or any SEC stadium, for that matter. I can’t imagine anyone saying with a straight face, “That guy understands the South!”

Yet, he’s literally more important to SEC power than any single person anywhere. He’s not interested in the SEC because of regionalism. The Walt Disney Company invests in the SEC because Disney is in the business of showcasing huge national (and optimally international) forms of entertainment and the SEC has had a proven track record of doing that. We’re seriously arguing the motivations of The Walt Disney Company, which is the single biggest exporter of IP of any company in America? So many posters here subscribe to grandiose claims about what ESPN wants and will do, yet somehow go “small” in missing the basic point that Disney’s entire business is mass market national and international entertainment. That’s the whole definition of Disney! Disney isn’t interested in regional media properties just like it isn’t interested in regional Six Flags-type theme parks. They look at things on a MUCH bigger scale.

So are you going to address my points regarding regionalism or just make up one and argue against it?

(04-09-2024 11:57 AM)esayem Wrote:  

(04-09-2024 11:35 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  And to this argument that regionalism isn’t dead… what the heck have we all been watching in conference realignment for the past 25 years? Every decision is being made by an handful of people in an handful of offices in NYC and LA. The only “rural” place that they even understand might be Bristol, CT. I’m trying to imagine if Disney CEO Bob Iger has ever set foot in Tuscaloosa or any SEC stadium, for that matter. I can’t imagine anyone saying with a straight face, “That guy understands the South!”

Yet, he’s literally more important to SEC power than any single person anywhere. He’s not interested in the SEC because of regionalism. The Walt Disney Company invests in the SEC because Disney is in the business of showcasing huge national (and optimally international) forms of entertainment and the SEC has had a proven track record of doing that. We’re seriously arguing the motivations of The Walt Disney Company, which is the single biggest exporter of IP of any company in America? So many posters here subscribe to grandiose claims about what ESPN wants and will do, yet somehow go “small” in missing the basic point that Disney’s entire business is mass market national and international entertainment. That’s the whole definition of Disney! Disney isn’t interested in regional media properties just like it isn’t interested in regional Six Flags-type theme parks. They look at things on a MUCH bigger scale.

So are you going to address my points regarding regionalism or just make up one and argue against it?

The points about travel for non-football sports, loss of tradition, regional ties, etc.? They’ve been rehashed a million times. People thought this about the ACC adding Boston College and Miami and even the Big Ten adding Penn State (much less Rutgers and Maryland). The boundaries of what is “regional” keeps getting stretched and stretched further to the point where we are now where it’s more like the NFC and AFC than anything to do with geography. That’s not a “good” or “bad” statement - it’s a reflection of where we’re at. Whether it makes sense to send USC (or Stanford or Cal) Olympic sports to the East Coast because of football has been asked a million times and the upshot is that this is the cost of doing business at the top level of football. Either you adapt or die.

Certainly, the recruitment for top talent isn’t regional. Duke and UNC don’t depend on basketball recruits from North Carolina. Alabama and Ohio State don’t depend on football recruits from their home states. Once upon a time, regionalism mattered a lot in recruiting, but in an NIL world with effective free agency with the transfer portal, college sports honestly have an even more pure nationalized talent market compared to pro sports. If talent is nationalized (or even global for basketball and a lot of Olympic sports), it stands to reason that the teams and their leagues will become more nationalized, too. The Michigan Wolverines aren’t any more dependent on Michigan-based talent than the Detroit Lions.

I mean, Stanford and Cal going to the ACC proves the point. These aren’t great football programs (albeit I think Stanford gets underrated by a lot of people here), they’re not making much TV money in their ACC deal… and yet they were pretty outright adamant that this move was necessary for their *Olympic* sports just as much as football and basketball. And they’re right! This is a national/global market for top talent and that means that the top talent *wants* that national platform. Olympic-level swimmers and track stars don’t think twice about traveling from California to Florida when the top talent needs to compete in Europe and Asia, too.

Fans don’t have to personally like this, which is fine. However, there’s no putting the proverbial genie back in the bottle here. This is a national battle for talent and that inherently means all of the top level for all college sports will be nationalized. Either adapt or die.

Frank the Tank's new catch phrase seems to be "either adapt or die."

I kind of miss his "think like a university president."

(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!"

(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."

Ha! Yes - believe me, I liked conference analysis where it seemed that there could be multiple paths to success. That path to the top has become narrower and a whole slew of other forces (e.g. courts, legislation, TV networks, etc.) have made this a binary choice for schools and conferences: either play the game how it is today or don’t play at all. It’s like asking how to build an NBA champion today: the answer is to get a top 10 superstar at a minimum. There is no other path - a “Moneyball” strategy doesn’t exist. That’s essentially how it is now in conference realignment where it has turned into “Big Ten/SEC or bust”. All other realignment discussions have seemingly turned into a bunch of minnows fighting with each other to see who can avoid being eaten. That saddens me even as a Big Ten guy.

That being said, I’m all about nostalgia as much as anyone, but if there’s any environment where nostalgia can actually *hurt* you, it’s right now. The only thing clinging to the past risks doing is letting the rest of the world pass you by.

Now, to the extent that I have “optimism”, I think pretty much everyone of note (and I mean virtually everyone in Division I, much less the P4) will adapt. Whether it’s sunk costs, delusions of grandeur, and/or pure hubris, I will never underestimate the will and desire of parties to pursue sports at the top level (no matter how nonsensical it might look from the outside). It’s too intoxicating and the very schools that might superficially have the least amount of money to support Division I sports are often the exact ones that will tell themselves that they need sports to survive as institutions overall.

(04-09-2024 12:49 PM)bill dazzle Wrote:  Frank the Tank's new catch phrase seems to be "either adapt or die."
....

That, or 'The Walt Disney Company™'

Quote:I kind of miss his "think like a university president."

I will note the irony that I have said that there is no Moneyball strategy in conference realignment anymore while, at the same time, the most famous modern use of “Adapt or Die” is from Billy Beane (or at least Brad Pitt’s portrayal of him) in Moneyball.

(04-09-2024 12:37 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(04-09-2024 11:57 AM)esayem Wrote:  

(04-09-2024 11:35 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  And to this argument that regionalism isn’t dead… what the heck have we all been watching in conference realignment for the past 25 years? Every decision is being made by an handful of people in an handful of offices in NYC and LA. The only “rural” place that they even understand might be Bristol, CT. I’m trying to imagine if Disney CEO Bob Iger has ever set foot in Tuscaloosa or any SEC stadium, for that matter. I can’t imagine anyone saying with a straight face, “That guy understands the South!”

Yet, he’s literally more important to SEC power than any single person anywhere. He’s not interested in the SEC because of regionalism. The Walt Disney Company invests in the SEC because Disney is in the business of showcasing huge national (and optimally international) forms of entertainment and the SEC has had a proven track record of doing that. We’re seriously arguing the motivations of The Walt Disney Company, which is the single biggest exporter of IP of any company in America? So many posters here subscribe to grandiose claims about what ESPN wants and will do, yet somehow go “small” in missing the basic point that Disney’s entire business is mass market national and international entertainment. That’s the whole definition of Disney! Disney isn’t interested in regional media properties just like it isn’t interested in regional Six Flags-type theme parks. They look at things on a MUCH bigger scale.

So are you going to address my points regarding regionalism or just make up one and argue against it?

The points about travel for non-football sports, loss of tradition, regional ties, etc.? They’ve been rehashed a million times. People thought this about the ACC adding Boston College and Miami and even the Big Ten adding Penn State (much less Rutgers and Maryland). The boundaries of what is “regional” keeps getting stretched and stretched further to the point where we are now where it’s more like the NFC and AFC than anything to do with geography. That’s not a “good” or “bad” statement - it’s a reflection of where we’re at. Whether it makes sense to send USC (or Stanford or Cal) Olympic sports to the East Coast because of football has been asked a million times and the upshot is that this is the cost of doing business at the top level of football. Either you adapt or die.

Certainly, the recruitment for top talent isn’t regional. Duke and UNC don’t depend on basketball recruits from North Carolina. Alabama and Ohio State don’t depend on football recruits from their home states. Once upon a time, regionalism mattered a lot in recruiting, but in an NIL world with effective free agency with the transfer portal, college sports honestly have an even more pure nationalized talent market compared to pro sports. If talent is nationalized (or even global for basketball and a lot of Olympic sports), it stands to reason that the teams and their leagues will become more nationalized, too. The Michigan Wolverines aren’t any more dependent on Michigan-based talent than the Detroit Lions.

I mean, Stanford and Cal going to the ACC proves the point. These aren’t great football programs (albeit I think Stanford gets underrated by a lot of people here), they’re not making much TV money in their ACC deal… and yet they were pretty outright adamant that this move was necessary for their *Olympic* sports just as much as football and basketball. And they’re right! This is a national/global market for top talent and that means that the top talent *wants* that national platform. Olympic-level swimmers and track stars don’t think twice about traveling from California to Florida when the top talent needs to compete in Europe and Asia, too.

Fans don’t have to personally like this, which is fine. However, there’s no putting the proverbial genie back in the bottle here. This is a national battle for talent and that inherently means all of the top level for all college sports will be nationalized. Either adapt or die.

I think back to my school days when we were in the SWC. Baylor was 90 min away. So was Texas. SMU, TCU, Houston and Rice weren't much further, maybe 3.5 hrs max to get to any of them. Lubbock and Baton Rouge were a LONG drive b/c they were 400 miles away (we played LSU all 5 years I was in school, and we were 5-0 against them, too!). The Colorado game my senior year really stood out b/c it was just SO FAR AWAY. Then a few years after I graduated, CU was in-conference and most of the nearby schools were not. Later, LSU/Arky/etc took their place, but the SEC wasn't any more "regional" for us than the Big 12 was. It was a bit worse for us at first, now with OUT joining up it will be about the same as the original Big 12 was for us.

What's the takeaway? Regionalism is a worthy goal for college athletics, but there has to be money in it. There wasn't enough money in the Regionalism of the SWC. There was enough in the Big 12, and there's more than enough in the SEC, and both of those are still "Regional" in the sense that they're a grouping of powerful schools in adjacent regions, just not as many from each individual region. We talk about Regionalism a lot in the SEC b/c it helps make us unique among power conferences these days, while the B1G guys talk a lot about their many power markets. They're both reasonable arguments, though neither makes any sense if you have UAB and Long Beach St instead of Alabama and USC in your ranks.

(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.

(04-09-2024 12:37 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(04-09-2024 11:57 AM)esayem Wrote:  

(04-09-2024 11:35 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  And to this argument that regionalism isn’t dead… what the heck have we all been watching in conference realignment for the past 25 years? Every decision is being made by an handful of people in an handful of offices in NYC and LA. The only “rural” place that they even understand might be Bristol, CT. I’m trying to imagine if Disney CEO Bob Iger has ever set foot in Tuscaloosa or any SEC stadium, for that matter. I can’t imagine anyone saying with a straight face, “That guy understands the South!”

Yet, he’s literally more important to SEC power than any single person anywhere. He’s not interested in the SEC because of regionalism. The Walt Disney Company invests in the SEC because Disney is in the business of showcasing huge national (and optimally international) forms of entertainment and the SEC has had a proven track record of doing that. We’re seriously arguing the motivations of The Walt Disney Company, which is the single biggest exporter of IP of any company in America? So many posters here subscribe to grandiose claims about what ESPN wants and will do, yet somehow go “small” in missing the basic point that Disney’s entire business is mass market national and international entertainment. That’s the whole definition of Disney! Disney isn’t interested in regional media properties just like it isn’t interested in regional Six Flags-type theme parks. They look at things on a MUCH bigger scale.

So are you going to address my points regarding regionalism or just make up one and argue against it?

The points about travel for non-football sports, loss of tradition, regional ties, etc.? They’ve been rehashed a million times. People thought this about the ACC adding Boston College and Miami and even the Big Ten adding Penn State (much less Rutgers and Maryland). The boundaries of what is “regional” keeps getting stretched and stretched further to the point where we are now where it’s more like the NFC and AFC than anything to do with geography. That’s not a “good” or “bad” statement - it’s a reflection of where we’re at. Whether it makes sense to send USC (or Stanford or Cal) Olympic sports to the East Coast because of football has been asked a million times and the upshot is that this is the cost of doing business at the top level of football. Either you adapt or die.

Certainly, the recruitment for top talent isn’t regional. Duke and UNC don’t depend on basketball recruits from North Carolina. Alabama and Ohio State don’t depend on football recruits from their home states. Once upon a time, regionalism mattered a lot in recruiting, but in an NIL world with effective free agency with the transfer portal, college sports honestly have an even more pure nationalized talent market compared to pro sports. If talent is nationalized (or even global for basketball and a lot of Olympic sports), it stands to reason that the teams and their leagues will become more nationalized, too. The Michigan Wolverines aren’t any more dependent on Michigan-based talent than the Detroit Lions.

I mean, Stanford and Cal going to the ACC proves the point. These aren’t great football programs (albeit I think Stanford gets underrated by a lot of people here), they’re not making much TV money in their ACC deal… and yet they were pretty outright adamant that this move was necessary for their *Olympic* sports just as much as football and basketball. And they’re right! This is a national/global market for top talent and that means that the top talent *wants* that national platform. Olympic-level swimmers and track stars don’t think twice about traveling from California to Florida when the top talent needs to compete in Europe and Asia, too.

Fans don’t have to personally like this, which is fine. However, there’s no putting the proverbial genie back in the bottle here. This is a national battle for talent and that inherently means all of the top level for all college sports will be nationalized. Either adapt or die.

My quote: Regionalism is NOT dead. While it may be tossed aside for college football—except of course almost every SEC game and the majority of Big Ten rivalries—Olympic sports are still tied to football and nobody can look at anybody else in the room with a straight face and say it's a good thing for USC to send their Olympic sports teams across the country half the season.

Regionalism is at the heart of every single major college sports rivalry except Notre Dame vs USC.

USC vs Michigan will never usurp Michigan vs Ohio State. Why do you think that is?

No doubt that college football has been driven to the national level, I mean just look at the Big Ten: they've exhausted all possible regional resources, save Notre Dame. The Big Ten had to adapt and expand beyond its region or else it wasn't going to increase its revenues.

My argument concerning regionalism is that it is not dead (see every major rivalry) and what's best for football is not what's best for non-revenue sports. Your Stanford example fails to account for the football-driven revenue that supplies the lifeblood to non-revenue sports. So it was still a direct football revenue decision. Financials the same, would it not be better for Stanford and Cal to play football/basketball in the ACC while keeping their non-revenue sports in the Pac 12, with UCLA, USC, UO, and UW's non-revenue sports? I mean we've had coaches that work in this environment everyday tell us this would be better.

I already anticipate your response: "it doesn't work that way because it hasn't worked that way." Well, by next media contract it might make more financial sense for it to work that way.

(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.

(04-09-2024 01:09 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  That being said, I’m all about nostalgia as much as anyone, but if there’s any environment where nostalgia can actually *hurt* you, it’s right now. The only thing clinging to the past risks doing is letting the rest of the world pass you by.

You keep mentioning this, but nothing in the super league proposal outlined divisions, that was some of us here. The Big Ten has all of its regional rivalries intact, so it's easy for you to sit there and be nostalgic while also offering your advice.

(04-09-2024 01:21 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  I will note the irony that I have said that there is no Moneyball strategy in conference realignment anymore while, at the same time, the most famous modern use of “Adapt or Die” is from Billy Beane (or at least Brad Pitt’s portrayal of him) in Moneyball.

Arguments from scale represent a 2-sided coin that can flip either way.

You can say 'Look how vast and mighty The Walt Disney Company™ is! Gaze upon its works, ye sports fans, and despair!'

And of course we can agree. 'My, The Walt Disney Company™, how vast you are! So incredibly huge! We are all really impressed down here, we just want you to know that!'



Agreeing on that impression of vastness we can jump to either of two assumptions.

Vast Indifference
'The Walt Disney Company™ is too concerned with big, vast, mighty cosmic matters to take much interest in miniscule, penny-ante operations like ESPN and the CFP and conference realignment.'

Vast Agency
'The Walt Disney Company™ is so big, vast, mighty and cosmic that it can easily resolve any miniscule, penny-ante housekeeping problems plaguing one of its subsidiaries.'

The coin flips either way. All we really know is 'vast.'

Size = size. Size ≠ motive. Conjectures about that remain a coin toss.

Hit it and we congratulate ourselves. Miss it and we're left with 'The Walt Disney Company™ works in mysterious ways!'

(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.

Right - it’s the same in the sense that a university president’s goal is to maximize a school’s revenue and that’s generally going to align with what TV executives want. That was actually my point even back in 2009 - the university president thinking on expansion was going to be based on TV revenue as opposed to geography. (Hence why I thought Texas was the biggest prize in realignment regardless of where a conference was located.)

In a world circa 2009 where conference network revenue based on TV markets and cable households could make expansion viable, there were a whole lot more viable expansion candidates to examine. As a result, the university president analysis was a lot more detailed - a lot of schools could provide similar revenue, so factors such as academic fit, institutional alignment and demographics needed to be considered.

Today, it’s honestly a simpler analysis today because there are so few schools left (probably what we can count on one hand) that are financially viable expansion candidates for the Big Ten and SEC. We’ve gone from a universe from 20-plus viable expansion candidates to 5 or less.
It’s just all going to be determined by pure TV revenue concerns at this point. Like I’ve said, it’s like building an NBA champ: the only thing that works is having a top 10 superstar. The Moneyball option that conference networks used to provide is dying and will soon be gone.

(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.

(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.

(04-09-2024 01:09 PM)Frank the Tank 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."

Ha! Yes - believe me, I liked conference analysis where it seemed that there could be multiple paths to success. That path to the top has become narrower and a whole slew of other forces (e.g. courts, legislation, TV networks, etc.) have made this a binary choice for schools and conferences: either play the game how it is today or don’t play at all. It’s like asking how to build an NBA champion today: the answer is to get a top 10 superstar at a minimum. There is no other path - a “Moneyball” strategy doesn’t exist. That’s essentially how it is now in conference realignment where it has turned into “Big Ten/SEC or bust”. All other realignment discussions have seemingly turned into a bunch of minnows fighting with each other to see who can avoid being eaten. That saddens me even as a Big Ten guy.

That being said, I’m all about nostalgia as much as anyone, but if there’s any environment where nostalgia can actually *hurt* you, it’s right now. The only thing clinging to the past risks doing is letting the rest of the world pass you by.

Now, to the extent that I have “optimism”, I think pretty much everyone of note (and I mean virtually everyone in Division I, much less the P4) will adapt. Whether it’s sunk costs, delusions of grandeur, and/or pure hubris, I will never underestimate the will and desire of parties to pursue sports at the top level (no matter how nonsensical it might look from the outside). It’s too intoxicating and the very schools that might superficially have the least amount of money to support Division I sports are often the exact ones that will tell themselves that they need sports to survive as institutions overall.

Vanderbilt and Memphis are examples. And as a fan of both, I'm not sure if I will be gravely embarrassed or pleasantly pleased for the two schools (and for myself) once the dust settles.

(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!"

Had a fresh-out-of-high-school Bill Dazzle, circa 1981, attempted to enlist in the U.S. Marine Corps, the recruiting sergeant likely would have said: "Young man. There is no adapting, innovating and overcoming in either your background or your future. Thank you for your interest and there's the door."