06-01-2008, 08:51 PM
He thinks that would "solve" everyone's problems, partly by destroying the Big East and "forcing" ND into a super conference (see paragraph 6):
http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/sports_...d-eye.html
SEC should eye hostile takeover of college football marketplace
posted by Tim Stephens on May 28, 2008 1:09:43 PM
Discuss This: Comments (13) | TrackBack (0) | Linking Blogs | Add to del.icio.us | Digg it
The Southeastern Conference's annual meetings are taking place this week in pristine Destin, Fla. These year-end vacations for the SEC jet set are usually mostly fun and games -- and not that much business -- along the Gulf of Mexico before the commissioner divides all the millions between the schools.
This year, it's big business. There will be important talk of TV and bowl options. And, of course, there's the money. This year, that payoff is expected to be yet another record, topping last year's take of more than $120 million.
Somewhere, former SEC commissioner Roy Kramer must be proud. Back in my days in Birmingham in the early part of the decade, I was often a critic of the SEC boss, but the man was wise and ruthless. He understood what was coming and where the marketplace would lead. He was saying as far back as 1999 that a bowl for every team without a losing record would be a good thing. He told me as far back as 2001 that getting rid of the I-A and I-AA labels should occur, too, with the implication being that flooding the market with new "major" teams would drive down the prices of game guarantees for teams in his league. On those, he looks prescient today.
He also understood a decade ago, I suspect, that his pet creation known as the Bowl Championship Series would evolve into the dominant entity in college sports. Which, of course, it has. The NCAA and not even Congress have been able to seriously challenge the BCS conference commissioners' power grab.
Please indulge me as I channel Roy and offer some advice to current SEC Commissioner Mike Slive and the gang: Forget the nice-guy approach. Yes, it's admirable that you've cleaned up the cheating and gotten the teams off probation and out of whack-the-rat mode. But no one cares. What they really care about is money -- specifically, making a lot of it and not sharing much of it with freeloaders.
Gordongekko So it's time to go all Gordon Gekko on the rest of college football. It's time for a hostile takeover.
Before we go further, let's review. Call it table-setting for what is to come.
The SEC this week began discussions about forming its own television network. That it's now open for public consumption should be a clue that it's not exactly the first time this has come up behind closed doors and that it's probably much farther along in the process than leaders will confirm now. It's part of a bigger picture. Remember that a convergence of circumstances are on the horizon within the next five years, starting with next summer when the SEC's current TV deals expire.
Also coming:
-- The BCS and the networks will negotiate to extend the current arrangement for four more years beyond the two currently still on the books with Fox. After that, billions upon billions await a legitimate playoff system that the BCS schools will want to keep away from the NCAA.
-- Virtually every major deal between the conferences, the bowls and the television networks will expire;
-- All of the major television contracts between conferences and the networks for regular-season games will expire;
-- The Big East Conference's moratorium on membership changes expires;
-- And the NCAA's $6 billion contract with CBS for rights to the NCAA Tournament expires in 2014.
That's a lot of negotiating. And a lot of potential for leverage and change.
Now, as I don my best Armani suit and slick back my hair, here is what the SEC as college athletics' strongest conference needs to be doing to prepare for all of that. Cue this guy for some inspiration and let's get rolling.
If we define the BCS as what it truly is -- a cartel designed to control the flow of money in major college football for the major conferences -- then we should also play out that definition to its logical cutthroat conclusion. The strong eat the weak, both inside and outside of the cartel. There's no reason to delay that inevitability, either.
A speculative corporate raider might set this agenda for Slive and the SEC over the next half-decade:
1) Get moving on SEC-TV or whatever you are going to call it. Have it ready to trot out in 2009 at the latest. Be prepared to beat the Big 12 and ACC, who'll also probably create their own TV networks, to the punch. This will be important as you'll be competing for the same access to cable systems.
2) Begin your secret negotiations with Texas and Texas A&M to join the SEC. Remember, this is cutthroat business. Adding the Texas market to SEC TV would strengthen negotiating power with the cable companies and greatly enhance the value for the SEC while diminishing the Big 12's. You may have to beat the Big Ten in the race for Texas, by the way.
3) Make private overtures also to ACC and Big East schools that are within the SEC footprint and would add value to the SEC. Doing so may not bring those those teams into the SEC but it would pressure those schools and leagues to get on board with the real plan here: The emergence of the era of the true superconference and the establishment of a multi-billion dollar college football playoff.
4) As leader of the pack, begin the push to 4 to 6 "super conferences" ranging from 12 to 16 members. The SEC. The ACC. The Big 12 (er, Big 14?). Maybe the Big East (or whatever it might be called by then after the football-playing schools split in 2010). And, reluctantly, the Big Ten and Pac-10, who will have no choice but to capitulate this time.
5) Conspire with the ACC and Big Ten to purge the Big Eastern Something of its marquee programs. Folding Syracuse, Rutgers, West Virginia, et al, into existing leagues would enhance TV network values and might eliminate the Big Whatever as an auto-bid league. Ditto for the Notre Dame dilemma. Now, while they are in a weaker-than-usual bargaining position and may not have that NBC lifeline forever, is the time to push the Irish into a league.
6) TV potential will carry some weight. That could mean reevaluating existing membership and perhaps even pushing out small-market teams that don't add value and replacing them with rising programs that do. Tradition, while still a big part of college football, will not be as important as potential and TV market. Baylor types, you are on the clock. And the UCF types, you are, too.
7) Working with the other cartel members, begin negotiations with an outside marketing organization such as this one to form an eight-team college football playoff. This is a deviation from the Kramer Doctrine, as he was a staunch opponent of the bowl system. But the playoff train will leave the station sometime in the second half of the next decade. The tracks are being laid now.
8) And finally, if the non-cartel schools with nothing to add in this new landscape want to complain too loudly about their table scraps, break away from the NCAA. Entirely. A much bigger, better version of this can become your new March Madness. You can rewrite the rule book and get rid of archaic bureaucracy. You can be the leader toward streamlining into a more modern organization that attends to the needs of the most powerful without holding them down in the interest of "fairness" to programs that have neither contributed to the creation of the wealth nor made the commitments or built the infrastructure necessary to do so in the future.
Remember, as Gordon Gekko might say:
The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save the Southeastern Conference, but that other malfunctioning corporation called college athletics. Thank you very much.
http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/sports_...d-eye.html
SEC should eye hostile takeover of college football marketplace
posted by Tim Stephens on May 28, 2008 1:09:43 PM
Discuss This: Comments (13) | TrackBack (0) | Linking Blogs | Add to del.icio.us | Digg it
The Southeastern Conference's annual meetings are taking place this week in pristine Destin, Fla. These year-end vacations for the SEC jet set are usually mostly fun and games -- and not that much business -- along the Gulf of Mexico before the commissioner divides all the millions between the schools.
This year, it's big business. There will be important talk of TV and bowl options. And, of course, there's the money. This year, that payoff is expected to be yet another record, topping last year's take of more than $120 million.
Somewhere, former SEC commissioner Roy Kramer must be proud. Back in my days in Birmingham in the early part of the decade, I was often a critic of the SEC boss, but the man was wise and ruthless. He understood what was coming and where the marketplace would lead. He was saying as far back as 1999 that a bowl for every team without a losing record would be a good thing. He told me as far back as 2001 that getting rid of the I-A and I-AA labels should occur, too, with the implication being that flooding the market with new "major" teams would drive down the prices of game guarantees for teams in his league. On those, he looks prescient today.
He also understood a decade ago, I suspect, that his pet creation known as the Bowl Championship Series would evolve into the dominant entity in college sports. Which, of course, it has. The NCAA and not even Congress have been able to seriously challenge the BCS conference commissioners' power grab.
Please indulge me as I channel Roy and offer some advice to current SEC Commissioner Mike Slive and the gang: Forget the nice-guy approach. Yes, it's admirable that you've cleaned up the cheating and gotten the teams off probation and out of whack-the-rat mode. But no one cares. What they really care about is money -- specifically, making a lot of it and not sharing much of it with freeloaders.
Gordongekko So it's time to go all Gordon Gekko on the rest of college football. It's time for a hostile takeover.
Before we go further, let's review. Call it table-setting for what is to come.
The SEC this week began discussions about forming its own television network. That it's now open for public consumption should be a clue that it's not exactly the first time this has come up behind closed doors and that it's probably much farther along in the process than leaders will confirm now. It's part of a bigger picture. Remember that a convergence of circumstances are on the horizon within the next five years, starting with next summer when the SEC's current TV deals expire.
Also coming:
-- The BCS and the networks will negotiate to extend the current arrangement for four more years beyond the two currently still on the books with Fox. After that, billions upon billions await a legitimate playoff system that the BCS schools will want to keep away from the NCAA.
-- Virtually every major deal between the conferences, the bowls and the television networks will expire;
-- All of the major television contracts between conferences and the networks for regular-season games will expire;
-- The Big East Conference's moratorium on membership changes expires;
-- And the NCAA's $6 billion contract with CBS for rights to the NCAA Tournament expires in 2014.
That's a lot of negotiating. And a lot of potential for leverage and change.
Now, as I don my best Armani suit and slick back my hair, here is what the SEC as college athletics' strongest conference needs to be doing to prepare for all of that. Cue this guy for some inspiration and let's get rolling.
If we define the BCS as what it truly is -- a cartel designed to control the flow of money in major college football for the major conferences -- then we should also play out that definition to its logical cutthroat conclusion. The strong eat the weak, both inside and outside of the cartel. There's no reason to delay that inevitability, either.
A speculative corporate raider might set this agenda for Slive and the SEC over the next half-decade:
1) Get moving on SEC-TV or whatever you are going to call it. Have it ready to trot out in 2009 at the latest. Be prepared to beat the Big 12 and ACC, who'll also probably create their own TV networks, to the punch. This will be important as you'll be competing for the same access to cable systems.
2) Begin your secret negotiations with Texas and Texas A&M to join the SEC. Remember, this is cutthroat business. Adding the Texas market to SEC TV would strengthen negotiating power with the cable companies and greatly enhance the value for the SEC while diminishing the Big 12's. You may have to beat the Big Ten in the race for Texas, by the way.
3) Make private overtures also to ACC and Big East schools that are within the SEC footprint and would add value to the SEC. Doing so may not bring those those teams into the SEC but it would pressure those schools and leagues to get on board with the real plan here: The emergence of the era of the true superconference and the establishment of a multi-billion dollar college football playoff.
4) As leader of the pack, begin the push to 4 to 6 "super conferences" ranging from 12 to 16 members. The SEC. The ACC. The Big 12 (er, Big 14?). Maybe the Big East (or whatever it might be called by then after the football-playing schools split in 2010). And, reluctantly, the Big Ten and Pac-10, who will have no choice but to capitulate this time.
5) Conspire with the ACC and Big Ten to purge the Big Eastern Something of its marquee programs. Folding Syracuse, Rutgers, West Virginia, et al, into existing leagues would enhance TV network values and might eliminate the Big Whatever as an auto-bid league. Ditto for the Notre Dame dilemma. Now, while they are in a weaker-than-usual bargaining position and may not have that NBC lifeline forever, is the time to push the Irish into a league.
6) TV potential will carry some weight. That could mean reevaluating existing membership and perhaps even pushing out small-market teams that don't add value and replacing them with rising programs that do. Tradition, while still a big part of college football, will not be as important as potential and TV market. Baylor types, you are on the clock. And the UCF types, you are, too.
7) Working with the other cartel members, begin negotiations with an outside marketing organization such as this one to form an eight-team college football playoff. This is a deviation from the Kramer Doctrine, as he was a staunch opponent of the bowl system. But the playoff train will leave the station sometime in the second half of the next decade. The tracks are being laid now.
8) And finally, if the non-cartel schools with nothing to add in this new landscape want to complain too loudly about their table scraps, break away from the NCAA. Entirely. A much bigger, better version of this can become your new March Madness. You can rewrite the rule book and get rid of archaic bureaucracy. You can be the leader toward streamlining into a more modern organization that attends to the needs of the most powerful without holding them down in the interest of "fairness" to programs that have neither contributed to the creation of the wealth nor made the commitments or built the infrastructure necessary to do so in the future.
Remember, as Gordon Gekko might say:
The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save the Southeastern Conference, but that other malfunctioning corporation called college athletics. Thank you very much.