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Full Version: What criteria should major programs require for membership in a new athletic assn?
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If P5 schools, and some major basketball leagues, want to break away from the NCAA, how should they decide who gets to be a member? I don't think a simple invitation only would pass anti-trust muster. How would they decide who gets to join and who doesn't? And can they require that qualification be achieved by a certain date, so as to avoid the membership creep that has so diluted the FBS?
It's been discussed ad nauseam already. It essentially is the same as with conferences. Quality of facilities, number of required sports offered, size of venues, level of economic commitment to the sports which may include athletic endowment sizes, annual contribution levels, and average ticket sales. Scholarship limits and graduation rates should also be set.

At least a new association would not likely be a share and share alike organization like a conference so the standards would have some latitude.
Also, each member school should pay a substantial annual fee to this new "association" with the total amount of fees being sufficient to cover all of the association's overhead.

I.e., the operations should be pay-as-you-go, all the time. No more letting the "association" collect and control billions of dollars in annual revenue. Using the March Madness money to fund the NCAA operations and provide it with a nine-figure "reserve" account is a major corrupting influence on the NCAA. It motivates the NCAA to tread too lightly when dealing with the schools whose basketball programs make March Madness most valuable. It also motivates the NCAA to continually become more bloated, given that they have no real budgetary concerns with the giant surplus gifted to them by CBS and Turner.
Should there be different criteria for schools which play football than for those who don't? And should schools that are currently in a P5 conference be grandfathered in, even if they would not be able to qualify based only on their self-generated resources? Or would the criteria be "reverse engineered" to be sure they all qualify?
(03-15-2018 10:47 AM)ken d Wrote: [ -> ]Should there be different criteria for schools which play football than for those who don't? And should schools that are currently in a P5 conference be grandfathered in, even if they would not be able to qualify based only on their self-generated resources? Or would the criteria be "reverse engineered" to be sure they all qualify?

You cover member by requisite require sports. Those schools that don't offer football can form their own association. And there can be no sliding scale and relatively well defined minimums. Nothing needs to be jobbed or reverse engineered. If handled properly the segregation would be self imposed, or overcome by meeting requirements.
(03-15-2018 11:08 AM)JRsec Wrote: [ -> ]
(03-15-2018 10:47 AM)ken d Wrote: [ -> ]Should there be different criteria for schools which play football than for those who don't? And should schools that are currently in a P5 conference be grandfathered in, even if they would not be able to qualify based only on their self-generated resources? Or would the criteria be "reverse engineered" to be sure they all qualify?

You cover member by requisite require sports. Those schools that don't offer football can form their own association. And there can be no sliding scale and relatively well defined minimums. Nothing needs to be jobbed or reverse engineered. If handled properly the segregation would be self imposed, or overcome by meeting requirements.

So you wouldn't include the Big East, despite their basketball prowess. Does that diminish the basketball championship for what amounts to a College Football Association?

IIRC, the MAC successfully challenged their relegation to FCS at the time of the split, and were allowed back into the FBS. How do you prevent similar legal challenges to your criteria, which puts us back into a self selected membership situation?
(03-15-2018 11:34 AM)ken d Wrote: [ -> ]
(03-15-2018 11:08 AM)JRsec Wrote: [ -> ]
(03-15-2018 10:47 AM)ken d Wrote: [ -> ]Should there be different criteria for schools which play football than for those who don't? And should schools that are currently in a P5 conference be grandfathered in, even if they would not be able to qualify based only on their self-generated resources? Or would the criteria be "reverse engineered" to be sure they all qualify?

You cover member by requisite require sports. Those schools that don't offer football can form their own association. And there can be no sliding scale and relatively well defined minimums. Nothing needs to be jobbed or reverse engineered. If handled properly the segregation would be self imposed, or overcome by meeting requirements.

So you wouldn't include the Big East, despite their basketball prowess. Does that diminish the basketball championship for what amounts to a College Football Association?

IIRC, the MAC successfully challenged their relegation to FCS at the time of the split, and were allowed back into the FBS. How do you prevent similar legal challenges to your criteria, which puts us back into a self selected membership situation?

Permeability prevents legal action.

There is no reason that a national basketball tournament couldn't have its own criteria. The basketball schools when meeting basketball minimums could easily participate as they do now. The same is true for baseball and softball.
(03-15-2018 11:34 AM)ken d Wrote: [ -> ]So you wouldn't include the Big East, despite their basketball prowess. Does that diminish the basketball championship for what amounts to a College Football Association?

You can always invite teams to your basketball tournament that are not members of your "association".

Same would be true for any other sport, for that matter.
I guess I'm assuming that if non-football schools aren't in this new association, they would be in some other - whether that's the NCAA or something else. I'm further assuming that other association wouldn't allow its members to participate in someone else's championship tournament. That would pretty much require that a conference like the Big East would have to go it alone - that is, not be a member of any national athletic association - if they wanted to play in the CFA basketball tournament.

For a school like Villanova, which plays FCS football, that could be problematic.
I wouldn't make those assumptions. If Villanova is in Association X, and the best college basketball tournament is sponsored by Association Y, then Villanova and others are not going to tolerate Association X's BS rule that bans them from participating in Association Y's tournament. The rule would be changed or thrown out in court.

The NCAA knew that their rule was going to be nullified by the courts when the NIT sued the NCAA, which is why the NCAA settled the lawsuit by purchasing the NIT.
My thoughts are that members ought to be able to demonstrate that their athletic departments are essentially self sufficient financially. That is, they ought to have sustained annual athletics revenues that don't rely heavily on outside subsidies.

I wouldn't want to exclude an AAC or MWC school because their conference's media contract is dramatically lower than other conferences. On the other hand, I wouldn't want to include a school whose revenue threshold is only met because the school chooses to subsidize them heavily from its general funds.

If playing football is one of the criteria, I guess that's not an unreasonable way to differentiate your membership. There is certainly nothing subjective about that. It's cut and dried.

I don't know where the dollar threshold should be for revenues, but whatever it is I think it should only include income from the following sources:

Gate receipts
Athletic Department endowments
Donations other than one time donations for capital projects
Student athletics fees, not to exceed $600 per student per year
Media revenues, excluding conference media contracts

The threshold IMO should be an average of the most recent three years to avoid gamesmanship by some well heeled booster willing to buy his school's entry into the CFA.

I'm guessing the service academies might opt out on principle, and because they wouldn't want to be limited in who they can play in sports besides football. Depending on where you set the number, you could wind up with a membership in the 80-90 range, and probably nearer the low end of that range. I would consider that pretty reasonable if your goal is to have only members with similar resources competing against each other.
(03-15-2018 01:16 PM)Wedge Wrote: [ -> ]I wouldn't make those assumptions. If Villanova is in Association X, and the best college basketball tournament is sponsored by Association Y, then Villanova and others are not going to tolerate Association X's BS rule that bans them from participating in Association Y's tournament. The rule would be changed or thrown out in court.

The NCAA knew that their rule was going to be nullified by the courts when the NIT sued the NCAA, which is why the NCAA settled the lawsuit by purchasing the NIT.

I don't see why, as a condition of membership, that Association X can't require that all their conference champions represent them in the Association Championship tournament. if the Big East doesn't want to agree to that, they are free to form their own association.
(03-15-2018 01:27 PM)ken d Wrote: [ -> ]
(03-15-2018 01:16 PM)Wedge Wrote: [ -> ]I wouldn't make those assumptions. If Villanova is in Association X, and the best college basketball tournament is sponsored by Association Y, then Villanova and others are not going to tolerate Association X's BS rule that bans them from participating in Association Y's tournament. The rule would be changed or thrown out in court.

The NCAA knew that their rule was going to be nullified by the courts when the NIT sued the NCAA, which is why the NCAA settled the lawsuit by purchasing the NIT.

I don't see why, as a condition of membership, that Association X can't require that all their conference champions represent them in the Association Championship tournament. if the Big East doesn't want to agree to that, they are free to form their own association.

The NCAA's rule is much more broad than that. Every Division I member, if invited to the NCAA tournament either as an automatic bid or at-large team, is required to either play in the NCAA tournament or no tournament at all. They are only permitted to play in other tournaments if not selected for the NCAA tournament.
(03-15-2018 01:18 PM)ken d Wrote: [ -> ]My thoughts are that members ought to be able to demonstrate that their athletic departments are essentially self sufficient financially. That is, they ought to have sustained annual athletics revenues that don't rely heavily on outside subsidies.

I wouldn't want to exclude an AAC or MWC school because their conference's media contract is dramatically lower than other conferences. On the other hand, I wouldn't want to include a school whose revenue threshold is only met because the school chooses to subsidize them heavily from its general funds.

If playing football is one of the criteria, I guess that's not an unreasonable way to differentiate your membership. There is certainly nothing subjective about that. It's cut and dried.

I don't know where the dollar threshold should be for revenues, but whatever it is I think it should only include income from the following sources:

Gate receipts
Athletic Department endowments
Donations other than one time donations for capital projects
Student athletics fees, not to exceed $600 per student per year
Media revenues, excluding conference media contracts

The threshold IMO should be an average of the most recent three years to avoid gamesmanship by some well heeled booster willing to buy his school's entry into the CFA.

I'm guessing the service academies might opt out on principle, and because they wouldn't want to be limited in who they can play in sports besides football. Depending on where you set the number, you could wind up with a membership in the 80-90 range, and probably nearer the low end of that range. I would consider that pretty reasonable if your goal is to have only members with similar resources competing against each other.

There should be a baseline of requisite sports: Football, W. Soccer, M&W Basketball, M&W Indoor/Outdoor Track, M&W Swimming & Diving, M&W Tennis & Golf, Baseball, Softball, W Volleyball.

The baseline on Gross Total Revenue should be $65,000,000 and really that's too low to sustain the value of a program to the better earners.

The baseline on Attendance should be 35,000 hard body count, not tickets sold and should be verifiable. And that's too low.

But those numbers give you the wiggle room on squezzing in the best of the G5.

Whether those numbers need to be handicapped for privates I don't know? Wake Forest, Vandy, Duke, and a few others would have difficulty at these norms. But if you lower them you may as well not even have a boundary.

Kansas and UConn averaged 24,000 and 20,000 respectively for football attendance last year.

I do think the minimums I've suggested would make the upper tier more competitive and might force some schools into the basketball (no football grouping). And that too might make for better competition.
(03-15-2018 02:00 PM)JRsec Wrote: [ -> ]
(03-15-2018 01:18 PM)ken d Wrote: [ -> ]My thoughts are that members ought to be able to demonstrate that their athletic departments are essentially self sufficient financially. That is, they ought to have sustained annual athletics revenues that don't rely heavily on outside subsidies.

I wouldn't want to exclude an AAC or MWC school because their conference's media contract is dramatically lower than other conferences. On the other hand, I wouldn't want to include a school whose revenue threshold is only met because the school chooses to subsidize them heavily from its general funds.

If playing football is one of the criteria, I guess that's not an unreasonable way to differentiate your membership. There is certainly nothing subjective about that. It's cut and dried.

I don't know where the dollar threshold should be for revenues, but whatever it is I think it should only include income from the following sources:

Gate receipts
Athletic Department endowments
Donations other than one time donations for capital projects
Student athletics fees, not to exceed $600 per student per year
Media revenues, excluding conference media contracts

The threshold IMO should be an average of the most recent three years to avoid gamesmanship by some well heeled booster willing to buy his school's entry into the CFA.

I'm guessing the service academies might opt out on principle, and because they wouldn't want to be limited in who they can play in sports besides football. Depending on where you set the number, you could wind up with a membership in the 80-90 range, and probably nearer the low end of that range. I would consider that pretty reasonable if your goal is to have only members with similar resources competing against each other.

There should be a baseline of requisite sports: Football, W. Soccer, M&W Basketball, M&W Indoor/Outdoor Track, M&W Swimming & Diving, M&W Tennis & Golf, Baseball, Softball, W Volleyball.

The baseline on Gross Total Revenue should be $65,000,000 and really that's too low to sustain the value of a program to the better earners.

The baseline on Attendance should be 35,000 hard body count, not tickets sold and should be verifiable. And that's too low.

But those numbers give you the wiggle room on squezzing in the best of the G5.

Whether those numbers need to be handicapped for privates I don't know? Wake Forest, Vandy, Duke, and a few others would have difficulty at these norms. But if you lower them you may as well not even have a boundary.

Kansas and UConn averaged 24,000 and 20,000 respectively for football attendance last year.

I do think the minimums I've suggested would make the upper tier more competitive and might force some schools into the basketball (no football grouping). And that too might make for better competition.

I think an attendance threshold is problematic for a number of reasons. First, a hard body count is very hard to verify. And, it can be gamed. If it's just fannies in seats, a school on the bubble could give away tickets to put themselves over the top. And it's hard to justify as a criterion for disqualification. I would imagine that any number of schools would challenge in court the reasonableness of assuming that a school with attendance of 35,200 is acceptable and one with 34,800 is not. Especially if one is getting $50 a ticket and the other $25.

And 35,000 wouldn't get many G5's in the field. There were only five such schools in 2017: BYU (56.3), San Diego St (39.3), UCF (36.8), ECU (36.7) and Memphis (36.3). It would knock seven P5's out: Kansas (26.6), Duke (26.8), Wake Forest (28.4), Vanderbilt (31.3), Syracuse (33.9) and Oregon St (34.8).
(03-15-2018 03:17 PM)ken d Wrote: [ -> ]
(03-15-2018 02:00 PM)JRsec Wrote: [ -> ]
(03-15-2018 01:18 PM)ken d Wrote: [ -> ]My thoughts are that members ought to be able to demonstrate that their athletic departments are essentially self sufficient financially. That is, they ought to have sustained annual athletics revenues that don't rely heavily on outside subsidies.

I wouldn't want to exclude an AAC or MWC school because their conference's media contract is dramatically lower than other conferences. On the other hand, I wouldn't want to include a school whose revenue threshold is only met because the school chooses to subsidize them heavily from its general funds.

If playing football is one of the criteria, I guess that's not an unreasonable way to differentiate your membership. There is certainly nothing subjective about that. It's cut and dried.

I don't know where the dollar threshold should be for revenues, but whatever it is I think it should only include income from the following sources:

Gate receipts
Athletic Department endowments
Donations other than one time donations for capital projects
Student athletics fees, not to exceed $600 per student per year
Media revenues, excluding conference media contracts

The threshold IMO should be an average of the most recent three years to avoid gamesmanship by some well heeled booster willing to buy his school's entry into the CFA.

I'm guessing the service academies might opt out on principle, and because they wouldn't want to be limited in who they can play in sports besides football. Depending on where you set the number, you could wind up with a membership in the 80-90 range, and probably nearer the low end of that range. I would consider that pretty reasonable if your goal is to have only members with similar resources competing against each other.

There should be a baseline of requisite sports: Football, W. Soccer, M&W Basketball, M&W Indoor/Outdoor Track, M&W Swimming & Diving, M&W Tennis & Golf, Baseball, Softball, W Volleyball.

The baseline on Gross Total Revenue should be $65,000,000 and really that's too low to sustain the value of a program to the better earners.

The baseline on Attendance should be 35,000 hard body count, not tickets sold and should be verifiable. And that's too low.

But those numbers give you the wiggle room on squezzing in the best of the G5.

Whether those numbers need to be handicapped for privates I don't know? Wake Forest, Vandy, Duke, and a few others would have difficulty at these norms. But if you lower them you may as well not even have a boundary.

Kansas and UConn averaged 24,000 and 20,000 respectively for football attendance last year.

I do think the minimums I've suggested would make the upper tier more competitive and might force some schools into the basketball (no football grouping). And that too might make for better competition.

I think an attendance threshold is problematic for a number of reasons. First, a hard body count is very hard to verify. And, it can be gamed. If it's just fannies in seats, a school on the bubble could give away tickets to put themselves over the top. And it's hard to justify as a criterion for disqualification. I would imagine that any number of schools would challenge in court the reasonableness of assuming that a school with attendance of 35,200 is acceptable and one with 34,800 is not. Especially if one is getting $50 a ticket and the other $25.

And 35,000 wouldn't get many G5's in the field. There were only five such schools in 2017: BYU (56.3), San Diego St (39.3), UCF (36.8), ECU (36.7) and Memphis (36.3). It would knock seven P5's out: Kansas (26.6), Duke (26.8), Wake Forest (28.4), Vanderbilt (31.3), Syracuse (33.9) and Oregon St (34.8).

I'm not quibbling here. If it were left up to me the cutoff would be 10,000 more. Really you have no damned business being in D1 if you can't average 45,000 in attendance. It's a gift to be included at 35,000. If you want to count sold tickets that's certainly verifiable.
(03-15-2018 03:50 PM)JRsec Wrote: [ -> ]
(03-15-2018 03:17 PM)ken d Wrote: [ -> ]
(03-15-2018 02:00 PM)JRsec Wrote: [ -> ]
(03-15-2018 01:18 PM)ken d Wrote: [ -> ]My thoughts are that members ought to be able to demonstrate that their athletic departments are essentially self sufficient financially. That is, they ought to have sustained annual athletics revenues that don't rely heavily on outside subsidies.

I wouldn't want to exclude an AAC or MWC school because their conference's media contract is dramatically lower than other conferences. On the other hand, I wouldn't want to include a school whose revenue threshold is only met because the school chooses to subsidize them heavily from its general funds.

If playing football is one of the criteria, I guess that's not an unreasonable way to differentiate your membership. There is certainly nothing subjective about that. It's cut and dried.

I don't know where the dollar threshold should be for revenues, but whatever it is I think it should only include income from the following sources:

Gate receipts
Athletic Department endowments
Donations other than one time donations for capital projects
Student athletics fees, not to exceed $600 per student per year
Media revenues, excluding conference media contracts

The threshold IMO should be an average of the most recent three years to avoid gamesmanship by some well heeled booster willing to buy his school's entry into the CFA.

I'm guessing the service academies might opt out on principle, and because they wouldn't want to be limited in who they can play in sports besides football. Depending on where you set the number, you could wind up with a membership in the 80-90 range, and probably nearer the low end of that range. I would consider that pretty reasonable if your goal is to have only members with similar resources competing against each other.

There should be a baseline of requisite sports: Football, W. Soccer, M&W Basketball, M&W Indoor/Outdoor Track, M&W Swimming & Diving, M&W Tennis & Golf, Baseball, Softball, W Volleyball.

The baseline on Gross Total Revenue should be $65,000,000 and really that's too low to sustain the value of a program to the better earners.

The baseline on Attendance should be 35,000 hard body count, not tickets sold and should be verifiable. And that's too low.

But those numbers give you the wiggle room on squezzing in the best of the G5.

Whether those numbers need to be handicapped for privates I don't know? Wake Forest, Vandy, Duke, and a few others would have difficulty at these norms. But if you lower them you may as well not even have a boundary.

Kansas and UConn averaged 24,000 and 20,000 respectively for football attendance last year.

I do think the minimums I've suggested would make the upper tier more competitive and might force some schools into the basketball (no football grouping). And that too might make for better competition.

I think an attendance threshold is problematic for a number of reasons. First, a hard body count is very hard to verify. And, it can be gamed. If it's just fannies in seats, a school on the bubble could give away tickets to put themselves over the top. And it's hard to justify as a criterion for disqualification. I would imagine that any number of schools would challenge in court the reasonableness of assuming that a school with attendance of 35,200 is acceptable and one with 34,800 is not. Especially if one is getting $50 a ticket and the other $25.

And 35,000 wouldn't get many G5's in the field. There were only five such schools in 2017: BYU (56.3), San Diego St (39.3), UCF (36.8), ECU (36.7) and Memphis (36.3). It would knock seven P5's out: Kansas (26.6), Duke (26.8), Wake Forest (28.4), Vanderbilt (31.3), Syracuse (33.9) and Oregon St (34.8).

I'm not quibbling here. If it were left up to me the cutoff would be 10,000 more. Really you have no damned business being in D1 if you can't average 45,000 in attendance. It's a gift to be included at 35,000. If you want to count sold tickets that's certainly verifiable.

Actually, I wouldn't want to use attendance at all. My only criterion was revenue (with certain caveats as explained above). Then, for those who qualify, a requirement to sponsor certain core sports along the lines you outlined.
In my ideal set up its the Power 5 plus the Big East and AAC. As a condition for allowing them into the association the Bg East has to pick up 2-6 additional basketball oriented schools like Dayton, VCU, etc. to ensure that the new league has all of the top programs meriting consideration.The AAC admits BYU, Boise, San Diego St, and AFA.

There is a commissioner and some standard rules regarding scheduling--everyone must play at least 10 regular season football games against members of the association.

Discipline. The most severe of infractions result in expulsion from your conference and the organization. Back to the NCAA with you cheaters. The financial implications of that kind of exile ought to keep everyone in line.

Exemption from Title IX for men's basketball and football. Let's face it, at the highest level these are more than extracurriculars. They are an essential piece of marketing for the institutions they represent and those who are on the edge should be able to invest.

A 48 team basketball tournament and 10 team football playoff--6 autobids for the conference winners and 4 at large selections.
(03-15-2018 03:50 PM)JRsec Wrote: [ -> ]I'm not quibbling here. If it were left up to me the cutoff would be 10,000 more. Really you have no damned business being in D1 if you can't average 45,000 in attendance. It's a gift to be included at 35,000. If you want to count sold tickets that's certainly verifiable.

I ran the numbers for the past six years. Taking average attendance for the most recent three seasons, a cutoff of 30K would result in 72 teams being included, assuming the service academies would not participate.

P5 teams missing the cut: Duke, Kansas and Wake Forest

G5 teams making the cut: BYU, East Carolina, Memphis, San Diego State, Houston, UCF, Cincinnati, Boise State, Temple, and USF.
Reported attendance numbers are so fraudulent that I can't see ever using them as a "cut line". That would just encourage those who falsify their attendance reports to falsify more aggressively.

Or, you could have legitimately audited attendance, where an independent outside organization controls the turnstiles at each school and produces verified counts of people who actually attend the games using paid-for tickets. But no school wants that, whether it's a school that has 10,000 in the stands and reports 37,000, or a school that brags about "197 consecutive sellouts" even though anyone watching on TV can see at least a few thousand empty seats.
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