(04-10-2018 05:12 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  I understand Neil's argument that what you get from the conference and what you earn on your own are 2 different things (and should probably be treated as such). For this reason conference averages are far less valuable than conference payouts.

For example, the 7th highest total revenues in the ACC belong to Syracuse (ironically) at $91.4M, while the 7th in the SEC would be South Carolina at $136.0M. Does that mean SC made more money BECAUSE they were in the SEC... or because they themselves are bigger and have a large fan base than Syracuse? Neil's point - that if we remove the conference payouts from both schools - is that Syracuse earned about $63M apart from the ACC payout, while SC earned about $96M apart from the SEC. SC wins anyway.

I also understand JR's argument that money is money, regardless of how you get it. I can say I'd make more if I were the president of Disney - but I'm not and never will be (spoiler!)

The ACC always looks worse when you average all 14 schools because of the small private schools. Does WalMart sell more stuff than the Mom & Pop Corner Store? Of course they do, but that tells you nothing about the profitability of the location. A better comparison would be how does the WalMart in SEC country compare to the one in ACC country? For that kind of comparison, the ACC really only has 2 schools with athletic programs as big as most SEC schools - Clemson and Florida State. Half of the ACC is made up of Syracuse-sized schools. It is what it is.

Total gross revenue isn't shared between conference members. Athletic departments vary wildly in size, scope, subsidy, the number of varsity teams supported, and the accounting employed, especially between public and private schools. The ACC has more small schools and over 3X more private schools than any other conference and everyone that actually matters is well aware of that and couldn't care less that "mean gross revenue" doesn't match conferences that are predominantly filled with large state flagships. It matters not one whit to Florida State or Clemson what amount of gross athletic revenue Wake and Georgia Tech bring in as long as those schools maintain a semblance of competitiveness in football so that they don't become an anchor when strength of schedule metrics are important. What matters as far as conference affiliations is the money that each school receives from their conference, the exposure facilitated by the conference, and whether the conference allows them to compete at the highest levels. No one gives a crap if Boston College doesn't make more revenue than Mississippi State, except maybe Boston College.

Having some diversity in institutional types in conference composition is a good aspect; as long as it is not extreme.

The SEC does not need, nor should desire, every elite football program in the southern half of the USA. The same logic could be applied to the BIG.

Gutting the Big12 and/or the ACC of their better athletic schools to create two, maybe three, super conferences, would not necessarily be progressive improvement. It could end up being very damaging for college sports as we know it.

(04-10-2018 05:12 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  Neil's point - that if we remove the conference payouts from both schools - is that Syracuse earned about $63M apart from the ACC payout, while SC earned about $96M apart from the SEC. SC wins anyway.

That may be true in the case of Syracuse and South Carolina, but at many schools, like G5 schools, a lot of that $63m wasn't "earned", because it took the form of mandatory student fees and transfers from the academic 'side' and the like.

I don't know if Cuse or SC have fees, but if they do, they have to be subtracted from those values as well.

(04-10-2018 08:33 AM)XLance Wrote:  Actually Mark, Clemson is not even in the top 4 in the ACC. There are 4 ACC schools that have topped the $100 million mark (Notre Dame, Florida State, Louisville and UVa) and Clemson is not among them.

I'd qualify that with (a) Notre Dame isn't an ACC school in football, and football is obviously what generates most of its revenue, so ND should not be counted as an ACC school; and (b), IIRC, a nice chunk, about $15m, of UVA's athletic revenue is from fees it socks its students with, so if we subtract that out, Clemson actually earns more athletic revenue.

Only FSU and UofL actually generate more athletic dollars than Clemson, and not by much.

(04-10-2018 10:28 AM)OdinFrigg Wrote:  Having some diversity in institutional types in conference composition is a good aspect; as long as it is not extreme.

The SEC does not need, nor should desire, every elite football program in the southern half of the USA. The same logic could be applied to the BIG.

Gutting the Big12 and/or the ACC of their better athletic schools to create two, maybe three, super conferences, would not necessarily be progressive improvement. It could end up being very damaging for college sports as we know it.

I don't think the SEC would gut the ACC of its football schools. For one thing ESPN wouldn't permit it. And as long as end of season in state rivalries are preserved there is no need for it. And since the schools the Big 10 might covet are the core schools of the ACC their chance to succeed in future raid attempts will be tied to how severe the economic situation might be for the individual school, so in other words it would have to be another Maryland scenario and really only Georgia Tech approximates that situation.

But the Big 12 is another issue entirely. When a school like Texas or Oklahoma can bring the kind of economic impact to a conference that they wield they become a catch up tool for the PAC or ACC, or a lock down on the top pay position for the SEC or Big 10. Those two schools have the ability to tip the precarious balance within the college sports world one way or the other by their affiliation. So I see nothing that will prevent any of the other 4 conferences from making a run at those schools. Machen's remarks were that the SEC would not expand again unless some jewels fell into our lap.

That was his way of saying that he didn't think the SEC would expand again unless Oklahoma or Texas came our way. Every conference will be thinking this way. Right now the Big 12 balances the power of the SEC and Big 10 against the positioning of the ACC and PAC.

Should Texas and Oklahoma head West we will have 3 power conferences and one which trails in revenue significantly, the ACC. Should those two head to the ACC (I don't see this as being likely) the same result would exist with the PAC being the trailing conference. But, should Oklahoma and Texas head together to either the SEC or Big 10 where they would assuredly make more money then the college sports landscape is altered permanently and in a skewed fashion. Those two added to either the Big 10 or SEC would create one uber conference one strong one, and two vastly weaker ones. Even if one went to the SEC and the other to the Big 10 things will be thrown out of kilter. At that point the "TV revenue advantage" would be in the 25 million range and that would be a major destabilizing factor because the advantages would essentially be locked into place. And I promise you that both of those conferences (Big 10 and SEC) would jump on that opportunity without regard for the balance or long term health of the sport. What's more is that the networks would jump on it as well. Texas or Oklahoma vs Big 10 brands or SEC brands on a regular basis would be a major money maker.

So what you express is true. But the ACC is much less likely to be the instrument of that destabilization and the Big 12 is much more of a threat to create it. Or to put it another way, if the ACC lost Clemson and Florida State it wouldn't make the SEC or Big 10 an ultimate power and it would damage but not kill the ACC. But if Texas and Oklahoma move it kills the Big 12 as a power conference and should they head severely or together to SEC or Big 10 it does create ultimate powers. The safest way for the Big 12 to implode would be for Texas and another Texas school to head to the ACC and for Oklahoma and Oklahoma State to head to the PAC. But I really don't see how either of those are going to be choices of those two schools.

(04-10-2018 08:43 AM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 05:12 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  I understand Neil's argument that what you get from the conference and what you earn on your own are 2 different things (and should probably be treated as such). For this reason conference averages are far less valuable than conference payouts.

For example, the 7th highest total revenues in the ACC belong to Syracuse (ironically) at $91.4M, while the 7th in the SEC would be South Carolina at $136.0M. Does that mean SC made more money BECAUSE they were in the SEC... or because they themselves are bigger and have a large fan base than Syracuse? Neil's point - that if we remove the conference payouts from both schools - is that Syracuse earned about $63M apart from the ACC payout, while SC earned about $96M apart from the SEC. SC wins anyway.

I also understand JR's argument that money is money, regardless of how you get it. I can say I'd make more if I were the president of Disney - but I'm not and never will be (spoiler!)

The ACC always looks worse when you average all 14 schools because of the small private schools. Does WalMart sell more stuff than the Mom & Pop Corner Store? Of course they do, but that tells you nothing about the profitability of the location. A better comparison would be how does the WalMart in SEC country compare to the one in ACC country? For that kind of comparison, the ACC really only has 2 schools with athletic programs as big as most SEC schools - Clemson and Florida State. Half of the ACC is made up of Syracuse-sized schools. It is what it is.

Total gross revenue isn't shared between conference members. Athletic departments vary wildly in size, scope, subsidy, the number of varsity teams supported, and the accounting employed, especially between public and private schools. The ACC has more small schools and over 3X more private schools than any other conference and everyone that actually matters is well aware of that and couldn't care less that "mean gross revenue" doesn't match conferences that are predominantly filled with large state flagships. It matters not one whit to Florida State or Clemson what amount of gross athletic revenue Wake and Georgia Tech bring in as long as those schools maintain a semblance of competitiveness in football so that they don't become an anchor when strength of schedule metrics are important. What matters as far as conference affiliations is the money that each school receives from their conference, the exposure facilitated by the conference, and whether the conference allows them to compete at the highest levels. No one gives a crap if Boston College doesn't make more revenue than Mississippi State, except maybe Boston College.

Nobody asserted that it was shared. It is merely a reflection of the conference's ability to make money and there is some synergy.

(04-10-2018 08:33 AM)XLance Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 05:12 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  I understand Neil's argument that what you get from the conference and what you earn on your own are 2 different things (and should probably be treated as such). For this reason conference averages are far less valuable than conference payouts.

For example, the 7th highest total revenues in the ACC belong to Syracuse (ironically) at $91.4M, while the 7th in the SEC would be South Carolina at $136.0M. Does that mean SC made more money BECAUSE they were in the SEC... or because they themselves are bigger and have a large fan base than Syracuse? Neil's point - that if we remove the conference payouts from both schools - is that Syracuse earned about $63M apart from the ACC payout, while SC earned about $96M apart from the SEC. SC wins anyway.

I also understand JR's argument that money is money, regardless of how you get it. I can say I'd make more if I were the president of Disney - but I'm not and never will be (spoiler!)

The ACC always looks worse when you average all 14 schools because of the small private schools. Does WalMart sell more stuff than the Mom & Pop Corner Store? Of course they do, but that tells you nothing about the profitability of the location. A better comparison would be how does the WalMart in SEC country compare to the one in ACC country? For that kind of comparison, the ACC really only has 2 schools with athletic programs as big as most SEC schools - Clemson and Florida State. Half of the ACC is made up of Syracuse-sized schools. It is what it is.

Actually Mark, Clemson is not even in the top 4 in the ACC. There are 4 ACC schools that have topped the $100 million mark (Notre Dame, Florida State, Louisville and UVa) and Clemson is not among them.

http://www.businessinsider.com/schools-m...-million-1

That article used the 2015-16 EADA numbers, since it was late November and not all of the 2016-17 was in yet.

Clemson joined the $100 million club in 2016-17, while UVA took a step backwards to just under $93 million.

I should add Duke joined the $100 million club in 2016-17 as well.

Cheers,
Neil

(04-10-2018 08:43 AM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 05:12 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  I understand Neil's argument that what you get from the conference and what you earn on your own are 2 different things (and should probably be treated as such). For this reason conference averages are far less valuable than conference payouts.

For example, the 7th highest total revenues in the ACC belong to Syracuse (ironically) at $91.4M, while the 7th in the SEC would be South Carolina at $136.0M. Does that mean SC made more money BECAUSE they were in the SEC... or because they themselves are bigger and have a large fan base than Syracuse? Neil's point - that if we remove the conference payouts from both schools - is that Syracuse earned about $63M apart from the ACC payout, while SC earned about $96M apart from the SEC. SC wins anyway.

I also understand JR's argument that money is money, regardless of how you get it. I can say I'd make more if I were the president of Disney - but I'm not and never will be (spoiler!)

The ACC always looks worse when you average all 14 schools because of the small private schools. Does WalMart sell more stuff than the Mom & Pop Corner Store? Of course they do, but that tells you nothing about the profitability of the location. A better comparison would be how does the WalMart in SEC country compare to the one in ACC country? For that kind of comparison, the ACC really only has 2 schools with athletic programs as big as most SEC schools - Clemson and Florida State. Half of the ACC is made up of Syracuse-sized schools. It is what it is.

Total gross revenue isn't shared between conference members. Athletic departments vary wildly in size, scope, subsidy, the number of varsity teams supported, and the accounting employed, especially between public and private schools. The ACC has more small schools and over 3X more private schools than any other conference and everyone that actually matters is well aware of that and couldn't care less that "mean gross revenue" doesn't match conferences that are predominantly filled with large state flagships. It matters not one whit to Florida State or Clemson what amount of gross athletic revenue Wake and Georgia Tech bring in as long as those schools maintain a semblance of competitiveness in football so that they don't become an anchor when strength of schedule metrics are important. What matters as far as conference affiliations is the money that each school receives from their conference, the exposure facilitated by the conference, and whether the conference allows them to compete at the highest levels. No one gives a crap if Boston College doesn't make more revenue than Mississippi State, except maybe Boston College.

Hail CrazyPaco!

I agree with most of this, except perhaps (in part) the highlighted statement because I am not entirely sure you meant it the way I am taking it.

As I am sure all are aware, the ACC is behind the 8-ball in terms of conference payouts mainly due to three factors, which I discussed in Post 107:

1) The TV Contract
2) The Contract Bowl Contract
3) Conference Network not up and running yet

Being behind (and significantly behind in terms of conference distributions) I believe can impact FSU's and Clemson's sustaining year-in and year-out competitive levels with their peers in the SEC - specifically in this case Florida and South Carolina. This contention may seem silly considering the recent success of FSU and Clemson this decade, but the key is, what happens if their football records mirror more what happened in the late 00s? Perhaps then it might be impactful in terms of their recovery?

There is also a piece of this that is impacted by who they have to play in conference (which some fans believes impact their individual revenue in terms of ticket sales, donations, etc.), but that only muddies the waters even more in this thread since it goes into conference membership and divisional set-ups, etc., so I didn't want to go there.

That is one separate sub-discussion in this thread that started with a discussion about the ACC being a stitched together conference that combined with the 5th place finances will likely lead to its better programs considering leaving the conference.

My post 107 was meant to show that being 5th place in conference revenue distribution was not necessarily a "forever thing" and hopefully gave reasons why I believe each of the above will be addressed in the next go-round of negotiations or in the case of the ACCN being addressed now to help narrow the gap - with the realistic goal of getting to third place since it is unlikely the ACC will ever catch the B1G and SEC overall in this regard. It is what is fellow ACC fans, I think the majority of us know this.

Another sub-discussion is dealing with this notion posted by Fighting Muskie- I think it all comes down to finances. If Clemson and Florida St want to keep up with Alabama and Georgia they can't do so when they are bringing in less money than Vanderbilt and Mississippi St..

Well, obviously neither Mississippi State nor Vandy are bringing in more overall money than FSU and Clemson (despite getting $15 million more in conference distributions over FSU and $12 million more than Clemson according to the last available data out there on conference payouts for 2015-16).

This combined with a minor but friendly dispute with JR in another thread over on the SEC board about the power conferences contracting to between 36 and 40/44/48 teams has resulted in some of the posts you have been reading in the latter part of this thread by me that brings into contention that certain lower level B1G/SEC teams will make the cut.

Now to be fair to JR, he wasn't advocating this based solely on overall conference athletics, but other factors as well. But I chose to focus solely on looking at what I refer to as Institutional Athletic Revenue since Total Athletic Revenue is both Conference Revenues distributed to an individual institution as well as Individual Institutional Athletic Revenue.

But if contractions occurs, will it be voluntary, forced, or a combination of both? Is it possible this Individual Institutional Athletic Revenue factor will influences who voluntarily drops out? So, being a fan of a private university, I am interested in this topic without necessarily taking a stance on what is likely to happen.

Since I have suspected this was going to be a possibility in the future, I have been developing a spread sheet on what I refer to as Individual Athletic Revenue (total revenue minus conference revenue) that I hopefully am going to follow over a span of 5 years before considering posting. With both data sets (EADA total revenue for all and conference revenue distributions for all but one conference) being out there for the 2015-16 that is the base year.

Hope this post makes some sense. I do tend to get long-winded sometimes.

Cheers,
Neil

I really don't care how much a conference or conferences make or earn, nor do I really care what individual schools make.

ND used to make more money than anyone after the NBC deal in 1991, but that did not translate into any championships.

I think that there is a sort of diminishing return issue here, unless you really think a new bowling alley in the athletic training facility tips the scales that much.

Heck, right now ND fully funds all of its 26 athletic programs and then returns about $20-25 million per year to the academic side.

So, if another school makes even $20 million or so in revenues right now more than ND, they could just not send that money over to the academic scholarship side if it were that critical to the athletic program.

It really doesn't matter that much, relatively speaking, that Michigan makes about that much more a year, for instance.

When ND needs a new soccer or lacrosse stadium or a new indoor basketball practice facility, they wait until a donor or donors line up to cover the costs.

When it wanted a $400 million project regarding the stadium, it did a bond issue.

That money isn't coming to me and it doesn't seem to cramp ND's style any, so I don't worry about it as a fan.

I guess that it may be a bragging rights issue for some.

(04-10-2018 11:10 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 05:12 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  Neil's point - that if we remove the conference payouts from both schools - is that Syracuse earned about $63M apart from the ACC payout, while SC earned about $96M apart from the SEC. SC wins anyway.

That may be true in the case of Syracuse and South Carolina, but at many schools, like G5 schools, a lot of that $63m wasn't "earned", because it took the form of mandatory student fees and transfers from the academic 'side' and the like.

I don't know if Cuse or SC have fees, but if they do, they have to be subtracted from those values as well.

There aren't many SEC schools with subsidies that amount to a great deal, especially when looked at in terms of % of the total revenue. There are still some schools that subsidize student tickets for football and basketball and in some cases baseball. The students still get cheap tickets (as far as printed face value) but for instance if a football ticket to the general donating public is $75 dollars face value and the student ticket is $10 face value a portion of the difference of $65 dollars is made up in the form of subsidies. This has come as student sections have been reduced and high dollar tickets are sold in those areas.

I'm not justifying the practice, but I am trying to account for why some SEC schools have any subsidy at all and why it is such a small amount.

(04-10-2018 11:46 AM)JRsec Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 08:43 AM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 05:12 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  I understand Neil's argument that what you get from the conference and what you earn on your own are 2 different things (and should probably be treated as such). For this reason conference averages are far less valuable than conference payouts.

For example, the 7th highest total revenues in the ACC belong to Syracuse (ironically) at $91.4M, while the 7th in the SEC would be South Carolina at $136.0M. Does that mean SC made more money BECAUSE they were in the SEC... or because they themselves are bigger and have a large fan base than Syracuse? Neil's point - that if we remove the conference payouts from both schools - is that Syracuse earned about $63M apart from the ACC payout, while SC earned about $96M apart from the SEC. SC wins anyway.

I also understand JR's argument that money is money, regardless of how you get it. I can say I'd make more if I were the president of Disney - but I'm not and never will be (spoiler!)

The ACC always looks worse when you average all 14 schools because of the small private schools. Does WalMart sell more stuff than the Mom & Pop Corner Store? Of course they do, but that tells you nothing about the profitability of the location. A better comparison would be how does the WalMart in SEC country compare to the one in ACC country? For that kind of comparison, the ACC really only has 2 schools with athletic programs as big as most SEC schools - Clemson and Florida State. Half of the ACC is made up of Syracuse-sized schools. It is what it is.

Total gross revenue isn't shared between conference members. Athletic departments vary wildly in size, scope, subsidy, the number of varsity teams supported, and the accounting employed, especially between public and private schools. The ACC has more small schools and over 3X more private schools than any other conference and everyone that actually matters is well aware of that and couldn't care less that "mean gross revenue" doesn't match conferences that are predominantly filled with large state flagships. It matters not one whit to Florida State or Clemson what amount of gross athletic revenue Wake and Georgia Tech bring in as long as those schools maintain a semblance of competitiveness in football so that they don't become an anchor when strength of schedule metrics are important. What matters as far as conference affiliations is the money that each school receives from their conference, the exposure facilitated by the conference, and whether the conference allows them to compete at the highest levels. No one gives a crap if Boston College doesn't make more revenue than Mississippi State, except maybe Boston College.

Nobody asserted that it was shared. It is merely a reflection of the conference's ability to make money and there is some synergy.

What is the point then? There already exists a public, direct measure of a conference's ability to make money, and it is available in each conference's actual tax filings that are far more comparable, although not perfectly so, than a mean off disparate revenue reportings of individual schools cited here. Individual schools' gross athletic revenues are, at best, tangential to a discussion about conferences revenue producing ability, and largely irrelevant. It is of little value unless it would be shared, which obviously, it is not.

Wake Forest's budget is never going to look like Florida State's, and neither school cares. You just can't make up the major gap in gate receipts, booster giving, and non-media and local rights revenues. For all intents and purposes, those are not functions of a conference unless it determines that these things should be shared.

(04-10-2018 02:54 PM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 11:46 AM)JRsec Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 08:43 AM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 05:12 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  I understand Neil's argument that what you get from the conference and what you earn on your own are 2 different things (and should probably be treated as such). For this reason conference averages are far less valuable than conference payouts.

For example, the 7th highest total revenues in the ACC belong to Syracuse (ironically) at $91.4M, while the 7th in the SEC would be South Carolina at $136.0M. Does that mean SC made more money BECAUSE they were in the SEC... or because they themselves are bigger and have a large fan base than Syracuse? Neil's point - that if we remove the conference payouts from both schools - is that Syracuse earned about $63M apart from the ACC payout, while SC earned about $96M apart from the SEC. SC wins anyway.

I also understand JR's argument that money is money, regardless of how you get it. I can say I'd make more if I were the president of Disney - but I'm not and never will be (spoiler!)

The ACC always looks worse when you average all 14 schools because of the small private schools. Does WalMart sell more stuff than the Mom & Pop Corner Store? Of course they do, but that tells you nothing about the profitability of the location. A better comparison would be how does the WalMart in SEC country compare to the one in ACC country? For that kind of comparison, the ACC really only has 2 schools with athletic programs as big as most SEC schools - Clemson and Florida State. Half of the ACC is made up of Syracuse-sized schools. It is what it is.

Total gross revenue isn't shared between conference members. Athletic departments vary wildly in size, scope, subsidy, the number of varsity teams supported, and the accounting employed, especially between public and private schools. The ACC has more small schools and over 3X more private schools than any other conference and everyone that actually matters is well aware of that and couldn't care less that "mean gross revenue" doesn't match conferences that are predominantly filled with large state flagships. It matters not one whit to Florida State or Clemson what amount of gross athletic revenue Wake and Georgia Tech bring in as long as those schools maintain a semblance of competitiveness in football so that they don't become an anchor when strength of schedule metrics are important. What matters as far as conference affiliations is the money that each school receives from their conference, the exposure facilitated by the conference, and whether the conference allows them to compete at the highest levels. No one gives a crap if Boston College doesn't make more revenue than Mississippi State, except maybe Boston College.

Nobody asserted that it was shared. It is merely a reflection of the conference's ability to make money and there is some synergy.

What is the point then? There already exists a public, direct measure of a conference's ability to make money, and it is available in actual tax filings that are far more comparable, although not perfectly so, than disparate revenue reportings cited here. Individual schools' gross athletic revenues are, at best, tangential to a discussion about conferences revenue producing ability, and largely irrelevant. It is of little value unless it would be shared, which obviously, it is not.

Wake Forest's budget is never going to look like Florida State's, and neither school cares. You just can't make up the major gap in gait receipts and booster giving.

Search me! I was initially responding to an inaccurate response as to how much the ACC actually made last year (and it was more than what was cited). I think in one of my earlier posts on this subject I said it was of little use except for excuse making and boasting. But the numbers are the numbers and they are relevant to that school. The TV revenue is wholly other and even there conference disbursements can't be accurately compared because they are all unique with regards to what the conference withholds and distributes, and how they calculate the distributions for those things they withhold.

It's not 2010, and new markets aren't driving realignment, and the ACC is not in any immediate jeopardy and is better insulated from the SEC than ever before, and will likely remain that way as long as the year end cross conference rivalries are protected.

And since the core of the ACC schools, the only ones the Big 10 might covet, aren't in a Marylandesque financial mess (Georgia Tech excepted) I don't see an angle of vulnerability in 2036 either. The only thing that can radically alter the existing milieu is a Federal Court ruling on whether or not stipends can be capped, and whether or not Oklahoma and Texas move and destabilize the fragile balance we have right now. And frankly I fear the former more than the latter.

(04-10-2018 01:46 PM)OrangeDude Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 08:43 AM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 05:12 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  I understand Neil's argument that what you get from the conference and what you earn on your own are 2 different things (and should probably be treated as such). For this reason conference averages are far less valuable than conference payouts.

For example, the 7th highest total revenues in the ACC belong to Syracuse (ironically) at $91.4M, while the 7th in the SEC would be South Carolina at $136.0M. Does that mean SC made more money BECAUSE they were in the SEC... or because they themselves are bigger and have a large fan base than Syracuse? Neil's point - that if we remove the conference payouts from both schools - is that Syracuse earned about $63M apart from the ACC payout, while SC earned about $96M apart from the SEC. SC wins anyway.

I also understand JR's argument that money is money, regardless of how you get it. I can say I'd make more if I were the president of Disney - but I'm not and never will be (spoiler!)

The ACC always looks worse when you average all 14 schools because of the small private schools. Does WalMart sell more stuff than the Mom & Pop Corner Store? Of course they do, but that tells you nothing about the profitability of the location. A better comparison would be how does the WalMart in SEC country compare to the one in ACC country? For that kind of comparison, the ACC really only has 2 schools with athletic programs as big as most SEC schools - Clemson and Florida State. Half of the ACC is made up of Syracuse-sized schools. It is what it is.

Total gross revenue isn't shared between conference members. Athletic departments vary wildly in size, scope, subsidy, the number of varsity teams supported, and the accounting employed, especially between public and private schools. The ACC has more small schools and over 3X more private schools than any other conference and everyone that actually matters is well aware of that and couldn't care less that "mean gross revenue" doesn't match conferences that are predominantly filled with large state flagships. It matters not one whit to Florida State or Clemson what amount of gross athletic revenue Wake and Georgia Tech bring in as long as those schools maintain a semblance of competitiveness in football so that they don't become an anchor when strength of schedule metrics are important. What matters as far as conference affiliations is the money that each school receives from their conference, the exposure facilitated by the conference, and whether the conference allows them to compete at the highest levels. No one gives a crap if Boston College doesn't make more revenue than Mississippi State, except maybe Boston College.

Hail CrazyPaco!

I agree with most of this, except perhaps (in part) the highlighted statement because I am not entirely sure you meant it the way I am taking it.

As I am sure all are aware, the ACC is behind the 8-ball in terms of conference payouts mainly due to three factors, which I discussed in Post 107:

1) The TV Contract
2) The Contract Bowl Contract
3) Conference Network not up and running yet

Being behind (and significantly behind in terms of conference distributions) I believe can impact FSU's and Clemson's sustaining year-in and year-out competitive levels with their peers in the SEC - specifically in this case Florida and South Carolina. This contention may seem silly considering the recent success of FSU and Clemson this decade, but the key is, what happens if their football records mirror more what happened in the late 00s? Perhaps then it might be impactful in terms of their recovery?

There is also a piece of this that is impacted by who they have to play in conference (which some fans believes impact their individual revenue in terms of ticket sales, donations, etc.), but that only muddies the waters even more in this thread since it goes into conference membership and divisional set-ups, etc., so I didn't want to go there.

That is one separate sub-discussion in this thread that started with a discussion about the ACC being a stitched together conference that combined with the 5th place finances will likely lead to its better programs considering leaving the conference.

My post 107 was meant to show that being 5th place in conference revenue distribution was not necessarily a "forever thing" and hopefully gave reasons why I believe each of the above will be addressed in the next go-round of negotiations or in the case of the ACCN being addressed now to help narrow the gap - with the realistic goal of getting to third place since it is unlikely the ACC will ever catch the B1G and SEC overall in this regard. It is what is fellow ACC fans, I think the majority of us know this.

Another sub-discussion is dealing with this notion posted by Fighting Muskie- I think it all comes down to finances. If Clemson and Florida St want to keep up with Alabama and Georgia they can't do so when they are bringing in less money than Vanderbilt and Mississippi St..

Well, obviously neither Mississippi State nor Vandy are bringing in more overall money than FSU and Clemson (despite getting $15 million more in conference distributions over FSU and $12 million more than Clemson according to the last available data out there on conference payouts for 2015-16).

This combined with a minor but friendly dispute with JR in another thread over on the SEC board about the power conferences contracting to between 36 and 40/44/48 teams has resulted in some of the posts you have been reading in the latter part of this thread by me that brings into contention that certain lower level B1G/SEC teams will make the cut.

Now to be fair to JR, he wasn't advocating this based solely on overall conference athletics, but other factors as well. But I chose to focus solely on looking at what I refer to as Institutional Athletic Revenue since Total Athletic Revenue is both Conference Revenues distributed to an individual institution as well as Individual Institutional Athletic Revenue.

But if contractions occurs, will it be voluntary, forced, or a combination of both? Is it possible this Individual Institutional Athletic Revenue factor will influences who voluntarily drops out? So, being a fan of a private university, I am interested in this topic without necessarily taking a stance on what is likely to happen.

Since I have suspected this was going to be a possibility in the future, I have been developing a spread sheet on what I refer to as Individual Athletic Revenue (total revenue minus conference revenue) that I hopefully am going to follow over a span of 5 years before considering posting. With both data sets (EADA total revenue for all and conference revenue distributions for all but one conference) being out there for the 2015-16 that is the base year.

Hope this post makes some sense. I do tend to get long-winded sometimes.

Cheers,
Neil

If observations of the behavior of institutions over the last couple of decades have revealed anything, it is that no expense will be spared to if an institution wants to maintain its place in the athletic hierarchy. This could describe Duke suddenly spending large amounts of money on a long-neglected football program that had decades of historically atrocious performances or Rutgers subsidizing their athletic department, still, to a tune of over $28m a year (~$10 more than the next most subsidized P5 school) despite the fact that the performance of its athletic department is, historically, one of the worst in all major and mid-major athletic conferences. I use these examples because for these two schools, Duke football and Rutgers athletic successes' have clearly not had tangible impacts on addressing the overall missions of these institutions. But for whatever reasons, these universities still deem their positions in the athletic hierarchy as one of significant importance and spent resources accordingly to protect those positions.

Therefore, if a school wants to maintain its place, it will do so. Contrast this to Temple's essential unwillingness to address conference mandated issues with its football program in the 1990s while an affiliate member of Big East football. It just didn't care. Schools that value their place, and demonstrate that by spending appropriately on revenue sports, aren't going to be forced out, no matter how small the rest of their overall athletic budget is. There is a reason Georgia Tech only sponsors 17 varsity sports, Kansas State 16, or Northwestern only 18 Big Ten sports, and no one else in those conferences cares. And they don't care because it doesn't impact the bottom line of any of the other members. What does is the media contracts built around football and men's basketball, and those are the only two sports that really need to be funded to a competitive level. How schools get there, whether it is issuing debt, dropping men's tennis or having less assistants for softball, isn't really a concern to their partners.

I agree with Terry. Contraction is only occurring if college athletes become overtly paid professionals and some schools, like ND, decide to split because it is incongruent with their academic ideologies. You aren't going to see Wake or Vandy forced out of anything. However, you could see them join a consortium of like-minded universities exiting "professional" athletics over ethical considerations.

(04-10-2018 03:08 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 02:54 PM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 11:46 AM)JRsec Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 08:43 AM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 05:12 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  I understand Neil's argument that what you get from the conference and what you earn on your own are 2 different things (and should probably be treated as such). For this reason conference averages are far less valuable than conference payouts.

For example, the 7th highest total revenues in the ACC belong to Syracuse (ironically) at $91.4M, while the 7th in the SEC would be South Carolina at $136.0M. Does that mean SC made more money BECAUSE they were in the SEC... or because they themselves are bigger and have a large fan base than Syracuse? Neil's point - that if we remove the conference payouts from both schools - is that Syracuse earned about $63M apart from the ACC payout, while SC earned about $96M apart from the SEC. SC wins anyway.

I also understand JR's argument that money is money, regardless of how you get it. I can say I'd make more if I were the president of Disney - but I'm not and never will be (spoiler!)

The ACC always looks worse when you average all 14 schools because of the small private schools. Does WalMart sell more stuff than the Mom & Pop Corner Store? Of course they do, but that tells you nothing about the profitability of the location. A better comparison would be how does the WalMart in SEC country compare to the one in ACC country? For that kind of comparison, the ACC really only has 2 schools with athletic programs as big as most SEC schools - Clemson and Florida State. Half of the ACC is made up of Syracuse-sized schools. It is what it is.

Total gross revenue isn't shared between conference members. Athletic departments vary wildly in size, scope, subsidy, the number of varsity teams supported, and the accounting employed, especially between public and private schools. The ACC has more small schools and over 3X more private schools than any other conference and everyone that actually matters is well aware of that and couldn't care less that "mean gross revenue" doesn't match conferences that are predominantly filled with large state flagships. It matters not one whit to Florida State or Clemson what amount of gross athletic revenue Wake and Georgia Tech bring in as long as those schools maintain a semblance of competitiveness in football so that they don't become an anchor when strength of schedule metrics are important. What matters as far as conference affiliations is the money that each school receives from their conference, the exposure facilitated by the conference, and whether the conference allows them to compete at the highest levels. No one gives a crap if Boston College doesn't make more revenue than Mississippi State, except maybe Boston College.

Nobody asserted that it was shared. It is merely a reflection of the conference's ability to make money and there is some synergy.

What is the point then? There already exists a public, direct measure of a conference's ability to make money, and it is available in actual tax filings that are far more comparable, although not perfectly so, than disparate revenue reportings cited here. Individual schools' gross athletic revenues are, at best, tangential to a discussion about conferences revenue producing ability, and largely irrelevant. It is of little value unless it would be shared, which obviously, it is not.

Wake Forest's budget is never going to look like Florida State's, and neither school cares. You just can't make up the major gap in gate receipts and booster giving.

Search me! I was initially responding to an inaccurate response as to how much the ACC actually made last year (and it was more than what was cited). I think in one of my earlier posts on this subject I said it was of little use except for excuse making and boasting. But the numbers are the numbers and they are relevant to that school. The TV revenue is wholly other and even there conference disbursements can't be accurately compared because they are all unique with regards to what the conference withholds and distributes, and how they calculate the distributions for those things they withhold.

It's not 2010, and new markets aren't driving realignment, and the ACC is not in any immediate jeopardy and is better insulated from the SEC than ever before, and will likely remain that way as long as the year end cross conference rivalries are protected.

And since the core of the ACC schools, the only ones the Big 10 might covet, aren't in a Marylandesque financial mess (Georgia Tech excepted) I don't see an angle of vulnerability in 2036 either. The only thing that can radically alter the existing milieu is a Federal Court ruling on whether or not stipends can be capped, and whether or not Oklahoma and Texas move and destabilize the fragile balance we have right now. And frankly I fear the former more than the latter.

Last year was 2016-17. We don't know how much the ACC actually made last year yet.

(04-10-2018 03:43 PM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 03:08 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 02:54 PM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 11:46 AM)JRsec Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 08:43 AM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  Total gross revenue isn't shared between conference members. Athletic departments vary wildly in size, scope, subsidy, the number of varsity teams supported, and the accounting employed, especially between public and private schools. The ACC has more small schools and over 3X more private schools than any other conference and everyone that actually matters is well aware of that and couldn't care less that "mean gross revenue" doesn't match conferences that are predominantly filled with large state flagships. It matters not one whit to Florida State or Clemson what amount of gross athletic revenue Wake and Georgia Tech bring in as long as those schools maintain a semblance of competitiveness in football so that they don't become an anchor when strength of schedule metrics are important. What matters as far as conference affiliations is the money that each school receives from their conference, the exposure facilitated by the conference, and whether the conference allows them to compete at the highest levels. No one gives a crap if Boston College doesn't make more revenue than Mississippi State, except maybe Boston College.

Nobody asserted that it was shared. It is merely a reflection of the conference's ability to make money and there is some synergy.

What is the point then? There already exists a public, direct measure of a conference's ability to make money, and it is available in actual tax filings that are far more comparable, although not perfectly so, than disparate revenue reportings cited here. Individual schools' gross athletic revenues are, at best, tangential to a discussion about conferences revenue producing ability, and largely irrelevant. It is of little value unless it would be shared, which obviously, it is not.

Wake Forest's budget is never going to look like Florida State's, and neither school cares. You just can't make up the major gap in gate receipts and booster giving.

Search me! I was initially responding to an inaccurate response as to how much the ACC actually made last year (and it was more than what was cited). I think in one of my earlier posts on this subject I said it was of little use except for excuse making and boasting. But the numbers are the numbers and they are relevant to that school. The TV revenue is wholly other and even there conference disbursements can't be accurately compared because they are all unique with regards to what the conference withholds and distributes, and how they calculate the distributions for those things they withhold.

It's not 2010, and new markets aren't driving realignment, and the ACC is not in any immediate jeopardy and is better insulated from the SEC than ever before, and will likely remain that way as long as the year end cross conference rivalries are protected.

And since the core of the ACC schools, the only ones the Big 10 might covet, aren't in a Marylandesque financial mess (Georgia Tech excepted) I don't see an angle of vulnerability in 2036 either. The only thing that can radically alter the existing milieu is a Federal Court ruling on whether or not stipends can be capped, and whether or not Oklahoma and Texas move and destabilize the fragile balance we have right now. And frankly I fear the former more than the latter.

Last year was 2016-17. We don't know how much the ACC actually made last year yet.

I just looked up N.C. State on the Equity in Athletics site and it said the reporting period was for 7/01/16 to 6/30/17. It said nothing about being an estimate. So what am I missing here? The information was in for that period on all ACC schools. It seems to me the distributions are baked in, just not released by the conference yet, which is what the SEC did as well, but we formally announced our's last month but that didn't change what was already reported on the Equity site.

(04-10-2018 03:38 PM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 01:46 PM)OrangeDude Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 08:43 AM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 05:12 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  I understand Neil's argument that what you get from the conference and what you earn on your own are 2 different things (and should probably be treated as such). For this reason conference averages are far less valuable than conference payouts.

For example, the 7th highest total revenues in the ACC belong to Syracuse (ironically) at $91.4M, while the 7th in the SEC would be South Carolina at $136.0M. Does that mean SC made more money BECAUSE they were in the SEC... or because they themselves are bigger and have a large fan base than Syracuse? Neil's point - that if we remove the conference payouts from both schools - is that Syracuse earned about $63M apart from the ACC payout, while SC earned about $96M apart from the SEC. SC wins anyway.

I also understand JR's argument that money is money, regardless of how you get it. I can say I'd make more if I were the president of Disney - but I'm not and never will be (spoiler!)

The ACC always looks worse when you average all 14 schools because of the small private schools. Does WalMart sell more stuff than the Mom & Pop Corner Store? Of course they do, but that tells you nothing about the profitability of the location. A better comparison would be how does the WalMart in SEC country compare to the one in ACC country? For that kind of comparison, the ACC really only has 2 schools with athletic programs as big as most SEC schools - Clemson and Florida State. Half of the ACC is made up of Syracuse-sized schools. It is what it is.

Total gross revenue isn't shared between conference members. Athletic departments vary wildly in size, scope, subsidy, the number of varsity teams supported, and the accounting employed, especially between public and private schools. The ACC has more small schools and over 3X more private schools than any other conference and everyone that actually matters is well aware of that and couldn't care less that "mean gross revenue" doesn't match conferences that are predominantly filled with large state flagships. It matters not one whit to Florida State or Clemson what amount of gross athletic revenue Wake and Georgia Tech bring in as long as those schools maintain a semblance of competitiveness in football so that they don't become an anchor when strength of schedule metrics are important. What matters as far as conference affiliations is the money that each school receives from their conference, the exposure facilitated by the conference, and whether the conference allows them to compete at the highest levels. No one gives a crap if Boston College doesn't make more revenue than Mississippi State, except maybe Boston College.

Hail CrazyPaco!

I agree with most of this, except perhaps (in part) the highlighted statement because I am not entirely sure you meant it the way I am taking it.

As I am sure all are aware, the ACC is behind the 8-ball in terms of conference payouts mainly due to three factors, which I discussed in Post 107:

1) The TV Contract
2) The Contract Bowl Contract
3) Conference Network not up and running yet

Being behind (and significantly behind in terms of conference distributions) I believe can impact FSU's and Clemson's sustaining year-in and year-out competitive levels with their peers in the SEC - specifically in this case Florida and South Carolina. This contention may seem silly considering the recent success of FSU and Clemson this decade, but the key is, what happens if their football records mirror more what happened in the late 00s? Perhaps then it might be impactful in terms of their recovery?

There is also a piece of this that is impacted by who they have to play in conference (which some fans believes impact their individual revenue in terms of ticket sales, donations, etc.), but that only muddies the waters even more in this thread since it goes into conference membership and divisional set-ups, etc., so I didn't want to go there.

That is one separate sub-discussion in this thread that started with a discussion about the ACC being a stitched together conference that combined with the 5th place finances will likely lead to its better programs considering leaving the conference.

My post 107 was meant to show that being 5th place in conference revenue distribution was not necessarily a "forever thing" and hopefully gave reasons why I believe each of the above will be addressed in the next go-round of negotiations or in the case of the ACCN being addressed now to help narrow the gap - with the realistic goal of getting to third place since it is unlikely the ACC will ever catch the B1G and SEC overall in this regard. It is what is fellow ACC fans, I think the majority of us know this.

Another sub-discussion is dealing with this notion posted by Fighting Muskie- I think it all comes down to finances. If Clemson and Florida St want to keep up with Alabama and Georgia they can't do so when they are bringing in less money than Vanderbilt and Mississippi St..

Well, obviously neither Mississippi State nor Vandy are bringing in more overall money than FSU and Clemson (despite getting $15 million more in conference distributions over FSU and $12 million more than Clemson according to the last available data out there on conference payouts for 2015-16).

This combined with a minor but friendly dispute with JR in another thread over on the SEC board about the power conferences contracting to between 36 and 40/44/48 teams has resulted in some of the posts you have been reading in the latter part of this thread by me that brings into contention that certain lower level B1G/SEC teams will make the cut.

Now to be fair to JR, he wasn't advocating this based solely on overall conference athletics, but other factors as well. But I chose to focus solely on looking at what I refer to as Institutional Athletic Revenue since Total Athletic Revenue is both Conference Revenues distributed to an individual institution as well as Individual Institutional Athletic Revenue.

But if contractions occurs, will it be voluntary, forced, or a combination of both? Is it possible this Individual Institutional Athletic Revenue factor will influences who voluntarily drops out? So, being a fan of a private university, I am interested in this topic without necessarily taking a stance on what is likely to happen.

Since I have suspected this was going to be a possibility in the future, I have been developing a spread sheet on what I refer to as Individual Athletic Revenue (total revenue minus conference revenue) that I hopefully am going to follow over a span of 5 years before considering posting. With both data sets (EADA total revenue for all and conference revenue distributions for all but one conference) being out there for the 2015-16 that is the base year.

Hope this post makes some sense. I do tend to get long-winded sometimes.

Cheers,
Neil

If observations of the behavior of institutions over the last couple of decades have revealed anything, it is that no expense will be spared to if an institution wants to maintain its place in the athletic hierarchy. This could describe Duke suddenly spending large amounts of money on a long-neglected football program that had decades of historically atrocious performances or Rutgers subsidizing their athletic department, still, to a tune of over $28m a year (~$10 more than the next most subsidized P5 school) despite the fact that the performance of its athletic department is, historically, one of the worst in all major and mid-major athletic conferences. I use these examples because for these two schools, Duke football and Rutgers athletic successes' have clearly not had tangible impacts on addressing the overall missions of these institutions. But for whatever reasons, these universities still deem their positions in the athletic hierarchy as one of significant importance and spent resources accordingly to protect those positions.

Therefore, if a school wants to maintain its place, it will do so. Contrast this to Temple's essential unwillingness to address conference mandated issues with its football program in the 1990s while an affiliate member of Big East football. It just didn't care. Schools that value their place, and demonstrate that by spending appropriately on revenue sports, aren't going to be forced out, no matter how small the rest of their overall athletic budget is. There is a reason Georgia Tech only sponsors 17 varsity sports, Kansas State 16, or Northwestern only 18 Big Ten sports, and no one else in those conferences cares. And they don't care because it doesn't impact the bottom line of any of the other members. What does is the media contracts built around football and men's basketball, and those are the only two sports that really need to be funded to a competitive level. How schools get there, whether it is issuing debt, dropping men's tennis or having less assistants for softball, isn't really a concern to their partners.

I agree with Terry. Contraction is only occurring if college athletes become overtly paid professionals and some schools, like ND, decide to split because it is incongruent with their academic ideologies. You aren't going to see Wake or Vandy forced out of anything. However, you could see them join a consortium of like-minded universities exiting "professional" athletics over ethical considerations.

This is exactly how we will get to the contracted number, be it 32 or up to 48. The schools that want to pursue the upper echelon will just stay the course and the schools, that because of academic conscience, will choose to drop to a lower level and band together to compete among peers.

(04-10-2018 03:51 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 03:43 PM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 03:08 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 02:54 PM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 11:46 AM)JRsec Wrote:  Nobody asserted that it was shared. It is merely a reflection of the conference's ability to make money and there is some synergy.

What is the point then? There already exists a public, direct measure of a conference's ability to make money, and it is available in actual tax filings that are far more comparable, although not perfectly so, than disparate revenue reportings cited here. Individual schools' gross athletic revenues are, at best, tangential to a discussion about conferences revenue producing ability, and largely irrelevant. It is of little value unless it would be shared, which obviously, it is not.

Wake Forest's budget is never going to look like Florida State's, and neither school cares. You just can't make up the major gap in gate receipts and booster giving.

Search me! I was initially responding to an inaccurate response as to how much the ACC actually made last year (and it was more than what was cited). I think in one of my earlier posts on this subject I said it was of little use except for excuse making and boasting. But the numbers are the numbers and they are relevant to that school. The TV revenue is wholly other and even there conference disbursements can't be accurately compared because they are all unique with regards to what the conference withholds and distributes, and how they calculate the distributions for those things they withhold.

It's not 2010, and new markets aren't driving realignment, and the ACC is not in any immediate jeopardy and is better insulated from the SEC than ever before, and will likely remain that way as long as the year end cross conference rivalries are protected.

And since the core of the ACC schools, the only ones the Big 10 might covet, aren't in a Marylandesque financial mess (Georgia Tech excepted) I don't see an angle of vulnerability in 2036 either. The only thing that can radically alter the existing milieu is a Federal Court ruling on whether or not stipends can be capped, and whether or not Oklahoma and Texas move and destabilize the fragile balance we have right now. And frankly I fear the former more than the latter.

Last year was 2016-17. We don't know how much the ACC actually made last year yet.

I just looked up N.C. State on the Equity in Athletics site and it said the reporting period was for 7/01/16 to 6/30/17. It said nothing about being an estimate. So what am I missing here? The information was in for that period on all ACC schools. It seems to me the distributions are baked in, just not released by the conference yet, which is what the SEC did as well, but we formally announced our's last month but that didn't change what was already reported on the Equity site.

You are missing the difference between actual conference revenue and and individual school athletic revenue. The latter has been discussed ad nauseum about how inconsistently reported and accounted for it is. Nor does it break down the sources of revenue.

If you think you know what the Atlantic Coast Conference's revenue was in 2016-17, you don't, because it has yet to be publicly released.

(04-10-2018 04:15 PM)XLance Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 03:38 PM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 01:46 PM)OrangeDude Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 08:43 AM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 05:12 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  I understand Neil's argument that what you get from the conference and what you earn on your own are 2 different things (and should probably be treated as such). For this reason conference averages are far less valuable than conference payouts.

For example, the 7th highest total revenues in the ACC belong to Syracuse (ironically) at $91.4M, while the 7th in the SEC would be South Carolina at $136.0M. Does that mean SC made more money BECAUSE they were in the SEC... or because they themselves are bigger and have a large fan base than Syracuse? Neil's point - that if we remove the conference payouts from both schools - is that Syracuse earned about $63M apart from the ACC payout, while SC earned about $96M apart from the SEC. SC wins anyway.

I also understand JR's argument that money is money, regardless of how you get it. I can say I'd make more if I were the president of Disney - but I'm not and never will be (spoiler!)

The ACC always looks worse when you average all 14 schools because of the small private schools. Does WalMart sell more stuff than the Mom & Pop Corner Store? Of course they do, but that tells you nothing about the profitability of the location. A better comparison would be how does the WalMart in SEC country compare to the one in ACC country? For that kind of comparison, the ACC really only has 2 schools with athletic programs as big as most SEC schools - Clemson and Florida State. Half of the ACC is made up of Syracuse-sized schools. It is what it is.

Total gross revenue isn't shared between conference members. Athletic departments vary wildly in size, scope, subsidy, the number of varsity teams supported, and the accounting employed, especially between public and private schools. The ACC has more small schools and over 3X more private schools than any other conference and everyone that actually matters is well aware of that and couldn't care less that "mean gross revenue" doesn't match conferences that are predominantly filled with large state flagships. It matters not one whit to Florida State or Clemson what amount of gross athletic revenue Wake and Georgia Tech bring in as long as those schools maintain a semblance of competitiveness in football so that they don't become an anchor when strength of schedule metrics are important. What matters as far as conference affiliations is the money that each school receives from their conference, the exposure facilitated by the conference, and whether the conference allows them to compete at the highest levels. No one gives a crap if Boston College doesn't make more revenue than Mississippi State, except maybe Boston College.

Hail CrazyPaco!

I agree with most of this, except perhaps (in part) the highlighted statement because I am not entirely sure you meant it the way I am taking it.

As I am sure all are aware, the ACC is behind the 8-ball in terms of conference payouts mainly due to three factors, which I discussed in Post 107:

1) The TV Contract
2) The Contract Bowl Contract
3) Conference Network not up and running yet

Being behind (and significantly behind in terms of conference distributions) I believe can impact FSU's and Clemson's sustaining year-in and year-out competitive levels with their peers in the SEC - specifically in this case Florida and South Carolina. This contention may seem silly considering the recent success of FSU and Clemson this decade, but the key is, what happens if their football records mirror more what happened in the late 00s? Perhaps then it might be impactful in terms of their recovery?

There is also a piece of this that is impacted by who they have to play in conference (which some fans believes impact their individual revenue in terms of ticket sales, donations, etc.), but that only muddies the waters even more in this thread since it goes into conference membership and divisional set-ups, etc., so I didn't want to go there.

That is one separate sub-discussion in this thread that started with a discussion about the ACC being a stitched together conference that combined with the 5th place finances will likely lead to its better programs considering leaving the conference.

My post 107 was meant to show that being 5th place in conference revenue distribution was not necessarily a "forever thing" and hopefully gave reasons why I believe each of the above will be addressed in the next go-round of negotiations or in the case of the ACCN being addressed now to help narrow the gap - with the realistic goal of getting to third place since it is unlikely the ACC will ever catch the B1G and SEC overall in this regard. It is what is fellow ACC fans, I think the majority of us know this.

Another sub-discussion is dealing with this notion posted by Fighting Muskie- I think it all comes down to finances. If Clemson and Florida St want to keep up with Alabama and Georgia they can't do so when they are bringing in less money than Vanderbilt and Mississippi St..

Well, obviously neither Mississippi State nor Vandy are bringing in more overall money than FSU and Clemson (despite getting $15 million more in conference distributions over FSU and $12 million more than Clemson according to the last available data out there on conference payouts for 2015-16).

This combined with a minor but friendly dispute with JR in another thread over on the SEC board about the power conferences contracting to between 36 and 40/44/48 teams has resulted in some of the posts you have been reading in the latter part of this thread by me that brings into contention that certain lower level B1G/SEC teams will make the cut.

Now to be fair to JR, he wasn't advocating this based solely on overall conference athletics, but other factors as well. But I chose to focus solely on looking at what I refer to as Institutional Athletic Revenue since Total Athletic Revenue is both Conference Revenues distributed to an individual institution as well as Individual Institutional Athletic Revenue.

But if contractions occurs, will it be voluntary, forced, or a combination of both? Is it possible this Individual Institutional Athletic Revenue factor will influences who voluntarily drops out? So, being a fan of a private university, I am interested in this topic without necessarily taking a stance on what is likely to happen.

Since I have suspected this was going to be a possibility in the future, I have been developing a spread sheet on what I refer to as Individual Athletic Revenue (total revenue minus conference revenue) that I hopefully am going to follow over a span of 5 years before considering posting. With both data sets (EADA total revenue for all and conference revenue distributions for all but one conference) being out there for the 2015-16 that is the base year.

Hope this post makes some sense. I do tend to get long-winded sometimes.

Cheers,
Neil

If observations of the behavior of institutions over the last couple of decades have revealed anything, it is that no expense will be spared to if an institution wants to maintain its place in the athletic hierarchy. This could describe Duke suddenly spending large amounts of money on a long-neglected football program that had decades of historically atrocious performances or Rutgers subsidizing their athletic department, still, to a tune of over $28m a year (~$10 more than the next most subsidized P5 school) despite the fact that the performance of its athletic department is, historically, one of the worst in all major and mid-major athletic conferences. I use these examples because for these two schools, Duke football and Rutgers athletic successes' have clearly not had tangible impacts on addressing the overall missions of these institutions. But for whatever reasons, these universities still deem their positions in the athletic hierarchy as one of significant importance and spent resources accordingly to protect those positions.

Therefore, if a school wants to maintain its place, it will do so. Contrast this to Temple's essential unwillingness to address conference mandated issues with its football program in the 1990s while an affiliate member of Big East football. It just didn't care. Schools that value their place, and demonstrate that by spending appropriately on revenue sports, aren't going to be forced out, no matter how small the rest of their overall athletic budget is. There is a reason Georgia Tech only sponsors 17 varsity sports, Kansas State 16, or Northwestern only 18 Big Ten sports, and no one else in those conferences cares. And they don't care because it doesn't impact the bottom line of any of the other members. What does is the media contracts built around football and men's basketball, and those are the only two sports that really need to be funded to a competitive level. How schools get there, whether it is issuing debt, dropping men's tennis or having less assistants for softball, isn't really a concern to their partners.

I agree with Terry. Contraction is only occurring if college athletes become overtly paid professionals and some schools, like ND, decide to split because it is incongruent with their academic ideologies. You aren't going to see Wake or Vandy forced out of anything. However, you could see them join a consortium of like-minded universities exiting "professional" athletics over ethical considerations.

This is exactly how we will get to the contracted number, be it 32 or up to 48. The schools that want to pursue the upper echelon will just stay the course and the schools, that because of academic conscience, will choose to drop to a lower level and band together to compete among peers.

Thanks. If that is the criteria there will be NO true contraction then since no one, not even the supposed academic elite schools, will sacrifice their athletic status on the altar of "academic conscience".

Cheers,
Neil

(04-11-2018 11:08 AM)OrangeDude Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 04:15 PM)XLance Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 03:38 PM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 01:46 PM)OrangeDude Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 08:43 AM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  Total gross revenue isn't shared between conference members. Athletic departments vary wildly in size, scope, subsidy, the number of varsity teams supported, and the accounting employed, especially between public and private schools. The ACC has more small schools and over 3X more private schools than any other conference and everyone that actually matters is well aware of that and couldn't care less that "mean gross revenue" doesn't match conferences that are predominantly filled with large state flagships. It matters not one whit to Florida State or Clemson what amount of gross athletic revenue Wake and Georgia Tech bring in as long as those schools maintain a semblance of competitiveness in football so that they don't become an anchor when strength of schedule metrics are important. What matters as far as conference affiliations is the money that each school receives from their conference, the exposure facilitated by the conference, and whether the conference allows them to compete at the highest levels. No one gives a crap if Boston College doesn't make more revenue than Mississippi State, except maybe Boston College.

Hail CrazyPaco!

I agree with most of this, except perhaps (in part) the highlighted statement because I am not entirely sure you meant it the way I am taking it.

As I am sure all are aware, the ACC is behind the 8-ball in terms of conference payouts mainly due to three factors, which I discussed in Post 107:

1) The TV Contract
2) The Contract Bowl Contract
3) Conference Network not up and running yet

Being behind (and significantly behind in terms of conference distributions) I believe can impact FSU's and Clemson's sustaining year-in and year-out competitive levels with their peers in the SEC - specifically in this case Florida and South Carolina. This contention may seem silly considering the recent success of FSU and Clemson this decade, but the key is, what happens if their football records mirror more what happened in the late 00s? Perhaps then it might be impactful in terms of their recovery?

There is also a piece of this that is impacted by who they have to play in conference (which some fans believes impact their individual revenue in terms of ticket sales, donations, etc.), but that only muddies the waters even more in this thread since it goes into conference membership and divisional set-ups, etc., so I didn't want to go there.

That is one separate sub-discussion in this thread that started with a discussion about the ACC being a stitched together conference that combined with the 5th place finances will likely lead to its better programs considering leaving the conference.

My post 107 was meant to show that being 5th place in conference revenue distribution was not necessarily a "forever thing" and hopefully gave reasons why I believe each of the above will be addressed in the next go-round of negotiations or in the case of the ACCN being addressed now to help narrow the gap - with the realistic goal of getting to third place since it is unlikely the ACC will ever catch the B1G and SEC overall in this regard. It is what is fellow ACC fans, I think the majority of us know this.

Another sub-discussion is dealing with this notion posted by Fighting Muskie- I think it all comes down to finances. If Clemson and Florida St want to keep up with Alabama and Georgia they can't do so when they are bringing in less money than Vanderbilt and Mississippi St..

Well, obviously neither Mississippi State nor Vandy are bringing in more overall money than FSU and Clemson (despite getting $15 million more in conference distributions over FSU and $12 million more than Clemson according to the last available data out there on conference payouts for 2015-16).

This combined with a minor but friendly dispute with JR in another thread over on the SEC board about the power conferences contracting to between 36 and 40/44/48 teams has resulted in some of the posts you have been reading in the latter part of this thread by me that brings into contention that certain lower level B1G/SEC teams will make the cut.

Now to be fair to JR, he wasn't advocating this based solely on overall conference athletics, but other factors as well. But I chose to focus solely on looking at what I refer to as Institutional Athletic Revenue since Total Athletic Revenue is both Conference Revenues distributed to an individual institution as well as Individual Institutional Athletic Revenue.

But if contractions occurs, will it be voluntary, forced, or a combination of both? Is it possible this Individual Institutional Athletic Revenue factor will influences who voluntarily drops out? So, being a fan of a private university, I am interested in this topic without necessarily taking a stance on what is likely to happen.

Since I have suspected this was going to be a possibility in the future, I have been developing a spread sheet on what I refer to as Individual Athletic Revenue (total revenue minus conference revenue) that I hopefully am going to follow over a span of 5 years before considering posting. With both data sets (EADA total revenue for all and conference revenue distributions for all but one conference) being out there for the 2015-16 that is the base year.

Hope this post makes some sense. I do tend to get long-winded sometimes.

Cheers,
Neil

If observations of the behavior of institutions over the last couple of decades have revealed anything, it is that no expense will be spared to if an institution wants to maintain its place in the athletic hierarchy. This could describe Duke suddenly spending large amounts of money on a long-neglected football program that had decades of historically atrocious performances or Rutgers subsidizing their athletic department, still, to a tune of over $28m a year (~$10 more than the next most subsidized P5 school) despite the fact that the performance of its athletic department is, historically, one of the worst in all major and mid-major athletic conferences. I use these examples because for these two schools, Duke football and Rutgers athletic successes' have clearly not had tangible impacts on addressing the overall missions of these institutions. But for whatever reasons, these universities still deem their positions in the athletic hierarchy as one of significant importance and spent resources accordingly to protect those positions.

Therefore, if a school wants to maintain its place, it will do so. Contrast this to Temple's essential unwillingness to address conference mandated issues with its football program in the 1990s while an affiliate member of Big East football. It just didn't care. Schools that value their place, and demonstrate that by spending appropriately on revenue sports, aren't going to be forced out, no matter how small the rest of their overall athletic budget is. There is a reason Georgia Tech only sponsors 17 varsity sports, Kansas State 16, or Northwestern only 18 Big Ten sports, and no one else in those conferences cares. And they don't care because it doesn't impact the bottom line of any of the other members. What does is the media contracts built around football and men's basketball, and those are the only two sports that really need to be funded to a competitive level. How schools get there, whether it is issuing debt, dropping men's tennis or having less assistants for softball, isn't really a concern to their partners.

I agree with Terry. Contraction is only occurring if college athletes become overtly paid professionals and some schools, like ND, decide to split because it is incongruent with their academic ideologies. You aren't going to see Wake or Vandy forced out of anything. However, you could see them join a consortium of like-minded universities exiting "professional" athletics over ethical considerations.

This is exactly how we will get to the contracted number, be it 32 or up to 48. The schools that want to pursue the upper echelon will just stay the course and the schools, that because of academic conscience, will choose to drop to a lower level and band together to compete among peers.

Thanks. If that is the criteria there will be NO true contraction then since no one, not even the supposed academic elite schools, will sacrifice their athletic status on the altar of "academic conscience".

Cheers,
Neil

Except it won't work that way Neil. The justification for the separation might be academic conscience, but the motivation for the separation will be purely economic. There will be those who simply recognize that they will be severely impaired by an open market for paid players. It's a game changer if the courts so rule.

(04-11-2018 12:31 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(04-11-2018 11:08 AM)OrangeDude Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 04:15 PM)XLance Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 03:38 PM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 01:46 PM)OrangeDude Wrote:  Hail CrazyPaco!

I agree with most of this, except perhaps (in part) the highlighted statement because I am not entirely sure you meant it the way I am taking it.

As I am sure all are aware, the ACC is behind the 8-ball in terms of conference payouts mainly due to three factors, which I discussed in Post 107:

1) The TV Contract
2) The Contract Bowl Contract
3) Conference Network not up and running yet

Being behind (and significantly behind in terms of conference distributions) I believe can impact FSU's and Clemson's sustaining year-in and year-out competitive levels with their peers in the SEC - specifically in this case Florida and South Carolina. This contention may seem silly considering the recent success of FSU and Clemson this decade, but the key is, what happens if their football records mirror more what happened in the late 00s? Perhaps then it might be impactful in terms of their recovery?

There is also a piece of this that is impacted by who they have to play in conference (which some fans believes impact their individual revenue in terms of ticket sales, donations, etc.), but that only muddies the waters even more in this thread since it goes into conference membership and divisional set-ups, etc., so I didn't want to go there.

That is one separate sub-discussion in this thread that started with a discussion about the ACC being a stitched together conference that combined with the 5th place finances will likely lead to its better programs considering leaving the conference.

My post 107 was meant to show that being 5th place in conference revenue distribution was not necessarily a "forever thing" and hopefully gave reasons why I believe each of the above will be addressed in the next go-round of negotiations or in the case of the ACCN being addressed now to help narrow the gap - with the realistic goal of getting to third place since it is unlikely the ACC will ever catch the B1G and SEC overall in this regard. It is what is fellow ACC fans, I think the majority of us know this.

Another sub-discussion is dealing with this notion posted by Fighting Muskie- I think it all comes down to finances. If Clemson and Florida St want to keep up with Alabama and Georgia they can't do so when they are bringing in less money than Vanderbilt and Mississippi St..

Well, obviously neither Mississippi State nor Vandy are bringing in more overall money than FSU and Clemson (despite getting $15 million more in conference distributions over FSU and $12 million more than Clemson according to the last available data out there on conference payouts for 2015-16).

This combined with a minor but friendly dispute with JR in another thread over on the SEC board about the power conferences contracting to between 36 and 40/44/48 teams has resulted in some of the posts you have been reading in the latter part of this thread by me that brings into contention that certain lower level B1G/SEC teams will make the cut.

Now to be fair to JR, he wasn't advocating this based solely on overall conference athletics, but other factors as well. But I chose to focus solely on looking at what I refer to as Institutional Athletic Revenue since Total Athletic Revenue is both Conference Revenues distributed to an individual institution as well as Individual Institutional Athletic Revenue.

But if contractions occurs, will it be voluntary, forced, or a combination of both? Is it possible this Individual Institutional Athletic Revenue factor will influences who voluntarily drops out? So, being a fan of a private university, I am interested in this topic without necessarily taking a stance on what is likely to happen.

Since I have suspected this was going to be a possibility in the future, I have been developing a spread sheet on what I refer to as Individual Athletic Revenue (total revenue minus conference revenue) that I hopefully am going to follow over a span of 5 years before considering posting. With both data sets (EADA total revenue for all and conference revenue distributions for all but one conference) being out there for the 2015-16 that is the base year.

Hope this post makes some sense. I do tend to get long-winded sometimes.

Cheers,
Neil

If observations of the behavior of institutions over the last couple of decades have revealed anything, it is that no expense will be spared to if an institution wants to maintain its place in the athletic hierarchy. This could describe Duke suddenly spending large amounts of money on a long-neglected football program that had decades of historically atrocious performances or Rutgers subsidizing their athletic department, still, to a tune of over $28m a year (~$10 more than the next most subsidized P5 school) despite the fact that the performance of its athletic department is, historically, one of the worst in all major and mid-major athletic conferences. I use these examples because for these two schools, Duke football and Rutgers athletic successes' have clearly not had tangible impacts on addressing the overall missions of these institutions. But for whatever reasons, these universities still deem their positions in the athletic hierarchy as one of significant importance and spent resources accordingly to protect those positions.

Therefore, if a school wants to maintain its place, it will do so. Contrast this to Temple's essential unwillingness to address conference mandated issues with its football program in the 1990s while an affiliate member of Big East football. It just didn't care. Schools that value their place, and demonstrate that by spending appropriately on revenue sports, aren't going to be forced out, no matter how small the rest of their overall athletic budget is. There is a reason Georgia Tech only sponsors 17 varsity sports, Kansas State 16, or Northwestern only 18 Big Ten sports, and no one else in those conferences cares. And they don't care because it doesn't impact the bottom line of any of the other members. What does is the media contracts built around football and men's basketball, and those are the only two sports that really need to be funded to a competitive level. How schools get there, whether it is issuing debt, dropping men's tennis or having less assistants for softball, isn't really a concern to their partners.

I agree with Terry. Contraction is only occurring if college athletes become overtly paid professionals and some schools, like ND, decide to split because it is incongruent with their academic ideologies. You aren't going to see Wake or Vandy forced out of anything. However, you could see them join a consortium of like-minded universities exiting "professional" athletics over ethical considerations.

This is exactly how we will get to the contracted number, be it 32 or up to 48. The schools that want to pursue the upper echelon will just stay the course and the schools, that because of academic conscience, will choose to drop to a lower level and band together to compete among peers.

Thanks. If that is the criteria there will be NO true contraction then since no one, not even the supposed academic elite schools, will sacrifice their athletic status on the altar of "academic conscience".

Cheers,
Neil

Except it won't work that way Neil. The justification for the separation might be academic conscience, but the motivation for the separation will be purely economic. There will be those who simply recognize that they will be severely impaired by an open market for paid players. It's a game changer if the courts so rule.

They already are paying players the extra cost of living stipend. Not to mention secret bag money to high prospects families in bb. They will simply pay less for the athletes the Super Football Brands don't want.

Cheers,
Neil