(08-08-2019 09:44 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote: (08-07-2019 08:06 AM)ken d Wrote: (08-06-2019 08:11 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote: I’m all for divesting any say by the NCAA on the affairs of college football. The new governing body would require a certain number of games among member institutions and up to a certain number of games against NCAA Schools. The NCAA would be powerless to prohibit Toledo from playing Purdue, etc.
Note that I didn't say college football. I said FBS football. I don't have a problem with schools opting to play under the NCAA at the FCS level or below, where they can have a lower level of scholarships and a championship tournament. This would possibly mean that schools now in FBS wouldn't be able to play FCS opponents any more. That just means more body bag payday opportunities for budget strapped FBS teams.
I understand what you’re saying here. What I imagine happening here is the P5 forming their own governing body while everyone else in FBS gets merged into FCS. The new body likely mandates 10 games among the P5 but would allow schools to schedule 2 NCAA FCS games as a pre-season.
The NCAA would really have no choice but to allow it because the schools need the pay day cash to operate.
Would the NCAA accommodate the breakaway group that easily?
On the one hand, the NCAA might want to compromise in order to keep the P5 schools in the NCAA basketball tournament, because the NCAA would have to cut away nearly all its bureaucracy if it lost the $800 million/year it takes in from March Madness. On the other hand, if the P5 succeeds in forming this new organization, then once they have gone to the trouble of setting up their new bureaucracy, why limit it to football?
Think about where the money is. The P5 already keeps almost all the money from the CFP. There's some more money to be made there, but their new organization would get a much bigger pile of cash (compared to what they have now) by starting their own basketball tournaments and keeping the lion's share of those huge TV contracts. They wouldn't have to make it a P5-only tournament; they could keep the Cinderella appeal by inviting about 20 NCAA teams to their tournament, or invite no-football conferences like the Big East to join the new organization founded by the P5. Think of the 10 or 20 best non-P5 basketball teams, and ask if they would rather compete in the tournament that has Duke, Kentucky, Kansas, etc., or the tournament that has no P5 teams. Everyone knows the answer to that.
It would be a huge mess for the NCAA. They have become so dependent on March Madness as their almost-exclusive source of funding that they would be in chaos without it. If the NCAA ever lost both the P5 and March Madness, the NCAA would become a shadow of what it is today.
So, IMO the NCAA would figure out that a P5 departure, even if it starts as a football-only thing, likely means an eventual end to the vast majority of the NCAA's revenue and power. They would do what they could to stop it, and if they couldn't stop it, then they would do anything they could to make things more difficult, and do nothing to cooperate with the P5.