(10-12-2020 10:06 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(10-12-2020 09:44 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(10-12-2020 09:34 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  To answer the OP question: NO. NFW.

Much of the value proposition of schools like Vandy and Northwestern is that you can have elite academics AND big-time sports (even if they aren’t necessarily good at them). Believe me - it’s a huge factor when Northwestern is competing for top academic kids across town with the University of Chicago.

Any university president of a school that is legitimately competing with the Ivy League for students would be absolutely INSANE to step back from Power Five membership. They’re competing in a space where they’re going after elite students that are willing to pay $80,000 per year out-of-pocket and it’s quite a valuable demographic to have top tier academics yet still have ESPN and other national networks coming to campus every week. That’s what they’re able to sell in order to compensate for not having the Ivy League membership. Heck, that’s how Michigan gets so many smart kids to pay nearly that much for out-of-state tuition, too.

If players eventually need to be paid, then they’ll be paid by all of these private institutions. No one is willingly giving up Power Five membership and, frankly, the budget constraints from this pandemic are only going to make that membership (with its focus on TV rights without having to depend on attendance) much more valuable.

The proof is gong to be in pudding Frank. Academics and Athletics are going to become two separate endeavors when pay for play hits. It's one thing if Vanderbilt or Northwestern want to stay, it's another as to whether they pay their way into whatever new associations are formed. Dead weight won't have to be kept in order just to keep an academic alliance. And the Big 10 (the only Ivy like Academic/Athletic conference among the P5) is going to have the most trouble in the new world. You have a TV contract world in which content will be everything that drives new contract values. They aren't pining for Vandy vs Georgia and NW vs Wisconsin.

When this happens we are going to have another realignment that is going to make that which has occurred heretofore look tame. So Vandy and NW may want to stay part of the club but there is no guarantee the old clubs will still be viable.

It's going to be more revolutionary than OU/UGa vs the NCAA.

We’ll just need to agree to disagree on this point. Schools are going to be dragged into the pay for play world kicking and screaming, but at the end of the day, they’ll pay up no matter what their academic standing might be.

This is a football-focused board, but endorsement income is more likely to have a bigger impact in basketball (as they don’t even try to hide that recruiting *today* is tied to the shoe companies). Duke is the highest ranked Power Five school in the US News rankings after Stanford... yet they’re getting top one-and-done basketball stars better than Kentucky and Kansas. Do we really think that Duke is giving that up? Do we really think that Duke boosters haven’t engaged in recruiting tactics that would make the fiercest Alabama football boosters blush?

Once again - this is about going after elite students and families that are willing to pay $80,000 per year out-of-pocket for college to go to the Ivy League. Power Five membership is a HUGE selling point for the handful of the elite schools that have it. I’ve seen it firsthand with with Northwestern competing with the University of Chicago. It’s what Vandy, Duke and Wake Forest use in competing against Emory. It’s what Stanford uses against Harvard, Yale and Princeton. How they perform against Alabama and Ohio State is almost irrelevant - they’re playing an entirely different game in terms of wanting to get the best talent in their student bodies overall and big-time sports are a huge differentiator there.

Eventually the families of the players at the Vanderbilts, Dukes and Northwesterns of the world will say...enough is enough. We aren't going to let our sons be brutalized by professional athletes that have no business in college.
The good, smart well adjusted kid that just wants to play football or other sports will start to seek out places to play where they can compete against their peers.
The big decisions will have to come from "tweener" schools like UVa, where academics and a form of Big Time athletics exist.
In order for a UVa to compete in the pay for play world, they would have to admit students that wouldn't usually attend. Duke basketball players routinely take their classes at North Carolina Central to avoid the challenges of Duke academics; most schools don't have that luxury.
The academic schools will eventually leave the pay for play conferences and form their own leagues to compete amongst themselves. For a school like Wake Forest it's a no brainer....for Notre Dame it's a soul searcher.

(10-12-2020 09:11 PM)Love and Honor Wrote:  

(10-12-2020 08:50 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  They were forcibly demoted to FCS and never returned so to that effect they de-emphasized.

To some extent, but there's a big difference between them and a former DI that dropped from a power conference to DIII by their own decision like Chicago.

Imo it'd take a fundamental changing of college athletics (or an administrator having comically dictatorial power of their athletic department and deciding unilaterally to move down) for a program to completely step away from major conference athletics. The fame and money (real or potential) along with organizational inertia will even keep tiny schools like Rice around indefinitely. Just think about the outcry that we saw after UAB, a small public school in a G5 conference that wasn't a major player in the college sports universe, dropped one DI sport (albeit football in the deep south). Imagine the reaction if Vanderbilt, an SEC school in a major city with a number of notable alums, seriously considered leaving all of that. It'll take a much different world for it to happen, not impossible but still unprecedented.

At the time the decision was made, I could actually see Vandy's administration's reasoning for getting rid of the athletic department. Vandy had tried everything to be more successful in football to no avail, except the crazy move of getting rid of the athletic department. Basically, Vandy was trying to streamline operations so it could actually have competitive football, which, to Vandy's credit, they actually did for awhile. But then, former cellar dweller buddy Kentucky finally landed a decent football coach, and Mizzou as well as Texas A&M came into the league. It helped that the Vols shot themselves in the foot a lot, but then former coach Phil Fulmer came in and worked on sorting out the mess that was UT Vols athletics. If that wasn't bad enough for Vandy, they had to now deal with a legitimate Memphis Tigers football program and Middle Tennessee was threatening. I think Vandy administration has finally come to the inevitable conclusion that, just like the University of the South and Tulane, they can't compete anymore in football. This is unlike what happened at Duke, who decided to try a different path, which was get more donors to invest in the football program. This is helped by the fact that UNC-Chapel Hill is basically a crosstown rival, so Duke donors hear it pretty bad from Tar Heel donors when the Blue Devils stink it up in football. Georgia Tech has a faux crosstown rivalry with my Dawgs, in that it's not too far from Athens, Ga. to Atlanta, IMO. But in no way shape or form, is Athens across town from Atlanta, in real life.
If Vandy had that type of a rivalry, where UT was in Nashville instead of Knoxville, I could see that lighting a fire under Vandy's administration's figurative butts.

SMU is totally different from Vandy, IMO. SMU is not paid to take losses. SMU has had a very proud history also and won't go down easily. And SMU has an athletic department as well as being located in one of the biggest population states in the country, unlike Vandy who is located in Tennessee, known for country music, Vols, plus Titans football, and not much else. If I'm not mistaken, I believe SMU also has a presidential library too. You have to go all the way back the conclusion of the War Between the States to find the last President from the state of Tennessee, Andrew Johnson, who replaced assasinated President Abraham Lincoln, and Vandy wasn't around back then to get President Johnson's presidential library.

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(10-12-2020 10:30 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(10-12-2020 10:06 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(10-12-2020 09:44 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(10-12-2020 09:34 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  To answer the OP question: NO. NFW.

Much of the value proposition of schools like Vandy and Northwestern is that you can have elite academics AND big-time sports (even if they aren’t necessarily good at them). Believe me - it’s a huge factor when Northwestern is competing for top academic kids across town with the University of Chicago.

Any university president of a school that is legitimately competing with the Ivy League for students would be absolutely INSANE to step back from Power Five membership. They’re competing in a space where they’re going after elite students that are willing to pay $80,000 per year out-of-pocket and it’s quite a valuable demographic to have top tier academics yet still have ESPN and other national networks coming to campus every week. That’s what they’re able to sell in order to compensate for not having the Ivy League membership. Heck, that’s how Michigan gets so many smart kids to pay nearly that much for out-of-state tuition, too.

If players eventually need to be paid, then they’ll be paid by all of these private institutions. No one is willingly giving up Power Five membership and, frankly, the budget constraints from this pandemic are only going to make that membership (with its focus on TV rights without having to depend on attendance) much more valuable.

The proof is gong to be in pudding Frank. Academics and Athletics are going to become two separate endeavors when pay for play hits. It's one thing if Vanderbilt or Northwestern want to stay, it's another as to whether they pay their way into whatever new associations are formed. Dead weight won't have to be kept in order just to keep an academic alliance. And the Big 10 (the only Ivy like Academic/Athletic conference among the P5) is going to have the most trouble in the new world. You have a TV contract world in which content will be everything that drives new contract values. They aren't pining for Vandy vs Georgia and NW vs Wisconsin.

When this happens we are going to have another realignment that is going to make that which has occurred heretofore look tame. So Vandy and NW may want to stay part of the club but there is no guarantee the old clubs will still be viable.

It's going to be more revolutionary than OU/UGa vs the NCAA.

We’ll just need to agree to disagree on this point. Schools are going to be dragged into the pay for play world kicking and screaming, but at the end of the day, they’ll pay up no matter what their academic standing might be.

This is a football-focused board, but endorsement income is more likely to have a bigger impact in basketball (as they don’t even try to hide that recruiting *today* is tied to the shoe companies). Duke is the highest ranked Power Five school in the US News rankings after Stanford... yet they’re getting top one-and-done basketball stars better than Kentucky and Kansas. Do we really think that Duke is giving that up? Do we really think that Duke boosters haven’t engaged in recruiting tactics that would make the fiercest Alabama football boosters blush?

Once again - this is about going after elite students and families that are willing to pay $80,000 per year out-of-pocket for college to go to the Ivy League. Power Five membership is a HUGE selling point for the handful of the elite schools that have it. I’ve seen it firsthand with with Northwestern competing with the University of Chicago. It’s what Vandy, Duke and Wake Forest use in competing against Emory. It’s what Stanford uses against Harvard, Yale and Princeton. How they perform against Alabama and Ohio State is almost irrelevant - they’re playing an entirely different game in terms of wanting to get the best talent in their student bodies overall and big-time sports are a huge differentiator there.

We don't have to agree to disagree Frank. I agree under the current model every effort will be made by these schools to remain. I'm suggesting that a different organizational paradigm will arise out of this and the old P5 as we knew it will be dramatically changed and with it we will see of necessity a separation of academic conferences (consortia) into a dichotomy of academic only consortia not bound by athletic competition and Athletic consortia not bound to academic associations but organized around competitive and financial principles which will radically change the world of conferences we see now, at least at the upper level. I think this will alter basketball conferences as well.

Why?

There is too much money to be made by a change in associations to match commitment to sport and the networks will more than willingly fund it. And I also believe that venerated associations in academia will survive and thrive by separating from the sports component of campus life. It will be a big adjustment for the Big 10 but a Big 10 academic consortium might well include a Texas, Texas A&M, Florida, North Carolina, Duke, Virginia, or Vanderbilt without having any impact on athletic association.

In other words I think the trend initiated by pay for play and by networks seeking the highest possible ratings will lead to a revolution that should have occurred 80 years ago. Universities should be freed to pursue their best possible exposure and financial reward in sports and also to pursue their best possible academic alliances for the sake of research and scientific discovery. It's really rather asinine and counter productive to continue simply because this is the way we've always done it since the early 1800's.

So I don't disagree with your assertion of what Duke, Northwestern, and Vandy will want to do, I just foresee a total reorganization of schools competing athletically with athletic peers, and researching academically with academic peers where such relationships no longer remain mutually inclusive to the detriment of both.

As long as the major decisions of university athletic conference membership are determined by university presidents and not athletic directors, academics will always matter.

And even if we made it entirely based on athletics or financial, I'm not buying it would include the entire SEC minus Vanderbilt either. You think every public SEC member is an "athletic peer" with Alabama and Auburn? You think Vandy is the only athletic dead weight in the conference? If I'm ESPN and I can choose only which schools I'd want to pay for, I'd dump more than Vanderbilt from the SEC. There might even be a list of only about 30 FBS schools worth paying big bucks for in college football (and my Illini definitely wouldn't be on the list). You could add a few more like Duke, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Kansas for men's basketball (maybe then Illinois would make the list in a few years). But we're not just going to give everyone in the SEC a free pass to the party and say they're better than everyone else. In no planet are Mississippi and Mississippi State going to be better than Ohio State or Clemson.

JR, here's what I don't get: the Miami Hurricanes had every excuse to be irrelevant in football back when they hired a slew of bad coaches after Butch Davis departed for the NFL. But instead, they buckled down, found the funds to pay for a very nice indoor practice facility and were able to lure Larranaga south to coach their basketball team, as well as get one of my favorite Georgia coaches, Mark Richt, to delay his retirement. Why didn't Vandy learn from what Miami did or Wake Forest, for that matter??? IMO, Stanford, USC, Notre Dame, and BYU have done this (doing what the Hurricanes did) as well. Even Duke has emulated Miami-FL some as well, IMO.

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(10-13-2020 05:47 AM)schmolik Wrote:  

(10-12-2020 10:30 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(10-12-2020 10:06 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(10-12-2020 09:44 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(10-12-2020 09:34 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  To answer the OP question: NO. NFW.

Much of the value proposition of schools like Vandy and Northwestern is that you can have elite academics AND big-time sports (even if they aren’t necessarily good at them). Believe me - it’s a huge factor when Northwestern is competing for top academic kids across town with the University of Chicago.

Any university president of a school that is legitimately competing with the Ivy League for students would be absolutely INSANE to step back from Power Five membership. They’re competing in a space where they’re going after elite students that are willing to pay $80,000 per year out-of-pocket and it’s quite a valuable demographic to have top tier academics yet still have ESPN and other national networks coming to campus every week. That’s what they’re able to sell in order to compensate for not having the Ivy League membership. Heck, that’s how Michigan gets so many smart kids to pay nearly that much for out-of-state tuition, too.

If players eventually need to be paid, then they’ll be paid by all of these private institutions. No one is willingly giving up Power Five membership and, frankly, the budget constraints from this pandemic are only going to make that membership (with its focus on TV rights without having to depend on attendance) much more valuable.

The proof is gong to be in pudding Frank. Academics and Athletics are going to become two separate endeavors when pay for play hits. It's one thing if Vanderbilt or Northwestern want to stay, it's another as to whether they pay their way into whatever new associations are formed. Dead weight won't have to be kept in order just to keep an academic alliance. And the Big 10 (the only Ivy like Academic/Athletic conference among the P5) is going to have the most trouble in the new world. You have a TV contract world in which content will be everything that drives new contract values. They aren't pining for Vandy vs Georgia and NW vs Wisconsin.

When this happens we are going to have another realignment that is going to make that which has occurred heretofore look tame. So Vandy and NW may want to stay part of the club but there is no guarantee the old clubs will still be viable.

It's going to be more revolutionary than OU/UGa vs the NCAA.

We’ll just need to agree to disagree on this point. Schools are going to be dragged into the pay for play world kicking and screaming, but at the end of the day, they’ll pay up no matter what their academic standing might be.

This is a football-focused board, but endorsement income is more likely to have a bigger impact in basketball (as they don’t even try to hide that recruiting *today* is tied to the shoe companies). Duke is the highest ranked Power Five school in the US News rankings after Stanford... yet they’re getting top one-and-done basketball stars better than Kentucky and Kansas. Do we really think that Duke is giving that up? Do we really think that Duke boosters haven’t engaged in recruiting tactics that would make the fiercest Alabama football boosters blush?

Once again - this is about going after elite students and families that are willing to pay $80,000 per year out-of-pocket for college to go to the Ivy League. Power Five membership is a HUGE selling point for the handful of the elite schools that have it. I’ve seen it firsthand with with Northwestern competing with the University of Chicago. It’s what Vandy, Duke and Wake Forest use in competing against Emory. It’s what Stanford uses against Harvard, Yale and Princeton. How they perform against Alabama and Ohio State is almost irrelevant - they’re playing an entirely different game in terms of wanting to get the best talent in their student bodies overall and big-time sports are a huge differentiator there.

We don't have to agree to disagree Frank. I agree under the current model every effort will be made by these schools to remain. I'm suggesting that a different organizational paradigm will arise out of this and the old P5 as we knew it will be dramatically changed and with it we will see of necessity a separation of academic conferences (consortia) into a dichotomy of academic only consortia not bound by athletic competition and Athletic consortia not bound to academic associations but organized around competitive and financial principles which will radically change the world of conferences we see now, at least at the upper level. I think this will alter basketball conferences as well.

Why?

There is too much money to be made by a change in associations to match commitment to sport and the networks will more than willingly fund it. And I also believe that venerated associations in academia will survive and thrive by separating from the sports component of campus life. It will be a big adjustment for the Big 10 but a Big 10 academic consortium might well include a Texas, Texas A&M, Florida, North Carolina, Duke, Virginia, or Vanderbilt without having any impact on athletic association.

In other words I think the trend initiated by pay for play and by networks seeking the highest possible ratings will lead to a revolution that should have occurred 80 years ago. Universities should be freed to pursue their best possible exposure and financial reward in sports and also to pursue their best possible academic alliances for the sake of research and scientific discovery. It's really rather asinine and counter productive to continue simply because this is the way we've always done it since the early 1800's.

So I don't disagree with your assertion of what Duke, Northwestern, and Vandy will want to do, I just foresee a total reorganization of schools competing athletically with athletic peers, and researching academically with academic peers where such relationships no longer remain mutually inclusive to the detriment of both.

As long as the major decisions of university athletic conference membership are determined by university presidents and not athletic directors, academics will always matter.

And even if we made it entirely based on athletics or financial, I'm not buying it would include the entire SEC minus Vanderbilt either. You think every public SEC member is an "athletic peer" with Alabama and Auburn? You think Vandy is the only athletic dead weight in the conference? If I'm ESPN and I can choose only which schools I'd want to pay for, I'd dump more than Vanderbilt from the SEC. There might even be a list of only about 30 FBS schools worth paying big bucks for in college football (and my Illini definitely wouldn't be on the list). You could add a few more like Duke, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Kansas for men's basketball (maybe then Illinois would make the list in a few years). But we're not just going to give everyone in the SEC a free pass to the party and say they're better than everyone else. In no planet are Mississippi and Mississippi State going to be better than Ohio State or Clemson.

Schmolik, the reason why ESPN is holding back, IMO, is that new media order (FAANG) really wants this badly too. However, ESPN can hold off the new media order by dangling the carrot of being able to keep a lot of old rivals together, something that the new media order is NOT big on, IMO.


Put another way: would you prefer JR Ewing from Dallas or Governor Gavin Newsome??
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(10-13-2020 05:47 AM)schmolik Wrote:  

(10-12-2020 10:30 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(10-12-2020 10:06 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(10-12-2020 09:44 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(10-12-2020 09:34 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  To answer the OP question: NO. NFW.

Much of the value proposition of schools like Vandy and Northwestern is that you can have elite academics AND big-time sports (even if they aren’t necessarily good at them). Believe me - it’s a huge factor when Northwestern is competing for top academic kids across town with the University of Chicago.

Any university president of a school that is legitimately competing with the Ivy League for students would be absolutely INSANE to step back from Power Five membership. They’re competing in a space where they’re going after elite students that are willing to pay $80,000 per year out-of-pocket and it’s quite a valuable demographic to have top tier academics yet still have ESPN and other national networks coming to campus every week. That’s what they’re able to sell in order to compensate for not having the Ivy League membership. Heck, that’s how Michigan gets so many smart kids to pay nearly that much for out-of-state tuition, too.

If players eventually need to be paid, then they’ll be paid by all of these private institutions. No one is willingly giving up Power Five membership and, frankly, the budget constraints from this pandemic are only going to make that membership (with its focus on TV rights without having to depend on attendance) much more valuable.

The proof is gong to be in pudding Frank. Academics and Athletics are going to become two separate endeavors when pay for play hits. It's one thing if Vanderbilt or Northwestern want to stay, it's another as to whether they pay their way into whatever new associations are formed. Dead weight won't have to be kept in order just to keep an academic alliance. And the Big 10 (the only Ivy like Academic/Athletic conference among the P5) is going to have the most trouble in the new world. You have a TV contract world in which content will be everything that drives new contract values. They aren't pining for Vandy vs Georgia and NW vs Wisconsin.

When this happens we are going to have another realignment that is going to make that which has occurred heretofore look tame. So Vandy and NW may want to stay part of the club but there is no guarantee the old clubs will still be viable.

It's going to be more revolutionary than OU/UGa vs the NCAA.

We’ll just need to agree to disagree on this point. Schools are going to be dragged into the pay for play world kicking and screaming, but at the end of the day, they’ll pay up no matter what their academic standing might be.

This is a football-focused board, but endorsement income is more likely to have a bigger impact in basketball (as they don’t even try to hide that recruiting *today* is tied to the shoe companies). Duke is the highest ranked Power Five school in the US News rankings after Stanford... yet they’re getting top one-and-done basketball stars better than Kentucky and Kansas. Do we really think that Duke is giving that up? Do we really think that Duke boosters haven’t engaged in recruiting tactics that would make the fiercest Alabama football boosters blush?

Once again - this is about going after elite students and families that are willing to pay $80,000 per year out-of-pocket for college to go to the Ivy League. Power Five membership is a HUGE selling point for the handful of the elite schools that have it. I’ve seen it firsthand with with Northwestern competing with the University of Chicago. It’s what Vandy, Duke and Wake Forest use in competing against Emory. It’s what Stanford uses against Harvard, Yale and Princeton. How they perform against Alabama and Ohio State is almost irrelevant - they’re playing an entirely different game in terms of wanting to get the best talent in their student bodies overall and big-time sports are a huge differentiator there.

We don't have to agree to disagree Frank. I agree under the current model every effort will be made by these schools to remain. I'm suggesting that a different organizational paradigm will arise out of this and the old P5 as we knew it will be dramatically changed and with it we will see of necessity a separation of academic conferences (consortia) into a dichotomy of academic only consortia not bound by athletic competition and Athletic consortia not bound to academic associations but organized around competitive and financial principles which will radically change the world of conferences we see now, at least at the upper level. I think this will alter basketball conferences as well.

Why?

There is too much money to be made by a change in associations to match commitment to sport and the networks will more than willingly fund it. And I also believe that venerated associations in academia will survive and thrive by separating from the sports component of campus life. It will be a big adjustment for the Big 10 but a Big 10 academic consortium might well include a Texas, Texas A&M, Florida, North Carolina, Duke, Virginia, or Vanderbilt without having any impact on athletic association.

In other words I think the trend initiated by pay for play and by networks seeking the highest possible ratings will lead to a revolution that should have occurred 80 years ago. Universities should be freed to pursue their best possible exposure and financial reward in sports and also to pursue their best possible academic alliances for the sake of research and scientific discovery. It's really rather asinine and counter productive to continue simply because this is the way we've always done it since the early 1800's.

So I don't disagree with your assertion of what Duke, Northwestern, and Vandy will want to do, I just foresee a total reorganization of schools competing athletically with athletic peers, and researching academically with academic peers where such relationships no longer remain mutually inclusive to the detriment of both.

As long as the major decisions of university athletic conference membership are determined by university presidents and not athletic directors, academics will always matter.

And even if we made it entirely based on athletics or financial, I'm not buying it would include the entire SEC minus Vanderbilt either. You think every public SEC member is an "athletic peer" with Alabama and Auburn? You think Vandy is the only athletic dead weight in the conference? If I'm ESPN and I can choose only which schools I'd want to pay for, I'd dump more than Vanderbilt from the SEC. There might even be a list of only about 30 FBS schools worth paying big bucks for in college football (and my Illini definitely wouldn't be on the list). You could add a few more like Duke, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Kansas for men's basketball (maybe then Illinois would make the list in a few years). But we're not just going to give everyone in the SEC a free pass to the party and say they're better than everyone else. In no planet are Mississippi and Mississippi State going to be better than Ohio State or Clemson.

What if the SEC did not throw Vandy out?? What if Vandy became more like Georgetown and Villanova and de-emphasized football to really emphasize men's basketball and other Olympic sports and Vandy could stay in the SEC too, due to their history with the conference??

It would be slightly similar to the relationship U of Chicago had with the Big Ten, but takes it one step further, in creating another major Olympic sports competitor.
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(10-12-2020 08:50 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  

(10-12-2020 07:02 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(10-12-2020 06:38 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  Plenty of once mighty (as well as less mighty) athletic programs from small, elite, private schools have de-emphasized athletics:

The Ivy League
U of Chicago
Washington U (St L)
Fordham
William & Mary
Richmond
Holy Cross

The 1978 split and subsequent ratcheting up of DI-A requirements sent some of these schools down but decisions about academics either directly or indirectly changed the philosophies of those athletic departments.



It makes me wonder if in this day and age we will see anyone else make similar decisions to de-emphasize sports because the missions of their athletic conferences aren’t in sync with the university.

Vanderbilt immediately comes to mind but Northwestern, Rice, Tulsa, Tulane, SMU, BC, WF, and even Stanford could fall in this category. (I could see programs like Syracuse and Duke abandoning football but retaining big time basketball in the Big East).

Do schools like these really need the athletic income (or losses)?
What publicity or name recognition is a big time athletic program getting them that they don’t already get on academic reputation alone?

William & Mary and Richmond have not de-emphasized, although the others have.

They were forcibly demoted to FCS and never returned so to that effect they de-emphasized.

Actually both those schools left the SoCon due to the questionable academics of new schools being added in the late 70’s. They survived as 1-A Independents until 1981 when they were reclassified, but their schedules were full of 1-A competition. So they did not de-emphasize.

Had the proposed conference of those two, VaTech, VMI, ECU, S. Carolina and some others worked out, they wouldn’t have been placed in 1-AA.

Fordham dropped football due to losing money on the program and poor attendance at the gate, it had nothing to do with academics. There were two or three bailouts by alumni until they finally dropped the team. They have since brought it back, and actually offer scholarships.

Former University Division (FBS) programs Detroit Mercy, Marquette, Villanova, and Xavier all dropped football for monetary reasons, not academics. Villanova is of course back, and won a FCS title. I’m not sure about longtime University Division Independent, Dayton. They dropped to DIII in the late 70’s.

Holy Cross is the only recent program I can think of that deemphasized due to academics, and that’s because the president of the college wanted them to be Ivy lite so they stopped offering scholarships. COHC even turned down an Atlantic 10 offer, quickly doing an about-face, but it was too late.

I don’t see BC, Wake, Vandy etc. having the problems of the aforementioned programs.

I can see Ivy League teams actually being more competitive in the future.

I’d like to point out that since 1960, Vanderbilt has only posted 2 seasons with a winning record in SEC play: 1982 and 2012

(10-12-2020 06:50 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  Someone at Notre Dame once told me that Notre Dame's academics would be like Marquette's if Notre Dame never had D-1 football. And he wasn't saying that as an insult to Marquette.

Elite sports attracts high end academic talent. Mediocre sports, on the other hand, do nothing. I think it's a waste of money for Rice to have a D-1 athletic department.

The quote that I heard many years ago was that Notre Dame would be like tiny St. Norbert College in Wisconsin without football.

Football indeed put ND on the map and led to its academic success.

It is ironic that its Administration is often suspicious of and sometimes against too much football success over the decades.

It has "pumped the breaks" and put internal roadblocks up when coaches like Frank Leahy, Ara Parseghian and Lou Holtz became "too successful" in football.

(10-13-2020 07:48 AM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  I’d like to point out that since 1960, Vanderbilt has only posted 2 seasons with a winning record in SEC play: 1982 and 2012

*in football

That should show you that they don’t care and it hasn’t affected their membership.

I don't think Tulane has de-empahisized athletics, they have moved out of the SuperDome and built a new stadium on campus. Sounds like a commitment to me.

(10-13-2020 05:47 AM)schmolik Wrote:  

(10-12-2020 10:30 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(10-12-2020 10:06 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(10-12-2020 09:44 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(10-12-2020 09:34 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  To answer the OP question: NO. NFW.

Much of the value proposition of schools like Vandy and Northwestern is that you can have elite academics AND big-time sports (even if they aren’t necessarily good at them). Believe me - it’s a huge factor when Northwestern is competing for top academic kids across town with the University of Chicago.

Any university president of a school that is legitimately competing with the Ivy League for students would be absolutely INSANE to step back from Power Five membership. They’re competing in a space where they’re going after elite students that are willing to pay $80,000 per year out-of-pocket and it’s quite a valuable demographic to have top tier academics yet still have ESPN and other national networks coming to campus every week. That’s what they’re able to sell in order to compensate for not having the Ivy League membership. Heck, that’s how Michigan gets so many smart kids to pay nearly that much for out-of-state tuition, too.

If players eventually need to be paid, then they’ll be paid by all of these private institutions. No one is willingly giving up Power Five membership and, frankly, the budget constraints from this pandemic are only going to make that membership (with its focus on TV rights without having to depend on attendance) much more valuable.

The proof is gong to be in pudding Frank. Academics and Athletics are going to become two separate endeavors when pay for play hits. It's one thing if Vanderbilt or Northwestern want to stay, it's another as to whether they pay their way into whatever new associations are formed. Dead weight won't have to be kept in order just to keep an academic alliance. And the Big 10 (the only Ivy like Academic/Athletic conference among the P5) is going to have the most trouble in the new world. You have a TV contract world in which content will be everything that drives new contract values. They aren't pining for Vandy vs Georgia and NW vs Wisconsin.

When this happens we are going to have another realignment that is going to make that which has occurred heretofore look tame. So Vandy and NW may want to stay part of the club but there is no guarantee the old clubs will still be viable.

It's going to be more revolutionary than OU/UGa vs the NCAA.

We’ll just need to agree to disagree on this point. Schools are going to be dragged into the pay for play world kicking and screaming, but at the end of the day, they’ll pay up no matter what their academic standing might be.

This is a football-focused board, but endorsement income is more likely to have a bigger impact in basketball (as they don’t even try to hide that recruiting *today* is tied to the shoe companies). Duke is the highest ranked Power Five school in the US News rankings after Stanford... yet they’re getting top one-and-done basketball stars better than Kentucky and Kansas. Do we really think that Duke is giving that up? Do we really think that Duke boosters haven’t engaged in recruiting tactics that would make the fiercest Alabama football boosters blush?

Once again - this is about going after elite students and families that are willing to pay $80,000 per year out-of-pocket for college to go to the Ivy League. Power Five membership is a HUGE selling point for the handful of the elite schools that have it. I’ve seen it firsthand with with Northwestern competing with the University of Chicago. It’s what Vandy, Duke and Wake Forest use in competing against Emory. It’s what Stanford uses against Harvard, Yale and Princeton. How they perform against Alabama and Ohio State is almost irrelevant - they’re playing an entirely different game in terms of wanting to get the best talent in their student bodies overall and big-time sports are a huge differentiator there.

We don't have to agree to disagree Frank. I agree under the current model every effort will be made by these schools to remain. I'm suggesting that a different organizational paradigm will arise out of this and the old P5 as we knew it will be dramatically changed and with it we will see of necessity a separation of academic conferences (consortia) into a dichotomy of academic only consortia not bound by athletic competition and Athletic consortia not bound to academic associations but organized around competitive and financial principles which will radically change the world of conferences we see now, at least at the upper level. I think this will alter basketball conferences as well.

Why?

There is too much money to be made by a change in associations to match commitment to sport and the networks will more than willingly fund it. And I also believe that venerated associations in academia will survive and thrive by separating from the sports component of campus life. It will be a big adjustment for the Big 10 but a Big 10 academic consortium might well include a Texas, Texas A&M, Florida, North Carolina, Duke, Virginia, or Vanderbilt without having any impact on athletic association.

In other words I think the trend initiated by pay for play and by networks seeking the highest possible ratings will lead to a revolution that should have occurred 80 years ago. Universities should be freed to pursue their best possible exposure and financial reward in sports and also to pursue their best possible academic alliances for the sake of research and scientific discovery. It's really rather asinine and counter productive to continue simply because this is the way we've always done it since the early 1800's.

So I don't disagree with your assertion of what Duke, Northwestern, and Vandy will want to do, I just foresee a total reorganization of schools competing athletically with athletic peers, and researching academically with academic peers where such relationships no longer remain mutually inclusive to the detriment of both.

As long as the major decisions of university athletic conference membership are determined by university presidents and not athletic directors, academics will always matter.

And even if we made it entirely based on athletics or financial, I'm not buying it would include the entire SEC minus Vanderbilt either. You think every public SEC member is an "athletic peer" with Alabama and Auburn? You think Vandy is the only athletic dead weight in the conference? If I'm ESPN and I can choose only which schools I'd want to pay for, I'd dump more than Vanderbilt from the SEC. There might even be a list of only about 30 FBS schools worth paying big bucks for in college football (and my Illini definitely wouldn't be on the list). You could add a few more like Duke, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Kansas for men's basketball (maybe then Illinois would make the list in a few years). But we're not just going to give everyone in the SEC a free pass to the party and say they're better than everyone else. In no planet are Mississippi and Mississippi State going to be better than Ohio State or Clemson.

(10-13-2020 06:59 AM)esayem Wrote:  I can see Ivy League teams actually being more competitive in the future.

The Ivy's, at least some, seem much better at basketball and basketball recruiting lately

As a Vanderbilt fan of more than 50 years (and perhaps the only one on this board), I contend the university's athletics program might be significantly more unlike those of the other private schools in P5 programs. There are many reasons for this. I need to go to the office but might post them later.

More to follow ...

(10-12-2020 09:43 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  Also, from the first day that I wrote about conference realignment over a decade ago, I emphasized how much conferences want elite academic institutions. The Big Ten LOVES Northwestern. It’s an elite school located directly in the most important TV market in the league (Chicago). Vandy provides a similar value proposition for the SEC with an elite school located in a major market near the center of the conference (Nashville).

Yes, nobody within the SEC has any problem with Vanderbilt's membership, everyone recognizes the role they play in the conference and its a valuable one, always has been. So why on earth would Vanderbilt give up membership in a P5 conference that pays them $50 million a year and a ton of exposure for no reason at all?

It's only commentators from outside, usually from schools that are not in the P5 and envy Vanderbilt's membership, that raise this issue.

(10-13-2020 09:20 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(10-12-2020 09:43 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  Also, from the first day that I wrote about conference realignment over a decade ago, I emphasized how much conferences want elite academic institutions. The Big Ten LOVES Northwestern. It’s an elite school located directly in the most important TV market in the league (Chicago). Vandy provides a similar value proposition for the SEC with an elite school located in a major market near the center of the conference (Nashville).

Yes, nobody within the SEC has any problem with Vanderbilt's membership, everyone recognizes the role they play in the conference and its a valuable one, always has been. So why on earth would Vanderbilt give up membership in a P5 conference that pays them $50 million a year and a ton of exposure for no reason at all?

It's only commentators from outside, usually from schools that are not in the P5 and envy Vanderbilt's membership, that raise this issue.

Yeah that's right Quo. But there are also people outside of the SEC who don't understand that Vanderbilt has gotten more recalcitrant on being a supporting member. The don't upgrade facilities to SEC standards and they are stated standards. They don't offer the requisite number of sports refusing women's softball, and they don't try to be competitive in football, or basketball, anymore. And now they have failed in the conferences COVID protocols. But we have people outside the conference who don't know a damn thing about these matters either chiming in with complete ignorance of the issues.

Nobody in the SEC is asking for Vanderbilt's removal, but they are all well aware that poorer schools are doing more to belong. Vanderbilt has some decisions to make and right now they are refusing to commit to the minimum standards set. And it's time academics faced the music. The product most produce outside of STEM fields is poorer than ever. Academic associations are already extant from athletic conferences, and pretending that Vanderbilt does anything for the SEC other than give us a top 20 to 30 rated research school in our membership (depending on the rating service) doesn't put another dime in any of the other 13 schools pockets. It might well be argued that Florida and Texas A&M are much more diverse as leaders in research and have more to share. But Vanderbilt does prove one point in spades. Academic associations and Athletic associations are already diverging subsets and will only continue to do so. Business, culture, and necessity are driving what will become a much more widely accepted and successful dichotomy of academics and athletics and in that world the Vanderbilt's of the world will be able to excel the one while committing to the other at levels comfortable for them to do so.

When sports revenue was counted in the seven digit range justifying Vanderbilt for academic reasons was wholly agreeable. Now that sports revenue is in the 9 digit range the cost / benefit analysis may indicate otherwise. No doubt Vanderbilt enjoys P5 exposure in the SEC. So don't you think Women's softball, improved facilities at venues (not even asking for new venues), and a commitment to COVID protection protocols and to competitiveness is a small price to pay for that P5 exposure?

Northwestern stepped it up with facilities. Duke did the same. Why not Vandy?

(10-13-2020 08:50 AM)Huskies12 Wrote:  

(10-13-2020 05:47 AM)schmolik Wrote:  

(10-12-2020 10:30 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(10-12-2020 10:06 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(10-12-2020 09:44 PM)JRsec Wrote:  The proof is gong to be in pudding Frank. Academics and Athletics are going to become two separate endeavors when pay for play hits. It's one thing if Vanderbilt or Northwestern want to stay, it's another as to whether they pay their way into whatever new associations are formed. Dead weight won't have to be kept in order just to keep an academic alliance. And the Big 10 (the only Ivy like Academic/Athletic conference among the P5) is going to have the most trouble in the new world. You have a TV contract world in which content will be everything that drives new contract values. They aren't pining for Vandy vs Georgia and NW vs Wisconsin.

When this happens we are going to have another realignment that is going to make that which has occurred heretofore look tame. So Vandy and NW may want to stay part of the club but there is no guarantee the old clubs will still be viable.

It's going to be more revolutionary than OU/UGa vs the NCAA.

We’ll just need to agree to disagree on this point. Schools are going to be dragged into the pay for play world kicking and screaming, but at the end of the day, they’ll pay up no matter what their academic standing might be.

This is a football-focused board, but endorsement income is more likely to have a bigger impact in basketball (as they don’t even try to hide that recruiting *today* is tied to the shoe companies). Duke is the highest ranked Power Five school in the US News rankings after Stanford... yet they’re getting top one-and-done basketball stars better than Kentucky and Kansas. Do we really think that Duke is giving that up? Do we really think that Duke boosters haven’t engaged in recruiting tactics that would make the fiercest Alabama football boosters blush?

Once again - this is about going after elite students and families that are willing to pay $80,000 per year out-of-pocket for college to go to the Ivy League. Power Five membership is a HUGE selling point for the handful of the elite schools that have it. I’ve seen it firsthand with with Northwestern competing with the University of Chicago. It’s what Vandy, Duke and Wake Forest use in competing against Emory. It’s what Stanford uses against Harvard, Yale and Princeton. How they perform against Alabama and Ohio State is almost irrelevant - they’re playing an entirely different game in terms of wanting to get the best talent in their student bodies overall and big-time sports are a huge differentiator there.

We don't have to agree to disagree Frank. I agree under the current model every effort will be made by these schools to remain. I'm suggesting that a different organizational paradigm will arise out of this and the old P5 as we knew it will be dramatically changed and with it we will see of necessity a separation of academic conferences (consortia) into a dichotomy of academic only consortia not bound by athletic competition and Athletic consortia not bound to academic associations but organized around competitive and financial principles which will radically change the world of conferences we see now, at least at the upper level. I think this will alter basketball conferences as well.

Why?

There is too much money to be made by a change in associations to match commitment to sport and the networks will more than willingly fund it. And I also believe that venerated associations in academia will survive and thrive by separating from the sports component of campus life. It will be a big adjustment for the Big 10 but a Big 10 academic consortium might well include a Texas, Texas A&M, Florida, North Carolina, Duke, Virginia, or Vanderbilt without having any impact on athletic association.

In other words I think the trend initiated by pay for play and by networks seeking the highest possible ratings will lead to a revolution that should have occurred 80 years ago. Universities should be freed to pursue their best possible exposure and financial reward in sports and also to pursue their best possible academic alliances for the sake of research and scientific discovery. It's really rather asinine and counter productive to continue simply because this is the way we've always done it since the early 1800's.

So I don't disagree with your assertion of what Duke, Northwestern, and Vandy will want to do, I just foresee a total reorganization of schools competing athletically with athletic peers, and researching academically with academic peers where such relationships no longer remain mutually inclusive to the detriment of both.

As long as the major decisions of university athletic conference membership are determined by university presidents and not athletic directors, academics will always matter.

And even if we made it entirely based on athletics or financial, I'm not buying it would include the entire SEC minus Vanderbilt either. You think every public SEC member is an "athletic peer" with Alabama and Auburn? You think Vandy is the only athletic dead weight in the conference? If I'm ESPN and I can choose only which schools I'd want to pay for, I'd dump more than Vanderbilt from the SEC. There might even be a list of only about 30 FBS schools worth paying big bucks for in college football (and my Illini definitely wouldn't be on the list). You could add a few more like Duke, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Kansas for men's basketball (maybe then Illinois would make the list in a few years). But we're not just going to give everyone in the SEC a free pass to the party and say they're better than everyone else. In no planet are Mississippi and Mississippi State going to be better than Ohio State or Clemson.

(10-13-2020 06:59 AM)esayem Wrote:  I can see Ivy League teams actually being more competitive in the future.

The Ivy's, at least some, seem much better at basketball and basketball recruiting lately

It helps when most of the schools have expanded their need-based scholarships to cover anyone whose families have an income under $125K. Much easier to compete with Stanford or Northwestern for middle class smart kids that can play, knowing that they have a fallback.

(10-12-2020 08:50 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  

(10-12-2020 07:02 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(10-12-2020 06:38 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  Plenty of once mighty (as well as less mighty) athletic programs from small, elite, private schools have de-emphasized athletics:

The Ivy League
U of Chicago
Washington U (St L)
Fordham
William & Mary
Richmond
Holy Cross

The 1978 split and subsequent ratcheting up of DI-A requirements sent some of these schools down but decisions about academics either directly or indirectly changed the philosophies of those athletic departments.



It makes me wonder if in this day and age we will see anyone else make similar decisions to de-emphasize sports because the missions of their athletic conferences aren’t in sync with the university.

Vanderbilt immediately comes to mind but Northwestern, Rice, Tulsa, Tulane, SMU, BC, WF, and even Stanford could fall in this category. (I could see programs like Syracuse and Duke abandoning football but retaining big time basketball in the Big East).

Do schools like these really need the athletic income (or losses)?
What publicity or name recognition is a big time athletic program getting them that they don’t already get on academic reputation alone?

William & Mary and Richmond have not de-emphasized, although the others have.

They were forcibly demoted to FCS and never returned so to that effect they de-emphasized.

They're still basically in the same place in the pecking order. They just have a different label.

(10-13-2020 09:03 AM)bill dazzle Wrote:  As a Vanderbilt fan of more than 50 years (and perhaps the only one on this board), I contend the university's athletics program might be significantly more unlike those of the other private schools in P5 programs. There are many reasons for this. I need to go to the office but might post them later....in limerick form

This. Or you're banned.

(10-12-2020 09:25 PM)BearcatJerry Wrote:  

(10-12-2020 08:54 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  If Vanderbilt won’t voluntarily take themselves out of big time athletics would the rest of the membership dare to take them out against their will?

You are such a yankee.

Seriously. A yankee asks the question "Would the conference kick out a member in good standing?" Maybe the Big 10 would do that to Northwestern, but the SEC won't do it to Vanderbilt or any other member.

If Tulane hadn't left of their own accord, they would be in the SEC today. That's not saying the SEC would re-add them today, but the SEC would not have "kicked them out."

The only way Vanderbilt is not a member of the SEC is if they choose not to be. Or if they rest of the Conference fell apart around them.

I merely raised the question for discussion. That’s a lot different than spouting off some half cocked conclusion without any facts to back it up.

Read some of JR’s analysis—he’s a pretty credible source on the goings on in the SEC. Vandy’s facilities have fallen below SEC standards and they don’t sponsor some required sports. They aren’t competitive in the revenue sports and they aren’t investing in them. They aren’t 100% in good standing.

If you read the OP, the premise of the thread was to consider if a school like Vanderbilt would make the same type of move that Tulane did several decades ago where they looked at their lack of competitiveness in athletics and the varying academic missions of their institution and their that of their conference mates and decided to quit the arms race.

Personally, I think programs like Vanderbilt would be better served by forming an FCS level conference that functions like a southern Ivy League—the institutional profiles and level of competition would be much closer.

I don’t see where throwing words around like Yankee as insults does anything to benefit the conversation or how it’s even applicable. If you go around insulting people you disagree with you lose credibility as a poster.