(Scroll down to post #12 regarding revision)

(09-14-2021 04:23 PM)_sturt_ Wrote:  

You are predicting the demise of the AAC? Very unlikely. The conference that is in the most danger of being raided to the point of extinction it's CUSA because it made the self-lacerating decision to not partner with a strong media company. It was a truly egregious miscalculation and is now an existential threat to the conference.

(09-14-2021 04:47 PM)Lurker Above Wrote:  

(09-14-2021 04:23 PM)_sturt_ Wrote:  

You are predicting the demise of the AAC? Very unlikely. The conference that is in the most danger of being raided to the point of extinction it's CUSA because it made the self-lacerating decision to not partner with a strong media company. It was a truly egregious miscalculation and is now an existential threat to the conference.

Thanks. You might be right, with the exception of this part...

"Predicting?"

Nah.

Not the intent to suggest I'm predicting.

I'm proposing.

But having said that. It's time to end the silliness of these musical chairs games. The days of any of the non-auto conferences obtaining a meaningful TV contract are mostly done, with streaming and wide distribution for games available.

All I'm proposing is that this is a reasonable approach. And yeah, as offensive as I suppose it could be taken by some, the AAC is too new of a brand still for it to be an especially important one to hold on to... though, I also wouldn't flinch much for that matter if we switched out CUSA and replaced it with AAC anyhow. What we call them is less important.

Although this is pretty good and it appears you put a lot of effort into it, some will squabble over being in a conference with school x or not in a conference with school y. There's no perfect scenario in which everyone will be happy.

With that said.....WKU, although a consistent winner in football, considers itself a basketball school because of our rich history and success on the hardwood. We left the Sun Belt eight years ago to join CUSA primarily to play against others who also valued basketball...i.e. UAB, ODU, Charlotte etc. I can't see WKU ever going back to the Sun Belt unless there were other schools that also valued basketball and your Sun Belt scenario doesn't have that. I could see WKU looking at football only in a FBS Conference and then applying for basketball and Olympic sports in the MVC, A10 or some other landing spot that appreciates basketball. Going Football Independent is an option, albeit an unpleasant option.

(09-14-2021 05:49 PM)WKUApollo Wrote:  Although this is pretty good and it appears you put a lot of effort into it, some will squabble over being in a conference with school x or not in a conference with school y. There's no perfect scenario in which everyone will be happy.

Definitely. Yeah, this is, by design, trying to look at the situation from 30,000 feet, and without any deference to any school in particular, come up with something that is uniform and practical.

The big change this time around is that there's not nearly the same motivating TV contract factor that in previous times had compelled everyone to chase the ever-higher TV contract, of course.

So, just accepting the conditions for what they are, the starting point is, how can we engineer something that can get us out of this cycle of having to revisit realignment every 5-10 years, and at the same time grant everyone essentially the same opportunity to ascend to the highest level of football success?

Didn't focus on the basketball side of the equation in the construction since football is generally understood to drive the athletic department buses... but it's a worthy other area of conversation.

Duplicate post

A core premise of the concept is that we've finally reached a point in the timeline where there is no significant monetary or tangible motivating factor any longer for non-auto schools to be desperate to make a move to a different conference. The difference in actual competition level has become negligible, and the difference in perceptions of conferences' competition level continues to follow that.

So, put another way, a core premise is... it's time to chill... time to bloom where you're planted, understanding that the path to the highest regard among non-auto schools based on conference affiliation is yesterday... it's just not appreciably different any more.

Let's embrace that, then, and think about how a commitment to cooperation among the conferences could raise the tide of all the ships.

(09-14-2021 04:23 PM)_sturt_ Wrote:  

I've wondered if the G5 consolidated to the G4 would the A5 consider moving to 16 team playoff with 9 autobids for the conference champs and 7 at-large spots. It would make D1 football much more interesting and provides extra spots for the top conferences.

(09-15-2021 11:56 AM)AztecEmpire Wrote:  

(09-14-2021 04:23 PM)_sturt_ Wrote:  

I've wondered if the G5 consolidated to the G4 would the A5 consider moving to 16 team playoff with 9 autobids for the conference champs and 7 at-large spots. It would make D1 football much more interesting and provides extra spots for the top conferences.

There's certainly a lot you can do with 4 non-autonomous champs emerging that you can't do as simply and cleanly with 5.

What that is best to look like is another and larger question, of course. I'm not one to think that more is necessarily better. It might be. But might not be.

Most of what I know at this stage is that it doesn't seem there's much purpose actually served to this musical chairs game any more, and that the greater purpose served is probably some broad and longer-term stability among the non-auto schools.

Moreover, with some newfound cooperation that could be borne of the non-auto conference consolidation pictured here, it's plausible that they could work together on some unique revenue streams that can result from having reach into almost 60 schools' markets.

This does not include the A10, ASun and WAC schools want FBS and Chattanooga and North Dakota State.

(09-15-2021 06:18 PM)DavidSt Wrote:  This does not include the A10, ASun and WAC schools want FBS and Chattanooga and North Dakota State.

True.

And it's a legitimate discussion whether any new schools should be added to FBS for awhile.

From where I sit, you might consider a couple of western additions to bring MWC to 14 eventually, but only if it's actually merited of course. And then, conceivably you could get to 16 in every conference, but I'd definitely cap it there permanently... such that, the only way a school gets into an FBS conference is if another one is exiting it.

Now, the other consideration could be, if you have an exceptional currently-basketball-only school in a market that is legitimately viable... say if that happened with a Gonzaga, for instance... then that makes for a compelling argument to accept that school's application.

But still... 4 x 16 should be the max. And I'm very content, me, to keep status quo as described in the OP.

New development.

Began giving the basketball side of this equation some thought in the last 24 hours, and came up with this amendment...

The reorg pictured in the OP should be a football-only arrangement. That is, all schools otherwise continue to play in the conferences where they're currently situated.

Why so? Mainly because of the auto qualifier that the AAC holds, and that it would make little sense for those schools to give up.

In fact, here's what makes this reorg concept especially attractive to Temple, East Carolina, Memphis, SMU, South Florida, Tulane, Tulsa... and also Wichita State... is that they get the luxury of enjoying an automatic bid as an 8-team conference.

Self-evidently, fewer competitors translates to optimal chance for any of the eight to win the bid. And too, it also translates to fewer slices of the March Madness pie to have to divvy up (... at least, that is, until those schools would have other basketball-strong schools take interest in them, and they might decide to add them on the premise that they would add value).

In turn, other schools that hold a substantial fan interest in basketball (e.g., WKU as suggested above by @WKUApollo ) also benefit.

I'm sure this Dennis Dodd (CBS) story has been cited in another thread, but I wanted to focus on this part...



Not a big fan of obliterating the structures that are already in place, nor that there's some exceptional benefit in attempting creating anew some rigid regional conferences.

I think enough of the same idea can be mostly achieved within the framework of what is already existing. And honestly, I think it's a heck of a lot more idealistic to imagine a total tear down than to imagine something that uses the current framework, but reshapes it.

But I (obviously) am a fan of the leadership of the existing conferences putting a stop to the endless war, and instead, beginning to think in terms of cooperation.

Conference USA is the most vulnerable because they have the lowest TV deal. I think FAU & UAB are a lock. I don't see Boise State or any Mountain West school bolting for the AAC now. The Sun Belt Conference needs to choose two members that make a lot of sense and to me, it's Southern Miss and UTSA.

(09-15-2021 11:56 AM)AztecEmpire Wrote:  

(09-14-2021 04:23 PM)_sturt_ Wrote:  

I've wondered if the G5 consolidated to the G4 would the A5 consider moving to 16 team playoff with 9 autobids for the conference champs and 7 at-large spots. It would make D1 football much more interesting and provides extra spots for the top conferences.

Much more interesting to whom? If this only benefits G5 schools, why would P5 schools (and their fans) have any interest in it? For them the only benefits of having a G5 (or 4) are to give P5 schools 7 home games and get more P5 schools bowl eligible.

(09-16-2021 09:30 PM)ken d Wrote:  ....why would P5 schools (and their fans) have any interest in it?

For them the only benefits of having a G5 (or 4) are to give P5 schools 7 home games and get more P5 schools bowl eligible.

I think that point often gets lost in these kinds of discussions.

It's simultaneously the most obvious reason why the occasional idea floated that the autonomous schools/conferences will eventually kill off any non-auto schools/conferences is ill-conceived.

The Minnesotas, the North Carolinas, the Washingtons, the Tennessees.... those schools that can have really good years and also can have very mediocre if not bad years... which in fact is most of the big money schools... need the benefit of a game or two every season in which they have some plausible advantage to add to their win column instead of their loss column... it's about bowl eligibility, but even if it weren't, it still would be about having a winning record and avoid the reputation of being a perennial loser.

But having said that, 20 years ago there was not even any talk of including non-auto schools in any major bowl... and to imagine a playoff format that might evolve to include even just one non-auto school would have received gut-busting laughter.

The point being, like it or not, the non-autos have been able to make some serious progress of-late compared to the state of things not so long ago. The talent inventory itself, and the capacity of the NFL to scout even tiny schools, and as much as anything, the proliferation of televised games through streaming in addition to broadcast, have all combined to force that evolution, I believe.

And circling back to a major premise of this thread, the time is now ripe for the non-autos to begin working off-the-field-of-play from a spirit of cooperation and what's-best-for-the-whole rather than from a spirit of dog-eat-dog me-first competition.

For instance, why even do the TV contract negotiation thing separately? Sure, there's some difference to TV people between a game featuring a Boise State versus a Ball State, but any group of competitive teams naturally benefits from having a few at the top that represent Goliaths... and the common analogy of big fish/smaller pond vs smaller fish/big pond thing applies.

It makes sense for the non-auto conferences and their schools to collaborate on a TV deal for all. Boise, in particular, could benefit from a package that is national in its constitution, in which it would be one of the regularly featured schools not unlike the New England Patriots have been at the pro level.

(09-16-2021 09:07 PM)Realignment Wrote:  Conference USA is the most vulnerable because they have the lowest TV deal.

That's a very temporary circumstance. Unless I missed something (always possible), the next primary-network CUSA contract(s) is on the cusp of being negotiated soon since the current one is done in 2023.

But to my point, let's face it, there is no non-auto conference, including AAC (given the anticipated walk-back that is contractually resulting from losing 3 "marquee" programs), that has some exceptionally great deal, relatively speaking.

There is strength in numbers, folks. The time has come to form a unified front. The non-auto product, if sold as a package instead of this la carte deal that the networks have always been able to get, could flourish.

The AAC isn't going away. It will cherry pick from the other G4.

The MWC and MAC don't need any reorganization.

And the AAC is a step above CUSA and Sun Belt so they aren't going away.

Sun Belt and CUSA need to work together and avoid bringing up another southern FCS school to compete against them in recruiting.

It's understandable that people first think to compare internally b/t non-auto conferences, and reach a conclusion that this is better than that is better than that other.

But, big picture?

None of the non-autos are doing anything even merely okay, ie in terms of revenues compared to what they're capable of generating.

And one of the primary contributing (not only) reasons for that is a matter of approach... this idea that someway somehow one of the non-auto conferences/schools can somehow will themselves into seeming on-par with an auto conference so very well that someone's going to hand that conference a humongous payday.

Always do what you always did, always will get what you always got, right?

In fact, the growth of the product on the field has progressed to an extent that the day has now passed that educated fans do a spitake when they see a non-auto school defeat a big money school... and yet, the growth of non-auto revenues hasn't tracked with that product growth.

The premise behind this concept argues for a new approach... for the commissioners and the university stakeholders to cooperate... ie, to vividly recognize the futility of warring internally for some unrecognizable leg-up between ourselves within our non-auto universe (ie, unrecognizable to a plurality of college football fans whose universe is primarily the auto conferences), and instead, act in solidarity toward a goal of so graying the area between auto and non-auto as to be often indistinct.

Sounds like a lot to ask, perhaps.

But (a), the talent inventory has proved itself too broad for the big money schools to retain previous generations' stranglehold on talent, the broader availability of televised games also contributes to that, and the NFL scouts' wider and deeper work (making it not nearly as ubiquitously accepted that a given prospect "needs" to play for an auto school in order to be noticed)

...and...

(b) what we've been doing for decades surely should have taught a lesson by now: This isn't working.

At least not where revenues are concerned, and that's kind-of a primary consideration one would think.

We can do better overall, but people in leadership have to sober up first, and second, work together instead of against one another in as many areas as can prove to be productive.