(05-22-2020 01:09 AM)ClairtonPanther Wrote:  I know that this would result in a loss of TV revenue, but perhaps worth the risk. I think Pitt should go back to independent, and use a league (like ND does) for bowl tie-ins. I miss the traditional schedule Pitt had with BC, Temple, Rutgers, Navy, WVU, Syracuse and so on. There's zero traditional rivals on our schedule. I'd rather play Navy on a yearly basis than Duke, I'd rather play Rutgers on a yearly basis than North Carolina. This is nothing personal against the likes of Virginia and Georgia Tech, but these games just don't get me excited for Saturdays. Maybe I'm wrong with this opinion. But conference realignment and the chase of money really destroyed what was left of northeastern football. Big East was a valiant effort to create a northeastern league, but wasn't meant to be. But being in a southern based league with no rivals isn't the fit I was expecting it to be. Virginia Tech is the closest thing we have to a yearly rival, and it doesn't come close to the hatred we had with WVU and likely never will. We may hate a Miami, but we're not close to being Miami's top rival either. Florida, FSU and ND are much more rivals for Miami than Pitt is. Call this buyer's remorse, I don't know. But if I'm Pitt admin, I'm closely looking to what UConn and BYU are doing.

Gimme this sample schedule:

Army
Virginia Tech
Temple
Maryland
Boston College
Rutgers
Navy
BYU
Notre Dame
Syracuse
UConn
WVU

And I'm sure many Pitt fans will disagree, and that's ok. My opinion doesn't represent that of all Pitt fans nor those that run Pitt athletics.

If double the media money in the Big 10 & SEC ever does entice away core schools of the ACC then I think there will be a definite possibility to rebuild a Northeastern football conference.

I don't see B.C., Syracuse, Temple, Connecticut, or Miami for that matter making a move to the Big 10 or SEC. The service academies don't like week in and week out games against the size of athletes you find in the Big 10 or SEC so Army and Navy would probably be amenable as well.

The peculiar thing about realignment is it eventually (even though the conference names may change) rearranges schools back with those that played with before. The old Metro schools tend to gravitate back together and the old CUSA schools do as well. It just takes time for the conferences they thought they upgraded into to lose the schools they upgraded to be with.

If Texas and/or Oklahoma ever leave the Big 12 WVU would have no economic reason to remain. Solid schools like Cincinnati might find good reason to join up with a northeastern conference as an upgrade of peers.

I think some of this is going to happen because the investment level in college football is about to form a new tier that I'm not sure all of the current P schools will want to participate in. It could come as early as the middle of this decade, or a bit later and quite possibly beyond my lifetime but it seems to me the process is well underway and people miss the reason it is happening. Upper tier college football can reap advertising revenue second only to the NFL. But the cost of production is largely shared by the schools with the network. The NFL is so massive of an economic entity and so self contained that they don't leave as much on the table percentage wise for the size of the investment required to carry them as do the still somewhat disorganized top college draws. So there's more of a ROI on top colleges than the NFL although it never will replace the NFL. That aspect attracts the networks and challenges the mission of college athletics and may very soon turn it into officially what it already is surreptitiously, a semi professional product.

Schools that don't desire that step formally, and are unwilling to broach their tax status, pay players, or dedicate a whole apparatus to it are likely to continue to offer football as it is supposed to be now. That's going to create a new distinction. I could easily see what were mostly Northeastern privates and state schools like Pitt which operate more like a private going that route. B.C. has already expressed reservations over the current direction of college athletics.

So should a North Carolina or Virginia Tech or Clemson or F.S.U. seek to step it up for exposure, or actually consider a move to the Big 10 or SEC to move from 32 million a year in TV revenue to closer to 70 million which is where the SEC and Big 10 will be by the mid 20's there could easily be an opening for the reformation of a Northeastern Football conference. I think you are a good deal younger than I am and if it happens I believe most of the schools that once comprised the OBE might be open to a resurrection of it. Even the basketball only schools have suffered some since the breakup and there is a synergy for the region where that competition is concerned and with football's limits having been defined and accepted I doubt it would be the dividing force it was becoming at the time of the breakup. You might even have some current East Coast privates that would like to join like say Duke, or Wake Forest or even a Vanderbilt. I truly doubt any of those schools are going to be comfortable heading where football might go next.