(01-26-2014 07:35 PM)Eagle78 Wrote: (01-26-2014 07:20 PM)bigblueblindness Wrote: (01-26-2014 05:16 PM)lumberpack4 Wrote: Whatever happens, UNC and UVa are not going to put themselves into direct competition with schools that have 100K seat football stadiums - just not going to happen. That puts UNC and UVa at a $20 to $25 million disadvantage and football is not popular enough in Charlottesville and UNC has too much competition to sell seats in Chapel Hill from Duke, NC State, and ECU to add the 30K seats necessary to pull into the PSU, Ohio State, Michigan, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Alabama, Florida, TAMU level.
This isn't talked about very much, but it's one of the reasons that the ACC appeals to UNC and UVa. Those two are not going to be happy in a conference where they are a secondary money player. Shared conference revenues have nothing to do with the problem.
Maybe NC State and Virginia Tech are up for the challenge, then.
Tone-deaf, IMHO
I came to this board almost 2 years ago. My first post was about how an undervalued and somewhat disorganized product, college football, was in the process of being taken over by corporate overlords in the form of networks who had recognized the potential for the product, were attracted by its low cost of production, and could see how the packaging of the product could be handled in ways that would maximize national advertising appeal instead of just regional appeal. Absolutely nothing has happened since then to convince me otherwise. Two years in and everything is proceeding right on course for the buy in, repackaging of the product and the culling of less profitable material.
During those two years I've heard overconfidence bordering on arrogance coming from SEC and Big 10 posters about the power of their conferences. In part this is true, but only because they were already the most watched products within the genre and the two strongest cores around which to repackage the product. But that doesn't mean that either the SEC or Big 10 will escape this process unscathed. They may not be raided by other conferences, although nothing is absolute, but they most likely will find that their next contract negotiations in about 12 to 15 years will not be as profitable once the networks have the control that they desire. Sure they will still do fine, but the rapid build up in values has been the carrot in front of the mule to get it to move, and move it has.
The process has left a string of victims by the roadside from the repacking product. Two years ago the pain suffered by the Big East was palpable and raw. There are two very valuable pieces out there that must be rounded up. ESPN bagged one with the LHN this past year. The other is Notre Dame. It is not surprising that the Big East was picked apart. It was a better packaging of product on behalf of ESPN to locate Virginia Tech, Boston College and Miami in the ACC. Syracuse was a huge addition and Pittsburgh was a strategic addition geographically as a bridge and academically. All of this helped to attract Notre Dame to the ACC. But the Irish are still not in the fold as a commodity. While the fate of the Big East is not as likely to replicate itself in the ACC the fact remains that there is product in the ACC that would be more valuable repackaged and placed elsewhere. If such a move painted the Irish in a corner then the strategy could find roots.
Prior to the loss of Maryland the mantra coming from ACC fans was as laced with hubris as your "tone deaf" comment. That was followed by shock and defensiveness following the departure of the Terrapins. We all know that was the weakest link, but we also know that Clemson and Florida State had formed committees to look at moves. Virginia and Georgia Tech were rumored as well. I wouldn't say that speculation about future movement was necessarily baseless, but I would agree it is much less likely now than a year ago.
I hope for your sake that you are right in your assessment. I am a traditionalist at heart, a student of systems, and of human behavior. Therefore your idealistic view of your conference, which is also somewhat nostalgic, appeals to me. But we are no longer living in that kind of world. I am assuming that '78 was your year of graduation. If so I'm a good bit older than you. Before my retirement I spent a few decades dealing with corporate leadership in one fashion or another. I promise you that their team of lawyers is every bit as good as those working for the ACC or any other conference. I also promise you that while Research Triangle schools and Virginia may not have to be motivated by additional revenue that not all of the schools in the ranks of the ACC are so privileged. F.S.U. was having some needs two years ago and if you lost them your value as a whole would dip precipitously, especially if Clemson left with them. And that Duke, North Carolina, and Virginia can't afford. Louisville may be a prime example of the need to assuage the Seminoles and Tigers.
The progression in realignment, which is following the typical takeover path, is playing out according to plan, just within rudimentary guidelines offered up by the conferences. Heck, even most conference commissioners have their roots in negotiating television contracts for networks. Slive, Delany, Swofford, Bowlsby, and Scott will be retired by the time the next set of contracts all come about and so the faces that will replace them will have to deal with the reality of corporate control of college football.
Being an SEC guy I had hoped that the conference would self own and self produce its product for no other reason than to maintain some leverage and to pocket more profits. Slive chose not to follow Scott's and Delany's path in that regard. He gladly accepted the big Dog Biscuit that ESPN held out to him. The ACC simply sold their whole shebang lock stock and barrel. The Big 10 suffered initial start up distribution problems. Now that they are 51% owned by FOX those issues are no longer really present and they are blossoming. Scott has not relented to selling out a percentage of the PACN and his distribution problems are still a real problem. I have a feeling that product for growth and distribution will become more readily available after they sell out a good share of the PACN to either FOX or ESPN or both.
But this is all just symptomatic of a much larger paradigm shift that is ongoing in the world. The shift away from nation state power to corporate power has continued and accelerated in recent years. Just today HSBC of England issued a notice to its depositors that all large withdrawals must be accompanied by written evidence showing the need for the money. We've gone from soliciting depositors to telling depositors that they do not have a right to withdraw their funds from their accounts and we aren't talking about time restricted financial instruments here. Corporate influence over government has reached such an extreme that given that kind of influence and the recent memory of the banking scandal they can play upon the fears of legislators, Parliament, and the public to permit them now to claim their depositors money as their fungible assets.
I pity your generation and hold mine to blame. In the name of ease and necessity we have given away our fundamental rights to manage our own affairs. I have lived to see, and history is rife with examples of, the committing of atrocities in the name of expediency (ease and necessity).
Forgive my cynicism but if college football can make the corporate bottom line exceed shareholder estimates for a quarter of the year then anything can and will happen. Will that mean North Carolina and Virginia will be moving? It will depend on where they offer the most value and right now it may more importantly depend on which network holds their rights. Should FOX and ESPN ever truly work in concert watch out.
Now I'm not claiming to be right in saying that a breakaway could bring about radical change, but it could. I'm not saying that the networks have an agenda to relocate ACC property, but they might one day choose to do that. But I am saying that whether you are the SEC, Big 10, PAC, ACC, or Big 12 your control over your own product is slipping away from you and right now you don't care because the money is better than ever. Better than ever never lasts, but once you have surrendered your control out of ease and necessity (more easy money in a money crisis for government) you will find it terribly hard to ever get that control back. The one with the control is the one who pays you.
So if you're SEC or Big 10 don't gloat, it's not all roses. If you are the ACC and you patched up with a really good addition in Louisville and provided a new safe haven for the Irish, don't get too comfortable. Just a year ago you thought you were untouchable. You're not. If you are the Big 12 and I, or others, have chided you for spinning your situation as positively as you can, I (we) would do the same thing if we had lost 4 top programs and were trying to hold on. To the G5 I say the P5 is not your enemy. You will live or die by the networks.
Realignment will end when the best product assortments are in place, with a directive to increase their content games, with regularly scheduled cross over games of interest, and a playoff that enhances all regions until the semis are completed. The NFL is king because it is an understandable format with which people feel comfortable. College ball has left too many fans with a feeling that was anything but that which resembles familiarity or comfort. The format is not understandable to the average fan and the outcomes are too arbitrary. Better product, better content, better packaging, and a better structure is what this about. And that combined will yield more profits. That's it. You may continue to look at the subject through conference perspectives, but there is really only one overarching perspective and it is corporate. FOX and ESPN may be competitors, and right now that confuses the issue, but when they learn to work together, and they will, it will be very apparent who the architect of realignment has been.
/
Now that SEC basketball looks like a 2 bid league...
Teams in the SEC West play a tougher football schedule within their own division than most schools play over the course of several years. Baseball is just as brutal -- bigger crowds than other conferences and much tougher competition.
