(12-11-2014 08:15 AM)XLance Wrote:  

(12-11-2014 06:59 AM)vandiver49 Wrote:  It's going to take at least 3 conferences colluding together to find a home for the teams currently in the B12. Ideally ESPN/FOX would want all 4 involved because the endgame will still require finding homes for UConn and Cincy as well.

Please explain why you think that UConn and Cincinnati will be included.

IMO if teams like Cinci and UConn are able to be relegated from P5 to G5, then dissolving the B12 doesn't require finding P5 homes for all 10 teams, just 8. I find it unlikely that Baylor, TCU, ISU and KSU will stand by and simply let themselves be demoted without some type of legal recourse. The former Big East football schools also could sue for legal damages if they aren't found P4 homes because as long as the B12 exists, the possibility of making back to the P5 level remains.

(12-11-2014 10:33 AM)JRsec Wrote:  

(12-11-2014 10:05 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(12-11-2014 09:34 AM)JRsec Wrote:  

(12-11-2014 09:19 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(12-11-2014 09:07 AM)JRsec Wrote:  Why don't you read my last post before making these assertions.

You're kidding, right? How can your "last post" influence my assertions? You have no cogent explanation for why the SEC would want to kill the Big 12 morseo than any other P5.

As for the Champs/Sugar Bowl, ESPN didn't need to "encourage" the SEC. Once the PAC and B1G signed their $80 million per year deal with the Rose, the SEC realized it had to get a $40m bowl deal of its own, and the available partners were the ACC and Big 12. It chose the Big 12.

Quo all of your bluster doesn't change the fact that you ignore the bigger issues behind the moves. But believe what you will. Your way of looking at things would be the equivalent of blaming the gun in a murder instead of the one who pulls the trigger. The ACC and SEC, and now the Big 10, are nothing more than weapons in the hands of the networks. They are the proxies who for cents on the dollar do the fighting so that the ones who are really contending remain behind a veil.

You can assert a deeper conspiracy if you want, but the evidence has to be there and in some cases it doesn't appear to be. E.g., I explained how an ESPN-driven explanation for the ACC's 2011 raid on the Big East falters because it doesn't explain the 2003-2004 raids. What does explain both raids is ACC's own internal desire to grow.

Surely, you realize that a conference doesn't need any input from ESPN or FOX to be motivated by a desire to make more money? The ACC didn't need ESPN to tell it that its future growth was hampered by the presence of a growing Big East, and the SEC didn't need ESPN to tell it that if it was stuck with a Sugar Bowl making $18m a year while the PAC and B1G had a new Rose Bowl tie giving them $40m a year, that they would be falling behind and so something needed to be done about that.

I love your contributions, but on this issue, you seem to be buying the big-picture conspiracies lock stock and barrel without looking more closely at the evidence.

The timeline is the evidence Quo. The BTN was independent too and a threat to ESPN. So they had distribution problems just like the PACN is having. Delany started the BTN in response to an offer from ESPN and a negative meeting for the two. ESPN knew that Delany needed markets. They lowballed the Big East and knew that made them vulnerable. The ACC had no leverage being under contract for long duration at 100% to ESPN. Boston College administrators admitted ESPN's involvement in the raids and alluded to the the motives. The ACC remained underpaid because even after the additions they had no leverage. They were going to be a repository for realignment targets to give ESPN leverage in their future deals with the Big 10 and to a lesser extent the SEC and to ultimately pressure the PAC into having to relent on a totally self owned network. The moves against the Big 12 simply reinforce the leverage with the Big 10 and impede the PAC's attempt at independence. It seems that with the exception of only a part interest in a conference that only had a few prime targets (the Big 12) and the loss of Oklahoma's T3 contract to FOX that ESPN has had everything their way.

They accumulated most of the Big East, two of the three prime Big 12 properties (while managing to only pay for the LHN and 1 seven year contract with Kansas on top of making FOX split the upkeep of that conference with them) and lost only Maryland which woke them up as to the low pay of the ACC and created the whole GOR business. So in the whole realignment business ESPN owns the ACC, acquired most of the Big East's best properties with them, owns the vast majority of the SEC, acquired some of the better Big 12 properties with them, locked up Texas and Kansas and stopped Texahoma.

I might add that they did lose Colorado to the PAC (a small loss in the scheme of things and necessary to destabilize the Big 12) and Nebraska (a bigger loss that emboldened the Big 10 and stuck a dagger into the Big 12). But look at what they did. They eliminated most Big 10 targets in the Northeast and Midwest. They pressured Texas into rethinking the Big 12 and into considering options. And they have the SEC primed to be a money maker for them in a much bigger way. It will take more time but in the end they will be the architects of restructuring the P5 into a much more profitable structure and implementing a system that will maximize revenue from advertising. And all of it has relatively low overhead for programming compared to the rest of the entertainment industry. Their wins have been great and their losses small and in business that's a great success.

No Quo I need look no further than where the money that motivates the conferences comes from to know that it is not a conspiracy, but rather a hostile takeover of an undervalued product that is undergoing restructuring and product placement, and that quite effectively. A conspiracy involves multiple parties, this is simply one entity whose strategy is sound, whose execution is effective, and whose stockholders will be pleased. And that is the real world that conference commissioners (most of whom worked for the networks in contracts at one time or another), college presidents, and AD's simply don't have the scope of information to stop and whose conduct is as predictable as the sunrise where more money is concerned.

The timeline I've discussed stretches a lot further back than BC's AD claiming that ESPN forced the ACC to raid (IMO, that's self-serving to cover for their own predatory desires). It goes back 10 years, to when the ACC raided the BEast for BC, VT and Miami.

I just don't see where ESPN's hand was at work in that, nor do I see how that raid and what happened in 2011 were unrelated.

After Swofford signed the awful 2010 deal, the ACC soon realized it was stuck, saddled to low money for the next 15 years, and was facing a Big East that was about to become just as strong, and choking them in the north.

Raiding the Big East addressed two huge ACC problems: Killed them as a competitor in the NE corridor, and added new schools to go back to ESPN with and demand some kind of extra money.

Plus, i question the idea that ESPN is all-powerful and never makes mistakes. I bet ESPN planners thought that after the Big East was sunk, the NE would be open to the ACC and ESPN would cash in. But the B1G muscled in quickly, taking Maryland and Rutgers, and now dominates the NE more than the ACC.