It’s not perfect.


But it’s the best proposal I’ve seen.

Keep up the good work. This might actually have some traction if you can get the fans on board to push for it or something like it.

(11-07-2018 06:06 PM)_sturt_ Wrote:  

(11-07-2018 09:56 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  IMO, some problems:

1) Don't like games 1-7 being about "seeding". That makes them a lot less meaningful, because a team could theoretically go 0-7, but then win on week 8 and voila, into the National Title pool, while a 7-0 team gets upset and they are out. Why not just get rid of week 8 and choose the national title pool based on record during weeks 1-7?

Entitled to your opinion, of course.

I see it differently (of course).

Theoretically, there could be a substantive argument that the 7-0 team in the example was the beneficiary of being in an incredibly weak division.

So, the 0-7 team from the opposite division who hypothetically went into the 7-0 team's home and beat them serves the purpose of testing that argument and finding it to be true on the basis of the empirical evidence.

IMO, if the 0-7 team beats the 7-0 team, it would be far more likely that the reason isn't that the 7-0 team was in an incredibly weak division but rather that the result was just "any given Sunday", the fact that any team can beat any other on a given day. A fluke result, in other words.

To me, those first 7 games are reduced in import significantly if you still have a guaranteed path to the title even if you finish last in your division.

(11-07-2018 10:46 PM)_sturt_ Wrote:  I would qualify one point here, too... just because a team loses on Consequence Saturday and fails to get to the NC Pool doesn't necessarily mean they fall out of conference title contention... so there's also that.

As to attendance, I feel you can't be talking about the NC Pool games (right?)... if anything, those games are going to be tickets difficult to get if you don't have season tickets or if you aren't willing to pay premium price. Regarding the other games, I'm not one of those fans inclined to think that most people need a lot of lead time... if there's a game, and if my team is playing, just tell me what day and what time the gates are opening.

1) I would imagine that any team that makes the national title pool isn't going to risk that by playing a CCG. Which IMO makes the CCG worthless because the best team isn't there. I mean, consider this year - what if Alabama and Georgia go on to your national title pool, and also win the SEC West and East and decline to play in the CCG? The SEC title game would then consist of two runner-up teams and would be regarded as a joke by everyone. Nobody would want to be involved with that.

2) Attendance at football games isn't easy for many people. Sure, if you're a student living on campus, you can just fall out of bed on game day and roll over to the stadium even if the game is announced the day before. But for many it's a planned event.

There was a good test case of this here in Baton Rouge a couple years ago. In 2015, LSU was supposed to play at South Carolina, but the SC area was hit with flooding so with about a week's notice, the game was moved to LSU.

LSU of course has some of the most rabid fans in the country, and for an SEC game there would normally be 90+ thousand in the stands. But for this game the announced attendance was around 41,000.

I think we'd see a significant drop in attendance with the uncertainty about whether a team is hosting a game or not.

(11-08-2018 10:11 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(11-07-2018 06:06 PM)_sturt_ Wrote:  

(11-07-2018 09:56 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  IMO, some problems:

1) Don't like games 1-7 being about "seeding". That makes them a lot less meaningful, because a team could theoretically go 0-7, but then win on week 8 and voila, into the National Title pool, while a 7-0 team gets upset and they are out. Why not just get rid of week 8 and choose the national title pool based on record during weeks 1-7?

Entitled to your opinion, of course.

I see it differently (of course).

Theoretically, there could be a substantive argument that the 7-0 team in the example was the beneficiary of being in an incredibly weak division.

So, the 0-7 team from the opposite division who hypothetically went into the 7-0 team's home and beat them serves the purpose of testing that argument and finding it to be true on the basis of the empirical evidence.

IMO, if the 0-7 team beats the 7-0 team, it would be far more likely that the reason isn't that the 7-0 team was in an incredibly weak division but rather that the result was just "any given Sunday", the fact that any team can beat any other on a given day. A fluke result, in other words.

To me, those first 7 games are reduced in import significantly if you still have a guaranteed path to the title even if you finish last in your division.

Well taken, and I'd even agree with the fluke theory, at least to an extent... but 0-7 FBS teams from a conference sooo never defeat 7-0 FBS teams in their same conference that that outcome would almost certainly be historic... never mind that it would be played on the home field of the 7-0 team.

To find such a case, I think we'd have to look to a situation where the 0-7 team was a team from an autonomous FBS conference playing a team, not from a non-auto conference, probably not even an FCS, but a DII team.

So, rather, I'd say it's not one or the other, but both... a fluke, yes, but also it would take some incredibly... historically... weak division to allow that to actually play out in real life, beyond the hypothetical.

More pragmatically, we do see the occasional valid criticism that a conference or a sports league is lopsided... and to address that potential concern, this mechanism in the concept seems reasonable, at least to me... and at least, under the assumptions that we're limited to essentially 3 months to get-in 12 games, and hosting contests on a weekly basis.

Now... since we're playing with some hypotheticals... if you were, however, to find the political will was out there in NCAA land to push the boundaries to be more NFL-like in terms of calendar or number of games or both? Then, that creates exceptionally more room to maneuver. (I doubt you see that happening, and I certainly don't, having been employed by higher ed institutions for part of my life and having some insight to how those decision-makers tend to think about the athletics component.)

Good discussion.

What about the Notre Dame-Navy & the Notre Dame-USC rivalries?? Navy-Notre Dame has been played 90 times, Notre Dame-USC has been played 86 times. Not quite 100 games on both, but pretty close to it.

(11-08-2018 10:21 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  1) I would imagine that any team that makes the national title pool isn't going to risk that by playing a CCG. Which IMO makes the CCG worthless because the best team isn't there. I mean, consider this year - what if Alabama and Georgia go on to your national title pool, and also win the SEC West and East and decline to play in the CCG? The SEC title game would then consist of two runner-up teams and would be regarded as a joke by everyone. Nobody would want to be involved with that.

I understand your concern, but isn't that essentially the same logic that said that once we began an official national championship game, that it would for all intents and purposes represent a vasectomy to the bowl system?

No, I think people want to have something to get excited about, and that they *can* indeed get excited even if it's not as cognitively appealing as it once was or as might be wished... there is a left brain element, I agree, but at the end of the day, it's so much more right brain... how many fans, after all, enjoy sports for how it makes them think, in comparison to how it makes them feel?

And so, I advance the thought here that if you're pursuing the national championship... if you're a serious contender/finalist... the conference championship is largely a shrug of the shoulders in comparison... and simultaneously, if you're NOT in that same position to seriously contend for the national title, you almost certainly will be eager to still achieve the highest acclaim you can, which might be a conference championship.

We've confounded the two because of the evolution of the sport has just led us to that, but zooming out and taking a rational look at it, there's no good reason to think of it now the way we've thought of it before.

(11-08-2018 10:21 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(11-07-2018 10:46 PM)_sturt_ Wrote:  I would qualify one point here, too... just because a team loses on Consequence Saturday and fails to get to the NC Pool doesn't necessarily mean they fall out of conference title contention... so there's also that.

As to attendance, I feel you can't be talking about the NC Pool games (right?)... if anything, those games are going to be tickets difficult to get if you don't have season tickets or if you aren't willing to pay premium price. Regarding the other games, I'm not one of those fans inclined to think that most people need a lot of lead time... if there's a game, and if my team is playing, just tell me what day and what time the gates are opening.

1) I would imagine that any team that makes the national title pool isn't going to risk that by playing a CCG. Which IMO makes the CCG worthless because the best team isn't there. I mean, consider this year - what if Alabama and Georgia go on to your national title pool, and also win the SEC West and East and decline to play in the CCG? The SEC title game would then consist of two runner-up teams and would be regarded as a joke by everyone. Nobody would want to be involved with that.

2) Attendance at football games isn't easy for many people. Sure, if you're a student living on campus, you can just fall out of bed on game day and roll over to the stadium even if the game is announced the day before. But for many it's a planned event.

There was a good test case of this here in Baton Rouge a couple years ago. In 2015, LSU was supposed to play at South Carolina, but the SC area was hit with flooding so with about a week's notice, the game was moved to LSU.

LSU of course has some of the most rabid fans in the country, and for an SEC game there would normally be 90+ thousand in the stands. But for this game the announced attendance was around 41,000.

I think we'd see a significant drop in attendance with the uncertainty about whether a team is hosting a game or not.

Okay, let's look at that example you've cited... it seems a reasonable enough case study. And though not an LSU fan, I know what you're saying is true, having worked in Lake Charles for awhile, and a lot of professional relationships with LSU alums.

It does speak to the capacity for fans to adjust within a week to a change of venue/plans.

My first question if I were researching it for a paper would be, do I think maybe a confounding variable worth assessing would be the degree to which LSU fans planned their weekend differently, thinking they *knew for certain* their team is going to be out-of-town on that Saturday... versus... the degree to which they might have made plans had they thought it was a *possibility* their team would be?

(11-08-2018 10:40 AM)DawgNBama Wrote:  What about the Notre Dame-Navy & the Notre Dame-USC rivalries?? Navy-Notre Dame has been played 90 times, Notre Dame-USC has been played 86 times. Not quite 100 games on both, but pretty close to it.

Agree that that's important, and said this about that, earlier...



Then again, too, remember that both USC and Navy are in conferences where they have latitude to schedule 2 of their first 7 games however they want to (...i.e., having 5 in-conference games)... so Notre Dame being an independent, it is conceivable that both USC and Navy would commit to taking one of those slots and committing to their game with ND most years.

(11-08-2018 10:02 AM)owl at the moon Wrote:  It’s not perfect.


But it’s the best proposal I’ve seen.

Keep up the good work. This might actually have some traction if you can get the fans on board to push for it or something like it.

Thanks, owl. Get me an e-mail address for the PayPal payment, or I can't cut you that tip I promised.

There was a time in my idealistic younger years where I actually imagined that kind of grassroots success in modifying something sports-related to be plausible. I'm jaded now. It just hasn't ever happened that I'm aware of. There is no authoritative "sports fan union" through which sports entertainment consumers can gain the attention of the real decision-makers. You seemingly have to be inside the castle of any given sports institution... they don't lower the drawbridge for us peons to really give a serious voice, so it effectively keeps us peons from ever even attempting to work together to engineer and to advocate for better mousetraps.

So, nah... it's mainly just an interesting brain teaser and fun conversation that maybe keeps the old age dementia from setting in as rapidly as it otherwise would.

So if the top two (or more) SEC teams are in the final four... guess what folks.

We will make the SEC championship a literal national title semifinal.

That buys the SEC two things:

1) it’s Championship just got HUGER
And
2) whoever wins it earns extra rest before the national championship game.

It also reduces the chance of the *boring* to some all-SEC title game (unless they place 3 teams in the final four!!!)

So right there are three reasons the SEC should go for this. They could even have an all-SEC final four if it came to it. Which I’m ok with as long as there’s a path for the G5’s, too.

Of course same logic applies for ANY conference to place two in the final four but... we all know ONLY the great SEC is capable of such a feat. We KNOW this because that’s what the committee has been feeding us


One more bonus— rose bowl can pit B10vPAC champs again since playoff teams get a pass on the conf champ game.

So, YNot, here's what I come up with, as I think about what you'd posted, in light of the new framework proposed here...

Mind you, it does build from another something I tinkered with last bowl season, hence the 2018 dates.

In doing this, we establish... in light of your general ambition... some vivid carrots for schools to ascend to capturing in the quest to reach, if not the national championship, a Tier One Bowl invite, or if not that, a Tier Two, and if not that, a Tier Three... again, each with some criteria ("carrots") attached for qualifying to play for their bowl game title.



What you'll notice first off, maybe, is that we get the Tier Three Bowls played, then the Tier Two, and finally the Tier Ones... making the prestige of the tiers tied to when they get played makes it easier for fans to follow, instead of the rag-tag mix all over the mid-December to early-January calendar.

What you might notice next is this idea of "qualifiers" for both the Tier Two and the Tier One Bowls. Skinny down the number of bowl titles in any given year, but don't necessarily skinny down the number of teams participating in bowl seasons, but do make each bowl's title more credible by forcing teams to earn the right to play in the actual bowl game in the first place... and where TV is concerned, just make their holiday season that more jolly by adding to the offerings.

Circling back to the premise, if my team doesn't win on Consequence Saturday and, thus, we're compelled to play a slate of 4 games to cap the season from within the Regular Pool, though a national championship is out of the question...

- We conceivably can win our conference's championship and have a shot at a Tier One Bowl, or at least be assured of playing in a Qualifier game for a Tier Two Bowl of our choice...

- Or if not, we conceivably can win 10 games and almost certainly still gain a Tier Two Bowl Qualifier game...

- Or if not, we conceivably can still impress a Tier Two Bowl committee to invite us, as has historically been the protocol...

- Or if not, we conceivably can still gain an invite to a Tier Three Bowl Qualifier game.

So the whole bowl structure really serves us well here to continue to keep things interesting following Consequence Saturday's outcomes.

(Will now exit for awhile to catch up, again, on some things they pay me to do... I say that so no one thinks I'm ignoring any follow-ups, but I really do have to take at least a day away now... thx for the discussion and your insights, con or pro. :) )

(11-08-2018 10:53 AM)_sturt_ Wrote:  

(11-08-2018 10:21 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(11-07-2018 10:46 PM)_sturt_ Wrote:  I would qualify one point here, too... just because a team loses on Consequence Saturday and fails to get to the NC Pool doesn't necessarily mean they fall out of conference title contention... so there's also that.

As to attendance, I feel you can't be talking about the NC Pool games (right?)... if anything, those games are going to be tickets difficult to get if you don't have season tickets or if you aren't willing to pay premium price. Regarding the other games, I'm not one of those fans inclined to think that most people need a lot of lead time... if there's a game, and if my team is playing, just tell me what day and what time the gates are opening.

1) I would imagine that any team that makes the national title pool isn't going to risk that by playing a CCG. Which IMO makes the CCG worthless because the best team isn't there. I mean, consider this year - what if Alabama and Georgia go on to your national title pool, and also win the SEC West and East and decline to play in the CCG? The SEC title game would then consist of two runner-up teams and would be regarded as a joke by everyone. Nobody would want to be involved with that.

2) Attendance at football games isn't easy for many people. Sure, if you're a student living on campus, you can just fall out of bed on game day and roll over to the stadium even if the game is announced the day before. But for many it's a planned event.

There was a good test case of this here in Baton Rouge a couple years ago. In 2015, LSU was supposed to play at South Carolina, but the SC area was hit with flooding so with about a week's notice, the game was moved to LSU.

LSU of course has some of the most rabid fans in the country, and for an SEC game there would normally be 90+ thousand in the stands. But for this game the announced attendance was around 41,000.

I think we'd see a significant drop in attendance with the uncertainty about whether a team is hosting a game or not.

Okay, let's look at that example you've cited... it seems a reasonable enough case study. And though not an LSU fan, I know what you're saying is true, having worked in Lake Charles for awhile, and a lot of professional relationships with LSU alums.

It does speak to the capacity for fans to adjust within a week to a change of venue/plans.

My first question if I were researching it for a paper would be, do I think maybe a confounding variable worth assessing would be the degree to which LSU fans planned their weekend differently, thinking they *knew for certain* their team is going to be out-of-town on that Saturday... versus... the degree to which they might have made plans had they thought it was a *possibility* their team would be?

I don't know why I'm even entertaining this because this is the most asinine scenario posted on this board but here goes:

Part of deciding which away games you travel to depends on when you are going to be able to take vacation time for travel. The overwhelming majority of places of employment I know of require more than a week's notice. Hell, most people who attend Clemson home games have to account for at least half a day's vacation because of travel if the start time is noon on Saturday.

How does your system accommodate for that and the resulting lost revenue of fewer tickets sold?

Anyone can make up a playoff system that addresses what he/she personally believes is "best". I personally think that an 8-team playoff with auto-bids for the P5 champs using the bowls as quarterfinals is the "best". Others think a 16-team playoff with auto-bids for all conferences is the "best". There are others that think the current 4-team playoff shouldn't be changed at all. We can argue about different playoff systems all day because what we personally believe is most entertaining/intriguing/fair is subjective.

What's completely objective, though, is that any new playoff system needs MORE *guaranteed* money for the Power Five conferences with the same revenue and access *advantage* over the G5 or else it's DOA. Having boom years with lots of bids and money and trough years with fewer bids and less money is NOT what the P5 wants or needs. Instead, the P5 need a significant pay bump that is 100% ironclad with no strings attached and granted to them regardless of any performance on the field. (Even a 99% chance isn't good enough. That last 1% guarantee is what separates the powerful from the powerless.) We can go around and around in circles all day about what's "fair", but the only people that really matter here are the P5 commissioners and university presidents and, even more specifically, Jim Delany of the Big Ten and Mike Slive of the SEC. If the Big Ten and SEC both want something, then change has a chance and, in turn, if they don't want it, then it's pretty much dead. (Note that a Big Ten or SEC AD is essentially a heretic now if he/she isn't scheduling 7 home games per year, much less 6 home games, so anything that takes away home games that are under the financial control of the P5 conferences and their members is a non-starter. The fact that Ohio State might get an extra home game in a convoluted playoff system is meaningless for the other 13 members of the Big Ten.)

So, don't waste time trying to explain how a playoff system will be more "fair" or interesting or competitive or how the little guy will have a chance. All of that is absolutely irrelevant in real life. If you want a new playoff format that has a chance, show me how a system will give the P5 more *guaranteed* money and preserves the revenue and access gap over the G5 at the same time. Remember that the unequal access and revenue sharing of football of the current system is a *feature* to the P5, NOT a bug. How the money works needs to come FIRST and then the on-the-field format will need to fit the financial structure as opposed to the other way around (which is what most fans seem to do in playoff proposals).

(11-09-2018 09:38 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  What's completely objective, though, is that any new playoff system needs MORE *guaranteed* money for the Power Five conferences with the same revenue and access *advantage* over the G5 or else it's DOA.

Yes, the guaranteed money is key, because a school administrator can't make plans based on contingent money. Contingent money can only be in play once a baseline guarantee that is significantly greater than the guaranteed money from the old system is in place.

That's how the CFP got approved: The networks showed the conferences significantly more guaranteed money over what the BCS was providing. For an 8-team playoff to come about, it would have to offer the same over the CFP.

And yes, of course the P5 has no interest in giving G5 more access to the playoffs. Why should they? It's the P5 schools that give the sport the popularity that makes the playoffs a big stage. Why would they want to share it?

It's kind of like an explanation I heard about the Academy Awards in the 1990s (back when they still had great cultural gravitas). Someone asked a critic why the small independent films that were better than the movies produced by Disney, Warners, etc. never win Best Picture when they were, well, clearly better?

And the critic said something like "you have to remember, the Academy is run by the major studios. It's their show, their production, and it's their big movies that lots of people see that make the Academy Awards a big public event to begin with. They're not going to give that spotlight away to little independent auteurs who've done nothing to build that brand value". And that's why it wasn't until independent studios like Miramax were bought out by big studios like Disney that their artsy films started winning Oscars.

(11-08-2018 06:59 PM)Kaplony Wrote:  Part of deciding which away games you travel to depends on when you are going to be able to take vacation time for travel. The overwhelming majority of places of employment I know of require more than a week's notice. Hell, most people who attend Clemson home games have to account for at least half a day's vacation because of travel if the start time is noon on Saturday.

How does your system accommodate for that and the resulting lost revenue of fewer tickets sold?

1. This is just an idea/proposal on a sports message board out in cyberspace, and no one (or at least I'm not) is pretending that this is going to happen or even likely to happen.

So, stating maybe the obvious, no one needs to be too concerned that this represents some threat to the status quo.

That said, for the sake of substantive conversation and given the time I've put into thinking through it, it is pretty cool to have it all taken seriously enough that I'm getting this feedback to see where people think the holes are.

So, sincerely, thanks for that.

2. To your specific point regarding reduced ticket sales due to individuals who live far enough away and who do not have much if any flexibility with their jobs to get the necessary time to travel... and, okay... those situations undeniably exist.

But the real question is whether those situations exist in such a large number to merit concern.

For those who currently fly-in, it's not a concern at all, of course. So, we're talking about those whose drive time would be significant enough that they need to take a half-day on Friday to be there for that noon kick-off on Saturday... what is that, then... would we say people who live more than 2 hours from the game site?... or 4?... or 6?... or 8? Depending on what number we settle on, it defines the boundary, and of course, we then can estimate how many fans (a) live outside that boundary... and who (b) currently consistently make it to games, and who © would not be able to make arrangements with only a week's notice.

It would make an interesting study. I can't give you any hard numbers and hopefully it isn't presumptuous of me to say you can't give me any hard numbers... so I guess we just have to leave it "you're entitled to your opinion on that."

In my mind, the vast, vast majority of ticket sales for any Saturday are to individuals who do not fall outside of that boundary anyhow, and for those who fall far outside of that boundary, they probably don't make it every game anyhow...

So we're specifically talking about those who live within a relatively narrow band around that circumference of the game site who are on the fence... and only that subset of those who either do not have enough PTO... or, if they do have enough PTO, are employed where they have no flexibility to use it unless they put-in for it more than 5 days before they use it... and... specifically for these subsets of fans:

(a) those fans whose teams' Consequence Saturday (Game 8) destination would be on the bubble until the prior Saturday (conventional estimate would be 1/3, or ~43)

(Note, then, every team in both the NC and the Regular Pools knows two weeks in advance of Game 9 who and where they're playing)

(b) the fans of the 16 NC Pool winners Game 10, as well as those of the 16 losers (because they learn about their next game as they also gain a concrete slate for the two remaining games to finish the season)... 32 total

(c ) the fans of the 8 that win in Game 11, as well as those of the 8 losers... 16 total

... so, in other words, out of 1,560 (12 games x 130 teams' fanbases) opportunities for this to represent a concern, that's 5.8%, and again of that 5.8%, we're only speaking about those fans who comprise the subset who historically have consistently attended games but live beyond that boundary, and of that subset, only the subset of them who have the employment obstacles indicated.

I'm sure I'm not alone in saying I've been in a position to make marketing and budget decisions for an organization, and I feel safe in saying, were it to come to that, it would surprise a board of directors to learn that their CEO had made a decision to stick with the status quo, under the premise that there cannot possibly be a reward great enough to overcome the risk arising from a subset of a subset of 5.8% of revenue opportunities.



3. I'm running out of time and might revisit this later, but to your larger point and the others' comments about concerns about revenue, my primary response is that we never would have had an NC in the first place if the NCAA Football Industry didn't perceive that the interest in that had become so intense, that they were leaving money on the table if they didn't... and similarly, more recently... that we wouldn't have a 4-team playoff in the first place if they didn't perceive that there, again, was money to be made from interest created by a 4-team playoff...

The higher interest propelled by playoffs is hard to argue against. It is only because of the Academe's absolute mandates that the football calendar be contained to a certain number of weeks that we don't already have an NFL-like playoff... it's just that no one in a decision-making position has yet made a formal proposal to enmesh a tournament system within the fabric of the current 12-game season, which is what this concept essentially does.

So, all of that to say... to the contrary, there is a solid argument that even now money is being left on the table because they haven't yet ascended to a concept that establishes a full tournament component. History says, if they did, there would be even more guaranteed money, but self-evidently, no one in the castle has come up with a plan.

For most of NCAA football, they have their next chance to capture that money when negotiations for TV contracts start in about 2-3 years, to take effect in 2023.

sturt - I do think they’re leaving *some* money on the table, but there’s really isn’t that much more from a P5 perspective. The only thing that may make more money for the P5 is an 8-team playoff where each P5 league gets an auto-bid (AKA guaranteed money) and keeps the current 12-game regular season with a conference championship game as-is. Essentially, it needs to a be complete add-on to the current system as opposed to taking anything away from the current system. Anything more than that is superfluous and, from their standpoint, just propping up the G5 schools that don’t bring money or branding to the system. Regular season games and conference championship games are also revenue that is 100% controlled by the conferences and doesn’t need to be split with anyone, so there isn’t really much of an argument for the P5 to give up a single penny of that revenue. The 90/10 revenue split between the P5 and G5 is even more important than the P5 earning a little bit more money outright with a more even revenue split. Once again, that revenue disparity is a *feature*, NOT a bug. The P5 absolutely despises how revenue is split for the NCAA Tournament, but the bargain is that they stay in the NCAA for basketball in exchange for revenue control over football. If anyone attempted to impose the system that you have proposed in football, the P5 would just leave the NCAA entirely and turn basketball into a closed-end exclusionary sport on top of football, too. That’s the reality - it’s about control and power, not open access. Whether that’s “fair” is irrelevant.

(11-10-2018 05:30 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  sturt - I do think they’re leaving *some* money on the table, but there’s really isn’t that much more from a P5 perspective.

I don't even know how we would ever come up with a reasoned formula for evaluating that assertion in terms of anything tangible. Am I missing something?

As long as there is...

(a) some number of new customers out there who have not yet been won over to top-level college football as a worthy investment of their time and attention (and thus, a conduit for ad revenues through exposures), and/or

(b) some number of current customers out there who might have additional capacity in their time and attention to fit-in more college football interest, and/or

© some number of both of those who are willing to spend more money out-of-pocket on tickets and merchandise and/or capable and willing to make contributions to athletics programs chiefly as a result of their college football interest... and at the same time, as long as there is always, also,

(d) natural and opposite encroaching forces that pose a risk of losing revenues because of erosion time and interest, and direct cash support...

... there cannot be a really well-established understanding of what the ceiling is, and thus, what could be but isn't.

All we really can ascend to knowing is what history teaches us about what stokes broader and deeper customer interest.

Think of it this way.

If the NFL could figure out a way to have 130 teams across the US, and make money from 130 instead of just 32, then, being interested to maximize profit, aka, "since they're a business"... they would pursue that.

They don't have the resources, though, that the NCAA and its member institutions have, by the inherent fact that the NCAA has these institutions planted in 130 locations, each of them poised to raise the level of income for the greater good of the whole of the membership.

(11-10-2018 05:30 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  If anyone attempted to impose the system that you have proposed in football, the P5 would just leave the NCAA entirely and turn basketball into a closed-end exclusionary sport on top of football, too. That’s the reality - it’s about control and power, not open access. Whether that’s “fair” is irrelevant.

I respect you, as I know you've been part of this discussion for several years, but I have historical reason that I reject this idea that the autonomous schools/conferences are charitable organizations, propping up everyone else with no actual benefit to their own self-interest.

To the contrary, there has to be some explanation for why it is that they haven't exited and formed their own self-standing membership association. They, indeed, are not charities.

What is that benefit?

Well, as I've said above... there's benefit to growing the larger enterprise by embedding into every geographical nook and cranny of the developed economic capital structures in the nation a "franchise" with the capacity to generate more interest in the larger enterprise.

And then, too, think of it this way... if you had 64-ish schools playing football in their own exclusive league, the nature of math is that you will always end up with about 1/3 of the schools winning and being considered successful, 1/3 in the middle, and 1/3 losing and being considered unsuccessful.

By playing ball in the larger pool with all these other schools with lesser resources, you set in place an environment where instead of 33% of your autonomous conference's schools being "successful," that stretches to an opportunity for maybe 40-50% of your schools having that real possibility... from 33% of your autonomous schools' being middle-of-the-pack, to a real possibility that maybe 40-50% of those schools are.

And in fact, just look at the bottom 1/3 of the 130 schools in any given year for some mathematically/objectively based ratings system... and notice how very few of those are, indeed, from auto conferences... hardly any...

That, as opposed to the stark reality that if they all had their OWN league, no getting around it, about 1/3 of the schools would be at the bottom.

Put more succinctly, the big boys need the smaller boys to prop up perception that they're all big boys... and so, even if that means that a few of the smaller boys excel, it's a small price to be paid for the bigger cause to be achieved.

Where am I wrong on either of those two points. Open to your thoughts/criticisms.

=================

And so, circling back to where the thread starts...



I think the goals that are laid out are economically-progressive ones... the larger enterprise of NCAA FBS College Football will prosper more greatly as it strives to achieve those goals than the degree to which it does not.

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(11-10-2018 12:10 PM)_sturt_ Wrote:  

(11-08-2018 06:59 PM)Kaplony Wrote:  Part of deciding which away games you travel to depends on when you are going to be able to take vacation time for travel. The overwhelming majority of places of employment I know of require more than a week's notice. Hell, most people who attend Clemson home games have to account for at least half a day's vacation because of travel if the start time is noon on Saturday.

How does your system accommodate for that and the resulting lost revenue of fewer tickets sold?

1. This is just an idea/proposal on a sports message board out in cyberspace, and no one (or at least I'm not) is pretending that this is going to happen or even likely to happen.

So, stating maybe the obvious, no one needs to be too concerned that this represents some threat to the status quo.

That said, for the sake of substantive conversation and given the time I've put into thinking through it, it is pretty cool to have it all taken seriously enough that I'm getting this feedback to see where people think the holes are.

So, sincerely, thanks for that.

2. To your specific point regarding reduced ticket sales due to individuals who live far enough away and who do not have much if any flexibility with their jobs to get the necessary time to travel... and, okay... those situations undeniably exist.

But the real question is whether those situations exist in such a large number to merit concern.

For those who currently fly-in, it's not a concern at all, of course. So, we're talking about those whose drive time would be significant enough that they need to take a half-day on Friday to be there for that noon kick-off on Saturday... what is that, then... would we say people who live more than 2 hours from the game site?... or 4?... or 6?... or 8? Depending on what number we settle on, it defines the boundary, and of course, we then can estimate how many fans (a) live outside that boundary... and who (b) currently consistently make it to games, and who © would not be able to make arrangements with only a week's notice.

It would make an interesting study. I can't give you any hard numbers and hopefully it isn't presumptuous of me to say you can't give me any hard numbers... so I guess we just have to leave it "you're entitled to your opinion on that."

In my mind, the vast, vast majority of ticket sales for any Saturday are to individuals who do not fall outside of that boundary anyhow, and for those who fall far outside of that boundary, they probably don't make it every game anyhow...

So we're specifically talking about those who live within a relatively narrow band around that circumference of the game site who are on the fence... and only that subset of those who either do not have enough PTO... or, if they do have enough PTO, are employed where they have no flexibility to use it unless they put-in for it more than 5 days before they use it... and... specifically for these subsets of fans:

(a) those fans whose teams' Consequence Saturday (Game 8) destination would be on the bubble until the prior Saturday (conventional estimate would be 1/3, or ~43)

(Note, then, every team in both the NC and the Regular Pools knows two weeks in advance of Game 9 who and where they're playing)

(b) the fans of the 16 NC Pool winners Game 10, as well as those of the 16 losers (because they learn about their next game as they also gain a concrete slate for the two remaining games to finish the season)... 32 total

(c ) the fans of the 8 that win in Game 11, as well as those of the 8 losers... 16 total

... so, in other words, out of 1,560 (12 games x 130 teams' fanbases) opportunities for this to represent a concern, that's 5.8%, and again of that 5.8%, we're only speaking about those fans who comprise the subset who historically have consistently attended games but live beyond that boundary, and of that subset, only the subset of them who have the employment obstacles indicated.

I'm sure I'm not alone in saying I've been in a position to make marketing and budget decisions for an organization, and I feel safe in saying, were it to come to that, it would surprise a board of directors to learn that their CEO had made a decision to stick with the status quo, under the premise that there cannot possibly be a reward great enough to overcome the risk arising from a subset of a subset of 5.8% of revenue opportunities.



3. I'm running out of time and might revisit this later, but to your larger point and the others' comments about concerns about revenue, my primary response is that we never would have had an NC in the first place if the NCAA Football Industry didn't perceive that the interest in that had become so intense, that they were leaving money on the table if they didn't... and similarly, more recently... that we wouldn't have a 4-team playoff in the first place if they didn't perceive that there, again, was money to be made from interest created by a 4-team playoff...

The higher interest propelled by playoffs is hard to argue against. It is only because of the Academe's absolute mandates that the football calendar be contained to a certain number of weeks that we don't already have an NFL-like playoff... it's just that no one in a decision-making position has yet made a formal proposal to enmesh a tournament system within the fabric of the current 12-game season, which is what this concept essentially does.

So, all of that to say... to the contrary, there is a solid argument that even now money is being left on the table because they haven't yet ascended to a concept that establishes a full tournament component. History says, if they did, there would be even more guaranteed money, but self-evidently, no one in the castle has come up with a plan.

For most of NCAA football, they have their next chance to capture that money when negotiations for TV contracts start in about 2-3 years, to take effect in 2023.

All you have to do is look at Clemson's games with Wake or BC to see that we have a huge traveling fanbase. The amount of orange in the stands is a reflection of that. This asinine proposal hinders people's ability to travel to games like that because in addition to time constraints there's also the rise in prices for hotels/airline tickets/etc. as you get closer to an event.

Oh and BTW...I'd conservatively estimate that at minimum 40% of Clemson's home fanbase travels 3+ hours to home games. It's what happens when your school is in the far NW corner of the state.

You are trying to cure a disease that doesn't exist for the overwhelming majority of schools and fanbases out there.

Look, my friend, I've merely put forward a concept rooted in the goals indicated.

If you disagree with the goals, that's your privilege and right, and so it only makes sense that you would disparage the whole concept on its merits.

But as far as I can interpret it, you've only essentially repeated yourself, and have not actually issued any counterpoint to the two points made to your previous assertion...

Quote:
But the real question is whether those situations exist in such a large number to merit concern.

For those who currently fly-in, it's not a concern at all, of course. So, we're talking about those whose drive time would be significant enough that they need to take a half-day on Friday to be there for that noon kick-off on Saturday... what is that, then... would we say people who live more than 2 hours from the game site?... or 4?... or 6?... or 8? Depending on what number we settle on, it defines the boundary, and of course, we then can estimate how many fans (a) live outside that boundary... and who (b) currently consistently make it to games, and who would not be able to make arrangements with only a week's notice.

It would make an interesting study. I can't give you any hard numbers and hopefully it isn't presumptuous of me to say you can't give me any hard numbers... so I guess we just have to leave it "you're entitled to your opinion on that."

In my mind, the vast, vast majority of ticket sales for any Saturday are to individuals who do not fall outside of that boundary anyhow, and for those who fall far outside of that boundary, they probably don't make it every game anyhow...

So we're specifically talking about those who live within a relatively narrow band around that circumference of the game site who are on the fence... and only that subset of those who either do not have enough PTO... or, if they do have enough PTO, are employed where they have no flexibility to use it unless they put-in for it more than 5 days before they use it... and... specifically for (the 5.8% of all games to be played in the regular season)...



so, in other words, out of 1,560 (12 games x 130 teams' fanbases) opportunities for this to represent a concern, that's 5.8%, and again of that 5.8%, we're only speaking about those fans who comprise the subset who historically have consistently attended games but live beyond that boundary, and of that subset, only the subset of them who have the employment obstacles indicated.

I'm sure I'm not alone in saying I've been in a position to make marketing and budget decisions for an organization, and I feel safe in saying, were it to come to that, it would surprise a board of directors to learn that their CEO had made a decision to stick with the status quo, under the premise that there cannot possibly be a reward great enough to overcome the risk arising from a subset of a subset of 5.8% of revenue opportunities.

...and...

Quote:we never would have had an NC in the first place if the NCAA Football Industry didn't perceive that the interest in that had become so intense, that they were leaving money on the table if they didn't... and similarly, more recently... that we wouldn't have a 4-team playoff in the first place if they didn't perceive that there, again, was money to be made from interest created by a 4-team playoff...

The higher interest propelled by playoffs is hard to argue against. It is only because of the Academe's absolute mandates that the football calendar be contained to a certain number of weeks that we don't already have an NFL-like playoff... it's just that no one in a decision-making position has yet made a formal proposal to enmesh a tournament system within the fabric of the current 12-game season, which is what this concept essentially does.

So, all of that to say... to the contrary, there is a solid argument that even now money is being left on the table because they haven't yet ascended to a concept that establishes a full tournament component. History says, if they did, there would be even more guaranteed money, but self-evidently, no one in the castle has come up with a plan.

There is money to be made that isn't right now being made. The NCAA FBS football economy can expand, and make everyone more prosperous just as the proverbial rising tide lifts all ships.
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(11-09-2018 10:21 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  And yes, of course the P5 has no interest in giving G5 more access to the playoffs. Why should they? It's the P5 schools that give the sport the popularity that makes the playoffs a big stage. Why would they want to share it?

I've already spoken to the general point in the response above, but I do think it's worth adding... how one structures the payouts for the regular season NC Pool part of the system suggested in the OP is its own question as it pertains to the next major contracts that are worked out. So, in short, it's not the playoffs per se that matters, it's how the money ends up getting distributed that matters in the end... and thus, how economic self-interest is served for the autonomous conference schools.

So, having said that, there is a clean slate here in this new framework that can be engineered to the autonomous conference schools' satisfaction just as the current one has been.

In fact, there could be some added appeal to this one because there is no automatic NY6 bowl berth and money associated with that going to a non-autonomous conference school... everyone has to earn their own way all the way through the gauntlet.

It's another interesting question. Invite others and will try myself to give some thought to what a payout structure within the context of this new framework might look like.