(02-22-2020 07:11 PM)schmolik Wrote:  The SEC has miles to go to catch up to the ACC in men's basketball. In fact, they're behind the Big Ten and on par with the Big 12.

https://www.bloggingthebracket.com/2019/...tournament

Since 2010,

ACC: 130 wins, 36 Sweet 16's, 9 Final 4's, 5 Championships

Big Ten: 101 wins, 29 Sweet 16's, 8 Final 4's

SEC: 79 wins, 21 Sweet 16's, 7 Final 4's, 1 Championship

Big 12: 78 wins, 22 Sweet 16's, 5 Final 4's

31 of the SEC's wins and 4 of the 7 Final Fours are of course Kentucky. If you took Kentucky out of the SEC, they'd have barely more wins than the Pathetic 12 (48 to 46 for the Pac-12). Of course if you took Kansas out of the Big 12 they'd be just as bad. If you took Duke out of the ACC, they'd still have over 100 wins and three national championships by three different schools.

SEC basketball is ACC football and ACC basketball is SEC football. As I said before, Clemson and Kentucky should just switch conferences. Better yet, Kentucky and Florida and Clemson and Georgia Tech. The ACC would own college basketball and the SEC would be a mid major.

Why since 2010? The point is that revenue and emphasis is making a difference and when the revenue is 30 million greater it is going to have an impact.

And if you took UNC and Duke out of the mix where would they be?

Also I didn't see the Big 10 in that championship standing? Stretch it back to 1990 and the differences where the Big 10 are concerned is more stark. The ACC and Big 10 have always been tournament darlings because of the viewers they bring. So the number of games won is indicative of getting more in on average than anyone else. P5's are usually (not always) favored in those opening round games. But the Big 10 for all of its hoops credits just hasn't produced many champions. And none in the last 10 years. For the number of schools that each conference gets in the SEC and Big 12 have reached the sweet sixteen at a slightly higher rate than most.

Statistics are frequently misleading depending on how they are framed and you framed the last 10 years.

The SEC has won titles with Arkansas, Florida twice, and of course Kentucky since 1990. How many championships have the Big 10 schools won since 1990? I know the Spartans are probably in there somewhere.

I didn't count for all of the conferences but it seems the ACC has 12, the SEC has 6 (3 different schools) and the Big 10 has 1 (Michigan State). The Big East had a an ample share and it's hard to count with all the realignment without a chart of when everybody switched. So you see framing the argument makes a difference.

(02-22-2020 07:02 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(02-22-2020 06:31 PM)bill dazzle Wrote:  I might not have been clear in my previous post that I feel the ACC is clearly the superior basketball league (compared to the SEC) and will likely remain so for many years to come. To take a line from that goofball TV commercial for the SEC: "Basketball ... in the ACC, it just means more." I tremendously respect JRsec's knowledge of college sports (he makes me look like a simpleton) and he does make some good points about budgets, the SEC putting more emphasis on hoops, etc. I get it. And I'm very impressed at how the SEC men's basketball has improved the last few years (with the various quality coaching hires having been huge). I live in Nashville and love Vanderbilt. I have multiple cousins and good friends who attended the University of Tennessee and am always happy for them when the Vols do well. If the SEC does well in any sport, good for the SEC and good for VU. I like SEC baseball and root for the league on diamond. I'm not anti-SEC (though I am hugely "anti SEC homer," and I've met a few SEC apologists and nerds during my almost 60 years). I'm fine with the SEC potentially surpassing the ACC in men's basketball, and it might happen (as JRsec predicts).

But I don't see it.

Now, and to be fair, maybe I'm a bit biased. My sister both attended and worked at the University of North Carolina. She and her family lived in Chapel Hill for many years. One of her children was born at UNC Medical Center. Our family loves the Tar Heels. My sister also has a degree from NCState. And my brother's wife graduated from Louisville. So, yes, I admit to some pro-ACC bias. Still, and being as objective as I can be, I struggle mightily to see any of the five decades in the next 50 years during which the SEC is "better" than the ACC for, say, six or more of those 10 years (per decade). There is simply too much basketball tradition in the ACC. The money will be sufficient to hire great coaches and lure great players.

One more thing (and on the football generating lots of revenue for Big Ten and SEC programs to pump into their hoops programs) ... there could easily come a day when football is nowhere near as big a deal as it has been. Injuries, deaths, absurd ticket prices, uncomfortable stadiums, enrollments with significant percentages of foreign students who have no interest in American football, etc. True, that might be 50 or more years from now and, equally true, football will always be popular. But basketball and soccer are international sports. And they are played by women. They will continue to gain traction, sometimes at college football's expense.

In summary, as somebody who follows teams in both the SEC and the ACC ... may the best hoops conference "win" over the long haul. The ACC has been clearly better up until now. The next 20 years, who knows? Maybe the SEC will be better.

Then they are going to have to find a market which presently they fail to have. Women's hoops is no longer a revenue sport at any of the institutions as it now runs in red ink at both Connecticut and Tennessee, two schools that have both made revenue on it in the past.

Women's soccer (other than with the Olympics) doesn't have a market at the collegiate level.

Women's Softball however does make money at some schools, just not much, but alas that is not so international.

So the bolded and underlined portion of your post has no evidence whatsoever to support your assumption. The rest however is your opinion to which you are entitled.

I would merely point out that if pay for play actually arises in the future that the impact it could have upon Title IX could be devastating. I doubt seriously that semi-professional for profit sports which are taxed can be held to the same standard as amateur athletics when it comes to Title IX.

My point being, as always with media contracts, you have to have a profitable product before you can count on air time. The two you cited are not remotely close to being a profitable television product. They can see air time on a conference network and the women's basketball tourney might get some air time too, but the support in the arenas and in terms of viewers simply aren't there for widespread appeal.

Here's the thing, JRsec. I work in the media. I talk to folks. I once worked at Athlon Sports Communications (as you might have read in a previous post). I'm almost 60. I've talked to a lot of folks about college sports over the years. And I would estimate that of all the people I've talked to regarding the "SEC hoops vs. ACC hoops debate" and who are not fans of an athletic program in either league (i.e., they are very unbiased) or who are (like me) fans of programs in both leagues, 99 percent feel the ACC has been vastly better than the SEC in men's basketball for many years. And they see that superiority continuing for many years to come.

Now perhaps you will be proved correct one day. If so, I will gladly buy you a beer and say I was wrong. You crunch the numbers. You understand elements of this topic that I simply don't have the time, the patience, the desire and/or the intellect to grasp. You make some very good points regarding this subject. I have posted that I agree with some of those points.

I enjoy reading your posts and feel you make strong contributions to the board.

I simply feel you will be proved wrong and that the ACC will continue its superiority in men's basketball over the SEC. Similarly, the SEC is the best league in the country year in and year out in football, baseball and women's basketball. That is very impressive and I give full credit to the league for that.

Your name let's many of us on this board know that you are very pro-SEC. And that's fine. I respect your right to be that way. I'm not. But I try to be fair and give the SEC credit when due.

(02-23-2020 12:20 AM)bill dazzle Wrote:  

(02-22-2020 07:02 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(02-22-2020 06:31 PM)bill dazzle Wrote:  I might not have been clear in my previous post that I feel the ACC is clearly the superior basketball league (compared to the SEC) and will likely remain so for many years to come. To take a line from that goofball TV commercial for the SEC: "Basketball ... in the ACC, it just means more." I tremendously respect JRsec's knowledge of college sports (he makes me look like a simpleton) and he does make some good points about budgets, the SEC putting more emphasis on hoops, etc. I get it. And I'm very impressed at how the SEC men's basketball has improved the last few years (with the various quality coaching hires having been huge). I live in Nashville and love Vanderbilt. I have multiple cousins and good friends who attended the University of Tennessee and am always happy for them when the Vols do well. If the SEC does well in any sport, good for the SEC and good for VU. I like SEC baseball and root for the league on diamond. I'm not anti-SEC (though I am hugely "anti SEC homer," and I've met a few SEC apologists and nerds during my almost 60 years). I'm fine with the SEC potentially surpassing the ACC in men's basketball, and it might happen (as JRsec predicts).

But I don't see it.

Now, and to be fair, maybe I'm a bit biased. My sister both attended and worked at the University of North Carolina. She and her family lived in Chapel Hill for many years. One of her children was born at UNC Medical Center. Our family loves the Tar Heels. My sister also has a degree from NCState. And my brother's wife graduated from Louisville. So, yes, I admit to some pro-ACC bias. Still, and being as objective as I can be, I struggle mightily to see any of the five decades in the next 50 years during which the SEC is "better" than the ACC for, say, six or more of those 10 years (per decade). There is simply too much basketball tradition in the ACC. The money will be sufficient to hire great coaches and lure great players.

One more thing (and on the football generating lots of revenue for Big Ten and SEC programs to pump into their hoops programs) ... there could easily come a day when football is nowhere near as big a deal as it has been. Injuries, deaths, absurd ticket prices, uncomfortable stadiums, enrollments with significant percentages of foreign students who have no interest in American football, etc. True, that might be 50 or more years from now and, equally true, football will always be popular. But basketball and soccer are international sports. And they are played by women. They will continue to gain traction, sometimes at college football's expense.

In summary, as somebody who follows teams in both the SEC and the ACC ... may the best hoops conference "win" over the long haul. The ACC has been clearly better up until now. The next 20 years, who knows? Maybe the SEC will be better.

Then they are going to have to find a market which presently they fail to have. Women's hoops is no longer a revenue sport at any of the institutions as it now runs in red ink at both Connecticut and Tennessee, two schools that have both made revenue on it in the past.

Women's soccer (other than with the Olympics) doesn't have a market at the collegiate level.

Women's Softball however does make money at some schools, just not much, but alas that is not so international.

So the bolded and underlined portion of your post has no evidence whatsoever to support your assumption. The rest however is your opinion to which you are entitled.

I would merely point out that if pay for play actually arises in the future that the impact it could have upon Title IX could be devastating. I doubt seriously that semi-professional for profit sports which are taxed can be held to the same standard as amateur athletics when it comes to Title IX.

My point being, as always with media contracts, you have to have a profitable product before you can count on air time. The two you cited are not remotely close to being a profitable television product. They can see air time on a conference network and the women's basketball tourney might get some air time too, but the support in the arenas and in terms of viewers simply aren't there for widespread appeal.

Here's the thing, JRsec. I work in the media. I talk to folks. I once worked at Athlon Sports Communications (as you might have read in a previous post). I'm almost 60. I've talked to a lot of folks about college sports over the years. And I would estimate that of all the people I've talked to regarding the "SEC hoops vs. ACC hoops debate" and who are not fans of an athletic program in either league (i.e., they are very unbiased) or who are (like me) fans of programs in both leagues, 99 percent feel the ACC has been vastly better than the SEC in men's basketball for many years. And they see that superiority continuing for many years to come.

Now perhaps you will be proved correct one day. If so, I will gladly buy you a beer and say I was wrong. You crunch the numbers. You understand elements of this topic that I simply don't have the time, the patience, the desire and/or the intellect to grasp. You make some very good points regarding this subject. I have posted that I agree with some of those points.

I enjoy reading your posts and feel you make strong contributions to the board.

I simply feel you will be proved wrong and that the ACC will continue its superiority in men's basketball over the SEC. Similarly, the SEC is the best league in the country year in and year out in football, baseball and women's basketball. That is very impressive and I give full credit to the league for that.

Your name let's many of us on this board know that you are very pro-SEC. And that's fine. I respect your right to be that way. I'm not. But I try to be fair and give the SEC credit when due.

Athlon was a publication for offering great pictures, and not so accurate pre-season prognostications for the coming year. Also great Honey-Watching shots back in the day. The sports media business, including the newspapers when they were in their prime, and the beat coverage for FOX and ESPN are nothing more than a glorified Athlon prognosticator.

Presidents, Athletic Directors, Recruiters, and Network Executives are the ones that count. That's where the business gets done.

30 million dollars worth of a revenue gap between the 2 P5 conferences that border you and the ACC is going to be something that has never been there before. It took the last ESPN deal for the SEC to pull ahead by 10 million. Until then things were within a few million between all 5 of the power conferences. Things have decidedly changed Bill. The PAC is way behind. U.C.L.A. is running a 32 million dollar red ink athletic department. Their media rights deal is dead last though the ACC's until the ACCN projections was right there with them.

We are moving into an era where there will be a P2 and likely a P sub 2 and where the top brands of the Big 12 will likely ally themselves with one of the P2. The revenue is simply too great.

They can't catch up uniting the P12 with the B12 and the ACC is simply going to be walled off behind Big 10 and SEC. We aren't talking about what was for the last 20 years or 40 years. We are talking about the next 20 years. I think everyone sees the challenges for football moving forward, but those who have it and with more than just 2 schools with national brand power are about to cash in and they are smart enough men and women that they will be intentionally developing the only other collegiate sport that has profit potential, basketball. And if football survives then fantastic, and its shelf life is longer than most think. But when it is relegated to history as has been boxing, polo, and the currently passing automobile racing, they will have made sure that their money has purchased all the advantage they need in whatever sport arises and right now that's basketball, and men's basketball to be specific.

And for your information Bill I have been to or lived in 47 of the 48 contiguous states, 3 provinces in Canada, and have traveled the Middle East and parts of Europe. I live in an SEC university town and I like SEC sports. But when I first took the initials JR for my online moniker there were oodles of them. I added the SEC in lower case letters to set my moniker apart, not to intentionally affiliate it with the conference.

My angle has been what I saw and knew best, the corporate takeover of a sleepy regionalized sport with a large underdeveloped value. I described it as such in 2008 when I first started posting on another site that is now defunct, and continued in the vein when I joined here almost 8 years ago.

The sport has been deliberately discouraged from adding other schools in states by the footprint pay model, then encouraged to get valuations from the network before adding so that the networks could control their market development, and not those of the conferences per se, and now we are entering a content driven market pay model so that the networks can maximize national penetration.

None of this has been about the Big 10, SEC, ACC, PAC, or Big 12. It's been about market extension and depth of content within groupings so that advertising rates regionally and nationally could be maximized without a single conference owning their own region outright (no 2 schools from 1 state). Florida and Texas are divided allegiances now, the attempt was solidly made in 2010-12 to divide North Carolina and Virginia but the SEC wasn't driving it, the networks were looking to enhance the market spread of a popular product under two different brands into shared regions to double dip the broader draw of eyeballs.

You saw it as rivalries died, and product placement, just as in a retail store, was made with universities instead of skus.

The average fan in any venue saw his schools logos replaced with those of corporations and IMG and others sold a one size fits all approach to corporate advertising right down to the same sets of songs being piped into every baseball venue in the SEC / ACC and Big 12. Gone was the local flavor to be replaced by "sameness" everywhere. They even discouraged old cheers no longer considered to be PC, and I'm not referring to any that pertained to race. I am referring to those corporate sponsors didn't want to have heard at the telecast that sported their advertisements.

What we have replaced is uniqueness and local flavor with is the same tepid corporate crap we find everywhere.

But what do the stupid fans do? They blame it on the conferences who were being paid more money to make these moves instead of the hands that dipped into the till to make it happen.

You tell me what is going to happen to a conference that finds itself 27-35 million behind its two strongest neighbors, especially as we move un-mistakenly toward some form of pay for play?

It's what is known as a paradigm shift and the Big 10 and SEC (chosen because they are the two strongest and national branded conferences of the P5 and which both have 5 or more top brands) have been singled out to be on top of the pyramid financially for the purpose of culling the skus. And nothing gets movement like a lot of cash when universities facing a downturn nationally in enrollment are squeamish about drying up Federal and State funding, decreasing enrollment, are watching the downsizing and re-tasking of other smaller state schools, and crave national exposure in an effort to attract students.

I might add that the addition of large state land grant schools and top academic public universities is also part of the exposure plan because they have the largest living alumni bases. This doesn't bode well for most privates, Notre Dame, Stanford, and U.S.C. likely excepted. And it doesn't bode well for a conference which has the highest % of privates of any of the P5.

The point I have been making and will continue to make is that the Big 10 is quietly boosting baseball and softball while the SEC is boosting basketball, not because they need those sports for revenue, but because they need to be competitive in those sports when more key schools are integrated into their structures. And those conferences lagging so very far behind in revenue are where they are because when the skus are thinned the most profitable and nationally known among them will be placed where their branding is more valuable, not to the SEC and Big 10 per se, but to ESPN and FOX or whoever is seeking to hold the rights to conferences with truly national draws.

And Bill those conferences will be paid enough to attract the best coaches, be able to offer legally a pay for play to the best athletes, and to be a cheap substitute for the MLB, NFL, and NBA but to what is mostly a large but different audience, and even at 75 million per school media rights for say 40 or 48 total schools that's still highly profitable because the overhead is lower than with professional teams, and the allegiances are baked in.

I point out what I do Bill because the issue isn't conference pride. The issue is what is being made of all of our conferences by corporate entities which are involved in a well disguised hostile takeover of what we each love in our own ways about our schools and our native regions.

I'm not sure anyone has any hard and fast final figure of the number of schools to be included. Personally I think 72 makes the most sense for the preservation of wins and losses that most fans are accustomed to seeing. I know people who think it will be fewer than 65. And last year some media pundits were tossing out 36, which I think is absurdly low. I wouldn't be surprised by any set number between 48 and 72.

I picked on the ACC posters today because they are the frog in warm water where the degree of temperature gets turned up annually and they still don't realize they are getting cooked and by whom?

I'm sure North Carolina will keep great hoops, what I'm highly skeptical of is that in 15 years it will be hoops played in the ACC.

Right now if you take the 28 schools of the SEC and Big 10 and you split out the most profitable and recognizable brands of the PAC you would be adding about 8 schools to that number and possibly as few as 4 to 6. In the Big 12 at most 6, but likely 2-4. In the ACC about 8.

The revenue is the carrot to get the mule to move. That's why the two most ready to have a league built around them are paid the most.

Now people can deny it as is their right to do. But everything that has been happening since the Oklahoma/Georgia lawsuit of the early 80's has been building to this. And basketball wrested away from the NCAA is coming. I'm old enough that it might not be in my lifetime if that is sooner than I hope but it is coming.

Pay for play destroys the organizing principle of the NCAA which was amateurism. When that happens the breakaway will occur and with it basketball becomes much more profitable for the schools. An upper tier that offers pay for play will emerge and those who choose to remain simply amateur in status will be those who remain in the NCAA where the organizing principle still works.

Do I love the SEC? Of course. But I loved it best at 10 schools and no disrespect is intended to South Carolina, Arkansas, Texas A&M and Missouri. I loved it best when beating your neighbors was better than a bowl game. I loved it when Pete Maravich was enough basketball for any of us especially when he was playing against John Mengelt.

But look at it now Bill. It's been blended into the Southern Mid Atlantic, Texas, the Ozarks, and the Midwest. And the Big 10 is into the Plains, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland.

If the trajectory of the networks is not evident now, when will it be?

The Big East was cobbled into the ACC so that the networks could distribute all of it as they needed to when the time came. And the money differential is the inescapable evidence. The PAC wasn't under any network control since they owned their own Network. And like the Big 10 Network at its inception it has suffered nothing but carriage issues. That's not an accident. Texas and Oklahoma being bribed away from PAC membership was worth 15 million to ESPN and 7 million to FOX.

Everything is right in front of people to see but they refuse to. But I should have expected this. They refuse to see the big picture politically. But that I'll leave for another board. My point being if they couldn't wake up to see what they were losing control of, enjoyment of, and a natural feeling of love for, when their alma maters became the subject of corporate for profit takeover, I guess they'll never wake up.

I poke the bear to make them think. But inevitably they choose to blame the wrong things as the source of their ire.

The Big East of old is gone. The Texas fiefdom of the SWC is gone. The Big 12 has been picked over like a ripe opossum on a highway full of buzzards but still clings to the pavement, and the PAC has been isolated and left to dry on the Napa vine. Meanwhile the ACC has been spoon fed clam chowder from Boston, and fat markets in New York and Pittsburgh, and given a good footing in Florida. That's enough markets to fatten anyone up, but the money is lean and that's to make the lure of luxury irresistible when the time comes.

That's what is called a paradigm shift. One lawsuit and about a half dozen years before the networks figured out the angles to make it work for them, and voila, a takeover that robbed rivalries, destroyed boundaries, and changed the composition of even the strongest among us. And it still goes on. And the people ignorantly still blame the other conference instead of the hands that crafted it all.

Now smoke that over and then come again.

I wish I could put out well opinionated post as this. Just follow the money.

JRSec, your premise of a future of a "Big Two" of the Big Ten and SEC is financially sound. That being said, should the Big Ten and SEC come raiding for the ACC after their GOR expires (2036), the top basketball schools, at least now (Virginia, North Carolina, and Duke) will join the Big Ten. I see the future Big Ten adds along academic lines, Virginia, North Carolina, Duke, and Georgia Tech and these also give the B1G the Carolinas and Atlanta. I see the SEC adding Clemson and Florida State for football and Virginia Tech and NC State to expand their geographic footprint north. If there is an ACC split, the Big Ten almost certainly will win in men's basketball. I can't see UNC/Duke joining the SEC over the Big Ten if they had a choice. Of course 2036 is a long time from now, Coach K and Roy Williams almost certainly will be retired if not dead by then, who knows if Duke and UNC will still be good in basketball by then (I might even be dead by then and if I'm not, I'll be over 60). I'm sure the SEC schools are investing in men's basketball. But historically outside of Kentucky, Florida, and one year for Arkansas, they haven't had much success. And in a "Big Two" scenario, the Big Ten has more of the Atlantic Coast and most of the Northeast. If I'm the Big Ten commissioner and I'm in Atlanta and the Carolinas, I'd be asking Florida and/or Florida State. Of course Florida won't leave the SEC for the Big Ten now with the nearest member being Maryland and won't leave for the ACC. But imagine a Big Ten with Georgia Tech, North Carolina, and Duke. If (and it's a big if) the athletics are equal, there's a lot of money to be made on the academic side too and we all know the Big Ten's way ahead there. Once the Big Ten gets into Florida, they become even more powerful. Who knows, they may already have gotten into Texas by then. You can say the SEC will always be better in football. Or can you? You can say the same about Nick Saban as you can about Coach K. For all we know, 2036 Alabama could go back to being pre-Saban Alabama.

The thing is, campus is only so big, there is limited space to build fancy things for athletes. What are these SEC schools realistically going to be able to offer with more money? Do you really think the universities are going to support state employees (every school in the SEC sans Vandy) making grossly more than they do now? You better pay close attention to the way politics are drifting.

The SEC region isn’t a hotbed for high school basketball, so what about all the players that want to stay regional?

There are just too many opposing factors that point out the flaws in his argument.

(02-23-2020 01:54 AM)JRsec Wrote:  

(02-23-2020 12:20 AM)bill dazzle Wrote:  

(02-22-2020 07:02 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(02-22-2020 06:31 PM)bill dazzle Wrote:  I might not have been clear in my previous post that I feel the ACC is clearly the superior basketball league (compared to the SEC) and will likely remain so for many years to come. To take a line from that goofball TV commercial for the SEC: "Basketball ... in the ACC, it just means more." I tremendously respect JRsec's knowledge of college sports (he makes me look like a simpleton) and he does make some good points about budgets, the SEC putting more emphasis on hoops, etc. I get it. And I'm very impressed at how the SEC men's basketball has improved the last few years (with the various quality coaching hires having been huge). I live in Nashville and love Vanderbilt. I have multiple cousins and good friends who attended the University of Tennessee and am always happy for them when the Vols do well. If the SEC does well in any sport, good for the SEC and good for VU. I like SEC baseball and root for the league on diamond. I'm not anti-SEC (though I am hugely "anti SEC homer," and I've met a few SEC apologists and nerds during my almost 60 years). I'm fine with the SEC potentially surpassing the ACC in men's basketball, and it might happen (as JRsec predicts).

But I don't see it.

Now, and to be fair, maybe I'm a bit biased. My sister both attended and worked at the University of North Carolina. She and her family lived in Chapel Hill for many years. One of her children was born at UNC Medical Center. Our family loves the Tar Heels. My sister also has a degree from NCState. And my brother's wife graduated from Louisville. So, yes, I admit to some pro-ACC bias. Still, and being as objective as I can be, I struggle mightily to see any of the five decades in the next 50 years during which the SEC is "better" than the ACC for, say, six or more of those 10 years (per decade). There is simply too much basketball tradition in the ACC. The money will be sufficient to hire great coaches and lure great players.

One more thing (and on the football generating lots of revenue for Big Ten and SEC programs to pump into their hoops programs) ... there could easily come a day when football is nowhere near as big a deal as it has been. Injuries, deaths, absurd ticket prices, uncomfortable stadiums, enrollments with significant percentages of foreign students who have no interest in American football, etc. True, that might be 50 or more years from now and, equally true, football will always be popular. But basketball and soccer are international sports. And they are played by women. They will continue to gain traction, sometimes at college football's expense.

In summary, as somebody who follows teams in both the SEC and the ACC ... may the best hoops conference "win" over the long haul. The ACC has been clearly better up until now. The next 20 years, who knows? Maybe the SEC will be better.

Then they are going to have to find a market which presently they fail to have. Women's hoops is no longer a revenue sport at any of the institutions as it now runs in red ink at both Connecticut and Tennessee, two schools that have both made revenue on it in the past.

Women's soccer (other than with the Olympics) doesn't have a market at the collegiate level.

Women's Softball however does make money at some schools, just not much, but alas that is not so international.

So the bolded and underlined portion of your post has no evidence whatsoever to support your assumption. The rest however is your opinion to which you are entitled.

I would merely point out that if pay for play actually arises in the future that the impact it could have upon Title IX could be devastating. I doubt seriously that semi-professional for profit sports which are taxed can be held to the same standard as amateur athletics when it comes to Title IX.

My point being, as always with media contracts, you have to have a profitable product before you can count on air time. The two you cited are not remotely close to being a profitable television product. They can see air time on a conference network and the women's basketball tourney might get some air time too, but the support in the arenas and in terms of viewers simply aren't there for widespread appeal.

Here's the thing, JRsec. I work in the media. I talk to folks. I once worked at Athlon Sports Communications (as you might have read in a previous post). I'm almost 60. I've talked to a lot of folks about college sports over the years. And I would estimate that of all the people I've talked to regarding the "SEC hoops vs. ACC hoops debate" and who are not fans of an athletic program in either league (i.e., they are very unbiased) or who are (like me) fans of programs in both leagues, 99 percent feel the ACC has been vastly better than the SEC in men's basketball for many years. And they see that superiority continuing for many years to come.

Now perhaps you will be proved correct one day. If so, I will gladly buy you a beer and say I was wrong. You crunch the numbers. You understand elements of this topic that I simply don't have the time, the patience, the desire and/or the intellect to grasp. You make some very good points regarding this subject. I have posted that I agree with some of those points.

I enjoy reading your posts and feel you make strong contributions to the board.

I simply feel you will be proved wrong and that the ACC will continue its superiority in men's basketball over the SEC. Similarly, the SEC is the best league in the country year in and year out in football, baseball and women's basketball. That is very impressive and I give full credit to the league for that.

Your name let's many of us on this board know that you are very pro-SEC. And that's fine. I respect your right to be that way. I'm not. But I try to be fair and give the SEC credit when due.

Athlon was a publication for offering great pictures, and not so accurate pre-season prognostications for the coming year. Also great Honey-Watching shots back in the day. The sports media business, including the newspapers when they were in their prime, and the beat coverage for FOX and ESPN are nothing more than a glorified Athlon prognosticator.

Presidents, Athletic Directors, Recruiters, and Network Executives are the ones that count. That's where the business gets done.

30 million dollars worth of a revenue gap between the 2 P5 conferences that border you and the ACC is going to be something that has never been there before. It took the last ESPN deal for the SEC to pull ahead by 10 million. Until then things were within a few million between all 5 of the power conferences. Things have decidedly changed Bill. The PAC is way behind. U.C.L.A. is running a 32 million dollar red ink athletic department. Their media rights deal is dead last though the ACC's until the ACCN projections was right there with them.

We are moving into an era where there will be a P2 and likely a P sub 2 and where the top brands of the Big 12 will likely ally themselves with one of the P2. The revenue is simply too great.

They can't catch up uniting the P12 with the B12 and the ACC is simply going to be walled off behind Big 10 and SEC. We aren't talking about what was for the last 20 years or 40 years. We are talking about the next 20 years. I think everyone sees the challenges for football moving forward, but those who have it and with more than just 2 schools with national brand power are about to cash in and they are smart enough men and women that they will be intentionally developing the only other collegiate sport that has profit potential, basketball. And if football survives then fantastic, and its shelf life is longer than most think. But when it is relegated to history as has been boxing, polo, and the currently passing automobile racing, they will have made sure that their money has purchased all the advantage they need in whatever sport arises and right now that's basketball, and men's basketball to be specific.

And for your information Bill I have been to or lived in 47 of the 48 contiguous states, 3 provinces in Canada, and have traveled the Middle East and parts of Europe. I live in an SEC university town and I like SEC sports. But when I first took the initials JR for my online moniker there were oodles of them. I added the SEC in lower case letters to set my moniker apart, not to intentionally affiliate it with the conference.

My angle has been what I saw and knew best, the corporate takeover of a sleepy regionalized sport with a large underdeveloped value. I described it as such in 2008 when I first started posting on another site that is now defunct, and continued in the vein when I joined here almost 8 years ago.

The sport has been deliberately discouraged from adding other schools in states by the footprint pay model, then encouraged to get valuations from the network before adding so that the networks could control their market development, and not those of the conferences per se, and now we are entering a content driven market pay model so that the networks can maximize national penetration.

None of this has been about the Big 10, SEC, ACC, PAC, or Big 12. It's been about market extension and depth of content within groupings so that advertising rates regionally and nationally could be maximized without a single conference owning their own region outright (no 2 schools from 1 state). Florida and Texas are divided allegiances now, the attempt was solidly made in 2010-12 to divide North Carolina and Virginia but the SEC wasn't driving it, the networks were looking to enhance the market spread of a popular product under two different brands into shared regions to double dip the broader draw of eyeballs.

You saw it as rivalries died, and product placement, just as in a retail store, was made with universities instead of skews.

The average fan in any venue saw his schools logos replaced with those of corporations and IMG and others sold a one size fits all approach to corporate advertising right down to the same sets of songs being piped into every baseball venue in the SEC / ACC and Big 12. Gone was the local flavor to be replaced by "sameness" everywhere. They even discouraged old cheers no longer considered to be PC, and I'm not referring to any that pertained to race. I am referring to those corporate sponsors didn't want to have heard at the telecast that sported their advertisements.

What we have replaced uniqueness and local flavor with is the same tepid corporate crap we find everywhere.

But what do the stupid fans do? They blame it on the conferences who were being paid more money to make these moves instead of the hands that dipped into the till to make it happen.

You tell me what is going to happen to a conference that finds itself 27-35 million behind its two strongest neighbors, especially as we move un-mistakenly toward some form of pay for play?

It's what is known as a paradigm shift and the Big 10 and SEC (chosen because they are the two strongest and national branded conferences of the P5 and which both have 5 or more top brands) have been singled out to be on top of the pyramid financially for the purpose of culling the skews. And nothing gets movement like a lot of cash when universities facing a downturn nationally in enrollment are squeamish about drying up Federal and State funding, decreasing enrollment, are watching the downsizing and re-tasking of other smaller state schools, and crave national exposure in an effort to attract students.

I might add that the addition of large state land grant schools and top academic public universities is also part of the exposure plan because they have the largest living alumni bases. This doesn't bode well for most privates, Notre Dame, Stanford, and U.S.C. likely excepted. And it doesn't bode well for a conference which has the highest % of privates of any of the P5.

The point I have been making and will continue to make is that the Big 10 is quietly boosting baseball and softball while the SEC is boosting basketball, not because they need those sports for revenue, but because they need to be competitive in those sports when more key schools are integrated into their structures. And those conferences lagging so very far behind in revenue are where they are because when the skews are thinned the most profitable and nationally known among them will be placed where their branding is more valuable, not to the SEC and Big 10 per se, but to ESPN and FOX or whoever is seeking to hold the rights to conferences with truly national draws.

And Bill those conferences will be paid enough to attract the best coaches, be able to offer legally pay for play to the best athletes, and to be a cheap substitute for the MLB, NFL, and NBA but to what is mostly a large but different audience and even at 75 million per school media rights for say 40 or 48 total schools that's still highly profitable because the overhead is lower than with professional teams, and the allegiances are baked in.

I point out what I do Bill because the issue isn't conference pride. The issue is what is being made of all of our conferences by corporate entities which are involved in a well disguised hostile takeover of what we each love in our own ways about our schools and our native regions.

I'm not sure anyone has any hard and fast final figure of the number of schools to be included. Personally I think 72 makes the most sense for the preservation of wins and losses that most fans are accustomed to seeing. I know people who think it will be fewer than 65. And last year some media pundits were tossing out 36, which I think is absurdly low. I wouldn't be surprised by any set number between 48 and 72.

I picked on the ACC posters today because they are the frog in warm water where the degree of temperature gets turned up annually and they still don't realize they are getting cooked and by whom?

I'm sure North Carolina will keep great hoops, what I'm highly skeptical of is that in 15 years it will be hoops played in the ACC.

Right now if you take the 28 schools of the SEC and Big 10 and you split out the most profitable and recognizable brands of the PAC you would be adding about 8 schools to that number and possibly as few as 4 to 6. In the Big 12 at most 6, but likely 2-4. In the ACC about 8.

The revenue is the carrot to get the mule to move. That's why the two most ready to have a league built around them are paid the most.

Now people can deny it as is their right to do. But everything that has been happening since the Oklahoma/Georgia lawsuit of the early 80's has been building to this. And basketball wrested away from the NCAA is coming. I'm old enough that it might not be in my lifetime if that is sooner than I hope but it is coming.

Pay for play destroys the organizing principle of the NCAA which was amateurism. When that happens the breakaway will occur and with it basketball becomes much more profitable for the schools. An upper tier that offers pay for play will emerge and those who choose to remain simply amateur in status will be those who remain in the NCAA where the organizing principle still works.

Do I love the SEC? Of course. But I loved it best at 10 schools and no disrespect is intended to South Carolina, Arkansas, Texas A&M and Missouri. I loved it best when beating your neighbors was better than a bowl game. I loved it when Pete Maravich was enough basketball for any of us especially when he was playing against John Mengelt.

But look at it now Bill. It's been blended into the Southern Mid Atlantic, Texas, the Ozarks, and the Midwest. And the Big 10 is into the Plains, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland.

If the trajectory of the networks is not evident now, when will it be?

The Big East was cobbled into the ACC so that the networks could distribute all of it as they needed to when the time came. And the money differential is the inescapable evidence. The PAC wasn't under any network control since they owned their own Network. And like the Big 10 Network at its inception it has suffered nothing but carriage issues. That's not an accident. Texas and Oklahoma being bribed away from PAC membership was worth 15 million to ESPN and 7 million to FOX.

Everything is right I front of people to see but they refuse to. But I should have expected this. They refuse to see the big picture politically. But that I'll leave for another board. My point being if they couldn't wake up to see what they were losing control of, enjoyment of, and a natural feeling of love for, when their alma maters became the subject of corporate for profit takeover, I guess they'll never wake up.

I poke the bear to make them think. But inevitably they choose to blame the wrong things as the source of their ire.

The Big East of old is gone. The Texas fiefdom of the SWC is gone. The Big 12 has been picked over like a ripe opossum on a highway full of buzzards but still clings to the pavement, and the PAC has been isolated and left to dry on the Napa vine. Meanwhile the ACC has been spoon fed clam chowder from Boston, and fat markets in New York and Pittsburgh, and given a good footing in Florida. That's enough markets to fatten anyone up, but the money is lean and that's to make the lure of luxury irresistible when the time comes.

That's what is called a paradigm shift. One lawsuit and about a half dozen years before the networks figured out the angles to make it work for them, and voila, a takeover that robbed rivalries, destroyed boundaries, and changed the composition of even the strongest among us. And it still goes on. And the people ignorantly still blame the other conference instead of the hands that crafted it all.

Now smoke that over and then come again.

I'd like to hire you to work for the publication at which I am employed. Your wordsmithing is strong; your ability to cogently express an argument, stellar.

I would attempt to counter your points (and, as always, they are extremely well made) but am suffering some hemorrhoid difficulties and doing battle with you would render me doomed for failure, thus worsening my condition. Plus (and I have to admit), you have rather won me over a bit regarding this topic.

And by the way, JRsec, this is genius:

The Big 12 has been picked over like a ripe opossum on a highway full of buzzards but still clings to the pavement, and the PAC has been isolated and left to dry on the Napa vine.

I would enjoy (hypothetically) seeing you, Quo, GW11, attackcoog, GW11 and some others from this board and whose names escape me in my early-Sunday-morning sluggishness placed in a room for two hours — and have at it.

(02-23-2020 09:35 AM)bill dazzle Wrote:  

(02-23-2020 01:54 AM)JRsec Wrote:  

(02-23-2020 12:20 AM)bill dazzle Wrote:  

(02-22-2020 07:02 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(02-22-2020 06:31 PM)bill dazzle Wrote:  I might not have been clear in my previous post that I feel the ACC is clearly the superior basketball league (compared to the SEC) and will likely remain so for many years to come. To take a line from that goofball TV commercial for the SEC: "Basketball ... in the ACC, it just means more." I tremendously respect JRsec's knowledge of college sports (he makes me look like a simpleton) and he does make some good points about budgets, the SEC putting more emphasis on hoops, etc. I get it. And I'm very impressed at how the SEC men's basketball has improved the last few years (with the various quality coaching hires having been huge). I live in Nashville and love Vanderbilt. I have multiple cousins and good friends who attended the University of Tennessee and am always happy for them when the Vols do well. If the SEC does well in any sport, good for the SEC and good for VU. I like SEC baseball and root for the league on diamond. I'm not anti-SEC (though I am hugely "anti SEC homer," and I've met a few SEC apologists and nerds during my almost 60 years). I'm fine with the SEC potentially surpassing the ACC in men's basketball, and it might happen (as JRsec predicts).

But I don't see it.

Now, and to be fair, maybe I'm a bit biased. My sister both attended and worked at the University of North Carolina. She and her family lived in Chapel Hill for many years. One of her children was born at UNC Medical Center. Our family loves the Tar Heels. My sister also has a degree from NCState. And my brother's wife graduated from Louisville. So, yes, I admit to some pro-ACC bias. Still, and being as objective as I can be, I struggle mightily to see any of the five decades in the next 50 years during which the SEC is "better" than the ACC for, say, six or more of those 10 years (per decade). There is simply too much basketball tradition in the ACC. The money will be sufficient to hire great coaches and lure great players.

One more thing (and on the football generating lots of revenue for Big Ten and SEC programs to pump into their hoops programs) ... there could easily come a day when football is nowhere near as big a deal as it has been. Injuries, deaths, absurd ticket prices, uncomfortable stadiums, enrollments with significant percentages of foreign students who have no interest in American football, etc. True, that might be 50 or more years from now and, equally true, football will always be popular. But basketball and soccer are international sports. And they are played by women. They will continue to gain traction, sometimes at college football's expense.

In summary, as somebody who follows teams in both the SEC and the ACC ... may the best hoops conference "win" over the long haul. The ACC has been clearly better up until now. The next 20 years, who knows? Maybe the SEC will be better.

Then they are going to have to find a market which presently they fail to have. Women's hoops is no longer a revenue sport at any of the institutions as it now runs in red ink at both Connecticut and Tennessee, two schools that have both made revenue on it in the past.

Women's soccer (other than with the Olympics) doesn't have a market at the collegiate level.

Women's Softball however does make money at some schools, just not much, but alas that is not so international.

So the bolded and underlined portion of your post has no evidence whatsoever to support your assumption. The rest however is your opinion to which you are entitled.

I would merely point out that if pay for play actually arises in the future that the impact it could have upon Title IX could be devastating. I doubt seriously that semi-professional for profit sports which are taxed can be held to the same standard as amateur athletics when it comes to Title IX.

My point being, as always with media contracts, you have to have a profitable product before you can count on air time. The two you cited are not remotely close to being a profitable television product. They can see air time on a conference network and the women's basketball tourney might get some air time too, but the support in the arenas and in terms of viewers simply aren't there for widespread appeal.

Here's the thing, JRsec. I work in the media. I talk to folks. I once worked at Athlon Sports Communications (as you might have read in a previous post). I'm almost 60. I've talked to a lot of folks about college sports over the years. And I would estimate that of all the people I've talked to regarding the "SEC hoops vs. ACC hoops debate" and who are not fans of an athletic program in either league (i.e., they are very unbiased) or who are (like me) fans of programs in both leagues, 99 percent feel the ACC has been vastly better than the SEC in men's basketball for many years. And they see that superiority continuing for many years to come.

Now perhaps you will be proved correct one day. If so, I will gladly buy you a beer and say I was wrong. You crunch the numbers. You understand elements of this topic that I simply don't have the time, the patience, the desire and/or the intellect to grasp. You make some very good points regarding this subject. I have posted that I agree with some of those points.

I enjoy reading your posts and feel you make strong contributions to the board.

I simply feel you will be proved wrong and that the ACC will continue its superiority in men's basketball over the SEC. Similarly, the SEC is the best league in the country year in and year out in football, baseball and women's basketball. That is very impressive and I give full credit to the league for that.

Your name let's many of us on this board know that you are very pro-SEC. And that's fine. I respect your right to be that way. I'm not. But I try to be fair and give the SEC credit when due.

Athlon was a publication for offering great pictures, and not so accurate pre-season prognostications for the coming year. Also great Honey-Watching shots back in the day. The sports media business, including the newspapers when they were in their prime, and the beat coverage for FOX and ESPN are nothing more than a glorified Athlon prognosticator.

Presidents, Athletic Directors, Recruiters, and Network Executives are the ones that count. That's where the business gets done.

30 million dollars worth of a revenue gap between the 2 P5 conferences that border you and the ACC is going to be something that has never been there before. It took the last ESPN deal for the SEC to pull ahead by 10 million. Until then things were within a few million between all 5 of the power conferences. Things have decidedly changed Bill. The PAC is way behind. U.C.L.A. is running a 32 million dollar red ink athletic department. Their media rights deal is dead last though the ACC's until the ACCN projections was right there with them.

We are moving into an era where there will be a P2 and likely a P sub 2 and where the top brands of the Big 12 will likely ally themselves with one of the P2. The revenue is simply too great.

They can't catch up uniting the P12 with the B12 and the ACC is simply going to be walled off behind Big 10 and SEC. We aren't talking about what was for the last 20 years or 40 years. We are talking about the next 20 years. I think everyone sees the challenges for football moving forward, but those who have it and with more than just 2 schools with national brand power are about to cash in and they are smart enough men and women that they will be intentionally developing the only other collegiate sport that has profit potential, basketball. And if football survives then fantastic, and its shelf life is longer than most think. But when it is relegated to history as has been boxing, polo, and the currently passing automobile racing, they will have made sure that their money has purchased all the advantage they need in whatever sport arises and right now that's basketball, and men's basketball to be specific.

And for your information Bill I have been to or lived in 47 of the 48 contiguous states, 3 provinces in Canada, and have traveled the Middle East and parts of Europe. I live in an SEC university town and I like SEC sports. But when I first took the initials JR for my online moniker there were oodles of them. I added the SEC in lower case letters to set my moniker apart, not to intentionally affiliate it with the conference.

My angle has been what I saw and knew best, the corporate takeover of a sleepy regionalized sport with a large underdeveloped value. I described it as such in 2008 when I first started posting on another site that is now defunct, and continued in the vein when I joined here almost 8 years ago.

The sport has been deliberately discouraged from adding other schools in states by the footprint pay model, then encouraged to get valuations from the network before adding so that the networks could control their market development, and not those of the conferences per se, and now we are entering a content driven market pay model so that the networks can maximize national penetration.

None of this has been about the Big 10, SEC, ACC, PAC, or Big 12. It's been about market extension and depth of content within groupings so that advertising rates regionally and nationally could be maximized without a single conference owning their own region outright (no 2 schools from 1 state). Florida and Texas are divided allegiances now, the attempt was solidly made in 2010-12 to divide North Carolina and Virginia but the SEC wasn't driving it, the networks were looking to enhance the market spread of a popular product under two different brands into shared regions to double dip the broader draw of eyeballs.

You saw it as rivalries died, and product placement, just as in a retail store, was made with universities instead of skews.

The average fan in any venue saw his schools logos replaced with those of corporations and IMG and others sold a one size fits all approach to corporate advertising right down to the same sets of songs being piped into every baseball venue in the SEC / ACC and Big 12. Gone was the local flavor to be replaced by "sameness" everywhere. They even discouraged old cheers no longer considered to be PC, and I'm not referring to any that pertained to race. I am referring to those corporate sponsors didn't want to have heard at the telecast that sported their advertisements.

What we have replaced uniqueness and local flavor with is the same tepid corporate crap we find everywhere.

But what do the stupid fans do? They blame it on the conferences who were being paid more money to make these moves instead of the hands that dipped into the till to make it happen.

You tell me what is going to happen to a conference that finds itself 27-35 million behind its two strongest neighbors, especially as we move un-mistakenly toward some form of pay for play?

It's what is known as a paradigm shift and the Big 10 and SEC (chosen because they are the two strongest and national branded conferences of the P5 and which both have 5 or more top brands) have been singled out to be on top of the pyramid financially for the purpose of culling the skews. And nothing gets movement like a lot of cash when universities facing a downturn nationally in enrollment are squeamish about drying up Federal and State funding, decreasing enrollment, are watching the downsizing and re-tasking of other smaller state schools, and crave national exposure in an effort to attract students.

I might add that the addition of large state land grant schools and top academic public universities is also part of the exposure plan because they have the largest living alumni bases. This doesn't bode well for most privates, Notre Dame, Stanford, and U.S.C. likely excepted. And it doesn't bode well for a conference which has the highest % of privates of any of the P5.

The point I have been making and will continue to make is that the Big 10 is quietly boosting baseball and softball while the SEC is boosting basketball, not because they need those sports for revenue, but because they need to be competitive in those sports when more key schools are integrated into their structures. And those conferences lagging so very far behind in revenue are where they are because when the skews are thinned the most profitable and nationally known among them will be placed where their branding is more valuable, not to the SEC and Big 10 per se, but to ESPN and FOX or whoever is seeking to hold the rights to conferences with truly national draws.

And Bill those conferences will be paid enough to attract the best coaches, be able to offer legally pay for play to the best athletes, and to be a cheap substitute for the MLB, NFL, and NBA but to what is mostly a large but different audience and even at 75 million per school media rights for say 40 or 48 total schools that's still highly profitable because the overhead is lower than with professional teams, and the allegiances are baked in.

I point out what I do Bill because the issue isn't conference pride. The issue is what is being made of all of our conferences by corporate entities which are involved in a well disguised hostile takeover of what we each love in our own ways about our schools and our native regions.

I'm not sure anyone has any hard and fast final figure of the number of schools to be included. Personally I think 72 makes the most sense for the preservation of wins and losses that most fans are accustomed to seeing. I know people who think it will be fewer than 65. And last year some media pundits were tossing out 36, which I think is absurdly low. I wouldn't be surprised by any set number between 48 and 72.

I picked on the ACC posters today because they are the frog in warm water where the degree of temperature gets turned up annually and they still don't realize they are getting cooked and by whom?

I'm sure North Carolina will keep great hoops, what I'm highly skeptical of is that in 15 years it will be hoops played in the ACC.

Right now if you take the 28 schools of the SEC and Big 10 and you split out the most profitable and recognizable brands of the PAC you would be adding about 8 schools to that number and possibly as few as 4 to 6. In the Big 12 at most 6, but likely 2-4. In the ACC about 8.

The revenue is the carrot to get the mule to move. That's why the two most ready to have a league built around them are paid the most.

Now people can deny it as is their right to do. But everything that has been happening since the Oklahoma/Georgia lawsuit of the early 80's has been building to this. And basketball wrested away from the NCAA is coming. I'm old enough that it might not be in my lifetime if that is sooner than I hope but it is coming.

Pay for play destroys the organizing principle of the NCAA which was amateurism. When that happens the breakaway will occur and with it basketball becomes much more profitable for the schools. An upper tier that offers pay for play will emerge and those who choose to remain simply amateur in status will be those who remain in the NCAA where the organizing principle still works.

Do I love the SEC? Of course. But I loved it best at 10 schools and no disrespect is intended to South Carolina, Arkansas, Texas A&M and Missouri. I loved it best when beating your neighbors was better than a bowl game. I loved it when Pete Maravich was enough basketball for any of us especially when he was playing against John Mengelt.

But look at it now Bill. It's been blended into the Southern Mid Atlantic, Texas, the Ozarks, and the Midwest. And the Big 10 is into the Plains, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland.

If the trajectory of the networks is not evident now, when will it be?

The Big East was cobbled into the ACC so that the networks could distribute all of it as they needed to when the time came. And the money differential is the inescapable evidence. The PAC wasn't under any network control since they owned their own Network. And like the Big 10 Network at its inception it has suffered nothing but carriage issues. That's not an accident. Texas and Oklahoma being bribed away from PAC membership was worth 15 million to ESPN and 7 million to FOX.

Everything is right I front of people to see but they refuse to. But I should have expected this. They refuse to see the big picture politically. But that I'll leave for another board. My point being if they couldn't wake up to see what they were losing control of, enjoyment of, and a natural feeling of love for, when their alma maters became the subject of corporate for profit takeover, I guess they'll never wake up.

I poke the bear to make them think. But inevitably they choose to blame the wrong things as the source of their ire.

The Big East of old is gone. The Texas fiefdom of the SWC is gone. The Big 12 has been picked over like a ripe opossum on a highway full of buzzards but still clings to the pavement, and the PAC has been isolated and left to dry on the Napa vine. Meanwhile the ACC has been spoon fed clam chowder from Boston, and fat markets in New York and Pittsburgh, and given a good footing in Florida. That's enough markets to fatten anyone up, but the money is lean and that's to make the lure of luxury irresistible when the time comes.

That's what is called a paradigm shift. One lawsuit and about a half dozen years before the networks figured out the angles to make it work for them, and voila, a takeover that robbed rivalries, destroyed boundaries, and changed the composition of even the strongest among us. And it still goes on. And the people ignorantly still blame the other conference instead of the hands that crafted it all.

Now smoke that over and then come again.

I'd like to hire you to work for the publication at which I am employed. Your wordsmithing is strong; your ability to cogently express an argument, stellar.

I would attempt to counter your points (and, as always, they are extremely well made) but am suffering some hemorrhoid difficulties and doing battle with you would render me doomed for failure, thus worsening my condition. Plus (and I have to admit), you have rather won me over a bit regarding this topic.

And by the way, JRsec, this is genius:

The Big 12 has been picked over like a ripe opossum on a highway full of buzzards but still clings to the pavement, and the PAC has been isolated and left to dry on the Napa vine.

I would enjoy (hypothetically) seeing you, Quo, GW11, attackcoog, GW11 and some others from this board and whose names escape me in my early-Sunday-morning sluggishness placed in a room for two hours — and have at it.

You are at the age Bill when you should eat more prunes.

(02-23-2020 10:31 AM)JRsec Wrote:  

(02-23-2020 09:35 AM)bill dazzle Wrote:  

(02-23-2020 01:54 AM)JRsec Wrote:  

(02-23-2020 12:20 AM)bill dazzle Wrote:  

(02-22-2020 07:02 PM)JRsec Wrote:  Then they are going to have to find a market which presently they fail to have. Women's hoops is no longer a revenue sport at any of the institutions as it now runs in red ink at both Connecticut and Tennessee, two schools that have both made revenue on it in the past.

Women's soccer (other than with the Olympics) doesn't have a market at the collegiate level.

Women's Softball however does make money at some schools, just not much, but alas that is not so international.

So the bolded and underlined portion of your post has no evidence whatsoever to support your assumption. The rest however is your opinion to which you are entitled.

I would merely point out that if pay for play actually arises in the future that the impact it could have upon Title IX could be devastating. I doubt seriously that semi-professional for profit sports which are taxed can be held to the same standard as amateur athletics when it comes to Title IX.

My point being, as always with media contracts, you have to have a profitable product before you can count on air time. The two you cited are not remotely close to being a profitable television product. They can see air time on a conference network and the women's basketball tourney might get some air time too, but the support in the arenas and in terms of viewers simply aren't there for widespread appeal.

Here's the thing, JRsec. I work in the media. I talk to folks. I once worked at Athlon Sports Communications (as you might have read in a previous post). I'm almost 60. I've talked to a lot of folks about college sports over the years. And I would estimate that of all the people I've talked to regarding the "SEC hoops vs. ACC hoops debate" and who are not fans of an athletic program in either league (i.e., they are very unbiased) or who are (like me) fans of programs in both leagues, 99 percent feel the ACC has been vastly better than the SEC in men's basketball for many years. And they see that superiority continuing for many years to come.

Now perhaps you will be proved correct one day. If so, I will gladly buy you a beer and say I was wrong. You crunch the numbers. You understand elements of this topic that I simply don't have the time, the patience, the desire and/or the intellect to grasp. You make some very good points regarding this subject. I have posted that I agree with some of those points.

I enjoy reading your posts and feel you make strong contributions to the board.

I simply feel you will be proved wrong and that the ACC will continue its superiority in men's basketball over the SEC. Similarly, the SEC is the best league in the country year in and year out in football, baseball and women's basketball. That is very impressive and I give full credit to the league for that.

Your name let's many of us on this board know that you are very pro-SEC. And that's fine. I respect your right to be that way. I'm not. But I try to be fair and give the SEC credit when due.

Athlon was a publication for offering great pictures, and not so accurate pre-season prognostications for the coming year. Also great Honey-Watching shots back in the day. The sports media business, including the newspapers when they were in their prime, and the beat coverage for FOX and ESPN are nothing more than a glorified Athlon prognosticator.

Presidents, Athletic Directors, Recruiters, and Network Executives are the ones that count. That's where the business gets done.

30 million dollars worth of a revenue gap between the 2 P5 conferences that border you and the ACC is going to be something that has never been there before. It took the last ESPN deal for the SEC to pull ahead by 10 million. Until then things were within a few million between all 5 of the power conferences. Things have decidedly changed Bill. The PAC is way behind. U.C.L.A. is running a 32 million dollar red ink athletic department. Their media rights deal is dead last though the ACC's until the ACCN projections was right there with them.

We are moving into an era where there will be a P2 and likely a P sub 2 and where the top brands of the Big 12 will likely ally themselves with one of the P2. The revenue is simply too great.

They can't catch up uniting the P12 with the B12 and the ACC is simply going to be walled off behind Big 10 and SEC. We aren't talking about what was for the last 20 years or 40 years. We are talking about the next 20 years. I think everyone sees the challenges for football moving forward, but those who have it and with more than just 2 schools with national brand power are about to cash in and they are smart enough men and women that they will be intentionally developing the only other collegiate sport that has profit potential, basketball. And if football survives then fantastic, and its shelf life is longer than most think. But when it is relegated to history as has been boxing, polo, and the currently passing automobile racing, they will have made sure that their money has purchased all the advantage they need in whatever sport arises and right now that's basketball, and men's basketball to be specific.

And for your information Bill I have been to or lived in 47 of the 48 contiguous states, 3 provinces in Canada, and have traveled the Middle East and parts of Europe. I live in an SEC university town and I like SEC sports. But when I first took the initials JR for my online moniker there were oodles of them. I added the SEC in lower case letters to set my moniker apart, not to intentionally affiliate it with the conference.

My angle has been what I saw and knew best, the corporate takeover of a sleepy regionalized sport with a large underdeveloped value. I described it as such in 2008 when I first started posting on another site that is now defunct, and continued in the vein when I joined here almost 8 years ago.

The sport has been deliberately discouraged from adding other schools in states by the footprint pay model, then encouraged to get valuations from the network before adding so that the networks could control their market development, and not those of the conferences per se, and now we are entering a content driven market pay model so that the networks can maximize national penetration.

None of this has been about the Big 10, SEC, ACC, PAC, or Big 12. It's been about market extension and depth of content within groupings so that advertising rates regionally and nationally could be maximized without a single conference owning their own region outright (no 2 schools from 1 state). Florida and Texas are divided allegiances now, the attempt was solidly made in 2010-12 to divide North Carolina and Virginia but the SEC wasn't driving it, the networks were looking to enhance the market spread of a popular product under two different brands into shared regions to double dip the broader draw of eyeballs.

You saw it as rivalries died, and product placement, just as in a retail store, was made with universities instead of skews.

The average fan in any venue saw his schools logos replaced with those of corporations and IMG and others sold a one size fits all approach to corporate advertising right down to the same sets of songs being piped into every baseball venue in the SEC / ACC and Big 12. Gone was the local flavor to be replaced by "sameness" everywhere. They even discouraged old cheers no longer considered to be PC, and I'm not referring to any that pertained to race. I am referring to those corporate sponsors didn't want to have heard at the telecast that sported their advertisements.

What we have replaced uniqueness and local flavor with is the same tepid corporate crap we find everywhere.

But what do the stupid fans do? They blame it on the conferences who were being paid more money to make these moves instead of the hands that dipped into the till to make it happen.

You tell me what is going to happen to a conference that finds itself 27-35 million behind its two strongest neighbors, especially as we move un-mistakenly toward some form of pay for play?

It's what is known as a paradigm shift and the Big 10 and SEC (chosen because they are the two strongest and national branded conferences of the P5 and which both have 5 or more top brands) have been singled out to be on top of the pyramid financially for the purpose of culling the skews. And nothing gets movement like a lot of cash when universities facing a downturn nationally in enrollment are squeamish about drying up Federal and State funding, decreasing enrollment, are watching the downsizing and re-tasking of other smaller state schools, and crave national exposure in an effort to attract students.

I might add that the addition of large state land grant schools and top academic public universities is also part of the exposure plan because they have the largest living alumni bases. This doesn't bode well for most privates, Notre Dame, Stanford, and U.S.C. likely excepted. And it doesn't bode well for a conference which has the highest % of privates of any of the P5.

The point I have been making and will continue to make is that the Big 10 is quietly boosting baseball and softball while the SEC is boosting basketball, not because they need those sports for revenue, but because they need to be competitive in those sports when more key schools are integrated into their structures. And those conferences lagging so very far behind in revenue are where they are because when the skews are thinned the most profitable and nationally known among them will be placed where their branding is more valuable, not to the SEC and Big 10 per se, but to ESPN and FOX or whoever is seeking to hold the rights to conferences with truly national draws.

And Bill those conferences will be paid enough to attract the best coaches, be able to offer legally pay for play to the best athletes, and to be a cheap substitute for the MLB, NFL, and NBA but to what is mostly a large but different audience and even at 75 million per school media rights for say 40 or 48 total schools that's still highly profitable because the overhead is lower than with professional teams, and the allegiances are baked in.

I point out what I do Bill because the issue isn't conference pride. The issue is what is being made of all of our conferences by corporate entities which are involved in a well disguised hostile takeover of what we each love in our own ways about our schools and our native regions.

I'm not sure anyone has any hard and fast final figure of the number of schools to be included. Personally I think 72 makes the most sense for the preservation of wins and losses that most fans are accustomed to seeing. I know people who think it will be fewer than 65. And last year some media pundits were tossing out 36, which I think is absurdly low. I wouldn't be surprised by any set number between 48 and 72.

I picked on the ACC posters today because they are the frog in warm water where the degree of temperature gets turned up annually and they still don't realize they are getting cooked and by whom?

I'm sure North Carolina will keep great hoops, what I'm highly skeptical of is that in 15 years it will be hoops played in the ACC.

Right now if you take the 28 schools of the SEC and Big 10 and you split out the most profitable and recognizable brands of the PAC you would be adding about 8 schools to that number and possibly as few as 4 to 6. In the Big 12 at most 6, but likely 2-4. In the ACC about 8.

The revenue is the carrot to get the mule to move. That's why the two most ready to have a league built around them are paid the most.

Now people can deny it as is their right to do. But everything that has been happening since the Oklahoma/Georgia lawsuit of the early 80's has been building to this. And basketball wrested away from the NCAA is coming. I'm old enough that it might not be in my lifetime if that is sooner than I hope but it is coming.

Pay for play destroys the organizing principle of the NCAA which was amateurism. When that happens the breakaway will occur and with it basketball becomes much more profitable for the schools. An upper tier that offers pay for play will emerge and those who choose to remain simply amateur in status will be those who remain in the NCAA where the organizing principle still works.

Do I love the SEC? Of course. But I loved it best at 10 schools and no disrespect is intended to South Carolina, Arkansas, Texas A&M and Missouri. I loved it best when beating your neighbors was better than a bowl game. I loved it when Pete Maravich was enough basketball for any of us especially when he was playing against John Mengelt.

But look at it now Bill. It's been blended into the Southern Mid Atlantic, Texas, the Ozarks, and the Midwest. And the Big 10 is into the Plains, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland.

If the trajectory of the networks is not evident now, when will it be?

The Big East was cobbled into the ACC so that the networks could distribute all of it as they needed to when the time came. And the money differential is the inescapable evidence. The PAC wasn't under any network control since they owned their own Network. And like the Big 10 Network at its inception it has suffered nothing but carriage issues. That's not an accident. Texas and Oklahoma being bribed away from PAC membership was worth 15 million to ESPN and 7 million to FOX.

Everything is right I front of people to see but they refuse to. But I should have expected this. They refuse to see the big picture politically. But that I'll leave for another board. My point being if they couldn't wake up to see what they were losing control of, enjoyment of, and a natural feeling of love for, when their alma maters became the subject of corporate for profit takeover, I guess they'll never wake up.

I poke the bear to make them think. But inevitably they choose to blame the wrong things as the source of their ire.

The Big East of old is gone. The Texas fiefdom of the SWC is gone. The Big 12 has been picked over like a ripe opossum on a highway full of buzzards but still clings to the pavement, and the PAC has been isolated and left to dry on the Napa vine. Meanwhile the ACC has been spoon fed clam chowder from Boston, and fat markets in New York and Pittsburgh, and given a good footing in Florida. That's enough markets to fatten anyone up, but the money is lean and that's to make the lure of luxury irresistible when the time comes.

That's what is called a paradigm shift. One lawsuit and about a half dozen years before the networks figured out the angles to make it work for them, and voila, a takeover that robbed rivalries, destroyed boundaries, and changed the composition of even the strongest among us. And it still goes on. And the people ignorantly still blame the other conference instead of the hands that crafted it all.

Now smoke that over and then come again.

I'd like to hire you to work for the publication at which I am employed. Your wordsmithing is strong; your ability to cogently express an argument, stellar.

I would attempt to counter your points (and, as always, they are extremely well made) but am suffering some hemorrhoid difficulties and doing battle with you would render me doomed for failure, thus worsening my condition. Plus (and I have to admit), you have rather won me over a bit regarding this topic.

And by the way, JRsec, this is genius:

The Big 12 has been picked over like a ripe opossum on a highway full of buzzards but still clings to the pavement, and the PAC has been isolated and left to dry on the Napa vine.

I would enjoy (hypothetically) seeing you, Quo, GW11, attackcoog, GW11 and some others from this board and whose names escape me in my early-Sunday-morning sluggishness placed in a room for two hours — and have at it.

You are at the age Bill when you should eat more prunes.

After reading this, I chuckled so robustly that I lost my vegan sausage patty and cheap coffee.

Well done, sir.

(02-23-2020 11:16 AM)bill dazzle Wrote:  

(02-23-2020 10:31 AM)JRsec Wrote:  

(02-23-2020 09:35 AM)bill dazzle Wrote:  

(02-23-2020 01:54 AM)JRsec Wrote:  

(02-23-2020 12:20 AM)bill dazzle Wrote:  Here's the thing, JRsec. I work in the media. I talk to folks. I once worked at Athlon Sports Communications (as you might have read in a previous post). I'm almost 60. I've talked to a lot of folks about college sports over the years. And I would estimate that of all the people I've talked to regarding the "SEC hoops vs. ACC hoops debate" and who are not fans of an athletic program in either league (i.e., they are very unbiased) or who are (like me) fans of programs in both leagues, 99 percent feel the ACC has been vastly better than the SEC in men's basketball for many years. And they see that superiority continuing for many years to come.

Now perhaps you will be proved correct one day. If so, I will gladly buy you a beer and say I was wrong. You crunch the numbers. You understand elements of this topic that I simply don't have the time, the patience, the desire and/or the intellect to grasp. You make some very good points regarding this subject. I have posted that I agree with some of those points.

I enjoy reading your posts and feel you make strong contributions to the board.

I simply feel you will be proved wrong and that the ACC will continue its superiority in men's basketball over the SEC. Similarly, the SEC is the best league in the country year in and year out in football, baseball and women's basketball. That is very impressive and I give full credit to the league for that.

Your name let's many of us on this board know that you are very pro-SEC. And that's fine. I respect your right to be that way. I'm not. But I try to be fair and give the SEC credit when due.

Athlon was a publication for offering great pictures, and not so accurate pre-season prognostications for the coming year. Also great Honey-Watching shots back in the day. The sports media business, including the newspapers when they were in their prime, and the beat coverage for FOX and ESPN are nothing more than a glorified Athlon prognosticator.

Presidents, Athletic Directors, Recruiters, and Network Executives are the ones that count. That's where the business gets done.

30 million dollars worth of a revenue gap between the 2 P5 conferences that border you and the ACC is going to be something that has never been there before. It took the last ESPN deal for the SEC to pull ahead by 10 million. Until then things were within a few million between all 5 of the power conferences. Things have decidedly changed Bill. The PAC is way behind. U.C.L.A. is running a 32 million dollar red ink athletic department. Their media rights deal is dead last though the ACC's until the ACCN projections was right there with them.

We are moving into an era where there will be a P2 and likely a P sub 2 and where the top brands of the Big 12 will likely ally themselves with one of the P2. The revenue is simply too great.

They can't catch up uniting the P12 with the B12 and the ACC is simply going to be walled off behind Big 10 and SEC. We aren't talking about what was for the last 20 years or 40 years. We are talking about the next 20 years. I think everyone sees the challenges for football moving forward, but those who have it and with more than just 2 schools with national brand power are about to cash in and they are smart enough men and women that they will be intentionally developing the only other collegiate sport that has profit potential, basketball. And if football survives then fantastic, and its shelf life is longer than most think. But when it is relegated to history as has been boxing, polo, and the currently passing automobile racing, they will have made sure that their money has purchased all the advantage they need in whatever sport arises and right now that's basketball, and men's basketball to be specific.

And for your information Bill I have been to or lived in 47 of the 48 contiguous states, 3 provinces in Canada, and have traveled the Middle East and parts of Europe. I live in an SEC university town and I like SEC sports. But when I first took the initials JR for my online moniker there were oodles of them. I added the SEC in lower case letters to set my moniker apart, not to intentionally affiliate it with the conference.

My angle has been what I saw and knew best, the corporate takeover of a sleepy regionalized sport with a large underdeveloped value. I described it as such in 2008 when I first started posting on another site that is now defunct, and continued in the vein when I joined here almost 8 years ago.

The sport has been deliberately discouraged from adding other schools in states by the footprint pay model, then encouraged to get valuations from the network before adding so that the networks could control their market development, and not those of the conferences per se, and now we are entering a content driven market pay model so that the networks can maximize national penetration.

None of this has been about the Big 10, SEC, ACC, PAC, or Big 12. It's been about market extension and depth of content within groupings so that advertising rates regionally and nationally could be maximized without a single conference owning their own region outright (no 2 schools from 1 state). Florida and Texas are divided allegiances now, the attempt was solidly made in 2010-12 to divide North Carolina and Virginia but the SEC wasn't driving it, the networks were looking to enhance the market spread of a popular product under two different brands into shared regions to double dip the broader draw of eyeballs.

You saw it as rivalries died, and product placement, just as in a retail store, was made with universities instead of skews.

The average fan in any venue saw his schools logos replaced with those of corporations and IMG and others sold a one size fits all approach to corporate advertising right down to the same sets of songs being piped into every baseball venue in the SEC / ACC and Big 12. Gone was the local flavor to be replaced by "sameness" everywhere. They even discouraged old cheers no longer considered to be PC, and I'm not referring to any that pertained to race. I am referring to those corporate sponsors didn't want to have heard at the telecast that sported their advertisements.

What we have replaced uniqueness and local flavor with is the same tepid corporate crap we find everywhere.

But what do the stupid fans do? They blame it on the conferences who were being paid more money to make these moves instead of the hands that dipped into the till to make it happen.

You tell me what is going to happen to a conference that finds itself 27-35 million behind its two strongest neighbors, especially as we move un-mistakenly toward some form of pay for play?

It's what is known as a paradigm shift and the Big 10 and SEC (chosen because they are the two strongest and national branded conferences of the P5 and which both have 5 or more top brands) have been singled out to be on top of the pyramid financially for the purpose of culling the skews. And nothing gets movement like a lot of cash when universities facing a downturn nationally in enrollment are squeamish about drying up Federal and State funding, decreasing enrollment, are watching the downsizing and re-tasking of other smaller state schools, and crave national exposure in an effort to attract students.

I might add that the addition of large state land grant schools and top academic public universities is also part of the exposure plan because they have the largest living alumni bases. This doesn't bode well for most privates, Notre Dame, Stanford, and U.S.C. likely excepted. And it doesn't bode well for a conference which has the highest % of privates of any of the P5.

The point I have been making and will continue to make is that the Big 10 is quietly boosting baseball and softball while the SEC is boosting basketball, not because they need those sports for revenue, but because they need to be competitive in those sports when more key schools are integrated into their structures. And those conferences lagging so very far behind in revenue are where they are because when the skews are thinned the most profitable and nationally known among them will be placed where their branding is more valuable, not to the SEC and Big 10 per se, but to ESPN and FOX or whoever is seeking to hold the rights to conferences with truly national draws.

And Bill those conferences will be paid enough to attract the best coaches, be able to offer legally pay for play to the best athletes, and to be a cheap substitute for the MLB, NFL, and NBA but to what is mostly a large but different audience and even at 75 million per school media rights for say 40 or 48 total schools that's still highly profitable because the overhead is lower than with professional teams, and the allegiances are baked in.

I point out what I do Bill because the issue isn't conference pride. The issue is what is being made of all of our conferences by corporate entities which are involved in a well disguised hostile takeover of what we each love in our own ways about our schools and our native regions.

I'm not sure anyone has any hard and fast final figure of the number of schools to be included. Personally I think 72 makes the most sense for the preservation of wins and losses that most fans are accustomed to seeing. I know people who think it will be fewer than 65. And last year some media pundits were tossing out 36, which I think is absurdly low. I wouldn't be surprised by any set number between 48 and 72.

I picked on the ACC posters today because they are the frog in warm water where the degree of temperature gets turned up annually and they still don't realize they are getting cooked and by whom?

I'm sure North Carolina will keep great hoops, what I'm highly skeptical of is that in 15 years it will be hoops played in the ACC.

Right now if you take the 28 schools of the SEC and Big 10 and you split out the most profitable and recognizable brands of the PAC you would be adding about 8 schools to that number and possibly as few as 4 to 6. In the Big 12 at most 6, but likely 2-4. In the ACC about 8.

The revenue is the carrot to get the mule to move. That's why the two most ready to have a league built around them are paid the most.

Now people can deny it as is their right to do. But everything that has been happening since the Oklahoma/Georgia lawsuit of the early 80's has been building to this. And basketball wrested away from the NCAA is coming. I'm old enough that it might not be in my lifetime if that is sooner than I hope but it is coming.

Pay for play destroys the organizing principle of the NCAA which was amateurism. When that happens the breakaway will occur and with it basketball becomes much more profitable for the schools. An upper tier that offers pay for play will emerge and those who choose to remain simply amateur in status will be those who remain in the NCAA where the organizing principle still works.

Do I love the SEC? Of course. But I loved it best at 10 schools and no disrespect is intended to South Carolina, Arkansas, Texas A&M and Missouri. I loved it best when beating your neighbors was better than a bowl game. I loved it when Pete Maravich was enough basketball for any of us especially when he was playing against John Mengelt.

But look at it now Bill. It's been blended into the Southern Mid Atlantic, Texas, the Ozarks, and the Midwest. And the Big 10 is into the Plains, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland.

If the trajectory of the networks is not evident now, when will it be?

The Big East was cobbled into the ACC so that the networks could distribute all of it as they needed to when the time came. And the money differential is the inescapable evidence. The PAC wasn't under any network control since they owned their own Network. And like the Big 10 Network at its inception it has suffered nothing but carriage issues. That's not an accident. Texas and Oklahoma being bribed away from PAC membership was worth 15 million to ESPN and 7 million to FOX.

Everything is right I front of people to see but they refuse to. But I should have expected this. They refuse to see the big picture politically. But that I'll leave for another board. My point being if they couldn't wake up to see what they were losing control of, enjoyment of, and a natural feeling of love for, when their alma maters became the subject of corporate for profit takeover, I guess they'll never wake up.

I poke the bear to make them think. But inevitably they choose to blame the wrong things as the source of their ire.

The Big East of old is gone. The Texas fiefdom of the SWC is gone. The Big 12 has been picked over like a ripe opossum on a highway full of buzzards but still clings to the pavement, and the PAC has been isolated and left to dry on the Napa vine. Meanwhile the ACC has been spoon fed clam chowder from Boston, and fat markets in New York and Pittsburgh, and given a good footing in Florida. That's enough markets to fatten anyone up, but the money is lean and that's to make the lure of luxury irresistible when the time comes.

That's what is called a paradigm shift. One lawsuit and about a half dozen years before the networks figured out the angles to make it work for them, and voila, a takeover that robbed rivalries, destroyed boundaries, and changed the composition of even the strongest among us. And it still goes on. And the people ignorantly still blame the other conference instead of the hands that crafted it all.

Now smoke that over and then come again.

I'd like to hire you to work for the publication at which I am employed. Your wordsmithing is strong; your ability to cogently express an argument, stellar.

I would attempt to counter your points (and, as always, they are extremely well made) but am suffering some hemorrhoid difficulties and doing battle with you would render me doomed for failure, thus worsening my condition. Plus (and I have to admit), you have rather won me over a bit regarding this topic.

And by the way, JRsec, this is genius:

The Big 12 has been picked over like a ripe opossum on a highway full of buzzards but still clings to the pavement, and the PAC has been isolated and left to dry on the Napa vine.

I would enjoy (hypothetically) seeing you, Quo, GW11, attackcoog, GW11 and some others from this board and whose names escape me in my early-Sunday-morning sluggishness placed in a room for two hours — and have at it.

You are at the age Bill when you should eat more prunes.

After reading this, I chuckled so robustly that I lost my vegan sausage patty and cheap coffee.

Well done, sir.

To borrow the hackneyed expression of Reader's Digest, "Laughter is the Best Medicine." And since none of us are getting out of this alive dark humor is absolutely the best emotional response to the existential reality.

And by the way, avoid the new non meat whopper since ingestion is allegedly boosting estrogen levels.

(02-23-2020 09:06 AM)esayem Wrote:  The thing is, campus is only so big, there is limited space to build fancy things for athletes. What are these SEC schools realistically going to be able to offer with more money? Do you really think the universities are going to support state employees (every school in the SEC sans Vandy) making grossly more than they do now? You better pay close attention to the way politics are drifting.

The SEC region isn’t a hotbed for high school basketball, so what about all the players that want to stay regional?

There are just too many opposing factors that point out the flaws in his argument.

A potential factor to consider is the planned Professional Collegiate League, which intends to set up shop in several Atlantic states and to offer basketball players salaries of approx. $50-150k per season + publicity rights on top of scholarship. That would deprive the ACC of some top regional talent, probably more so than the SEC.

(02-23-2020 11:16 AM)bill dazzle Wrote:  After reading this, I chuckled so robustly that I lost my vegan sausage patty and cheap coffee.

Well done, sir.

I think I just discovered the source of your health problems.

(02-23-2020 01:04 PM)chester Wrote:  

(02-23-2020 09:06 AM)esayem Wrote:  The thing is, campus is only so big, there is limited space to build fancy things for athletes. What are these SEC schools realistically going to be able to offer with more money? Do you really think the universities are going to support state employees (every school in the SEC sans Vandy) making grossly more than they do now? You better pay close attention to the way politics are drifting.

The SEC region isn’t a hotbed for high school basketball, so what about all the players that want to stay regional?

There are just too many opposing factors that point out the flaws in his argument.

A potential factor to consider is the planned Professional Collegiate League, which intends to set up shop in several Atlantic states and to offer basketball players salaries of approx. $50-150k per season + publicity rights on top of scholarship. That would deprive the ACC of some top regional talent, probably more so than the SEC.

I don't know how attractive a minor league will be - the exposure in the NCAA for a year is much greater.

(02-23-2020 01:24 PM)dbackjon Wrote:  

(02-23-2020 01:04 PM)chester Wrote:  

(02-23-2020 09:06 AM)esayem Wrote:  The thing is, campus is only so big, there is limited space to build fancy things for athletes. What are these SEC schools realistically going to be able to offer with more money? Do you really think the universities are going to support state employees (every school in the SEC sans Vandy) making grossly more than they do now? You better pay close attention to the way politics are drifting.

The SEC region isn’t a hotbed for high school basketball, so what about all the players that want to stay regional?

There are just too many opposing factors that point out the flaws in his argument.

A potential factor to consider is the planned Professional Collegiate League, which intends to set up shop in several Atlantic states and to offer basketball players salaries of approx. $50-150k per season + publicity rights on top of scholarship. That would deprive the ACC of some top regional talent, probably more so than the SEC.

I don't know how attractive a minor league will be - the exposure in the NCAA for a year is much greater.

That may be so. Guess it depends on the individual. Personally, I wouldn't go anywhere near forced amateurism if there's another other option in the area. If I have NBA talent, the NBA will find me.

(02-23-2020 01:22 PM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  

(02-23-2020 11:16 AM)bill dazzle Wrote:  After reading this, I chuckled so robustly that I lost my vegan sausage patty and cheap coffee.

Well done, sir.

I think I just discovered the source of your health problems.

I've been a vegetarian since 1989 and feel great overall. But I will admit, I eat some stuff that is horrendous for me.

(02-23-2020 01:02 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(02-23-2020 11:16 AM)bill dazzle Wrote:  

(02-23-2020 10:31 AM)JRsec Wrote:  

(02-23-2020 09:35 AM)bill dazzle Wrote:  

(02-23-2020 01:54 AM)JRsec Wrote:  Athlon was a publication for offering great pictures, and not so accurate pre-season prognostications for the coming year. Also great Honey-Watching shots back in the day. The sports media business, including the newspapers when they were in their prime, and the beat coverage for FOX and ESPN are nothing more than a glorified Athlon prognosticator.

Presidents, Athletic Directors, Recruiters, and Network Executives are the ones that count. That's where the business gets done.

30 million dollars worth of a revenue gap between the 2 P5 conferences that border you and the ACC is going to be something that has never been there before. It took the last ESPN deal for the SEC to pull ahead by 10 million. Until then things were within a few million between all 5 of the power conferences. Things have decidedly changed Bill. The PAC is way behind. U.C.L.A. is running a 32 million dollar red ink athletic department. Their media rights deal is dead last though the ACC's until the ACCN projections was right there with them.

We are moving into an era where there will be a P2 and likely a P sub 2 and where the top brands of the Big 12 will likely ally themselves with one of the P2. The revenue is simply too great.

They can't catch up uniting the P12 with the B12 and the ACC is simply going to be walled off behind Big 10 and SEC. We aren't talking about what was for the last 20 years or 40 years. We are talking about the next 20 years. I think everyone sees the challenges for football moving forward, but those who have it and with more than just 2 schools with national brand power are about to cash in and they are smart enough men and women that they will be intentionally developing the only other collegiate sport that has profit potential, basketball. And if football survives then fantastic, and its shelf life is longer than most think. But when it is relegated to history as has been boxing, polo, and the currently passing automobile racing, they will have made sure that their money has purchased all the advantage they need in whatever sport arises and right now that's basketball, and men's basketball to be specific.

And for your information Bill I have been to or lived in 47 of the 48 contiguous states, 3 provinces in Canada, and have traveled the Middle East and parts of Europe. I live in an SEC university town and I like SEC sports. But when I first took the initials JR for my online moniker there were oodles of them. I added the SEC in lower case letters to set my moniker apart, not to intentionally affiliate it with the conference.

My angle has been what I saw and knew best, the corporate takeover of a sleepy regionalized sport with a large underdeveloped value. I described it as such in 2008 when I first started posting on another site that is now defunct, and continued in the vein when I joined here almost 8 years ago.

The sport has been deliberately discouraged from adding other schools in states by the footprint pay model, then encouraged to get valuations from the network before adding so that the networks could control their market development, and not those of the conferences per se, and now we are entering a content driven market pay model so that the networks can maximize national penetration.

None of this has been about the Big 10, SEC, ACC, PAC, or Big 12. It's been about market extension and depth of content within groupings so that advertising rates regionally and nationally could be maximized without a single conference owning their own region outright (no 2 schools from 1 state). Florida and Texas are divided allegiances now, the attempt was solidly made in 2010-12 to divide North Carolina and Virginia but the SEC wasn't driving it, the networks were looking to enhance the market spread of a popular product under two different brands into shared regions to double dip the broader draw of eyeballs.

You saw it as rivalries died, and product placement, just as in a retail store, was made with universities instead of skews.

The average fan in any venue saw his schools logos replaced with those of corporations and IMG and others sold a one size fits all approach to corporate advertising right down to the same sets of songs being piped into every baseball venue in the SEC / ACC and Big 12. Gone was the local flavor to be replaced by "sameness" everywhere. They even discouraged old cheers no longer considered to be PC, and I'm not referring to any that pertained to race. I am referring to those corporate sponsors didn't want to have heard at the telecast that sported their advertisements.

What we have replaced uniqueness and local flavor with is the same tepid corporate crap we find everywhere.

But what do the stupid fans do? They blame it on the conferences who were being paid more money to make these moves instead of the hands that dipped into the till to make it happen.

You tell me what is going to happen to a conference that finds itself 27-35 million behind its two strongest neighbors, especially as we move un-mistakenly toward some form of pay for play?

It's what is known as a paradigm shift and the Big 10 and SEC (chosen because they are the two strongest and national branded conferences of the P5 and which both have 5 or more top brands) have been singled out to be on top of the pyramid financially for the purpose of culling the skews. And nothing gets movement like a lot of cash when universities facing a downturn nationally in enrollment are squeamish about drying up Federal and State funding, decreasing enrollment, are watching the downsizing and re-tasking of other smaller state schools, and crave national exposure in an effort to attract students.

I might add that the addition of large state land grant schools and top academic public universities is also part of the exposure plan because they have the largest living alumni bases. This doesn't bode well for most privates, Notre Dame, Stanford, and U.S.C. likely excepted. And it doesn't bode well for a conference which has the highest % of privates of any of the P5.

The point I have been making and will continue to make is that the Big 10 is quietly boosting baseball and softball while the SEC is boosting basketball, not because they need those sports for revenue, but because they need to be competitive in those sports when more key schools are integrated into their structures. And those conferences lagging so very far behind in revenue are where they are because when the skews are thinned the most profitable and nationally known among them will be placed where their branding is more valuable, not to the SEC and Big 10 per se, but to ESPN and FOX or whoever is seeking to hold the rights to conferences with truly national draws.

And Bill those conferences will be paid enough to attract the best coaches, be able to offer legally pay for play to the best athletes, and to be a cheap substitute for the MLB, NFL, and NBA but to what is mostly a large but different audience and even at 75 million per school media rights for say 40 or 48 total schools that's still highly profitable because the overhead is lower than with professional teams, and the allegiances are baked in.

I point out what I do Bill because the issue isn't conference pride. The issue is what is being made of all of our conferences by corporate entities which are involved in a well disguised hostile takeover of what we each love in our own ways about our schools and our native regions.

I'm not sure anyone has any hard and fast final figure of the number of schools to be included. Personally I think 72 makes the most sense for the preservation of wins and losses that most fans are accustomed to seeing. I know people who think it will be fewer than 65. And last year some media pundits were tossing out 36, which I think is absurdly low. I wouldn't be surprised by any set number between 48 and 72.

I picked on the ACC posters today because they are the frog in warm water where the degree of temperature gets turned up annually and they still don't realize they are getting cooked and by whom?

I'm sure North Carolina will keep great hoops, what I'm highly skeptical of is that in 15 years it will be hoops played in the ACC.

Right now if you take the 28 schools of the SEC and Big 10 and you split out the most profitable and recognizable brands of the PAC you would be adding about 8 schools to that number and possibly as few as 4 to 6. In the Big 12 at most 6, but likely 2-4. In the ACC about 8.

The revenue is the carrot to get the mule to move. That's why the two most ready to have a league built around them are paid the most.

Now people can deny it as is their right to do. But everything that has been happening since the Oklahoma/Georgia lawsuit of the early 80's has been building to this. And basketball wrested away from the NCAA is coming. I'm old enough that it might not be in my lifetime if that is sooner than I hope but it is coming.

Pay for play destroys the organizing principle of the NCAA which was amateurism. When that happens the breakaway will occur and with it basketball becomes much more profitable for the schools. An upper tier that offers pay for play will emerge and those who choose to remain simply amateur in status will be those who remain in the NCAA where the organizing principle still works.

Do I love the SEC? Of course. But I loved it best at 10 schools and no disrespect is intended to South Carolina, Arkansas, Texas A&M and Missouri. I loved it best when beating your neighbors was better than a bowl game. I loved it when Pete Maravich was enough basketball for any of us especially when he was playing against John Mengelt.

But look at it now Bill. It's been blended into the Southern Mid Atlantic, Texas, the Ozarks, and the Midwest. And the Big 10 is into the Plains, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland.

If the trajectory of the networks is not evident now, when will it be?

The Big East was cobbled into the ACC so that the networks could distribute all of it as they needed to when the time came. And the money differential is the inescapable evidence. The PAC wasn't under any network control since they owned their own Network. And like the Big 10 Network at its inception it has suffered nothing but carriage issues. That's not an accident. Texas and Oklahoma being bribed away from PAC membership was worth 15 million to ESPN and 7 million to FOX.

Everything is right I front of people to see but they refuse to. But I should have expected this. They refuse to see the big picture politically. But that I'll leave for another board. My point being if they couldn't wake up to see what they were losing control of, enjoyment of, and a natural feeling of love for, when their alma maters became the subject of corporate for profit takeover, I guess they'll never wake up.

I poke the bear to make them think. But inevitably they choose to blame the wrong things as the source of their ire.

The Big East of old is gone. The Texas fiefdom of the SWC is gone. The Big 12 has been picked over like a ripe opossum on a highway full of buzzards but still clings to the pavement, and the PAC has been isolated and left to dry on the Napa vine. Meanwhile the ACC has been spoon fed clam chowder from Boston, and fat markets in New York and Pittsburgh, and given a good footing in Florida. That's enough markets to fatten anyone up, but the money is lean and that's to make the lure of luxury irresistible when the time comes.

That's what is called a paradigm shift. One lawsuit and about a half dozen years before the networks figured out the angles to make it work for them, and voila, a takeover that robbed rivalries, destroyed boundaries, and changed the composition of even the strongest among us. And it still goes on. And the people ignorantly still blame the other conference instead of the hands that crafted it all.

Now smoke that over and then come again.

I'd like to hire you to work for the publication at which I am employed. Your wordsmithing is strong; your ability to cogently express an argument, stellar.

I would attempt to counter your points (and, as always, they are extremely well made) but am suffering some hemorrhoid difficulties and doing battle with you would render me doomed for failure, thus worsening my condition. Plus (and I have to admit), you have rather won me over a bit regarding this topic.

And by the way, JRsec, this is genius:

The Big 12 has been picked over like a ripe opossum on a highway full of buzzards but still clings to the pavement, and the PAC has been isolated and left to dry on the Napa vine.

I would enjoy (hypothetically) seeing you, Quo, GW11, attackcoog, GW11 and some others from this board and whose names escape me in my early-Sunday-morning sluggishness placed in a room for two hours — and have at it.

You are at the age Bill when you should eat more prunes.

After reading this, I chuckled so robustly that I lost my vegan sausage patty and cheap coffee.

Well done, sir.

To borrow the hackneyed expression of Reader's Digest, "Laughter is the Best Medicine." And since none of us are getting out of this alive dark humor is absolutely the best emotional response to the existential reality.

And by the way, avoid the new non meat whopper since ingestion is allegedly boosting estrogen levels.

I regale the ladies at the office with limericks and the use of, for example, "dollface" and "toots" — and they love it. It's inappropriate and raw in some respects, but we all chuckle.

Dark humor, indeed.

(02-23-2020 09:06 AM)esayem Wrote:  The thing is, campus is only so big, there is limited space to build fancy things for athletes. What are these SEC schools realistically going to be able to offer with more money? Do you really think the universities are going to support state employees (every school in the SEC sans Vandy) making grossly more than they do now? You better pay close attention to the way politics are drifting.

The SEC region isn’t a hotbed for high school basketball, so what about all the players that want to stay regional?

There are just too many opposing factors that point out the flaws in his argument.

1. The political tide is shifting due to overreach from the administration prior to this one. That trend isn't done.

2. Most SEC campuses besides Vanderbilt have room to grow, or will simply raze outdated buildings to build new ones so space is not the factor it is in Raleigh/Durham.

3. The SEC recruits nationally for basketball and internationally, as do most basketball powers. Revenue is definitely a factor with recruitment.

4. The argument is simple. 30 million more in revenue is going to be very hard to overcome and if we go to any form of pay for play of any kind even harder.

5. Look at the campus enrollment among the P5. Those schools with space to grow are already using that to their distinct advantage. That doesn't mean that schools like UNC are going to lose top students, they are not. But it does mean that the tuition from enlarged undergraduate rosters won't be available to schools that are landlocked like UNC and others to help to create more internal revenue for research or to increase their profile and reach for the media.

The building in Auburn, Tuscaloosa and other such University towns is immense. A&M has been growing by leaps. And this is happening in many locations not related to the SEC. It's the first steps in the coming downsizing of higher ed. Top schools will grow and grow at the expense of smaller state schools. UNC is certainly safe, but again it will be somewhat limited to keep pace in what will be the tuition revenue stream with schools free to grow to enrollments of 60 and 70 thousand, or more. Interesting times ahead.

I guess most people are not getting what JRSec is saying.

Yes, the ACC is synonymous with college basketball. Duke and North Carolina are a duo no other P5 + Big East have. However, when you see the likes of Penn State (currently #9) and Auburn in the top 10 is a sign of things to come. Penn State is a football school and a men’s hockey school second but make no mistake, they’re taking men’s basketball seriously now especially since winning the NIT title in 2018. This year is not going to be a fluke. That extra money the B1G and SEC are getting is now going to hire higher paid assistants so the gap will not just be in football but in basketball as well. Duke and North Carolina will always have the prestige but as we’ve seen with UCLA and Indiana, blue bloods can go through bad stretches.

ACC fans better pray the ACCN starts delivering and fast. Otherwise, schools with real options will start getting anxious and it’ll take one or two schools to challenge the GOR.

The best move the ACC and the rest of the P3 could make, IMO, is to try to cut the P2 off at their football knees in order to seize control of basketball, which will outlive tackle football.

Just find investors interested in a for-profit NFL lite -- perhaps NFL owners themselves -- that pays the players. Drop gridiron altogether, leasing your names, logos and football facilities to them. That's several good football brands in fair climes: FSU, Clemson, Miami, Texas, Oklahoma, USC...

Now, whether or not Title IX requires schools to pay employees equally (it doesn't), in order for the P2 to have any hope of competing against this NFL lite, they would have to pay their own players, and that would cut into revenue. They could divest themselves of football as well but if the NFL brand is attached to the others, their own investors would be doomed to second fiddle.

Meanwhile, the P3 wouldn't need to pay football players anything at all since they wouldn't have any football players to begin with. They could use their resources to dominate the basketball scene. Syracuse, Louisville, Carolina, Duke, Kansas, Arizona & UCLA vs what? -- Kentucky, Indiana, Maryland and Michigan State? Yeah, no.

(02-23-2020 06:15 PM)chester Wrote:  The best move the ACC and the rest of the P3 could make, IMO, is to try to cut the P2 off at their football knees in order to seize control of basketball, which will outlive tackle football.

Just find investors interested in a for-profit NFL lite -- perhaps NFL owners themselves -- that pays the players. Drop gridiron altogether, leasing your names, logos and football facilities to them. That's several good football brands in fair climes: FSU, Clemson, Miami, Texas, Oklahoma, USC...

Now, whether or not Title IX requires schools to pay employees equally (it doesn't), in order for the P2 to have any hope of competing against this NFL lite, they would have to pay their own players, and that would cut into revenue. They could divest themselves of football as well but if the NFL brand is attached to the others, their own investors would be doomed to second fiddle.

Meanwhile, the P3 wouldn't need to pay football players anything at all since they wouldn't have any football players to begin with. They could use their resources to dominate the basketball scene. Syracuse, Louisville, Carolina, Duke, Kansas, Arizona & UCLA vs what? -- Kentucky, Indiana, Maryland and Michigan State? Yeah, no.

If that were working, the Big East would be dominating men's basketball by now. Also, how much do you think Duke's really investing in football right now? I'm pretty sure Krzyzewski gets paid more than Duke's football coach and the only reason I know who he is is because he has connections to Peyton Manning.