(07-17-2020 08:43 AM)quo vadis Wrote: (07-16-2020 10:20 PM)Wedge Wrote: (07-16-2020 08:46 PM)SkullyMaroo Wrote: Pay the G5 the same TV money the P5 “floor” gets and I can’t help but think their subsidies would go way down. The networks and massive TV contracts completely changed college football, and a lot of schools are trying their hardest to keep up.
No, TV contracts did not change everything.
There has always been a huge variance in revenue in college football, going back to before any of us were born. Do you think Ohio State and Ohio had the same-sized football budget in 1968? Of course not.
Eh, IMO you and JR are both correct and incorrect. On one hand, anyone who thinks that before big TV deals - which really only started about 10 years ago - created the modern disparities in revenue and budgets is living in a fantasy land. As you say Ohio State and Alabama have always had far more revenue and budgets than South Alabama and Akron. So the relative disparities have been around for many decades.
But on the other hand, TV money has driven a *major* increase in spending, and to spend, you need real dollars, not percentages. We know this because as recently as 25 years ago, a Power conference school like Baylor had a $7 million athletic budget. That was their entire budget. That same year, 1995, Florida, surely as top-shelf a program as existed anywhere, had a $15 million athletic budget. That was the entire budget at the height of Steve Spurrier era.
Even adjusting for inflation, that Florida budget translates in to about $25m today. Last year, Florida's budget was $160 million.
So the big infusion of money has had a major impact.
Of course, Florida doesn't get $135m a year from the SEC, so most of that money is self-generated. During the same time there was also a revolution in generating local money, such as new and hugely increased fees for parking, personal seat licences, luxury suites and generally being more aggressive about tapping donors for money. Major programs found "shale oil" and the ability to frack it, allowing them to tap into big reservoirs of money from supporters.
Moral: If you want Florida-sized budgets, build your fan base.
1. I never said there were no disparities before the big contract money.
The assumption by the poster I was responding to was that media money would make things equal. It does not and has not.
2. In 1992 about 3 million is all that separated any of the major conferences in TV revenue and the total spread from top to bottom of what we call the P5 today was maybe 6 million.
3. TV media differentials are now large by comparison with 16 million separating the SEC from the ACC and PAC and 26 million separating the Big 10 from the same. By 2024 that gap increases by nearly 20 million for the SEC and another 10 to 15 million for the Big 10 effectively doubling the outputs of the ACC and PAC respectively.
4. The money differential is the manipulative tool of the Networks to get the product placement they want via realignment as it can occur within the stated norms of the conferences, e.g. AAU status and contiguous for the Big 10, etc. If you make some wealthy and others not you control the leverage necessary to move the product around (realignment). And realignment is not finished. We are gong to now move into a period of brand consolidation.
5. What most posters here do is what most Americans do, they blame the wrong people for the things that upset them. The Big 10 and SEC have merely benefitted from their cohesion and existing brand strength. In other words the were easier to build around successfully. But each merely does what they are told will generate them more revenue because the success of conference athletics is now measured more in revenue generation than in championships, and that's not to say championships aren't important, but revenue is seen as both the result of championships and the generator of advantages moving forward so it has become the focus of Conferences. Once that becomes the focus then many things can be justified as expenditures.
So Quo I resent your changing of what I said to make a trollish comment when I never stated things were equitable before TV contracts. The same brands have driven the market for nearly a century and some over that, with some having decades of success and others only a decade of success.
But clearly media money is the current driving force, equaling in many cases the donations and attendance revenue and surpassing it in more than a few cases. The disparity in payouts can be rationalized as long as what drives the payouts can be justified. And as long as all program's boats were floated a little bit higher, and some floated a lot higher, nobody complained about the changes that were afoot. But now that we would need a lock system to place everyone at the same sea level people are finally waking up to what has happened. A tier system has been created and relocation for market and viewership numbers has been implemented to benefit the networks through advertising rates.
So just as I told you 8 years ago when you laughed, a hostile takeover of a disorganized but beloved American pass time has happened. Popular product is being placed together more and more often to maximize and generate interest, and control has been wrested away from the conferences by the power of the purse. Exacerbating the matter has been the tightening of governmental support at the state and Federal levels and this only fuels the mindset that the TV money is needed.
And the NCAA's reaction to this has been to increase the number of Division I schools which only drives the feeling among presidents and commissioners that they need to stratify further. So instead of spreading wealth they are driving a mindset that schools in certain natural echelons need to protect their interests and those interests are no longer scheduling and officiating and rules enforcement for recruiting, or getting along and participating with smaller regional schools, but revenue production.
So the shrinking governmental support, the self serving push of the NCAA to expand the upper division, and the media revenue available have co mingled to create an environment that encourages the protection of interests, focused the interest upon revenue, and has given the networks the mindset, power, and tools they need to streamline their product in such a way as to maximize interest in it through the tube, and incentivize them further to consolidate it for the sake of cutting overhead (paychecks to teams with poorer ratings) and maximizing advertising revenues which are pegged to more precise ways of measuring them than ever before due to technological advances.
The public response is to blame conferences instead of corporate for profit networks. The response of the conferences is to blame the NCAA for impinging their ability to maximize revenues. And the networks encourage the blame being placed on the wrong parties so they can continue to exploit the situation without negative effect.
To be sure there was never a level playing field. But when 20 million might have been the top athletic budget for a university things were a lot closer when the gap was zero budget to 20 million than when it is 220 million to 20 million. And the majority of that has happened since 1983, and exponentially since 1992.