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Will Vanderbilt and/or others de-emphasize athletics in the 21st Century?
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JRsec Offline
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Post: #41
RE: Will Vanderbilt and/or others de-emphasize athletics in the 21st Century?
(10-13-2020 10:38 AM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  
(10-12-2020 09:25 PM)BearcatJerry Wrote:  
(10-12-2020 08:54 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  If Vanderbilt won’t voluntarily take themselves out of big time athletics would the rest of the membership dare to take them out against their will?

You are such a yankee.

Seriously. A yankee asks the question "Would the conference kick out a member in good standing?" Maybe the Big 10 would do that to Northwestern, but the SEC won't do it to Vanderbilt or any other member.

If Tulane hadn't left of their own accord, they would be in the SEC today. That's not saying the SEC would re-add them today, but the SEC would not have "kicked them out."

The only way Vanderbilt is not a member of the SEC is if they choose not to be. Or if they rest of the Conference fell apart around them.

I merely raised the question for discussion. That’s a lot different than spouting off some half cocked conclusion without any facts to back it up.

Read some of JR’s analysis—he’s a pretty credible source on the goings on in the SEC. Vandy’s facilities have fallen below SEC standards and they don’t sponsor some required sports. They aren’t competitive in the revenue sports and they aren’t investing in them. They aren’t 100% in good standing.

If you read the OP, the premise of the thread was to consider if a school like Vanderbilt would make the same type of move that Tulane did several decades ago where they looked at their lack of competitiveness in athletics and the varying academic missions of their institution and their that of their conference mates and decided to quit the arms race.

Personally, I think programs like Vanderbilt would be better served by forming an FCS level conference that functions like a southern Ivy League—the institutional profiles and level of competition would be much closer.

I don’t see where throwing words around like Yankee as insults does anything to benefit the conversation or how it’s even applicable. If you go around insulting people you disagree with you lose credibility as a poster.

That's accurate except for one detail. When Tulane left in the mid 60's they were doing very well athletically and felt they could make more money as an independent. When Suwanee left it was because they could no longer keep up. Georgia Tech used the excuse that they could make more as an independent but it was mostly because Dodd wanted academic standards to remain in place and Bryant wanted them lowered and Dodd wanted strict scholarship limits and Bryant wanted them raised. An on field incident however triggered Dodd's decision to leave. In a game with Alabama a second string defender deliberately (as Dodd thought and he was likely correct) essentially targeted and injured the Tech QB (though it was called roughness and not targeting in the day). That was the final straw.
10-13-2020 10:54 AM
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Captain Bearcat Offline
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Post: #42
RE: Will Vanderbilt and/or others de-emphasize athletics in the 21st Century?
(10-13-2020 05:56 AM)DawgNBama Wrote:  
(10-13-2020 05:47 AM)schmolik Wrote:  
(10-12-2020 10:30 PM)JRsec Wrote:  
(10-12-2020 10:06 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  
(10-12-2020 09:44 PM)JRsec Wrote:  The proof is gong to be in pudding Frank. Academics and Athletics are going to become two separate endeavors when pay for play hits. It's one thing if Vanderbilt or Northwestern want to stay, it's another as to whether they pay their way into whatever new associations are formed. Dead weight won't have to be kept in order just to keep an academic alliance. And the Big 10 (the only Ivy like Academic/Athletic conference among the P5) is going to have the most trouble in the new world. You have a TV contract world in which content will be everything that drives new contract values. They aren't pining for Vandy vs Georgia and NW vs Wisconsin.

When this happens we are going to have another realignment that is going to make that which has occurred heretofore look tame. So Vandy and NW may want to stay part of the club but there is no guarantee the old clubs will still be viable.

It's going to be more revolutionary than OU/UGa vs the NCAA.

We’ll just need to agree to disagree on this point. Schools are going to be dragged into the pay for play world kicking and screaming, but at the end of the day, they’ll pay up no matter what their academic standing might be.

This is a football-focused board, but endorsement income is more likely to have a bigger impact in basketball (as they don’t even try to hide that recruiting *today* is tied to the shoe companies). Duke is the highest ranked Power Five school in the US News rankings after Stanford... yet they’re getting top one-and-done basketball stars better than Kentucky and Kansas. Do we really think that Duke is giving that up? Do we really think that Duke boosters haven’t engaged in recruiting tactics that would make the fiercest Alabama football boosters blush?

Once again - this is about going after elite students and families that are willing to pay $80,000 per year out-of-pocket for college to go to the Ivy League. Power Five membership is a HUGE selling point for the handful of the elite schools that have it. I’ve seen it firsthand with with Northwestern competing with the University of Chicago. It’s what Vandy, Duke and Wake Forest use in competing against Emory. It’s what Stanford uses against Harvard, Yale and Princeton. How they perform against Alabama and Ohio State is almost irrelevant - they’re playing an entirely different game in terms of wanting to get the best talent in their student bodies overall and big-time sports are a huge differentiator there.

We don't have to agree to disagree Frank. I agree under the current model every effort will be made by these schools to remain. I'm suggesting that a different organizational paradigm will arise out of this and the old P5 as we knew it will be dramatically changed and with it we will see of necessity a separation of academic conferences (consortia) into a dichotomy of academic only consortia not bound by athletic competition and Athletic consortia not bound to academic associations but organized around competitive and financial principles which will radically change the world of conferences we see now, at least at the upper level. I think this will alter basketball conferences as well.

Why?

There is too much money to be made by a change in associations to match commitment to sport and the networks will more than willingly fund it. And I also believe that venerated associations in academia will survive and thrive by separating from the sports component of campus life. It will be a big adjustment for the Big 10 but a Big 10 academic consortium might well include a Texas, Texas A&M, Florida, North Carolina, Duke, Virginia, or Vanderbilt without having any impact on athletic association.

In other words I think the trend initiated by pay for play and by networks seeking the highest possible ratings will lead to a revolution that should have occurred 80 years ago. Universities should be freed to pursue their best possible exposure and financial reward in sports and also to pursue their best possible academic alliances for the sake of research and scientific discovery. It's really rather asinine and counter productive to continue simply because this is the way we've always done it since the early 1800's.

So I don't disagree with your assertion of what Duke, Northwestern, and Vandy will want to do, I just foresee a total reorganization of schools competing athletically with athletic peers, and researching academically with academic peers where such relationships no longer remain mutually inclusive to the detriment of both.

As long as the major decisions of university athletic conference membership are determined by university presidents and not athletic directors, academics will always matter.

And even if we made it entirely based on athletics or financial, I'm not buying it would include the entire SEC minus Vanderbilt either. You think every public SEC member is an "athletic peer" with Alabama and Auburn? You think Vandy is the only athletic dead weight in the conference? If I'm ESPN and I can choose only which schools I'd want to pay for, I'd dump more than Vanderbilt from the SEC. There might even be a list of only about 30 FBS schools worth paying big bucks for in college football (and my Illini definitely wouldn't be on the list). You could add a few more like Duke, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Kansas for men's basketball (maybe then Illinois would make the list in a few years). But we're not just going to give everyone in the SEC a free pass to the party and say they're better than everyone else. In no planet are Mississippi and Mississippi State going to be better than Ohio State or Clemson.
Schmolik, the reason why ESPN is holding back, IMO, is that new media order (FAANG) really wants this badly too. However, ESPN can hold off the new media order by dangling the carrot of being able to keep a lot of old rivals together, something that the new media order is NOT big on, IMO.


Put another way: would you prefer JR Ewing from Dallas or Governor Gavin Newsome??
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Or, ESPN thinks that it's more valuable to have a 65 team P5 than a 30-40 team breakaway. Why would they purposefully devalue 25 of their properties?

All a breakaway would do is make college sports less popular. An Indiana fan won't suddenly become an Ohio State fan if a breakaway happens. They'll just stop caring.


The other thing is: the "deadweight" isn't really that dead. The Big 10 and SEC are making about $45 million per school. ACC, PAC, and Big 12 are 25-30 million. The American is making about $8 million. So the bottom P5 / top G5 schools are probably worth about $15 million.

Do the math: if you take out the bottom 4 SEC schools ($60 million, minimum), you bump the payment up from $44 million to $55 million. That's a lot, but it's not world-breaking.

And you'd lose a lot. You're losing more than just 100 year old rivalries and academic associations. You're losing exposure to potential students. You're increasing travel budgets as you cut out the heart of the conference. And does Tennessee really want an extra 2-3 losses a year when they have to play Auburn & LSU instead of Vanderbilt & Ole Miss? How will the additional losses affect ticket sales?

The Big Ten has even more to lose, because all of the worst programs still bring value to the conference. Who do you kick out? Northwestern, Illinois, Indiana, and Rutgers? That loses most of your local exposure in Chicago and New York media, and your biggest basketball fanbase. Ohio State doesn't want that.
10-13-2020 11:29 AM
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quo vadis Offline
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Post: #43
RE: Will Vanderbilt and/or others de-emphasize athletics in the 21st Century?
(10-13-2020 11:29 AM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  The other thing is: the "deadweight" isn't really that dead. The Big 10 and SEC are making about $45 million per school.

Yes, the "deadweight" concept is one proposed by fans of G5 schools who want their schools to be elevated to P5, like my USF.

Within the conferences, that concept rarely exists. E.g. to many outsiders, schools like Ole Miss and Mississippi State are "dead weight". Nobody in the SEC thinks that way, all of their peers value their longstanding rivalries and associations.
10-13-2020 11:52 AM
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Post: #44
RE: Will Vanderbilt and/or others de-emphasize athletics in the 21st Century?
(10-13-2020 10:34 AM)esayem Wrote:  
(10-13-2020 09:03 AM)bill dazzle Wrote:  As a Vanderbilt fan of more than 50 years (and perhaps the only one on this board), I contend the university's athletics program might be significantly more unlike those of the other private schools in P5 programs. There are many reasons for this. I need to go to the office but might post them later....in limerick form

This. Or you're banned.


Ah, a limerick request. I shall respond in due measure.
10-13-2020 11:55 AM
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bill dazzle Offline
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Post: #45
RE: Will Vanderbilt and/or others de-emphasize athletics in the 21st Century?
(10-13-2020 09:55 AM)JRsec Wrote:  
(10-13-2020 09:20 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(10-12-2020 09:43 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  Also, from the first day that I wrote about conference realignment over a decade ago, I emphasized how much conferences want elite academic institutions. The Big Ten LOVES Northwestern. It’s an elite school located directly in the most important TV market in the league (Chicago). Vandy provides a similar value proposition for the SEC with an elite school located in a major market near the center of the conference (Nashville).

Yes, nobody within the SEC has any problem with Vanderbilt's membership, everyone recognizes the role they play in the conference and its a valuable one, always has been. So why on earth would Vanderbilt give up membership in a P5 conference that pays them $50 million a year and a ton of exposure for no reason at all?

It's only commentators from outside, usually from schools that are not in the P5 and envy Vanderbilt's membership, that raise this issue.

Yeah that's right Quo. But there are also people outside of the SEC who don't understand that Vanderbilt has gotten more recalcitrant on being a supporting member. The don't upgrade facilities to SEC standards and they are stated standards. They don't offer the requisite number of sports refusing women's softball, and they don't try to be competitive in football, or basketball, anymore. And now they have failed in the conferences COVID protocols. But we have people outside the conference who don't know a damn thing about these matters either chiming in with complete ignorance of the issues.

Nobody in the SEC is asking for Vanderbilt's removal, but they are all well aware that poorer schools are doing more to belong. Vanderbilt has some decisions to make and right now they are refusing to commit to the minimum standards set. And it's time academics faced the music. The product most produce outside of STEM fields is poorer than ever. Academic associations are already extant from athletic conferences, and pretending that Vanderbilt does anything for the SEC other than give us a top 20 to 30 rated research school in our membership (depending on the rating service) doesn't put another dime in any of the other 13 schools pockets. It might well be argued that Florida and Texas A&M are much more diverse as leaders in research and have more to share. But Vanderbilt does prove one point in spades. Academic associations and Athletic associations are already diverging subsets and will only continue to do so. Business, culture, and necessity are driving what will become a much more widely accepted and successful dichotomy of academics and athletics and in that world the Vanderbilt's of the world will be able to excel the one while committing to the other at levels comfortable for them to do so.

When sports revenue was counted in the seven digit range justifying Vanderbilt for academic reasons was wholly agreeable. Now that sports revenue is in the 9 digit range the cost / benefit analysis may indicate otherwise. No doubt Vanderbilt enjoys P5 exposure in the SEC. So don't you think Women's softball, improved facilities at venues (not even asking for new venues), and a commitment to COVID protection protocols and to competitiveness is a small price to pay for that P5 exposure?

Northwestern stepped it up with facilities. Duke did the same. Why not Vandy?

I keep asking the same things, JRsec. Your questions are valid. On this note, I was not pleased with the hiring of Candice Storey Lee as our AD.

The situation is, in some respects, a mess.
10-13-2020 11:57 AM
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JRsec Offline
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Post: #46
RE: Will Vanderbilt and/or others de-emphasize athletics in the 21st Century?
(10-13-2020 11:29 AM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  
(10-13-2020 05:56 AM)DawgNBama Wrote:  
(10-13-2020 05:47 AM)schmolik Wrote:  
(10-12-2020 10:30 PM)JRsec Wrote:  
(10-12-2020 10:06 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  We’ll just need to agree to disagree on this point. Schools are going to be dragged into the pay for play world kicking and screaming, but at the end of the day, they’ll pay up no matter what their academic standing might be.

This is a football-focused board, but endorsement income is more likely to have a bigger impact in basketball (as they don’t even try to hide that recruiting *today* is tied to the shoe companies). Duke is the highest ranked Power Five school in the US News rankings after Stanford... yet they’re getting top one-and-done basketball stars better than Kentucky and Kansas. Do we really think that Duke is giving that up? Do we really think that Duke boosters haven’t engaged in recruiting tactics that would make the fiercest Alabama football boosters blush?

Once again - this is about going after elite students and families that are willing to pay $80,000 per year out-of-pocket for college to go to the Ivy League. Power Five membership is a HUGE selling point for the handful of the elite schools that have it. I’ve seen it firsthand with with Northwestern competing with the University of Chicago. It’s what Vandy, Duke and Wake Forest use in competing against Emory. It’s what Stanford uses against Harvard, Yale and Princeton. How they perform against Alabama and Ohio State is almost irrelevant - they’re playing an entirely different game in terms of wanting to get the best talent in their student bodies overall and big-time sports are a huge differentiator there.

We don't have to agree to disagree Frank. I agree under the current model every effort will be made by these schools to remain. I'm suggesting that a different organizational paradigm will arise out of this and the old P5 as we knew it will be dramatically changed and with it we will see of necessity a separation of academic conferences (consortia) into a dichotomy of academic only consortia not bound by athletic competition and Athletic consortia not bound to academic associations but organized around competitive and financial principles which will radically change the world of conferences we see now, at least at the upper level. I think this will alter basketball conferences as well.

Why?

There is too much money to be made by a change in associations to match commitment to sport and the networks will more than willingly fund it. And I also believe that venerated associations in academia will survive and thrive by separating from the sports component of campus life. It will be a big adjustment for the Big 10 but a Big 10 academic consortium might well include a Texas, Texas A&M, Florida, North Carolina, Duke, Virginia, or Vanderbilt without having any impact on athletic association.

In other words I think the trend initiated by pay for play and by networks seeking the highest possible ratings will lead to a revolution that should have occurred 80 years ago. Universities should be freed to pursue their best possible exposure and financial reward in sports and also to pursue their best possible academic alliances for the sake of research and scientific discovery. It's really rather asinine and counter productive to continue simply because this is the way we've always done it since the early 1800's.

So I don't disagree with your assertion of what Duke, Northwestern, and Vandy will want to do, I just foresee a total reorganization of schools competing athletically with athletic peers, and researching academically with academic peers where such relationships no longer remain mutually inclusive to the detriment of both.

As long as the major decisions of university athletic conference membership are determined by university presidents and not athletic directors, academics will always matter.

And even if we made it entirely based on athletics or financial, I'm not buying it would include the entire SEC minus Vanderbilt either. You think every public SEC member is an "athletic peer" with Alabama and Auburn? You think Vandy is the only athletic dead weight in the conference? If I'm ESPN and I can choose only which schools I'd want to pay for, I'd dump more than Vanderbilt from the SEC. There might even be a list of only about 30 FBS schools worth paying big bucks for in college football (and my Illini definitely wouldn't be on the list). You could add a few more like Duke, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Kansas for men's basketball (maybe then Illinois would make the list in a few years). But we're not just going to give everyone in the SEC a free pass to the party and say they're better than everyone else. In no planet are Mississippi and Mississippi State going to be better than Ohio State or Clemson.
Schmolik, the reason why ESPN is holding back, IMO, is that new media order (FAANG) really wants this badly too. However, ESPN can hold off the new media order by dangling the carrot of being able to keep a lot of old rivals together, something that the new media order is NOT big on, IMO.


Put another way: would you prefer JR Ewing from Dallas or Governor Gavin Newsome??
Sent from my moto g(7) power using Tapatalk

Or, ESPN thinks that it's more valuable to have a 65 team P5 than a 30-40 team breakaway. Why would they purposefully devalue 25 of their properties?

All a breakaway would do is make college sports less popular. An Indiana fan won't suddenly become an Ohio State fan if a breakaway happens. They'll just stop caring.


The other thing is: the "deadweight" isn't really that dead. The Big 10 and SEC are making about $45 million per school. ACC, PAC, and Big 12 are 25-30 million. The American is making about $8 million. So the bottom P5 / top G5 schools are probably worth about $15 million.

Do the math: if you take out the bottom 4 SEC schools ($60 million, minimum), you bump the payment up from $44 million to $55 million. That's a lot, but it's not world-breaking.

And you'd lose a lot. You're losing more than just 100 year old rivalries and academic associations. You're losing exposure to potential students. You're increasing travel budgets as you cut out the heart of the conference. And does Tennessee really want an extra 2-3 losses a year when they have to play Auburn & LSU instead of Vanderbilt & Ole Miss? How will the additional losses affect ticket sales?

The Big Ten has even more to lose, because all of the worst programs still bring value to the conference. Who do you kick out? Northwestern, Illinois, Indiana, and Rutgers? That loses most of your local exposure in Chicago and New York media, and your biggest basketball fanbase. Ohio State doesn't want that.

You should do your homework on this first. Enter Sandman has a thread pinned in the important threads at the top of the page that would help you.

And you should try reading the premise of the different posters before wading in.

For starters the Big 10 earned 55 million plus per school last year and the SEC 45 million plus. The SEC schools will start at 68 plus by 2024 under the new contract. There is more at stake sure. For now that doesn't detract from your statement. But the premise of some positions is that pay for play will change that landscape. Content based payouts instead of market based payouts is already changing it because streaming gives companies the ability to actually pay per viewer. New technology outstripped the market math of the old subscription fee model just a couple of years after the 2012 realignment.

The money now is driven by games that on a major carrier deliver a large national audience (think 12 to 14 million) over regional audiences of much less.

ESPN has already locked up the ACC and SEC through the mid 2030's for all 3 tiers of sports rights. They are likely to bid on the Big 12 for the same reason, or perhaps engineer a placement of the most valuable parts of the Big 12 within their other holdings. Even if the so called FAANG companies do get involved, and so far they've very publicly demurred, they won't be able to land the schools in the hottest viewing regions unless they go all out for the Big 10 and FOX just chooses to bow out, and I don't see that coming either.

So that gets us to why pay for play is going to change things. For one it directly challenges the Big 10's amateur more Ivy like approach. It is why a split between football first schools in the Big 10 could happen if their operating model isn't changed.

For privates it will come down to funding since state appropriations won't be helping them out as they will for larger state schools. Mid sized to smaller state schools could however run into budgetary constraints. That doesn't mean they will just that states with budgetary issues may see the need to fund Big State U who generates 150 million in revenue and not have the same exuberance over doing it where the return on investment is much less. Even for well funded privates it will present some challenges, especially if Title IX ratios aren't adjusted and some sports remain strictly amateur and others are treated semi professionally.

Then there is the network angle. ESPN doesn't have to cull anyone. All they have to do is keep getting those rights signed up. When change hits and some opt out the programs will cull themselves and as they do that gives ESPN an opportunity to do two things.

1. They get to renegotiate the contracts of the conferences which have had schools bow out of the pay for play, and in spite of insistence this won't happen which prima facia sounds logical, it will happen because not all institutions or states are gong to be prepared to handle it. Let's say that the ACC loses 2, the SEC 1, the PAC 2, and the Big 12 and Big 10 none. Now we are down to 60 schools so inventory for games has dropped.

2. So to keep the payouts up conferences are going to need to add schools to increase inventory and if those schools are brand name schools it will enhance content value as well. So in all likelihood ESPN gets to do a little consolidation for their own benefit. Or, perhaps the remaining schools see the vulnerable position they are in and decide with the defections from their ranks to collectivize for the sake of leverage. Either way composition changes and the opportunity for more brand on brand games for national ad revenue at its highest rate goes up.

My point is change is coming, it will be radical, and the network can play it either way and make more. What's more is the change will be external to the networks getting them off the hook for public displeasure. People will not like it initially because people are resistant to all change, but week after week of boring reruns and they'll be back for sports.

What's unclear to me is whether attendance at games will ever get back to a fever pitch with people donating significant sums just to be able to purchase tickets. HD TV, the breaking of routine with COVID, and the societal junk will all take a toll on the actual enthusiasm to attend, but the boredom of routine will bring seasonal sports back into view soon enough.

So as I see it the networks don't have to do anything but sign up the rights. The rest of it will play out leaving the networks better options and opportunities to naturally rearrange things to benefit themselves.

Meanwhile the P5 will be caught off guard like academics always are because they are naturally a backwards looking group. They are steeped in tradition and very reticent to change. But once academic endeavor is completely separated from athletic endeavor a beneficial revolution will occur permitting both to seek associations independently of one another and for the betterment of both and it is in that world that some on the athletic side will be left behind and some who have held aspirations on the academic side, but not inclusion in groups like AAU, will as well.

Think of it this way. Your school will be in a athletic conference and an academic conference and the two won't necessarily be the same conference. Therefore with their academic alliance secure schools like Ohio State, U.S.C., Washington, North Carolina, etc will be free to align themselves wherever it best suits their athletic needs. Geography could become a bigger factor, but level of competition, and ability to draw a national audience certainly will play a part with regard to with whom it is you play sports.
10-13-2020 12:10 PM
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Nerdlinger Offline
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Post: #47
RE: Will Vanderbilt and/or others de-emphasize athletics in the 21st Century?
"Yankee" is still considered an insult from Southerners to Northerners? I'm a Northerner and don't find the term offensive at all. If anything, it's something to take pride in.

As long as we're using 19th century lingo, I think Muskie in turn should refer to Bearcat as "Johnny Reb". Although Ohio and Illinois are not part of the South, so anyone living in either of those states is a "Yankee" too. 07-coffee3
10-13-2020 12:29 PM
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Post: #48
RE: Will Vanderbilt and/or others de-emphasize athletics in the 21st Century?
(10-13-2020 11:57 AM)bill dazzle Wrote:  
(10-13-2020 09:55 AM)JRsec Wrote:  
(10-13-2020 09:20 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(10-12-2020 09:43 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  Also, from the first day that I wrote about conference realignment over a decade ago, I emphasized how much conferences want elite academic institutions. The Big Ten LOVES Northwestern. It’s an elite school located directly in the most important TV market in the league (Chicago). Vandy provides a similar value proposition for the SEC with an elite school located in a major market near the center of the conference (Nashville).

Yes, nobody within the SEC has any problem with Vanderbilt's membership, everyone recognizes the role they play in the conference and its a valuable one, always has been. So why on earth would Vanderbilt give up membership in a P5 conference that pays them $50 million a year and a ton of exposure for no reason at all?

It's only commentators from outside, usually from schools that are not in the P5 and envy Vanderbilt's membership, that raise this issue.

Yeah that's right Quo. But there are also people outside of the SEC who don't understand that Vanderbilt has gotten more recalcitrant on being a supporting member. The don't upgrade facilities to SEC standards and they are stated standards. They don't offer the requisite number of sports refusing women's softball, and they don't try to be competitive in football, or basketball, anymore. And now they have failed in the conferences COVID protocols. But we have people outside the conference who don't know a damn thing about these matters either chiming in with complete ignorance of the issues.

Nobody in the SEC is asking for Vanderbilt's removal, but they are all well aware that poorer schools are doing more to belong. Vanderbilt has some decisions to make and right now they are refusing to commit to the minimum standards set. And it's time academics faced the music. The product most produce outside of STEM fields is poorer than ever. Academic associations are already extant from athletic conferences, and pretending that Vanderbilt does anything for the SEC other than give us a top 20 to 30 rated research school in our membership (depending on the rating service) doesn't put another dime in any of the other 13 schools pockets. It might well be argued that Florida and Texas A&M are much more diverse as leaders in research and have more to share. But Vanderbilt does prove one point in spades. Academic associations and Athletic associations are already diverging subsets and will only continue to do so. Business, culture, and necessity are driving what will become a much more widely accepted and successful dichotomy of academics and athletics and in that world the Vanderbilt's of the world will be able to excel the one while committing to the other at levels comfortable for them to do so.

When sports revenue was counted in the seven digit range justifying Vanderbilt for academic reasons was wholly agreeable. Now that sports revenue is in the 9 digit range the cost / benefit analysis may indicate otherwise. No doubt Vanderbilt enjoys P5 exposure in the SEC. So don't you think Women's softball, improved facilities at venues (not even asking for new venues), and a commitment to COVID protection protocols and to competitiveness is a small price to pay for that P5 exposure?

Northwestern stepped it up with facilities. Duke did the same. Why not Vandy?

I keep asking the same things, JRsec. Your questions are valid. On this note, I was not pleased with the hiring of Candice Storey Lee as our AD.

The situation is, in some respects, a mess.

Still a step up from Toad Turner
10-13-2020 12:45 PM
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Captain Bearcat Offline
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Post: #49
RE: Will Vanderbilt and/or others de-emphasize athletics in the 21st Century?
(10-13-2020 12:10 PM)JRsec Wrote:  
(10-13-2020 11:29 AM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  
(10-13-2020 05:56 AM)DawgNBama Wrote:  
(10-13-2020 05:47 AM)schmolik Wrote:  
(10-12-2020 10:30 PM)JRsec Wrote:  We don't have to agree to disagree Frank. I agree under the current model every effort will be made by these schools to remain. I'm suggesting that a different organizational paradigm will arise out of this and the old P5 as we knew it will be dramatically changed and with it we will see of necessity a separation of academic conferences (consortia) into a dichotomy of academic only consortia not bound by athletic competition and Athletic consortia not bound to academic associations but organized around competitive and financial principles which will radically change the world of conferences we see now, at least at the upper level. I think this will alter basketball conferences as well.

Why?

There is too much money to be made by a change in associations to match commitment to sport and the networks will more than willingly fund it. And I also believe that venerated associations in academia will survive and thrive by separating from the sports component of campus life. It will be a big adjustment for the Big 10 but a Big 10 academic consortium might well include a Texas, Texas A&M, Florida, North Carolina, Duke, Virginia, or Vanderbilt without having any impact on athletic association.

In other words I think the trend initiated by pay for play and by networks seeking the highest possible ratings will lead to a revolution that should have occurred 80 years ago. Universities should be freed to pursue their best possible exposure and financial reward in sports and also to pursue their best possible academic alliances for the sake of research and scientific discovery. It's really rather asinine and counter productive to continue simply because this is the way we've always done it since the early 1800's.

So I don't disagree with your assertion of what Duke, Northwestern, and Vandy will want to do, I just foresee a total reorganization of schools competing athletically with athletic peers, and researching academically with academic peers where such relationships no longer remain mutually inclusive to the detriment of both.

As long as the major decisions of university athletic conference membership are determined by university presidents and not athletic directors, academics will always matter.

And even if we made it entirely based on athletics or financial, I'm not buying it would include the entire SEC minus Vanderbilt either. You think every public SEC member is an "athletic peer" with Alabama and Auburn? You think Vandy is the only athletic dead weight in the conference? If I'm ESPN and I can choose only which schools I'd want to pay for, I'd dump more than Vanderbilt from the SEC. There might even be a list of only about 30 FBS schools worth paying big bucks for in college football (and my Illini definitely wouldn't be on the list). You could add a few more like Duke, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Kansas for men's basketball (maybe then Illinois would make the list in a few years). But we're not just going to give everyone in the SEC a free pass to the party and say they're better than everyone else. In no planet are Mississippi and Mississippi State going to be better than Ohio State or Clemson.
Schmolik, the reason why ESPN is holding back, IMO, is that new media order (FAANG) really wants this badly too. However, ESPN can hold off the new media order by dangling the carrot of being able to keep a lot of old rivals together, something that the new media order is NOT big on, IMO.


Put another way: would you prefer JR Ewing from Dallas or Governor Gavin Newsome??
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Or, ESPN thinks that it's more valuable to have a 65 team P5 than a 30-40 team breakaway. Why would they purposefully devalue 25 of their properties?

All a breakaway would do is make college sports less popular. An Indiana fan won't suddenly become an Ohio State fan if a breakaway happens. They'll just stop caring.


The other thing is: the "deadweight" isn't really that dead. The Big 10 and SEC are making about $45 million per school. ACC, PAC, and Big 12 are 25-30 million. The American is making about $8 million. So the bottom P5 / top G5 schools are probably worth about $15 million.

Do the math: if you take out the bottom 4 SEC schools ($60 million, minimum), you bump the payment up from $44 million to $55 million. That's a lot, but it's not world-breaking.

And you'd lose a lot. You're losing more than just 100 year old rivalries and academic associations. You're losing exposure to potential students. You're increasing travel budgets as you cut out the heart of the conference. And does Tennessee really want an extra 2-3 losses a year when they have to play Auburn & LSU instead of Vanderbilt & Ole Miss? How will the additional losses affect ticket sales?

The Big Ten has even more to lose, because all of the worst programs still bring value to the conference. Who do you kick out? Northwestern, Illinois, Indiana, and Rutgers? That loses most of your local exposure in Chicago and New York media, and your biggest basketball fanbase. Ohio State doesn't want that.

You should do your homework on this first. Enter Sandman has a thread pinned in the important threads at the top of the page that would help you.

And you should try reading the premise of the different posters before wading in.

For starters the Big 10 earned 55 million plus per school last year and the SEC 45 million plus. The SEC schools will start at 68 plus by 2024 under the new contract. There is more at stake sure. For now that doesn't detract from your statement. But the premise of some positions is that pay for play will change that landscape. Content based payouts instead of market based payouts is already changing it because streaming gives companies the ability to actually pay per viewer. New technology outstripped the market math of the old subscription fee model just a couple of years after the 2012 realignment.

The money now is driven by games that on a major carrier deliver a large national audience (think 12 to 14 million) over regional audiences of much less.

ESPN has already locked up the ACC and SEC through the mid 2030's for all 3 tiers of sports rights. They are likely to bid on the Big 12 for the same reason, or perhaps engineer a placement of the most valuable parts of the Big 12 within their other holdings. Even if the so called FAANG companies do get involved, and so far they've very publicly demurred, they won't be able to land the schools in the hottest viewing regions unless they go all out for the Big 10 and FOX just chooses to bow out, and I don't see that coming either.

So that gets us to why pay for play is going to change things. For one it directly challenges the Big 10's amateur more Ivy like approach. It is why a split between football first schools in the Big 10 could happen if their operating model isn't changed.

For privates it will come down to funding since state appropriations won't be helping them out as they will for larger state schools. Mid sized to smaller state schools could however run into budgetary constraints. That doesn't mean they will just that states with budgetary issues may see the need to fund Big State U who generates 150 million in revenue and not have the same exuberance over doing it where the return on investment is much less. Even for well funded privates it will present some challenges, especially if Title IX ratios aren't adjusted and some sports remain strictly amateur and others are treated semi professionally.

Then there is the network angle. ESPN doesn't have to cull anyone. All they have to do is keep getting those rights signed up. When change hits and some opt out the programs will cull themselves and as they do that gives ESPN an opportunity to do two things.

1. They get to renegotiate the contracts of the conferences which have had schools bow out of the pay for play, and in spite of insistence this won't happen which prima facia sounds logical, it will happen because not all institutions or states are gong to be prepared to handle it. Let's say that the ACC loses 2, the SEC 1, the PAC 2, and the Big 12 and Big 10 none. Now we are down to 60 schools so inventory for games has dropped.

2. So to keep the payouts up conferences are going to need to add schools to increase inventory and if those schools are brand name schools it will enhance content value as well. So in all likelihood ESPN gets to do a little consolidation for their own benefit. Or, perhaps the remaining schools see the vulnerable position they are in and decide with the defections from their ranks to collectivize for the sake of leverage. Either way composition changes and the opportunity for more brand on brand games for national ad revenue at its highest rate goes up.

My point is change is coming, it will be radical, and the network can play it either way and make more. What's more is the change will be external to the networks getting them off the hook for public displeasure. People will not like it initially because people are resistant to all change, but week after week of boring reruns and they'll be back for sports.

What's unclear to me is whether attendance at games will ever get back to a fever pitch with people donating significant sums just to be able to purchase tickets. HD TV, the breaking of routine with COVID, and the societal junk will all take a toll on the actual enthusiasm to attend, but the boredom of routine will bring seasonal sports back into view soon enough.

So as I see it the networks don't have to do anything but sign up the rights. The rest of it will play out leaving the networks better options and opportunities to naturally rearrange things to benefit themselves.

Meanwhile the P5 will be caught off guard like academics always are because they are naturally a backwards looking group. They are steeped in tradition and very reticent to change. But once academic endeavor is completely separated from athletic endeavor a beneficial revolution will occur permitting both to seek associations independently of one another and for the betterment of both and it is in that world that some on the athletic side will be left behind and some who have held aspirations on the academic side, but not inclusion in groups like AAU, will as well.

Think of it this way. Your school will be in a athletic conference and an academic conference and the two won't necessarily be the same conference. Therefore with their academic alliance secure schools like Ohio State, U.S.C., Washington, North Carolina, etc will be free to align themselves wherever it best suits their athletic needs. Geography could become a bigger factor, but level of competition, and ability to draw a national audience certainly will play a part with regard to with whom it is you play sports.

I'm trying to figure out what you think I'm missing.

There's many different breakaway models. All of them have at least one of the following big flaws:
1) the bottom P5 schools aren't that much different in value from the 90th percentile P5 schools
2) the top schools are very happy with the current system
3) the networks want more "big time college football" content, not fewer games that are higher profile


I was only talking about markets because Ohio State wants exposure in Chicago/New York. They want to be on TV in sports bars. Games in town for alums to attend. Arguments at work over which Big Ten team is the best. They want the Big 10 (and hence, Ohio State) to get top coverage by local TV newscasters.

The TV money was always secondary: they want to stay connected with wealthy alumni, and they want New York and Chicago kids to come to OSU! Last year 318 Illinois residents enrolled at Ohio State as freshmen (almost all from greater Chicago). Only 71 enrolled at Pitt and 59 at Cincinnati. At full-cost of attendance over 4 years, that's a difference of $46-48 million.
10-13-2020 12:55 PM
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Fighting Muskie Online
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RE: Will Vanderbilt and/or others de-emphasize athletics in the 21st Century?
(10-13-2020 12:29 PM)Nerdlinger Wrote:  "Yankee" is still considered an insult from Southerners to Northerners? I'm a Northerner and don't find the term offensive at all. If anything, it's something to take pride in.

As long as we're using 19th century lingo, I think Muskie in turn should refer to Bearcat as "Johnny Reb". Although Ohio and Illinois are not part of the South, so anyone living in either of those states is a "Yankee" too. 07-coffee3

I think it was intended as an insult. The great irony is that while my college sports loyalties rest with schools in Ohio since that’s where I’m from, culturally and politically I am far more Southern in my leanings.
10-13-2020 01:09 PM
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RE: Will Vanderbilt and/or others de-emphasize athletics in the 21st Century?
As a Cincinnati fan currently stuck in the AAC, anything that brings realignment to the P5 is A-okay in my book. I would love to see Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, Boston College, Rutgers, Kansas State, Oregon State, Georgia Tech, and/or Stanford, etc. de-emphasize athletics.

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10-13-2020 01:22 PM
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JRsec Offline
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RE: Will Vanderbilt and/or others de-emphasize athletics in the 21st Century?
(10-13-2020 12:55 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  
(10-13-2020 12:10 PM)JRsec Wrote:  
(10-13-2020 11:29 AM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  
(10-13-2020 05:56 AM)DawgNBama Wrote:  
(10-13-2020 05:47 AM)schmolik Wrote:  As long as the major decisions of university athletic conference membership are determined by university presidents and not athletic directors, academics will always matter.

And even if we made it entirely based on athletics or financial, I'm not buying it would include the entire SEC minus Vanderbilt either. You think every public SEC member is an "athletic peer" with Alabama and Auburn? You think Vandy is the only athletic dead weight in the conference? If I'm ESPN and I can choose only which schools I'd want to pay for, I'd dump more than Vanderbilt from the SEC. There might even be a list of only about 30 FBS schools worth paying big bucks for in college football (and my Illini definitely wouldn't be on the list). You could add a few more like Duke, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Kansas for men's basketball (maybe then Illinois would make the list in a few years). But we're not just going to give everyone in the SEC a free pass to the party and say they're better than everyone else. In no planet are Mississippi and Mississippi State going to be better than Ohio State or Clemson.
Schmolik, the reason why ESPN is holding back, IMO, is that new media order (FAANG) really wants this badly too. However, ESPN can hold off the new media order by dangling the carrot of being able to keep a lot of old rivals together, something that the new media order is NOT big on, IMO.


Put another way: would you prefer JR Ewing from Dallas or Governor Gavin Newsome??
Sent from my moto g(7) power using Tapatalk

Or, ESPN thinks that it's more valuable to have a 65 team P5 than a 30-40 team breakaway. Why would they purposefully devalue 25 of their properties?

All a breakaway would do is make college sports less popular. An Indiana fan won't suddenly become an Ohio State fan if a breakaway happens. They'll just stop caring.


The other thing is: the "deadweight" isn't really that dead. The Big 10 and SEC are making about $45 million per school. ACC, PAC, and Big 12 are 25-30 million. The American is making about $8 million. So the bottom P5 / top G5 schools are probably worth about $15 million.

Do the math: if you take out the bottom 4 SEC schools ($60 million, minimum), you bump the payment up from $44 million to $55 million. That's a lot, but it's not world-breaking.

And you'd lose a lot. You're losing more than just 100 year old rivalries and academic associations. You're losing exposure to potential students. You're increasing travel budgets as you cut out the heart of the conference. And does Tennessee really want an extra 2-3 losses a year when they have to play Auburn & LSU instead of Vanderbilt & Ole Miss? How will the additional losses affect ticket sales?

The Big Ten has even more to lose, because all of the worst programs still bring value to the conference. Who do you kick out? Northwestern, Illinois, Indiana, and Rutgers? That loses most of your local exposure in Chicago and New York media, and your biggest basketball fanbase. Ohio State doesn't want that.

You should do your homework on this first. Enter Sandman has a thread pinned in the important threads at the top of the page that would help you.

And you should try reading the premise of the different posters before wading in.

For starters the Big 10 earned 55 million plus per school last year and the SEC 45 million plus. The SEC schools will start at 68 plus by 2024 under the new contract. There is more at stake sure. For now that doesn't detract from your statement. But the premise of some positions is that pay for play will change that landscape. Content based payouts instead of market based payouts is already changing it because streaming gives companies the ability to actually pay per viewer. New technology outstripped the market math of the old subscription fee model just a couple of years after the 2012 realignment.

The money now is driven by games that on a major carrier deliver a large national audience (think 12 to 14 million) over regional audiences of much less.

ESPN has already locked up the ACC and SEC through the mid 2030's for all 3 tiers of sports rights. They are likely to bid on the Big 12 for the same reason, or perhaps engineer a placement of the most valuable parts of the Big 12 within their other holdings. Even if the so called FAANG companies do get involved, and so far they've very publicly demurred, they won't be able to land the schools in the hottest viewing regions unless they go all out for the Big 10 and FOX just chooses to bow out, and I don't see that coming either.

So that gets us to why pay for play is going to change things. For one it directly challenges the Big 10's amateur more Ivy like approach. It is why a split between football first schools in the Big 10 could happen if their operating model isn't changed.

For privates it will come down to funding since state appropriations won't be helping them out as they will for larger state schools. Mid sized to smaller state schools could however run into budgetary constraints. That doesn't mean they will just that states with budgetary issues may see the need to fund Big State U who generates 150 million in revenue and not have the same exuberance over doing it where the return on investment is much less. Even for well funded privates it will present some challenges, especially if Title IX ratios aren't adjusted and some sports remain strictly amateur and others are treated semi professionally.

Then there is the network angle. ESPN doesn't have to cull anyone. All they have to do is keep getting those rights signed up. When change hits and some opt out the programs will cull themselves and as they do that gives ESPN an opportunity to do two things.

1. They get to renegotiate the contracts of the conferences which have had schools bow out of the pay for play, and in spite of insistence this won't happen which prima facia sounds logical, it will happen because not all institutions or states are gong to be prepared to handle it. Let's say that the ACC loses 2, the SEC 1, the PAC 2, and the Big 12 and Big 10 none. Now we are down to 60 schools so inventory for games has dropped.

2. So to keep the payouts up conferences are going to need to add schools to increase inventory and if those schools are brand name schools it will enhance content value as well. So in all likelihood ESPN gets to do a little consolidation for their own benefit. Or, perhaps the remaining schools see the vulnerable position they are in and decide with the defections from their ranks to collectivize for the sake of leverage. Either way composition changes and the opportunity for more brand on brand games for national ad revenue at its highest rate goes up.

My point is change is coming, it will be radical, and the network can play it either way and make more. What's more is the change will be external to the networks getting them off the hook for public displeasure. People will not like it initially because people are resistant to all change, but week after week of boring reruns and they'll be back for sports.

What's unclear to me is whether attendance at games will ever get back to a fever pitch with people donating significant sums just to be able to purchase tickets. HD TV, the breaking of routine with COVID, and the societal junk will all take a toll on the actual enthusiasm to attend, but the boredom of routine will bring seasonal sports back into view soon enough.

So as I see it the networks don't have to do anything but sign up the rights. The rest of it will play out leaving the networks better options and opportunities to naturally rearrange things to benefit themselves.

Meanwhile the P5 will be caught off guard like academics always are because they are naturally a backwards looking group. They are steeped in tradition and very reticent to change. But once academic endeavor is completely separated from athletic endeavor a beneficial revolution will occur permitting both to seek associations independently of one another and for the betterment of both and it is in that world that some on the athletic side will be left behind and some who have held aspirations on the academic side, but not inclusion in groups like AAU, will as well.

Think of it this way. Your school will be in a athletic conference and an academic conference and the two won't necessarily be the same conference. Therefore with their academic alliance secure schools like Ohio State, U.S.C., Washington, North Carolina, etc will be free to align themselves wherever it best suits their athletic needs. Geography could become a bigger factor, but level of competition, and ability to draw a national audience certainly will play a part with regard to with whom it is you play sports.

I'm trying to figure out what you think I'm missing.

There's many different breakaway models. All of them have at least one of the following big flaws:
1) the bottom P5 schools aren't that much different in value from the 90th percentile P5 schools
2) the top schools are very happy with the current system
3) the networks want more "big time college football" content, not fewer games that are higher profile


I was only talking about markets because Ohio State wants exposure in Chicago/New York. They want to be on TV in sports bars. Games in town for alums to attend. Arguments at work over which Big Ten team is the best. They want the Big 10 (and hence, Ohio State) to get top coverage by local TV newscasters.

The TV money was always secondary: they want to stay connected with wealthy alumni, and they want New York and Chicago kids to come to OSU! Last year 318 Illinois residents enrolled at Ohio State as freshmen (almost all from greater Chicago). Only 71 enrolled at Pitt and 59 at Cincinnati. At full-cost of attendance over 4 years, that's a difference of $46-48 million.

The OP was about whether Vanderbilt would drop down. My main point is that pay for play along with the changing pay models (markets on the way out content games for national ratings getting a lot more) indicate that what we are looking at moving forward is likely to be an entirely different paradigm and one that necessitates and shift in philosophy at the university level to do what is necessary to separate sports and academics in order to maximize both associations.

If that's the case regardless of anything else there will be shifts in conference memberships as some schools (think 5 to 10) opt out of pa for play. This has nothing to do with breakaways, adding more schools or losing them to another conference.

As to disparity there is a great deal of it between schools making 100 million plus and their upper end where the top schools are making between 175 to 200 million and those under 100 million in total revenue.

So there is going to be an eventual clustering of schools with a national audience because the payouts models for such an alignment is another echelon above what transpires even now.

Attrition will happen due to changes external the current system, but those changes will wholly revamp the sport as we know it, likely crossing all conference boundaries.

So whether a Vanderbilt wants to remain in the SEC or not is irrelevant. They have no national draw. The new system and the changes it will bring are much more likely to leave Vanderbilt behind than any conference realignment as it has happened in the past.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a new arrangement of the top 32 to 48 schools.

Now take that into consideration and check the Gross Total Athletic Revenues listed in the important threads section at the top of this page in the CS/CR forum and scroll down from Texas and see the cutoffs. It's much more telling than just examining a conference structure. You will notice that earning 100 million ends around the 45th position. At that point the top of the producers are more than doubling those below it. Then look at the true competitiveness of programs below that position. There are a few anomalies but the vast majority are not what you would call competitive programs. Then keep in mind that only about the top 20 to 25 have any national appeal. So roughly there is a great difference between the top 22 and that lower 23 even to the 45th position.

Networks are going to be looking at these things and while they will not push realignment the factors of pay models, and the difference in revenue that playing other national draws, along with the natural attrition in a move to pay for play, will mean realignment will happen again, just for different reasons and the conferences we have right now may not pass into that period unchanged or unscathed.

Most of what you speak of pertains to how realignment has occurred in the past and those motivating factors have changed, as has the payout models. The shifts will change most relationships before they are completed, IMO.
(This post was last modified: 10-13-2020 01:26 PM by JRsec.)
10-13-2020 01:25 PM
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bill dazzle Offline
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Post: #53
RE: Will Vanderbilt and/or others de-emphasize athletics in the 21st Century?
(10-13-2020 12:45 PM)Statefan Wrote:  
(10-13-2020 11:57 AM)bill dazzle Wrote:  
(10-13-2020 09:55 AM)JRsec Wrote:  
(10-13-2020 09:20 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(10-12-2020 09:43 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  Also, from the first day that I wrote about conference realignment over a decade ago, I emphasized how much conferences want elite academic institutions. The Big Ten LOVES Northwestern. It’s an elite school located directly in the most important TV market in the league (Chicago). Vandy provides a similar value proposition for the SEC with an elite school located in a major market near the center of the conference (Nashville).

Yes, nobody within the SEC has any problem with Vanderbilt's membership, everyone recognizes the role they play in the conference and its a valuable one, always has been. So why on earth would Vanderbilt give up membership in a P5 conference that pays them $50 million a year and a ton of exposure for no reason at all?

It's only commentators from outside, usually from schools that are not in the P5 and envy Vanderbilt's membership, that raise this issue.

Yeah that's right Quo. But there are also people outside of the SEC who don't understand that Vanderbilt has gotten more recalcitrant on being a supporting member. The don't upgrade facilities to SEC standards and they are stated standards. They don't offer the requisite number of sports refusing women's softball, and they don't try to be competitive in football, or basketball, anymore. And now they have failed in the conferences COVID protocols. But we have people outside the conference who don't know a damn thing about these matters either chiming in with complete ignorance of the issues.

Nobody in the SEC is asking for Vanderbilt's removal, but they are all well aware that poorer schools are doing more to belong. Vanderbilt has some decisions to make and right now they are refusing to commit to the minimum standards set. And it's time academics faced the music. The product most produce outside of STEM fields is poorer than ever. Academic associations are already extant from athletic conferences, and pretending that Vanderbilt does anything for the SEC other than give us a top 20 to 30 rated research school in our membership (depending on the rating service) doesn't put another dime in any of the other 13 schools pockets. It might well be argued that Florida and Texas A&M are much more diverse as leaders in research and have more to share. But Vanderbilt does prove one point in spades. Academic associations and Athletic associations are already diverging subsets and will only continue to do so. Business, culture, and necessity are driving what will become a much more widely accepted and successful dichotomy of academics and athletics and in that world the Vanderbilt's of the world will be able to excel the one while committing to the other at levels comfortable for them to do so.

When sports revenue was counted in the seven digit range justifying Vanderbilt for academic reasons was wholly agreeable. Now that sports revenue is in the 9 digit range the cost / benefit analysis may indicate otherwise. No doubt Vanderbilt enjoys P5 exposure in the SEC. So don't you think Women's softball, improved facilities at venues (not even asking for new venues), and a commitment to COVID protection protocols and to competitiveness is a small price to pay for that P5 exposure?

Northwestern stepped it up with facilities. Duke did the same. Why not Vandy?

I keep asking the same things, JRsec. Your questions are valid. On this note, I was not pleased with the hiring of Candice Storey Lee as our AD.

The situation is, in some respects, a mess.

Still a step up from Toad Turner


TT was bad but CSL might end up being so, too.
10-13-2020 03:03 PM
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XLance Offline
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Post: #54
RE: Will Vanderbilt and/or others de-emphasize athletics in the 21st Century?
This is not my original idea.
If we separate into a top echelon ($100 million +) or even a top 32-48. If we can get to four conferences, with equal divisions, each conference could have an A & B division, with the ability to move up or down. All conference games might be played within the division with one A/B crossover game (to insure an annual Vanderbilt/Tennessee match-up as an example)
Four conferences of 18, with 9 team divisions, playing 9 conference games (8 in division, 1 out of division).
All OOC games would be division specific (only A's from the SEC could play an A from the ACC, etc) and all games played within the P4.
That way Olympic sports are not affected and rivalries for basketball/baseball/softball are maintained.
10-13-2020 03:10 PM
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bullet Offline
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Post: #55
RE: Will Vanderbilt and/or others de-emphasize athletics in the 21st Century?
I think pay for play will be a deal breaker for some college presidents. Maybe many.

Notre Dame has said it would be. If they could get enough other schools to join them, the president might be able to keep his job!
10-13-2020 05:30 PM
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XLance Offline
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RE: Will Vanderbilt and/or others de-emphasize athletics in the 21st Century?
(10-13-2020 05:30 PM)bullet Wrote:  I think pay for play will be a deal breaker for some college presidents. Maybe many.

Notre Dame has said it would be. If they could get enough other schools to join them, the president might be able to keep his job!

Wake Forest has already said they wouldn't pay. Wake Forest President is the former Provost at Notre Dame.
10-13-2020 05:41 PM
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bill dazzle Offline
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RE: Will Vanderbilt and/or others de-emphasize athletics in the 21st Century?
(10-13-2020 10:34 AM)esayem Wrote:  
(10-13-2020 09:03 AM)bill dazzle Wrote:  As a Vanderbilt fan of more than 50 years (and perhaps the only one on this board), I contend the university's athletics program might be significantly more unlike those of the other private schools in P5 programs. There are many reasons for this. I need to go to the office but might post them later....in limerick form

This. Or you're banned.

Is Vandy football truly "power"?
Could this be the program's last hour?
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After losses we pray...
Wilts not our sweet SEC flower
10-13-2020 09:24 PM
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RE: Will Vanderbilt and/or others de-emphasize athletics in the 21st Century?
(10-13-2020 05:41 PM)XLance Wrote:  
(10-13-2020 05:30 PM)bullet Wrote:  I think pay for play will be a deal breaker for some college presidents. Maybe many.

Notre Dame has said it would be. If they could get enough other schools to join them, the president might be able to keep his job!

Wake Forest has already said they wouldn't pay. Wake Forest President is the former Provost at Notre Dame.

Wisconsin's AD and President are both on record as saying they would probably drop the athletic program if pay-for-play becomes reality.

Purdue's President has spoken very strongly against any extra benefits for athletes. And Purdue's administration has always funded athletics as an afterthought. They didn't even have permanent lights in the football stadium until 2017 (not a typo, 2017).

Purdue and Illinois fans have told me that Northwestern would also rather drop sports than pay-for-play.

If those three say no, I'd be shocked if Illinois, Minnesota, and Indiana don't follow them. They're all usually on the same page, even if they're not saying it publicly. Just look at the decision to cancel due to COVID - the charge was lead by Minnesota and Illinois, but Purdue and Indiana voted with them even though they had a neutral opinion.

Cincinnati's administration thinks along the same lines as that group, especially Purdue for some reason. For example: Cincinnati and Purdue are the only two schools I know of that have frozen tuition since 2015. If Notre Dame and Purdue agree on something, you can bet that Cincinnati will do the same thing as they do.


I don't know what the rest of the Big Ten would do. But losing those 8 schools would rip the heart out of college sports in the most populated and wealthiest parts of the Midwest.

It would be particularly bad for the NCAA tournament. Not only would you lose most of the mid-majors, you'd also lose a lot of the biggest basketball fanbases just in those 8 schools alone.
(This post was last modified: 10-13-2020 11:08 PM by Captain Bearcat.)
10-13-2020 11:00 PM
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JRsec Offline
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Post: #59
RE: Will Vanderbilt and/or others de-emphasize athletics in the 21st Century?
(10-13-2020 11:00 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  
(10-13-2020 05:41 PM)XLance Wrote:  
(10-13-2020 05:30 PM)bullet Wrote:  I think pay for play will be a deal breaker for some college presidents. Maybe many.

Notre Dame has said it would be. If they could get enough other schools to join them, the president might be able to keep his job!

Wake Forest has already said they wouldn't pay. Wake Forest President is the former Provost at Notre Dame.

Wisconsin's AD and President are both on record as saying they would probably drop the athletic program if pay-for-play becomes reality.

Purdue's President has spoken very strongly against any extra benefits for athletes. And Purdue's administration has always funded athletics as an afterthought. They didn't even have permanent lights in the football stadium until 2017 (not a typo, 2017).

Purdue and Illinois fans have told me that Northwestern would also rather drop sports than pay-for-play.

If those three say no, I'd be shocked if Illinois, Minnesota, and Indiana don't follow them. They're all usually on the same page, even if they're not saying it publicly. Just look at the decision to cancel due to COVID - the charge was lead by Minnesota and Illinois, but Purdue and Indiana voted with them even though they had a neutral opinion.

Cincinnati's administration thinks along the same lines as that group, especially Purdue for some reason. For example: Cincinnati and Purdue are the only two schools I know of that have frozen tuition since 2015. If Notre Dame and Purdue agree on something, you can bet that Cincinnati will do the same thing as they do.


I don't know what the rest of the Big Ten would do. But losing those 8 schools would rip the heart out of college sports in the most populated and wealthiest parts of the Midwest.

It would be particularly bad for the NCAA tournament. Not only would you lose most of the mid-majors, you'd also lose a lot of the biggest basketball fanbases just in those 8 schools alone.

This is precisely why pay for play if ruled into law with the NIL case will be a bigger catalyst for revolution within college athletics than OU/UGa vs the NCAA.

I would expect Iowa, Nebraska, Ohio State, Michigan State, Penn State, Maryland and possibly Wisconsin (which might do an about face when confronted with the reality) to leave for athletic competition at the highest level and in so doing would force the separation of academic associations from athletic ones as the Big 10 schools seek a way to remain in one academic consortium but play athletics at levels each school can accept.

It is why I also foresee this liberation of academics from athletics revitalizing the Big 10 academic consortium as other key research schools can feel free to join without sacrificing regional athletics to do so. Schools like Texas, and A&M, Vanderbilt, Florida, Duke, North Carolina and Virginia could join the academic alliance while letting their sports pursue regional play at levels comfortable for each. The Ivy model has been outdated and too constricting for over 80 years.
10-13-2020 11:26 PM
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DawgNBama Offline
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Post: #60
RE: Will Vanderbilt and/or others de-emphasize athletics in the 21st Century?
(10-13-2020 11:26 PM)JRsec Wrote:  
(10-13-2020 11:00 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  
(10-13-2020 05:41 PM)XLance Wrote:  
(10-13-2020 05:30 PM)bullet Wrote:  I think pay for play will be a deal breaker for some college presidents. Maybe many.

Notre Dame has said it would be. If they could get enough other schools to join them, the president might be able to keep his job!

Wake Forest has already said they wouldn't pay. Wake Forest President is the former Provost at Notre Dame.

Wisconsin's AD and President are both on record as saying they would probably drop the athletic program if pay-for-play becomes reality.

Purdue's President has spoken very strongly against any extra benefits for athletes. And Purdue's administration has always funded athletics as an afterthought. They didn't even have permanent lights in the football stadium until 2017 (not a typo, 2017).

Purdue and Illinois fans have told me that Northwestern would also rather drop sports than pay-for-play.

If those three say no, I'd be shocked if Illinois, Minnesota, and Indiana don't follow them. They're all usually on the same page, even if they're not saying it publicly. Just look at the decision to cancel due to COVID - the charge was lead by Minnesota and Illinois, but Purdue and Indiana voted with them even though they had a neutral opinion.

Cincinnati's administration thinks along the same lines as that group, especially Purdue for some reason. For example: Cincinnati and Purdue are the only two schools I know of that have frozen tuition since 2015. If Notre Dame and Purdue agree on something, you can bet that Cincinnati will do the same thing as they do.


I don't know what the rest of the Big Ten would do. But losing those 8 schools would rip the heart out of college sports in the most populated and wealthiest parts of the Midwest.

It would be particularly bad for the NCAA tournament. Not only would you lose most of the mid-majors, you'd also lose a lot of the biggest basketball fanbases just in those 8 schools alone.

This is precisely why pay for play if ruled into law with the NIL case will be a bigger catalyst for revolution within college athletics than OU/UGa vs the NCAA.

I would expect Iowa, Nebraska, Ohio State, Michigan State, Penn State, Maryland and possibly Wisconsin (which might do an about face when confronted with the reality) to leave for athletic competition at the highest level and in so doing would force the separation of academic associations from athletic ones as the Big 10 schools seek a way to remain in one academic consortium but play athletics at levels each school can accept.

It is why I also foresee this liberation of academics from athletics revitalizing the Big 10 academic consortium as other key research schools can feel free to join without sacrificing regional athletics to do so. Schools like Texas, and A&M, Vanderbilt, Florida, Duke, North Carolina and Virginia could join the academic alliance while letting their sports pursue regional play at levels comfortable for each. The Ivy model has been outdated and too constricting for over 80 years.
You are truly a man wayy ahead of your time, JR!! There is no telling what we could accomplish as a nation if there were no barriers to various academic consortiums/leagues.

When I was a student at the University of Montevallo, I learned that my school was a part of consortium between Samford University, UAB, and the Birmingham Public Library. Basically, what it meant for me was this: I was free to check out books from UAB's, Sanford's, or the B'ham Public Library as long as I had my student ID on me. Also, Samford & UAB students were free to check out books from University of Montevallo's library, so long as they had their student IDs.

Imagine doing this on a much larger scale and even getting college & university faculties to work together on federal grant projects and programs!!!

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10-14-2020 05:55 AM
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