(04-04-2021 10:54 PM)HoustonRocks Wrote: AAC members would like to join a P5 conference. The money in a P5 is very appealing. An invite is not likely for most if not all AAC schools. Hoping for the AAC to become P6 is dreaming of a coronation.
The P5 can and will prevent the AAC from becoming a P6. They don't want competition in money, recruiting, exposure, and status.
But, they can't prevent the AAC from obtaining these values.
How can the AAC accomplish these goals?
1. Alabama and Clemson might be added as members.
2. A huge tech company might decide to pay the AAC large amounts of money.
3. The ACC might take steps toward these goals.
Only the last idea has any potential.
Ideas for Obtaining More Money and Exposure.
1. Creation of an AAC bowl.
2. Pay based On viewership.
An AAC Bowl could be created by obtaining "seed" money from members.
AAC members might be rewarded or "punished" for levels of viewers.
The AAC could provide more of its contract money to schools with great
viewership and less to schools with poor viewership. If a school's
viewership is good it would get more money to grow it. If a school's
viewership is poor it would get less money. A member must spend
money to obtain good viewership or its going to lose money. Generally,
this would raise viewership of AAC members. Raised viewership would
get raised revenues from media companies. Capitalism works.
There are undoubtedly other ideas. All the AAC needs is leaders with
backbones. If they don't take these or other ideas to grow the conference they are deciding the AAC will not succeed.
The 2016 BigXII expansion traveshamockery proved one thing - no single AAC school (or the other mwc etc) was worth being pulled into the existing "P5" conference structure at $30 million per school - didn't bring that additive value to the table.
Followon - no AAC school (or the other mwc etc) will bring the additive value to the table when the discussions are at $50 million per school.
So "realignment" is dead -- as we've all understood it looking back at the last couple decades of conferences picking individual schools which could add enough value to their conference.
With those assumptions, we should look ahead to the next round of College Football Playoff negotiations in 2025-26 as "restructure" vice "realignment."
And that is when, why, and how the AAC Strategic Plan, and the "P6" information campaign came about after the 2016 BigXII expansion traveshamockery.
Rather than single schools getting that Willie Wonka Golden Ticket -- which we were all unworthy of at a much cheaper price than in the next round -- the conference and its institutions looked at elevating the conference as a whole. Let's make the conference be perceived as being worth inclusion in that next restructure.
Legally speaking, there are two differences between the SEC, Big10, BigXII, ACC, and PAC12; and the AAC, mwc, MAC, SunBelt, and CUSA. First off five of those conferences have autonomous status in terms of governance, recognized by the NCAA. And secondly, the CFP structure differentiates between five conferences (plus ND) having contract relationships with the bowls in the CFP arrangement and five conferences NOT being bowl-contract-conferences.
When the SEC, Big10, BigXII, ACC, and PAC12 gained their autonomy status within NCAA governance, the AAC had an immediate response: we will do everything the autonomous conferences do -- they may make their own rules and set their own standards, but we will play by those rules and meet those standards. Full cost of attendance is the easy example for that. The other four non-autonomous conferences may or may not step up to those standards, but the AAC and I don't care.
So on that first difference, we could either just keep pace, or ask to be added, whcih might get a "no" I suggest we are in good standing just keeping pace.
The real answer to the AAC reaching the strategic goal is in being on the inside looking out, instead of the outside looking in, in the next restructure of the College Football Playoff.
The good news is that that doesn't necessarily require the five autonomous or contract-bowl conferences giving up $ they already have. The AAC isn't asking for any of their current slice of the pie - just asking for a slice of a bigger future pie.
If the next CFP restructure were a four team playoff and six bowls, that's a steep climb: we need to convince the Cotton/Peach/Fiesta Bowls that they're better off having the AAC champ (that is, the AAC gaining a contract bowl with a CFP bowl) than risking a Western Michigan and low ratings, low attendance, lower money. That's a steep climb but possibly doable.
If the next CFP restrucuture is an eight team playoff and ten or twelve bowls, there are actually a few paths for AAC inclusion on the right side of that restructure. 5-3 with highest ranked five champs. 5-1-2 with or without some state preference for the AAC champ. Straight 8 for the playoff but an AAC champ contract to a Cotton/Peach/Fiesta/Citrus/Liberty/New Bowl in an 8-team 10/12-bowl CFP.
Could the AAC still be shutout as a contract-bowl participant in any new 8-team CFP restructure? Sure. But you miss every shot you don't take.
Could some sort of Oklahoma or Texas move lead to old-school "realignment" instead of "restructure" as I have as a planning assumption? Sure, but honestly that's the kind of tectonic shifts that you can't plan ahead for and just deal with when they come.
That's what "P6" and the AAC Strategic Plan are about -- position the conference as a whole (since everybody put on their fanciest dresses but still didn't get asked to dance by the BigXII in 2016) to be on the right side of the next restructure in a few more years.
(And that's also why there are only a couple of candidates for expansion that make us look more like a P6 than the other four in the interim, and we don't want to take any candidates who make us look worse for that strategic goal)