esayem
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RE: Bowl Affiliation in New 12-Team Format
(06-19-2021 08:54 AM)BruceMcF Wrote: (06-19-2021 08:15 AM)esayem Wrote: (06-18-2021 11:23 PM)BruceMcF Wrote: (06-18-2021 09:53 PM)esayem Wrote: The Sugar, Peach, and arguably the Orange are all in SEC territory, so I don’t see any reason the SEC would object to the Sugar hosting a semi every three or four years. They legitimately have the best setup of any power conference with half the bowl sites being in their neck of the woods. The Peach does serve better as a semi as long as their CCG is played in ATL. Of course, they could always move that to Jacksonville or better yet, Birmingham!! I kid, but Tampa wouldn’t be bad.
So if they let the QF bowls be a conduit for more money, the question would be which bowl could and would channel more money.
There are three countervailing factors. One upside is that large live audiences continue to become more scarce, increasing the relative value of the remaining ones to advertisers. The other upside is that they would be hosting championship knockout games, so everything else equal that is a larger audience. One downside is that under the new structure, there is less guarantee about the match-up, so regionally focused money may not grow in proportion to overall money in the system.
The two ways they can get more regional certainty is to have a contract to host a conference champion if they should be a top four conference champion, or to have contracts with two conferences to host the highest seeded of the two. The first gives a conference region to target, but the risk that conference champion is not top four, the second gives two conference regions to target, but substantial uncertainty how often any given region will be represented.
There is in any event more uncertainty for the three current Contract Bowls no matter what they do, and with greater uncertainty comes a need for a higher expected surplus for the bowl committee, to cover the risk. This is a big reason why I expect the relative balance between Bowl revenue and CFP media contract revenue will shift toward the latter.
And then the different bowls have different levels of financial strength and different abilities to pay.
With the college football audience trending older, I expect the fading bloom of a Rose Bowl bid in Big Ten country, now that it only hosts the champion when fails to reach the season goal of a CFP bid, hasn't faded as much as some people may thing, and if it is placed in the championship path again, that will instantly freshen the bloom. And the fall back of being a "home" PAC-12 bowl when not a Big Ten bowl seems like it would be a strong appeal to the Rose Bowl, which is why I continue to think "best of Big Ten or PAC-12" contracts are likely the Rose Bowl's preference, and therefore the contract package that they will pay they most for, in terms of bowl payout.
AFAICT, the Sugar Bowl has the second deepest pockets, and the greatest certainty for the Sugar Bowl is an exclusive contract to host the SEC champion if a top seed. Over the likely life of the contract, that is the single conference champion with the lowest risk of falling out of the top four champions.
AFAICT, the Orange Bowl has the third deepest pockets, and given that the Sugar Bowl would win a bidding war for the SEC champion it won't enter that bidding war but would instead go for its second preference, the ACC champion.
That leaves the Peach Bowl as a semi-final bowl and the Fiesta Bowl and Cotton Bowl in a bidding war for the BigXII. Don't ask me which of those two would win the bidding war, I don't have any idea.
This is all, at least, assuming that the process follows the big time college football version of the Golden Rule, which is that the one who has the gold makes the rule.
You make some excellent points, and as long as there is no monetary difference between hosting a quarterfinal vs a semifinal, I can see the “golden” bowls pushing for the traditional date with a P5 champ.
I have to think the Big XII moves their affiliation to the Cotton Bowl and changes the location of their CCG to Houston, or perhaps a rotation that also includes San Antonio; both of which have hosted in the past. Now that Nebraska and Mizzou are gone, there isn’t the power for the demand of Kansas City, or to a lesser extent, St. Louis.
The Fiesta is an excellent bowl, but if you’re the Big XII champ, i.e. Oklahoma or Texas, why wouldn’t you want to host in your backyard? Why potentially “host” Arizona St., USC, UCLA, or Colorado in Glendale, AZ?
Typically, because one bow can offer a larger participation payment. I have no idea which has deeper pockets between the Cotton and Fiesta Bowl, or whether the BigXII affiliation would be a prime revenue driver so either could offer similar and it comes down to preference for a location.
I suppose this is all assuming unique conference contracts remain in place. So theoretically a #4 Ohio State could garner a larger payout over say a #1 Clemson? Or a team ranked #10 gets into the Sugar Bowl after a first round win and garners a larger payout than a team in the top 4? Something just seems off about that. I have the feeling if the bowls go all in on this as part of the playoff then payouts will be dispersed more similar to the NCAA tournament.
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