(08-13-2021 06:19 PM)JSchmack Wrote: Of course, the real solution to stop the madness would have been WINNING the 1984 court case that gave all the schools their TV rights.... OR settling before the fact that schools were free to put themselves on TV, but had to buy their rights from the NCAA to do so and set up a revenue sharing arrangement like a pro league.
A 50-50 split, with conferences keeping 50% and the other 50% going into a central fund evenly distributed to all of Division I would have slowed down the conference realignment for TV purposes; AND leveled the playing field so that you had 8 to 10 high level conferences instead of 4 to 6.
The BCS/P5 superiority is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Those conferences weren't really BETTER until they grabbed all the best schools from outside their group; and ESPN paid only them and disparaged anyone else. The SEC wasn't ACTUALLY "the best conference hands down, bar none" until ESPN started TELLING EVERYONE THAT non-stop when they got into bed with them. All the recruits now want to play SEC football more than anywhere else, so it becomes true and Texas has to about-face on their SEC opinion and join it for money.
Well, fefore 1980, meaning before ESPN, there were five major conferences - the PAC, SEC, B8, SWC and B10 - and the ACC, a quasi-major.
In 1978, the last year there was no ESPN to tell everyone which conferences were better, of the conference teams that were ranked in the final AP top 20, the number that came from those conferences was .... all of them, every single one.
In 1977, the same thing was true.
Or if we go post-ESPN but pre-BCS, I just looked at the final AP top 25 for 1995. Of the conference teams ranked, all were from what became the "BCS-AQ" conferences save for one, Toledo at #24. In 1996, there was also one ranked team from a non-AQ conference, BYU. This was typical for back then.
Truth is, schools from non-P5 conferences are ranked more frequently now than ever were back in the pre-ESPN era. When I was growing up in the 1970s, I was only aware of the existence of those major conferences. Few knew that non-major conferences even existed at all.
The second-tier of D1 conferences have never thrived more than they have during the BCS/CFP era.
The one thing I would agree on is the SEC. For decades, the SEC was always among the very best conferences, but you couldn't say it was the clear-cut best. Heck, the SEC went 11 straight seasons, from 1981 through 1991, without winning a national title. So the "best" was a rotating kind of thing, kind of like it usually is in basketball.
But the last 15 years, that has changed. The SEC has dominated like no conference ever has, so now it is indeed fair to call it the clear-cut best.