quo vadis
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RE: CFP Expansion: Hancock says new plan must be agreed to in 3 to 4 months, or ...
(09-29-2021 10:39 AM)johnbragg Wrote: (09-29-2021 10:08 AM)quo vadis Wrote: (09-29-2021 09:53 AM)johnbragg Wrote: (09-29-2021 09:34 AM)Gamecock Wrote: (09-29-2021 09:15 AM)johnbragg Wrote: As the trailer I saw for the Handmaid's Tale series said, "Better doesn't mean better for everyone."
The CFP is a complicated contract between the 10 FBS conferences, Notre Dame, the 6 major bowls, and ESPN. Those aren't all equal partners, but any of those has grounds to sue if their rights under the current contract are voided.
The bowls can argue in court that they signed on the dotted line to host SEMIFINALS once every three years, not just "playoff games." That's worth a very hard to calculate but surely very large amount of money.
The Rose and Sugar Bowls, and I suppose the Orange Bowl, have big contracts with the major conferences that secure big, free-spending fanbases coming to their bowl after a good season with regularity. You mess with the pecking order of who goes to what bowl because the Sugar Bowl gets the #4 SEC team instead of #3, the Sugar Bowl will be able to put together a powerpoint about how much money the Sugar Bowl is losing.
That's the long-winded answer to why this probably happens at the end of the contract.
Thanks. Still doesn't make that much sense to me, but I guess that's why they get paid the big bucks.
Shorter version: Since 2012 or so when the CFP was negotiated, the bowls have lost a lot of power and relevance (except maybe Rose). So the bowls are likely to monkeywrench new arrangements that reflect their diminished clout.
The bowls have every legal right to do that, and no reason not to.
FWIW, I don't think the bowls have experienced diminished power and relevance. TV ratings might be down, but TV ratings are down for a lot of things (e.g., the World Series and NBA Finals have trended down the last 20 years). The brand value of the major bowls, at least the four traditional ones, IMO remains strong, and surely the Cotton and Peach bowls are more valuable thanks to their inclusion in the CFP.
As for the minor bowls, to me, they remain what they always have been, minor, but liked, otherwise ESPN wouldn't be showing 20 of them each Christmas season.
I don't think the brand value of the Sugar or Orange Bowls is what it was 10 years ago. (Or more exactly, what it was 25 years ago.) Ten years ago, the new CFP system preserved the power and prestige of the those bowls, and yes elevated the Cotton and Peach bowls. The current CFP reflects the brand value of the bowls in about 1995-2000, if that makes any sense.
The Rose Bowl is a different deal. The PAC and B1G will do things to defend the Rose Bowl. That tells me that they have information that the Rose Bowl is independently valuable. (YEs, Frank the Tank, I know the arguments about the parade. But for me, the proof is that the B1G consistenly makes statements that would have them pay some kind of price to keep the Rose Bowl the Rose Bowl).
Ten years ago, Mike Slive and the SEC signed the Champions Bowl with the Big 12, and entertained the idea of having it somewhere besides the Sugar Bowl.
The SEC DGAF about the "Sugar Bowl." It's a big game. You can have a big game in New Orleans or Atlanta or JerryWorld or Miami or a couple of other places and it's fine. The Sugar Bowl name or the Orange Bowl name isn't magic anymore. The Peach Bowl name isn't magic--it wasn't even the PEach Bowl for a while. The Cotton Bowl stopped being magic when the SWC went bust. The Fiesta Bowl stopped being magic when the Big 12 dumped them for the Cotton Bowl. (I mean the Sugar Bowl)
You don't need the Sugar Bowl, Inc or Orange Bowl Entertainment LTD or Cotton Bowl Enterprises. If #3 Georgia is playing #7 Oregon, it doesn't really really matter if the game is in Miami or Atlanta or Dallas or New Orleans or Houston or even Charlotte or Nashville; or in Los Angeles or Las Vegas or Phoenix. You just need a nice NFL stadium.
25 years ago, you'd have had howls of protest at a new playoff system that junked the Sugar, Orange, Fiesta, Cotton bowls. Now, the only protests are about what happens to the Rose Bowl.
The fact that walking away completely from the non-Rose Bowls is an option is going to impact the bowls in the next CFP round. The bowls won't get left out completely, but they'll get much less than they got last time. I don't know if the quarterfinals rotate between 6 bowls, for example. So 2 of the 6 get demoted back to Citrus Bowl status. Probably.
I agree that the Orange Bowl has been diminished by its association with the ACC, but I think the SEC does care about the Sugar Bowl.
That's why the "Champion's Bowl" idea lasted about 10 minutes before it became the Sugar Bowl. The difference was, whereas with the Rose Bowl, the two participants, the PAC and the B1G, were obviously in total accord about their feature game being the Rose Bowl, the SEC was dealing with the Big 12, which had not historically participated in the Sugar Bowl, and probably wanted the game to be played in the Cotton Bowl, or maybe rotate between the Cotton Bowl and the Sugar Bowl. So that took some sorting out that the Rose Bowl situation did not.
Of course, the result of that sorting was that the SEC, being more powerful, and wanting to maintain its relationship with the Sugar Bowl, decided it would be ... the Sugar Bowl.
That's how I think it played out, anyway, and IMO that means the SEC values the Sugar Bowl. I know down here in Louisiana, a berth in the Sugar Bowl still matters to people.
(This post was last modified: 09-29-2021 12:39 PM by quo vadis.)
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