(01-17-2022 12:29 PM)TerryD Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 12:05 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 11:04 AM)TerryD Wrote:  

(01-16-2022 01:27 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(01-16-2022 12:49 PM)XLance Wrote:  That is true Frank.
The ACC today would be a much better conference without Miami, Syracuse and Boston College. That trio was the choice of the ESPN consultants and sold to the conference by ESPN. That's back when the conference thought that ESPN had their back, but what they really wanted was access to Notre Dame.

Have you ever considered how much more hospitable, congenial, and cooperative, and how much more tolerant of potentially profitable additions the ACC would be without these three schools? And I'm speaking of Duke, North Carolina and Virginia.

The problem seems to be that you see yourselves as better than brash New Englanders, want to disavow your Southern heritage, and balk at being beholden to Northerners and have some silly notion that you should be Southern Ivy.

I hate to say it but in some ways you are like an old lady's' bridge club. You want to be exclusive, talk about everyone else in demeaning ways, and do nothing important or productive for the community and never admit wrong on your own part. Therefore doers, the practical, and the forthright, need not apply without a pre-approved pedigree assuring Patrician behavior.

The mystery to me is why a practical school like Notre Dame would even be associated with the Tobacco Plantation Supper Club?

Simple. It kept ND football out of the clutches of the Big Ten, just like the Big East deal did in 1995.

That was the main goal of ND in conference realignment from 1995 to the present.

ND wanted the Big East to survive, but not at the cost of joining for football (its the same with the ACC).

So, the ACC was useful to provide minor bowl access, it filled some November scheduling holes and provided a good home for ND's other sports.

It also was seen as helpful to ND's Southern recruiting efforts to play more games in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida.

But, by far, the main value of the ACC to ND was that it did not require football to join.

They was never a chance that ND was going to allow the "Supper Club" control over its football program.

A five game scheduling deal, sure. That just replaced the previous three game Big Ten opponents (Michigan, Michigan State and Purdue) and the two traditional Big East opponents (mainly Pitt and BC).

But full membership? No way.

(If it had required football to join, the value of the ACC to ND's plans would have plummeted greatly)

So, that has always meant that ND football was never going to be included, despite what some ACC homers say or thought.

If the Big 12 was the only conference who would offer ND partial membership in 2012, it would have joined the Big 12. The same goes for the SEC and Pac 12.

If no conference would have done so, ND would have stayed with the Catholic 7 of the Big East as a last resort.

I got the impression the Big East didn't want Notre Dame. They didn't want their non-rev programs overwhelmed by ND's infused with football money.

You would have to ask a C7 fan, but I think that those schools would have been okay with ND remaining in the Big East.

IMO, the C7 would have been very happy had Notre Dame remained a non-football member of the new Big East circa 2012.

Or circa today - if Notre Dame wanted to place its hoops and other sports in the Big East right now, I imagine we would roll out the red carpet. All upside, no downside, IMO.

(01-17-2022 09:14 AM)schmolik Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 01:32 AM)AuzGrams Wrote:  6 12 team power conferences would have been much better than the mess that is 14 & 16 team conferences.

These conferences are so large because around 80% of the members at the big tables were determined back before I was even born (Big Ten before any of us were born). Who decided Northwestern and Vanderbilt fit in with a bunch of state universities? Who thought Wake Forest was a good idea? Washington State, Oregon State, Iowa State, Kansas State, Mississippi State, I mean how many small school state schools do you need? Then all the big conferences want to add but no one other than the Big East wants to kick anyone out.

The last two 16 team conferences (WAC and Big East) eventually broke up so if you hate big conferences maybe you root for the SEC to be the next to do so. Texas has driven schools away from a conference and caused long time rivalries to break apart (Oklahoma/Nebraska). Who knows, maybe LSU and Arkansas join Texas, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, and Missouri for a faction in the SEC and the "Eastern" schools don't like it. Of course that would require Texas and Texas A&M to agree on things, good luck with that. Not to mention it's a lot easier for 16 SEC schools to agree when there's a crapload of money involved (or maybe it's harder, you know what they say, mo' money, mo' problems).

Oklahoma/Nebraska wasn't played every year because Oklahoma didn't want the schedule imbalance of being stuck with what was the top college football program at the time. Texas and Texas A&M leadership actually used to work pretty well together. It was only when a 60s Aggie, Loftin, got in. When Arkansas left the SWC, Texas and Texas A&M worked closely together, first, to both leave to the Pac and SEC and continue the rivalry, but then, to hold the SWC together. A&M could have still left when the Pac vetoed Texas.

(01-17-2022 02:39 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 12:29 PM)TerryD Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 12:05 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 11:04 AM)TerryD Wrote:  

(01-16-2022 01:27 PM)JRsec Wrote:  Have you ever considered how much more hospitable, congenial, and cooperative, and how much more tolerant of potentially profitable additions the ACC would be without these three schools? And I'm speaking of Duke, North Carolina and Virginia.

The problem seems to be that you see yourselves as better than brash New Englanders, want to disavow your Southern heritage, and balk at being beholden to Northerners and have some silly notion that you should be Southern Ivy.

I hate to say it but in some ways you are like an old lady's' bridge club. You want to be exclusive, talk about everyone else in demeaning ways, and do nothing important or productive for the community and never admit wrong on your own part. Therefore doers, the practical, and the forthright, need not apply without a pre-approved pedigree assuring Patrician behavior.

The mystery to me is why a practical school like Notre Dame would even be associated with the Tobacco Plantation Supper Club?

Simple. It kept ND football out of the clutches of the Big Ten, just like the Big East deal did in 1995.

That was the main goal of ND in conference realignment from 1995 to the present.

ND wanted the Big East to survive, but not at the cost of joining for football (its the same with the ACC).

So, the ACC was useful to provide minor bowl access, it filled some November scheduling holes and provided a good home for ND's other sports.

It also was seen as helpful to ND's Southern recruiting efforts to play more games in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida.

But, by far, the main value of the ACC to ND was that it did not require football to join.

They was never a chance that ND was going to allow the "Supper Club" control over its football program.

A five game scheduling deal, sure. That just replaced the previous three game Big Ten opponents (Michigan, Michigan State and Purdue) and the two traditional Big East opponents (mainly Pitt and BC).

But full membership? No way.

(If it had required football to join, the value of the ACC to ND's plans would have plummeted greatly)

So, that has always meant that ND football was never going to be included, despite what some ACC homers say or thought.

If the Big 12 was the only conference who would offer ND partial membership in 2012, it would have joined the Big 12. The same goes for the SEC and Pac 12.

If no conference would have done so, ND would have stayed with the Catholic 7 of the Big East as a last resort.

I got the impression the Big East didn't want Notre Dame. They didn't want their non-rev programs overwhelmed by ND's infused with football money.

You would have to ask a C7 fan, but I think that those schools would have been okay with ND remaining in the Big East.

IMO, the C7 would have been very happy had Notre Dame remained a non-football member of the new Big East circa 2012.

Or circa today - if Notre Dame wanted to place its hoops and other sports in the Big East right now, I imagine we would roll out the red carpet. All upside, no downside, IMO.

Notre Dame has very well funded, very good non-rev sports programs. They wouldn't want Notre Dame winning almost all the conference titles outside basketball. This year in the fall standings, Notre Dame is 2nd. They were 14th last year. Georgetown lead the Big East at #63.

(01-17-2022 02:12 PM)TerryD Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 01:19 PM)XLance Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 11:04 AM)TerryD Wrote:  

(01-16-2022 01:27 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(01-16-2022 12:49 PM)XLance Wrote:  That is true Frank.
The ACC today would be a much better conference without Miami, Syracuse and Boston College. That trio was the choice of the ESPN consultants and sold to the conference by ESPN. That's back when the conference thought that ESPN had their back, but what they really wanted was access to Notre Dame.

Have you ever considered how much more hospitable, congenial, and cooperative, and how much more tolerant of potentially profitable additions the ACC would be without these three schools? And I'm speaking of Duke, North Carolina and Virginia.

The problem seems to be that you see yourselves as better than brash New Englanders, want to disavow your Southern heritage, and balk at being beholden to Northerners and have some silly notion that you should be Southern Ivy.

I hate to say it but in some ways you are like an old lady's' bridge club. You want to be exclusive, talk about everyone else in demeaning ways, and do nothing important or productive for the community and never admit wrong on your own part. Therefore doers, the practical, and the forthright, need not apply without a pre-approved pedigree assuring Patrician behavior.

The mystery to me is why a practical school like Notre Dame would even be associated with the Tobacco Plantation Supper Club?

Simple. It kept ND football out of the clutches of the Big Ten, just like the Big East deal did in 1995.

That was the main goal of ND in conference realignment from 1995 to the present.

ND wanted the Big East to survive, but not at the cost of joining for football (its the same with the ACC).

So, the ACC was useful to provide minor bowl access, it filled some November scheduling holes and provided a good home for ND's other sports.

It also was seen as helpful to ND's Southern recruiting efforts to play more games in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida.

But, by far, the main value of the ACC to ND was that it did not require football to join.

They was never a chance that ND was going to allow the "Supper Club" control over its football program.

A five game scheduling deal, sure. That just replaced the previous three game Big Ten opponents (Michigan, Michigan State and Purdue) and the two traditional Big East opponents (mainly Pitt and BC).

But full membership? No way.

(If it had required football to join, the value of the ACC to ND's plans would have plummeted greatly)

So, that has always meant that ND football was never going to be included, despite what some ACC homers say or thought.

If the Big 12 was the only conference who would offer ND partial membership in 2012, it would have joined the Big 12. The same goes for the SEC and Pac 12.

If no conference would have done so, ND would have stayed with the Catholic 7 of the Big East as a last resort.

A swarm of bonnet bees must have been blown into Grayson Highlands with yesterday's snowstorm, because they sure are buzzing today!

It has been snowing for about two days now.

Just wait until the end of this week

(01-17-2022 02:45 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 02:39 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 12:29 PM)TerryD Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 12:05 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 11:04 AM)TerryD Wrote:  Simple. It kept ND football out of the clutches of the Big Ten, just like the Big East deal did in 1995.

That was the main goal of ND in conference realignment from 1995 to the present.

ND wanted the Big East to survive, but not at the cost of joining for football (its the same with the ACC).

So, the ACC was useful to provide minor bowl access, it filled some November scheduling holes and provided a good home for ND's other sports.

It also was seen as helpful to ND's Southern recruiting efforts to play more games in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida.

But, by far, the main value of the ACC to ND was that it did not require football to join.

They was never a chance that ND was going to allow the "Supper Club" control over its football program.

A five game scheduling deal, sure. That just replaced the previous three game Big Ten opponents (Michigan, Michigan State and Purdue) and the two traditional Big East opponents (mainly Pitt and BC).

But full membership? No way.

(If it had required football to join, the value of the ACC to ND's plans would have plummeted greatly)

So, that has always meant that ND football was never going to be included, despite what some ACC homers say or thought.

If the Big 12 was the only conference who would offer ND partial membership in 2012, it would have joined the Big 12. The same goes for the SEC and Pac 12.

If no conference would have done so, ND would have stayed with the Catholic 7 of the Big East as a last resort.

I got the impression the Big East didn't want Notre Dame. They didn't want their non-rev programs overwhelmed by ND's infused with football money.

You would have to ask a C7 fan, but I think that those schools would have been okay with ND remaining in the Big East.

IMO, the C7 would have been very happy had Notre Dame remained a non-football member of the new Big East circa 2012.

Or circa today - if Notre Dame wanted to place its hoops and other sports in the Big East right now, I imagine we would roll out the red carpet. All upside, no downside, IMO.

Notre Dame has very well funded, very good non-rev sports programs. They wouldn't want Notre Dame winning almost all the conference titles outside basketball. This year in the fall standings, Notre Dame is 2nd. They were 14th last year. Georgetown lead the Big East at #63.

IMO, the upside of having the ND brand and overall institutional presence in those sports would far outweigh any downsides.

As a Georgetown fan, I would be stunned if ND wanted to join and the Big East was not eager to have them.

But hey, maybe we could interview a Big East commissioner to know for sure?

(01-17-2022 02:50 PM)Statefan Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 02:12 PM)TerryD Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 01:19 PM)XLance Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 11:04 AM)TerryD Wrote:  

(01-16-2022 01:27 PM)JRsec Wrote:  Have you ever considered how much more hospitable, congenial, and cooperative, and how much more tolerant of potentially profitable additions the ACC would be without these three schools? And I'm speaking of Duke, North Carolina and Virginia.

The problem seems to be that you see yourselves as better than brash New Englanders, want to disavow your Southern heritage, and balk at being beholden to Northerners and have some silly notion that you should be Southern Ivy.

I hate to say it but in some ways you are like an old lady's' bridge club. You want to be exclusive, talk about everyone else in demeaning ways, and do nothing important or productive for the community and never admit wrong on your own part. Therefore doers, the practical, and the forthright, need not apply without a pre-approved pedigree assuring Patrician behavior.

The mystery to me is why a practical school like Notre Dame would even be associated with the Tobacco Plantation Supper Club?

Simple. It kept ND football out of the clutches of the Big Ten, just like the Big East deal did in 1995.

That was the main goal of ND in conference realignment from 1995 to the present.

ND wanted the Big East to survive, but not at the cost of joining for football (its the same with the ACC).

So, the ACC was useful to provide minor bowl access, it filled some November scheduling holes and provided a good home for ND's other sports.

It also was seen as helpful to ND's Southern recruiting efforts to play more games in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida.

But, by far, the main value of the ACC to ND was that it did not require football to join.

They was never a chance that ND was going to allow the "Supper Club" control over its football program.

A five game scheduling deal, sure. That just replaced the previous three game Big Ten opponents (Michigan, Michigan State and Purdue) and the two traditional Big East opponents (mainly Pitt and BC).

But full membership? No way.

(If it had required football to join, the value of the ACC to ND's plans would have plummeted greatly)

So, that has always meant that ND football was never going to be included, despite what some ACC homers say or thought.

If the Big 12 was the only conference who would offer ND partial membership in 2012, it would have joined the Big 12. The same goes for the SEC and Pac 12.

If no conference would have done so, ND would have stayed with the Catholic 7 of the Big East as a last resort.

A swarm of bonnet bees must have been blown into Grayson Highlands with yesterday's snowstorm, because they sure are buzzing today!

It has been snowing for about two days now.

Just wait until the end of this week

Some areas in Ashe, Alleghany and Watauga have about 20 inches already
More is on the way .........
the ski resorts are very happy

(01-17-2022 10:31 AM)TerryD Wrote:  

(01-16-2022 06:23 PM)BewareThePhog Wrote:  I’m going to assume that ND’s ratings have remained high, certainly above those of most schools. But what are the demographics behind that audience? The average of fans for almost all sports is aging fast (the PGA is up to 64!) and college football isn’t immune. I certainly could be wrong, but with changes in social attitudes among many young people and declining church membership, I could see the potential for Notre Dame’s traditional appeal to be somewhat on the wane, resulting in a fan base that is aging faster than the average.

That’s just speculation - I have to think that those making decisions on these matters have a lot of data on this point. But if that is the case, it could impact future considerations of their place in the overall CFB universe.

I read this exact post on a message board in 1998...and 2005...and 2011...and.....

Die hard ND fans have children, grandchildren and great grandchildren...we indoctrinate them at early ages to be ND fans.

(For instance, my three kids were born/raised in Baton Rouge, two of them graduated from LSU, and they are all die hard ND fans who root against LSU. They are all carrying on the family tradition with their children)

This "fanbase aging faster than the average" has always been a message board urban myth.

For me it was a point of speculation. If you’re outside the culture, it’s a reasonable question to ponder. That being said, even if the existing alumni base is as determined as you note to preserve and expand it, that’s still a phenomenon limited to the alumni of a rather exclusive school rather than a big state school. Whether that carries over to Catholics in general and/or the population at large, I don’t know.

But as I said, those who are going to be writing the big checks will have access to detailed analysis. If they continue to treat ND with the same historic deference, that’d show that their analysis agrees with your experience.

(01-17-2022 02:19 PM)esayem Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 10:18 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(01-16-2022 01:52 PM)esayem Wrote:  

(01-16-2022 10:38 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(01-16-2022 10:23 AM)esayem Wrote:  Logic says you start at the beginning. Penn State to the Big 10 was a MEGA move and caused massive tidal waves. It destroyed the possibility of a northeastern football conference and sealed the bleak future of the Big East sponsoring football. It caused a HUGE panic. Take some time to read the articles from back then.

Arkansas was poached from the SWC and that had a PROFOUND impact on the viability of the league. They were the basketball king, brought a ton of fans to the conference tourney, and were the only school outside of Texas. There was no replacing them because Tulane was too much like the private schools and Memphis and Louisville weren’t cultural fits. It absolutely caused Texas and TAMU to band together with the Big 8.

It’s a chain reaction. Without the Big 10/SEC making those moves, the ACC doesn’t add FSU and doesn’t start conversations with Miami. Choosing to ignore earlier events is your prerogative, but it’s wrong.

Well if we're not going to ignore earlier events, why stop at 1990?

To me, you put brackets around events when they make sense. For the reasons given, the 1990-1991 moves don't connect to the current events like the ACC raids of 2003-2004 do. To me it's just a very tenuous linkage without much support. Just to address your points:

1) The Penn State move to the B1G didn't destroy the Big East football conference, as that conference did in fact form at that time and from 1992-2003 it basically thrived just fine. IIRC, nobody called it the "Big Least" at that time, that came with the ACC raids later.

I am looking at the overarching picture. The SEC has designs to get into Texas and that “cycle” or whatever you want to call it took 20 years to complete, but ultimately it happened. People have been speculating about it since the onset. The fact that it went unresolved for so long meant the landscape was never settled.

Quote:2) The Arkansas move neither boosted SEC football power nor did it do much to the SWC. Basketball? The SWC never lived or died with hoops, it was a football-first conference through and through, and as long as it had Texas, it was fine.

This is just flat out wrong.

I just explained how it crushed the SWC and sparked its demise. I’ve actually read about it thoroughly and the SEC announcing they were interested in Arkansas, Texas, and TAMU absolutely killed that conference. Ask Houston, TTU, and SMU fans. This is pretty common knowledge. To say it didn’t do anything to the SWC is just flat out ignorant. Arkansas was one of the three jewels in the SWC crown and without them the conference was DOA.

Quote:IIRC, the big panic around 1990 were related to changes to television. Notre Dame's 1989 move to leave the CFA and sign its own TV deal was the signal that the 1981 Coalition that upended the NCAA monopoly on TV was gone. It was now every conference for itself, so conferences began moving to shore up TV. Before then, from 1984 to 1989, conferences were figuring out the TV landscape in a post-NCAA world, with the CFA having one sleepy package and the B10 and PAC having another. Notre Dame clarified that. That's what was the impetus for these moves, IMO, but they weren't predatory in a significant sense, because nobody was really harmed. The B8 and SWC merger was also in my view a response to this changing TV situation, happens no matter who Arkansas is aligned with. The 1990-1991 ACC/SEC/B1G expansion was an effect of the evolving TV situation, not a cause of later instability.

The proof of this to me is that we had a long period of stability, with no raiding, from 1991 - 2003.

The ACC's 2003-2004 raids on the Big East were much more harmful, hence much more impactful, and thus the logical place to bracket off different time categories. The ACC raids altered the BCS power structure, making the Big East the "Big Least" and creating instability that hadn't existed.

And again, I have zero issue with those ACC raids. It did what it had to do, IMO.

Harmful and impactful to whom? The Frankenstein Big East football league abomination? It wasn’t meant to be.

The 90’s was NOT stable! There was so much realignment happening at the DI level it was hard to keep track of. You had the introduction of THREE different bowl systems. What about that screams stability? The Big Ten said they were reviewing expansion the whole decade. Mizzou wanted to jump, Kansas, Syracuse, Pitt. All of those teams and more wanted that twelfth spot and the Big Ten knew they were eventually going to cash-in on that CCG.

I appreciate you believing the ACC was a mastermind in expansion and deserves the credit, but admittedly they were always behind in matters of member growth. Do you not recall how the ACC wanted to sponsor a CCG with only ten members and the other leagues wouldn’t allow it? I WISH we could have taken Miami and stuck at 10, but blame falls on ALL the other conferences that backed an arbitrary rule where divisions had to have six members. How ******* stupid. So stupid that the rule doesn’t even exist anymore.

About the SEC, Arkansas and the SWC - I disagree. I don't think Arkansas leaving for the SEC was anywhere near a fatal blow for the SWC. The SWC hinged on Texas and to a lesser extent TAMU. Losing Arkansas sucked, of course, but it was like a knife wound to the shoulder, not the gut.

The SWC's fate was IMO related to TV, and the Big 8, which had not suffered losses, was in the same position - too small and regional for TV in a changing TV landscape. They were a good marriage, in a technical sense but not as it turned out a cultural sense.

So a merger was IMO inevitable whether Arkansas was in the SWC or not. And it was the merger that sunk the SWC leftbehinds.

As for what I call 1990s stability, I was referring to actual movements of conference members among power conferences. Obviously, the 1990s were a time of big changes in terms of bowl alliances and efforts to match "1 vs 2" to get a clear-cut national champ.

Sorry, but I have to give credit where I think it is due (LOL), the ACC's attacks on the Big East in 2003 upset the power-conference applecart in a way that IMO reverbs to this day.

You’re underestimating Arkansas worth to the SWC. The fact they were the only school outside of Texas and then left crushed the SWC’s media hopes. They were even reaching out to Miami and also talking to some Big East schools about football-only membership. Fred Jacoby did an admirable job trying to save the conference, but as soon as Arkansas left, Texas and TAMU began looking elsewhere. There was no suitable replacement. Don’t you think that infers the conference is in big trouble? I mean it suffered and died. Gone. No zombie WAC, no Big East w/out football. Gone forever, memories only conjured up by old Texans and Jerry Jones.

The SEC absolutely knew they would kill the SWC, what they didn’t count on was Texas being stuck up for 20 years.

I agree with the bolded point above but I think it was neither a fatal blow nor a wound - it was just a step down a road that was inevitable. Arkansas leaving was bad for the SWC, no doubt, but it isn't like Arkansas being gone dramatically changed the tough situation the SWC faced; i.e. a small media footprint and 6 schools who weren't drawing fans and were increasingly uncompetitive. It seems to me that the biggest impact of Arkansas leaving that it gave cover to UT and A&M to look out for their own interests more explicitly. The SWC was doomed either way but their departure make its dissolution more immediate.

(01-17-2022 07:22 PM)BewareThePhog Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 10:31 AM)TerryD Wrote:  

(01-16-2022 06:23 PM)BewareThePhog Wrote:  I’m going to assume that ND’s ratings have remained high, certainly above those of most schools. But what are the demographics behind that audience? The average of fans for almost all sports is aging fast (the PGA is up to 64!) and college football isn’t immune. I certainly could be wrong, but with changes in social attitudes among many young people and declining church membership, I could see the potential for Notre Dame’s traditional appeal to be somewhat on the wane, resulting in a fan base that is aging faster than the average.

That’s just speculation - I have to think that those making decisions on these matters have a lot of data on this point. But if that is the case, it could impact future considerations of their place in the overall CFB universe.

I read this exact post on a message board in 1998...and 2005...and 2011...and.....

Die hard ND fans have children, grandchildren and great grandchildren...we indoctrinate them at early ages to be ND fans.

(For instance, my three kids were born/raised in Baton Rouge, two of them graduated from LSU, and they are all die hard ND fans who root against LSU. They are all carrying on the family tradition with their children)

This "fanbase aging faster than the average" has always been a message board urban myth.

For me it was a point of speculation. If you’re outside the culture, it’s a reasonable question to ponder. That being said, even if the existing alumni base is as determined as you note to preserve and expand it, that’s still a phenomenon limited to the alumni of a rather exclusive school rather than a big state school. Whether that carries over to Catholics in general and/or the population at large, I don’t know.

But as I said, those who are going to be writing the big checks will have access to detailed analysis. If they continue to treat ND with the same historic deference, that’d show that their analysis agrees with your experience.

Who mentioned alumni ? I am talking about all ND fans in general, coast to coast.

Here’san article and a separate quote from a Raycom suit about Arkansas’ departure.

Cotton Bowl May Cut Ties To Southwest Conference

"You didn't have the support in the two biggest markets, Dallas and Houston, to keep it going," says Ken Haines, vice president of Raycom, which holds the conference's syndication rights. With Arkansas, he added, the Southwest Conference "wasn't the Big Ten. It was viable. When Arkansas left, it made it difficult for us to break even financially."

Another:

Arkansas-Texas, a rivalry that once decided the national championship, would be no longer. That left the conference with only two perennials: Texas-Texas A&M and Texas-Oklahoma.

"As a league," Chryst says, "you went in trying to create three packages: national, syndicated, plus they (the members) wanted to hold something on their own. The conference wasn't deep enough to support it. TV brings issues into sharper focus."

(01-17-2022 02:54 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 02:45 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 02:39 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 12:29 PM)TerryD Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 12:05 PM)bullet Wrote:  I got the impression the Big East didn't want Notre Dame. They didn't want their non-rev programs overwhelmed by ND's infused with football money.

You would have to ask a C7 fan, but I think that those schools would have been okay with ND remaining in the Big East.

IMO, the C7 would have been very happy had Notre Dame remained a non-football member of the new Big East circa 2012.

Or circa today - if Notre Dame wanted to place its hoops and other sports in the Big East right now, I imagine we would roll out the red carpet. All upside, no downside, IMO.

Notre Dame has very well funded, very good non-rev sports programs. They wouldn't want Notre Dame winning almost all the conference titles outside basketball. This year in the fall standings, Notre Dame is 2nd. They were 14th last year. Georgetown lead the Big East at #63.

IMO, the upside of having the ND brand and overall institutional presence in those sports would far outweigh any downsides.

As a Georgetown fan, I would be stunned if ND wanted to join and the Big East was not eager to have them.

But hey, maybe we could interview a Big East commissioner to know for sure?

The Catholic 7 would have 1000% wanted ND to join their version of the Big East. If ND couldn’t play basketball in the ACC or another P5 league, the Big East would take immediately and without hesitation.

However, it’s a weird alternate reality to think that the C7 even bothered asking in 2012 considering that ND left the old Big East for the ACC first, which was one of the final straws that spurred the C7 to leave in the first place. I don’t know if people are misremembering timelines - ND was gone to the ACC before the Catholic 7 split off.

(01-17-2022 11:27 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 02:54 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 02:45 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 02:39 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 12:29 PM)TerryD Wrote:  You would have to ask a C7 fan, but I think that those schools would have been okay with ND remaining in the Big East.

IMO, the C7 would have been very happy had Notre Dame remained a non-football member of the new Big East circa 2012.

Or circa today - if Notre Dame wanted to place its hoops and other sports in the Big East right now, I imagine we would roll out the red carpet. All upside, no downside, IMO.

Notre Dame has very well funded, very good non-rev sports programs. They wouldn't want Notre Dame winning almost all the conference titles outside basketball. This year in the fall standings, Notre Dame is 2nd. They were 14th last year. Georgetown lead the Big East at #63.

IMO, the upside of having the ND brand and overall institutional presence in those sports would far outweigh any downsides.

As a Georgetown fan, I would be stunned if ND wanted to join and the Big East was not eager to have them.

But hey, maybe we could interview a Big East commissioner to know for sure?

The Catholic 7 would have 1000% wanted ND to join their version of the Big East. If ND couldn’t play basketball in the ACC or another P5 league, the Big East would take immediately and without hesitation.

However, it’s a weird alternate reality to think that the C7 even bothered asking in 2012 considering that ND left the old Big East for the ACC first, which was one of the final straws that spurred the C7 to leave in the first place. I don’t know if people are misremembering timelines - ND was gone to the ACC before the Catholic 7 split off.

Yeah ND moved to the ACC on Sep 12,2012.

The C7 split occurred if you will about 3 months later in December.

A lot of things brought down the SWC. The Dallas Cowboys and Houston Oilers took over Dallas and Houston. This really cut into the private schools who couldn't keep up with the public schools who had to subsidize the private schools more and more. Eventually they quit splitting the gate and the home team kept it all. TV and the OU lawsuit doomed the conference. Arkansas, Texas, and A&M didn't kill the SWC, they kept it alive another 10-20 years. All three were supposed to go to the SEC back then. Arkansas went first "to give UT and A&M cover" as well as an excuse as state politics would be in an uproar, which it did. It was too big and kept it from happening. They should have had it done before anyone found out like they did this time.

(01-17-2022 10:59 PM)esayem Wrote:  Here’san article and a separate quote from a Raycom suit about Arkansas’ departure.

Cotton Bowl May Cut Ties To Southwest Conference

"You didn't have the support in the two biggest markets, Dallas and Houston, to keep it going," says Ken Haines, vice president of Raycom, which holds the conference's syndication rights. With Arkansas, he added, the Southwest Conference "wasn't the Big Ten. It was viable. When Arkansas left, it made it difficult for us to break even financially."

Another:

Arkansas-Texas, a rivalry that once decided the national championship, would be no longer. That left the conference with only two perennials: Texas-Texas A&M and Texas-Oklahoma.

"As a league," Chryst says, "you went in trying to create three packages: national, syndicated, plus they (the members) wanted to hold something on their own. The conference wasn't deep enough to support it. TV brings issues into sharper focus."

Here's a quote from a November, 1995 St Pete Times article on the demise of the SWC. To my surprise, it laid the blame where I put it the other day, on the 1989 Notre Dame TV deal ("Windegger" was the TCU AD at the time):

"Windegger and most others in the SWC agree that, though a myriad of factors contributed to the decline of the once-proud conference, the deadliest blow was delivered when Notre Dame left the College Football Alliance to carve its own broadcast deal with NBC in 1990."

https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1995/11...th-a-bang/

Also, it's important to remember (I needed to remind myself) that the SWC and Big 8 didn't merge. The Big 8 invited the four Texas schools to join, and they accepted. It was a "raid" of the Big 8 on the SWC (although ironically, the future would prove that this was a case of the mouse swallowing the cat, as the Texas schools came to dominate the Big 12 politically).

The key thing to me is, when the SWC and Big 8 come together because of TV, you're not going to include all the schools. A 17-team conference is too big, too much dead weight.

So if you look at the two lineups, with Arkansas included because we're assuming they never left the SWC for the SEC, the schools that got left behind - Houston, SMU, TCU and Rice - are the obvious ones to leave behind.

I mean, in the Big 8, you have 5 state flagships. None of them are getting left behind. The other three were quasi-flagship state schools - Iowa State, Kansas State and Oklahoma State. They all have more resources and market value than the four SWC leftbehinds, save for Rice in a resource sense, but Rice of course had no interest in using those resources for athletics.

So IMO, one way or the other, these two come together, and the four Texas schools get dropped, whether Arkansas leaves for the SEC or not.

And the mechanism to achieve that is the Big 8 'raiding' the SWC, because if it is a merger, or the SWC raiding the Big 8, then getting rid of those four TX schools is much harder, because that would involve kicking them out of the SWC, and kicking out members is a fraught thing to try do, fraught with legal problems.

(01-17-2022 11:27 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 02:54 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 02:45 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 02:39 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 12:29 PM)TerryD Wrote:  You would have to ask a C7 fan, but I think that those schools would have been okay with ND remaining in the Big East.

IMO, the C7 would have been very happy had Notre Dame remained a non-football member of the new Big East circa 2012.

Or circa today - if Notre Dame wanted to place its hoops and other sports in the Big East right now, I imagine we would roll out the red carpet. All upside, no downside, IMO.

Notre Dame has very well funded, very good non-rev sports programs. They wouldn't want Notre Dame winning almost all the conference titles outside basketball. This year in the fall standings, Notre Dame is 2nd. They were 14th last year. Georgetown lead the Big East at #63.

IMO, the upside of having the ND brand and overall institutional presence in those sports would far outweigh any downsides.

As a Georgetown fan, I would be stunned if ND wanted to join and the Big East was not eager to have them.

But hey, maybe we could interview a Big East commissioner to know for sure?

The Catholic 7 would have 1000% wanted ND to join their version of the Big East. If ND couldn’t play basketball in the ACC or another P5 league, the Big East would take immediately and without hesitation.

However, it’s a weird alternate reality to think that the C7 even bothered asking in 2012 considering that ND left the old Big East for the ACC first, which was one of the final straws that spurred the C7 to leave in the first place. I don’t know if people are misremembering timelines - ND was gone to the ACC before the Catholic 7 split off.

It was talked about for about 7 years before it all happened.

(01-17-2022 10:37 AM)TerryD Wrote:  

(01-16-2022 12:12 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(01-16-2022 11:32 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(01-16-2022 11:25 AM)bullet Wrote:  

(01-16-2022 06:49 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  I don't know ..... 1991 (Penn State) and 1992 (Arkansas) to 2003 (ACC raids Big East) seems like an awful long lag to infer a link.

Plus, as far as equilibrium, we'd have to factor in FSU joining the ACC in 1991. That was IMO much more out of region than PSU to the B1G or Arkansas to the SEC.

It was also much more impactful on the strength and culture of the conference they joined. It made the ACC a first-team football conference, which they hadn't been since the early 1960s.

Penn St. and Arkansas were the culmination of the rise of the pros (diminishing privates and city schools) and the OU/UGA lawsuit. That cycle ended the SWC and Big 8 creating the Big 12, CUSA and WAC 16. That cycle didn't end until the WAC split into WAC and MWC ending the Big West and leading to the Sun Belt.

The ACC started the next cycle, but the Big 10 put it in hyperdrive with their open auditions. The BCS 6 had stabilized prior to that. That was the conference network cycle.

Texas and OU going to the SEC has started the streaming/NIL cycle of realignment.

Changes in media have driven each of the last few cycles. The 50s realignments were due to the changes of universities after WWII and explosion of the size of state schools, meaning many of the privates couldn't or didn't want to keep up.

I like the cycles concept and agree that media has driven these cycles.

Media is important because conferences collect directly on that. So it makes sense that conference changes would be tied to changes in the media landscape.

Maybe the most impactful media event was Notre Dame's TV deal in 1989. That IMO clarified what the landscape would look like after five years of trying to figure things out in the wake of the 1984 supreme court decision.

Notre Dame, ironically, really gave a kickstart to conferences seeking to leverage media to maximize their exposure and revenue.

ND pulling out of CFA put everyone into a panic. Each conference for themselves.
From the 1991 Information Please Sports Almanac:
"Two announcements early in the year particularly shook the Division I landscape. First, on Dec. 19, 1989, the Big Ten announced that it was admitting longtime football independent Penn State. Then, less than two months later, on Feb. 5, Notre Dame broke with sacred tradition and signed its own five-year home-games-only TV football contract with NBC for $38 million.
Expansion and TV money were suddenly the talk of Division I-A football schools. Change was in the wind.
"What the leagues will look like five years from now is something no one can envision at this point," said NCAA executive director Dick Schultz...."

Article talks about how Arkansas increased their conference distributions by moving from SWC to SEC from $700,000 to $1,600,000! Also talks about an FTC case along with the loss of Notre Dame and Penn State making the CFA unstable.

"Sacred tradition" my ass.

ND had a national TV contract in 1951.

The NCAA extorted ND (and Penn, the other national tv program) into surrendering their TV rights and losing their national TV contract.

The NBC deal just restored the "sacred tradition" of ND having its own national TV contract, just like in the early Fifties.



"In 1951, five Notre Dame games were televised on the old Dumont Network. The package earned the school $55,000. Some athletic officials thought television would kill the live gate. Others wanted a piece of the tasty new pie. The NCAA soon moved into the picture, in part because many members were convinced that Notre Dame would monopolize the airwaves unless the NCAA negotiated a package for all its schools. Notre Dame decided not to fight it, and in 1952 began appearing on national telecasts in the NCAA package on a regular basis.

"There's no question that the NCAA TV committee was formed in 1952 to stop Notre Dame," said Beano Cook, an ESPN college football analyst who's followed the sport most of his life. "Two schools were opposed to the TV contract -- Notre Dame and Penn, which had a big-time program. The other schools said fine, if you feel that way, play each other 10 times a year. Once Notre Dame signed on, it worked."


https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/s...be8ce6ba8/



"Notre Dame would soon have an exclusive television deal with the DuMont Television Network starting in 1950. What attracted Notre Dame to DuMont despite receiving higher bids from ABC and NBC, was DuMont's willingness to air educational programs on behalf of Notre Dame along with the football broadcast.

This triggered concern from NCAA members that television would hurt attendance. But Notre Dame argued that the contract with DuMont actually increased interest in their football program and the university."


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre_Dame...all_on_NBC


"By 1950, Dumont picked up Notre Dame and Penn games, triggering concern from NCAA members that television would hurt attendance.

So in 1951, the governing body stepped in to police the practice. Quoting from a study by John J. Siegfried and Molly Gardner Burba of Vanderbilt University, sternly titled, The college football association television broadcast cartel, “At its 1951 convention, the NCAA revoked its then existing policy allowing each individual institution complete control over the marketing of its athletic events, a first step toward prohibiting broadcasts into areas where another Association member was hosting a game.”

According to the Vanderbilt report, the University of Pennsylvania then challenged the NCAA’s television authority. The NCAA responded by calling Penn, a “member in bad standing.” But Penn learned quickly that it’s tough to fight City Hall. After the Quakers’ first four visiting opponents cancelled their 1951 games at Penn, the school threw in the towel."


https://www.sportsbroadcastjournal.com/b...id-let-go/

Interesting history.

(01-18-2022 01:40 AM)Porcine Wrote:  A lot of things brought down the SWC. The Dallas Cowboys and Houston Oilers took over Dallas and Houston. This really cut into the private schools who couldn't keep up with the public schools who had to subsidize the private schools more and more. Eventually they quit splitting the gate and the home team kept it all. TV and the OU lawsuit doomed the conference. Arkansas, Texas, and A&M didn't kill the SWC, they kept it alive 10-20 years longer than it lasted. All three were supposed to go to the SEC back then. Arkansas went first "to give UT and A&M cover" as well as an excuse as state politics would be in an uproar, which it did. It was too big and kept it from happening. They should have had it done before anyone found out like they did this time.

The SMU death penalty and Arkansas's departure just hastened the end. The Big 8 split off from the smaller mostly private remaining Missouri Valley schools in the 20s. The SEC split from the Southern Conference in the 30s. The ACC left behind the smaller mostly private Southern Conference schools in the 50s. The Pac left Montana and Idaho behind in the 50s. It wasn't until the mid 90s that Texas and Texas A&M left the smaller mostly private SWC schools behind.

(01-18-2022 08:52 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(01-17-2022 10:59 PM)esayem Wrote:  Here’san article and a separate quote from a Raycom suit about Arkansas’ departure.

Cotton Bowl May Cut Ties To Southwest Conference

"You didn't have the support in the two biggest markets, Dallas and Houston, to keep it going," says Ken Haines, vice president of Raycom, which holds the conference's syndication rights. With Arkansas, he added, the Southwest Conference "wasn't the Big Ten. It was viable. When Arkansas left, it made it difficult for us to break even financially."

Another:

Arkansas-Texas, a rivalry that once decided the national championship, would be no longer. That left the conference with only two perennials: Texas-Texas A&M and Texas-Oklahoma.

"As a league," Chryst says, "you went in trying to create three packages: national, syndicated, plus they (the members) wanted to hold something on their own. The conference wasn't deep enough to support it. TV brings issues into sharper focus."

Here's a quote from a November, 1995 St Pete Times article on the demise of the SWC. To my surprise, it laid the blame where I put it the other day, on the 1989 Notre Dame TV deal ("Windegger" was the TCU AD at the time):

"Windegger and most others in the SWC agree that, though a myriad of factors contributed to the decline of the once-proud conference, the deadliest blow was delivered when Notre Dame left the College Football Alliance to carve its own broadcast deal with NBC in 1990."

https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1995/11...th-a-bang/

Also, it's important to remember (I needed to remind myself) that the SWC and Big 8 didn't merge. The Big 8 invited the four Texas schools to join, and they accepted. It was a "raid" of the Big 8 on the SWC (although ironically, the future would prove that this was a case of the mouse swallowing the cat, as the Texas schools came to dominate the Big 12 politically).

The key thing to me is, when the SWC and Big 8 come together because of TV, you're not going to include all the schools. A 17-team conference is too big, too much dead weight.

So if you look at the two lineups, with Arkansas included because we're assuming they never left the SWC for the SEC, the schools that got left behind - Houston, SMU, TCU and Rice - are the obvious ones to leave behind.

I mean, in the Big 8, you have 5 state flagships. None of them are getting left behind. The other three were quasi-flagship state schools - Iowa State, Kansas State and Oklahoma State. They all have more resources and market value than the four SWC leftbehinds, save for Rice in a resource sense, but Rice of course had no interest in using those resources for athletics.

So IMO, one way or the other, these two come together, and the four Texas schools get dropped, whether Arkansas leaves for the SEC or not.

And the mechanism to achieve that is the Big 8 'raiding' the SWC, because if it is a merger, or the SWC raiding the Big 8, then getting rid of those four TX schools is much harder, because that would involve kicking them out of the SWC, and kicking out members is a fraught thing to try do, fraught with legal problems.

It was going to be a merger, then they decided to form a new conference without four SWC members.

As far as it happening inevitably, that’s fine. But I can say the exact same thing about the ACC expansion of 2003. 13 years earlier the BE schools were begging for football-only membership, and Miami wanted full membership. VaTech, WVU, Rutgers, and Temple would have spontaneously combusted if they were invited to the ACC. Meanwhile, zero ACC schools had any interest in joining the Big East whatsoever.

I guess I’m not sure how the addition of a former SoCon rival, Miami, and a few northern football also-rans shook up modern day alignment more than what sparked it to happen in the first place.

(01-18-2022 12:12 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(01-18-2022 01:40 AM)Porcine Wrote:  A lot of things brought down the SWC. The Dallas Cowboys and Houston Oilers took over Dallas and Houston. This really cut into the private schools who couldn't keep up with the public schools who had to subsidize the private schools more and more. Eventually they quit splitting the gate and the home team kept it all. TV and the OU lawsuit doomed the conference. Arkansas, Texas, and A&M didn't kill the SWC, they kept it alive 10-20 years longer than it lasted. All three were supposed to go to the SEC back then. Arkansas went first "to give UT and A&M cover" as well as an excuse as state politics would be in an uproar, which it did. It was too big and kept it from happening. They should have had it done before anyone found out like they did this time.

The SMU death penalty and Arkansas's departure just hastened the end. The Big 8 split off from the smaller mostly private remaining Missouri Valley schools in the 20s. The SEC split from the Southern Conference in the 30s. The ACC left behind the smaller mostly private Southern Conference schools in the 50s. The Pac left Montana and Idaho behind in the 50s. It wasn't until the mid 90s that Texas and Texas A&M left the smaller mostly private SWC schools behind.

And the Big East schools did the same in 2003 and 2012.

(01-16-2022 12:49 PM)XLance Wrote:  

(01-16-2022 11:34 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(01-15-2022 08:08 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(01-15-2022 07:46 PM)Wahoowa84 Wrote:  

(01-15-2022 06:51 PM)Gamenole Wrote:  Actually, the ACC started all of this power conference realignment madness when they poached Miami & Virginia Tech from the Big East in 2004.

Miami and VT to the ACC made perfect sense…solid cultural and football fits. It was an expansion consistent within the footprint. Those schools’ main rivals (UVa and FSU) were already in the ACC.

The next expansion, with BC, was awkward. It was an ESPN / media driven money grab. IMO, Pitt/WVU/Louisville would have been more natural expansions for the ACC’s 12th team. The ACC would then be expanding similar to the SEC’s approach when it added South Carolina/Arkansas…schools that grow the footprint, in an adjacent state.

VT, yes. Miami? They are closer to Havana, Cuba than to any other team in the ACC.

Not a fit at all, IMO.

Miami would be a geographic outlier no matter what conference they joined. By that standard, the old Big East football conference was even worse.

By fit, I look more at institutional and cultural fit, which Miami definitely has that fit with the ACC. Miami (both the school and the city) honestly have more cultural alignment with the NYC than it does with Tallahassee. That’s why Miami insisted upon Syracuse and BC to come along with them in ACC expansion originally. Miami did NOT want to be in a 100% Southern league.

It was only after Virginia politicians figured out that UVA alone could block ACC expansion (as UNC and Duke were going to vote against while everyone else was in favor) that they effectively forced UVA to push VT into that expansion plan. BC came along because, once again, Miami *insisted* upon a Northeastern expansion in order to join the ACC.

So, the school that most of the posters here believe fit the best into the ACC - VT - is the one that the ACC and Miami didn’t really want in the first place!

That is true Frank.
The ACC today would be a much better conference without Miami, Syracuse and Boston College. That trio was the choice of the ESPN consultants and sold to the conference by ESPN. That's back when the conference thought that ESPN had their back, but what they really wanted was access to Notre Dame.

All the ACC and ESPN really cared about was Miami. Miami demanded that Syracuse and BC be brought along.