(07-07-2023 07:10 AM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  Summing up my thoughts a little more concisely:

College football is by its very nature a regional sport. The split mirror worked well for this as games of regional interest were typically OTA. When ND and the SEC got national OTA deals, everyone else wanted them too. This has driven conferences to expand past their old footprints and become more national, harming the less marketable programs left behind in the raided conferences.

ND had a national OTA in 1951 and the NCAA threatened and extorted it into surrendering those rights to the NCAA (until the 1984 decision).

To me, the 1991 ND/NBC deal merely corrected the evil actions of the NCAA in stripping ND of that type of contract in 1951.

Frankly, without the NCAA's illegal actions, ND would have had a national OTA deal the entire time.

(07-07-2023 03:39 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  

(07-07-2023 02:03 AM)DawgNBama Wrote:  

(07-06-2023 09:18 PM)bryanw1995 Wrote:  

(07-06-2023 06:35 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  I feel like the networks, particularly ABC/ESPN, have had a huge impact on conference realignment since Oklahoma and Georgia were successful in their Supreme Court case against the NCAA.

For one thing, NBC took a bare minimum approach. They inked that deal with Notre Dame and that’s been their only major college sports property. Their unwillingness to spend big really limited potential bidders.

Then there’s ABC/ESPN. The worldwide leader needed a lot of content for their family of networks so they had to ink a lot of different deals with multiple conferences in order to have national coverage.

CBS initially had the Big East and SEC but eventually dropped the former after the ACC (ABC/ESPN property) raided them.

Which brings us to raiding. The Big 8’s evolution into the Big 12 was brought about by two conferences who were disadvantaged in the world of television due to their limited markets. The ACC did a similar thing the following decade. They went after another league on the advice of their media partner, to make a better tv product.

Suddenly sports journalism ceased to be sports journalism. The networks ceased being objective and it became about protecting your financial investment by promoting the brands you were contracted with. CBS only had the SEC so naturally they sang their praises. ABC/ESPN had lots of different conferences in their portfolio but internally there seemed to plan to promote the ACC as a basketball league and the SEC as their premier college football property. In the late 2000s they were heaping on the praises. It was all about SEC speed. If another conference had a good team, ESPN talking heads would call them SEC-esque.

You had jealousies and infighting among the leagues too. ABC/ESPN/ESPN used to have a great model where ESPN would air a game nationally and then two games of regional interest would spit mirror between ABC and ESPN2 where the game that was of most regional interest would be OTA in your market, while the other was on ESPN2. Conferences saw what ND and the SEC had with their national OTA deals and suddenly the split mirror wasn’t good enough. Everyone wanted national OTA coverage.

And when you go to national OTA coverage, in order to capitalize, the networks only want the biggest brands with the broadest national appeal on their network. With Tier 3 rights being wrapped into conference packages and often conference networks, the days of a local affiliate in your market picking up and airing games not tapped for the big broadcasts are gone. In the long run, I think this is going to be bad for a lot of programs who aren’t historic blue bloods.

ESPN discovered about 20 yrs ago that rather than paying a bunch of leagues fair market price and catering local broadcasts to regional tastes, it was cheaper to to consolidate brands into fewer conferences. Pull out the tent poles, and suddenly you can get what’s left on the cheap. That’s what happened with the 2004-2012 Big East. ESPN was able to get them for a lot less than the other BCS leagues and put that content in non-traditional time slots like Thursday nights. (I watched a lot of Thursday night Big East games in college.

I haven’t mentioned FOX yet because they were such a late comer to college football scene. Their first foray was with the BCS and a few other bowls. I don’t think it was until the early 2000s that they aired regular season games. But I’m not surprised by their present relationship with the Big 10 considering how ESPN picked the SEC as their flagship collegiate property. The Mouse simply didn’t have enough room for the both of them.

I didn't follow realignment back then as I was still in school, but I read recently that 15 of the 16 SWC/big 8 schools wanted to merge, but UT nixed that agreement. In retrospect that was probably a wise move, as TCU and UH might not have worked so hard to improve if they'd been in the big 12 (16?) at the start, and SMU was still recovering from their Death Penalty.

That's interesting, bryan!! I didn't follow the SWC much, except for Baylor and Texas A&M occasionally. (family is predominantly Southern Baptist, which explains Baylor, IMO). I do remember getting a Jim Feist college football magazine (he used to be as popular as Lindys or Athlon back in the day, IMO), and Feist talked about how Texas as well as Texas A&M were fed up with having to compete with smaller Texas privates with shrinking/dying alumni fanbases, and wanted to play in a big conference like the SEC or the Pac 12.
I remember reading in another magazine that Texas & A&M tried to get the Big XII to merge with the SWC, but that Nebraska and others weren't having it!! They (Nebraska & Co.) insisted on just Texas and A&M. The Texas legislature and the governor/lieutenant governor's office got involved then, and threatened to cut funding to Texas and TAMU if Baylor & Texas Tech were left out in the cold. You know what happened next.

I’ve never heard this 16-team merger talk before and actually I’m a little skeptical of it. Texas knew they had certain little brothers they had to take care of. Why would they pass up a chance to take care of them all? Why would they rather sit in an 8-team SWC from 1991-1994?

There were talks about a full merger. The Kansas St. president at the time has an interview where he talked about it. Apparently Texas and OU were never that serious about it. But it was part of the reason the left behind 4 were so shocked when Texas, Tech, A&M and Baylor left.

(07-07-2023 07:10 AM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  Summing up my thoughts a little more concisely:

College football is by its very nature a regional sport. The split mirror worked well for this as games of regional interest were typically OTA. When ND and the SEC got national OTA deals, everyone else wanted them too. This has driven conferences to expand past their old footprints and become more national, harming the less marketable programs left behind in the raided conferences.

That's not exactly what happened.

The Big 10 and Pac 10 did a joint deal after the Supreme Court ruling. 60-65 other schools (all but the MAC, Big West and minor independents) formed the College Football Association and did a TV deal. All were worth less combined than the old NCAA deal.

CFA was getting a total deal of $100 million for 5 years I believe. Notre Dame then pulled out and got their own deal for $35 million for 5 years. ABC told the CFA the rest were only worth the $100 less $35 million. So at that point all the conferences started doing their own deals.

(07-09-2023 11:02 AM)bullet Wrote:  

(07-07-2023 07:10 AM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  Summing up my thoughts a little more concisely:

College football is by its very nature a regional sport. The split mirror worked well for this as games of regional interest were typically OTA. When ND and the SEC got national OTA deals, everyone else wanted them too. This has driven conferences to expand past their old footprints and become more national, harming the less marketable programs left behind in the raided conferences.

That's not exactly what happened.

The Big 10 and Pac 10 did a joint deal after the Supreme Court ruling. 60-65 other schools (all but the MAC, Big West and minor independents) formed the College Football Association and did a TV deal. All were worth less combined than the old NCAA deal.

CFA was getting a total deal of $100 million for 5 years I believe. Notre Dame then pulled out and got their own deal for $35 million for 5 years. ABC told the CFA the rest were only worth the $100 less $35 million. So at that point all the conferences started doing their own deals.

What you said is also true but it doesn’t negate the fact that conferences who had media deals where their games were broadcast as split mirror didn’t see the one who were national OTA and didn’t go out and seek similar deals and that raiding conferences for their best pieces wasn’t a move that was encouraged by the networks so that they wouldn’t have to have so many high dollar contracts with the various leagues.

With the CFP expanding to 12 playoff teams in 2024 and 2025, will espn reserve rights to all these games or will the rights go to the open market.

Haven’t heard any reports of negotiations, the finals are about a year out