Conference Realignment - Page 108 (2024)

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Originally Posted by budwom

Ha, those guys have been delusional since Paul Dietzel dragged them out of the ACC 52 years ago.

I don’t think they’re delusional. I think they know that they don’t deserve nice things.

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Originally Posted by budwom

^ ...ok, maybe Vandy?

We’d be pretty excited, yes

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https://www.kagstv.com/video/sports/...9-819ad3a0d7f4

Speculation regarding the 4 Power conferences.

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Originally Posted by arnie

https://www.kagstv.com/video/sports/...9-819ad3a0d7f4

Speculation regarding the 4 Power conferences.

Does that mean that Stanford and Cal panicked?

Host, The Duke Basketball Roundup

Originally Posted by lotusland

Does that mean that Stanford and Cal panicked?

I think Wash St and Oreg St's payouts in the Big 12 will be less than what Cal and Stanford get from the ACC.

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I just noticed that a new player has entered the live streaming marketplace as HBO Max is adding an optional sports package to their lineup. It thru some partnership with Bleacher Report. Of note they will carry March Madness which may be enough for the casual fan..

Curious to see if this develops into something.

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Originally Posted by JasonEvans

I think Wash St and Oreg St's payouts in the Big 12 will be less than what Cal and Stanford get from the ACC.

I’d just be happy for them if they got the invite at this point

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Originally Posted by RoseBowl1942

I’d just be happy for them if they got the invite at this point

I think they will, it's the right move for everyone.

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Originally Posted by wilko

I just noticed that a new player has entered the live streaming marketplace as HBO Max is adding an optional sports package to their lineup. It thru some partnership with Bleacher Report. Of note they will carry March Madness which may be enough for the casual fan..

Curious to see if this develops into something.

Bleacher Report was bought by Turner a decade ago so they both have the same corporate overlords. I guess they are trying to have a second go at the idea because the last attempt, B/L Live, was a failure. The difference here is that this will be an add on to Max. I can see a future where one would need an subscription to Max AND this add on to watch Turner Sports. . Turner bought BT Sports (and Eurosports) so I'm sure the plan would be to offer some of those offerings contingent to licensing agreements.

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Originally Posted by ChillinDuke

To further the crux of your point, and as a counter to Jason's, and as a matter that I always try to keep a pulse on but never will accurately predict, these things (really, all things) face a moment where they "jump the shark". Nothing lasts forever. Many on this thread, myself included, have pointed to the late 2020s / 2030 as a major window of price discovery on if this market/world is still growing or shrinking (or neither). But it's also not a static world - things will change between today and ~2030 that have a meaningful impact on the broader landscape. As a relevant but not-often-discussed example, college in general is facing a jump-the-shark moment: a real divergence between the have's and have-not's. The top schools have a seemingly never-ending applicant pool with ever-growing cost figures (Bloomberg (Pay): Ivies are not far from $100k per year full cost of attendance); meanwhile the fringier, smaller, local colleges are shutting down or trying to dramatically adapt (NYT: especially in rural areas). People are seriously considering, for the first time in at least a generation if not two or three generations, if the "go to college" mantra is actually the right value proposition for everyone.

Will a similar dynamic ever play out for college football / college athletics? In the long-term, yes it will. As I said, nothing lasts forever. Not even an 8-team ACC, right? (Note to Moderators: sorry for immediately derailing this thread.) The question is will that shift come in 2025 or 2125? Or, likely, somewhere in between.

- Chillin

These are great points (that I just now read while catching up on this thread). There will be something that changes everything, and probably sooner than we think. Less than 30 years ago we were all certain the bowl system would last forever. 20 years ago the SEC was ascendant and arguably the strongest conference but not nearly as dominant as in recent years. 10 years ago we thought the Pac12 would last forever. Maybe it's the breakup of cable television. Maybe it's population movement back towards the North if climate change makes Texas and Arizona nearly uninhabitable. Maybe we just sever football programs from conferences. Maybe we just sever football programs from academic institutions altogether and align P5 college football with the NFL.

That said, my guess is that the ripples in the landscape of college attendance will not be the critical change agent here. Because it's not likely to have a huge impact on the sort of P5 schools we're almost exclusively talking about in this thread.

There's a demographic cliff coming, in that we're at a high water mark with about 3.7M high school seniors graduating annually, which is poised to drop significantly over the next decade. That's one of the primary factors driving the fiscal squeeze on the regionals and directional publics, as well as not-brand-name liberal arts colleges, etc. (not surprisingly, it's also THE biggest factor driving the "my kid can't get into any 'good' schools" angst that's the No. 1 topic of conversation at every social event I've attended in the last 5 years). Couple that with higher interest rates, and the implosion of the for-profit schools that dumped millions of people into the job market with worthless degrees and hundreds of thousands in debt, which as you've noted are making a lot of folks reconsider whether "college" as a general matter is the right path, and it looks like a lot of institutions are headed at icebergs.

But, all that's not likely going to hurt Virginia Tech or Wisconsin or other big publics that are currently dealing with over-enrollment and housing shortages. The rich will get richer in that environment. It's also the case (speaking as the parent of a freshman in college and a junior in high school) that there's a noticeable movement towards "I want to go to a school with big time athletics (= football)" in the mentality of a lot of the kids in demographics that aren't questioning the value proposition of a college education. At least in our part of the Midwest, where tons of kids are heading off to places their parents would never, ever have even considered. They don't want to go to Bucknell or NYU or Davidson or George Washington like their parents did - they want to be at Clemson and TCU and Florida and Ohio State.

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Originally Posted by Mal

...there's a noticeable movement towards "I want to go to a school with big time athletics (= football)" in the mentality of a lot of the kids in demographics that aren't questioning the value proposition of a college education. At least in our part of the Midwest, where tons of kids are heading off to places their parents would never, ever have even considered. They don't want to go to Bucknell or NYU or Davidson or George Washington like their parents did - they want to be at Clemson and TCU and Florida and Ohio State.

So many great points from you in recent posts, Mal; would spork if I could.
I find the above snippet especially interesting, and I think you're spot on. I'm curious as to what young people's long-term vision is for what they hope their college degree might do for them, insofar as any of them even have an answer to that question.
Case in point: the (to me, wildly disturbing) phenomenon chronicled in the documentary (available on Max) 'Bama Rush,' which tells the story, however slanted and dubious it might be, of young women traveling quite literally across the country to attend the University of Alabama owing to the siren song of its Greek culture. I think the trend of young women going from, say Southern California (one of the featured people in the film is from Rancho Cucamonga) specifically so they can join a sorority at a gigantic, very Southern school would have been almost entirely unheard of a generation ago.
This isn't quite the same thing as your point about athletics being a draw with regard to undergraduate campus culture, but there's of course significant overlap between Greek life and the tailgate crowd, if you will (especially at a place like 'Bama).

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Originally Posted by Mal

These are great points (that I just now read while catching up on this thread). There will be something that changes everything, and probably sooner than we think. Less than 30 years ago we were all certain the bowl system would last forever. 20 years ago the SEC was ascendant and arguably the strongest conference but not nearly as dominant as in recent years. 10 years ago we thought the Pac12 would last forever. Maybe it's the breakup of cable television. Maybe it's population movement back towards the North if climate change makes Texas and Arizona nearly uninhabitable. Maybe we just sever football programs from conferences. Maybe we just sever football programs from academic institutions altogether and align P5 college football with the NFL.

That said, my guess is that the ripples in the landscape of college attendance will not be the critical change agent here. Because it's not likely to have a huge impact on the sort of P5 schools we're almost exclusively talking about in this thread.

There's a demographic cliff coming, in that we're at a high water mark with about 3.7M high school seniors graduating annually, which is poised to drop significantly over the next decade. That's one of the primary factors driving the fiscal squeeze on the regionals and directional publics, as well as not-brand-name liberal arts colleges, etc. (not surprisingly, it's also THE biggest factor driving the "my kid can't get into any 'good' schools" angst that's the No. 1 topic of conversation at every social event I've attended in the last 5 years). Couple that with higher interest rates, and the implosion of the for-profit schools that dumped millions of people into the job market with worthless degrees and hundreds of thousands in debt, which as you've noted are making a lot of folks reconsider whether "college" as a general matter is the right path, and it looks like a lot of institutions are headed at icebergs.

But, all that's not likely going to hurt Virginia Tech or Wisconsin or other big publics that are currently dealing with over-enrollment and housing shortages. The rich will get richer in that environment. It's also the case (speaking as the parent of a freshman in college and a junior in high school) that there's a noticeable movement towards "I want to go to a school with big time athletics (= football)" in the mentality of a lot of the kids in demographics that aren't questioning the value proposition of a college education. At least in our part of the Midwest, where tons of kids are heading off to places their parents would never, ever have even considered. They don't want to go to Bucknell or NYU or Davidson or George Washington like their parents did - they want to be at Clemson and TCU and Florida and Ohio State.

I'm also in the Midwest with slightly older children and have absolutely seen this play out in our HS District, which is one of the highest rated in Illinois. I would add that a number of SEC schools, as well as Clemson and FSU, are actively courting students from other regions, with most offering free rides to applicants from target states with test scores above a certain threshold (e.g., a [30] ACT for IL residents applying to Alabama), regardless of the family's financial resources.

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FWIW, luvdahops and wilson, I moved us over to the Off Topic board in a new thread, so as not to wander too far from the core of this one.

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Originally Posted by arnie

https://www.kagstv.com/video/sports/...9-819ad3a0d7f4

Speculation regarding the 4 Power conferences.

I see no reason to take this guy seriously. He's a BYU fan who has self anointed himself as "B12Mafia" in their first year in the conference.

If the "powers that be" he references wanted WSU and OSU in the B12, it would have happened already. There were reports at one point that some P12 presidents were trying to get the B12 to take all of the P12 except WSU and OSU. For whatever reason, culture, geography, ???, they are not in the right clique at this point.

Now they are tangled up in legal wrangling to get what they can out of the remnants of the P12. What of value can be salvaged from the P12 towards their future is very unclear. The P12 commissioner and office appear to be the Keystone cops of P5 conferences. Every time I look for info about them, I just find more lawsuits and bad decisions they have been involved with. It's no wonder it all fell apart.

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Originally Posted by BigWayne

I see no reason to take this guy seriously. He's a BYU fan who has self anointed himself as "B12Mafia" in their first year in the conference.

If the "powers that be" he references wanted WSU and OSU in the B12, it would have happened already. There were reports at one point that some P12 presidents were trying to get the B12 to take all of the P12 except WSU and OSU. For whatever reason, culture, geography, ???, they are not in the right clique at this point.

Now they are tangled up in legal wrangling to get what they can out of the remnants of the P12. What of value can be salvaged from the P12 towards their future is very unclear. The P12 commissioner and office appear to be the Keystone cops of P5 conferences. Every time I look for info about them, I just find more lawsuits and bad decisions they have been involved with. It's no wonder it all fell apart.

Yep. USC is blamed and should be blamed for its perfidy, but the truth is if the PAC had been competently run over the last decade then they would never have left. I do love that they were certain they would finally be able to shut Oregon out of recruiting LA, bringing along only "chief rival" (truth: "relative weak sister") UCLA, then they learn what A&M and others have: newcomers get no say when the terrain shifts, and Nike and Oregon are coming too.

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Originally Posted by AustinDevil

Yep. USC is blamed and should be blamed for its perfidy, but the truth is if the PAC had been competently run over the last decade then they would never have left. I do love that they were certain they would finally be able to shut Oregon out of recruiting LA, bringing along only "chief rival" (truth: "relative weak sister") UCLA, then they learn what A&M and others have: newcomers get no say when the terrain shifts, and Nike and Oregon are coming too.

The PAC commissioner did the impossible: came up with a tv situation (not even deal) much worse than Swofford's...now we're down to four major conferences, and I think once OK and Texas move along to the SEC next year, the ACC money (augmented then by the new money brought in by Stanford, Cal and SMU) will clearly have the ACC in a solid third place. Sure, not good enough for the delusional sorts like unc and fsu, but not a bad place to be at all.

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ESPN is making "transition payments" directly to Oklahoma and Texas to offset the cost of their departure from the Big 12.

https://www.outkick.com/oklahoma-and...-12-exit-fees/

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Originally Posted by luvdahops

I'm also in the Midwest with slightly older children and have absolutely seen this play out in our HS District, which is one of the highest rated in Illinois. I would add that a number of SEC schools, as well as Clemson and FSU, are actively courting students from other regions, with most offering free rides to applicants from target states with test scores above a certain threshold (e.g., a [30] ACT for IL residents applying to Alabama), regardless of the family's financial resources.

My brother’s kids, who both graduated from Stevenson, illustrate this phenomenon succinctly. The oldest turned down partial athletic scholarships from a couple of B1G schools because she fell in love with Brown on her recruiting visit. The youngest could have gotten into any NESCAC school on a combination of grades and soccer, but chose UGa. Go figure.

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There's an awful lot of chatter out there that Clemson has cracked the code for breaking the GOR and is planning a move.

I'd provide a link, but I'm on mobile which makes it difficult. If you Google "Clemson ACC" there's lots of news hits in the last 48 hours. Most reputable seems to be Sports Illustrated.

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Originally Posted by Mtn.Devil.91.92.01.10.15

There's an awful lot of chatter out there that Clemson has cracked the code for breaking the GOR and is planning a move.

I'd provide a link, but I'm on mobile which makes it difficult. If you Google "Clemson ACC" there's lots of news hits in the last 48 hours. Most reputable seems to be Sports Illustrated.

I’m not seeing much here.

All the reports, including SI, are based on a single tweet that a single Clemson administrator hinted on one occasion (with zero elaboration) that they might leave the conference, without any information about how or why they could do that.

I think this is just gossips and rumors and is much more about people trolling for excitement than it is about anything that is actually happening.

I could be wrong, but I’m not seeing any solid reporting here.