CBS Sports: Realignment Fallout, What's Next

[gohornedfrogs]

I don't believe he's far off the mark. The issue is, I don't see how this is the precedent-setting moment. Teams have moved around before in the long history of College Football. Why is this episode different from Arkansas leaving in (IIRC) 1990? Or TCU moving from CUSA to the MWC? Or to the BIGXII? Fortunes change. There's fat years and lean years.

While I hate UT with the heat of a thousand suns, suing them for striving to get a better deal is silly.

I don't disagree in principle, but there's exponentially more money at stake now, and far more information and transparency.

When Arkansas bolted, TV contracts were a small portion of the budget. The game has grown, too, so the economic impact is much greater. Quite frankly, nobody paid much attention to these things back then -- they were done in the shadow of darkness in smoke-filled backrooms. This may be a case where the saturation of media/social media and the emphasis on "transparency" is a good thing.

If you are the mayor of FW, Lubbock or Waco -- or you're their state rep / senator -- don't you have an ethical and fiduciary responsibility to protect your city?

 

[Jefffrog1993]

I like the idea of the big 10, pac 12 and ACC creating an agreement with each other to not play SEC ever in any sport. If you add the top g5 schools and the rest that group would have more power clout and would be in way more markets. They could have their own playoffs championship etc. the big 8 left would hopefully end up on one of the other three conferences with Norte Dame in ACC. That league could have a super cable channel lineup with insane amounts of inventory. Every game every league including G5’s on TV. We guarantee g5 can play big 3 conference teams. Also the 2 worst teams in Big 3 get relegated to G5 leagues. The top 2 g5 teams move into the power 3 leagues. It makes crappy team matchups meaningful like English Premier league. Isolate cut off and crush the SEC. let them play with themselves all they want. They could try to declare their comfy champion a National Champion, but no one would care.

 

[satis1103]

Who gives a scheiss anymore? Is there a path to a last seed playoff birth? Fine. I'll take it.

 

[Paul in uhh]

So what I am gathering from Gary’s S Revenge we are not getting into any conference except a hybrid of leftovers. Hello Houston, Boise, K State, Baylor, BYU, Memphis, etc. with a tv payout of $10 million a year.

How depressing

It won’t feel depressing when we return to being league favorite every fall and we win minimum 10 games every year again without much effort. We spent more time ranked in the MWC than we did in the b12 if I had to guess.

Winning is fun but that’s just me.

I prefer P5 but if we don’t get it then we will be fine as long as we win.

 

[BrewingFrog]

This may be a case where the saturation of media/social media and the emphasis on "transparency" is a good thing.

Oh, I absolutely agree! I would love to see notes, projections, timetables, and juicy depositions of all the players involved. Hell, maybe even naked pics of wives and mistresses, but we'll never see any of that. There will be some carefully leaked stuff, guaranteed to make everyone look good, that will creep out after the Season is concluded, but that's about it. Nobody wants to anger ESPN/Disney.

If you are the mayor of FW, Lubbock or Waco -- or you're their state rep / senator -- don't you have an ethical and fiduciary responsibility to protect your city?

Yes. But does this mean chaining any and all enterprises to a firmly set post? Can Ralph's Cupcakes move from Fort Worth to Waco? Eddie's Septic Pumping Service? Why not? We can easily extrapolate boon/bane arguments on a host of different entities throughout the State, most of which do not involve football. The principle involved does not change simply because there's more money involved.

There's simply no way to outlaw rotten, greedy [ "illegitimate Baylor boys" ]. Mainly because politicians fall into that category...

 

[The Artist Formerly Known as PhormerPhrog]

 

[BrewingFrog]

Well, Clint?

 

[The Artist Formerly Known as PhormerPhrog]

Well, Clint?

Clint has a long way to go.

 

[kaiser soze]

Clint has a long way to go.

No big deal. Start identifying a little different and drop a letter from his/her name.

 

[Boomhauer]

So hot

 

[MagicFrog]

This was a busy day with some key things starting to happen that are beginning to make things appear to maybe/potentially/could be starting to take shape:

1) The Big 12 sends Cease and Desist letter to ESPN for working with a couple of conferences allegedly to break up the remainder of the Big 12.

2) We find that one of the deals that ESPN was working on was helping the AAC pick off 5 remaining Big 12 teams. How do we know? Because almost immediately after the C/D letter went out, a Manhattan KS reporter writes a scoop about it. He has all the details except which 5 schools were targeted (and his full written scoop which *had* to have been written before all the news came public because of he detail it had in it came out well before any tweets from the DMN, Chronicle

3) From reading various articles/message boards, the prevailing thought is that one of those 5 schools was KSU. The rationale is that KSU is the one who leaked the whole plan to the Big 12 office, and the thought behind that is that they do NOT want to go to the AAC (If they did, they would have most likely been quiet and let everything play out).

4) The next prevailing thought is that ESPN is doing this because they want the Big 12 to fully break up so OU and UT can move to the SEC sooner rather than later.

5) The fact that the letter refers to another conference would suggest that the other 3 schools not included in the AAC proposal would be headed to either the Pac-12 or ACC. The ACC is an ESPN conference and the Pac-12 is not. However, ESPN could still broker a deal based on new or future contracts.

6) The prevailing thought is that the 5 teams in the AAC deal would be the relative "have-nots" out of the remaining Big 12 schools, and the 3 that are NOT part of the AAC would be the "haves" that would move on to another (at least for now) P5 league.

There you have it, cobbled together with all sorts of non-facts, observations, opinions, and a handful of facts that came out of Manhattan KS. Obviously KSU doesn't like which bucket it's in and is trying to do something to avoid allowing it to happen. Once we know who their 4 stablemates are we just might have a very clear picture of where things are headed.

 

[Spike]

I'm obviously not a lawyer, but is it possible for every municipality with a Big 12 team being impacted to sue UT or the state of Texas? Or sue the Big 12 which in turn would have to sue UT for not being a good faith partner? It would seem that since real damage is being done that there would be some sort of an avenue to take action.

Think about it: UT's advantage is because they make all that money off the PUF. Their advantage isn't because they are wonderful on the field (they're not) or because they are better athletically, it's all because their university gets all that money to brand itself with, and that money comes out of the pockets of other Texans. Considering how much of UT is funded like that (much more than A&M, and Tech gets none of the PUF) then they should have a responsibility not to screw over a bunch of Texas cities.

Texas could have four flagship universities just based on the amount of money they give to UT alone. That's now much money UT gets for free, no questions asked.

What have they done wrong? They have stated that they are not going to sign a new contract when the old one ends. Correct me if I'm missing something but not seeing anything actionable here.

 

[Spike]

You're exactly right. The people making these decisions haven't stopped to think about the ramifications.

College fans are different than NFL fans. College fans watch all sorts of college games with great interest when their school is one of the programs competing. Take 70% of the schools out of it and they don't start following other teams, they simply lose interest and stop following any of it. These clowns talking about these 'superleagues' haven't stopped to think about what happens when suddenly all these college fans no longer have a school in that league.

Interesting. Once upon a time I used to follow the Boises and Fresnos of the world. Was pretty gung ho about University of North Texas in the eraly 2000s. Between TCU getting into the B12 and life in general getting more complicated I don't have the same inclination to keep up with such things.

 

[Gary's Shirtless Revenge]

I like the idea of the big 10, pac 12 and ACC creating an agreement with each other to not play SEC ever in any sport. If you add the top g5 schools and the rest that group would have more power clout and would be in way more markets. They could have their own playoffs championship etc. the big 8 left would hopefully end up on one of the other three conferences with Norte Dame in ACC. That league could have a super cable channel lineup with insane amounts of inventory. Every game every league including G5’s on TV. We guarantee g5 can play big 3 conference teams. Also the 2 worst teams in Big 3 get relegated to G5 leagues. The top 2 g5 teams move into the power 3 leagues. It makes crappy team matchups meaningful like English Premier league. Isolate cut off and crush the SEC. let them play with themselves all they want. They could try to declare their comfy champion a National Champion, but no one would care.

Lots of federal trade law violations here.

 

[Spike]

It's the general attitude from Cali that you describe in your last sentence, which makes me optimistic this is where we land. Like I told a group of friends, it's possible we're more popular than we think we are.

Disclaimer: I am just a dude with zero inside knowledge.

You are a dude with certain skill sets and knowledge bases that you don't always share with the board. GP!!!!!!!

 

[MagicFrog]

What have they done wrong? They have stated that they are not going to sign a new contract when the old one ends. Correct me if I'm missing something but not seeing anything actionable here.

You're probably right. It just seems like planning for 6-12 months to exit without any transparency when you have an advantage that no one else does largely because of free gifted money that no one else gets, and that advantage is being used to damage at least three other universities in the state plus the economy of the Texas municipalities they are located in should be actionable in some way.

Now that we know they've acted in bad faith for over six months, sat on boards and committees dealing with the future of the conference they are damaging/destroying it just seems like they should be responsible for some of the damage they are causing.

 

[MagicFrog]

I don't believe he's far off the mark. The issue is, I don't see how this is the precedent-setting moment. Teams have moved around before in the long history of College Football. Why is this episode different from Arkansas leaving in (IIRC) 1990? Or TCU moving from CUSA to the MWC? Or to the BIGXII? Fortunes change. There's fat years and lean years.

While I hate UT with the heat of a thousand suns, suing them for striving to get a better deal is silly.

I'd think a public school like Tech would have more ground to sue than anyone else because there is a clear difference in funding that has directly led to UT's advantages. But I'd also think municipalities that depended on revenue from this Texas state-owned entity might have some grounds.

I dunno, from what I've seen from a lot of the nation's attorney generals and the way they handle cases like from the BLM riots it seems like the letter of the law isn't that important anymore, so maybe they wouldn't really need any real legal grounds.

 

[gohornedfrogs]

I don't believe he's far off the mark. The issue is, I don't see how this is the precedent-setting moment. Teams have moved around before in the long history of College Football. Why is this episode different from Arkansas leaving in (IIRC) 1990? Or TCU moving from CUSA to the MWC? Or to the BIGXII? Fortunes change. There's fat years and lean years.

While I hate UT with the heat of a thousand suns, suing them for striving to get a better deal is silly.

For what it's worth, TCU officials/trustees met with Gov. Abbott yesterday. BU and TT have already made the trip to Austin, too.

Still think it's not different?

TCU brass has ‘very productive’ meeting with Gov. Greg Abbott amid Big 12 shake-up
https://www.star-telegram.com/sport...TCU's message well,schools land in good spots.

 

[gohornedfrogs]

I agree - I don’t think TCU getting invited to another conference would be about viewers in DFW but more our physical location and what that means for recruiting, etc

I also think a lot of falsehoods have been spread over the years about realignment and have become accepted as conventional wisdom.

Whenever realignment comes up, you always hear people talking about how X is a small school and doesn't bring eyeballs, but Y is a state school with huge enrollment/alumni base and does.

When you look at Tech vs. TCU, Tech is what, 4X the size of TCU, roughly? Yet there has never been a case where 4X the number of people watch a Tech game vs. a TCU game (unless they are playing UT or OU, duh). All this enrollment/alumni nonsense doesn't scale up in relative terms for the middle of the pack teams, and it never has (see proof below).

Additionally, and this is really the big factor -- NEITHER team moves the overall needle for ESPN or FOX. Tech may get a few hundred thousand more people watching their games than TCU -- I emphasize "may" since average TV ratings show it's closer than that over the years. A few hundred thousand extra eyeballs per game nets ESPN or FOX peanuts in the grand scheme of things. They need the tens of millions of extra eyeballs that the UTs and OUs of the world bring throughout the season.

In retail terms, Tech and TCU and all the others are at best loss leaders to get people in the ESPN/Fox doors for UT and OU, and that's why we're seeing ESPN conspiring the kill the B12.

By the way, here is some data from 2019 -- and we sucked that year but held our own on TV. OU had more than 30 million more people watch their games than TCU/Baylor/Okie State/WVU et. al. throughout the season.

And again...look at the second column that shows averages when teams aren't playing OU/UT. The gaps between the "Forgotten 8" is meaningless to the networks.

My biggest take from this is that people watch "big games" that involve a large brand -- in other words a highly-ranked OU vs. another school in contention, which explains UTs relatively dismal showing below. When UT is bad, nobody is watching them play Kansas, KState or WVU.

 

[AroundWorldFrog]

Texas has its reasons for leaving. It's money and more of it. TCU would do the same. The days of Texas being everyone's bogeyman are ending. Find someone else to hate.

lol, the bogeyman is generally scary. UT hasn't been the bogeyman in about 40 years.