The next round of realignment is where we get left out

[MississippiTexan]

Exactly. And those 40-60 teams are going to be in the SEC and the Big 10. And we'll be in the SEC group, along with the other 15 current SEC members.

This is how I see it happening. I don't think the top teams of the conference leave, I think the SEC and BIG tear the ACC apart when they are able to and then take whatever leftovers from the Big 12 to even out their conference to get to 24 each. Then they each play their own league, with their own playoff with the winners of each conference meeting in the National Championship (Super Bowl). No more out of conference, no more cupcake FCS games, unless they add a pre-season game/scrimmage. Much closer to an NFL style setup with the AFC and NFC instead being the SEC and BIG.

 

[Darryl Steight]

Imagine you are the President of the University of Alabama. Your enrollment is 65,000, fueled by 25 years of football dominance. You know these negotiations are happening. The B1G wants to go to $110 million per team and the SEC wants $100 million.

You take an "off the record" call with Ron DeSantis, President of Disney. Ron floats the idea about this 24-team college football league. Instead of paying what the conferences want, they'll give the 24 schools $175 million each. "You'll have full stadiums every weekend! You can sell liquor and marijuana and those new $20 Dub Lights, and they will use your official in-game gambling app. You'll make another $100 million!!!"

You call your buddy, the president of Ohio State, who holograms Michigan and Penn State into the conversation. You conference in LSU, Florida and Georgia, because you don't understand this new technology. Texas has spies and contacts Florida State to see what Florida is up to. Georgia texts Florida a meme of a frog dancing in Bitcoin.

USC and UCLA still don't really care about college football, but its Hollywood, so they are in. Add Notre Dame and we are at 17. "We need seven more." The president of Texas is a kooky numerology focused feminist lesbian and google's the number 17 as it relates to college football.

"I think we should take Mississippi State," she says. "I have a good feeling about it." The other 16 laugh and say - nah, we'll take Oklahoma, Texas A&M, Tennessee, Michigan State, Clemson, Wisconsin and just to mess with everyone - UCF.

Nebraska and Auburn fans go crazy on the internet.

Here's a point no one has mentioned yet, and an additional reason I could see Bama (and LSU, and other "haves" at that point) not standing up for us... hell, they may even want us out of the way.... and that's for a wide-***-open fertile recruiting ground right in their backyard. They already come in and pillage, but could you imagine if State and OM were not in the same conference? Sheesh.

This from the point of view of the same team who used to give out scholarships like lollipops to some of our best athletes just so they wouldn't play for the MS schools.

I don't THINK it's going to happen, but you do lay out a fairly plausible scenario. We better make hay for the next 10 years.

 

[Podgy]

What always gets forgotten amongst the people pushing for the big superconference is that someone's got to lose the games. You can take the 24 biggest names in football and put them together and a bunch of teams that aren't used to losing are going to lose and lose big, and they're going to regret everything.

I agree although I don't really like that reason. But that's why State schedules cupcakes too.

 

[horshack.sixpack]

The Saudi's will be running college football in five years and every game will be on a PPV platform.

It's all being negotiated as we type.

So THAT'S what kushner did with all that money!***

 

[greenbean.sixpack]

That Florida State deal is going to be interesting to watch. If that is successful it might not take a decade.

unless someone writes a huge check, like half a billion, they ain't going now where. No one has that kind of money to throw around.

 

[greenbean.sixpack]

I really think TV execs would be greatly overestimating the ratings if you exclude half the schools. High dollar College sports is uniquely American, and the only reason so many watch is out of loyalty to their own school, and the fact that 100+ schools are all in the same ‘league’ or ‘level’. If MSU is relegated down, I will rarely if ever watch the 32 super teams. In my mind it will become the same as Premier League, NHL, XFL, etc. Things I put on if nothing else is on, but since I don’t have a local or favorite team will rarely ever watch and definitely don’t care strongly about. The 70+ ‘non-super’ teams add up to a lot of eyeballs.

Saturday afternoons in the fall are valuable resource. There's a ton of other stuff one can do all over the country. I'm sure TV execs realize if they alienate fans of half universities, it will greatly impact the interest of the few remaining power teams.

 

[johnson86-1]

Saturday afternoons in the fall are valuable resource. There's a ton of other stuff one can do all over the country. I'm sure TV execs realize if they alienate fans of half universities, it will greatly impact the interest of the few remaining power teams.

I think you may be overestimating TV execs. But I think you're right. Lots of people only care about the college football championship because they are college football fans. You dump their school down into a G5 to focus on the 24 or 32 schools with the most revenue producing capability, you're also going to cut out a ton of current fans that have no interest in watching minor league football that doesn't involve their university.

Maybe we're wrong. I'm guessing lots of sunbelt school fans still pay attention to P5 football? So maybe they'll still pick up close to the same number of viewers. But I wouldn't want to make a multi-billion dollar bet on it if I were them. Of course I'd also want to just focus on making shows people want to watch that will make money rather than worry about including a bunch of "messaging" in my programming, so I obviously don't think like most TV execs.

 

[NewTweederEndzoneDance]

Title IX is going to throw a big wet blanket on all of these fantasies.

 

[HotMop]

Its actually easier with 24. Let me spell it out.

South
-----
Alabama
Georgia
LSU
Tennessee
Florida
Texas A&M

West
------
USC
UCLA
Washington
Oregon
Texas
Oklahoma

Midwest
------
Ohio State
Michigan
Michigan State
Wisconsin
Notre Dame
Nebraska

East
------
Clemson
Penn State
Florida State
Virginia
North Carolina
UCF

Everyone plays the other 5 in their division and rotates 2 from each of the other divisions. A 12th game will be allowed to be played against a non-Power team.

Alabama's schedule could look like this:

Auburn (non-power game)
Georgia
LSU
Tennessee
Florida
Texas A&M
USC
Texas
Ohio State
Michigan
Clemson
Penn State

No way they don't get 80 million views in a season. Might even crack 100 million. For comparison, Alabama had 60 million viewers last year. Ohio State led the nation with just under 70 million. We had 12 million. Michigan State - Michigan and Tennessee-Georgia both had over 13 million views for one game. We had 12 million in the entire season. Ole Miss had 21 million with practically the same schedule. Our Pac 12 after dark game hurt us a little. From 2015-19 we averaged 15.7 million. That's 29th in that metric. Like I said above, we are in the discussion in a 32 team league, probably in if its 40 (although we were under 10 million viewers in 2021, 43rd)

That's just me stabbing at the 24. TCU, Maryland, Auburn, Arkansas, Ole Miss, Oklahoma State were all in the top 25 for most views last year. TCU was probably an outlier last year.

Oh, and schools like Southern Miss? 192,000 people watched a USM game last year in an entire season - with all new opponents and excitement around the Sun Belt.

This looked good until you threw UCF in the mix.

 

[615dawg]

This looked good until you threw UCF in the mix.

The UCF was a joke. If you have ever met a true UCF alum/fan - they believe they will be running college football in 2035.

 

[Ranchdawg]

Go back in time to a Washington State message board when Leach had them winning 11 games a year and tell them that within a decade they, a founding member of the Pacific 8, will be in the Mountain West.

it will look a lot like this thread. This current realignment needs to be a complete failure because the next step is a 24-32 team super conference.

TV executives run college football now.

They have for a long time.