Alternative "Shoot The Moon" Strategy for B1G Expansion? B1G League Football?
It occurs to me we may not be thinking big enough in terms of B1G expansion.
There may be a rather interesting second path open at the moment for the B1G to become a larger league while the SEC has designs on being a "super conference".
Let's say the B1G adds USC & UCLA along with Stanford, Colorado, Utah, Cal, Oregon, Washington and both Arizona schools from the PAC12, then raids the ACC for as many of the schools it can get from the likes of Miami, BC, Duke, UNC, Georgia Tech, Pitt, maybe Va and Wake...possibly even 'Cuse...
Then perhaps even consider some schools like UConn, Rice, etc... Would be projects but they are associated with major media markets.
Most of these are institutions that the SEC has little interest in adding to their super-conference so it likely wouldn't trigger a massive reaction other than the SEC wanting Clemson and FSU.
The end result would be B1G-League football with a footprint very similar to that of the NFL in control of the majority of the top 50 US media markets which could be easily divided into logical divisions, probably resembling the old Big East, Big Ten and Pac 10.
Division champs plus a wild card end up in the league playoffs (first round perhaps Xmas Day) and you get a league championship on NYD in the Rose Bowl.
In such a model, the SEC would have a lot of big programs, but not a lot of eyeballs. It might even be in the B1G's best interest NOT to play any cross-over games with them. Why give them access to our media markets?
I think that's the right move. dominate the major media markets nationwide. and create a league that proactively dictates the agenda for the future. Instead of being reactionary and focused on what the SEC is doing, assemble a conference that's second fiddle to no one and go to 36, 4 division teams with 9 schools in each division. West, Midwest, East and Southeast. Focus on picking up strong academic institutions with brands and/or TV markets. Best case scenario is:
USC, UCLA, Stanford, Oregon, U. Washington, U. Arizona, U. Colorado, Baylor, and Ok. State, would be the strongest collection of teams in the west (brand and media market footprint). With Houston, Rice and TCU as options (biggest cities in Texas).
The Midwest would comprise Nebraska, Iowa, Northwestern, Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Minnesota Notre Dame and Kansas .
The East would be Michigan, Michigan State, Purdue, Penn State, Rutgers, Maryland, Syracuse, Boston College, and Connecticut,
And finally in the southeast, Ohio State, Virginia, Georgia Tech, North Carolina, Clemson, Duke, Fl. State, Miami and one addition from the list of: Cincinnati, Louisville, Pittsburgh, Va. Tech and Memphis. You want a presence in Tennessee (Memphis/Nashville markets) so, Memphis is the only choice to accomplish that.
Some teams are geographically interchangeable and Northwestern, Purdue, Indiana, and Notre Dame could fit in the Midwest or East and continue playing a national schedule as they already play 6 or 7 of the schools on the list. Moving Ohio State to the Southeast makes the east division more evenly balanced with other divisions.
A super conference like this would lead college athletics. Those worried about revenue sharing, a conference this big could charge 50 million a year, per team and get it because there's no better collection of teams in college sports. If they decided to call the Big Ten Champion the National Champion, they would have a strong argument even if they never played a single team outside of their own league. The ACC teams that are locked into shitty deals, would have leverage to negotiate themselves out because the Big Ten could threaten to never play ANY remaining ACC school ever again, while the defecting ACC schools honor their shitty contract by playing only Big Ten and other defecting ACC schools, until the shitty contract is up. Would the ACC and ESPN rather lose billions, or negotiate a sweetheart deal that lets defecting teams out and plans themselves into future deals. If you chose the former you could be choosing yourself right out of business.
I'm not interested in B1G expansion unless we get the University of Chicago back.
Ya mean the school whose unofficial motto is "Where the Fun Goes To Die"?
University of Chicago, Carnegie Mellon University, and Oxford should be the next additions.
As a hometown favorite, I hope we are also considering Kettering (the former GMI).
Actually...what about a B1G division solely of private "high academic" institutions?
Northwestern
Notre Dame
Stanford
Duke
Rice
Boston College
Wake Forest
plus the service academies...
Army
Navy
Air Force
That would be an interesting division.
I know this will never happen. For sure Notre Dame wouldn't go for it. But the idea is not any more ridiculous than many being floated. I doubt that Vanderbilt could be poached but they belong.
We also need Cornell, Wesleyan (CT) and the Stevens Ducks back on the schedule. We're under .500 against each off these three schools all time and need to even up the score.
Wesleyan is the Harvard of Central Connecticut.
Sorry, too much 30 rock.
That gif where the girl is so exhausted she collapses on the counter. Yeah thats the one Im thinking of right now.
Unaware. But I must confess a degree of intrigue...
This is what I posted about an hour ago in the thread right below yours:
"Really good post OP. I truly appreciate threads like this one where the OP has a fairly random thought then actually takes the time to research that thought to see it holds water."
Sadly OP IMO this is the exact opposite of that thread. This is a random thought, without much if any research, that if explored would render a shit-ton of reasons why this is a really bad idea.
See my beer response to you in the other thread.
I dislike how you two are making me work for the information that I should not even care about but am oddly drawn to find out more. I'm like those idiots slowing down to rubber neck a guy pulled over in the southbound side of the highway. Damn it.
Thank you!!!
How bout no?
OP, I'll bite. For starters:
- Exactly how is UConn "associated with a major media market?"
- What percent of Houston's population follows Rice's sports? What percent of Houston's population is even aware that the school exists?
- Do you think Winston-Salem (a fine place, don't get me wrong) has a large media market?
Answers:
1. Though UConn's campus is 85 miles from Boston and 140 miles from NYC, don't discount that thriving media hub of New London, CT.
2. Rice's enrollment is 4,000, so assuming 64% of the students are interested in their sports, that's 2,500 people compared to 2.5 million Houstonians. I'll let the stat nerds work out the exact number but by my rough estimate, you're starting with about 10% Houston interest already, just from the students.
3. Winston-Salem must have a large media market, there at the center of a ring of Mt. Airy, Martinsville, Danville, Burlington, Asheboro, Salisbury, Wilkesboro—surely major cities, every one.
You're just trying to make Rutger look good.
Pretty close, 2.5K iis .001 of 2.5M
Probably sparty undergrad.
Probably Sparty reject
That is not possible. Even fogging a mirror is now optional on the staee application.
1) Hartford / New Haven is the #30 US media market.
2) Same could be said about Rutgers and NYC, but B1G still got the $$$ from the TV market. Houston is the #8 US media market and Rice is a good school, but like I said, would be a project. With a little investment, and in a rich recruiting area like Texas, could easily be like Northwestern or better. Simply gives the league a foothold in a very valuable state.
3) Wake is a pretty highly ranked school and would be a fit in that way. If they don't bring enough to the table, then leave them out. If we got Duke and UNC, then perhaps that would be overkill in the NC market. NC has the #22 & #24 US media markets.
On #1, I don't know that being #30 would move the needle much for the Big Ten, but I asked the wrong question. Washington (despite its presence in a very large media market) apparently won't bring enough $ to interest the conference. It's hard to imagine UConn having better numbers than UW.
I was a little indirect on #2 as well. Rice would fit the Northwestern model very well in terms of academics and sports, yes, but I'd guess their numbers are even worse than UConn's. (I'm making the assumption, as in #1, that size of nearby media market isn't the most important number.)
For the record, I like Wake's fit with the Big Ten, too, numbers aside.
Very few college football fans in the Hartford / New Haven area. Ucon was unable to fill a 40,000 seat stadium back when they were winning more games than they lose.
I agree that some of the OP's details seem off, but the idea of the B1G being its own "league" does not seem extremely far fetched.
For example, imagine the B1G with Duke, UNC, UVa, Arizona, and Kansas - why would the B1G need the NCAA bball tournament? The B1G could host its own invitational tournament and probably make more $.
Killing the NCAA tournament would be foolish. It is a cultural touchstone, and that is what makes it make so much money. Yes, the big schools are a big and important part of that, but don't tell me you didn't get invested in St Pete's this year, and in Dunk City and George Mason in year's past. It is the only sporting event in this country that captivates as many people as the Super Bowl. And pulling out of it would be arrogant, foolish, and frankly sorta evil. But more than that - it would absolutely be bad for business.
Yeah, agreed, I don't see networks paying anything close to the current $1B+ annually for rights to anything other than a tournament as it currently exists.
Not sure what share of the NCAA income flows back to the B1G, but the B1G wouldn't have to make the same as the NCAA, the B1G just needs to make more than it currently gets.
The B1G could entice smaller teams (St pete's, George Mason...) to play in their invitational. With $ and with it being their only opportunities to play against Duke, UNC, Kansas and other iconic programs.
If the goal is to host a supersized Big Ten tourney that invites conference champions from every other conference in America - is every Big Ten team invited, or only the highest performing? Are there other "at large" opponents from say, the SEC, Big East, and PacX? Because if the latter is true and not every Big Ten team is invited, you're saying the Big Ten should basically take over running the National tournament?
And if not, and it's just a Big Ten tournament with a few other invitees, then I don't think it's a better proposition than the NCAA tournament, where a birth is supposed to be a culmination of a successful season for power conference schools, and not automatic. And if you're only inviting a handful of other schools, instead of a tourney of 68, sorry it's not as interesting or compelling since much of the fun IS seeing these cinderella runs and mid tier teams from power leagues hitting their stride - not just from one league, but like UCLA in 2021 as well. A Big Ten centered tournament, even if it had the best "brands," is still not as fun as a tourney that has bubble teams and Howard in it.
Yeah, nobody in NC gives a shit about Wake Forest except student and alumni. That state is all UNC & NCSU.
Please make these stop.
There's absolutely no point for the B1G to try become a 30 team "conference" by gobbling up all the mid-tier programs that are currently being left behind in the conference realignment.
Media markets are not the game anymore. The B1G is only interested in adding marquee "brands" that are comparable or better than its current teams. There are relatively few programs that would fit the bill outside of Notre Dame and a small handful of other programs (maybe Florida State, Clemson, Miami).
Right now, we are on a collision course to a future where all of the marquee college football programs are in the B1G or SEC, and everybody else is on a lower tier.
Once that happens we'll likely end up with a B1G champ vs. SEC champ bowl game that operates as a de facto college Superbowl.
Could certainly change, but right now the mostly the B1G at least pretends to "play school". Setting up a B1G v. SEC "superbowl" sounds like a bad deal for the B1G.
Not sure that its any worse than the current reality where the SEC/Clemson wins it all every year.
At least this way the B1G gets a guaranteed spot in the title game every year, which is the most that you can really ask for.
I don't see Alabama - Clemson as a real comparison to the situation I tried to lay out. Albeit the same teams, Alabama-Clemson games have, for the most part, been competitive.
Suppose B1G and SEC end up with significant rules/enforcement on some key issues. B1G pursues "student-athlete" model while SEC goes full pay for play. SEC allows significant oversigning and uses 1 year scholarships. B1G allows more limited oversigning with 4 year scholarships (net effect is SEC can "cut" ineffective players, while B1G cannot). B1G requires some type of academic progress rate, SEC does not...
The net impact of all that could be SEC teams that are "professional" players v. B1G "student-athletes". SEC would win a vast majority of these, probably by a significant margin. It wouldn't be compelling TV and would also be bad for the B1G. If they are going to meet in a playoff, the rules have to be reasonably level.
With USC/UCLA, each school is set to make somewhere between $80-100 million a year in media revenue. This idea would immensely dilute those shares. It's not happening.
All teams receive wouldn't necessarily have to receive the same payout. Not sure if this could fully address the dilution issue, but it could help. It also might bring up other issues.
If the revenue sharing could be ironed out (big if), I could see the B1G adding as many AAU schools as they can land and setting up rules to support a "student-athlete" model. This could be significantly different from the SEC such that it might not make sense for the B1G to play the SEC.
Bingo.
It also would allow the B1G to get rid of the NCAA silliness around NIL (rules against signing bonuses but no enforcement which screws over teams like Michigan that take the rules seriously)
Alabama had a lot of TV draw last season outside of the SEC footprint, but much of that was likely because everyone assumed they would be a playoff team and wanted to see what they were all about. If this larger big media market league didn't / wouldn't play these SEC programs, I doubt they'd get half the viewership they now enjoy, even if they were a good team "playing school".
It would be a bit like an NFL fan choosing between watching another NFL game VS the best CFL team. Yeah, the CFL game might be really entertaining, but the NFL fan is more interested in other teams in their league which they play regularly or might face off against in the playoffs.
Maybe, but I'm skeptical that even the current schools would agree to an uneven payout model. For starters, there's the possibility you misjudge -- maybe we promise Oregon $60 million a year, and it turns out they only add $50 million in value. But more importantly, I doubt the less valuable schools agree out of fear that their shares might also be diluted someday in the future. If you start to tie payout to value, sooner or later the Ohio States and USCs of the conference are going to wonder why the Purdues and Northwesterns should get full shares by mere virtue of already being here.
Ultimately, I don't see non-even revenue sharing as a viable option given the animosity and distrust it could sow between schools.
I'm thinking of the new Jordan Peele movie
We should add all the teams in the country together, break into divisions and maybe call them something like, I don’t know, conferences. Then as a whole we could just call it college football or something.
brilliant
We finally have the worst conference expansion take.
Mom just yelled downstairs.
Add Faber College and Bovine University and then maybe we’ll talk.
We have gotten to the point where someone seriously listed Rice and Wake Forest as B1G candidates.
That just begs the question - who will be the next "new" school to be proposed? New Mexico State? Lake Superior State? Alaska-Anchorage?
Look i know the Nanooks get all the glory because of amazing videos but I'm going to do a post on how awesome the seawolves really are and all they bring to the table. They bring the largest metro in the state! which is the LARGEST state, of course! It has almost as many people as Murmansk - the largest city north of the arctic circle, but they're in Russia. Really, since geography no longer matters, we should consider getting Murmansk State to join the Big Ten.