(01-03-2018 04:05 AM)otown Wrote: Smaller percentages of an exponentially larger payout. That's no mild inconvenience.
Vastly smaller percentages of what is in most cases an exponentially larger budget. That is not apples to apples.
Example:
If you were operating a business and in order to stay afloat you required that roughly half of your revenue came from tax money being given to you by the government while the same type of company down the street is raking in 2-3 times more revenue and less than 10% of their money is being given to them by the government then what would you conclude about the financial outlook of these 2 businesses should the government decide to pull funding?
Therein, you have your answer. The hard dollar figure at the end of the day would be irrelevant. You are missing the obvious my friend.
Let's say for sake of argument that the TV revenue is totally arbitrary and not in any way driven by fair market value. We still have to recognize that these subsidies are just a way of propping up operations. When your student body pays athletic fees as a portion of their tuition then that is in no way a market-based revenue stream. The students don't get a choice.
But who does get a choice? Ticket buyers...TV viewers...donors.
When you strip away both the media deals and the subsidies from all FBS programs then the full picture really starts to emerge. The strong majority of G5 schools would have to move back to FCS. The P5 schools would still be able to field halfway decent athletic programs because they get a ton of revenue from other means.
(01-03-2018 04:05 AM)otown Wrote: In addition, just by the way you worded it, "only been P5 since 2011", shows that you are giving the schools a crutch since they just joined the P5. They haven't fully latched on to the teat.
There are a few reasons I worded it that way.
1. I've never disputed that Power status helps the bottom line. What I have said is that Power status is something that has been slowly built for decades. No one starts out making huge cash.
The vast majority of the P5 have been playing at that level longer than many, many G5 schools have been in existence. It's unreasonable to think that G5 programs have done nothing different in comparison to their P5 competitors.
2. It shows that there is no conspiracy. Several G5 teams have moved up in recent years which completely undermines the narrative.
The reason they moved up? They performed well enough according to a complex equation of metrics and simultaneously met the need of an existing P5 league. They were not randomly anointed with magic fairy dust.
3. The overarching point of my list in the previous post was to show that a school like Rutgers is an outlier. Virtually every G5 is worse off financially than Rutgers despite the fact they haven't been "sucking the teat" very long. Yet, you strongly implied that Rutgers' situation was normative among P5 schools.
Not only that, the example of Rutgers shows just how far down the vast majority of the G5 is. The Big Ten had to scrape the barrel to come up with someone like Rutgers yet somehow their inclusion is used as proof that a large swath of the P5 doesn't deserve their status. It doesn't make any sense.
That's not a knock against Rutgers or the G5. It just is what it is.
(01-03-2018 04:05 AM)otown Wrote: All I am saying is that the top G5 programs would do a lot better financially in 5 to 10 years of being in the B1G or SEC, then a lot of the bottom half of the P5. Outside of media money.......a better product on the field than those P5 dregs combined with getting elite teams consistently at home via conference play, they would be much more financially sound than the bottom half of the P5 are today.
I agree that the AAC programs and maybe a few Mountain West programs aren't that far removed from the lower tier P5. Your statement about them being in line with the bottom half of the P5 is silly though and JR has already pointed why that is incorrect.
But you're still missing the forest for the trees.
1. It is 100% pure speculation on your part that the top G5 programs would perform better than many P5 programs if they traded places. You have no way of proving that. You're entitled to your opinion, but you can't point to any data that shows AAC programs would fare better if the circumstances were reversed. It is a hypothesis and nothing more.
2. Most P5s don't even have access to SEC and B1G money so your point holds no water. What you are saying is that if you had opportunities afforded to you that most P5s have never had afforded to them that you might be better off. You might be, but you have to deal in fiction to get there.
All in all, you have not highlighted a mechanism nor have you pointed to dynamic that would cause the SEC or B1G to pay you instead of another P5 school.
It goes back to my earlier example. If someone decided to take Bill Gates' money away from him and give it to me then I would obviously be richer than Bill Gates. That in no way proves that I deserved that money more than Bill Gates did.
I will say though that I think a healthy portion of the AAC will end up making it into the P5 before this conference realignment thing is said and done, but that's just my opinion.
(01-03-2018 04:05 AM)otown Wrote: Which leads to my next point.......the current system is a charity.
As far as the elite 20? You bet your butt if they broke away from the rest and formed a pseudo NFL league, they would take along with them most of the current college football money. What is keeping them from doing it? Mostly that it's currently too damn complicated with each embedded in 5 different entities all under different contract ending at varying times. Plus, the coordination of a break up would be almost impossible. However, if one can snap their fingers and make it happen, 80 to 90 percent of all college football money stays within 20 to 30 or so programs. In fact, they could still have decent OOC games because the would have no problem scheduling pay day games.
You still haven't addressed why media companies, who exist purely for the purpose of making profit, would go for any of that. Or why they would have ever gone for any of that in the past...
More to the point, the top 20 schools could break off if they really wanted to. They've had opportunities to do it since the 80s...since conferences were allowed to sell their own TV rights. Although it would certainly not be a clean process, but I don't see why it would have to be. If they could pull a few strings and obtain their end game within about 10 years then why wouldn't they have done it?
Most of these media contracts don't last more than about 10-15 years and yet the major powers keep signing them. They keep spearheading negotiations for new ones. They keep signing GOR agreements which is truly bizarre if they were capable of making so much more if they gave themselves the freedom to move about much easier. What leverage would the other 40+ schools have to stop them?
But if your hypothesis is true then things will get interesting in about 6 years because the PAC 12, B1G, and Big 12's deals all end about the same time. If the superpowers in those leagues could make more money by breaking off then that's a golden opportunity.
Bottom line is this...
G5 leagues don't have big media contracts because most fans aren't interested in watching. Remember the MTN? The Mountain West's pioneering conference network? It's defunct now. Why? There was no market for it. Nobody conspired to shut them out. CBS and Comcast partnered on an endeavor to make it work even before the Big Ten Network proved that conference networks could make good money.
The TV money is not magic fairy dust. it just isn't.
