Factors That May Shape the Coming Realignment of 2034-5
The Working Population:
By 2035 the youngest of the Boomer Generation will be 73 so it is safe to say that by 2030 that virtually all of the generation will be retired. Two key leading economic factors will then be in play.
The labor force will shrink by 1/3rd or a little more as subsequent generations will not be able to keep pace with the retirement of the Boomers. And, most importantly, Boomers will be an enormous drain on Social Security and Health Care. Inescapably this means that a major tax burden will have to be placed upon the existing working population. The good news is that this particular down turn financially will be short lived and the shrinking work force will mean stronger competition for jobs which will mean larger incomes for the work force. I'm sure immigration will be used to fill the work force from the bottom and that it will help to offset a portion of the SSI and Health Care payouts.
What this means for our Universities is that Federal Grants will likely be cut, Corporate Grants will be harder to attain, and enrollment and tuition will be key to supporting the strongest of the schools. It is why a Harvard study recently suggested that 50% of all colleges and Universities would be bankrupt within a 10 to 15 year span as we move forward from today.
What it also means is that the last truly vested generation of this nation will be passing and the subsequent generations will actually own less real property, have less personal savings, and briefly a higher cost of living. I say briefly because by the mid 2040's the number of living Boomers will be well within the numbers that the subsequent generations can support. At that time there will be a new economic renaissance for those still working.
What this means however for our cherished sports is that ticket prices will have to come down and that means the burden of supporting the costs of athletics will shift more toward Media revenue than has been the historical norm. Right now TV revenue account for between 1/3rd to 1/5th of the total revenue of the highest earning athletic departments in the country.
HD TV, travel costs, and shrinking disposable income have already started to take a toll on attendance.
So these trends will lead to the following trends in realignment:
1. An emphasis on playing closer rivals which means that priority to consolidation within a region, by division, if not by the whole conference, will become an emphasis. So far flung conferences and divisions with outliers will be a thing of the past.
2. Look for larger and larger undergraduate enrollments at the surviving schools. This will be necessary to streamline state budgets, and to support through undergraduate tuition the research programs of the post graduate schools.
I think this will mean that campuses with available space will utilize that for housing and brick and mortar facilities and those constrained will utilize on line courses in numbers never before seen. It will be interesting to see which of those two approaches will prove to be the most efficient. 18 year old kids don't want to stay at home, but the economy may force them to do so. So maybe online courses will win out over larger campuses. I suppose that will depend on the cost of housing because the overwhelming desire will be for the kids to get away from home and experience their first personal accountability in a social situation conducive for relationship building as well as study.
Streaming
Choice will no doubt drive the future delivery models of programming and with the advance of technology making individual viewing options available for almost everything pressures for schools with the largest number of actual viewers will stress conference relationships. However the need for the support structure (officials, standards, scheduling, etc.) will likely hold conferences together.
What streaming will do however is place an emphasis that the collection of schools within a conference all contribute to the overall media revenue. This means their athletic programs will have to be competitive across the money sports, that their travel crowd size will be factored in more heavily, and that means that once again proximity to opponents will be emphasized.
If there is a big hold on realignment in 2024 that disappoints many of us it will be because we are still in an unclear transitional period and taking a flyer on schools 600 miles away and more is likely going to be on hold. In fact I'd say the focus would be upon destinations under a 6 hour drive from your home stadium.
So What Might Future Conferences Look Like?
I would suspect the PAC will remain essentially the same but perhaps minus Colorado and a couple of the lesser impact schools which will not have to be voted out, but due to economic and population reasons may be downsized by internal choice, or at least state choice.
Where the radical changes will occur are in the East, North, Southeast and Southwest.
The present shape of the SEC and Big 10 took shape when people traveled by rail. I think those old cores will hold because they were originally formed for the same reasons, ease and affordability of travel.
But I do think they will grow their sphere of influence within their core footprint.
Kansas, Nebraska and Missouri might very well be of interest to the Big 10 by 2035. Penn State, Rutgers and Maryland may not.
So we could see a major retraction from the additions made under the cable market footprint subscription fee expansion period and quite frankly that may be a very good thing.
What we might also see out of the Big 10 and SEC is a refocusing on large state schools with massive undergraduate enrollments that support their research endeavors and all of whom are within a reasonable travel distance.
So look for a concentration of like schools within regions and by like I'm talking about size, not academics, and not necessarily historical ties.
What Might This Look Like?
Big 10:
Iowa, Iowa State, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska
Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State, Wisconsin
SEC:
Alabama, Louisiana State, Mississippi, Mississippi State, Tennessee, Vanderbilt
Auburn, Clemson, Florida, Florida State, Georgia, South Carolina
ACC:
Georgia Tech, Kentucky, North Carolina, N.C. State, Virginia, Virginia Tech
Maryland, Notre Dame, Penn State, Purdue, Rutgers, West Virginia
SWC II:
Arkansas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech
Arizona, Arizona State, New Mexico, Brigham Young, Colorado, Utah
PAC:
California, Cal Los Angeles, Nevada, San Diego State, Southern Cal, Stanford
Boise State, Nevada Las Vegas, Oregon, Oregon State, Washington, Washington State
The travel within divisional play is as local as it can be. The schools are large draws whether public or private, but the small privates have essentially been eliminated from the existing conferences.
Here is a suggestion for what the private associations may look like:
Private School Conference:
Army, Boston College, Pittsburgh, Northwestern, Syracuse
Duke, Miami, Navy, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest
Air Force, Baylor, S.M.U., T.C.U., Tulane,
|