Bigger question is why are colleges and universities sponsoring ANY sports above intramural level athletics? Even bigger than that, why do universities go on big capital campaigns to build so many new buildings when the majority of the "investments" don't seem to further the education of students nor the research they are doing with the research grants? The ROI on these "investments" seem to be for the school administrators, coaches of the "money sports" and possibly professors. Biggest losers of these capital campaigns and athletics for the 80% plus schools that run deficits by sponsoring sports are the students (and parents in many cases) who are paying increasingly higher tuition bills for questionable benefit if the wrong major is chosen and the local tax payers who are footing the tax revenues that the states parcel out to their institutions of higher learning.

(07-21-2020 03:56 AM)Wedge Wrote:  

(07-20-2020 06:53 PM)pvk75 Wrote:  That's why first-round games are so popular.

First round games are sometimes more fun -- it's fun if a team on your hate list flames out in the first round, isn't it? -- but first round games are the least watched games in the tournament. The audience size per game goes up every round, and the final has the largest audience.

To compare apples to apples (i.e., same TV channel), the average first round March Madness game on TNT has a smaller audience than the average first round NBA playoff game on TNT.

Wait, the average first round game on TNT - competing against 3 other simultaneous games and half of which are during a workday - has a smaller audience than the average first round NBA playoff game on TNT?

Wow, that’s scintillating, scathing evidence right there.

(07-21-2020 12:14 AM)JRsec Wrote:  

(07-20-2020 12:33 PM)ken d Wrote:  For that matter, why do they need to tell schools how many or which sports they have to play? Right now, they specify that D-I schools must sponsor a certain number of men's sports and women's sports, and even how many of those must be team sports or how many must be played in a specific season.

Why is that necessary, or even desirable? Why not let market forces, influenced by existing federal legislation like Title IX, determine how many sports a school should sponsor?

Track & Field and Cross Country, Swimming and Diving, Women's and Men's Soccer, Tennis, Golf, Crew, and even Men's and Women's Basketball should be under the guidance of the AOC and IOC since that is exactly where the nations go to get their Olympians. Use the same corporate sponsors and put those sports under the Auspices of the AOC and IOC so that Olympic rules and intercollegiate rules are the same. Equestrian, Wrestling and Volleyball are other sports that should fall under their aegis. Why waste the time learning Olympic Rules when utilizing them helps to prepare these athletes for the games?

Football, Baseball, Softball can be handled by the Athletic Departments and each should operate under their own organizational structure which provides size classifications based upon investment levels and size of enrollment.

The IOC/AOC will set the governance for the aforementioned and the organizational structures will provide it for the latter. The former would use IOC/AOC officials trained by the IOC/AOC and the latter should use their own.

There is no need for the NCAA at all. Their 2 billion in endowed funds should be divided among the member schools and the NCAA should be abandoned. There should probably be at least 3 national champions in football annually, maybe 4. Baseball and Softball could be much more inclusive because the size differential is less important since it is not really a contact sport.

Allow each organization to monetize their sport as best they can and the schools will make more revenue with which to provide their scholarships and pay for their facilities.

Title IX doesn't go away unless a sport, like football becomes semi-professional and only then would those numbers not be counted in the formula for women's scholarships.

Standardization in officiating for all NCAA football would be a nice start and if the officials were treated as a national unit then having neutral officials can become the norm. It won't fix gambling but better salaries and a retirement plan for officials would help.

The only thing standing in the way of any of this is the bureaucratic need of the NCAA to sustain itself.

Exactly. You said, eloquently, three things that are at the heart of my OP.

"There is no need for the NCAA at all."

"Title IX doesn't go away ..."

"The only thing standing in the way of any of this is the bureaucratic need of the NCAA to sustain itself ."

The NCAA was founded early in the 20th Century out of a very real need to protect young men from being maimed or killed in a uniquely American sport - football - for which there were no rules or safeguards at the time. Somehow along the way, that organization decided it needed to get into the social engineering business. Society already has enough social engineers. It doesn't need more.

Of course there needs to be some organizing structure in sports. But each sport has different organizational needs. There is no one structure that fits them all.

Of course there need to be different levels (divisions) of participation in sports. Again, each sport is different. The overarching rule, IMO, is that schools shouldn't be encouraged to play above their appropriate level in a given sport by giving them large subsidies at the expense of the schools that do belong at that level.

If the end result of doing away with the NCAA is a significant reduction in the total number of athletic scholarships being granted, I don't see that as a bad outcome. Social engineers would probably disagree with me on that point.

(07-20-2020 07:03 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  EDIT: The "Cinderellas" do contribute something, collectively, to March Madness. It's impossible to determine just exactly how much, or what would happen to general sports fan interest if the big dogs were seen to be mercilessly cutting the smaller-budget schools out of the tournament.

It's always possible that the power conferences breaking away would break the romance of the tournament, and lose a lot of the audience. Which is part of the reason it hasn't happened.

That's the thing the P5 do know that many around here do not. A P5-only tournament would not draw as many fans as the current version. The fans, particularly casual fans, are very attracted to the David vs Goliath matchups and possible upsets. That's where the whole concept of "March Madness" comes from. My wife knows NOTHING about sports (well except for the NFL), but she knows March Madness and the Big Dance, it has a general cultural resonance. Nothing but Illinois vs LSU, UCLA vs NC State, and Texas vs Ohio State would be a dull blur to many. Now would the P5 still make more money from a P5-only event because they would sharing with fewer mouths? That is unknown, but I suspect in the long run they would make less, as the event would lose its "magic" as you say.

IMO, if the P5 ever leave the NCAA, it will purely be for football, to capture all the football money by cutting out the rest of FBS. It will have nothing to do with basketball (see above) nor "freeing" themselves from onerous NCAA rules (the P5 have autonomy and largely control the NCAA anyway and in any event, another governing body would have to be created).

I will credit Aresco with one thing, and admittedly it's a big thing - he seems to understand this, has since the beginning of the CFP, is keen to the danger, and thus has constantly strived to create a "Power" perception for the AAC *in football* so as to compel the P5 to "take it along" should a break happen.

I do NOT see a breakaway happening, but if it happens, that's why it will happen.

(07-21-2020 06:16 AM)miko33 Wrote:  Bigger question is why are colleges and universities sponsoring ANY sports above intramural level athletics?

About 50 schools do it because it genuinely brings in a big profit to the university.

The rest do it out of collective insanity, out of hope that they too will one day join the ranks of the money-makers (possible but very unlikely), fear that if they drop out of this it will hurt their enrollment, donations and stature (almost surely not true) and because administrators making the decisions have a personal career interest in keeping the farce going (biggest reason).

(07-21-2020 08:51 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(07-20-2020 07:03 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  EDIT: The "Cinderellas" do contribute something, collectively, to March Madness. It's impossible to determine just exactly how much, or what would happen to general sports fan interest if the big dogs were seen to be mercilessly cutting the smaller-budget schools out of the tournament.

It's always possible that the power conferences breaking away would break the romance of the tournament, and lose a lot of the audience. Which is part of the reason it hasn't happened.

That's the thing the P5 do know that many around here do not. A P5-only tournament would not draw as many fans as the current version. The fans, particularly casual fans, are very attracted to the David vs Goliath matchups and possible upsets. Nothing but Illinois vs LSU, UCLA vs NC State, and Texas vs Ohio State would be a dull blur to many.

That's true. But you don't need to have 350+ schools in D-I, and 32 autobids for conference champions to have Cinderellas. That's going too far.

I have proposed in the past a change in the tournament structure that I believe would also result in a lot of schools opting out of D-I.

My proposal would give 40 schools from the six power conferences (the P5 plus the Big East) bids to the tournament, based first on their conference regular season records (primarily, schools with a .500 or better record in conference play).

The other 26 conferences would get an autobid for their champion plus 22 at-large bids into the first round (played during the week of the P6 conference tournaments). The top 24 seeds (based on a composite ranking using NET, BPI, Sagarin, Massey and KenPom ratings) would host the bottom 24 seeds on their home court. There would be six such games each on Tuesday through Friday. The winners of these first round games would complete the 64 team field, which would then be seeded using those same rankings.

The 48 schools in this first round would each get $50K - the hosts to cover the expenses of gameday, and the visitors to cover their travel costs. Any additional revenue received from ticket sales or media contracts, if any, would be divided equally among the participants. Any shortfall would be paid out of the revenues of the 64 team tourney. Only the 64 schools that qualify for the second round would share in the net revenue from that tournament.

The majority of these 26 conferences would rarely see Round Two. That would take away much of the incentive for their members to stay in D-I with the additional expense that membership requires. I wouldn't be surprised if D-I membership shrinks by one third if this proposal were adopted. And if it did, there would still be more D-I schools than there were 40 years ago.

(07-21-2020 07:44 AM)IWokeUpLikeThis Wrote:  

(07-21-2020 03:56 AM)Wedge Wrote:  

(07-20-2020 06:53 PM)pvk75 Wrote:  That's why first-round games are so popular.

First round games are sometimes more fun -- it's fun if a team on your hate list flames out in the first round, isn't it? -- but first round games are the least watched games in the tournament. The audience size per game goes up every round, and the final has the largest audience.

To compare apples to apples (i.e., same TV channel), the average first round March Madness game on TNT has a smaller audience than the average first round NBA playoff game on TNT.

Wait, the average first round game on TNT - competing against 3 other simultaneous games and half of which are during a workday - has a smaller audience than the average first round NBA playoff game on TNT?

Wow, that’s scintillating, scathing evidence right there.

C'mon. Everything has competition; it's not as if every other TV channel is blacked out when an NBA playoff game is on. On the first weekend the NBA playoffs are competing against the final two rounds of the Masters, and throughout the playoffs they're competing with NHL playoffs and MLB games.

(07-21-2020 08:51 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  IMO, if the P5 ever leave the NCAA, it will purely be for football, to capture all the football money by cutting out the rest of FBS. ...

They already capture over 80% of the football money ... perhaps over 90%. And the balance that they don't capture helps maintain a supply of "bowl subdivision" teams which they contract for guarantee game from which they also make money.

How much money is there to be captured in splitting up one CFP share and one Access Bowl participation fee amongst themselves? It's somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.5m-$2m on a per school basis for the Go5 ... it seems like it would be similar on a per school basis for the P5.

It's not clear that $1.5m-$2m per P5 school is enough to justify the change.

If they were to break away with enough additional schools to make a 64 team Tourney work, that seems like more money for them, even if they mostly redirect the Go5 subsidy out of the CFP to the tag-along FBS conferences they bring with to have the numbers in their organization to be confident of replacing the NCAA Tourney. Going from 30% of a $1b media deal going to the participating schools to 80% is worth about $500m, which in round numbers is about the annual value of the CFP. That $500m is a bigger pot of gold than the roughly $80m that the CFP currently directs toward the Go5.

Now, the biggest pot of gold of them all is the regular season football rights ... but they won those in court in the 1980's, so they aren't split with the Go5.