(02-08-2023 05:45 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(02-08-2023 04:48 PM)Skyhawk Wrote:  

(02-08-2023 01:23 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(02-08-2023 01:01 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(02-08-2023 11:59 AM)JRsec Wrote:  The 8 member and 10 member conference system was not designed to maximize markets and existed when the NCAA had a chokehold on college football broadcasts, and was created when people traveled by train to cover games at a distance.

The initial model for college football telecasts post OU?UGa vs the NCAA was cable subscription based. This killed the SWC, impaired the Big 8, and forced the ACC to expand. The proactive conferences were the Big 10 and SEC. Hmm? "The one who gets there firstest with the mostest generally wins" is an old quote which certainly seems to apply.

Why consolidation? Streaming will damage payouts as Frank and so many have noted here. Consolidation enhances collective bargaining, and consolidation into the top brands efficiently addresses a variety of factors which enhance larger payouts.

Until these conditions are altered by some future technology the day of the Super Conference, perhaps even leagues, is upon us.

The sixteen member conference was born out of the concept of maximizing market strength when it was conceived in the 70's. The WAC used it but was so disparate geographically, and paid so little, it fell apart.

That doesn't even relate to the Big 10 and SEC which are very geographically compact at the core, but distant at the perimeter in the case of the SEC, or now has fly over as the case for the Big 10. And both are quite well paid.

I see nothing other than profit, as Slive once said, which limits the size of conferences moving forward. And since we live in an era of expensive travel, but of high payouts, and since what is wasteful are redundant systems, the elimination of multiple conferences with multiple physical plants in high dollar commercial property areas, with redundant staffing, and each with its own set of officials, etc, is essential., I see no trend which will take us back to the "good old days" of 7, 8, and 10 member conferences.

Future divisions will be the small conference, and each school will earn more having to support only one set of offices and one set of staffing and sharing all overhead with more schools.

Therefore X, predicting that all conferences of over 16 will blow up like the old WAC is like saying plastic explosives are less stable than early dynamite, when exactly the opposite is true. Old dynamite is volatile, plastic explosives are harmless until you intentionally add a fuse (intentionality). What I'm telling you is that moving forward, especially as the popularity of the sport declines, bigger is better, safer, and more profitable, and when it does blow up it will be because we, in an orderly fashion, find smaller to be more profitable, and we intentionally break apart to capitalize upon it.

Its human nature JR. The more people you put together, the more different opinions you have. There's science on the most effective group sizes and its not 16. As you get bigger, you get more and more divergent. More cliques.

Economics may hold it together, but 16 and more is a fragile system.
Economics could also split it apart as the more valuable programs split off as the MWC did. With unequal revenue sharing, you get jealousy. Not conducive to staying together in the long run.

And ego prevents effective consolidation. Big 10 and SEC working together on a TV contract? It would be massive. Big 12 and Pac 12 should have done a combined TV contract. Didn't even get seriously considered even though they had pretty similarly structured TV contracts and similar ending dates.

Are we going to 18 or 20 in the Big 10 and SEC? Probably. But don't look for stability like the Big 10 and SEC have had in the past.

You miss my methodology Bullet, and I agree with what you are saying. Institutions don't have personalities beyond their presidents and largest donors, and that's enough to do damage. But they all react to outside stimuli similarly. And when threatened by an outside force, like people, they unify. When things are normal the differences come out. I hold no illusions as to permanency in any of it. Right now, the external threat level is sufficient to necessitate consolidation. When it isn't of course they'll break apart. But the fear of that cannot and should not prevent the unity they need now. And when smaller groupings with shared goals becomes possible in a time of low stressors of course they will splinter off, and they should.

I'm not afraid of change. What pisses me off are pea brained imbeciles who will not adapt to survive because "That's not how we do it" and "We've never done that before" and "It can't work!"

Adapt, Innovate, and Overcome! It's worked for the Marines for over a century, it works in business, and it works here. Super Conferences are merely the tool needed to overcome the next obstacle. I expect we will see smart conferences utilize streaming to self-contain their whole marketing approach at some point and eliminate the "Carrier". We aren't there yet, mostly because those in control refuse to look at the potential. Kudos to Delaney as he was well ahead on that one. He just didn't have streaming to make it easier. When the technology becomes less cost prohibitive we could see each school market their own and have scheduling groups instead of conferences.

My point is in adapting you do what is necessary for the current challenges you face. At no point is any of it a gestalt. All of life is a process of recognition and adaptation. What is not natural, is expecting no change.

If you look at wall street, investors talk about those who deal with the "facts on the ground". The ones who tend to make money don't invest based upon what they wish is true, but based upon what is true.

and when those facts change, you change too, or get left behind.

yes, I'm oversimplifying, and yes there is a facet of long term strategy, as well as leading change through action. (and remembering that inaction is itself an action.)

But in general yes.

And looking at conferences, the amount of sitting on one's hands when opportunity is knocking, is just amazing to me.

Yes there are times when it may be a good idea to let an opportunity pass. But some of these that we are seeing are some really guilty opportunities.

You know, and we all know the old maxim, "Those who can do, those who cannot teach." This is not about competency. It is about the ability to make decisions with what you know to be true. Some thrive on meeting challenges with informed decisions and innovation, and some fear failure and choose instead to simply impart what they learned.

So those who can make a decision do. Those who cannot teach. The delaying of making critical decisions, especially time sensitive ones, is endemic in education, where whole bureaucracies are created to slow change.

Heck, why do we have commissioners? So the presidents have a buffer between the decisions and themselves.

But presidents are the ultimate decision makers and are very risk averse and very prone to peer pressure and worry about their image.

(02-08-2023 06:02 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(02-08-2023 05:45 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(02-08-2023 04:48 PM)Skyhawk Wrote:  

(02-08-2023 01:23 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(02-08-2023 01:01 PM)bullet Wrote:  Its human nature JR. The more people you put together, the more different opinions you have. There's science on the most effective group sizes and its not 16. As you get bigger, you get more and more divergent. More cliques.

Economics may hold it together, but 16 and more is a fragile system.
Economics could also split it apart as the more valuable programs split off as the MWC did. With unequal revenue sharing, you get jealousy. Not conducive to staying together in the long run.

And ego prevents effective consolidation. Big 10 and SEC working together on a TV contract? It would be massive. Big 12 and Pac 12 should have done a combined TV contract. Didn't even get seriously considered even though they had pretty similarly structured TV contracts and similar ending dates.

Are we going to 18 or 20 in the Big 10 and SEC? Probably. But don't look for stability like the Big 10 and SEC have had in the past.

You miss my methodology Bullet, and I agree with what you are saying. Institutions don't have personalities beyond their presidents and largest donors, and that's enough to do damage. But they all react to outside stimuli similarly. And when threatened by an outside force, like people, they unify. When things are normal the differences come out. I hold no illusions as to permanency in any of it. Right now, the external threat level is sufficient to necessitate consolidation. When it isn't of course they'll break apart. But the fear of that cannot and should not prevent the unity they need now. And when smaller groupings with shared goals becomes possible in a time of low stressors of course they will splinter off, and they should.

I'm not afraid of change. What pisses me off are pea brained imbeciles who will not adapt to survive because "That's not how we do it" and "We've never done that before" and "It can't work!"

Adapt, Innovate, and Overcome! It's worked for the Marines for over a century, it works in business, and it works here. Super Conferences are merely the tool needed to overcome the next obstacle. I expect we will see smart conferences utilize streaming to self-contain their whole marketing approach at some point and eliminate the "Carrier". We aren't there yet, mostly because those in control refuse to look at the potential. Kudos to Delaney as he was well ahead on that one. He just didn't have streaming to make it easier. When the technology becomes less cost prohibitive we could see each school market their own and have scheduling groups instead of conferences.

My point is in adapting you do what is necessary for the current challenges you face. At no point is any of it a gestalt. All of life is a process of recognition and adaptation. What is not natural, is expecting no change.

If you look at wall street, investors talk about those who deal with the "facts on the ground". The ones who tend to make money don't invest based upon what they wish is true, but based upon what is true.

and when those facts change, you change too, or get left behind.

yes, I'm oversimplifying, and yes there is a facet of long term strategy, as well as leading change through action. (and remembering that inaction is itself an action.)

But in general yes.

And looking at conferences, the amount of sitting on one's hands when opportunity is knocking, is just amazing to me.

Yes there are times when it may be a good idea to let an opportunity pass. But some of these that we are seeing are some really guilty opportunities.

You know, and we all know the old maxim, "Those who can do, those who cannot teach." This is not about competency. It is about the ability to make decisions with what you know to be true. Some thrive on meeting challenges with informed decisions and innovation, and some fear failure and choose instead to simply impart what they learned.

So those who can make a decision do. Those who cannot teach. The delaying of making critical decisions, especially time sensitive ones, is endemic in education, where whole bureaucracies are created to slow change.

Heck, why do we have commissioners? So the presidents have a buffer between the decisions and themselves.

But presidents are the ultimate decision makers and are very risk averse and very prone to peer pressure and worry about their image.

It's a Catch 22 to be sure! God help us!

We have been trying to redefine conferences for the last several years.
Because the NCAA said we needed 12 teams divided into two divisions to have a championship game; the SEC implemented it and was extremely successful at making money.
Every conference tried to copy, but nobody else has been as successful.

Conferences have been divided into east/west, north/south, Leaders/Legends and zippers in an attempt to duplicate the SEC's success. Now we are starting to play annual rivals and rotating rivals in an attempt to regenerate the intimacy of smaller groupings. Will it work? Of course not, because they don't possess the SEC's secret, which is the schools of the SEC love playing and beating each other in football. No other conference has that feeling that permeates the entire conference. Fortunately a championship game loss has not hurt the SEC in the post season because of the strength of the conference.

In the "old ACC" (North Carolina specifically) there used to be a December basketball tournament called the Big Four. It featured Carolina, State, Wake Forest and Duke and was wildly popular. Tickets were almost as valuable as those to the ACC tournament. The schools played a double header on Friday night and the winners played on Saturday night for the Championship while the Friday night losers played the opening game. The records did not count in conference standings.
The problem with the tournament was that some very good basketball teams came out of the Big Four with two losses which would damage the chances of continuing in post season play. We loved beating each other as many times as possible in basketball just as much as the SEC does in football. There was one year where Carolina played Duke 5 times in the same season (once in the Big Four, the two regular season games, once in the ACC tournament and again in the NIT). Unfortunately the ACC can't monetize that passion as successfully as the SEC has.
And therein lies the problem, even for the SEC. When you expand too large or get outside of your own "area" with schools that don't share the same passion, the conference will start to crumble.

The SEC didn't cost itself the yearly big games, except for Auburn-Florida.

(02-10-2023 01:49 PM)Porcine Wrote:  The SEC didn't cost itself the yearly big games, except for Auburn-Florida.

Ole Miss lost both Tennessee and Georgia which were big games to both sides.
Auburn-Tennessee was also lost.

On the other hand, games like Alabama-Vanderbilt (except for WWII played every year from 1926-2002), Auburn-Kentucky and LSU-Kentucky weren't as big to the two sides.

(02-10-2023 11:25 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(02-10-2023 01:49 PM)Porcine Wrote:  The SEC didn't cost itself the yearly big games, except for Auburn-Florida.

Ole Miss lost both Tennessee and Georgia which were big games to both sides.
Auburn-Tennessee was also lost.

On the other hand, games like Alabama-Vanderbilt (except for WWII played every year from 1926-2002), Auburn-Kentucky and LSU-Kentucky weren't as big to the two sides.

As the size of conferences grow, the demand for more conference games played will also increase.
As that happens, many traditional rivalries will start to fade away.
USC does not have Notre Dame scheduled beyond 2026.
If the SEC adds a couple more teams will we then see the end of Georgia/Georgia Tech, Florida/FSU, Louisville/Kentucky and Clemson/South Carolina?
Who would have thought we would have ever seen the end of Oklahoma v. Nebraska?

Some of these traditional rivalries are the fabric of college football, once the are interrupted, they no longer carry the same importance to a new generation of fans, even if the series is re-visited every so often.