(10-28-2018 01:38 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(10-25-2018 02:24 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  

(10-24-2018 10:30 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(10-24-2018 07:50 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  

(10-24-2018 05:56 PM)JRsec Wrote:  The next realignment will be a consolidation of power, not the spreading of it.

I think the NEXT realignment will be to maximize revenue in light of the new media rights model. Consolidating power might be a happy side effect or it may get pushed to the next go round after that.

Power and revenue are practically the same thing. Why? It will be a content driven market and the powerful are national brand names with championship track records and large rabid fan bases. The more games they have with other recognized names the larger the audience, the larger the audiences the more money the networks will make and of course the more they will payout.

If the networks cull the herd this way it saves them on mid tier TV contracts. Think initial AAC payouts here.

Of course the larger brands will go along with this but with a few compromises. Instead of an upper tier of just 24 schools they will want buddies and rivals so think more in line with 40 to 48. Instead of playing a broad national schedule they will play a better mix of other names located in their regions and their historical rivals. They will get this concession because together they will have that clout. It's the price the networks pay for moving in this direction.

I'm sure there will be a move away from Conference Championship games and toward an eight school playoff as one of the concessions the big schools make. And paying the players will be not only be the catalyst, but the point of delineation.

The NCAA welfare system will be gone for everything but Olympic sports if they want a future role at all.

There will be the haves. A solid mid tier that will pay some current P schools less and some current G schools a bit more.

And then there will be the rest.

What remains to be seen is whether basketball will go the same route. I'm assuming it will.

There is significantly more money to be gained on the basketball side.

There is little revenue sharing in football and the schools most likely cut provide some deflationary pressure on the cost of non-returned games.

On the hoops side far more revenue flows to have nots and to lower divisions.

Every conference gone is an at-large bid gained and probability is an at-large gained ends up going to a P5 or the Big East.

The NCAA Tournament produces $1.1 billion in revenue that gets scattered all over the place more than 2.3 times the revenue of the CFP and around 85% of the CFP money stays with the P5. BUT only $210 million of that $1.1 billion is distributed out based on tournament performance, not factoring in the other five distribution funds which I wouldn't hazard a guess to their value because the NCAA has received two big raises since the last publicly released numbers.

Which is a good reason the next time major realignment happens (I think its more likely in the 30s than the 20s), it will be expansion in football, not contraction. They'll want to have a base that can take control of the basketball revenue from the NCAA.

That is an interesting viewpoint and I know that it was bandied about by some of the power brokers about 10 years ago.

Redefining Division I (or a new Division IV) that would be 15 to 20 conferences. No more I-A/I-AA or FBS/FCS just a smaller top level division yet one that remained large enough to have buy game opponents and enough schools to keep some of the less sponsored sports viable.

A viable way to do so without running into anti-trust issues was a major factor. The two ideas considered were changing the Division I criteria to slowly price people (ie. more than 14 sports and sponsoring more scholarships) or simply offering schools a five year window to accept reclassification where they would get an enhanced stream of payments over five years that would taper off and they could play two seasons in their new classification where they would count as a Division I opponent, two seasons where they could play up to four contests in basketball that counted, and then in the final year play two.

If they then elected to reclassify back within 10 years of completing the process they'd owe the money back as a condition of reclassifying.

Didn't go anywhere but apparently it was fun to talk about over whiskey in hotel lobbies at BCS meetings.