Conference rape is not good for college sports. It's inflating the cost, helping to drive coaches salaries, giving more control of college business to TV, killing smaller programs and conferences and in general selling the collective souls of an academic mission.

The ACC is less today because of the commercialism and it's all due to a weak NCAA and weak presidential leadership (the true power behind the NCAA.)

When the ACC tries to recover from rape or grow at the expense of another conference just remember there are more of "them" than the big schools and let them eat cake doesn't work forever!

Obviously no end is on the horizon. It's unfortunate but it's the reality of the world of college athletics. Everything is driven by greed and essentially until that ends there will likely be no resolution to the issues presented today.

Good luck to Memphis. It's an unenviable position your school is in.

It ends when the broadcast industry undergoes a major change. One day I won't have to pay for all the stuff I don't watch, like the BTN, NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB, etc. When the money goes down the conferences will break up into smaller regional groups with shared interest and lower travel times and cost.

It won't end until fans gets fed up w/ losing 100+ year rivalries. Pitt already lost 2 and a 3rd if you count ND due to the scheduling agreement with the ACC. How many more rivalries needs to be lost? These rivalries are what made College Football so special.

(11-25-2012 10:11 PM)ClairtonPanther Wrote:  It won't end until fans gets fed up w/ losing 100+ year rivalries. Pitt already lost 2 and a 3rd if you count ND due to the scheduling agreement with the ACC. How many more rivalries needs to be lost? These rivalries are what made College Football so special.

have to totally agree....

And, I'd say some of that is what's creating some of these moves. I think if Maryland for instance had been able to still host Duke and UNC yearly in hoops, they'd still be in the ACC today. Enough tradition is lost in conference that making a move to a new conference is not as big of a deal as it used to be. I don't think Maryland would have ever moved from a 8 or 9 team ACC. But, a 14 team ACC, not a big deal at all....

It's almost like watching the old movie War Games. We're in that last scene with all of the scenarios on the NORAD screen.... Eventually, everything is going to crash..... It'll be interesting to see what happens after the crash!

No doubt College Realignment is a bubble in a sense.

Oklahoma-Nebraksa... lost
Texas- Texas A&M... lost

I'm sure there are rivalries within the B1G that are lost. Same w/ the PAC 12, ACC, SEC and so on. How great would it be to see Alabama vs Florida on a yearly basis?

Sure some say this is progression but its a joke.

(11-25-2012 11:02 PM)ClairtonPanther Wrote:  No doubt College Realignment is a bubble in a sense.

Oklahoma-Nebraksa... lost
Texas- Texas A&M... lost

I'm sure there are rivalries within the B1G that are lost. Same w/ the PAC 12, ACC, SEC and so on. How great would it be to see Alabama vs Florida on a yearly basis?

Sure some say this is progression but its a joke.

Throw in Pitt-WVU, that is a great rivalry too

Also with the expansion of conference sizes, some schools will see a team at their place every 4 or 6 years, so it isn't like new rivalries can even form.

Everything is cyclical. Conferences are expanding now, but at some point the bubble will burst (a la carte TV subscriptions will probably be the impetus as cited above) and then they will go back to 9 or 10 conferences.

Cheers,
Neil

(11-25-2012 09:59 PM)Wolfman Wrote:  It ends when the broadcast industry undergoes a major change. One day I won't have to pay for all the stuff I don't watch, like the BTN, NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB, etc. When the money goes down the conferences will break up into smaller regional groups with shared interest and lower travel times and cost.

Wisdom.

(11-25-2012 09:59 PM)Wolfman Wrote:  It ends when the broadcast industry undergoes a major change. One day I won't have to pay for all the stuff I don't watch, like the BTN, NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB, etc. When the money goes down the conferences will break up into smaller regional groups with shared interest and lower travel times and cost.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arch...le/309109/

Quote:Your monthly TV bill—if you belong to one of the 83 percent of U.S. households that subscribes to a pay-TV service—is in fact three bundles nestled inside each other. Cable channels (such as TBS) are bundles of shows. Media companies (such as Time Warner, which owns TBS) offer bundles of channels that they refuse to sell one by one. Finally, pay-TV companies—which I’ll call cable companies for short, but which also include satellite companies like DirecTV and telcos like Verizon—bundle and sell the media companies’ offerings. When you pay $80 or so each month for cable, roughly half goes to the cable company to pay for the cost of building and maintaining the infrastructure to transport the content, and the other half goes to the media companies, which divvy it up among channels.
....
At some point, consumers may decide, en masse, that they won’t be force-fed anymore. But that hasn’t happened yet. The HBO Go campaign was just the latest revolutionary yelp of the “cord cutters”—those who’ve canceled their cable subscriptions to rely on video streamed over the Internet via Hulu or Netflix. One report estimated that more than 2.5 million people canceled their cable subscriptions between 2008 and 2011. But despite hard times, total pay-TV subscriptions held steady at about 104 million.
....
Today’s pay-TV subscribers are in effect subsidizing the cord-cutter experience by paying top dollar for first-run programming, while the Cordless soak up the offerings more cheaply in later windows. Without cable, there wouldn’t be HBO Go. There might not even be HBO. Great TV only seems cheap to the Internet’s enfants terribles because media companies insist on charging for it elsewhere—and more than 100 million households still think the price is worth paying.

(11-26-2012 11:40 AM)AtlanticLeague Wrote:  http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arch...le/309109/

The shift will eventually occur. It is a combination of new media, changes in expectations among younger consumers, and pricing. TV is just one of the most entrenched and thus will be one of the last to change.

We've seen the change elsewhere already. The key thing that has to happen is a viable alternative platform must emerge. Places where this has happened:
- Software. Nobody buys packaged software anymore. It's all digital distribution. OEMs won't even include Windows restore discs with new PCs anymore. Hell... many PCs don't even have optical drives anymore.
- Video Games. Another place where control through physical media is ending. The Steam platform may very well destroy the console market for all but casual gamers.
- Music. Death to the one hit wonder album. Songs on demand, individually, DRM free, for less than a dollar each. The proliferation of indie bands, indie labels, and even indie radio stations is going strong.
- Movies. Only the truly big movies are raking in big time profits. Netflix has destroyed the limited selection and hassle of Blockbuster. More and more holders are giving in to full digital streaming access.
- TV Shows. See above. Only add in commodity off the shelf PVR systems which strip the advertising and deliver you more time value and allow you watch what you want when you want.
- Books. Kindle. Nook. Tablets. Digital distribution. DRM free (in some cases, eventually it will become 100% DRM free like music has become). Cheaper. No longer must you blow a publisher to distribute your own book to millions. Indie publishers and indie labels and indie writers are beginning to proliferate.


TV will come around eventually. We want to be able to watch anything. We want to be able to watch it any time. Want want to be able to watch it on any of our devices, be that tablet or PC or smartphone. And we want to pay for only what we like. And if these conditions are met, we will consume more readily and more frequently, actually INCREASING profit for the companies providing content.

Adapt or die.

(11-26-2012 12:50 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  

(11-26-2012 11:40 AM)AtlanticLeague Wrote:  http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arch...le/309109/

The shift will eventually occur. It is a combination of new media, changes in expectations among younger consumers, and pricing. TV is just one of the most entrenched and thus will be one of the last to change.

We've seen the change elsewhere already. The key thing that has to happen is a viable alternative platform must emerge. Places where this has happened:
- Software. Nobody buys packaged software anymore. It's all digital distribution. OEMs won't even include Windows restore discs with new PCs anymore. Hell... many PCs don't even have optical drives anymore.
- Video Games. Another place where control through physical media is ending. The Steam platform may very well destroy the console market for all but casual gamers.
- Music. Death to the one hit wonder album. Songs on demand, individually, DRM free, for less than a dollar each. The proliferation of indie bands, indie labels, and even indie radio stations is going strong.
- Movies. Only the truly big movies are raking in big time profits. Netflix has destroyed the limited selection and hassle of Blockbuster. More and more holders are giving in to full digital streaming access.
- TV Shows. See above. Only add in commodity off the shelf PVR systems which strip the advertising and deliver you more time value and allow you watch what you want when you want.
- Books. Kindle. Nook. Tablets. Digital distribution. DRM free (in some cases, eventually it will become 100% DRM free like music has become). Cheaper. No longer must you blow a publisher to distribute your own book to millions. Indie publishers and indie labels and indie writers are beginning to proliferate.


TV will come around eventually. We want to be able to watch anything. We want to be able to watch it any time. Want want to be able to watch it on any of our devices, be that tablet or PC or smartphone. And we want to pay for only what we like. And if these conditions are met, we will consume more readily and more frequently, actually INCREASING profit for the companies providing content.

Adapt or die.

I agree that the switch will happen at some point, but there is the fixed cost component that may not be covered by variable revenue once unbundled (as outlined in the article).

I love only paying for what I use (I don't own a TV and it hasn't stopped me from accessing all of the material I wish to see), but I also know that I don't represent a sustainable business model for content producers.

To tie this back to realignment, a 16 team conference is not financially sustainable unless that size commands bundled revenue. Once this takes off, you'll see the large conferences split in half (Coastal vs Atlantic) as we revert to an older model. Maybe division alignments are more important now than I thought.

Some interesting insight on the a la carte issue in connection with the massive deal that FOX and the Dodgers are brewing:

"Whatever happens, TV rights prices won’t come down anytime soon unless ‘a la carte’ cable gets some semblance of traction in the courts or Congress and not just with consumers. And if that does ever happen, “the strong will survive, the weak will go,” one Big Media bigwig told me today very matter-of-factly." http://www.deadline.com/2012/11/exclusiv...by-nov-30/

Strong = able to deliver subscribers willing to pay to see their teams. Weak = not so much.

My take -- if a la carte becomes a reality, look for ESPN, FOX and some of the independent RSNs to team together to ditch cable as their primary distribution method. They could offer ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, FSN, one or more other local RSNs, FX, FS1, BTN, SECN, and some non-sports Fox and Disney channels as a bundle for $50-75/month delivered via broadband and/or satellite. The Fox and the Mouse (Disney) owe billions for sports rights. They will get paid and make tons of money along the way.

(11-26-2012 02:36 PM)orangefan Wrote:  Some interesting insight on the a la carte issue in connection with the massive deal that FOX and the Dodgers are brewing:

"Whatever happens, TV rights prices won’t come down anytime soon unless ‘a la carte’ cable gets some semblance of traction in the courts or Congress and not just with consumers. And if that does ever happen, “the strong will survive, the weak will go,” one Big Media bigwig told me today very matter-of-factly." http://www.deadline.com/2012/11/exclusiv...by-nov-30/

Strong = able to deliver subscribers willing to pay to see their teams. Weak = not so much.

My take -- if a la carte becomes a reality, look for ESPN, FOX and some of the independent RSNs to team together to ditch cable as their primary distribution method. They could offer ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, FSN, one or more other local RSNs, FX, FS1, BTN, SECN, and some non-sports Fox and Disney channels as a bundle for $50-75/month delivered via broadband and/or satellite. The Fox and the Mouse (Disney) owe billions for sports rights. They will get paid and make tons of money along the way.

I think the pricing has to come down further than your proposal. NFL Sunday Ticket is $34.99/mo and that includes every NFL out of market game. I think a conference network should be able to come in at $15-20/mo and even less for a full year if they backfill with .edu content.

Even at say $35/mo ... if you only have it for football and basketball season you still make out better than standard cable.