(10-22-2018 03:13 PM)CliftonAve Wrote:  This board's obsession with Rice and Tulane is really bizarre.

I'd add Buffalo to that list as well.

I think people forget that realignment is powered by football.

Sure, something like academics factors into the equation for some conferences, but no one is going to "invite" a school that doesn't add to the bottom line for the soon to be negotiated media rights contracts. I don't think ESPN and the ACC are sitting at the table drooling over the prospect of a "must have" market like New Orleans. ESPN has them with the SEC and LSU, the ACC doesn't need them.

IF someone like Rice were to be added to a conference, it would probably be a partial membership or select sports like the B1G did with Johns Hopkins.

Buffalo is different animal

(10-24-2018 08:26 AM)BruceMcF Wrote:  

(10-22-2018 04:01 PM)The Cutter of Bish Wrote:  

(10-22-2018 03:13 PM)CliftonAve Wrote:  This board's obsession with Rice and Tulane is really bizarre.

For those of us fans of the Big East, imagine our surprise when Tulane is announced as a member.

Or, when Rice is discussed for membership for the MWC.

It's not obsession. Clearly, these schools' academic reputations mean something to other school presidents. They come up so often here because they keep popping up in realignment talks.

They keep popping up because they easily clear the "academically good enough" hurdles.

And they also keep popping up because they ALWAYS end up near the bottom of the "adds media value to the conference" ranking which is done to the schools that are "good enough academically" to be considered.

So they are still out there the next time somebody is looking, and says, "which are the schools that are academically good enough in about the right areas"

And then if they again pass the pre-screening, they again fail the preference ranking.

Repeat, ad nauseum.

Tulane was lucky to be at the right place at the right time with an advantageous (to them) hair-brained strategic vision by a conference commission when the old Big East was in the middle of a ongoing get raided, reload, get raided, reload cycle. IMNSHO, if they are going to step up, they can try first stepping up to the AAC level where they are officially located at.

I don't think it's just academics. It's also politics. It also may have to do with working relationships and quality fanbases. For the flack the service academies get for not being able to keep up, their fans travel very well, and nobody tends to say anything negative about working with those programs. You know, from a logistics standpoint...you need that. Of course, for Rice and Tulane, who have fans that don't travel (or even bother going to the home games)...maybe it's that their leadership meshes well with the rest of the conference.

The politics part...just ask Memphis and ECU about Louisville and the Big East blockage the two faced for so long. When are there too many public mid-south schools looking to get on the same line as these others? That's when Tulane becomes a convenient alternative. It took certain schools leaving to open up spots and favor for those guys to finally jump aboard.

(10-24-2018 01:49 PM)The Cutter of Bish Wrote:  

(10-24-2018 08:26 AM)BruceMcF Wrote:  

(10-22-2018 04:01 PM)The Cutter of Bish Wrote:  

(10-22-2018 03:13 PM)CliftonAve Wrote:  This board's obsession with Rice and Tulane is really bizarre.

For those of us fans of the Big East, imagine our surprise when Tulane is announced as a member.

Or, when Rice is discussed for membership for the MWC.

It's not obsession. Clearly, these schools' academic reputations mean something to other school presidents. They come up so often here because they keep popping up in realignment talks.

They keep popping up because they easily clear the "academically good enough" hurdles.

And they also keep popping up because they ALWAYS end up near the bottom of the "adds media value to the conference" ranking which is done to the schools that are "good enough academically" to be considered.

So they are still out there the next time somebody is looking, and says, "which are the schools that are academically good enough in about the right areas"

And then if they again pass the pre-screening, they again fail the preference ranking.

Repeat, ad nauseum.

Tulane was lucky to be at the right place at the right time with an advantageous (to them) hair-brained strategic vision by a conference commission when the old Big East was in the middle of a ongoing get raided, reload, get raided, reload cycle. IMNSHO, if they are going to step up, they can try first stepping up to the AAC level where they are officially located at.

I don't think it's just academics. It's also politics. It also may have to do with working relationships and quality fanbases. For the flack the service academies get for not being able to keep up, their fans travel very well, and nobody tends to say anything negative about working with those programs. You know, from a logistics standpoint...you need that. Of course, for Rice and Tulane, who have fans that don't travel (or even bother going to the home games)...maybe it's that their leadership meshes well with the rest of the conference.

The politics part...just ask Memphis and ECU about Louisville and the Big East blockage the two faced for so long. When are there too many public mid-south schools looking to get on the same line as these others? That's when Tulane becomes a convenient alternative. It took certain schools leaving to open up spots and favor for those guys to finally jump aboard.

Getting back to the original premise of the thread, adding a Rice or Tulane doesn't do squat for improving the Pac12's situation-- they aren't getting a pay hike from the networks by adding those schools, a recruit is not going to be swayed to go to USC because he gets to play Rice, and the playoff committee isn't going to give Oregon the nod over another P5 school for playing the gauntlet of Oregon State, Washington State, Rice and Tulane in November.

Clifton just did the perfect TLDR on this thread

(10-24-2018 05:48 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  Clifton just did the perfect TLDR on this thread

The next realignment will be a consolidation of power, not the spreading of it.

(10-24-2018 05:56 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(10-24-2018 05:48 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  Clifton just did the perfect TLDR on this thread

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.

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

(10-24-2018 05:56 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(10-24-2018 05:48 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  Clifton just did the perfect TLDR on this thread

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.

(10-24-2018 10:30 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

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

(10-24-2018 05:56 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(10-24-2018 05:48 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  Clifton just did the perfect TLDR on this thread

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.

(10-22-2018 09:34 AM)ken d Wrote:  

(10-22-2018 08:19 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  I don't know that there is really anything the conference can do short of fixing the games.

The top 6 Pac-12 teams per ESPN FPI
Washington, Utah, Stanford, Washington State, Oregon, USC in that order.

First problem of the top 4 only one is a brand that is going to roll off the fingers of an AP voter without some thought. It's easy to vote USC, Oregon and even Stanford if they are doing well. Washington is the great up down, Utah still has some voters out east thinking they are MWC and Washington State is the flag at GameDay and crazy coach antics.

The league cannot help that the names people have built in to be inclined to vote for aren't killing it right now.

Let's look at those six.
USC has one non-conference loss, to Texas
Oregon no non-conference losses
Washington State no non-conference losses
Stanford lost to Notre Dame
Utah no non-conference losses
Washington, lost to Auburn.

So your top half of the league has 12 losses but only two to non-conference opponents.

The only way to fix that is to fix games and I don't think the Pac-12 is that desperate yet.

There is nothing for the league to do but keep competing and hope a strong one or two eventually emerge that can be CFP contenders.

That's a pretty solid analysis. But there is one other thing they could do to help their cause. I understand the reasons why the PAC schedules 9 league games despite having only 12 teams. But that extra game guarantees that PAC teams combined will have 6 more losses every year. Some of those are going to hurt their CFP chances.

I would put Cal and Stanford in the PAC South, and move Colorado and Utah to the PAC North. I would have an 8 game conference schedule with no protected crossovers (all necessary annual games are now all division games).

Arrange the schedule so nobody plays both Washington and Oregon or USC and Stanford OOD in the same year.

Everybody in the PAC North plays one Bay Area and one LA team every year - one home and one away. If it's important to Colorado and Utah to play more often in California, they now have an additional OOC game they can use to play San Diego State, Fresno State or San Jose State.

It's just an incremental improvement to the PAC's CFP chances, but often the difference between being in or out is pretty small.

The PAC could improve on the ACC's zipper, and make it a true zipper alignment. This also works well for their already existing "paired networks".
8 conference games, 5 division games, 1 crossover and two "other division" games would be perfect for the PAC.
Something like:

Colorado-Utah
Arizona-Arizona State
UCLA-USC
Cal-Stanford
Oregon-Oregon State
Washington State-Washington

The PAC's paired network concept could easily accommodate one or two additional pairs:
Texas-Texas Tech
Texas-Oklahoma
Oklahoma-Kansas
Oklahoma-Oklahoma State*
Kansas-Kansas State*

*would require two additional pair

(10-24-2018 02:00 PM)CliftonAve Wrote:  Getting back to the original premise of the thread, adding a Rice or Tulane doesn't do squat for improving the Pac12's situation-- they aren't getting a pay hike from the networks by adding those schools, a recruit is not going to be swayed to go to USC because he gets to play Rice, and the playoff committee isn't going to give Oregon the nod over another P5 school for playing the gauntlet of Oregon State, Washington State, Rice and Tulane in November.

Actually, the original premise was whether there was a plan in place for this conference. And nobody knows what it could be.

And really, when you turn your nose up at Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and B1G-PAC...when big money comes at you so easily, and you turn them down BOTH, no, who knows what will happen with this conference given this particular group of presidents; network execs and bottom lines be darned.

Troll those with opinions you don't like all you want (did I even say the PAC will take these guys, I'm confused?). You're no more a university president than I or anyone else here, and those guys do some weird things...case in point the PAC as much as other examples raised. But, whatever, we know your triggers.

FWIW, I think some of this gets walked back. It's just a question of which one comes back first, expansion with OU and OSU in the bundle, or another version of B1G-PAC (regardless if there's some movement on a universal thirteenth game in football).

(10-25-2018 07:48 AM)XLance Wrote:  

(10-22-2018 09:34 AM)ken d Wrote:  

(10-22-2018 08:19 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  I don't know that there is really anything the conference can do short of fixing the games.

The top 6 Pac-12 teams per ESPN FPI
Washington, Utah, Stanford, Washington State, Oregon, USC in that order.

First problem of the top 4 only one is a brand that is going to roll off the fingers of an AP voter without some thought. It's easy to vote USC, Oregon and even Stanford if they are doing well. Washington is the great up down, Utah still has some voters out east thinking they are MWC and Washington State is the flag at GameDay and crazy coach antics.

The league cannot help that the names people have built in to be inclined to vote for aren't killing it right now.

Let's look at those six.
USC has one non-conference loss, to Texas
Oregon no non-conference losses
Washington State no non-conference losses
Stanford lost to Notre Dame
Utah no non-conference losses
Washington, lost to Auburn.

So your top half of the league has 12 losses but only two to non-conference opponents.

The only way to fix that is to fix games and I don't think the Pac-12 is that desperate yet.

There is nothing for the league to do but keep competing and hope a strong one or two eventually emerge that can be CFP contenders.

That's a pretty solid analysis. But there is one other thing they could do to help their cause. I understand the reasons why the PAC schedules 9 league games despite having only 12 teams. But that extra game guarantees that PAC teams combined will have 6 more losses every year. Some of those are going to hurt their CFP chances.

I would put Cal and Stanford in the PAC South, and move Colorado and Utah to the PAC North. I would have an 8 game conference schedule with no protected crossovers (all necessary annual games are now all division games).

Arrange the schedule so nobody plays both Washington and Oregon or USC and Stanford OOD in the same year.

Everybody in the PAC North plays one Bay Area and one LA team every year - one home and one away. If it's important to Colorado and Utah to play more often in California, they now have an additional OOC game they can use to play San Diego State, Fresno State or San Jose State.

It's just an incremental improvement to the PAC's CFP chances, but often the difference between being in or out is pretty small.

The PAC could improve on the ACC's zipper, and make it a true zipper alignment. This also works well for their already existing "paired networks".
8 conference games, 5 division games, 1 crossover and two "other division" games would be perfect for the PAC.
Something like:

Colorado-Utah
Arizona-Arizona State
UCLA-USC
Cal-Stanford
Oregon-Oregon State
Washington State-Washington

Flip the Washington schools and you get the old Cooler alignment

(10-24-2018 07:50 AM)CliftonAve Wrote:  Tulane is in the AAC, and they aren't doing a damn thing for anyone else in the conference. They haven't added additional media revenue, they don't increase anyone else's academic rankings, we don't share in their endowment, and they don't travel fans (honestly, they brought 2 fans for their alumni event in Cincinnati this year). There home attendance is trash--- a couple years ago UC hoops played at Tulane and we had more people in the stands than they did. Sure, they might get a little bump being in a P5 conference, but still probably would not be as much of a bump as where Houston, UCF/USF, Cincinnati and Memphis already are not to mention their potential.

The other presidents care about what the new schools do for the existing schools, not what they do for themselves. There is no question some of the northern Big 12 schools didn't want Houston because they were concerned about adding competition for recruiting.

(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:  

(10-24-2018 05:48 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  Clifton just did the perfect TLDR on this thread

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.

In reference to that-how conferences have done since 1985: https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men...dness-1985

A-10 87-95 0.478
A-Sun 6-31 0.162
American 11-8 0.579
ACC 307-153 0.667
American East 1-20 0.048
ASC * 1-3 0.250
Big 12 147-110 0.572
Big 8 * 67-49 0.578
Big East 278-172 0.618
Big Sky 3-31 0.088
Big South 1-20 0.048
Big Ten 270-177 0.604
Big West 21-32 0.396
CAA 21-36 0.368
CUSA 53-52 0.505
ECAC * 1-9 0.100
ECC * 0-7 0.000
Great Midwest * 15-12 0.556
Horizon 19-18 0.514
Independents 13-18 0.419
Ivy 8-32 0.200
MAAC 5-32 0.135
MAC 18-37 0.327
MEAC 3-28 0.097
Metro * 26-25 0.510
Mid-Cont * 7-23 0.233
MVC 36-57 0.387
MW City * 2-1 0.667
MW Coll * 10-22 0.313
MWC 20-42 0.323
NAC * 2-8 0.200
NEC 0-25 0.000
OVC 6-33 0.154
Pac-10 * 141-107 0.569
Pac-12 26-23 0.531
Patriot 3-24 0.111
PCAA * 8-6 0.571
SEC 223-143 0.609
Southern 6-32 0.158
Southland 5-31 0.139
Summit 1-9 0.100
Sun Belt 16-41 0.281
SWAC 1-23 0.042
SWC 21-24 0.467
WAC 42-64 0.396
WCAC * 1-7 0.125
WCC 33-40 0.452

(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.