(09-28-2023 10:17 AM)quo vadis Wrote: ... Tank made a telling point about history, but I still think that the P2 are going to try and squeeze the M2. I think they will push for a formula that gives each of them about 25% of the guaranteed revenue, and the B12 and ACC each about 13% of the same, with the Gs collectively splitting the last 20% or so and maybe 5% for merit.
I think the rationale would be along the lines of in the 2014 CFP, the rationale for more guarantied P5 CFP income was the "contract bowl" ties, which themselves reflected the market value of the conferences.
However, the thing abut using the contract bowl test is that only the test was written into the CFP contracts ... it was the bowl committees as formally independent business entities that decided which conferences were worth offering a contract to. So the defense against it being an anti-competitive contract clause is that "any conference can compete in the market to be valuable enough to be offered a contract".
Quote: Since those ties are now absorbed within the 2026+ CFP, a new metric will be the relative value of the TV deals each conference has, and IIRC the SEC and B1G will be making about twice as much as the ACC and B12.
IANDL, so I don't know if that flies as a defensible market test, but it's a headache to codify in a way that pays the SEC and Big Ten the same share.
By contrast, in the "QF affiliate" approach, conferences are given the right to pick their QF bowl, and so bowls have the ability to pay for the promise to pick them when they are QF bowls, and there "just so happens" (by coincidence) to be four conferences which get offered affiliate deals, and it just so happens that two of the affiliate deals pay more than the other two.
Quote: I do not think there will be a large pool of "merit" money based on putting teams in the CFP. There will be a small amount of that, like in the current CFP, but the P-conferences want big guarantied money, IMO, not something that can drop dramatically downward if the conference has a tough year.
But the strongest non-discriminatory way to grab more for the P2 is to ramp up the share that goes for being selected. A full unit for being selected for the QF bye, a 60% unit for being selected for the first round host, a 40% unit for being selected for the first round visitor.
And we already know the way to prevent big swings in those revenues from one year to the next ... pool units over multiple years. The size of the selection money pool can ramp up by thirds in 2024, 2025 and 2026, with two years units in 2025 and three years units in 2026 and going ahead.
Put 30% of the revenue into that pool for the full 24 units ... 10% in 2024, 20% in 2025 ... and the greater revenue share for the P2 is, to be sure, not a formal guarantee, but as close to guaranteed as you can get without writing a larger share for the P2 straight into the contract terms.
Because they want guaranteed money, to be sure, but what they
really want is
exactly the kind of discriminatory contract terms in restraint of trade that those with market power always want to use to leverage their market power into a larger guaranteed flow of money. And so they have to dance around what they really want to figure out how to get as close as possible to what they want without getting so close that they risk getting burned.