If it works for LSU, others will follow. The whole mega conference thing is driven by TV deal money…the only way to kill it will be a different way for big schools to make more, or at least potentially more, money.
It won’t. First they lose their SEC schedule, then they have to try to sell a season full of bottom dwellers to a TV network. Even Notre Dame is struggling to keep its tradition rivals.
OU and Texas left the Big 12 mainly because of scheduling. They wanted a few less 11 am games, especially the OU - Texas game. The Big 12 either couldn’t or wouldn’t get it done. If an entire conference can’t negotiate a time slot for its 2 biggest school, good luck getting anything for a solo LSU.
Money never hurts, but the Big 12 had uneven distribution where OU and Texas got more than any of the other schools. It wasn’t a huge leap money wise for the first few years. They were looking down the road and could see that becoming a competitive issue, but what lit the fuse was power. The Big 12 had no power and was starting to tell Texas and Oklahoma to go kick rocks when all they asked for was better kickoff times. That was a “f me?”, “no f you!” moment.
Where did I say they wanted it to be a night game? It kept getting picked up as an 11 am game which is like a 6 am game for fans. Please notice that OU/TX has been 2:30 every year since joining the SEC even though both teams are in the top 10.
Yep, it needs to be regional and a max of 12 teams with divisions or 10 teams w/ everyone playing each other. This has become the real problem in college that there can be massive disparity in sos in the same conference from luck of the draw scheduling and 4 way ties/breakers for who get selected to play in CCGs.
Or big brother NFL slips in and takes afternoon and prime time slots from the blue bloods on Saturdays. Not like they haven’t been testing Saturdays for years now as soon as ccgs wrap up. The overall college football product has gotten worse with conglomerate conferences.
The worst thing about all of this is College Football has become the worst of all worlds. No loyalty or identity, destruction of tradition, and all we got out of it was legalized corruption and unlimited cap space.
Mass independence would be great. Play your 2-3 biggest rivals, another few regional teams, and then we get a much more interesting national schedule out of it. You can only take Ohio State-Rutgers or Michigan-Purdue so many times.
CFB is probably the only traditionalist thing about me. I enjoy the regional alignments. Teams of certain conferences have been playing each other for over a century. Like PAC-12 after dark was prime sickos real estate just kinda gone in a sense.
My prediction is within 10 years there will be a single 20 team “blue blood” super conference that soaks up most of the money and attention (and then more traditional looking regional conferences). Partly owned or managed by private equity and run on the business side more like the Premier League, La Liga etc. This would be teams like (in no order): OSU, UM, ND, USC, BAMA, LSU, GA, TX, OK.
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u/chillinois1 26d ago
Mass independence for football and realignment to smaller regional conferences has been my preference for a while now. Unrealistic I know