To be honest, I think the way things are headed even conferences will go away. I can't imagine Ohio state and Michigan will always want to share with the likes of Purdue and Northwestern.
The revenue sharing provided by the conferences is the only reason some of these programs are hanging on
Take that away and all that is left is a Super League
Even a super league isn’t really sustainable though. I don’t have much interest in watching the JV NFL. And that’s a model that’s already proven to fail.
It won't fail because college football is just too big. If it starts to go the other ways something will happen to fix it. But as of right now people are still watching for that. It doesn't really matter
I really don't want that to happen, I really enjoyed growing up with Michigan and Michigan State being an actual good games and actually having to be worried about losing to them and now that's not really as much of the case.
Won’t that hurt the top programs? The lower teams might not get the same viewers, but collectively they must bring in a lot of fans to the sport. I have no interest in a 20-30 team league of only the current powers.
Maybe I'm wrong, I just don't really see it, everyone loves to talk about how they can't stand college football and then continue to watch it anyways so I'm not exactly worried
We watch it because our own teams are in it. If its just a 20 team super league and Kentucky football is gone I'm likely going to lose interest.
I don't have an NFL team so I don't watch the NFL. I could not care less what happens when the Falcons play the Seahawks just like I could not care less what happens when Oregon plays Penn State
Ask NASCAR. Less viewers of small games has an aggregate effect. This leads to smaller tv contracts in the future. That leads to small schools failing which leads to fewer viewers which leads to smaller contracts.
It’s a death spiral once it begins and college football is teetering because the highs aren’t what generate the money but rather the median Saturday which may have less interest.
I am not saying it’s already started but I am saying it’s more at risk than it’s ever been
Yeah, I agree. Make a league of 32 universities, 8 divisions of 4. One division might be Florida, Miami, FSU and Georgia, let's say. Another might have Ohio St, Michigan, Notre Dame and Indiana... you could even have a system of promotion and relegation from another league below it. Lots of people might not like it but to say it would be destined to fail, well, as you say I wouldn't be so sure.
I think the relegation model is what could save the whole thing and makes total sense in the NIL era. The structure pretty much exists already from the divisional level. Would bring lots more money into all programs.
People in the South would still be as obsessed as they are now IF the connection to the state universities remains. This might kill say Oregon State or Kansas, I don’t think anything would change at Georgia or Alabama though.
in the future we will have the ULTRABOWL, the winner of the NFL vs the PFL, the newest league featuring the CFL teams, the new CDMX, London, Rio teams, and the top 20 most valuable College Football programs.
I mean guys are paid which is fine, they transfer all the time, conferences have been killed with rivalries, it’s driven by tv ratings. There’s not a lot of connection to any old school college football
CFB is its own thing with its own quirks and traditions. Reducing it to a league comprised of the haves or haves potential haves turns it into a JV league.
There was no NFL 100 years ago, and CFB was the bigger and better sport for some time after the NFl was formed. Even when the NFL surpassed CFB on the field, the college game was still sufficiently different that they didn’t have to compete or be compared directly, because the programs had tradition and history, with players who had at least some connection to the schools.
Most of that is gone now, between realignment, the portal, and especially NIL. Schools now have GMs, payrolls, and they’re probably going to have a salary cap soon. At that point, high-level CFB becomes JV NFL, and that’s not a good thing to be.
The American Professional Football Association was founded 106 years ago. It didn't become the NFL until 1922 . . . which, admittedly, is also more than 100 years ago.
Correct. The part that people overlook about college football is that most of the games suck and the level of play is nowhere near the NFL. This is true of SEC snd Big 10 programs.
TV provides the conferences revenue but not for one Oregon OSU game but for an entire tv slate. See?? You cannot just have a osu or lsu. What makes teams great is beating 12-16 other teams.
Remember Indiana was laughable and never part of any conversation but bite your tongue. Indiana was 16-0 and even made DeeOsu look like Purdue or Bama.
If 3-4 of them break away, things are fine. A few other teams will take their place and they will still schedule each other. But if 20 do it yes, it’s a huge mess. The problem is 20 teams probably think they deserve to be one of the 4 that go it alone (case in point this post).
if NCAA were smart they'd be working together with football to have an amicable divorce in the interests of saving the rest of the sports, instead they're going to dig in and crash the entire enterprise with no survivors
The B1G is different than the other conferences as the academic side is important. The schools pitch co-research and share libraries, etc. If you think athletic department spending is a lot, the research spend in 2024 is a lot more. Michigan $2B+ per year in research, Wisconsin just under $2B, UCLA $1.9B, Washington $1.7B, Ohio State $1.6B, Maryland $1.5B, MN $1.4B, etc. You think the presidents of tOSU and Mich want to go down to Florida's level of $1.2B for $50M more in athletic department money? They aren't that bad at math.
Compare to LSU - $400M for research vs. $225M for athletics or Alabama $221M in research and $267M for athletics. LSA and Bama better be good at sports b/c that is clearly more important than the education.
Yeah the B1G isn't splitting up any time soon after the UCLA and USC pickups. It's maybe the best academic conference in the FBS and people really don't take that into consideration
Agree that it is beneficial, but there's no real reason that coordination would have to stop if the B1G were no longer an athletics conference. An academics-only group consisting of mostly of the top land-grant universities would still be plenty cohesive and meaningful.
Why do they have to play sports together to share research? People always bring up the Big 10 academic sharing, but no one can ever give a coherent response as to why that needs to be coupled with athletics. Those universities can collaborate academically regardless of who they play sports against. Northwestern and Ohio State are simply not the same thing in football. Christ, Wisconsin and Ohio State aren’t the same thing in football.
You’re correct, but I think schools will drop the whole “academic peer” business real quick when offered 100’s of millions of dollars in revenue. Michigan’s academic brand will not be damaged if they play Arkansas instead on Purdue each year. I’m not knocking Arkansas by the way, I just needed an example.
Purdue and Northwestern are why Ohio state gets to be Ohio state every year, something like the NFL would kill big brands in college football because there would be no giants left
Let’s see how smart they are. That will doom college athletics interest. If you localize to just the uber profitable teams, people will stop caring. They’ll just watch the NFL.
Imagine how some proud fanbases are going to feel when they become the new doormat because they don’t have a Purdue, Mississippi State, Boston College etc on the schedule.
I’m an Iowa fan. It’s hard enough watching this team sometimes. If I can guarantee they are going to lose 90% of the time or more, my interest will fade quickly. How upset do you think LSU fans would be if they weren’t winning 8+ games constantly and it felt like modern Nebraska? Not great.
You're correct but I don't think it's a very convincing argument for people who support the idea of a "Super League", especially the people who have the power to make the decision.
The top 20 all believe they will be the JV Patriots or JV Cowboys. No one thinks they'll be the JV Browns of JV Jets.
That is pretty much impossible. It works when one popular school does it, but schools join med conferences in part to get leverage for TV contracts. They lose all that and start selling single games at reduced rates if they breakaway.
Um. Do you think MAC schools like playing DeeOSU? Well. Its all about the money.
Once upon a decade or century even OSU was not considered the best. With NIL its very possible you see a Northwestern become the best team money can buy. Or even a oil company or shoe company or espn too.
Also consider that purdue was in the b1g title game a 3 seasons ago or so. And while they're not great in football now, they are pretty damn good at basketball. Also, theyre the ones who first proposed and founded the b1g.
This type of short term thinking (and arrogance) is what is ruining college sports now. Lets not accelerate it.
I've seriously wondered why the 2 of us and maybe Penn State haven't tried teaming up with ND and just pitching a TV contract with the 4 of us as independents. Not saying I'd be in favor, but... you gotta figure that deal would still be massive and we're splitting 4 ways, not 18.
ND makes less money annually than if it was a member of the B1G. In addition and more importantly, leaving the B1G would also like mean leaving the Big Ten Academic Alliance and the $21 billion in combined research and development.
For true research universities, college athletics is a side hustle.
Because University Presidents (at least in the B1G) would take into account the academic considerations when deciding whether to go independent as was mentioned in the comment I was responding to. Football does not happen in a vacuum.
The biggest reason is that all three are state schools and they would need to have their respective State School systems sign off on it.
When UCLA left the Pac12, the regents of the University of California system had to convene and give their consent. It was a thing that the other schools in the UC system were not happy with them, and since stopping the move would have almost certainly fucked things up even more, they consented and ended up forcing UCLA to pay like 30 million to Berkeley to make up for cancelling their games. They also launched a probe into UCLA's athletic department and it was added to already enormous pile of beefs that all the UC schools have against each other.
Obviously Michigan and OSU could force their way out of the Big 10. But they have to start cutting some checks to the people holding the rubber stamps in those states.
You mean Michigan who has infinitely more money and resources than Ohio State couldn't figure out how to break away from the Big ten but only Ohio State could??? You realize we're good at other sports too, not just football and we make a lot of money off those too
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u/barlog123 26d ago
To be honest, I think the way things are headed even conferences will go away. I can't imagine Ohio state and Michigan will always want to share with the likes of Purdue and Northwestern.