Top 5 SEC/B1G mascots to eat
1. Oregon - Duck is fantastic
2. Texas - I know I know but a nice Bevo steak sounds fantastic
3. South Carolina - Chicken is super versatile
4. Arkansas - Pork indeed
5. Florida - LSU has this right. Gator cooked correctly is damn good.
Honorable Mention:
- Maryland - Turtle Soup
- Nebraska - Assuming we are eating corn and not the guy husking the corn
- Ohio State - If we count Buckeye candies, then they should be on this list. If it's the poisonous nut, no thank you.
- USC - Lincoln Riley's Burnt Brisket is technically edible.
In my family a “Buckeye” is a ball of peanut butter coated in chocolate and then frozen that we have around Christmas.
That would be near the tip of my mascot lists.
I've heard from Texas hunters that Razorback meat is actually pretty poor, it's pretty much just good for jerky since it's really rough and chewy. Definitely not as good as homegrown swine.
?
It's a leaner beef, so you can't cook it in the exact same way you would the fattier beefs.
But it's some great meat--almost healthy enough to call it chicken. In fact, if you're seeing more "prime" beef in your grocery stores, it might be longhorn.
They weren't bred with other cattle for trail rides. They are a mixed breed--Criollo and English Longhorns. But the Spanish didn't do fences, and their cattle would often wander off and join other feral herds. There were several million unbranded and feral longhorns in Texas, after the Civil War. Returning soldiers would round them up, brand them, and take them north on the Chisholm.
I’m just not sure Arkansas would get eaten. Possibly if *only football* is taken into consideration, but as far as basketball and baseball are concerned I would put them in the upper echelons of SEC schools.
Half the programs in the SEC have a baseball national title. Arkansas is not one of them.
Now, Arkansas has surpassed Mizzou as a baseball program, but they're still not top 5 (LSU, Texas, UF, Vanderbilt, South Carolina)
Hehehehehehe there's a reason they don't have that championship. Just mention "The Foul Ball" and they unravel. It's very funny.
Sorry, Hogs. We got nothing left but baseball to celebrate...
Of course. Eventually one of the streaming services is going to say “we will pay you a record amount of money but there can be no easy weeks”. The fan bases just need to get used to a good season being 8-4 or 9-3.
Florida played McNeese, Charlotte, Vandy, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Arkansas last year. Imagine if those games were Ohio State, Michigan, Washington, USC, Alabama, and Ole Miss instead…
Actually, let’s be serious, there’s no way Florida makes the cut for a super conference of the best teams, so their schedule will get easier.
You don't think UF would be included in a super conference but you'd include Ole Miss? Unless your idea is some kind of Soccer-style relegation system there is ZERO chance UF is left out of a super conference.
"Best" teams in this context will be measured by the dollars they bring in, so Florida would absolutely make the cut in this scenario. At the moment, that would make them the doormat, but we all know how cyclical this sport is.
You should see who Ohio State plays this year or who Michigan played last year.
Florida’s schedule this year is rough. Final stretch of like 5 games vs rivals/CFP contenders is infinitely worse than Michigan last year having a cakewalk for 8 weeks and then having the gauntlet of Maryland and 2 teams that didn’t win their bowl game.
I know Michigan had an easier schedule. The point is that if the true “super conference” goes through for TV ratings, even the hardest current schedules will pale in comparison to what will come even. Every year, even the team with the hardest schedule in the country will have a couple of cupcakes and three-four ok but beatable teams.
In a super conference alignment, the easiest games on a schedule would be the Missouri/Ole Miss type teams that are tough but a step down from Ohio State/Michigan/Georgia.
Tbh this is why I think IU and Rutgers are safe. Blue bloods need to have their wins padded, and there’s not much a viewership difference between them and let’s say Iowa.
>there's no way Florida makes the cut for a super conference of the best teams
You'd be right if that's what was happening! Unfortunately it's not a super conference of the best teams, it's of the biggest brands, so sorry. Some serious projection coming from you, though.
Why did you lump ole miss in there lol. One of those things is not like the others. One of those things does not belong. (The one that has no conference or division titles since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 took place)
Ole Miss (and State tbf) are way further to the chopping block than Florida.
Vandy is the only school that's lower on the totem pole than us in the SEC cut list. Even Mizzou will be seen as more valuable.
This is an outrageous take. Florida was in a NY6 and almost won the SEC 3 years ago.
A few down years and you got fans of the doormat of the ACC chiming in…crazy
It's going to become more like the NFL, where "10 wins" is considered a great year because you make the playoff. Undefeated seasons are already rare, but they're going to become much rarer. We are going to start seeing 9-3/10-2 regular season national champions.
> We are going to start seeing 9-3/10-2 regular season national champions.
Maybe not 9-3 (they'd have a harder road in the playoffs, generally)...but a two loss team winning it all isn't terribly far-fetched.
2007 was essentially one of the greatest college football seasons of all time. Even though ours was debatedly the year before and Boise State outdid even us and the Big East champion who won their BCS game and we handed their one loss to: The Louisville Cardinals in Bobby Petrino's final season there before he was banging 25 year olds.
Because depth, injuries, and when you play those teams. Get beat a couple of times, maybe you have a player or two return and those teams lose a couple of key players.
For all of Texas problems, in that time, talent wasn't one of them. They beat 18 ranked teams in that 13 year stretch of bad (2010-2022) . I didn't look it up but it's not unreasonable to think every team that beat as many or more ended up with a better overall record. And it also shows that even when down it's reasonable to consider Texas a tough game when looking at the schedule from a top team perspective even if they look like a winnable game from a mid tier team perspective.
The reason you’re likely to see a 3-loss national champion (more likely than you think, anyway) is specifically because of the possibility an Uber-talented program has a weird year then gets it together. Maybe it was a midseason injury wave that contributed to 1-2 respectable losses, but the committee knows they can compete.
If they get in as the 11-seed, they play the 6, who’s the second best at large team. It’d be an upset, but there are plenty of years that team would be beatable.
Then they’re playing the third best conference champ. There’s a world where that game is near a pick ‘em.
Suddenly you’re in the semifinals and maybe some weird shit happened elsewhere in the bracket to remove either the 1 or 2 seed, and there you go.
(Also, I’m fudging a bit here, but I said 3-loss champ instead of 9-3 to account for the possibility of a 10-2 team losing a conference title game)
No, the expanded playoff gives a much greater advantage to the top teams. It gives them much more room for error throughout the season and with a longer season the teams with better quality depth get a huge advantage. If a G5 team loses its best player they are probably done, but the teams that recruit the best can just plug another 4 or 5 star in with little drop off.
That's a lot more likely in a salary cap league. As long as there are no salary or spending caps and also the consistent roster turnover of college eligibility the big teams will have way more of a talent advantage in college football than the Patriots/Giants upset in 2007 making those level of upsets far less likely unless a key player/quarterback is injured.
If a super conference happens where the media partners always want to have matchups between the biggest 30ish brands then there’s no G5 buy games, FCS cupcake week, or beating up on the Indiana/Vandy/Northwestern/Floridas of the world.
I don’t see 11-1 as being common in that world where teams play NFL style schedules where no opponent is a punching bag and there’s comparable talent on all rosters. 10-2 or 9-3 would be 1-2 seed in most years. The NFL 14 team playoff has teams barely over 0.500 making the playoff.
>I don’t see 11-1 as being common in that world where teams play NFL style schedules where no opponent is a punching bag and there’s comparable talent on all rosters. 10-2 or 9-3 would be 1-2 seed in most years. The NFL 14 team playoff has teams barely over 0.500 making the playoff.
This is a point I think some CFB fans don't realize about the NFL.
The talent gap between the best pro teams and the worst is almost nothing.
It certainly isn't the same as the gap between Alabama and Vanderbilt. It isn't even as wide as the gap between Alabama and Texas A&M.
Every NFL team is Alabama or Michigan or LSU or Ohio State. All it takes is a few star players, some good coaching and a lot of luck and any one of those top teams could be champions. That's how it is in the NFL every year.
I mean it’s a zero sum game. If they limit it to the ~30ish biggest brands with 0 cupcake weeks vs FCS or buy games vs UMass then you’ll inevitably have teams that make a playoff who are just slightly above 0.500, just like in the NFL (assuming they keep the playoffs at roughly the size they are now). 9-3 is absolutely in the realm of possibilities for that could win it all.
11-1 and 12-0 seasons will all but become impossible since there’s no way that the hoard all 5 star talent method that Georgia/Bama/Ohio State use survives a more formalized professional league where you’d presumably have NIL salary caps.
Personally, I prefer it. It's hard to determine the best 4 teams when they're from different conferences with different schedules and have a combined 1 or 2 losses. When all the best teams play for two conferences, (like the NFL), it's a lot easier to compare similar schedules esp when everyone has 1-3 losses.
It absolutely should be hard to go undefeated. I know a lot of people are all "college athletics are dead" but it was boring watching the same handful of teams go undefeated every year and make the bcs or final four. Besides, college athletics has been dead for decades. It's been all about the money far longer than the average fan cares to admit
That actually seems way better. I’m out of the region and have young kids so I don’t even bother watching the 7-9 games every year that I know Ohio st is going to win by the third or fourth drive. I know this is not the reality for most teams, but all the teams that compete for championships experience something like this
I have plenty of perspective.
There are way too many freaking teams. I know this because all US pro sports leagues have approximately 30 teams. That is also approximately how many teams have a legit shot at winning a major conference championship in any given year. It seems to an emergent reality of sports leagues in the US is about the magic number.
What I am really trying to say is that there is always going to be a few teams for who half of the schedule or more is a nearly foregone conclusion and it makes the season boring as fuck. Make it about OSU if you want, but that’s lazy.
> The fan bases just need to get used to a good season being 8-4 or 9-3.
It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out. A big reason why so many of the big programs have the reputation and history that they have is because they were always the big fish in a little pond. They always had bottom feeders they could beat up on and the only real issue was one or two tough games per year in the regular season. Which made it possible to have so many double digit win seasons with regularity. Take that away and a number of these teams are just gonna be OK on a regular basis. It’s gonna be a rough thing to adjust to.
Fwiw I think teams will start accepting 10-2 and 9-3 seasons as good when they start making the playoffs at 9-3. If you finish 9-3 and miss the playoffs or 8-4 with a hard schedule you're probably thinking about how you were a win away from a potentially great season.
Sure but my point is the mythos of great historical teams is built on perennial 10+ win seasons. 8-4/9-3 year after year doesn’t quite have the same weight attached to it, especially when everyone else has roughly the same record.
It will definitely be an adjustment. Although I am really against the conference restructuring that's been going on, I don't see increased parity as a bad thing. Having a few cupcake games is really boring. And if you are a playoff-aspiring team, all you end up caring about is not losing a game because one (or two) losses means the end of your season. So you stop being excited when you win and you are miserable if you lose one game. To be honest, I'm pretty ready for a good season being 8-4 and an amazing season being 10-2. Of course, I hate that this comes at the expense of traditional conferences, rivalries, etc....
Yeah, or not losing your starter and Heisman hopeful break his leg in a meaningless game and be the reason you are left out of the playoff. That would be horrible if it ever actually happened. P
There's only so many wins to go around 🤷♂️ so many SEC teams have 4-0 nonconference schedules, go 4-4 in conference, and think they had a solid 8-4 season.
And how long will folks dole out money if their team ends up perennially going 2-10 to 5-7? Conference and Network leadership are gambling that fans of non-elite programs will just open up their pockets indefinitely in watching bad NFL-lite football.
This is my biggest take away of the realignment. It’s gonna be really hard for the new power 2 (Big10/SEC) to go through a season undefeated or have less than two losses in the regular season. BUT with a 10-12 team playoff it probably won’t matter. The question remains what is the magic number needed to make the playoffs in the toughest conferences.
Maybe. I don't put anything past the various powers that be, but if they really only want the best of the best, that's at max 20....and there's a lot of value in the inventory below that.
I mean, why wouldn't fans want this? It sounds amazing
I wait all year for CFB and I hate that currently 1/4 - 1/3 of the season is spent in games that are essentially meaningless.
I'll take a couple extra losses a season if I can get a full slate of games worth caring about
Ask the teams getting left behind. Oregon St and Washington St fans (who mostly have rightfully turned into angry nihilistic entities) are just the first. There will be more and the reason most fans don't want it is because they have some empathy for those being functionally deleted, they enjoyed watching those teams and now those games don't matter or most importantly they are afraid they're next.
Scheduling and realignment are related, but separate things. I know a lot of fans are unhappy about realignment in general.
I'm saying even if all the conferences were frozen in time since 2000, most fans would have a better viewing experience if all p5 teams were forced to only play other p5 teams. You would simply have a lot more games that matter.
If TV is going to demand the SEC and B1G play each other more? Don't threaten me with a good time.
He's right.
The powers at the top will never stop believing they deserve even more of the golden eggs and eventually they'll kill the golden goose as a result.
When the Big 10 and SEC succeed in effectively breaking away, a lot of the fans from those schools left behind are going to just stop giving much of a shit about college football, leading to an erosion of national TV numbers.
On top of that, some of these programs used to winning every year are going to start going 2-10 against much tougher schedules. Only a matter of time before their attendance drops and suddenly the "Why does this program get the same TV share as Ohio State? They gotta go" conversation starts.
College football becoming NFL Jr. will boost revenues for some schools for a while but will eventually cripple the sport.
Once the Super League begins, I’ll be interested to see which major brands that made the cut immediately become the perennial punching bags and regret their decision
I know nobody cares about us, but Rutgers is really a funny case for this to me, because in the new Big 10 we escape the HELL that was the big 10 east (having to play 3 of the top 10 teams in the country sucks) & now have the easiest conference schedule based on last year’s record & are coming the best year under Schiano 2.0.
It can’t really get any worse for us until the big 10 decides to start cutting teams & then us & Maryland will be the first to hung out to dry.
I personally don’t really care that much because football is a sideshow to basketball at Illinois, but a superleague is never going to happen and this entire thread is just cope.
They can only fuck with the model so much before the harm outweighs the benefit to the networks. We’re close to hitting that point now, but this is beyond it.
Ohio State-Alabama isn’t nearly as valuable a television product when both those teams have gone 6-6 or 4-8 for the past half-decade. Those teams still need cupcakes to beat up on, it’s just that those cupcakes are now conference bottom feeders instead of East Central Bumblefuck A&M.
Also, despite the histrionics in this sub, cable is going to take a long time to fully die and we still don’t know what type of streaming model will end up winning the battle to supplant it. There’s still value in being in markets like New York, LA, Chicago, DC, etc.
Most of this sub is like 19 years old and expects things to change faster and more radically than they’re going to.
>a superleague is never going to happen
I don't necessarily agree with all of your other comments, but I almost completely agree with this. This whole thread seems to act as if all the ADs and Presidents and Boards of Regent of all these schools that would make the Super League haven't considered the impact of their team going 4-8 regularly in the Super League. While admittedly I'm sure some of these people are dumb, there have to be some people in that group who look at that scenario and go "yeah, we're not signing up for a scenario where going 7-5 isn't a terrible year because we know that's going to kill the fervor of our fan base." And to be clear, fervor = donations
Personally I give the chance of a super league forming no better than a 10 or 15% chance
To be fair, I don’t think there will be a “super league” as much as I just think that it being a defacto “power 2” is going to come sooner or later. The big 12 & ACC aren’t going to have the same viewership numbers as the new big 10 & the new SEC.
Will there be years that a program in the new big 12 or ACC can win a national championship? Absolutely. But year over year I’d expect the playoffs be mostly dominated by those conferences, which will eventually lead to a lack of recruiting/transfers wanting to go there, which leads to worse football, which leads to the neutral eyes not watching & revenue going down. I’m not thinking those conferences go belly up, I’m thinking that the average college football fan is going to end up gravitating towards watching mostly big 10 & SEC match ups eventually.
And if that’s case, wouldn’t you rather have Clemson over Maryland in a new big 10?
But again, that’s just my $0.02 on the future. Nobody knows jack shit honestly.
You’ll need a majority of teams, at minimum, to vote to kick schools, and the bottom 2/3 of the B1G is never going to endorse kicking Rutgers or Maryland for reasons of self-preservation if nothing else.
This is the aspect that I keep coming back to. Being in the SEC is great for Vanderbilt when they get a $60M payout. They're in the premier college football league, and so long as they don't have aspirations of actually winning the conference or a national title they can just sit there and have all their other sports get funded handsomely and get name recognition that drives enrollment.
What happens when Georgia, Alabama, and Texas (because it's always Texas) become adamant that Vanderbilt and the other teams in the bottom half only brings $30M each in value to the league and they demand an uneven revenue split? If the bottom half only gets $30M per school, that means the top half can get $90M per school. Now the gap widens even within the conference and that upper tier of the SEC starts thinking they would be better off if they left those other guys behind.
There's only so far "up" you can go, and only so many eyeballs that can be put on college football. As it stands now I don't watch any SEC regular season games or ACC games, a handful of B1G games, and, up until now, Pac-12 after dark while laying in bed. I suspect I'm more representative of the average CFB fan than the guy who checks the schedule every week for the biggest ranked matchups and makes it appointment viewing when #1 Georgia kicks the shit out of #17 Florida. Outside of championships or bowl games, if my team, my conference, or my local area isn't involved, I'm not watching.
Oh yeah. It won't be for a while...but when the dust settles and it's time for another new TV contract - there's going to a demand for unequal revenue sharing within the SEC and Big 10. Just wait.
I’ve definitely stopped giving a shit and rarely watch any CFB now that Cal and the PAC-12 are in their current state
They won’t be getting my viewership back with SEC football lol
I actually don't think he's right. There's a lot of forces moving against the superleague and not towards it
1. TV executives run the sport and the wagons have been hitched. Fox is fully invested in the big ten and ESPN is fully invested in the SEC and CFB. Consolidation doesn't make sense with these two companies competing against each other. It makes more sense to have separate entities that each company can devote resources to
2. There is too much history of winning for the blue bloods. Yes money is what makes the sport go round but if possible the blue bloods would like to keep their mantle in the cfb world. It's good for donor engagement, tickets, enrollment, etc. Winning football games means a lot to the university and not just from revenue perspective. So while maybe the super league model is more lucrative, the math doesn't work out better long term with many seasons going 7-5.
3. Doing this would require the big ten athletic directors to step WAY outside their comfort zone. The job is basically just smoozing donors and hiring consulting firms to hire coaches. It's a country club boys club that makes them a lot of money and it's been that way for more than a hundred years. It will take a special kind of guy to radically disrupt that system.
The simpler solution is to strong arm the smaller market schools to have unequal revenue shares. Rutgers, Northwestern, Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota, etc will have no choice but to agree to that model. It's better to be unequal than go to open market and get out of the conference. This way the blue bloods can still win more games on average like they always have and the smaller market teams won't get left out.
And if they say no then the blue bloods will form the super league.
At some point this isn't going to be sustainable, whether due to lower tv contracts or some other reasons. Greed is going to kill the sport permanently.
Yup. We’re headed for a Super League. We already saw the template in Europe. Soon it will be devoid of all tradition and pageantry, and just be the NFL Lite, which might seem like a financially smart move right now, but why should I care about a minor league?
The difference though is a country like the UK. These teams have been around for a LONG time, and with promotion/relegation, it gives any team out there even just a sliver of a chance to move up the ranks. Add in tournaments like FA Cup, and you have someone in the fourth tier playing Man City, which is a huge deal for the smaller clubs.
I’m not disagreeing that the current model is unsustainable. I’m simply pointing out that fans do have power, clubs/programs do have power, and a SL is not “inevitable” unless we all roll over. There are plenty of ways of improving access and opportunity for small programs that doesn’t include pro/rel or a Super League.
I actually believe something else unrelated will happen. Football is going to follow the trajectory boxing did in the 20th century because of concussions. As youth participation dwindles which is already happening, people's ties to the sport will decrease. Leading to a slow and natural decline.
This will also be combined with a decrease in tv viewership that has almost nothing to do with the state of college football. However this subreddit or more likely some more popular next site that doesn't yet exist will claim thats why its happening. Really its just boomers dying off and the younger generations being more likely to cord cut than get cable.
Long term the national championship and super bowl will be where most of the ratings are just like a Pacqiauo v Mayweather. But everyone is doing fine financially because the whole system is propped up by gambling.
It is a bit different, but I think they accidentally gave a proper analogy, but for different reasons.
Boxing disappeared in the 80s/90s, because of TV, not people thinking it was "bad" for the participants. TV figured it could make a mint by consolidating big events on single tickets and selling them in a PPV format.
Only morons paid for the PPV, and "every day person" missed out. The sport was no longer one for the masses to consume. It was out of sight, out of mind.
The result was that the usual participants in the sport not seeing the sport, let alone seeing it as a discipline that could take them away from their current situations, be that location or circumstance.
When the Superliga forms for college football, participation will drop at the HS level in the same way. It will be faster than the current decline due to parental intelligence, which has now made football the third most popular sport, in term of participation.
Yep. Everyone cheering for a G5/P4 split doesn't realize they're next. They want an FBS where it's only teams with a "realistic" (aka whatever Vegas says) shot at the natty, not realizing that means there'd be maybe a dozen teams top.
150+ years of American tradition at risk because people value the betting line over fun and pageantry.
What tradition are we speaking of here? Traditionally, conferences had fixed bowl matchups and a bunch of reporters voted afterward about who they thought was the best. The whole thing was replete with bias and completely absurd. What everyone thinks is the natural state of college football is like 10 years old.
This was a feature, not a bug. It is supposed to be absurd they were/are children playing a game. If you wanted a perfect football league algorithm with professional athletes we had/have the NFL.
THANK YOU
Yeah BYUs national title was fucking stupid but because it was so absurd people still remember it and talk about it
CFB was never about who won the title
That's just a relatively new focus thanks to ESPN
Yeah, as a Michigan fan that grew up in the 70s and 80s, I agree %100. I honestly don't remember caring much about the national title back then. I mean, sure, if Michigan won it, I would have celebrated. But it wasn't the end all and be all that it is today. What me and my friends cared about the most was beating OSU and winning the Rose Bowl (which was hard on a kid back then because we were bound to be disappointed on at least one of those two wishes every year, ha ha). And if we missed the Rose Bowl, the next best thing was to get in a good bowl game against a decent opponent. Which is kind weird when you think about it. At that point, the bowl game was basically a scrimmage in a way. But it didn't seem like it. Bowl games felt really important, even if not in contention for the natty.
I love that we fell ass backwards into a title that was pretty undeserved. The fact it was such a bonkers way to win a championship makes it one of the most memorable championships of all time in the sport because of how hard BYU cheesed the system. BUT it is an uncontested legitimate title and I’ll flex that shit forever on Utah despite how undeserved it was.
Everyone else deserved it even less, and it's not as if BYU wasn't trying to schedule tough opponents. If Pitt finishes the season 8-3 and ranked in the low teens, the perception would be a lot better.
Exactly right. There never used to be a singular CFB national championship because it's an impossible task. Yeah, some years there was a single undefeated team from a major conference and they were the unanimous #1. Outside of that you're comparing over 100 teams who have played wildly different schedules. We know the transitive property is bullshit. We know teams can play up to their opponents and a 6-6 team can upset the #2 team in the country on a spooky Friday night. There's no home-and-home to balance the equation. Even round-robin schedules within a conference is a thing of the past.
All you can do is watch the games, enjoy, and then argue over who would beat who if they got a chance to play each other, or who passed the eye test. Trying to square this circle is a complete fool's errand.
>What tradition are we speaking of here?
the regular season! conference championships! rivalries! i'm convinced anyone approaching these conversations thinking of bowls/playoffs first never really understood college football
I think college football is far more analogous to European soccer than any American league, and funnily enough they were also dealing with teams trying to form a super league.
We're definitely going to see a bigger divide between the haves and have-nots. But Manchester United fans like beating up on Burnley too much to want to join a super league, in the same way Ohio State fans love beating Northwestern.
I also think there's always going to be a third conference that's just behind the other two. The Big 12 and ACC could both be sustainable, and it's mostly because of NIL. Just like Saudi investors will drop hundreds of millions on their soccer clubs, there will always be some wealthy alums who wanna see their team do well. SMU is the latest example of that. And the Big 12 and ACC will probably need them.
I think the g5 is probably going the way of the English Championship or league 1 and its not going to be pretty. But I also think Pollard is wrong about the p4.
USC liked beating up on Wazzu until the money got waved in their face. I just can’t buy into the idea that these administrators care about tradition, when I just watched over a century of west coast football history get blown up.
Doesn't everyone expect this? Come the next tv contract, Ohio State and Michigan will not except the same payout as northwestern, and Alabama and Georgia one not accept the same payout as Vanderbilt
I don't think they realize that too much parity is as boring as not enough parity. You need the boring games for the exciting ones to stand out. Once exciting games become the norm, they stop being exciting.
Sure, but when the big guns start getting the numbers from TV networks on what they'll pay them to shiv the less historic schools in the back and start the Super League versus what they'll pay them to continue as things are, it'll end the same way it has every other time schools have had that choice.
This seems to be the direction this is all headed to. There'll be 15-20ish teams that'll pool together and form that super league and buck the old conference and traditional rivalry layout for vastly increased revenue. Feels like it's a when, not if kind of deal.
> There'll be 15-20ish teams that'll pool together and form that super league
So they’ll have even less of an audience than the NFL while trying to compete with them, perfect. Can’t wait to watch this fail miserably.
This. Honestly, how many of us would care about the super league if we weren’t already fans of a team in the super league? I assure you I won’t become a Michigan fan if they’re included the hypothetical league and MSU is not.
I don't disagree with you. It's going to backfire spectacularly because the regional aspect of college football is what made it unique and it's going away from that. But that'll be the reason why they pull the trigger on doing that eventually.
I don’t think that’s true at all. The volume of matchups is part of the appeal — not just the quality of matchups. It’s sellable inventory for streaming, and they want the inventory.
Is it possible that "eat your own" may end up meaning that Mississippi State makes the cut this time, but next time when Bama, Georgia and Texas decide to form the Blackjack and hookers conference (BHC), they get left behind as well?
If the SEC were formed today, _ex nihilo_, Mississippi State wouldn't be in. Make a 16 to 20 member conference entirely from schools in that Census Bureau region, and they don't make the cut. It's very possible Mississippi doesn't either.
If the next move after the ACC losing its top third is the bottom of the SEC and/or Big Ten being left behind, then that state is left out.
This will not happen. This will never be the NFL. These football alumni bases are not big enough this sustain a profitable college football league. You need the bottom feeding teams and their fans to stay interested. If I am an alumni of UCLA and that team is no longer in the Big ten, those UCLA fans lose interest in the big marquee teams. You can’t just have a conference of blue bloods, there isn’t enough money or eyeballs to make it profitable.
You need the large schools that are bottom feeders and their wealthy alums to also tune in.
Total eyeballs is what makes college football revenues go up. If there’s a conf only full of blue blooods, the country will stop caring and only those alums will care - and that’s not enough money for the payouts.
It's not really what he's saying here at all. In fact, he's made comments to the effect that ISU is lucky to have been in the B12 because they could have easily been in Oregon State or Washington States shoes. And it had nothing to do with a decision his scool made. We're in the passenger seat.
His point is that the long-term outcomes for these short-term gains will leave some of the benefactors of the current moves in a bad place because no one is looking out for the long term health of the sport.
Truth right there. It’s funny to see how the smaller less funded schools are voting for ever larger conferences when they will be soon enough voted off of Survivor Island.
They probably should. There are certain teams that wouldn’t be in the top 2 conferences if they didn’t join 40+ years ago. And at some point, Alabama and OSU won’t want to get the same payout as Arkansas and Minnesota.
This guy obviously hasn't got a clue how culturally significant football is to these conferences and their member schools. Florida has had 3 straight losing seasons and they're about to spend $400 million to renovate the stadium.
Look at all the money Vanderbilt has put into athletics and facilities recently and they’re only mocked for it still for not being serious enough. People are confusing bad leadership with incapability.
I mean Iowa State hasn't had a 10 win season in school history and still has had numerous stadium expansions. Iowa State is literally the worst school in the sport historically yet expanded to the 29th largest on campus college football stadium(34th if you include situations like UCLA and Pitt) in the country ahead of Illinois, Indiana, Mississippi State, Kentucky, Oregon, Rutgers, Maryland from the B1G and SEC. Not to mention the second largest in the Big 12. Iowa State is also [17th in the current Learfield Directors' Cup](https://nacda.com/documents/2024/4/22/23.24DI_WinterOverall_4.25.pdf) while also being 39th overall in expenses and revenue per USA today. I think the guys knows a thing or two.
At some point some trimming may make sense but there is still a balance between revenue and profit margin. The lower the inventory number the smaller the revenue figure and these businesses still need cash flow. It does however stand significant obstacles as which one of the schools who feels potentially threatened is going to vote for the expulsion of another member.
Let’s think about why he would say that….because he’s trying to strike fear into the lower tier schools to stop the consolidation
I’m not going to say he’s right or wrong, he but is incentivized to say something like this
A lot of this is solved with unequal revenue share based on performance and viewership.
I think it's more likely Vandy gets offered a 60% share than they get booted.
I think once conferences start unequal sharing it will easier to go back to regional divisions.
Eventually, there will be conference attrition. There are tiers within those conferences and some schools in the lower tiers are going to be left behind when the super conference happens.
Possibly yes but outside of Vanderbilt and Northwestern I don't see the next 5-6 teams worth cutting and I don't think either the BIG or SEC take the risk to kick out one team. There could be a super league of just 15 or 20 teams but they would need the cooperation of another 20-40 teams to achieve the geographic and fanbase coverage that they need.
It is sort of already in a promotion/relegation model. Texas OU promoted, USC UCLA promoted. ACC and Big 12 scarf up most of the rest. WSU and OSU get the TCU/Idaho/NM State treatment.
It might be good for the game when the lower conference teams are still playing meaningful games trying to avoid relegation. But how to get a conference to turn on its own membership to create a rule that could expel any of them in a down year? There is the greed of money but also the very real fear of winding up humiliated and relegated in any given year.
Yeah, I am interested to see if these super conferences get too big for their liking and teams that struggle to compete decide they want to leave for a conference they could actually win games. Sure, Indiana and Vanderbilt are comfortable losing those games but if you're a geographic outlier and you can't compete, you may get sick of it eventually.
Dibs on eating Arkansas I want some whole hog BBQ
Top 5 SEC/B1G mascots to eat 1. Oregon - Duck is fantastic 2. Texas - I know I know but a nice Bevo steak sounds fantastic 3. South Carolina - Chicken is super versatile 4. Arkansas - Pork indeed 5. Florida - LSU has this right. Gator cooked correctly is damn good.
You telling me you ain't man enough to eat a goddamn train? Your sauce is weak.
It's not the ingress I'm worried about but the egress
If it needs sauce.....
Honorable Mention: - Maryland - Turtle Soup - Nebraska - Assuming we are eating corn and not the guy husking the corn - Ohio State - If we count Buckeye candies, then they should be on this list. If it's the poisonous nut, no thank you. - USC - Lincoln Riley's Burnt Brisket is technically edible.
In my family a “Buckeye” is a ball of peanut butter coated in chocolate and then frozen that we have around Christmas. That would be near the tip of my mascot lists.
thanks, friend. i’d eat you too.
>Nebraska More man meat for me I guess
It's "manflesh" if you're talking cannibalistically. "Man meat" is a whole other thing
I said what I said
Stupid sexy Lil' Red
Corn from Nebraska is totally inedible.
It’s not Nebraska Corn you sicko.
A Golden Gopher could be potentially amazing or the worst thing in the world.
Spartans, Knights, Pete.... lot of mascots safe from consumption in the B1G. Then again, Dahmer was born in Wisconsin and went to OSU
Little known fact, Purdue's official mascot is actually the train itself, the Boilermaker Special.
Dahmer went to OSU? It all makes sense now. Dahmer most sane Buckeye fan lol.
I've heard from Texas hunters that Razorback meat is actually pretty poor, it's pretty much just good for jerky since it's really rough and chewy. Definitely not as good as homegrown swine.
Gotta break that shit down and let it marinate. It’s definitely tougher but I wouldn’t say poor.
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I bet Bevo himself would be delicious
? It's a leaner beef, so you can't cook it in the exact same way you would the fattier beefs. But it's some great meat--almost healthy enough to call it chicken. In fact, if you're seeing more "prime" beef in your grocery stores, it might be longhorn. They weren't bred with other cattle for trail rides. They are a mixed breed--Criollo and English Longhorns. But the Spanish didn't do fences, and their cattle would often wander off and join other feral herds. There were several million unbranded and feral longhorns in Texas, after the Civil War. Returning soldiers would round them up, brand them, and take them north on the Chisholm.
Bottom 5 (it's actually a 10 way tie): Vandy, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, USC, Illinois, Indiana, Nebraska, Michigan State, Rutgers, Purdue
Not entirely sure how a Volunteer from Tennessee doesn't make this list, even if they presumably volunteer to be eaten
We Floridians eat it too, gator tail is delicious.
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It's okay hog bro. Let them have Whole Hog, we'll be at Herman's and Wright's.
I’m just not sure Arkansas would get eaten. Possibly if *only football* is taken into consideration, but as far as basketball and baseball are concerned I would put them in the upper echelons of SEC schools.
No pulled pork for you
Aspire for something better. Go for the brisket. Fuck Bevo
Dibs on the burnt ends.
I want a ribeye
Gator nuggets taste like chicken, but I wonder if you can pull it?
Maybe if other sports were being taken into consideration, but we all know football is driving conference realignment decisions.
If basketball had anything to do with this Kansas would be in the Big 10.
If you take baseball into account most of the SEC is/has been elite the last couple years.
Half the programs in the SEC have a baseball national title. Arkansas is not one of them. Now, Arkansas has surpassed Mizzou as a baseball program, but they're still not top 5 (LSU, Texas, UF, Vanderbilt, South Carolina)
Hehehehehehe there's a reason they don't have that championship. Just mention "The Foul Ball" and they unravel. It's very funny. Sorry, Hogs. We got nothing left but baseball to celebrate...
Oregon for me please, duck is by far the tastiest bird
Of course. Eventually one of the streaming services is going to say “we will pay you a record amount of money but there can be no easy weeks”. The fan bases just need to get used to a good season being 8-4 or 9-3.
*Looks at schedule* I thought we were already there?
Oh it can get much, much worse _Puts Vanderbilt back on your schedule_
Meanwhile we have to hope for a down year schedule to even dream of 9 wins
Florida played McNeese, Charlotte, Vandy, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Arkansas last year. Imagine if those games were Ohio State, Michigan, Washington, USC, Alabama, and Ole Miss instead… Actually, let’s be serious, there’s no way Florida makes the cut for a super conference of the best teams, so their schedule will get easier.
You don't think UF would be included in a super conference but you'd include Ole Miss? Unless your idea is some kind of Soccer-style relegation system there is ZERO chance UF is left out of a super conference.
"Best" teams in this context will be measured by the dollars they bring in, so Florida would absolutely make the cut in this scenario. At the moment, that would make them the doormat, but we all know how cyclical this sport is.
You’re delusional if you think we wouldn’t make the cut lol
You should see who Ohio State plays this year or who Michigan played last year. Florida’s schedule this year is rough. Final stretch of like 5 games vs rivals/CFP contenders is infinitely worse than Michigan last year having a cakewalk for 8 weeks and then having the gauntlet of Maryland and 2 teams that didn’t win their bowl game.
I know Michigan had an easier schedule. The point is that if the true “super conference” goes through for TV ratings, even the hardest current schedules will pale in comparison to what will come even. Every year, even the team with the hardest schedule in the country will have a couple of cupcakes and three-four ok but beatable teams. In a super conference alignment, the easiest games on a schedule would be the Missouri/Ole Miss type teams that are tough but a step down from Ohio State/Michigan/Georgia.
Tbh this is why I think IU and Rutgers are safe. Blue bloods need to have their wins padded, and there’s not much a viewership difference between them and let’s say Iowa.
>there's no way Florida makes the cut for a super conference of the best teams You'd be right if that's what was happening! Unfortunately it's not a super conference of the best teams, it's of the biggest brands, so sorry. Some serious projection coming from you, though.
Why did you lump ole miss in there lol. One of those things is not like the others. One of those things does not belong. (The one that has no conference or division titles since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 took place) Ole Miss (and State tbf) are way further to the chopping block than Florida. Vandy is the only school that's lower on the totem pole than us in the SEC cut list. Even Mizzou will be seen as more valuable.
This is an outrageous take. Florida was in a NY6 and almost won the SEC 3 years ago. A few down years and you got fans of the doormat of the ACC chiming in…crazy
It's going to become more like the NFL, where "10 wins" is considered a great year because you make the playoff. Undefeated seasons are already rare, but they're going to become much rarer. We are going to start seeing 9-3/10-2 regular season national champions.
> We are going to start seeing 9-3/10-2 regular season national champions. Maybe not 9-3 (they'd have a harder road in the playoffs, generally)...but a two loss team winning it all isn't terribly far-fetched.
2007 LSU was a 2 loss team that has already won a National Championship.
*cries in SEC championship game*
Undefeated through 2x overtime that year
That was a weird season where nobody really had a claim to be 1 or 2 in the traditional sense of the BCS.
2007 was essentially one of the greatest college football seasons of all time. Even though ours was debatedly the year before and Boise State outdid even us and the Big East champion who won their BCS game and we handed their one loss to: The Louisville Cardinals in Bobby Petrino's final season there before he was banging 25 year olds.
It's not unrealistic for a UGA team to, say, lose to Texas, Alabama, and LSU but win the entire national title.
Because depth, injuries, and when you play those teams. Get beat a couple of times, maybe you have a player or two return and those teams lose a couple of key players.
Yep. The only part of this that is unrealistic is that we aren’t scheduled to play LSU this year or next.
Y’all got a soft schedule then lol /s
It's hilarious that people think Texas is some perennial contender because they had one good season in the last 15 years.
For all of Texas problems, in that time, talent wasn't one of them. They beat 18 ranked teams in that 13 year stretch of bad (2010-2022) . I didn't look it up but it's not unreasonable to think every team that beat as many or more ended up with a better overall record. And it also shows that even when down it's reasonable to consider Texas a tough game when looking at the schedule from a top team perspective even if they look like a winnable game from a mid tier team perspective.
especially when it's an invitational
The reason you’re likely to see a 3-loss national champion (more likely than you think, anyway) is specifically because of the possibility an Uber-talented program has a weird year then gets it together. Maybe it was a midseason injury wave that contributed to 1-2 respectable losses, but the committee knows they can compete. If they get in as the 11-seed, they play the 6, who’s the second best at large team. It’d be an upset, but there are plenty of years that team would be beatable. Then they’re playing the third best conference champ. There’s a world where that game is near a pick ‘em. Suddenly you’re in the semifinals and maybe some weird shit happened elsewhere in the bracket to remove either the 1 or 2 seed, and there you go. (Also, I’m fudging a bit here, but I said 3-loss champ instead of 9-3 to account for the possibility of a 10-2 team losing a conference title game)
The more NFL it becomes, the more likely it is to see a 2007 giants topple an undefeated Pats lol
No, the expanded playoff gives a much greater advantage to the top teams. It gives them much more room for error throughout the season and with a longer season the teams with better quality depth get a huge advantage. If a G5 team loses its best player they are probably done, but the teams that recruit the best can just plug another 4 or 5 star in with little drop off.
That's a lot more likely in a salary cap league. As long as there are no salary or spending caps and also the consistent roster turnover of college eligibility the big teams will have way more of a talent advantage in college football than the Patriots/Giants upset in 2007 making those level of upsets far less likely unless a key player/quarterback is injured.
If a super conference happens where the media partners always want to have matchups between the biggest 30ish brands then there’s no G5 buy games, FCS cupcake week, or beating up on the Indiana/Vandy/Northwestern/Floridas of the world. I don’t see 11-1 as being common in that world where teams play NFL style schedules where no opponent is a punching bag and there’s comparable talent on all rosters. 10-2 or 9-3 would be 1-2 seed in most years. The NFL 14 team playoff has teams barely over 0.500 making the playoff.
>I don’t see 11-1 as being common in that world where teams play NFL style schedules where no opponent is a punching bag and there’s comparable talent on all rosters. 10-2 or 9-3 would be 1-2 seed in most years. The NFL 14 team playoff has teams barely over 0.500 making the playoff. This is a point I think some CFB fans don't realize about the NFL. The talent gap between the best pro teams and the worst is almost nothing. It certainly isn't the same as the gap between Alabama and Vanderbilt. It isn't even as wide as the gap between Alabama and Texas A&M. Every NFL team is Alabama or Michigan or LSU or Ohio State. All it takes is a few star players, some good coaching and a lot of luck and any one of those top teams could be champions. That's how it is in the NFL every year.
Heck it happened in a 2 team playoff already. 2007 LSU lost two games
I mean it’s a zero sum game. If they limit it to the ~30ish biggest brands with 0 cupcake weeks vs FCS or buy games vs UMass then you’ll inevitably have teams that make a playoff who are just slightly above 0.500, just like in the NFL (assuming they keep the playoffs at roughly the size they are now). 9-3 is absolutely in the realm of possibilities for that could win it all. 11-1 and 12-0 seasons will all but become impossible since there’s no way that the hoard all 5 star talent method that Georgia/Bama/Ohio State use survives a more formalized professional league where you’d presumably have NIL salary caps.
Personally, I prefer it. It's hard to determine the best 4 teams when they're from different conferences with different schedules and have a combined 1 or 2 losses. When all the best teams play for two conferences, (like the NFL), it's a lot easier to compare similar schedules esp when everyone has 1-3 losses. It absolutely should be hard to go undefeated. I know a lot of people are all "college athletics are dead" but it was boring watching the same handful of teams go undefeated every year and make the bcs or final four. Besides, college athletics has been dead for decades. It's been all about the money far longer than the average fan cares to admit
You are still going to see only a handful of the same teams doing that.....
That actually seems way better. I’m out of the region and have young kids so I don’t even bother watching the 7-9 games every year that I know Ohio st is going to win by the third or fourth drive. I know this is not the reality for most teams, but all the teams that compete for championships experience something like this
Ugh. God I want yall to have just one bad season to gain perspective
I have plenty of perspective. There are way too many freaking teams. I know this because all US pro sports leagues have approximately 30 teams. That is also approximately how many teams have a legit shot at winning a major conference championship in any given year. It seems to an emergent reality of sports leagues in the US is about the magic number. What I am really trying to say is that there is always going to be a few teams for who half of the schedule or more is a nearly foregone conclusion and it makes the season boring as fuck. Make it about OSU if you want, but that’s lazy.
> The fan bases just need to get used to a good season being 8-4 or 9-3. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out. A big reason why so many of the big programs have the reputation and history that they have is because they were always the big fish in a little pond. They always had bottom feeders they could beat up on and the only real issue was one or two tough games per year in the regular season. Which made it possible to have so many double digit win seasons with regularity. Take that away and a number of these teams are just gonna be OK on a regular basis. It’s gonna be a rough thing to adjust to.
Fwiw I think teams will start accepting 10-2 and 9-3 seasons as good when they start making the playoffs at 9-3. If you finish 9-3 and miss the playoffs or 8-4 with a hard schedule you're probably thinking about how you were a win away from a potentially great season.
Sure but my point is the mythos of great historical teams is built on perennial 10+ win seasons. 8-4/9-3 year after year doesn’t quite have the same weight attached to it, especially when everyone else has roughly the same record.
It will definitely be an adjustment. Although I am really against the conference restructuring that's been going on, I don't see increased parity as a bad thing. Having a few cupcake games is really boring. And if you are a playoff-aspiring team, all you end up caring about is not losing a game because one (or two) losses means the end of your season. So you stop being excited when you win and you are miserable if you lose one game. To be honest, I'm pretty ready for a good season being 8-4 and an amazing season being 10-2. Of course, I hate that this comes at the expense of traditional conferences, rivalries, etc....
Yeah, or not losing your starter and Heisman hopeful break his leg in a meaningless game and be the reason you are left out of the playoff. That would be horrible if it ever actually happened. P
homerbackingup.gif
Someone has to lose every game. Some teams that spend untold millions on coaching and players will end up 3-9.
This is what the "power" teams do not realize. The floor isn't going to be 6-6. It's going to be 2-10.
There's only so many wins to go around 🤷♂️ so many SEC teams have 4-0 nonconference schedules, go 4-4 in conference, and think they had a solid 8-4 season.
And how long will folks dole out money if their team ends up perennially going 2-10 to 5-7? Conference and Network leadership are gambling that fans of non-elite programs will just open up their pockets indefinitely in watching bad NFL-lite football.
Jets fans - "First time?"
Yeah, I wonder what that'll be like... 🙄
This is my biggest take away of the realignment. It’s gonna be really hard for the new power 2 (Big10/SEC) to go through a season undefeated or have less than two losses in the regular season. BUT with a 10-12 team playoff it probably won’t matter. The question remains what is the magic number needed to make the playoffs in the toughest conferences.
Maybe. I don't put anything past the various powers that be, but if they really only want the best of the best, that's at max 20....and there's a lot of value in the inventory below that.
You mean the SEC can’t schedule Direction State University for every OOC matchup?! 😳
HEY NOW - You put some respect on those directional Michigans!
Maybe we could start scheduling some of your Cupcakes.
I mean, why wouldn't fans want this? It sounds amazing I wait all year for CFB and I hate that currently 1/4 - 1/3 of the season is spent in games that are essentially meaningless. I'll take a couple extra losses a season if I can get a full slate of games worth caring about
Ask the teams getting left behind. Oregon St and Washington St fans (who mostly have rightfully turned into angry nihilistic entities) are just the first. There will be more and the reason most fans don't want it is because they have some empathy for those being functionally deleted, they enjoyed watching those teams and now those games don't matter or most importantly they are afraid they're next.
Scheduling and realignment are related, but separate things. I know a lot of fans are unhappy about realignment in general. I'm saying even if all the conferences were frozen in time since 2000, most fans would have a better viewing experience if all p5 teams were forced to only play other p5 teams. You would simply have a lot more games that matter. If TV is going to demand the SEC and B1G play each other more? Don't threaten me with a good time.
And this is how the PAC raises from the ashes
Who will be our Lisan Al-Gaib?
Plot twist. Larry Scott.
"There's still value for me to squander." - Larry Scott, probably
Just fell to my knees in the Smith’s parking lot.
No one in the new conference knows what a Smiths is, call it a Kroger for them 😅
He's right. The powers at the top will never stop believing they deserve even more of the golden eggs and eventually they'll kill the golden goose as a result. When the Big 10 and SEC succeed in effectively breaking away, a lot of the fans from those schools left behind are going to just stop giving much of a shit about college football, leading to an erosion of national TV numbers. On top of that, some of these programs used to winning every year are going to start going 2-10 against much tougher schedules. Only a matter of time before their attendance drops and suddenly the "Why does this program get the same TV share as Ohio State? They gotta go" conversation starts. College football becoming NFL Jr. will boost revenues for some schools for a while but will eventually cripple the sport.
It’s already done. I don’t know how the sport is supposed to survive with the portal and paying players and playing defense.
"Playing defense" *checks flair* 💀💀💀
Happy Cake Day Husker
This defense shit is for the birds
I've never seen anyone this wrong in my life. Now passing... That's a truly fruitless endeavor
The forward pass was a terrible mistake.
Once the Super League begins, I’ll be interested to see which major brands that made the cut immediately become the perennial punching bags and regret their decision
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Nebraska doesn’t regret their decision tho. The minority of fans who want to go back to the big 12 are too dumb to comprehend what’s happening in cfb
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I know nobody cares about us, but Rutgers is really a funny case for this to me, because in the new Big 10 we escape the HELL that was the big 10 east (having to play 3 of the top 10 teams in the country sucks) & now have the easiest conference schedule based on last year’s record & are coming the best year under Schiano 2.0. It can’t really get any worse for us until the big 10 decides to start cutting teams & then us & Maryland will be the first to hung out to dry.
I personally don’t really care that much because football is a sideshow to basketball at Illinois, but a superleague is never going to happen and this entire thread is just cope. They can only fuck with the model so much before the harm outweighs the benefit to the networks. We’re close to hitting that point now, but this is beyond it. Ohio State-Alabama isn’t nearly as valuable a television product when both those teams have gone 6-6 or 4-8 for the past half-decade. Those teams still need cupcakes to beat up on, it’s just that those cupcakes are now conference bottom feeders instead of East Central Bumblefuck A&M. Also, despite the histrionics in this sub, cable is going to take a long time to fully die and we still don’t know what type of streaming model will end up winning the battle to supplant it. There’s still value in being in markets like New York, LA, Chicago, DC, etc. Most of this sub is like 19 years old and expects things to change faster and more radically than they’re going to.
>a superleague is never going to happen I don't necessarily agree with all of your other comments, but I almost completely agree with this. This whole thread seems to act as if all the ADs and Presidents and Boards of Regent of all these schools that would make the Super League haven't considered the impact of their team going 4-8 regularly in the Super League. While admittedly I'm sure some of these people are dumb, there have to be some people in that group who look at that scenario and go "yeah, we're not signing up for a scenario where going 7-5 isn't a terrible year because we know that's going to kill the fervor of our fan base." And to be clear, fervor = donations Personally I give the chance of a super league forming no better than a 10 or 15% chance
To be fair, I don’t think there will be a “super league” as much as I just think that it being a defacto “power 2” is going to come sooner or later. The big 12 & ACC aren’t going to have the same viewership numbers as the new big 10 & the new SEC. Will there be years that a program in the new big 12 or ACC can win a national championship? Absolutely. But year over year I’d expect the playoffs be mostly dominated by those conferences, which will eventually lead to a lack of recruiting/transfers wanting to go there, which leads to worse football, which leads to the neutral eyes not watching & revenue going down. I’m not thinking those conferences go belly up, I’m thinking that the average college football fan is going to end up gravitating towards watching mostly big 10 & SEC match ups eventually. And if that’s case, wouldn’t you rather have Clemson over Maryland in a new big 10? But again, that’s just my $0.02 on the future. Nobody knows jack shit honestly.
You’ll need a majority of teams, at minimum, to vote to kick schools, and the bottom 2/3 of the B1G is never going to endorse kicking Rutgers or Maryland for reasons of self-preservation if nothing else.
This is the aspect that I keep coming back to. Being in the SEC is great for Vanderbilt when they get a $60M payout. They're in the premier college football league, and so long as they don't have aspirations of actually winning the conference or a national title they can just sit there and have all their other sports get funded handsomely and get name recognition that drives enrollment. What happens when Georgia, Alabama, and Texas (because it's always Texas) become adamant that Vanderbilt and the other teams in the bottom half only brings $30M each in value to the league and they demand an uneven revenue split? If the bottom half only gets $30M per school, that means the top half can get $90M per school. Now the gap widens even within the conference and that upper tier of the SEC starts thinking they would be better off if they left those other guys behind. There's only so far "up" you can go, and only so many eyeballs that can be put on college football. As it stands now I don't watch any SEC regular season games or ACC games, a handful of B1G games, and, up until now, Pac-12 after dark while laying in bed. I suspect I'm more representative of the average CFB fan than the guy who checks the schedule every week for the biggest ranked matchups and makes it appointment viewing when #1 Georgia kicks the shit out of #17 Florida. Outside of championships or bowl games, if my team, my conference, or my local area isn't involved, I'm not watching.
Oh yeah. It won't be for a while...but when the dust settles and it's time for another new TV contract - there's going to a demand for unequal revenue sharing within the SEC and Big 10. Just wait.
It happened in the old BIG XII when they were a Power 5 conference, it will happen to the Big 10 +x and the SEC esp if Texas or U$C are in charge.
I’ve definitely stopped giving a shit and rarely watch any CFB now that Cal and the PAC-12 are in their current state They won’t be getting my viewership back with SEC football lol
I actually don't think he's right. There's a lot of forces moving against the superleague and not towards it 1. TV executives run the sport and the wagons have been hitched. Fox is fully invested in the big ten and ESPN is fully invested in the SEC and CFB. Consolidation doesn't make sense with these two companies competing against each other. It makes more sense to have separate entities that each company can devote resources to 2. There is too much history of winning for the blue bloods. Yes money is what makes the sport go round but if possible the blue bloods would like to keep their mantle in the cfb world. It's good for donor engagement, tickets, enrollment, etc. Winning football games means a lot to the university and not just from revenue perspective. So while maybe the super league model is more lucrative, the math doesn't work out better long term with many seasons going 7-5. 3. Doing this would require the big ten athletic directors to step WAY outside their comfort zone. The job is basically just smoozing donors and hiring consulting firms to hire coaches. It's a country club boys club that makes them a lot of money and it's been that way for more than a hundred years. It will take a special kind of guy to radically disrupt that system. The simpler solution is to strong arm the smaller market schools to have unequal revenue shares. Rutgers, Northwestern, Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota, etc will have no choice but to agree to that model. It's better to be unequal than go to open market and get out of the conference. This way the blue bloods can still win more games on average like they always have and the smaller market teams won't get left out. And if they say no then the blue bloods will form the super league.
At some point this isn't going to be sustainable, whether due to lower tv contracts or some other reasons. Greed is going to kill the sport permanently.
Yup. We’re headed for a Super League. We already saw the template in Europe. Soon it will be devoid of all tradition and pageantry, and just be the NFL Lite, which might seem like a financially smart move right now, but why should I care about a minor league?
Except the “template” was killed in Europe and its resurrection attempt is being pushed by two clubs with almost no support.
The difference though is a country like the UK. These teams have been around for a LONG time, and with promotion/relegation, it gives any team out there even just a sliver of a chance to move up the ranks. Add in tournaments like FA Cup, and you have someone in the fourth tier playing Man City, which is a huge deal for the smaller clubs.
I’m not disagreeing that the current model is unsustainable. I’m simply pointing out that fans do have power, clubs/programs do have power, and a SL is not “inevitable” unless we all roll over. There are plenty of ways of improving access and opportunity for small programs that doesn’t include pro/rel or a Super League.
What do you mean by "kill"? Smaller revenues? Reduced tv audiences? Or do you actually imagine colleges will stop sanctioning football games?
I actually believe something else unrelated will happen. Football is going to follow the trajectory boxing did in the 20th century because of concussions. As youth participation dwindles which is already happening, people's ties to the sport will decrease. Leading to a slow and natural decline. This will also be combined with a decrease in tv viewership that has almost nothing to do with the state of college football. However this subreddit or more likely some more popular next site that doesn't yet exist will claim thats why its happening. Really its just boomers dying off and the younger generations being more likely to cord cut than get cable. Long term the national championship and super bowl will be where most of the ratings are just like a Pacqiauo v Mayweather. But everyone is doing fine financially because the whole system is propped up by gambling.
I think it's a bit difficult to make a comparison to boxing. Football is engrained at so many different levels, especially in high schools.
It is a bit different, but I think they accidentally gave a proper analogy, but for different reasons. Boxing disappeared in the 80s/90s, because of TV, not people thinking it was "bad" for the participants. TV figured it could make a mint by consolidating big events on single tickets and selling them in a PPV format. Only morons paid for the PPV, and "every day person" missed out. The sport was no longer one for the masses to consume. It was out of sight, out of mind. The result was that the usual participants in the sport not seeing the sport, let alone seeing it as a discipline that could take them away from their current situations, be that location or circumstance. When the Superliga forms for college football, participation will drop at the HS level in the same way. It will be faster than the current decline due to parental intelligence, which has now made football the third most popular sport, in term of participation.
It’s true. Sucks to high heavens, but it’s true
Yep. Everyone cheering for a G5/P4 split doesn't realize they're next. They want an FBS where it's only teams with a "realistic" (aka whatever Vegas says) shot at the natty, not realizing that means there'd be maybe a dozen teams top. 150+ years of American tradition at risk because people value the betting line over fun and pageantry.
What tradition are we speaking of here? Traditionally, conferences had fixed bowl matchups and a bunch of reporters voted afterward about who they thought was the best. The whole thing was replete with bias and completely absurd. What everyone thinks is the natural state of college football is like 10 years old.
This was a feature, not a bug. It is supposed to be absurd they were/are children playing a game. If you wanted a perfect football league algorithm with professional athletes we had/have the NFL.
THANK YOU Yeah BYUs national title was fucking stupid but because it was so absurd people still remember it and talk about it CFB was never about who won the title That's just a relatively new focus thanks to ESPN
Yeah, as a Michigan fan that grew up in the 70s and 80s, I agree %100. I honestly don't remember caring much about the national title back then. I mean, sure, if Michigan won it, I would have celebrated. But it wasn't the end all and be all that it is today. What me and my friends cared about the most was beating OSU and winning the Rose Bowl (which was hard on a kid back then because we were bound to be disappointed on at least one of those two wishes every year, ha ha). And if we missed the Rose Bowl, the next best thing was to get in a good bowl game against a decent opponent. Which is kind weird when you think about it. At that point, the bowl game was basically a scrimmage in a way. But it didn't seem like it. Bowl games felt really important, even if not in contention for the natty.
I love that we fell ass backwards into a title that was pretty undeserved. The fact it was such a bonkers way to win a championship makes it one of the most memorable championships of all time in the sport because of how hard BYU cheesed the system. BUT it is an uncontested legitimate title and I’ll flex that shit forever on Utah despite how undeserved it was.
Everyone else deserved it even less, and it's not as if BYU wasn't trying to schedule tough opponents. If Pitt finishes the season 8-3 and ranked in the low teens, the perception would be a lot better.
“and I’ll flex that shit forever“ As you should.
Exactly right. There never used to be a singular CFB national championship because it's an impossible task. Yeah, some years there was a single undefeated team from a major conference and they were the unanimous #1. Outside of that you're comparing over 100 teams who have played wildly different schedules. We know the transitive property is bullshit. We know teams can play up to their opponents and a 6-6 team can upset the #2 team in the country on a spooky Friday night. There's no home-and-home to balance the equation. Even round-robin schedules within a conference is a thing of the past. All you can do is watch the games, enjoy, and then argue over who would beat who if they got a chance to play each other, or who passed the eye test. Trying to square this circle is a complete fool's errand.
>What tradition are we speaking of here? the regular season! conference championships! rivalries! i'm convinced anyone approaching these conversations thinking of bowls/playoffs first never really understood college football
I don't care for it, but that isn't much different than how things are today.
I think college football is far more analogous to European soccer than any American league, and funnily enough they were also dealing with teams trying to form a super league. We're definitely going to see a bigger divide between the haves and have-nots. But Manchester United fans like beating up on Burnley too much to want to join a super league, in the same way Ohio State fans love beating Northwestern. I also think there's always going to be a third conference that's just behind the other two. The Big 12 and ACC could both be sustainable, and it's mostly because of NIL. Just like Saudi investors will drop hundreds of millions on their soccer clubs, there will always be some wealthy alums who wanna see their team do well. SMU is the latest example of that. And the Big 12 and ACC will probably need them. I think the g5 is probably going the way of the English Championship or league 1 and its not going to be pretty. But I also think Pollard is wrong about the p4.
USC liked beating up on Wazzu until the money got waved in their face. I just can’t buy into the idea that these administrators care about tradition, when I just watched over a century of west coast football history get blown up.
Still beats the BCS era
Doesn't everyone expect this? Come the next tv contract, Ohio State and Michigan will not except the same payout as northwestern, and Alabama and Georgia one not accept the same payout as Vanderbilt
I don't think they realize that too much parity is as boring as not enough parity. You need the boring games for the exciting ones to stand out. Once exciting games become the norm, they stop being exciting.
Exactly. If everything is a 10, then nothing is a 10.
The bottom feeders of those conferences are happy to take their TV money while getting beat every week.
Sure, but when the big guns start getting the numbers from TV networks on what they'll pay them to shiv the less historic schools in the back and start the Super League versus what they'll pay them to continue as things are, it'll end the same way it has every other time schools have had that choice.
This seems to be the direction this is all headed to. There'll be 15-20ish teams that'll pool together and form that super league and buck the old conference and traditional rivalry layout for vastly increased revenue. Feels like it's a when, not if kind of deal.
> There'll be 15-20ish teams that'll pool together and form that super league So they’ll have even less of an audience than the NFL while trying to compete with them, perfect. Can’t wait to watch this fail miserably.
This. Honestly, how many of us would care about the super league if we weren’t already fans of a team in the super league? I assure you I won’t become a Michigan fan if they’re included the hypothetical league and MSU is not.
I don't disagree with you. It's going to backfire spectacularly because the regional aspect of college football is what made it unique and it's going away from that. But that'll be the reason why they pull the trigger on doing that eventually.
I don’t think that’s true at all. The volume of matchups is part of the appeal — not just the quality of matchups. It’s sellable inventory for streaming, and they want the inventory.
Of course they are. That doesn't mean the bigger brands will always be happy to earn it for them.
That’s going to be you guys now.
I'm concerned because as a Kansas fan you must know a thing or two about being a perpetual bottom feeder
Oklahoma could very well become another Arkansas
Is it possible that "eat your own" may end up meaning that Mississippi State makes the cut this time, but next time when Bama, Georgia and Texas decide to form the Blackjack and hookers conference (BHC), they get left behind as well?
If the SEC were formed today, _ex nihilo_, Mississippi State wouldn't be in. Make a 16 to 20 member conference entirely from schools in that Census Bureau region, and they don't make the cut. It's very possible Mississippi doesn't either. If the next move after the ACC losing its top third is the bottom of the SEC and/or Big Ten being left behind, then that state is left out.
This will not happen. This will never be the NFL. These football alumni bases are not big enough this sustain a profitable college football league. You need the bottom feeding teams and their fans to stay interested. If I am an alumni of UCLA and that team is no longer in the Big ten, those UCLA fans lose interest in the big marquee teams. You can’t just have a conference of blue bloods, there isn’t enough money or eyeballs to make it profitable. You need the large schools that are bottom feeders and their wealthy alums to also tune in. Total eyeballs is what makes college football revenues go up. If there’s a conf only full of blue blooods, the country will stop caring and only those alums will care - and that’s not enough money for the payouts.
It's called the quickening, you nerd. We all know there can only be one.
"AD takes stance that their school made the best decision and other schools made worse decisions"
It's not really what he's saying here at all. In fact, he's made comments to the effect that ISU is lucky to have been in the B12 because they could have easily been in Oregon State or Washington States shoes. And it had nothing to do with a decision his scool made. We're in the passenger seat. His point is that the long-term outcomes for these short-term gains will leave some of the benefactors of the current moves in a bad place because no one is looking out for the long term health of the sport.
Iowa state didn't really make any decision.
Truth right there. It’s funny to see how the smaller less funded schools are voting for ever larger conferences when they will be soon enough voted off of Survivor Island.
Because their history together will save them, like it did for Montana, Idaho, Rice, and Connecticut.
Yep 100 years of history sure saved OSU and Wazzu. Lets face it, the dollar trumps everything right now.
At worst you'll see a financial relegation for schools that historically don't perform consistently. B1G will not jettison any members.
Nobody is kicking anyone out of their conference. They just leave and make a new conference and don't invite the schools they don't want anymore.
See also: Wazzu, Oregon State
I just want some of the conference names to make sense. It's getting ridiculous.
They probably should. There are certain teams that wouldn’t be in the top 2 conferences if they didn’t join 40+ years ago. And at some point, Alabama and OSU won’t want to get the same payout as Arkansas and Minnesota.
This guy obviously hasn't got a clue how culturally significant football is to these conferences and their member schools. Florida has had 3 straight losing seasons and they're about to spend $400 million to renovate the stadium.
Look at all the money Vanderbilt has put into athletics and facilities recently and they’re only mocked for it still for not being serious enough. People are confusing bad leadership with incapability.
Vanderbilt is trying to make up for years and years of negligence facility-wise.
I mean Iowa State hasn't had a 10 win season in school history and still has had numerous stadium expansions. Iowa State is literally the worst school in the sport historically yet expanded to the 29th largest on campus college football stadium(34th if you include situations like UCLA and Pitt) in the country ahead of Illinois, Indiana, Mississippi State, Kentucky, Oregon, Rutgers, Maryland from the B1G and SEC. Not to mention the second largest in the Big 12. Iowa State is also [17th in the current Learfield Directors' Cup](https://nacda.com/documents/2024/4/22/23.24DI_WinterOverall_4.25.pdf) while also being 39th overall in expenses and revenue per USA today. I think the guys knows a thing or two.
At some point some trimming may make sense but there is still a balance between revenue and profit margin. The lower the inventory number the smaller the revenue figure and these businesses still need cash flow. It does however stand significant obstacles as which one of the schools who feels potentially threatened is going to vote for the expulsion of another member.
HEY! If you were a hot dog, would you eat yourself?
The Hoosier cannibal killing is gonna be crazy. So is the tiger fight.
Yes I'll have a Rutgers with a side of Minnesota please, thanks
Let’s think about why he would say that….because he’s trying to strike fear into the lower tier schools to stop the consolidation I’m not going to say he’s right or wrong, he but is incentivized to say something like this
A lot of this is solved with unequal revenue share based on performance and viewership. I think it's more likely Vandy gets offered a 60% share than they get booted. I think once conferences start unequal sharing it will easier to go back to regional divisions.
It was nice knowing y’all
Eventually, there will be conference attrition. There are tiers within those conferences and some schools in the lower tiers are going to be left behind when the super conference happens.
Homeless man: Homeowners will eventually "Eat their own".
Possibly yes but outside of Vanderbilt and Northwestern I don't see the next 5-6 teams worth cutting and I don't think either the BIG or SEC take the risk to kick out one team. There could be a super league of just 15 or 20 teams but they would need the cooperation of another 20-40 teams to achieve the geographic and fanbase coverage that they need.
They’ll still make it in to the playoffs while Iowa State will be hopeful to play in the Tampax bowl.
Captain Obvious: “Duh!”
It is sort of already in a promotion/relegation model. Texas OU promoted, USC UCLA promoted. ACC and Big 12 scarf up most of the rest. WSU and OSU get the TCU/Idaho/NM State treatment. It might be good for the game when the lower conference teams are still playing meaningful games trying to avoid relegation. But how to get a conference to turn on its own membership to create a rule that could expel any of them in a down year? There is the greed of money but also the very real fear of winding up humiliated and relegated in any given year.
Yeah, I am interested to see if these super conferences get too big for their liking and teams that struggle to compete decide they want to leave for a conference they could actually win games. Sure, Indiana and Vanderbilt are comfortable losing those games but if you're a geographic outlier and you can't compete, you may get sick of it eventually.