Hurtlocker

Because, at its heart, what the committee judges is recruiting rankings. They expect the best athletes on the field will win out, so they'll always favor a team with a few losses and a higher recruiting ranking and brand, than a team that is just well coached and doing well. Indiana isn't cute any more with their 1 and 2 star kids transferred from JMU. The moment they lose they'll be seen as "the luck is over" and will be ranked back where they believe their talent should lie based off their athletes. This is why Miami is still at 6 and BYU is out of the top ten. Miami SHOULD be better, which is why they're ranked higher.

My favorite was that Arkansas was both a key win and a terrible loss depending on your orange. Take that Vols. They really need to go back to computers, there is a lot of really blatant bias showing up, like Notre Dame's loss to NIU never happening any longer.

You literally made his point for him with bad math.

To catch they need nine and a diversified media deal. Everything with the mouse is good for exposure, but bad for increasing revenue. They need to bid out their T1 in the next contract. B1G will always have the market advantage, which does factor into those T1s because most of the networks own the locals in the big markets, but at the end of the day it won't matter. The current player cap per school is supposed to start around $20m if the agreement is signed by the judge. There isn't a school in either conference at the current contracts who can't manage that.

This is the part I actually detest about this the most. The vast majority of these teams have no business being paired up on the field together. That's not to say none, but a lot of these FCS teams don't have the depth to run with a bad A4 program, let alone a big brand or $200m SEC school. So these FCS schools are raising cash for their athletic departments by basically tossing athletes out in front of a moving bus and collecting the insurance money.

This. They're fun. They bring no money to the school nor conference. When ESPN looks at the SEC's schedule of games out several years to do a media deal, they're really just valuing the 8 conference games, with maybe some added bonus for the games ESPN is going to schedule SEC teams against the ACC in the opening weeks. That means a third of the games are drastically undervalued and under monetized. The initial way of monetizing them was conference networks, now you could trick people into paying for those games by dumping them on carriage channels. But if you want the next big leap in money, you have to put value in that third that you put in the other two thirds. And its not just simple math that if you made $100m prior you make $130m now. To Thunder's point, the T1 match ups drive most of that number. This tide rises all boats as the T2/3 numbers inflate as well. This is a 30-50% increase over time as match ups become more compelling and that's just media contracts. Now, why they don't exist today is not because of the networks. It's because of the admin and coaches. You have competing drives for money here. Media deals give money, but winning gives more money. If the ACC goes to 12 P4 games, their contract will grow with ESPN, but teams like VTech will have more losses. Tech is a good football school when it's on its game, but it's not Tennessee or Alabama or Georgia around it. Those teams are built to play 12 and end up with 10 wins still. Tech may go 6-6. Wallowing in mediocrity with a higher media contract doesn't pay the same as generating lots of wins on a lower one. The PR value alone outstrips it for a university in increased enrollment or added season ticket holders, or being on more T1 games than you are when you're losing. That builds casual fans if you can do it over time. So, the ADs and coaches want those free 3-4 wins, because 6 is the minimum to even be talked about, 8 gets you in the realm of mattering, and 10 wins over time and you're a media darling. Wins matter above all else.

Does this mean half the MWC gets a week zero game?

This, they don't really count CCG losses the same as regular season losses. The 13th game is a different tier, you're playing for a bye, the loser gets the at large. All of the conferences have moved to the top two best teams in the champ game, not two division winners. Auburn, in this case, gets a lower at large consideration.

Technically, they don't shell out millions for those games. 95+% of conference revenue comes from conference games. The out of conference slate is barely valued at all. This includes the blockbuster games where they'd put Texas vs Alabama or Michigan. Those games would serve more as one offs where the schools would get a bonus for taking the "made for tv" event. The reason they aren't valued has less to do with Michigan vs Holy Mother of the Blind Goats and more to do with when they make these contracts up they don't know the full extent of out of conference games. Regardless of who wins or loses in any given season, they KNOW someone will with the SEC or Big Ten or Big 12 and so ratings will be relatively good somewhere as those battles play themselves out any given year. But on the 3-4 out of conference games, they don't know. Since they don't know if its against Michigan or BC or the Citidel, they aren't valued. This is the first piece of the missing money left with CFB. If you did nothing else but say, "keep it what it is, but the A4 only plays each other for all 12 games" each conference would see a boost in valuation of between 30-50% in future contracts. All they'd have to do is sign a long-term scheduling agreement with each other and work it into their media contracts. Each would get credit for their home games. The second piece left on the table is the bigger one, the NFL one. The one they may need congressional help to get. The moment they can go to market with a shared media deal they'll dwarf these numbers you see today. They'll seem as quaint as the SEC paying out $9m a school 15 years ago. We all rave that the B1G gets $1B for their games a year. The NFL gets that for one game, on Thursday nights. The A4 are giving away a massive amount of money negotiating against themselves and this is the major reason why PE wants to come in. No other sports league does this. Its fucking stupid. If I'm a network I'm lobbying hard to tell everyone conferences standing on their own is the best thing about college football because it saves me 2-3x the money I spend today.

Right, but, to maximize money, you need more of those match ups. That's what the networks want and will pay for. That's the entire reason for realignment in the first place, they've just been doing it in little moves. Where CFB leaves the most money on the table is having like 5 negotiated TV contracts over 60-70 teams and not pairing those teams together more. This is why you're really only paid for a conference slate, because its the only part of the schedule that networks know is reliable year in and year out. OOC games, even the good ones, are still hit and miss based on if an AD schedules them or not. WHen the contract is signed the network may not even know, so it doesn't factor in. If you put all 70 teams under one global media and scheduling contract and say all 12 of those games will be against each other, now you're going to market with 420 (gnarly) defined games that the networks can bank on. On top of that, if you own the schedule, you can lay out featured match ups all through the season and through time slots at various times of the day, instead of competing with yourself for eyeballs. And lastly, you can go full out NFL and start windowing. National window games in various slots. Regional windows to maximize across the board on lower channels. If you want to watch outside your window, pay for the all in package. Oh, you just like the excitement, did you know we offer a redzone package now? Those are things the NFL can do that CFB can't that would likely double the amount of money CFB could make for literally doing nothing else. Its the only no-brainer chess move left on the board. And you're right, that's why you need the 70 teams. Blue bloods drive more interest at the end of the year, when games mean more, if they have no losses.

I don't think this was actually their proposal, because they said keep the conferences. What they wanted to do was take over the media rights and scheduling so that with the 3-4 games outside of conference they could put Alabama against USC, FSU, and Michigan and crap like that.

What the PE was bringing to the table in this regard was the financing to even the table over a period of time. They mentioned, specifically, $5.3b in financing so the 70 teams could buy out all the games they need to buy out, including canceling G4/FCS games on the books and media contracts, then they make that back from a cut of the new deal they foster. To add a sweetener, much like the next NFL deal, they were also discussing bringing in the networks as equity partners in the entire operation, likely at a 30% stake. That would pay back some of the investment too, but that's kind of what they do, provide the capital to make it move, not have to wait until some point in time when 2-3-5-whatever contracts align.

well I think where it will fail is what you mention. Texas will remain in the SEC and will make more money. But Ole Miss will also remain in the SEC and will not make the same as Texas, Alabama, and Georgia. Same in the Big Ten where Ohio State, Michigan and USC will make more than Oregon, Penn State and Nebraska.. The ACC/B12 already know they aren't top tier, the secondary schools of the B1G/SEC haven't had this heart to heart yet. At some point its the next step, even if its not this step. That's why Sankey is so brazen, they'll try and fix this first by saying "Well the SEC will just play the Big Ten more!" But they still can't do it unless the Big Ten and the SEC combine their media contracts AND schedule games together that features a higher match up of top tier programs AND eliminates all but P4 games. That's how you make the next jump in money. Its always been how you make the next jump in money. The PE investment is just how you buy out contracts and games today. For less investment you start this in 5 - 10 years and do it yourself, but you still have to merge all of the contracts of all of the schools AND control the scheduling for all of them, there isn't a way of getting around that.