Hurtlocker

Words, right?

Yeah, you wouldn't. You'd take Miami first. For those who get stuck in the car and listen to sports radio, they had a conversation on today and one of the national writers, i think from Yahoo, but I came in late, listed what would happen if the ACC fractured. The basic order was ND was first by an extremely wide margin. They're number one on everyone's list if they ever join a conference. After that though the top two were UNC/UVA. The reasoning given, and they quoted conference and media contact conversations, was location in two rapidly growing states on the east coast and the combined weight of the university brand being far and away greater than the athletic department's brand. After that it was FSU and then a knife fight between if it would be Clemson or Miami. Next tiering was VTech, though they're picking a rough time to be bad at everything, then everyone else in the order we'd probably pick them in.

Yeah, student fees are kind of an accounting trick. Some schools make kids pay for tickets; some sell them in advance. Some provide some games for some sports, some provide all. In Virginia, the state schools all have student tickets as a fee and then there are variations on how much it covers. JMU's is high, but students get free admission to all sporting events. It's not quite educational support, in that the school is paying to make the department in the red, but it's clearly a captive audience sale that not all account for in the same way. UVA and VTech have student fees in the tens of millions too.

Yeah there are some anomalies. If you look at the top 50 programs by revenue things get a bit more even: $200M+ Club: Ohio State, Texas, Bama, Michigan, Geogia >$175m: LSU, A&M, Florida, Penn State, Oklahoma >$150m: Auburn, Mich St, Indiana, UVA, FSU, UK, Clemson, Tennessee, Oregon, Arkansas, Iowa >$125m: Louisville, Illinois, Washington, Nebraska, South Carolina, Missouri, Minnesota, Ole Miss (Pretty sure TCU/Baylor/USC fall in this camp) >$100m: Zona, UNC, ASU, Cal, Kansas, Utah, Purdue, VTech, ISU, MSU, Tech, Rutgers, Maryland, GTech, WVU, OkSt, UCLA, NCState, Kansas State (I think BYU falls here) I'd expect you'll see UCF, Colorado, Cinci and Houston join the $100m ranks in the next two years. This list also has a lot of fluctuation on it depending on who gets a good booster run in any given year. Like you mentioned with UVA's $50m donation, last year they had $105m. Two years ago Oregon was #1 with over $200m, now they're back to normal.

That's an interesting way of looking at it. Sometimes school funds are there to support a lot of non-revenue sports, just two ways of tackling Title IX. You can either offer the exact same amount of opportunities, which means cutting mens sports not named football and adding more womens, or you can offer all of the sports possible and don't need to balance the scales. Though, sometimes its because sports gets you on tv and you need to be on tv, so spend the cash. Both JMU and Old Dominion are exploding in growth because UVA and VTech just can't grow as fast as the state is. UVA is still 22k students, while if they were like other land grant schools, they'd be 50-60k easy. What I didn't expect to see though is JMU with nearly twice the revenue as Washington State. Yeeeooch.

I think they would. The issue I hear often from the ISU/OSU/BYU crowd isn't that they wouldn't support their team, its that they are against silver spoons. So, if there is a path to promotion and relegation that they could achieve, set it up. But Vandy shouldn't get a free meal over them due to luck and happenstance. If there isn't a way for that to happen, then that's when the number swells. I don't mind 64 teams too much, if, and only if, every single game on every one of those 64 teams is against each other. Having a quarter to a third of the schedule against teams a tier or three below is a bigger problem in my mind, like A&M vs Abeline Christian, than if Ohio State plays Rutgers.

My guess, at the money Fox spent, is that those are T2 pick ups. Noon/3/Prime will be for USC/OSU/Michigan/Penn State and, to a lesser degree, Nebraska or Wisconsin games. Now if OSU plays the Ducks, then that will bump to T1, but the Ducks/Iowa or Washington/Purdue will be on FS1 during the day and Oregon/UCLA will be a prime time FS1..

Definitely. Remember there is a major difference here. ESPN bought the use of the rights to the SEC and ACC until the mid 2030s, but Fox literally owns the rights to the Big Ten. All of the Big Ten's rights are owned by the Big Ten Network. That agreement goes out for a while, its why teams have to buy in, etc etc. The Big Ten Network then made deals for the T1/2 rights. But, during the pandemic when schools needed an infusion of funds, Fox bought an additional 10% of B1G, taking them into controlling interest. This is why Fox sat in the negotiations and why they gobbled up the west coast of what they wanted. This is a different fight than we've seen before, like Fox is using the Mouse pulling back as an opportunity to take space. We always knew they were not giving CFB the attention they could have for years, with limited marketing. But once they decided to hit hard, Fox Noon became the premier slot, and their LA studios got some hometown love.

not sure why the brightness went up to 11 but...interesting quote

My money is on the Sun Belt

Could The Mountain West Become A Power 5 Conference?

But....why? They already own the south with Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, LSU, Alabama, Texas and Oklahoma. Neither FSU nor Clemson are bigger draws than any of them. If FSU/Clemson are 25-30% of the ACC's value, then keeping that status quo means ESPN is overpaying the ACC for 13 years to the tune of $1.2-1.5 billion. Additionally, they now need to double the payments of FSU/Clemson in the SEC, which means shelling out an additional $780m. Even without factoring in buyouts, or inflation growth, or GoR negotiations, for ESPN to keep things status quo for 12 and double for 2, would cost them $2-2.5 billion over 13 years. To outlay this kind of cash FSU/Clemson would need to have all of their games be T1 only games (they can't) averaging around 9-12m in audience every game (they won't). There is so much working against ESPN on this, at a time where they are slicing budgets and are looking to put more money into the UFC/NBA/NFL, that I just cannot fathom a way for them to fund this. The only way this kind of works is if you do it the same way it happened with the Pac. Instead of paying the Pac $300m for ten properties, ESPN spent $80m for four.

Er, wait....what? They're in the process of being cobbled together with Discovery Networks from the AT&T split, they've shut down production on numerous movies and shows, and lost a ton of subscribers in cable and in rebranding to Max. No one is sitting on a pile waiting to be spent, they're struggling to make money on what they've already invested.

It's not damages, that's the catch. The ACC literally owns the rights. If FSU wants them before 2036, they need to buy them back. The question is, what is that worth? It's hard for FSU to argue that they only need to pay $300m on one side and that they're worth $750m on another.

Its really a question of how much Fox wants to fuck with ESPN. Any move from the ACC to B1G is full on stolen property. It almost makes more sense for the B1G to go UVA/UNC/Duke/FSU because they take the biggest football brand and all the basketball cache that ESPN has built their network on. The ACC media contract for weekly basketball games is basically who is playing UNC or Duke and for football its whoever is playing ND or FSU. How much is neutering your rival's last non-SEC value worth? And what if the mouse doesn't care? If the SEC doesn't care? Let the ACC go, dump the money into the NBA and just feature SEC/B12 football and basketball.

Everyone except ND is a net negative for the B1G, even FSU/Clemson, though FSU would be the closest #2.

The thing that gets me with this story is the State of Iowa looked and the data came from the betting sites. There is no way in any statistical model I can think of, that this is isolated to Iowa, a state that barely moves the gambling meter on any given day. There are like 35 states that have legal online betting. Maybe a poor choice of words, but I'd wager there are a metric shit ton of big programs out there that are praying that their states don't also decide to look at who is betting, and how, now that the road map to find them is laid out publicly. Another thing I've found funny about this, outside the stupid parents, assuming they knew and the kids just didn't use their info, is how small the bets were. We're talking about paying kids 5, 6, 7 digits in NIL, and most of these bets were for $10 or less.

So...? SEC: FSU, Clemson? B1G: UVA, UNC, Miami? Hold for ND or swipe Duke? B12: VTech, NCState, Pitt, Louisville? Left out: Cuse, BC, Wake, Tech? The biggest issue I see here is ESPN is THE player in all of these moves besides the B1G, and they've invested a ton in the ACC Network. Its equally plausible FSU/Clemson leave and the remaining 12 stay together, add UConn, and live comfortably on the buyouts, which should be significant if you can't get 12 teams to vote for dissolution. Let's pretend its only a quarter bill each, that's $500m in the ACC's coffers, which is equal to an entire year of revenue. They could buy Cal's debt and make another $600m on the servicing over the next century. Agree though that FSU/Clemson not having a home in advance that is bought and paid for is dumb. Especially when someone else currently owns your rights.

So....Tuesday.

The other autonomous conferences. I can't see where we'll have 5 going forward.

Yeah the only problem is they didn't start doing this last year. Every MWC school now has a $34m buyout to get out by next year, instead of $17m. The AAC has around $20m. They'll all have some negotiated down, but still, the only teams west of the Mississippi who can move for free are the Pac 4.

The pandemic crushed all budgets, even those who figured out how to play. The B1G had to sell a majority stake in their rights to Fox to make up some quick cash and then Fox went goblin mode.