camel at sea

Aranda is in danger of having the wheels come off of that program. The good news for them is that if that happens, there will be good coaches lining up for the job. The biggest issue seems to be getting their NIL up to speed, but they'll get there. SMU probably just motivated some more of the folks there with deep pockets. Tech looked like a team that got a big lead, started looking ahead, and couldn't turn it back on again once the game turned into a fight. TCU-Colorado was a weird game. Neither team had film on each other, or a good read on their respective personnel. Colorado's OL pass blocked well but couldn't run block. In a few weeks, with film on what they do, defenses might figure them out a little bit. It might have been a pretty bad thing for the Frogs to play them in week 1. TCU's defense looks like it sucks. They're going to have to outscore people all year. Most of the offenses in the Big 12 looked bad in week 1, so they might be able to do that. A lot of the B12 (Irate8) looks like it has taken a step back. Maybe those COVID super seniors propped up the depth of the league and it's returning to the mean a little bit. Texas, KState, and OU appear to be the only Big 12 teams that might be good on both sides of the ball. Destroying a Sun Belt team in Week 1 isn't something OU has been capable of doing in the last few years. SMU will tell us a lot about how much OU has improved on defense (if at all.) The Ponies have one of the most talented G5 rosters (offense especially) in the country.

Yeah, this argument reminds me of the Big 12 vs. PAC argument from about 2 years ago. The ACC has the better brands at the very top. Those better brands also want to leave. The Big 12 has much better depth of quality 2nd tier programs. We just saw how that type of head to head played out for the PAC. So the comparison between the two leagues is and will remain close for now. The Big 12 is on a stronger position longer term. I think the ACC is a great situation for SMU, though, at least short term, and 100% the right choice medium and long term. They can sell something different to TX recruits, which will probably help them win some head to head recruiting battles. The bottom of the ACC also offers a lot better opportunities for wins than they'd find in the Big 12. So the table is set for SMU to win ~8 games per, be ranked occasionally, host ND/FSU/Clemson/etc., and elevate their brand and grow their fanbase. If they can catch lightning in a bottle and win more than that, I think they'll see a lot of program growth. After the big ACC brands leave for the SEC/B1G, maybe they've done enough by then to be on the list of programs that the Big 12 would consider poaching. If not, then being in a reconstructed ACC - post raiding - is still better than the AAC.

The SMU recruiting pitch will be NIL + "you'll get to play against Notre Dame, Florida State, Miami, etc." Some players/parents will get starry-eyed about the big name football opponents and kind of look past the less interesting games / road trips with Cal, Wake, BC, etc. The Big 12 recruiting pitch will be NIL + "you'll play games close to home, practice in elite facilities, play most of your games against great local programs." Some players/parents will prefer being more local, with games the family can attend, better school facilities, etc. Big 12 schools will have to be competitive with SMU on the NIL front. Most of them will. Some Big 12 schools will need to add marquee OOC games to equal out SMU's in-league marquee games sales pitch and they probably will. SMU will probably need to significantly upgrade facilities, win a lot of games, and develop fan support. I'd guess SMU upgrades facilities (though they are pretty far behind Big 12 schools in that arms race) and I bet SMU turns into a good but not elite program in the ACC.

That's probably why the 4C schools are all getting full shares immediately. Yormark used that offer to trump anything the ACC might be able to throw at them.

SMU probably comes out ahead of status quo with respect to conference distribution, even with taking no money for Tier 1. They come out way ahead with respect to ticket sales, donations, merch sales, etc. This is a great move for them. It'll be interesting to see how this works out on the recruiting trail and with local fan interest. SMU might see at least one big name school like Notre Dame, FSU, Clemson, or Miami on its home football schedule each year. That will draw a lot of local interest, at least for the first few years, and it's something no Big 12 school can replicate. TCU will have a bunch of relatively strong local programs on its annual slate (SMU can't match that), but none of the big national names that SMU will host. SMU will host hoops games against Duke, UNC, Syracuse, Louisville, etc. TCU will host Kansas, Baylor, Houston, Arizona, etc.

I don't think the UNC BOR is talking about "financial disparity" in this way if they're not already planning their own eventual exit.

Yeah. The vast majority of UT's issues have been coaching / S&C, going back at least 15 years. Texas went some absurd number of years in a row without putting any OL in the NFL. If you're signing multiple four stars per cycle, all with great offer sheets, and then they aren't developing... the issue is you, not the incoming talent. I think there's an argument to be made about the recruiting ceiling being lower post 2011, but UT is the wrong place to make the argument because there are too many other issues to look at, too. On the other hand, recruiting is the main reason why OU hasn't matched up well on the national stage and aggy moving hurt OU more than anyone. OU pretty consistently recruits in the lower half of the Top 10 nationally, but almost always misses out on 5 star DTs. A&M has signed the type of elite DL players over the last decade that OU was previously landing when the ags were in the Big 12. The commit Venables got last weekend from David Stone was the first 5 star DT commit in Norman since '09.

The way that I expect the Big 12's TV numbers to sort out: 1) Big 12 games will lose some UT/OU casuals from the audience, more and more as time goes on, but 2) a bunch of Big 12 teams will play games in better timeslots than they have been in, historically, which will improve the TV viewership for those games. In addition, some Big 12 schools are going to start winning more hardware than they've won historically, with the OU roadblock out of the way. CFP trips will accompany that, too. That will help with team branding, casual interest, etc. Ultimately the new Big 12 will be in good shape.

The interior recruiting battles seem to last longer for the elite guys. We'll see what it looks like by signing day.

Yeah. They've got work to do. ASU is mostly one person throwing a massive temper tantrum. So once their president moves on, they'll probably settle in. Utah, though... they've been hostile about the Big 12 at every level (admin, media, fans, HC apparently) since the idea first got floated. It might have been better to leave them adrift for a few years until they were humbled into a more realistic understanding of their actual value.

I don't think you could get the conference cohesion that you want with those two in the fold. It's already pretty clear that the Big 12 is going to be dealing with "not happy to be here" attitudes from ASU and Utah leadership.

That would put them at 17 and a half members. They could probably now get poached by the other three major conferences and survive it, especially when you see that they could also still add UConn, Tulane, USF, etc. to fill in some gaps. In the interim, maybe this generates some extra cash to keep FSU and Clemson quiet for a few years. If you're Wake, Cuse, BC, this is a big win. You get to avoid being Washington State and Oregon State.

SMU donors are willing to pay for facilities upgrades as well as foot the bill for an AD that won't get media revenue for as long as seven years? On top of that, they'll fund an NIL operation competitive enough to win games in a power conference? I guess you do what you gotta do to get your foot in the door but that's an enormous buy-in. Assuming they do get in, though, the ACC will have three outliers in Big 12 territory (SMU, Stanford, Cal), and vice versa (WVU, Cincy, UCF.) Maybe at some point the two conferences swap.

The biggest problem with the PAC wasn't that SC stopped winning titles, it was a combo of bad leadership, a bad TV deal that hurt exposure/recruiting, and the dead weight schools in its bottom tier. You just can't make the money work when you're distributing an equal share to multiple schools who bring almost no value to the media rights deal. It dilutes the money for the earners by too much. The ACC has a similar problem now, too. The Big 12 doesn't have the same brand strength at the top (it's not as far back as people think) but its value is much stronger at the bottom of the inventory slate. K-State / Iowa St / TCU / Baylor >>> Washington State / Oregon St / Cal / Stanford as TV properties.

Yep. It also wouldn't exactly be shocking if Texas Tech, ISU, and BYU all have capacities > 65K a decade from now. All three are close and have the enrollment numbers to support it..

I think if they can rebuild the PAC, the politics will favor them keeping the "power" designation b/c ultimately it won't matter much. The "Top 6 conference champions" format for the CFP doesn't directly specify anything re: Power vs. G5. Hypothetically, you could get a Sun Belt and American champion in over the PAC champion anyway. Continuing to allow them to insist that they're a "power" conference won't make their media deal competitive. The designation is ultimately pretty meaningless.

Maybe I'll be proven wrong, and the two Bay Area schools get ACC B1G invites sometime soon, but I think their best and most likely option is what you're suggesting. Go get the academically snobby schools from the AAC and then fill in the map between Texas and California. West: Stanford, Cal, WSU, OSU, SDSU, Boise East: SMU, Tulane, Rice, Col St, Wyo, Air Forcce If you've got Cal and Stanford donors embarrassed, and investing, along with SMU donors throwing out huge bags of NIL money, then that league could be pretty good. It's easily the 5th best league and the champ would usually grab a CFP spot. They could add the Zags for hoops, too.

They beat K-State in Manhattan during the regular season, too.

Penn State fans / alums / admins absolutely denied it. Their collective reaction was one of the most insane things I've ever witnessed and I still think it was a mistake that they didn't get the death penalty. There was a state employee, raping children, in state facilities, for decades, and other state officials (Paterno included) covered it up for decades. There are probably still more Penn State fans who deny that JoePa knew anything about what Sandusky was doing than there are Baylor fans in total. Side note: One of the best things that ever happened on the previous site was the UT effort to send someone dressed as pedobear to the Penn State - Houston bowl game right after all that happened.

Yeah, I think they'll keep the number at one more than the number of power conferences even in the next contract cycle. That avoids any backlash and it creates some potentially good TV opportunities for the playoff itself. I am in the camp that believes the CFP will try to make that opening round into an equivalent of the first weekend of the NCAA tourney and to do that, you need at least the possibility of a Cinderella team. It'll be a huge gambling event. Last year's opening round games would have been: 5 TCU v 12 Tulane 6 tOSU v 11 Penn St 7 Bama v 10 SC 8 Tenn v 9 K-State That would have set up 1 UGA vs Tenn/KSU; 2 Mich vs. Bama/SC; 3 Clem vs. tOSU/PSU; and 4 Utah vs. TCU/Tulane Out of the first 8 games, most of them are potentially pretty good on paper and there's a plausible path for the G5 school to become a huge media story and reach the semi-final. If that happens occasionally, it'll spur bottom-up investment from other G5 programs who want to replicate that type of exposure for themselves.

If your HS team drops down a level, you stop paying attention to the scores of the teams who still play at your old level. Fans of the schools at the level you used to play at will pay less attention to you in return. It's just human nature. If Iowa State dropped down to FCS tomorrow, casual CFB fans would pay less attention to them than if they were still in FBS. ISU grads/fans would watch a lot less FBS football. The idea that you could shrink the top level of college football from 130 schools down to 40 or so schools, without losing a large number of viewers in the process, is absurd. You can obtain the goal of more/better regular season games without inflicting damage to yourself in the process. If you've grouped the big brands together into a P2, you've got the elite games you want. You've got the financial superiority you deserve. What's the point of kicking the Big 12, the ACC, etc., entirely out of the top tier? What do you actually gain from that if you're the P2 or the P2's TV partners? Fewer CFB games to televise? Fewer people invested in the outcome of the top tier of college football/sports?

At least 64. The networks don't want to reduce total CFB inventory by reducing the number of teams in the field. The 1-2M audience games are valuable and you don't want to throw too many of them away trying to create more 5M+ games. If you can consolidate the big brands in the B1G and SEC, and pay them accordingly, there's no reason not to continue including a reshuffled and lesser paid B12, PAC, ACC, etc., at the top level of the sport. The expanded CFP makes that easier. You just need to structure the playoff in a way where the first round games are interesting. Generally speaking, CFB has about 3-4 teams every year who are dominant and a lot of parity between 5 and 15... so that's doable. Assume you get 4 first round byes for those four dominant teams, the other games should usually be good.

Yeah... that's the same person who used to post on message boards as NebFaninWi. I'm impressed that she successfully rebranded herself as a B1G insider on Twitter/X despite being a total lunatic.

For pro rata shares to those two schools, ESPN and the SEC could shut and lock the door on the Deep South in college athletics. That's potentially a very valuable chip if you're looking for a financial partner. How much would Apple or Amazon pay for a piece of the SEC? Likely a lot. You'd have 90% of college football's national titles since 2000, the nation's best HS football recruiting footprint, etc. I also think that if FSU and Clemson are gone, the ACC gets stable. UNC and UVA aren't worth B1G shares. The B1G already added two dilutive members a few days ago. The only way they'd be able to add again without taking another loss would be if ND joins. So for the price of moving FSU and Clemson, you also buy ACC stability (stability that probably keeps ND indy, even without FSU and Clemson.) The ACC's Tier 1 deal is as undervalued right now as the Big 12's deal was before Texas and OU announced their exit. The Mouse might be willing to keep them status quo in exchange for letting their two football jewels go. I don't know what FSU and Clemson could afford, but if ESPN is mediating the GOR exit, it doesn't have to be $500M each or anything prohibitive. Would the ACC release them for $125M each and status quo media rights payouts? I think they would.

The other side of it is that if you're the ACC, the longer you wait to let FSU/Clemson leave, the lower their exit value. There's a reason Texas and OU were willing to hang around so long after announcing their exit, and that was less than five years, not more than ten. Would FSU and Clemson each pay $100M+ today to escape today? Probably, and maybe quite a bit more. There's an upper end on that before it become untenable financially, but it's a huge number. That upper end number goes down annually though. So if you're a member of the ACC, and your revenue recently took a huge hit from COVID, maybe you take the short term cash infusion in exchange for releasing them. But this is why I think the SEC has to be their destination. In order for that to work, the ACC needs ESPN to keep payouts about where they are now. ESPN has no reason to do that unless those two are going to the SEC.