Re: College Football Realignment
With the Big East imploding, wouldn't it make sense for the Big XII to grab some of those decent football/ basketball schools in the midwest/ west and create their own brand? A 20-team super-conference with the following universities might turn some heads:
Texas
Baylor
Texas Tech
Houston
TCU
SMU
UTEP
Oklahoma
Oklahoma State
Tulsa
Iowa State
Kansas St.
Kansas
Louisville
Cincinnati
Memphis
Missouri
Colorado
Colorado State
Air Force Academy
That would make Boise State a nice Pac 12 consolation prize (at least in football), as well as Nevada, UNLV, Utah, BYU, New Mexico, et al. That puts them at 20. Add in a 20-team Big Ten (snicker), a 20-team ACC, and a 20-team SEC.
Re: College Football Realignment
I highly doubt any conference would go to 20 teams -- remember, each team you add splits the TV revenue pie even smaller for the member schools. Adding schools has to make sense for media markets and TV contract negotiations (which is what this is all about).
Re: College Football Realignment
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Scrap Irony
With the Big East imploding, wouldn't it make sense for the Big XII to grab some of those decent football/ basketball schools in the midwest/ west and create their own brand? A 20-team super-conference with the following universities might turn some heads:
Texas
Baylor
Texas Tech
Houston
TCU (Texas will not share Dallas)
SMU
UTEP (have you ever been to El Paso?)
Oklahoma (Pac 16 bound)
Oklahoma State (Goes where Oklahoma tells them)
Tulsa
Iowa State
Kansas St.
Kansas
Louisville
Cincinnati
Memphis
Missouri (Big 10 bound)
Colorado (Left already because of Texas why go back?)
Colorado State
Air Force Academy
That would make Boise State a nice Pac 12 consolation prize (at least in football), as well as Nevada, UNLV, Utah, BYU, New Mexico, et al. That puts them at 20. Add in a 20-team Big Ten (snicker), a 20-team ACC, and a 20-team SEC.
Never play a game outside of your geographic area? 20 is way too big for the money it would cost. I think 16 might even be pushing it in terms of schools that would add that kind of revenue.
That conference would be Texas and the XX little dwarfs. TCU and Louisville would be the only possible yearly threats to Texas.
Re: College Football Realignment
There is still a lot to be played out in this, but something else to keep in mind, is that even before this round of conference realignment got started, there had been a lot of talk about a CUSA split, as there's a real disconnect in that league right now. I could completely see the Big East leftovers (namely former CUSA teams UL, UC and USF) rejoining the eastern branch of CUSA to form a new alliance, and the western branch of CUSA joining up with the remainders of the Big 12.
You'd basically have a reformed C-USA (with a new name, I'm sure) with Cincinnati, Louisville, South Florida, Memphis, Tulane, Southern Miss, UAB, East Carolina, Central Florida and maybe Marshall. Then the other league would be something like Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State, Baylor, joining up with Houston, Rice, UTEP, SMU, Tulsa and maybe TCU hooking up there with the Big East fiasco that's unfolding. This is assuming the larger conference breaks happen, with UConn, WVU and Rutgers leaving the Big East (extremely likely), and Texas, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Missouri leaving the Big 12 (not a 100% lock, but pretty likely to wind up the end game in this).
It would form a couple decent conferences, but I'm not sure either would have AQ status in this new coalition that seems to be forming. Something else to keep in mind is the WAC also seems like it could be in trouble right now, I could see the WAC and MWC merging in a way (of course, the whole reason the MWC exists today is because it was split off from a 16-team WAC that seemed to be about a decade ahead of its time). Some of the Big 12/western CUSA teams could have a hand in this MWC, it's just hard to say because there is much left to decided, like whether the leagues hold at 14 as it seems, or they'll push to 16, as seems to be the ultimate goal of all of the major leagues, other than maybe the Big Ten.
Re: College Football Realignment
Anyone really feel this is going to be any better than the ACC is already???
North:
1 Boston College
2 Connecticut
3 Maryland
4 Pittsburgh
5 Rutgers
6 Syracuse
7 Va Tech
8 Virginia
South:
1 Duke
2 Florida State
3 Georgia Tech
4 Miami
5 North Carolina
6 NC State
7 Wake
8 Clemson
The ACC added more chaff that tv sets don't care about and bowls don't want. Congrats you just shrunk your per piece share!!!!
Re: College Football Realignment
The Big East is dead. Reports are that WVU has submitted their paperwork to the SEC, confirming what their fans have hoped for and the rest of us suspected. I suspect UConn and Rutgers wil soon round out the ACC at 16.
As for the leftovers, the best case scenario is to merge with the Big XII north schools. UC's best hope is to hitch their wagon to Louisville, wherever that may be.
Re: College Football Realignment
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Slyder
Never play a game outside of your geographic area? 20 is way too big for the money it would cost. I think 16 might even be pushing it in terms of schools that would add that kind of revenue.
I think the fact that everyone with a name is talking 14 and only "sources" are talking 16 is a real sign that nobody wants to go 16 unless somebody else does it first, it'll be a scheduling nightmare.
Re: College Football Realignment
Quote:
Originally Posted by
paintmered
As for the leftovers, the best case scenario is to merge with the Big XII north schools. UC's best hope is to hitch their wagon to Louisville, wherever that may be.
Exactly, Texas may be able to keep the big12 afloat on name only if they can get big east left overs and maybe BYU to join them, independence won't work anymore in a huge conference landscape, nobody will play them when everyone is going to have 9 or 10 conference games to deal with.
Re: College Football Realignment
That will make Saturday's LSU @ WVU interesting, particularly with ESPN's Gameday already announcing they're setting up in Morgantown.
Does this mean that I'm going to have to stop calling the SEC a conference of crooks?
Re: College Football Realignment
Per ESPN and others, it looks like the Pac is about to be the Pac-16, bringing in Texas and Texas Tech. The Longhorn Network will survive, but on terms the conference can live with.
As for the ACC, I read somewhere -- and I have no idea if this is all true -- that the ACC thinks the ESPN/ABC/Fox etc. network revenue stream is close to maxed out. So instead of basing everything on increasing those contracts, their first priority was to land the knockout punch on the Big East, to make sure the ACC is the one getting the seat at the big table for whatever comes next. A little short-term pain for the sake of long-term gain. They're also looking at an equivalent of the Big Ten Network, which is a per-subscriber revenue model, and they just added 45 million people to the ACC home-state footprint.