arkstfan
Sorry folks
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RE: What criteria should major programs require for membership in a new athletic assn?
(05-23-2018 01:31 AM)JRsec Wrote: I totally understand your point of view and why you feel that way. I'm not sure that streaming will deliver the results that you believe will happen. I do think they will have fairer estimates of each schools marketability. But my fear is that it going to be used to shrink the overall pie.
I railed against the market footprint model in '09 three years before I came to the board. I saw it as a well designed ploy to pry leverage away from conferences, especially old established conferences as they urged us to expand peripherally and paid other conferences to raid what had been solid states in an effort to break up a conference's complete hold over their larger states.
That is why A&M is now in the SEC. It is why the SEC was allegedly offered a deal in which they might have obtained N.C. State and Virginia Tech. It is why even before they had a stake in the ACC I strongly suspect a particular network who issued valuation on SEC prospects may have leaked information to the ACC that helped them to land Florida State. Which just so happened to become later the cornerstone of value around which their new conference home built a major conference denying the Big 10 product it could have leveraged for better rates when that conference poached Syracuse, Pitt, Boston College, Virginia Tech and Miami.
Had the SEC landed F.S.U. in '92 we would have the hammer on rates for advertising during football games on Saturday in the Sunshine state.
My argument then, as it remains, was that in the end the content model would shift to a % of households in the state that each school actually delivered and that as a result of that rates would eventually fall. It is why such acrimony exists between Texas along with the Big 12 members against A&M. (Not to say there aren't other visceral examples of animosity there.) UT realized that their leverage over Texas was being forfeited as the Aggies left for the SEC.
All of us have been victimized by a scheme to divide the product of regions, and large states to undermine leverage. The AAC does that nicely with incursions into New England, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, and even North Carolina. And who controls the rights to the AAC? Have they not through the SEC / ACC and AAC not monopolized a whole region for themselves?
It was a hostile takeover of a sleepy cottage industry complete with product placement for the maximization of network profits where the best lines are hyped and the lesser ones sold off or maintained on the cheap.
My animus is for all the dopes who believe it is an evil plan of the P5 to takeover. It was not and is not. The ones who produce the marginalization of the G5 schools are in suits working for corporations. The ones who pick a committee to pick the 4 in the CFP have done a magnificent job of justifying the selection of the schools while selecting the best national draws to enhance their profits.
I push for a P4 Champs only model because that eliminates their ability to pick. And while not fair for all, at least it is fair for the schools in the those 4 conferences.
The P5 is not pushing for permanent marginalization of the G5. The networks are. It's more work for less ad money to hype those which are not already identifiable product for the non-alumni masses and gamblers. If you want to know just how much organized crime and government go hand in hand now then just reflect upon the courts ruling on legalized betting. It won't stop point shaving in college football anymore than it has prevented the NFL from paying the house on 85% of the bets every Sunday. It is why the NFL calls itself an entertainment industry and not a sport.
There are no bought players and fumbles scores and interceptions are reviewed. But holding and interference flags are not and that is how the game is handicapped. It'll be no different in college now. Besides they don't have to throw games like in the old days, just control the spread and everyone profits, including the fairness insurance of the % paid to the conferences involved. The betting line the public sees. The closing line merely shows where the most money was bet. The house wins against the closing time 85% of the time.
No, I understand and sympathize with your sentiments. I just think they are somewhat misdirected as your point of view also assumes that where we are headed is what our presidents want. It is not. But it is lucrative (for now) and it is easy to let the networks guide our realignment by offering us more and more to take team x y or z from conference 1, 2 or 3. We get the money and they do the thinking. The extent of our control are the parameters for acceptable schools. But even those have been pushed.
On this board it was once so bad that any P5 related thread would have half a dozen angry G5 posters harassing the wrong folks. It is another example of the politics of division. Get the electorate to fight each other and government can do as it pleases and nobody will notice. Red vs Blue, Liberal vs Conservative, Right to life versus Family Planning, pro gun vs anti gun, pro LGBT vs anyone who objects, etc, etc, etc. Have any of those hackneyed issues been resolved? No. And they won't be as long as they are a convenient tool with which to divide the masses while candidates backed in both parties by the same corporations march off to office to do the bidding of their masters.
When I make my observations I'm merely stating what I see, not what I desire. What I see is reality and and what I would like is merely fancy.
Now add to all of this, which is being done to organize a somewhat disorganized product (college football) and to shape it into a more marketable and profitable product (alumni desires be damned), the coming downsizing of State budgets for higher education due to perks being offered the retail corporations which include the State's portion of the sales tax, 50% of the counties property tax, just to get a Big Box to locate and to pay their building's cost at the expense of the State and its taxpayers and it doesn't take long to see how we the people have been gigged twice in the pocket to provide political favors at the expense of what we have loved so dearly, our local schools where our children are supposed to learn, and our colleges. Tack on the destruction of local family businesses who are the ultimate victims here and whose fully paid taxes are now missed with their empty buildings and closed doors and the travesty is only compounded.
This whole mess is merely part of the systemic economic rape of the middle class that corporate conglomerates have wrought upon our people. They contribute more than we can to the elections funds, charge them back for campaign advertising collecting through one enterprise they own, the media, everything their other enterprises donated, eliminating the voice the of the people in government, and getting a damned tax write off to do it!
College football is a product, but the free market isn't determining its ultimate value. The free market will be the excuse however to cheapen the overhead of the networks who monetize us.
My frustration at times with you and others is that you are so focused on your situation, your relationships, and what is happening at your school, that you either miss, or worse deny, the scope of the betrayal of the public's trust that has led to the colossal abuse of some of our most venerated social touchstones, our schools.
The P5 is not to blame. The corporate raiders are, just as surely as if you were a union guy who had your pension fund raided, or a private investor who was bilked by Milken or Madoff.
I think you have associated me with the thoughts of others.
I for one have consistently been a voice for the proposition that the CFP is the best thing that has ever happened for the G5. I haven't been one calling it an evil cartel.
A G5 can make the playoff if they have a convincing resume to be top four. The access game was a P5 offering, not the result of a G5 "strike" and worst element of the revenue sharing for the G5 is not the percentage but rather the G5's own cut throat insistence on the performance money distribution. That's a G5 invention not something imposed on them and it is a significant departure from how the other 5 partner conferences deal with revenue.
I don't expect a 130rd share of the revenue generated in football because AState is FBS nor do I expect a 1/350th (or whatever the number is now) share of hoops revenue merely for being Division I and sponsoring football.
I shed no tears when a G5 who has a shot at an at-large craps the bed and loses in their first conference tournament game to a 261 RPI team. The power that be didn't force the conference to host a tournament.
I don't sweat over college teams paying their players because it isn't going to make any notable changes in the distribution of talent vs today unless some school chooses to bleed their students more.
There are quite a few posts from me over the past few years pointing out that the minimum standards for Division I are a joke. While everyone sits around trying to craft a new super duper football attendance or budget based system no one bothers to pay attention to the fact that the entry barrier to Division I is scant. A high caliber Division II can move from Division II to Division I with little or no new outlay for athletics. That's terrible. You can't shift from FCS to FBS without spending more.
Right now Division I requires: Sponsor 14 sports, award 50% of the scholarships allowed in the sports sponsored and mostly play Division I competition. Standards that pale to FBS with the requirement to sponsor 16 sports, award at least 200 rides, and play a minimum of 5 of 12 games at home with at least four of those vs other FBS.
Once upon time, we saw schools play as few as three home games on an 11 game schedule in I-A. We saw teams play one or none at home against a member of the division they were a putative member of.
Nothing wrong with bringing the Division I criteria in closer alignment with FBS criteria because that's more consistent with the Division I Philosophy Statement.
Team sports have to play 40% of their contests at home against other Division I teams is a good start. Awarding 90% of the maximum allowed aid in the 14 sports sponsored is a good start. It will discourage moving up and make it harder for schools not really trying to do anything other than possess the Division I badge to keep it.
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