(12-01-2014 04:09 AM)JRsec Wrote:  

(11-30-2014 10:25 PM)Transic_nyc Wrote:  

(11-29-2014 02:46 AM)JRsec Wrote:  I'm a sociologist. I took up realignment to see just how many cherished institutions would be forfeit to corporate greed before the average citizen had their fill. After three years of talking this stuff ad nauseam I have come to the conclusion that most people accept it all gleefully citing how much more their schools are going to make, and ignoring the passing of a century of tradition and memories. To me it means our nation is more than ripe for the same kinds of theft of traditions, liberties, and rights, and that little more than a whimper will be forthcoming on that. College football was a beloved and remarkably unchanged touchstone to our heritage and therefore a perfect litmus test for greater societal change and as a people we've failed. But then that's what happens when everything you hold dear is measured by the dollar instead of out of honor, love, and morality.

It's interesting now in light of the rumors surrounding the UAB football program. This could be an anomaly or signal the start of radical change in the FBS sphere. I don't know if this change would be limited to the G5 or whether this could creep up to the P5 level. Some of this might be inevitable with the need to appease the student-athletes with stipends, medical insurance, etc..

What's not in dispute is that the bill for competing in the FBS is now coming due.

I believe your suspicions are accurate. The bill is due and maybe a better analogy would be in the high stakes poker game of college athletics the anti has just been raised to thin the table. I use a gambling analogy because unless some legitimacy is at least feigned by transforming the playoff process to a champs only model for a controlled 4 conferences so that the process yields the playoff participants annually and conducts the process in an easily understood and accepted way for the fans to follow then college football will continue to lose fans who just get tired of politics and network profit angles being so obviously in the forefront.

But as you alluded to the thinning is beginning. Remember it is not just U.A.B. that is on the chopping block. Wake Forest has made noises, Hawaii seems to be on the way out, and I am sure there are many right now with fan base support below 30,000 who are considering the high percentage of crowd support they could keep without the high overhead if they only dropped down a division. I mean really if you live where you can draw 20,000 local fans to a Division II game why spend all of that money to compete in the FBS to only draw 27,000 or 30,000 to the games?

Those however that can draw 50,000 plus will do what it takes to stay in the FBS.

I think what we are going to see is a culling of the G5 as schools who in recent years joined drop back down. Then we will see some of the strongest G5 replace some a very few P5 privates that call it quits at the FBS level. In the end I do believe that we wind up with a P4 of about the same number of schools (between 64 -72) which is geographically grouped by division. And it is possible that the G5 actually gets stronger by growing leaner and a bit more competitive.

Well the culling is here. And while there is much gnashing of teeth over UAB, as you have stated several times JR, the era Baby Boomer expansion is past and opening and with the advent of online education, all of these learning centers across most states are redundant. I've pointed several people to the consolidations that have taken place within the Univ. System of Georgia. And what is happening in Alabama has the appearance of something nefarious, I actually don't think the situations are that dissimilar. Colleges are battening down the hatches.