(10-29-2019 05:25 PM)AllTideUp Wrote:  

(10-29-2019 04:07 PM)JRsec Wrote:  Slive said it best. The only real limit on the size of a conference is profitability.

The biggest obstacles to any of this isn't the desire of the conferences, but the regulations of the NCAA.

And that affects profitability. Get the NCAA out of the way and basketball programs would earn (by themselves) at least 25 million a year in media revenue and many say possibly 35 million. If the NCAA's money hoarding governance of the tournament is out of the way that means that Duke, North Carolina, and Kansas all three could pay their way in (Duke may still be a bit iffy but Carolina may help to cover that).

Right now it is content football program driven process. Let the basketball schools truly keep most of what they actually earn through the tournament and the worm turns and suddenly they become a major factor in realignment.

Last year the tournament made 1 billion. Divide that in half and divide by 64 and figure out the tourney creds. You'll be shocked.

If we truly needed to act in our own self interest with the ACC should it implode why not go to 24 (Clemson, F.S.U., Duke, UNC, Virginia & Va Tech).

If you simply paid every participant in March Madness an equal share that would be 15,625,000 per school. Of course that won't happen. But tack that onto the regular season rights and conference tourney rights and you should be looking at 30-35 million per school easily. And we all know if you pay by credits the top. Tourney creds would be $8,064,500 per school instead of something like 2.5 million now. So each round a school advanced that would be another $8,064,500. Auburn would have made over 40 million just for the tourney last year. Instead we'll get around 12.5 million and we will get that over 6 years.

The potential value of basketball brings up another question...

With the NCAA out of the way, and we have to wonder if the new compensation rules will effectively accomplish that, then conferences with good basketball immediately become more valuable.

The NCAA Tournament credits are only a part of the equation. The value of the regular season to media companies and ticket buyers is much less than it should be simply because of the structure of the post season.

Theoretically, there should be room for some significant growth.

At that, with the NCAA out of the way, then I suspect the post season tournaments for baseball and softball would take on new value. The price range wouldn't be comparable to football or basketball, but it should be more than a pittance. That and with the MLB talking about doing away with a healthy portion of their minor league system, that means more players for colleges and that ups the quality of play.

First I will express a fear. I am leary of Congress jumping to put a bill in place. I don't want them to exclude the voices of AD's and University presidents by dictating how it will be and that way being an endorsement of the NCAA which is another quasi governmental bureaucracy. I really do want us to have a chance to break from them for the betterment of all of our schools' athletics.

I agree with you about the value of baseball improving as well.

But yes, it should open the eyes of the power conferences to the benefits of including the Duke, Kansas, and North Carolina kinds of additions and currently that would boost the value of a Texas Tech as well.

So I would advise our commissioners, presidents, and ADs to be openly and deliberately involved with talking to their congressmen about what guidelines they feel should be put in place and why. They need to be part of the legislative dialogue before their self interest is hijacked by a couple of guys with an agenda for some form of the status quo plus payouts. It needs to be a university decision, not a Congressional one.