(03-15-2018 03:17 PM)ken d Wrote:  

(03-15-2018 02:00 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(03-15-2018 01:18 PM)ken d Wrote:  My thoughts are that members ought to be able to demonstrate that their athletic departments are essentially self sufficient financially. That is, they ought to have sustained annual athletics revenues that don't rely heavily on outside subsidies.

I wouldn't want to exclude an AAC or MWC school because their conference's media contract is dramatically lower than other conferences. On the other hand, I wouldn't want to include a school whose revenue threshold is only met because the school chooses to subsidize them heavily from its general funds.

If playing football is one of the criteria, I guess that's not an unreasonable way to differentiate your membership. There is certainly nothing subjective about that. It's cut and dried.

I don't know where the dollar threshold should be for revenues, but whatever it is I think it should only include income from the following sources:

Gate receipts
Athletic Department endowments
Donations other than one time donations for capital projects
Student athletics fees, not to exceed $600 per student per year
Media revenues, excluding conference media contracts

The threshold IMO should be an average of the most recent three years to avoid gamesmanship by some well heeled booster willing to buy his school's entry into the CFA.

I'm guessing the service academies might opt out on principle, and because they wouldn't want to be limited in who they can play in sports besides football. Depending on where you set the number, you could wind up with a membership in the 80-90 range, and probably nearer the low end of that range. I would consider that pretty reasonable if your goal is to have only members with similar resources competing against each other.

There should be a baseline of requisite sports: Football, W. Soccer, M&W Basketball, M&W Indoor/Outdoor Track, M&W Swimming & Diving, M&W Tennis & Golf, Baseball, Softball, W Volleyball.

The baseline on Gross Total Revenue should be $65,000,000 and really that's too low to sustain the value of a program to the better earners.

The baseline on Attendance should be 35,000 hard body count, not tickets sold and should be verifiable. And that's too low.

But those numbers give you the wiggle room on squezzing in the best of the G5.

Whether those numbers need to be handicapped for privates I don't know? Wake Forest, Vandy, Duke, and a few others would have difficulty at these norms. But if you lower them you may as well not even have a boundary.

Kansas and UConn averaged 24,000 and 20,000 respectively for football attendance last year.

I do think the minimums I've suggested would make the upper tier more competitive and might force some schools into the basketball (no football grouping). And that too might make for better competition.

I think an attendance threshold is problematic for a number of reasons. First, a hard body count is very hard to verify. And, it can be gamed. If it's just fannies in seats, a school on the bubble could give away tickets to put themselves over the top. And it's hard to justify as a criterion for disqualification. I would imagine that any number of schools would challenge in court the reasonableness of assuming that a school with attendance of 35,200 is acceptable and one with 34,800 is not. Especially if one is getting $50 a ticket and the other $25.

And 35,000 wouldn't get many G5's in the field. There were only five such schools in 2017: BYU (56.3), San Diego St (39.3), UCF (36.8), ECU (36.7) and Memphis (36.3). It would knock seven P5's out: Kansas (26.6), Duke (26.8), Wake Forest (28.4), Vanderbilt (31.3), Syracuse (33.9) and Oregon St (34.8).

Well they already had one and failed to enforce it. They had the 17k once in 4 years which was gamed. They had the 15k and never enforced it.

(03-16-2018 08:08 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(03-15-2018 03:17 PM)ken d Wrote:  

(03-15-2018 02:00 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(03-15-2018 01:18 PM)ken d Wrote:  My thoughts are that members ought to be able to demonstrate that their athletic departments are essentially self sufficient financially. That is, they ought to have sustained annual athletics revenues that don't rely heavily on outside subsidies.

I wouldn't want to exclude an AAC or MWC school because their conference's media contract is dramatically lower than other conferences. On the other hand, I wouldn't want to include a school whose revenue threshold is only met because the school chooses to subsidize them heavily from its general funds.

If playing football is one of the criteria, I guess that's not an unreasonable way to differentiate your membership. There is certainly nothing subjective about that. It's cut and dried.

I don't know where the dollar threshold should be for revenues, but whatever it is I think it should only include income from the following sources:

Gate receipts
Athletic Department endowments
Donations other than one time donations for capital projects
Student athletics fees, not to exceed $600 per student per year
Media revenues, excluding conference media contracts

The threshold IMO should be an average of the most recent three years to avoid gamesmanship by some well heeled booster willing to buy his school's entry into the CFA.

I'm guessing the service academies might opt out on principle, and because they wouldn't want to be limited in who they can play in sports besides football. Depending on where you set the number, you could wind up with a membership in the 80-90 range, and probably nearer the low end of that range. I would consider that pretty reasonable if your goal is to have only members with similar resources competing against each other.

There should be a baseline of requisite sports: Football, W. Soccer, M&W Basketball, M&W Indoor/Outdoor Track, M&W Swimming & Diving, M&W Tennis & Golf, Baseball, Softball, W Volleyball.

The baseline on Gross Total Revenue should be $65,000,000 and really that's too low to sustain the value of a program to the better earners.

The baseline on Attendance should be 35,000 hard body count, not tickets sold and should be verifiable. And that's too low.

But those numbers give you the wiggle room on squezzing in the best of the G5.

Whether those numbers need to be handicapped for privates I don't know? Wake Forest, Vandy, Duke, and a few others would have difficulty at these norms. But if you lower them you may as well not even have a boundary.

Kansas and UConn averaged 24,000 and 20,000 respectively for football attendance last year.

I do think the minimums I've suggested would make the upper tier more competitive and might force some schools into the basketball (no football grouping). And that too might make for better competition.

I think an attendance threshold is problematic for a number of reasons. First, a hard body count is very hard to verify. And, it can be gamed. If it's just fannies in seats, a school on the bubble could give away tickets to put themselves over the top. And it's hard to justify as a criterion for disqualification. I would imagine that any number of schools would challenge in court the reasonableness of assuming that a school with attendance of 35,200 is acceptable and one with 34,800 is not. Especially if one is getting $50 a ticket and the other $25.

And 35,000 wouldn't get many G5's in the field. There were only five such schools in 2017: BYU (56.3), San Diego St (39.3), UCF (36.8), ECU (36.7) and Memphis (36.3). It would knock seven P5's out: Kansas (26.6), Duke (26.8), Wake Forest (28.4), Vanderbilt (31.3), Syracuse (33.9) and Oregon St (34.8).

Well they already had one and failed to enforce it. They had the 17k once in 4 years which was gamed. They had the 15k and never enforced it.

It's funny that no one has raised questions over the 65,000,000 in Gross Total Revenue, or the list of requisite sports. Those weed them out pretty well.

(03-15-2018 01:27 PM)ken d Wrote:  

(03-15-2018 01:16 PM)Wedge Wrote:  I wouldn't make those assumptions. If Villanova is in Association X, and the best college basketball tournament is sponsored by Association Y, then Villanova and others are not going to tolerate Association X's BS rule that bans them from participating in Association Y's tournament. The rule would be changed or thrown out in court.

The NCAA knew that their rule was going to be nullified by the courts when the NIT sued the NCAA, which is why the NCAA settled the lawsuit by purchasing the NIT.

I don't see why, as a condition of membership, that Association X can't require that all their conference champions represent them in the Association Championship tournament. if the Big East doesn't want to agree to that, they are free to form their own association.

One big fly in the ointment here: Notre Dame. Notre Dame has cherished its independence for years. How would this association make them give up their independence??

Actually, I would use the size of the athletic budget as a requirement combined with attendance & endowment. Maybe give some leniency on attendance if budget & endowment are met.

(03-17-2018 03:18 AM)DawgNBama Wrote:  Actually, I would use the size of the athletic budget as a requirement combined with attendance & endowment. Maybe give some leniency on attendance if budget & endowment are met.

As this thread has gone on, I have been moving in the same direction as you have, though I don't use the size of the athletic endowment as a criterion.

And, while football is the main driver here, I think that support for other sports, especially basketball, is also important. I took combined total annual attendance for both football and basketball for the most recent two years for all FBS schools. My threshold for inclusion was 400K per year, but a school could also be invited if their combined attendance averages 350K per year AND they have self generated athletic revenues above $40 million per year OR 300K and have such revenues above $65 million.

By self generated revenues, I mean to exclude revenue from a conference media contract, and revenue from bowl games and the basketball tournament (which are shared revenues within a conference, even if the school did not earn any of it themselves). The point here is that we only want to include schools who have demonstrated that they have the resources and support to compete at this level without having to rely on simply already being a member of the club.

These criteria would produce an association between 60-65. This is roughly the same size as the current P5, though a few G5s would qualify and a few P5s would be excluded.

(03-16-2018 10:56 PM)JRsec Wrote:  It's funny that no one has raised questions over the 65,000,000 in Gross Total Revenue, or the list of requisite sports. Those weed them out pretty well.

The list of sports is not that much of a bar. Sacramento State has all of those sports. And on the other hand, there are some northern P5 schools that don't have baseball and/or softball programs.

Revenue is an ok criterion if it's "real revenue", i.e., not including student fees or other university subsidies. If it included those things, then we'd be encouraging bad ideas like universities taxing the hell out of their own students just so they can have a college sports program in the top division.

(03-17-2018 12:02 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(03-16-2018 10:56 PM)JRsec Wrote:  It's funny that no one has raised questions over the 65,000,000 in Gross Total Revenue, or the list of requisite sports. Those weed them out pretty well.

The list of sports is not that much of a bar. Sacramento State has all of those sports. And on the other hand, there are some northern P5 schools that don't have baseball and/or softball programs.

Revenue is an ok criterion if it's "real revenue", i.e., not including student fees or other university subsidies. If it included those things, then we'd be encouraging bad ideas like universities taxing the hell out of their own students just so they can have a college sports program in the top division.

I'm good with not counting subsidies placed on the backs of students. 65 million in Gross Total Revenue is a sweet dividing line. A few weaker P5's would be below it as would a few basketball only schools who have football, but just to claim the revenue of others. It also promotes several worthy G5's.

(03-17-2018 12:13 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(03-17-2018 12:02 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(03-16-2018 10:56 PM)JRsec Wrote:  It's funny that no one has raised questions over the 65,000,000 in Gross Total Revenue, or the list of requisite sports. Those weed them out pretty well.

The list of sports is not that much of a bar. Sacramento State has all of those sports. And on the other hand, there are some northern P5 schools that don't have baseball and/or softball programs.

Revenue is an ok criterion if it's "real revenue", i.e., not including student fees or other university subsidies. If it included those things, then we'd be encouraging bad ideas like universities taxing the hell out of their own students just so they can have a college sports program in the top division.

I'm good with not counting subsidies placed on the backs of students. 65 million in Gross Total Revenue is a sweet dividing line. A few weaker P5's would be below it as would a few basketball only schools who have football, but just to claim the revenue of others. It also promotes several worthy G5's.

I don't see any of the P5 conferences agreeing to a new structure that excludes one of their own, though. It's one thing for a school to jump to a new conference by themselves; it's a much different thing for 13 schools to move on together and leave one behind in a lower division.

(03-17-2018 12:46 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(03-17-2018 12:13 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(03-17-2018 12:02 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(03-16-2018 10:56 PM)JRsec Wrote:  It's funny that no one has raised questions over the 65,000,000 in Gross Total Revenue, or the list of requisite sports. Those weed them out pretty well.

The list of sports is not that much of a bar. Sacramento State has all of those sports. And on the other hand, there are some northern P5 schools that don't have baseball and/or softball programs.

Revenue is an ok criterion if it's "real revenue", i.e., not including student fees or other university subsidies. If it included those things, then we'd be encouraging bad ideas like universities taxing the hell out of their own students just so they can have a college sports program in the top division.

I'm good with not counting subsidies placed on the backs of students. 65 million in Gross Total Revenue is a sweet dividing line. A few weaker P5's would be below it as would a few basketball only schools who have football, but just to claim the revenue of others. It also promotes several worthy G5's.

I don't see any of the P5 conferences agreeing to a new structure that excludes one of their own, though. It's one thing for a school to jump to a new conference by themselves; it's a much different thing for 13 schools to move on together and leave one behind in a lower division.

There are a lot of across the fence conversations taking place now that the pay model is changing. The Vandy's, Duke's, and Northwestern's of the world really aren't carrying their weight in the share and share alike model, and everyone's pay could go up if they weren't being carried.

In the coming economic climate, with the demographic shifts compounding economic issues, a reshuffling is possible. Especially if the tax status of players changes and cause state schools to comport themselves differently than privates.

And even if the tax relationship doesn't change, time and economic pressure are eventually going to force some of the privates out. Wake has already complained about stipends. Vanderbilt doesn't participate in all SEC sports and that's a bit of a rub.

So while the sentiment of what you say is true, it's legs are getting weaker and weaker upon examination of the anticipated pay model changes.

It's true that the fastest way for any of the P5 conferences to make more money per school would be to kick out their two least valuable members and then they'd be dividing the same amount of money into fewer shares. If the SEC is dividing $600 million 14 ways, that's $42.9 million per school. If they divide $600 million 12 ways, it's $50 million per school.

But, I wouldn't bet money on that happening any time soon. Maybe if TV money and donations shrink substantially, then at some point it becomes every school for itself.

(03-16-2018 10:56 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(03-16-2018 08:08 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(03-15-2018 03:17 PM)ken d Wrote:  

(03-15-2018 02:00 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(03-15-2018 01:18 PM)ken d Wrote:  My thoughts are that members ought to be able to demonstrate that their athletic departments are essentially self sufficient financially. That is, they ought to have sustained annual athletics revenues that don't rely heavily on outside subsidies.

I wouldn't want to exclude an AAC or MWC school because their conference's media contract is dramatically lower than other conferences. On the other hand, I wouldn't want to include a school whose revenue threshold is only met because the school chooses to subsidize them heavily from its general funds.

If playing football is one of the criteria, I guess that's not an unreasonable way to differentiate your membership. There is certainly nothing subjective about that. It's cut and dried.

I don't know where the dollar threshold should be for revenues, but whatever it is I think it should only include income from the following sources:

Gate receipts
Athletic Department endowments
Donations other than one time donations for capital projects
Student athletics fees, not to exceed $600 per student per year
Media revenues, excluding conference media contracts

The threshold IMO should be an average of the most recent three years to avoid gamesmanship by some well heeled booster willing to buy his school's entry into the CFA.

I'm guessing the service academies might opt out on principle, and because they wouldn't want to be limited in who they can play in sports besides football. Depending on where you set the number, you could wind up with a membership in the 80-90 range, and probably nearer the low end of that range. I would consider that pretty reasonable if your goal is to have only members with similar resources competing against each other.

There should be a baseline of requisite sports: Football, W. Soccer, M&W Basketball, M&W Indoor/Outdoor Track, M&W Swimming & Diving, M&W Tennis & Golf, Baseball, Softball, W Volleyball.

The baseline on Gross Total Revenue should be $65,000,000 and really that's too low to sustain the value of a program to the better earners.

The baseline on Attendance should be 35,000 hard body count, not tickets sold and should be verifiable. And that's too low.

But those numbers give you the wiggle room on squezzing in the best of the G5.

Whether those numbers need to be handicapped for privates I don't know? Wake Forest, Vandy, Duke, and a few others would have difficulty at these norms. But if you lower them you may as well not even have a boundary.

Kansas and UConn averaged 24,000 and 20,000 respectively for football attendance last year.

I do think the minimums I've suggested would make the upper tier more competitive and might force some schools into the basketball (no football grouping). And that too might make for better competition.

I think an attendance threshold is problematic for a number of reasons. First, a hard body count is very hard to verify. And, it can be gamed. If it's just fannies in seats, a school on the bubble could give away tickets to put themselves over the top. And it's hard to justify as a criterion for disqualification. I would imagine that any number of schools would challenge in court the reasonableness of assuming that a school with attendance of 35,200 is acceptable and one with 34,800 is not. Especially if one is getting $50 a ticket and the other $25.

And 35,000 wouldn't get many G5's in the field. There were only five such schools in 2017: BYU (56.3), San Diego St (39.3), UCF (36.8), ECU (36.7) and Memphis (36.3). It would knock seven P5's out: Kansas (26.6), Duke (26.8), Wake Forest (28.4), Vanderbilt (31.3), Syracuse (33.9) and Oregon St (34.8).

Well they already had one and failed to enforce it. They had the 17k once in 4 years which was gamed. They had the 15k and never enforced it.

It's funny that no one has raised questions over the 65,000,000 in Gross Total Revenue, or the list of requisite sports. Those weed them out pretty well.

That can be gamed as well. Nobody using the same definition or accounting. The number of sports and number of scholarships are a lot easier to define and measure accurately.

(03-17-2018 01:12 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(03-17-2018 12:46 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(03-17-2018 12:13 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(03-17-2018 12:02 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(03-16-2018 10:56 PM)JRsec Wrote:  It's funny that no one has raised questions over the 65,000,000 in Gross Total Revenue, or the list of requisite sports. Those weed them out pretty well.

The list of sports is not that much of a bar. Sacramento State has all of those sports. And on the other hand, there are some northern P5 schools that don't have baseball and/or softball programs.

Revenue is an ok criterion if it's "real revenue", i.e., not including student fees or other university subsidies. If it included those things, then we'd be encouraging bad ideas like universities taxing the hell out of their own students just so they can have a college sports program in the top division.

I'm good with not counting subsidies placed on the backs of students. 65 million in Gross Total Revenue is a sweet dividing line. A few weaker P5's would be below it as would a few basketball only schools who have football, but just to claim the revenue of others. It also promotes several worthy G5's.

I don't see any of the P5 conferences agreeing to a new structure that excludes one of their own, though. It's one thing for a school to jump to a new conference by themselves; it's a much different thing for 13 schools to move on together and leave one behind in a lower division.

There are a lot of across the fence conversations taking place now that the pay model is changing. The Vandy's, Duke's, and Northwestern's of the world really aren't carrying their weight in the share and share alike model, and everyone's pay could go up if they weren't being carried.

In the coming economic climate, with the demographic shifts compounding economic issues, a reshuffling is possible. Especially if the tax status of players changes and cause state schools to comport themselves differently than privates.

And even if the tax relationship doesn't change, time and economic pressure are eventually going to force some of the privates out. Wake has already complained about stipends. Vanderbilt doesn't participate in all SEC sports and that's a bit of a rub.

So while the sentiment of what you say is true, it's legs are getting weaker and weaker upon examination of the anticipated pay model changes.

If you get pay for athletes, we are going to have a LOT of realignment. I can see some of the private schools, even in the P5, taking their ball and playing with themselves.

(03-17-2018 01:20 PM)Wedge Wrote:  It's true that the fastest way for any of the P5 conferences to make more money per school would be to kick out their two least valuable members and then they'd be dividing the same amount of money into fewer shares. If the SEC is dividing $600 million 14 ways, that's $42.9 million per school. If they divide $600 million 12 ways, it's $50 million per school.

But, I wouldn't bet money on that happening any time soon. Maybe if TV money and donations shrink substantially, then at some point it becomes every school for itself.

Well the SEC did it in 1933. The ACC did it in 1953. The Big 12 did it in 1996 (after the Big 8 did it in 1928). The Pac did it in 1959, more or less. That's all of the P5 except for the Big 10.

For that matter, the MWC did it in 1998, CUSA did it in 1996 and then those schools did it again moving into the AAC in 2013. The Sun Belt did it when they formed from elements of the Big West and then many of their members did it moving to the CUSA.

(03-17-2018 04:19 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(03-17-2018 01:20 PM)Wedge Wrote:  It's true that the fastest way for any of the P5 conferences to make more money per school would be to kick out their two least valuable members and then they'd be dividing the same amount of money into fewer shares. If the SEC is dividing $600 million 14 ways, that's $42.9 million per school. If they divide $600 million 12 ways, it's $50 million per school.

But, I wouldn't bet money on that happening any time soon. Maybe if TV money and donations shrink substantially, then at some point it becomes every school for itself.

Well the SEC did it in 1933. The ACC did it in 1953. The Big 12 did it in 1996 (after the Big 8 did it in 1928). The Pac did it in 1959, more or less. That's all of the P5 except for the Big 10.

Not sure about the PAC, but the others didn't kick anybody out. They just formed new conferences, at a time when the whole concept of the conference was very unlike what it is today. But, to the point, what we would be talking about here isn't conferences leaving the NCAA and starting a new association. It is about individual schools. And, while some schools might be loathe to leave conference mates behind, I'm sure others would have no problem with it at all.

Where the rubber would meet the road is when some of the heavyweights in a conference all agree to leave, and others who would qualify for inclusion have to decide if they want to be left behind as a matter of principle, or to also leave as a matter of survival in the big leagues. That's when the Wake Forests of the world would learn who their real friends are.

What I would be interested in seeing is how all the schools who might qualify for a new association would align in the new conferences. Would they all stay with the same conference mates, or would they take advantage of an opportunity to "correct" what they might view as past mistakes? For example, would the new Big 12 want to include West Virginia if they had it to do all over again?

(03-17-2018 05:46 PM)ken d Wrote:  Not sure about the PAC, but the others didn't kick anybody out. They just formed new conferences, at a time when the whole concept of the conference was very unlike what it is today.

The Pac-12 is the "new conference", started in 1959.

The original conference that started in 1916, the PCC, had, by 1928, the Pac-8 schools plus Montana and Idaho. Montana left in 1950. In 1959 the PCC dissolved, and UW plus the 4 California schools formed the AAWU, which over the next several years added WSU, UO, and OSU, and then later officially took the name Pacific-8 Conference. (Today the official name is Pac-12, not Pacific-12.)

At any rate, whatever label you want to put on any past moves, kicking schools to the curb is a different deal in athletics now than it was in 1959. Especially with public schools and local politics. I don't think there would be anything easy about Indiana joining a new league that left Purdue behind in a second-rate league, or Oregon doing that to Oregon State, or Kansas to Kansas State, etc., etc.

(03-17-2018 08:26 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(03-17-2018 05:46 PM)ken d Wrote:  Not sure about the PAC, but the others didn't kick anybody out. They just formed new conferences, at a time when the whole concept of the conference was very unlike what it is today.

The Pac-12 is the "new conference", started in 1959.

The original conference that started in 1916, the PCC, had, by 1928, the Pac-8 schools plus Montana and Idaho. Montana left in 1950. In 1959 the PCC dissolved, and UW plus the 4 California schools formed the AAWU, which over the next several years added WSU, UO, and OSU, and then later officially took the name Pacific-8 Conference. (Today the official name is Pac-12, not Pacific-12.)

At any rate, whatever label you want to put on any past moves, kicking schools to the curb is a different deal in athletics now than it was in 1959. Especially with public schools and local politics. I don't think there would be anything easy about Indiana joining a new league that left Purdue behind in a second-rate league, or Oregon doing that to Oregon State, or Kansas to Kansas State, etc., etc.

This ^

(03-17-2018 05:46 PM)ken d Wrote:  

(03-17-2018 04:19 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(03-17-2018 01:20 PM)Wedge Wrote:  It's true that the fastest way for any of the P5 conferences to make more money per school would be to kick out their two least valuable members and then they'd be dividing the same amount of money into fewer shares. If the SEC is dividing $600 million 14 ways, that's $42.9 million per school. If they divide $600 million 12 ways, it's $50 million per school.

But, I wouldn't bet money on that happening any time soon. Maybe if TV money and donations shrink substantially, then at some point it becomes every school for itself.

Well the SEC did it in 1933. The ACC did it in 1953. The Big 12 did it in 1996 (after the Big 8 did it in 1928). The Pac did it in 1959, more or less. That's all of the P5 except for the Big 10.

Not sure about the PAC, but the others didn't kick anybody out. They just formed new conferences, at a time when the whole concept of the conference was very unlike what it is today. But, to the point, what we would be talking about here isn't conferences leaving the NCAA and starting a new association. It is about individual schools. And, while some schools might be loathe to leave conference mates behind, I'm sure others would have no problem with it at all.

Where the rubber would meet the road is when some of the heavyweights in a conference all agree to leave, and others who would qualify for inclusion have to decide if they want to be left behind as a matter of principle, or to also leave as a matter of survival in the big leagues. That's when the Wake Forests of the world would learn who their real friends are.

What I would be interested in seeing is how all the schools who might qualify for a new association would align in the new conferences. Would they all stay with the same conference mates, or would they take advantage of an opportunity to "correct" what they might view as past mistakes? For example, would the new Big 12 want to include West Virginia if they had it to do all over again?

Forming new conferences is the same as kicking schools out. Just using a different name.

I don't think many would change decisions on which schools. But I have no doubt some conferences would prefer different numbers. And several would have taken different schools if they could have gotten a yes.

The WAC 16 is probably the only true regret. They probably should have gone with the AD's recommendation, which was only UNLV and TCU, not San Jose, Tulsa, SMU and Rice.

(03-15-2018 02:00 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(03-15-2018 01:18 PM)ken d Wrote:  My thoughts are that members ought to be able to demonstrate that their athletic departments are essentially self sufficient financially. That is, they ought to have sustained annual athletics revenues that don't rely heavily on outside subsidies.

I wouldn't want to exclude an AAC or MWC school because their conference's media contract is dramatically lower than other conferences. On the other hand, I wouldn't want to include a school whose revenue threshold is only met because the school chooses to subsidize them heavily from its general funds.

If playing football is one of the criteria, I guess that's not an unreasonable way to differentiate your membership. There is certainly nothing subjective about that. It's cut and dried.

I don't know where the dollar threshold should be for revenues, but whatever it is I think it should only include income from the following sources:

Gate receipts
Athletic Department endowments
Donations other than one time donations for capital projects
Student athletics fees, not to exceed $600 per student per year
Media revenues, excluding conference media contracts

The threshold IMO should be an average of the most recent three years to avoid gamesmanship by some well heeled booster willing to buy his school's entry into the CFA.

I'm guessing the service academies might opt out on principle, and because they wouldn't want to be limited in who they can play in sports besides football. Depending on where you set the number, you could wind up with a membership in the 80-90 range, and probably nearer the low end of that range. I would consider that pretty reasonable if your goal is to have only members with similar resources competing against each other.

There should be a baseline of requisite sports: Football, W. Soccer, M&W Basketball, M&W Indoor/Outdoor Track, M&W Swimming & Diving, M&W Tennis & Golf, Baseball, Softball, W Volleyball.

The baseline on Gross Total Revenue should be $65,000,000 and really that's too low to sustain the value of a program to the better earners.

The baseline on Attendance should be 35,000 hard body count, not tickets sold and should be verifiable. And that's too low.

But those numbers give you the wiggle room on squezzing in the best of the G5.

Whether those numbers need to be handicapped for privates I don't know? Wake Forest, Vandy, Duke, and a few others would have difficulty at these norms. But if you lower them you may as well not even have a boundary.

Kansas and UConn averaged 24,000 and 20,000 respectively for football attendance last year.

I do think the minimums I've suggested would make the upper tier more competitive and might force some schools into the basketball (no football grouping). And that too might make for better competition.

Wake Forest's stadium seats less than 30,000. So I guess by your own words "you may as well not even have a boundary".