Pretty good conference in basketball and football and now have a partnership with OSU and WSU. They have not been raided since TCU and Utah left, they seem to be getting pretty close to M status to me.

When USC/UCLA/Oregon and UW leave the Big 10 for the MWC.

MWC isn't even at AAC level.

(03-13-2024 05:38 PM)Garrettabc Wrote:  Pretty good conference in basketball and football and now have a partnership with OSU and WSU. They have not been raided since TCU and Utah left, they seem to be getting pretty close to M status to me.

For starters, how about having half the schools in the conference average 40,000 in the stands?

(03-13-2024 06:23 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(03-13-2024 05:38 PM)Garrettabc Wrote:  Pretty good conference in basketball and football and now have a partnership with OSU and WSU. They have not been raided since TCU and Utah left, they seem to be getting pretty close to M status to me.

For starters, how about having half the schools in the conference average 40,000 in the stands?

You mean 30k?

Only Air Force, Boise, Fresno and Oregon St. are regularly over 30k.
Only WSU, SDSU and CSU of the rest are frequently over 25k.

(03-13-2024 06:28 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(03-13-2024 06:23 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(03-13-2024 05:38 PM)Garrettabc Wrote:  Pretty good conference in basketball and football and now have a partnership with OSU and WSU. They have not been raided since TCU and Utah left, they seem to be getting pretty close to M status to me.

For starters, how about having half the schools in the conference average 40,000 in the stands?

You mean 30k?

Only Air Force, Boise, Fresno and Oregon St. are regularly over 30k.
Only WSU, SDSU and CSU of the rest are frequently over 25k.

I was looking more at my spreadsheet for average attendance 2013-18.
NuACC below 40,000: Syracuse, BostonCollege, Duke, WakeForest, SMU (5/17)
New Big 12: Kansas, Cincinnati, Houston, UCF. (4/16)

Yes, the Mountain West schools are nowhere near the 40,000 mark.

(03-13-2024 06:36 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(03-13-2024 06:28 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(03-13-2024 06:23 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(03-13-2024 05:38 PM)Garrettabc Wrote:  Pretty good conference in basketball and football and now have a partnership with OSU and WSU. They have not been raided since TCU and Utah left, they seem to be getting pretty close to M status to me.

For starters, how about having half the schools in the conference average 40,000 in the stands?

You mean 30k?

Only Air Force, Boise, Fresno and Oregon St. are regularly over 30k.
Only WSU, SDSU and CSU of the rest are frequently over 25k.

I was looking more at my spreadsheet for average attendance 2013-18.
NuACC below 40,000: Syracuse, BostonCollege, Duke, WakeForest, SMU (5/17)
New Big 12: Kansas, Cincinnati, Houston, UCF. (4/16)

Yes, the Mountain West schools are nowhere near the 40,000 mark.

Do you have more recent stats? I'd love to see more recent stuff on a spreadsheet.

(03-13-2024 06:41 PM)otown Wrote:  

(03-13-2024 06:36 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(03-13-2024 06:28 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(03-13-2024 06:23 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(03-13-2024 05:38 PM)Garrettabc Wrote:  Pretty good conference in basketball and football and now have a partnership with OSU and WSU. They have not been raided since TCU and Utah left, they seem to be getting pretty close to M status to me.

For starters, how about having half the schools in the conference average 40,000 in the stands?

You mean 30k?

Only Air Force, Boise, Fresno and Oregon St. are regularly over 30k.
Only WSU, SDSU and CSU of the rest are frequently over 25k.

I was looking more at my spreadsheet for average attendance 2013-18.
NuACC below 40,000: Syracuse, BostonCollege, Duke, WakeForest, SMU (5/17)
New Big 12: Kansas, Cincinnati, Houston, UCF. (4/16)

Yes, the Mountain West schools are nowhere near the 40,000 mark.

Do you have more recent stats? I'd love to see more recent stuff on a spreadsheet.

Naah, some clickbait-y site did the compiling back in 2018, in a format that I could CTRL-C CTRL-V except for the top 10 I think, which I manually copied ( I didn't bother to track over 100,000, so that data was lost.) Then I tagged it with conferences, sorted by this and sorted by that. Threw in a couple of years of Sagarin data in other tabs.

I was noodling how the new CFP would allocate revenues based on some sort of performance formula, tuned to produce the "right" outcome. I played with counting Sagarin top 100, top 50, CFP top 25 finishes, top 50 1-50 points, top 50 1-25 points where everyone from 50-26 gets one point.

Then they ended up just counting CFP final four appearances. Lame.

(I'm still curiously waiting for the details of how the Big Ten and SEC split their 58%, and how the Big 12 and ACC split their 32%. There's a story in THERE, I bet.)

(03-13-2024 06:51 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(03-13-2024 06:41 PM)otown Wrote:  

(03-13-2024 06:36 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(03-13-2024 06:28 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(03-13-2024 06:23 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  For starters, how about having half the schools in the conference average 40,000 in the stands?

You mean 30k?

Only Air Force, Boise, Fresno and Oregon St. are regularly over 30k.
Only WSU, SDSU and CSU of the rest are frequently over 25k.

I was looking more at my spreadsheet for average attendance 2013-18.
NuACC below 40,000: Syracuse, BostonCollege, Duke, WakeForest, SMU (5/17)
New Big 12: Kansas, Cincinnati, Houston, UCF. (4/16)

Yes, the Mountain West schools are nowhere near the 40,000 mark.

Do you have more recent stats? I'd love to see more recent stuff on a spreadsheet.

Naah, some clickbait-y site did the compiling back in 2018, in a format that I could CTRL-C CTRL-V except for the top 10 I think, which I manually copied ( I didn't bother to track over 100,000, so that data was lost.) Then I tagged it with conferences, sorted by this and sorted by that. Threw in a couple of years of Sagarin data in other tabs.

I was noodling how the new CFP would allocate revenues based on some sort of performance formula, tuned to produce the "right" outcome. I played with counting Sagarin top 100, top 50, CFP top 25 finishes, top 50 1-50 points, top 50 1-25 points where everyone from 50-26 gets one point.

Then they ended up just counting CFP final four appearances. Lame.

(I'm still curiously waiting for the details of how the Big Ten and SEC split their 58%, and how the Big 12 and ACC split their 32%. There's a story in THERE, I bet.)

Save yourself the time and use the D1 ticker site

https://www.d1ticker.com/2023-fbs-attendance-trends/

Among the P5, attendance varied greatly, I don't see why an M3 would be any different.

The MWC couldn’t become a power conference with Utah, BYU and TCU in it. They were close in becoming the 7th BCS AQ conference and the cartel made sure it didn’t happen. I just don’t see the current MWC duplicating what the MWC of 1999 to 2011 did.

(03-13-2024 06:54 PM)Garrettabc Wrote:  Among the P5, attendance varied greatly, I don't see why an M3 would be any different.

The P5 leagues attendance vary from 25,000 to 100,000. The G5 leagues vary from 10,000 to 35,000. The best average attendance in the Mountain West would put you in the bottom quarter of the ACC or Big 12.

From my old 2013-18 averages, for the ACC:
Mean 46,773
Max 81,587
3rd Q 55,760
Median 45,432
1Q 35,265
Minimum 21,122

For the Big 12:
Mean 46,033
Max 56,925
3rd Q 55,092
Median 47,018
1Q 41,200
Minimum 26,650

For the Mountain West:
Mean 24,237
Max 33,909
3rd Q 28,676
Median 22,866
1Q 19,686
Minimum 14,852

Well, all of the autobids and revenue sharing should be based on objective criteria like the BCS used. The MWC nearly became an AQ because of the objective criteria. So that’s what we should use, but the reality is that we won’t. The SEC and Big Ten are monopolists with no intention of having a fair playing field.

(03-13-2024 07:09 PM)CitrusUCF Wrote:  Well, all of the autobids and revenue sharing should be based on objective criteria like the BCS used. The MWC nearly became an AQ because of the objective criteria. So that’s what we should use, but the reality is that we won’t. The SEC and Big Ten are monopolists with no intention of having a fair playing field.

What "objective criteria" would you use? Titles won? Top 4 places earned? How many 12 or 14 team bids you would have gotten if that was the size of the CFP in the last contract? Take entire amount and divide it evenly amongst all FBS schools?

FYI, the last and upcoming CFP agreements are more an Oligopoly than a monopoly. If there was no intention of having a fair playing field, then why is Vanderbilt getting paid as much as Ohio St?

(03-13-2024 05:38 PM)Garrettabc Wrote:  Pretty good conference in basketball and football and now have a partnership with OSU and WSU. They have not been raided since TCU and Utah left, they seem to be getting pretty close to M status to me.

What makes you think basketball will stay like this? Great season but I fully expect a return to crap in the next few years.

(03-13-2024 07:17 PM)bryanw1995 Wrote:  

(03-13-2024 07:09 PM)CitrusUCF Wrote:  Well, all of the autobids and revenue sharing should be based on objective criteria like the BCS used. The MWC nearly became an AQ because of the objective criteria. So that’s what we should use, but the reality is that we won’t. The SEC and Big Ten are monopolists with no intention of having a fair playing field.

What "objective criteria" would you use? Titles won? Top 4 places earned? How many 12 or 14 team bids you would have gotten if that was the size of the CFP in the last contract? Take entire amount and divide it evenly amongst all FBS schools?

My expectation was that someone sort of like me was in the SEC and/or Big Ten offices playing with spreadsheets and formulas, evaluating a bunch of ideas like you just mentioned, until we found the "correct formula", meaning the one that came closest to the division of revenues that we wanted in the first place.

Other criteria I expected were to minimize year-to-year swings in revenue, and Big swings in revenue based on single-game results or based on semi-arbitrary decisions of who's #8 and #9 or #12 and #13. It's disappointing enough to miss out on a playoff spot, or a home playoff game or whatever, without also having huge amounts of money at stake. (Yes the money is huge, but I wouldn't want the difference between #4 and #5 to be huge while #5 to #6 is much smaller.)

Quote:FYI, the last and upcoming CFP agreements are more an Oligopoly than a monopoly. If there was no intention of having a fair playing field, then why is Vanderbilt getting paid as much as Ohio St?

Attendance is far less meaningful these days than on-field performance. When and if MWC teams are able to win at least half the time in head-to-head competition against M2 teams, it will make sense to have this conversation.

(03-13-2024 07:17 PM)bryanw1995 Wrote:  

(03-13-2024 07:09 PM)CitrusUCF Wrote:  Well, all of the autobids and revenue sharing should be based on objective criteria like the BCS used. The MWC nearly became an AQ because of the objective criteria. So that’s what we should use, but the reality is that we won’t. The SEC and Big Ten are monopolists with no intention of having a fair playing field.

What "objective criteria" would you use? Titles won? Top 4 places earned? How many 12 or 14 team bids you would have gotten if that was the size of the CFP in the last contract? Take entire amount and divide it evenly amongst all FBS schools?

FYI, the last and upcoming CFP agreements are more an Oligopoly than a monopoly. If there was no intention of having a fair playing field, then why is Vanderbilt getting paid as much as Ohio St?

The computer polls used in the BCS and reviewing every 5 years or something based on that look back.

(03-13-2024 06:14 PM)bullet Wrote:  When USC/UCLA/Oregon and UW leave the Big 10 for the MWC.

MWC isn't even at AAC level.

How many P5 teams have left their conferences for the AAC? Until recently, the AAC had an edge over the MWC. The MWC hasn't gotten any better (though they will have if OSU and WSU come aboard). But the AAC's decline has been severe. The question is whether the AAC is still at MWC's level.

But neither is close to either the Big 12 or ACC, and there aren't any moves they are likely to make that is going to close the gap in my lifetime. But I'm old, and maybe those two will get weaker over time by losing more of their top teams to the P2. If you are a lot younger than I am, maybe they get to M3 status in your lifetime.

Or, if the P2 grow to 28 teams each, then the weaker teams that get left behind could constitute a new M3 along with the MWC and either the AAC or SBC.

If the MWC added

Wash St, Ore St, Tulane, Memphis.

then that would be enough to become an in-between conference, higher than the G4 but lower than the M2. In terms of CFP revenue, it would get 4% of the total pot.

(03-13-2024 06:28 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(03-13-2024 06:23 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(03-13-2024 05:38 PM)Garrettabc Wrote:  Pretty good conference in basketball and football and now have a partnership with OSU and WSU. They have not been raided since TCU and Utah left, they seem to be getting pretty close to M status to me.

For starters, how about having half the schools in the conference average 40,000 in the stands?

You mean 30k?

Only Air Force, Boise, Fresno and Oregon St. are regularly over 30k.
Only WSU, SDSU and CSU of the rest are frequently over 25k.

Washington State gets close to 34,000, but it is Kansas that gets normally 25,000.