Now, i'm bias and affects my post so please post your views.

Should there be a P4 breakaway or form a new division within the NCAA as Charlie Baker proposed in an initial draft?

In my mind the only way a new super classification can work within the NCAA is for Div 1 basketball to have classifications. My hope is the supper league would include their farm league the G5 for the playoffs, scheduling money games etc. So perhaps the NCAA Basketball tournament becomes the P4, Big East, G5, WCC and A10 conferences with automatic bids and 4 bids for the rest of Div1 basketball. This would keep those special schools access as the current CFP provides access to the G5.

The MAC is ranked 24th. We are not getting an autobid while several conferences ranked higher - and as high as 9th - aren’t.

You keep seeing NCAA rulings on compliance and by-laws that make little sense (for example the UNC football player ruled ineligible, the restrictions on transfers). And they keep losing in court (the Tennessee and Virginia NIL rulings). Also, the big money is in the NCAA tournament and the P5 don't get anywhere near their contribution. I just don't see the NCAA surviving. They are a slow moving dinosaur that doesn't have much of a brain.

(04-05-2024 09:30 AM)IWokeUpLikeThis Wrote:  The MAC is ranked 24th. We are not getting an autobid while several conferences ranked higher - and as high as 9th - aren’t.

Sorry about the 9th place BB conference as don't follow it closely. But the idea is along the reason Charlie Baker used for a different level. That certain conferences spend over 100M and there are some that spend less than 25 million. All G5 spend well over 25M on athletics, hence included the MAC, which is way down. Hope that changes.

So guess it could have been a poll. Do you favor a breakaway conference, a separate class of Div 1 and how to do it. (The nature of my view.), or you expect the status quo to survive.

I think whether there is a breakaway or not is essentially a red herring: whatever structure the power leagues end up in will be a means to an end as opposed to wanting a specific structure on principle.

Ultimately, the power conferences want true autonomy over governing their athletic departments (not the partial autonomy that they have now in the NCAA), make more efficient decisions regarding litigation and general employment and governance matters, and a greater share and control of overall revenue from the NCAA Tournament. Those are essentially the major items that the power conferences don’t receive from the NCAA today. Whether they get that from the NCAA or a separate breakaway organization isn’t as important as what substantive control and revenue that the power conference get out of it.

It’s certainly possible that the NCAA can do enough on those issues to keep the power conferences in the fold. When an organization is facing true death, it could be spurred to act in ways that it didn’t do before.

However, how likely is it for the entire NCAA membership to adjust to the power conferences demands? I don’t know. The loss of the NCAA Tournament would be a killer for them, so that’s an incentive for those smaller schools to play ball. Similarly, I think the power conferences know that the NCAA Tournament as an event is the single most valuable postseason basketball structure overall - it’s more that they believe that they should be paid a greater share of that revenue than they are today. 80% of the revenue of the NCAA Tournament could very well be worth more than 100% of a power-only breakaway tournament, so that has to be considered.

Once again, I see it as a means to an end: are the power conferences getting the revenue and control that they demand or not within the NCAA? If so, they’ll stay (as I legitimately don’t think they want to leave the NCAA for the sake of leaving the NCAA). If not, then they’ll leave (as there’s a breaking point where the power conferences aren’t getting what they need from the NCAA anymore).

In 2024, what purpose does the NCAA now serve? In many ways, it (the NCAA) has now been revealed as unconstitutional - no longer able to enforce amateur athletics procedures over its institutional members. In other ways, due to various lawsuits, it is also unable to govern its members if/when it is learned/determined that they break the rules. Sadly, as the NCAA showed last week, it cannot even be counted on to properly hire vendors to properly create and implement its own requirements for a basketball court.

The autonomous conferences and members would love nothing more than to oversee everything for themselves, not just for the power and authority but also to retain an even greater percentage of the profits (and rightfully so). How that looks like and when it can be implemented is anyone's guess, but we are headed that way 100%.

The frustrating component for so many today is that we are very much situated in a clear in-between phase of college athletics. We have wholeheartedly departed from the old amateur model, but we have not yet arrived at the destination of true autonomous and consolidated levels of college athletics.

(04-05-2024 12:18 PM)GoldenWarrior11 Wrote:  In 2024, what purpose does the NCAA now serve?

It serves three important purposes: consistent rules, consistent scheduling, and a means of brining disparate universities together in a consortium. Some may find that unnecessary, but if the SEC started playing on a 80 yard field or the Ivies set the hoop at seven feet instead of 10, things start to break down competitively across different schools.

We are about to conclude, in the next 4 days, another awesome "Big Dance". Overall, one of the most watched series of games in the world. Why is it awesome? There's balance in who gets in. Blue bloods and Cinderellas alike. There have been upsets and underdogs. A breakaway would ruin this.

The other so-called Olympic sports as well, makes no sense in a breakaway.

The breakaway talk is all FBS football driven. Let that break away. Let it be the minor league for the NFL. But leave the other sports alone.

(04-05-2024 12:29 PM)teamvsn Wrote:  We are about to conclude, in the next 4 days, another awesome "Big Dance". Overall, one of the most watched series of games in the world. Why is it awesome? There's balance in who gets in. Blue bloods and Cinderellas alike. There have been upsets and underdogs. A breakaway would ruin this.

The other so-called Olympic sports as well, makes no sense in a breakaway.

The breakaway talk is all FBS football driven. Let that break away. Let it be the minor league for the NFL. But leave the other sports alone.

As a fan, I don’t want the NCAA Tournament to change in substance. Expansion of a few more teams doesn’t bother me and the fact that every conference gets an auto-bid is part of the selling point for the tourney in a way that doesn’t exist for football.

On the other hand, I see proposals all of the time to just have football breakaway, but that honestly doesn’t do much for the power conferences because football has *already* been on its own via the CFP (and the BCS prior to that) for a long time. The gains for the power conferences to just have a superficial separate organization for football doesn’t mean much because they already have that de facto separate football organization in the CFP. I don’t know if I saw the NCAA mentioned once in all of these CFP format negotiations over the past several years (outside of a reporter clarification that the NCAA has zero involvement or control).

As a result, the big material difference for the power conferences in a breakaway is to control basketball in the way that they do football. The power conferences very much believe that they’re getting way underpaid for basketball compared to the value that they bring. This fact is why so much of conference realignment is driven by football as opposed to basketball in the first place. Football has become 100% of the realignment focus. If the power conferences were getting paid for the NCAA Tournament in a similar manner as the CFP, then basketball would at least be more of a consideration - such as 33% of the focus as opposed to effectively 0% now.

I’m not advocating for a breakaway, but the smaller conferences can’t just try to push this off as it should just be a football-focused breakaway. They need to adjust to the power conference needs/demands regarding basketball if they want a chance to keep the NCAA Tournament going in the long-term. Adapt or die.

If there is a breakaway then in a year everybody will just b!tch about what idiots the people running the new thing are.

(04-05-2024 09:53 AM)bullet Wrote:  You keep seeing NCAA rulings on compliance and by-laws that make little sense (for example the UNC football player ruled ineligible, the restrictions on transfers). And they keep losing in court (the Tennessee and Virginia NIL rulings). Also, the big money is in the NCAA tournament and the P5 don't get anywhere near their contribution. I just don't see the NCAA surviving. They are a slow moving dinosaur that doesn't have much of a brain.

The bolded phrase is true for the NCAA as a whole, but not for the power conferences. For the P4, it's a relatively small part of their total athletics associated revenues, and even a radically different formula for distributing tournament net revenues won't change that much for the wealthiest schools.

A large part of the reason the NCAA has become ungovernable is that college sports mirrors society in one very important aspect. There is a small number of institutions with outrageously high resources, and a much larger number of low resource schools. Within the NCAA, those low resource schools have always had a vastly disproportionate amount of voting power. When the amount of revenues generated by football and men's basketball was still pretty modest, the rich schools were mostly OK with subsidizing less wealthy schools.

Now they are not.

Once those rich schools decide at what level they are willing to subsidize poorer schools (whether that number is zero or something higher), then and only then will it be possible to craft a structure for governance that is sustainable in this new world order we live in. Personally, I believe that number is greater than zero, and will depend on how much the P4/5 perceives they benefit by continuing to compete (fairly or unfairly) with some subset of low resource schools.

(04-05-2024 01:06 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(04-05-2024 12:29 PM)teamvsn Wrote:  We are about to conclude, in the next 4 days, another awesome "Big Dance". Overall, one of the most watched series of games in the world. Why is it awesome? There's balance in who gets in. Blue bloods and Cinderellas alike. There have been upsets and underdogs. A breakaway would ruin this.

The other so-called Olympic sports as well, makes no sense in a breakaway.

The breakaway talk is all FBS football driven. Let that break away. Let it be the minor league for the NFL. But leave the other sports alone.

As a fan, I don’t want the NCAA Tournament to change in substance. Expansion of a few more teams doesn’t bother me and the fact that every conference gets an auto-bid is part of the selling point for the tourney in a way that doesn’t exist for football.

On the other hand, I see proposals all of the time to just have football breakaway, but that honestly doesn’t do much for the power conferences because football has *already* been on its own via the CFP (and the BCS prior to that) for a long time. The gains for the power conferences to just have a superficial separate organization for football doesn’t mean much because they already have that de facto separate football organization in the CFP. I don’t know if I saw the NCAA mentioned once in all of these CFP format negotiations over the past several years (outside of a reporter clarification that the NCAA has zero involvement or control).

As a result, the big material difference for the power conferences in a breakaway is to control basketball in the way that they do football. The power conferences very much believe that they’re getting way underpaid for basketball compared to the value that they bring. This fact is why so much of conference realignment is driven by football as opposed to basketball in the first place. Football has become 100% of the realignment focus. If the power conferences were getting paid for the NCAA Tournament in a similar manner as the CFP, then basketball would at least be more of a consideration - such as 33% of the focus as opposed to effectively 0% now.

I’m not advocating for a breakaway, but the smaller conferences can’t just try to push this off as it should just be a football-focused breakaway. They need to adjust to the power conference needs/demands regarding basketball if they want a chance to keep the NCAA Tournament going in the long-term. Adapt or die.

The problem is that these realignments are necessary from a football point of view, but not from other sports. When a school changes conferences for football reasons, they drag the other sports along with them. Having football break away could quarantine the other sports from the nonsense.

I agree that the power conferences THINK they are being underpaid for the basketball product. But they are wrong. A "Big Dance" without the smaller schools would be boring and wouldn't generate as much money.

(04-05-2024 01:38 PM)teamvsn Wrote:  

(04-05-2024 01:06 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(04-05-2024 12:29 PM)teamvsn Wrote:  We are about to conclude, in the next 4 days, another awesome "Big Dance". Overall, one of the most watched series of games in the world. Why is it awesome? There's balance in who gets in. Blue bloods and Cinderellas alike. There have been upsets and underdogs. A breakaway would ruin this.

The other so-called Olympic sports as well, makes no sense in a breakaway.

The breakaway talk is all FBS football driven. Let that break away. Let it be the minor league for the NFL. But leave the other sports alone.

As a fan, I don’t want the NCAA Tournament to change in substance. Expansion of a few more teams doesn’t bother me and the fact that every conference gets an auto-bid is part of the selling point for the tourney in a way that doesn’t exist for football.

On the other hand, I see proposals all of the time to just have football breakaway, but that honestly doesn’t do much for the power conferences because football has *already* been on its own via the CFP (and the BCS prior to that) for a long time. The gains for the power conferences to just have a superficial separate organization for football doesn’t mean much because they already have that de facto separate football organization in the CFP. I don’t know if I saw the NCAA mentioned once in all of these CFP format negotiations over the past several years (outside of a reporter clarification that the NCAA has zero involvement or control).

As a result, the big material difference for the power conferences in a breakaway is to control basketball in the way that they do football. The power conferences very much believe that they’re getting way underpaid for basketball compared to the value that they bring. This fact is why so much of conference realignment is driven by football as opposed to basketball in the first place. Football has become 100% of the realignment focus. If the power conferences were getting paid for the NCAA Tournament in a similar manner as the CFP, then basketball would at least be more of a consideration - such as 33% of the focus as opposed to effectively 0% now.

I’m not advocating for a breakaway, but the smaller conferences can’t just try to push this off as it should just be a football-focused breakaway. They need to adjust to the power conference needs/demands regarding basketball if they want a chance to keep the NCAA Tournament going in the long-term. Adapt or die.

The problem is that these realignments are necessary from a football point of view, but not from other sports. When a school changes conferences for football reasons, they drag the other sports along with them. Having football break away could quarantine the other sports from the nonsense.

I agree that the power conferences THINK they are being underpaid for the basketball product. But they are wrong. A "Big Dance" without the smaller schools would be boring and wouldn't generate as much money.

The NCAAT doesn't have to exclude the smaller schools in order to distribute more of the revenue to the power conferences. Only about 25% of the total revenue from the tournament is distributed in the form of participation and performance units. About 65% is distributed based on other criteria, some of which goes to power conference schools. Because of the sheer number of smaller schools, the power conferences get less than a third of that other revenue pool. That's where the distribution formula could be changed in favor of the power conferences.

(04-05-2024 12:10 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  I think whether there is a breakaway or not is essentially a red herring: whatever structure the power leagues end up in will be a means to an end as opposed to wanting a specific structure on principle.

Ultimately, the power conferences want true autonomy over governing their athletic departments (not the partial autonomy that they have now in the NCAA), make more efficient decisions regarding litigation and general employment and governance matters, and a greater share and control of overall revenue from the NCAA Tournament. Those are essentially the major items that the power conferences don’t receive from the NCAA today. Whether they get that from the NCAA or a separate breakaway organization isn’t as important as what substantive control and revenue that the power conference get out of it.

It’s certainly possible that the NCAA can do enough on those issues to keep the power conferences in the fold. When an organization is facing true death, it could be spurred to act in ways that it didn’t do before.

However, how likely is it for the entire NCAA membership to adjust to the power conferences demands? I don’t know. The loss of the NCAA Tournament would be a killer for them, so that’s an incentive for those smaller schools to play ball. Similarly, I think the power conferences know that the NCAA Tournament as an event is the single most valuable postseason basketball structure overall - it’s more that they believe that they should be paid a greater share of that revenue than they are today. 80% of the revenue of the NCAA Tournament could very well be worth more than 100% of a power-only breakaway tournament, so that has to be considered.

Once again, I see it as a means to an end: are the power conferences getting the revenue and control that they demand or not within the NCAA? If so, they’ll stay (as I legitimately don’t think they want to leave the NCAA for the sake of leaving the NCAA). If not, then they’ll leave (as there’s a breaking point where the power conferences aren’t getting what they need from the NCAA anymore).

From the comments that came out of the Knight Commission, I don't think there is a sense of reality in the NCAA. They may give them sufficient self-governance (but that is going awfully slow), but they don't seem to be nimble at all-I think that's hopeless, and I don't think they will change the tourney money significantly enough.

(04-05-2024 09:30 AM)IWokeUpLikeThis Wrote:  The MAC is ranked 24th. We are not getting an autobid while several conferences ranked higher - and as high as 9th - aren’t.

MAC is beautiful.