Conference Realignment


The SEC may he having it’s best year ever, but this sport is being killed. The feeling among fans is far worse than it is for football (which isn’t in an amazing spot either). I’ve never been less interested in CBB with the wild west rules

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I have tried to watch and I just cannot when I know that this is exactly what ESPN/FOX/BILAS wants. They want to kill all but the very top brands. Everyone else is going to be left in a ditch. It will be NFL lite and NBA lite. Around 40 teams for each.

Seeing all the players plundered from mid major rosters to force those programs into irrelevance is awful. I don’t care that the kids are getting paid, they deserve it. It’s the intentional killing off of the majority of college athletics that I cannot stand.

I’d like to think that there is an alternate reality where all NCAA and player likeness revenues are pooled together and then allocated to players at all programs, even on a somewhat staggered / incentive basis. No one else wants that though. It seems that majority are cheering on the death of every 2nd tier and directional program in the country.

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This belongs in another thread, probably realignment, but I hope everyone recognizes that the next step in the ESPN / Fox Sports / Power schools’ game plan, after the breakaway, is to dump all of the media contracts for every league and program that doesn’t make the cut. ESPN might offer to platform these left behind schools’ games on ESPN+, but these programs will have to self produce them and shoulder the costs. No media $ at all. And these have not programs (most of present college sports) can forget being featured on any traditional cable / linear channels. Those will be reserved, like ALL of the money, for the programs that “matter”. (See Jay Bilas repeatedly calling for all schools who don’t make the cut to “drop down to division 2”.)

And the best part will be how ESPN and Fox will position those moves as “necessary cost cutting” (“woe is me”), when that was their plan all along.

I stupidly have been holding out hope that there is strength in numbers amongst the have nots, but that was looking at things from the institutional standpoint. NIL has forced the issue to be defined from the player / talent perspective, which removes what little leverage any of the remaining brands / institutions had. No star players = no leverage. At best they will be 1 yr farm clubs (glorified JUCO programs) and flip their rosters constantly, maybe even mid season, as the big boys continue to plunder them.

Fox Sports and ESPN are going to win.

NA, I wise old friend of mine told me years ago there’s strength in numbers, and that number is ONE.

We better learn how to take care of ourselves and do it quickly.

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The evil networks dropping hundreds of schools will create a void that will be filled by other providers. May not have 20 different views, but it will still probably be better than CUSA coverage. We can be the generic brands that people come to choose

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Restaurant Eating GIF by Tijuana Flats

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Had Johnny’s yesterday since I was uptown for first time in a while. Firecracker chicken, yumm

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If only 40 teams “make the cut” then we are in business.

The “division 2” in that scenario will be just fine.

And I’ll be laughing everyday at the bitching from those 40 teams who don’t get to play FCS teams and schedule 8 home games to pad their records.

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Yeah 30-40 and we come out looking great.

Whew, it took the better part of 10+ years, but that’s looking at it without green tinted glasses.

NIL hasn’t been around for 10 years. Game changer.

NIL is just another form of the rich get richer or the have’s and the have nots. As long as they wanted to create division between the conferences, they were going to have diferent rules, whether that be NIL or something else.

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JWU Charlotte moving up to NCAA D-III.

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Why do you think those teams are exiting?

I think movement is done.

The P5 is going to stay as they are because there are no more schools to add that add TV value.

Remember SMU literally had to buy their way into the ACC.

Memphis, South Florida, and/or Tulane will leave when the financials work. No secret that the Tigers’ AD was hired to facilitate such a move.

BTW, movement isn’t done. The Pac-12 will be “resurrected” - mostly by poaching the Mountain West + Gonzaga. CUSA is adding Delaware and Missouri State, while losing UTEP to the MW. UMass is leaving the A-10 for the MAC, which is losing Northern Illinois - football to the MW and all other sports TBA (probably the Horizon or Summit).

In a related development, just last week the NCAA announced revisions to its rules so that a D-II can complete the transition to D-I in 3 years instead of 4.

BTW, “buried” in that announcement was a tweek to MBB recruiting. Schools will now be limited to the number of coaches who can be off campus to a max of four. As such, at least two coaches have to be in office and available to players.

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