The SEC may he having itās best year ever, but this sport is being killed. The feeling among fans is far worse than it is for football (which isnāt in an amazing spot either). Iāve never been less interested in CBB with the wild west rules
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 donāt care that the kids are getting paid, they deserve it. Itās the intentional killing off of the majority of college athletics that I cannot stand.
Iād 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.
This belongs in another thread, probably realignment, but I hope everyone recognizes that the next step in the ESPN / Fox Sports / Power schoolsā game plan, after the breakaway, is to dump all of the media contracts for every league and program that doesnāt make the cut. ESPN might offer to platform these left behind schoolsā 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 āmatterā. (See Jay Bilas repeatedly calling for all schools who donāt make the cut to ādrop down to division 2ā.)
And the best part will be how ESPN and Fox will position those moves as ānecessary cost cuttingā (āwoe is meā), 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 thereās strength in numbers, and that number is ONE.
We better learn how to take care of ourselves and do it quickly.
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
Had Johnnyās yesterday since I was uptown for first time in a while. Firecracker chicken, yumm
If only 40 teams āmake the cutā then we are in business.
The ādivision 2ā in that scenario will be just fine.
And Iāll be laughing everyday at the bitching from those 40 teams who donāt get to play FCS teams and schedule 8 home games to pad their records.
Yeah 30-40 and we come out looking great.
Whew, it took the better part of 10+ years, but thatās looking at it without green tinted glasses.
NIL hasnāt been around for 10 years. Game changer.
NIL is just another form of the rich get richer or the haveās and the have nots. As long as they wanted to create a division between the conferences, they were going to have diferent rules, whether that be NIL or something else.
JWU Charlotte moving up to NCAA D-III.