Conference Realignment thread

[utenation]

On 10/15/2022 at 8:21 AM, Did I hear a WOOSH? said:

PAC is still benefiting from preseason west coast bias, which will always make you look better in the first half of the season.  It fades annually like clockwork for the PAC.  But seriously, good luck against USC future conference mate. The Massey composite trends are tightening between the PAC and ACC for fourth/fifth place. And 3/4 of the new adds are top 25 caliber teams.  The other would be the best basketball school in the PAC.  

By the way, don’t think UCF is meh anymore.  I’m stunned myself but now that our offense has been let loose we’re one of only three schools in the country with both a top 15 defense and offense (Alabama and Michigan).  

And our Space Game uni’s are the best this year.

LOL.

[jdgaucho]

On 7/2/2024 at 10:52 AM, utenation said:

Poor UCF. Picked nowhere near the top of the conference. Another example of your pea brain. How can Utah be picked 1st? You told us that teams like Utah are part of West coast bias in the media and they fall apart. I guess Utah is also part of B12 media bias? LMAO.

 

 

Okay, that's impressive. Newcomers projected to finish 1st in a power league

[Beaver-Poke]

How bad do you have to be to be picked 16th in a 16-team league. Arizona State won't be drawing flies to its games by late October/early November. 

[alum93]

On 7/2/2024 at 2:26 PM, Beaver-Poke said:

How bad do you have to be to be picked 16th in a 16-team league. Arizona State won't be drawing flies to its games by late October/early November. 

They averaged 49k a game just last year.  Benefits of P4 conference in a large city.

https://thesundevils.com/sports/2022/10/27/sun-devil-football-attendance-year-by-year.aspx

[YesReally]

https://fanbuzz.com/college-football/pac-12-is-down-to-zero-teams-after-everyone-bolts/

[MissionTrails]

On 7/2/2024 at 2:18 PM, YesReally said:

https://fanbuzz.com/college-football/pac-12-is-down-to-zero-teams-after-everyone-bolts/

Did the author of this article just emerge from some cave somewhere?

[Beaver-Poke]

On 7/2/2024 at 1:57 PM, alum93 said:

They averaged 49k a game just last year.  Benefits of P4 conference in a large city.

https://thesundevils.com/sports/2022/10/27/sun-devil-football-attendance-year-by-year.aspx

And that (2023) was with USC, Oregon, Arizona and Oklahoma State on the home schedule. All solid, attractive opponents. This year they have Kansas, UCF, Ole Miss and Wyoming. Also Utah, who might travel some fans. Luckily they also get BYU, lots of LDS in the area, the game will draw but they will probably be visitors in their own stadium. 

I also believe ASU's attendance figures are as phony as a $3 bill, having seen thousands of empty seats on TV in games from Sun Devil Stadium. 

[UofMTigers]

On 7/1/2024 at 5:14 PM, utgrizfan said:

First and foremost I think a full merger is the most likely scenario. Outside that a few things about this list need some changes:

-Memphis is to far East initially, if they are able to poach and get a TV deal the $$ probably won't justify that kind of travel. Down the road if they expand again then maybe.

-Air Force would probably have to be a Football only Pick and even then I don't see them getting in over different markets (CSU brings Colorado).

What I see happening initially:

OSU............UNLV

WAZZU.......CSU

BSU.............WYO/Hawaii/UNM/USU

Fresno.........UTSA

SDSU............RICE/UNT

Something like this I feel is much more likely at least initially as it gives you a good variety of different and large/decent sized markets and by limiting eastern travel to Texas saves a bit on Travel Costs. 

-If going to is Mandatory (as Mongoose mentioned) could add 2 from the options I've already listed, UNT in my mind definitely being one of them.

I personally hope this happens so both Montana and MSU could get a shot to get called up. For example let's say UNT and Hawaii get picked in the above scenario:

SJSU...............Montana

Nevada...........MSU

USU................New Mexico 

WYO...............NMSU

Air Force........UTEP

Other Options if wanting to get to 12: NDSU, SDSU, Sac State, UC-Davis, Idaho

I know this idea is gross to some on here but I think it'd be a solid new MWC.

Memphis is still hoping 4+ chairs open up in the ACC. 

[smithy]

On 7/2/2024 at 3:39 PM, Beaver-Poke said:

And that (2023) was with USC, Oregon, Arizona and Oklahoma State on the home schedule. All solid, attractive opponents. This year they have Kansas, UCF, Ole Miss and Wyoming. Also Utah, who might travel some fans. Luckily they also get BYU, lots of LDS in the area, the game will draw but they will probably be visitors in their own stadium. 

I also believe ASU's attendance figures are as phony as a $3 bill, having seen thousands of empty seats on TV in games from Sun Devil Stadium. 

Don't forget Fresno put a goose egg on them at home 29-0, before they lost again to USC 42-28 a week later. Fresno brought a good crowd too.

[Chalsean]

On 7/2/2024 at 8:19 PM, UofMTigers said:

Memphis is still hoping 4+ chairs open up in the ACC. 

I don't see the advantages for Memphis to join a conference on the west unless it's a power conference

[alum93]

On 7/2/2024 at 4:39 PM, Beaver-Poke said:

And that (2023) was with USC, Oregon, Arizona and Oklahoma State on the home schedule. All solid, attractive opponents. This year they have Kansas, UCF, Ole Miss and Wyoming. Also Utah, who might travel some fans. Luckily they also get BYU, lots of LDS in the area, the game will draw but they will probably be visitors in their own stadium. 

I also believe ASU's attendance figures are as phony as a $3 bill, having seen thousands of empty seats on TV in games from Sun Devil Stadium. 

The file goes back to 1978.  It wasn't one year of good attendance.  They will be just fine.  There are 5 million people in the Phoenix metro area alone.  Unlike small towns out west with FBS teams, it doesn't take a very big percentage of population to draw 40-50k per game in Tempe.

[UofMTigers]

On 7/3/2024 at 8:09 AM, Chalsean said:

I don't see the advantages for Memphis to join a conference on the west unless it's a power conference

agreed. the AAC leftovers aka Memphis, Tulane, and USF would fit well in a depleated ACC but some teams gotta leave first...hopefully 4+ teams.

[HawaiiMongoose]

On 7/3/2024 at 3:09 AM, Chalsean said:

I don't see the advantages for Memphis to join a conference on the west unless it's a power conference

Unless some media company inexplicably decides it it wants to dump a ton of money on a coast-to-coast G5 BOR conference, there are none.

[Chalsean]

If we do reverse merger I hope we bring back divisions

[SteedLaw]

On 7/4/2024 at 8:03 AM, Chalsean said:

If we do reverse merger I hope we bring back divisions

There will be a reverse merger, but it won’t end there.

The ACC is also on the verge of total collapse.

My own total shoot-from-the-ass prediction:

1) The B1G expands to 20 teams (no more) — taking their long-coveted ND plus Stanford (whom ND has stated in the past is the only team they would head to the B1G with). 

2) FSU, Clemson, North Carolina and one other ACC program (not sure who) will head to the SEC. Thus, the SEC will become a 20 team league as well. 

3) Four other remaining ACC programs head to Big 12. Leaving 8 programs in the ACC. 

4) OSU, WSU, and Cal will join the PAC-15 with a MWC full reverse merger, now leaving 7 teams in the ACC.

5) Remaining 7 teams in the ACC will add Army, Navy, UConn, USF, Memphis, UTSA, Tulane, and one other program from the East Coast — probably either Old Dominion, North Texas, or JMU. Thus, moving the newly reconfigured ACC back to 15 teams.

6) PAC-15 (West Coast Mid-Major) and ACC (East Coast Mid-Major) will enter into a scheduling alliance together (East Coast vs. West Coast), thus keeping relevancy. They will also send their two conference champions to both a championship bowl game and the CFP — all other CFP seats (minus two) will go to the “power conferences”.

Ultimately, the FBS consists of three 20-team “power conferences” and two 15-team mid-major conferences — for a total of 90 relevant FBS teams across 5 relevant conferences (3 “power”, and 2 mid-major).

All other remaining conferences (MAC, CUSA, SunBelt, and AAC) and their remaining teams are officially out of FBS relevancy.

Thus, the powers that be reach their goal of shedding approximately 40-45 teams from FBS and consolidate viewership to just 5 conferences. 
 

Just how I think this is going down. 

 

[HawaiiMongoose]

On 7/5/2024 at 6:14 PM, SteedLaw said:

There will be a reverse merger, but it won’t end there.

The ACC is also on the verge of total collapse.

My own total shoot-from-the-ass prediction:

1) The B1G expands to 20 teams (no more) — taking their long-coveted ND plus Stanford (whom ND has stated in the past is the only team they would head to the B1G with). 

2) FSU, Clemson, North Carolina and one other ACC program (not sure who) will head to the SEC. Thus, the SEC will become a 20 team league as well. 

3) Four other remaining ACC programs head to Big 12. Leaving 8 programs in the ACC. 

4) OSU, WSU, and Cal will join the PAC-15 with a MWC full reverse merger, now leaving 7 teams in the ACC.

5) Remaining 7 teams in the ACC will add Army, Navy, UConn, USF, Memphis, UTSA, Tulane, and one other program from the East Coast — probably either Old Dominion, North Texas, or JMU. Thus, moving the newly reconfigured ACC back to 15 teams.

6) PAC-15 (West Coast Mid-Major) and ACC (East Coast Mid-Major) will enter into a scheduling alliance together (East Coast vs. West Coast), thus keeping relevancy. They will also send their two conference champions to both a championship bowl game and the CFP — all other CFP seats (minus two) will go to the “power conferences”.

Ultimately, the FBS consists of three 20-team “power conferences” and two 15-team mid-major conferences — for a total of 90 relevant FBS teams across 5 relevant conferences (3 “power”, and 2 mid-major).

All other remaining conferences (MAC, CUSA, SunBelt, and AAC) and their remaining teams are officially out of FBS relevancy.

Thus, the powers that be reach their goal of shedding approximately 40-45 teams from FBS and consolidate viewership to just 5 conferences. 
 

Just how I think this is going down. 

 

Makes too much sense to work out that way.  But I'm all for it.

[Johnny Idol]

The following is a really smart article from John Canzano.  He brings up a way of doing a reverse merger but only with serious MWC schools with at least a $60 million athletic budget.  The MWC schools that don't/can't make that threshold can stay back and get a nice little buyout.  It's a good way of separating the wheat from the chaff.

Canzano: The cost of playing in a new-world Pac-12

No way around it, there are some bad feelings about how the Pac-12 has talked about the Mountain West Conference in the last year.

It chapped some of the MWC presidents, for example, when officials at Oregon State and Washington State wrinkled their noses and talked negatively about the possibility of reverse merger over the last year.

That scenario was positioned as a last-resort fallback plan and often referred to as “relegation.” One Mountain West source told me it felt like a slap in the face. After all, they’d thrown the Pac-12 a life preserver by fostering a football scheduling partnership for the 2024 season.

One of the scenarios now being whispered about involves the Pac-12 building the top West Coast football conference using some — but not all — of the schools in the Mountain West. A ‘self-selecting’ strategic plan could hypothetically save OSU and WSU millions, but it comes with a big question.

As in, how many Mountain West schools can afford to join the Pac-12?

Some things:

• There’s a considerable expense involved in a Pac-12 rebuild, particularly if it involves trying to poach MWC schools. The exit fee is $17 million per school and that comes with an additional $10 million (approximate) per school “poaching penalty” for the Pac-12.

• The Pac-12 has earmarked approximately $65 million in settlement funds for a possible rebuild. That would cover the penalties for six MWC schools.

• A full-blown reverse merger with the MWC has never been viewed as a desirable option for OSU and WSU. There’s considerable opposition to it, particularly in Corvallis. But officials at the two schools have been more delicate in recent months when publicly speaking about it. I find that interesting.

• Would the Pac-12 want to raid the MWC? I mean, WSU and OSU know how gut-wrenching and awful that process felt to them. Would it be hypocritical to call out the greed, lies, and collusion involved in the downfall of the Pac-12, and then go steal a handful of schools from another conference? Discuss.

• The more collegial — and affordable — approach may be to offer a reverse merger with the Mountain West but require a minimum floor to each school’s athletic department budget.

• Oregon State’s athletic department spent more than $98 million in the fiscal year that ended in the summer of 2023. It set a record in Corvallis. But if we’re using 2022 data for a fair comparison — and we should here — OSU and WSU spent $87 million and $83 million respectively.

• For this discussion, let’s use $60 million as the annual budget floor. A three-year grace period to get there? That would motivate investment in athletic departments, and affirm the Pac-12 as the best football conference on the West Coast. That kind of conference champion would also frequently access the College Football Playoff.

• It allows the MWC schools to self-select. If only five or six schools decide they can afford it, so be it. If seven, eight, nine, 10, or all 11 get there, great. Those who can’t get to the $60 million floor aren’t serious about funding athletics anyway. Their campuses may welcome the reprieve and maybe they even collect a buyout fee. The real financial silver lining: It eliminates the costly penalties to the Pac-12 and exit fees for the joining members.

• Boise State, San Diego State, Air Force, Colorado State, and UNLV come up more frequently than others when I have conversations with sources about possible Pac-12 membership.

• Those schools happen to be the top five MWC schools when it comes to the athletic department budget in the fiscal year ending in 2022.

Insert

The rest of this article is available on his site:

 

https://substack.com/inbox/post/146312009

[HawaiiMongoose]

On 7/6/2024 at 10:38 AM, Johnny Idol said:

The Pac-12 has earmarked approximately $65 million in settlement funds for a possible rebuild. That would cover the penalties for six MWC schools.

This directly contradicts what Kirk Schulz said when Canzano interviewed him.  Schulz made it clear that setting aside a big chunk of the Pac's remaining money to pay for poaching schools from the MWC isn't a priority for WSU.  It's probably not a coincidence that the figure Schulz mentioned he couldn't justify diverting away from WSU athletics was $30 million, which would be the rough cost to WSU of the Pac blowing $65 million to poach the MWC.

I suspect what's really going on here is that OSU is pushing the poaching option and WSU isn't really interested, and Canzano has decided to base his update on OSU's viewpoint because it will play better with his readership.  In fact Canzano's suggestion that MWC schools be required to achieve a minimum spending level on athletics as the price of participating in a reverse merger sure feels like a trial balloon being floating on OSU's behalf.  Even if the MWC were to reject the concept, OSU could be thinking that forcing MWC members to take a vote on it would undermine the MWC's internal solidarity, which in turn might make it easier for OSU to convince its target schools to pony up the exit fees to defect to the Pac.

The interesting question to me is how the Pac rebuild issue will be resolved if OSU and WSU can't agree, e.g. if OSU makes a "final" decision that it wants to poach the MWC and WSU makes a "final" decision that it wants a full reverse merger with the MWC.  In a two-member conference there's no obvious way to break a 1-1 tie.  I suppose if the Pac's by-laws still require a supermajority for approving additions to the conference, each school could prevent the other from pursuing its preferred strategy for as long as it wished.  However a stalemate that prevents any additions to the conference, if not broken prior to the end of the two-year NCAA grace period, would result in the Pac losing both its FBS and D1 status.

[Wyobraska]

On 7/6/2024 at 2:38 PM, Johnny Idol said:

The following is a really smart article from John Canzano. 

Smart articles from Canzano do not exist.  

[HawaiiMongoose]

On 7/6/2024 at 10:38 AM, Johnny Idol said:

• For this discussion, let’s use $60 million as the annual budget floor.  ...

• Boise State, San Diego State, Air Force, Colorado State, and UNLV come up more frequently than others when I have conversations with sources about possible Pac-12 membership.

• Those schools happen to be the top five MWC schools when it comes to the athletic department budget in the fiscal year ending in 2022.

He conveniently fails to mention that Boise State is fifth in spending among those "top five" with an annual athletic budget that's $10 million short of the suggested $60 million floor.  That would be a lot to make up to participate in a reverse merger, especially if the incremental increase in TV revenue was only $3-4 million per year.  Moreover Fresno State is $13.5 million short (behind both Hawaii and Wyoming).  If a floor were established I think it would have to be lower than $60 million to secure the schools the Pac most covets.