Mike Petrik
Member
Well, there are still a few of us that lament its decline if not its demise. You are free to mock us of course. We don’t care.
Conference Realignment
- Thread starter DavidBenAkiva
- Start date
Mike Petrik
Member
Your points are well taken. The policing of the student-athlete concept by the NCAA was always famously imperfect. But what I loved about Duke was its earnest effort to live up to it. Yes, the uneven enforcement gave some schools competitive advantages, but not to the point that such advantages couldn’t occasionally be overcome by more faithful institutions. My lament is that I fear we are heading toward a system where the ability to compete will be dependent on the abandonment of the concept I cherish. Yes, I know I’m in the minority, and I’m comfortable with that.
SkyBrickey
Member
Where do we land? I just think when the market forces do their thing with our conference and our school, it will be really hard for a small private university that can't fill up its stadium on Saturday afternoons to have a nationally, or even regionally, competitive football team.
Will Clemson or FSU sign another deal with us that equally shares revenue? No. What about UNC and Virginia and Miami? Probably not.
So a reconstituted ACC or some other conference picks us up on a partial revenue share where we are locked into the cellar of that conference while we find the funds to maintain our elite basketball program? Is that where we're headed? Doesn't sound like fun.
Seems like we are headed there unless someone gets really creative and figures out a way to create a basketball-led league that squeezes a lot more revenue out of basketball than what we see today. Duke, UConn, UVA, UNC, Wake, Gonzaga. That would be a pretty good core for a basketball-first conference that signs an epic TV deal with ESPN.
Call it the CBF conference. College Basketball First. All games broadcast nationally on ESPN prime time. Record NIL money flowing for basketball like the SEC is seeing for football. Why does college basketball have to take a back seat to college football? Isn't the NBA doing OK vs the NFL?
FosterCoachK82
Member
In some ways I like this thought. I am all for jettisoning football to focus on basketball. But this just seems to bring in all the problems of big money football into basketball.
SkyBrickey
Member
Duke could be a visionary, a leader, in forming this conference. Who better to do it? Maybe in its charter the conference could somehow recommit to the non-rev sports and athlete academics.
The whole athlete academics might drop UNC out of the mix, but that's Ok.
Maybe we'd make a spot for Stanford. Maybe at some point Northwestern and Vandy might want to move over when their conferences are offering them a half share in a new deal. Do we really need to try to compete with Clemson and Alabama in football?
Just some late night crazy talk...
Phredd3
Member
Go check the other thread and watch the Duke Blue Planet Pro Day episode. That may reinvigorate your enthusiasm a bit. These kids may not be ordinary classroom students, but there is real teaching happening there, and great mentorship. I don't think it's a mistake to call all those guys "students", even if they aren't academics in the traditional sense.
half share from SEC/B10 still farrrr more than any non-football conference would ever generate. probably by an order of magnitude. Take a look at the current big east payouts.... <10mil/school/year.Duke could be a visionary, a leader, in forming this conference. Who better to do it? Maybe in its charter the conference could somehow recommit to the non-rev sports and athlete academics.
The whole athlete academics might drop UNC out of the mix, but that's Ok.
Maybe we'd make a spot for Stanford. Maybe at some point Northwestern and Vandy might want to move over when their conferences are offering them a half share in a new deal. Do we really need to try to compete with Clemson and Alabama in football?
Just some late night crazy talk...
Mike Petrik
Member
As a football fan I don't find your concept that appealing, but I do see the logic. To answer your question the NFL has 10 times the viewership and almost twice the revenue as the NBA. The comports with my experience. The NBA is far more niche these days.
Mike Petrik
Member
I do think it is worth considering an FBS conference composed of schools that are academic oriented and have similar aspirations and constraints. In a perfect world it might include Duke, Stanford, NU, Wake, Vandy, ND (I did say perfect world), BC, and some of the smaller more academic public institutions such as Cal, UVA and GA Tech.Duke could be a visionary, a leader, in forming this conference. Who better to do it? Maybe in its charter the conference could somehow recommit to the non-rev sports and athlete academics.
The whole athlete academics might drop UNC out of the mix, but that's Ok.
Maybe we'd make a spot for Stanford. Maybe at some point Northwestern and Vandy might want to move over when their conferences are offering them a half share in a new deal. Do we really need to try to compete with Clemson and Alabama in football?
Just some late night crazy talk...
Big 10 schools also won’t be paying out $23 million in football player salaries, not to mention other football related expenses that already exist. Paying the players directly doesn’t end the costs of coaches, recruiting, facilities, travel, etc.
sagegrouse
Member
I'll offer more later, but you are plunging pell-mell down a series of steps that are a bit wobbly. As in, private schools with poor home football attendance, therefore, have no bargaining power on -- basically -- TV viewers, not on-person attendance. Even if they are strong brands that attract viewers? And, if Clemson and FSU have no homes in the SEC or Big Ten, what else are they going to do? And basketball has no role in major conference negotiations. So, all is lost; therefore, it follows (???) that we should form a lesser conference and cut our athletic budget in half.
Oh my!
Mike Petrik
Member
As for "market forces," what a lot of people seem to miss, and something Nick Saban and others have emphasized, is that such forces in the professional leagues are managed by various mechanisms such as salary caps. This is because the members don't see themselves as in financial competition. Instead, the recognize that while they compete against each other on the field, they really don't compete financially. Home Depot wants to gain market share against Loew's. That is not the goal of the Chicago Bears versus the Packers. In fact, having a system where all teams have a reasonable chance to be competitive despite disparate market advantages and disadvantages is essential to the success for the product. The NFL, MLB, NHL and NBA are essentially joint ventures whose success or failure is shared. If the Bears make more money, so do the Packers, regardless of whether one is currently fielding a better team. College sports does not understand itself this way, at least yet. Nothing prevents Georgia from having a budget 100 times Duke's, and such an environment will make it increasingly impossible for certain programs to compete. If this is not corrected, and there may well be legal impediments to such a correction, the sport will become less interesting because the outcomes will be pre-ordained.
LeadingEdge
Member
That's true in principle, although the pro leagues vary in how much the cap causes similar spending. For example, the baseball cap is high and loose, so there's a wide variance in per-team spending.
Judge Wilken just shot down the House settlement, and her comments indicate she won't be blessing a settlement that creates a real salary cap, meaning one that includes ending NIL pay-for-play along with a limit on how much schools can spend directly in revenue sharing.
Mtn.Devil.91.92.01.10.15
Member
One of our DBR articles caught the attention of Art Chansky.
He's in favor of preserving the rivalry. Go figure.
He's in favor of preserving the rivalry. Go figure.
As long as you understand that if you get rid of football big conference TV money,you're also getting rid of a lot of the sports we've come to enjoy, like the lacrosse teams, soccer teams, baseball, on and on. This is why Nina is preparing for as many (league) eventualities as she can.
One irony in all this is that of all our sports, and kids doing really good stuff in the classroom, basketball has to be the one where the highest percentage of players aren't going to graduate....vast majority of the other teams' players graduate, can't use that term on the hoopsters when every year we have a significant number of kids who opt out for The League, transfers, etc.
The Big 12 has shifted to college basketball first, the commissioner has been pretty open about it. There’s talk of them even pulling in UConn.
SkyBrickey
Member
This is probably a better version of what I was musing on late last night. I'd much rather have a full share in a conference like this than a partial share in one of the big football conferences that dooms us to the cellar. Maybe this is what the ACC morphs into.
I do think there's a media opportunity with ESPN or someone to make a big commitment to basketball. Basically embrace being the 4th or 5th best football conference but commit the resources to be the #1 basketball conference. Brand it. Own it. And with a national media deal to broadcast all basketball games in prime time, create an inherent recruiting advantage over the other conferences... A basketball-led conference.
SkyBrickey
Member
Ahh...OK. I was not aware. I think maybe the ACC is missing that opportunity.
Maybe a Big 12 West Division and ACC East Division would be kind of a super conference for basketball with decent but not overly emphasized football. Then if/when the self proclaimed Big Shots leave the ACC, we won't even miss them. I've said before, I'll take Kansas over UNX any time.
the member schools aren't sold on it yet, though.