The Big Least?

that's not a conference. that's a subdivision. perhaps they can name it the FSS football shiatty subdivision.

/seriously what's the rotation plan. home and home every 20 years?

I wanted to complain about how bad an idea this is...but the more i think about it the more it makes sense,

With that many teams, they could just drop out of the NCAA and hold their own little national championship game and guarantee that one of their teams would win it every year.

"Okay, ONE of these teams has got to be good!"

How is that a terrible idea? College football is about money, plain and simple. This would allow all those schools to have equal access to a much larger pot. Everyone needs to forget about "regional battles" and "tradition". If Michigan suddenly realized that they could make more money not playing Ohio state every year, they'd never play that game again.

IAmRight: They'd have to split it 32 ways. It's good for most of the crappy teams but it's not good for any teams that might actually be good at any point in the near future.

All the games would have to be nationally televised which means more money in the long run. It's about TV deals and a national conference would make it everyone richer. The big schools could always get nationally televised games every week, and smaller schools would get national exposure.

IAmRight: Yeah, but as a secondary choice at best in every relevant market behind the regional teams that people actually care about.

I once thought like that, till I went to the bar on Saturday to watch an out of market game. There were sex televisions in the room, all on different games, with several guys sitting in the middle of the room. We politely asked if we could turn on our game at 3pm. They said "of course. We've got money on that game too."

That is the only market college sports cares about.

They could call it The National Football League or NFL and call the championship game The Super Bowl....oh Wait a minute.

WTF Indeed: IAmRight: Yeah, but as a secondary choice at best in every relevant market behind the regional teams that people actually care about.

I once thought like that, till I went to the bar on Saturday to watch an out of market game. There were sex televisions in the room, all on different games, with several guys sitting in the middle of the room. We politely asked if we could turn on our game at 3pm. They said "of course. We've got money on that game too."

That is the only market college sports cares about.

How do you bet on sex? Is it a point thigh spread or a moneyshot line?

So, they want to do this as a way to maintain their AQ status? Out of 32 farking teams, the only one I see helping them in that department is the Smurfs.

/UNLV? Wyoming? The Rice Owls? Farking Tulane? UAB? To help maintain AQ status. Yeah, okay.

scandalrag: How do you bet on sex? Is it a point thigh spread or a moneyshot line?

Nice catch. I missed that in my proof read.

WTF Indeed: IAmRight: Yeah, but as a secondary choice at best in every relevant market behind the regional teams that people actually care about.

I once thought like that, till I went to the bar on Saturday to watch an out of market game. There were sex televisions in the room, all on different games, with several guys sitting in the middle of the room. We politely asked if we could turn on our game at 3pm. They said "of course. We've got money on that game too."

That is the only market college sports cares about.

If this did happens, it'd be a better division than the previous Big East potentially.

So there you go.

Why is this a bad idea? What choice does the Big East really have at this point besides going big?

It's clear that the current 3 super conferences, and whatever the fourth one ends up being (Big12, ACC, or some combo of the two) are going to end up monopolizing like 95% of the football schools that matter on any kind of national level. This is not a coincidence, and it seems clear it has been the gameplan for a very long time now. The Big East has long since lost any chance to be relevant in this new world.

If I were in charge of the Big East, I would do whatever I could to be proactive. I would be on the phone with any conference/school that looks to be left out in the cold, and form a super conference at worst, and perhaps even look to form another division of college football. Get a playoff system in before the Big 4 can, make some headlines and get sportswriter tongues wagging. ESPN has like 5 full time sports channels, and there are dozens of others, regional or otherwise, You won't be getting billion dollar contracts, but channels still need to fill time. Start playing all your games during the week to make it attractive for a channel to pick the games up. Broadcast them all for free live on the internet. Do something - anything - to keep yourself visible and relevant to the public. Invite some D2 programs to make the jump up to your division. Market your student athletes as "real" student athletes, your games as a throw-back to simpler times, your game experience as a more pure product. Take open and vicious pot shots at the super-conference programs whenever and however you can. What have you got to lose? Try to gather as many football poor, but basketball rich, programs as you can, and try to make your bones that way.

If you're not going to be invited to the big dance, at least make as much noise as possible to keep eyes (and ad dollars). There's still opportunities to succeed here, but these left-over programs need to stop thinking about their programs like they have the past ~100 years.

80 teams. Four 20 team conferences. Eight 10 team divisions. It really is the only way to go. Get rid of the teams that don't make money. Push them into div.2a. And then allow for teams to move up and down divisions like english soccer.

Instead of 5 games being split 10 ways, there will be 15 games being split 30 ways! There's no way to lose!

moefuggenbrew: I wanted to complain about how bad an idea this is...but the more i think about it the more it makes sense,

That 's my reaction, too. Everyone wants a tournament and this picks someone for the AQ. What exactly are people being all pissy about?

If you combine a bunch of shiatty teams into 1 megaconference, you still have a bunch of shiatty teams.

Droog8912:

That 's my reaction, too. Everyone wants a tournament and this picks someone for the AQ. What exactly are people being all pissy about?

I wouldn't say anyone is being "pissy", but it's getting pretty close to NFL. May as well just watch NFL at that point.

The NCAA just needs to step up and schedule a playoff and crown a NCAA champ. Let the BCS do what it wants.

Hillbilly Jim: The NCAA just needs to step up and schedule a playoff and crown a NCAA champ. Let the BCS do what it wants.

I would LOVE to see the NCAA do this. And throw in 'if you opt out, good luck getting into March Madness'

Sweet so Memphis and Louisville could play once every 20 years? fark that.

Gosling: "Okay, ONE of these teams has got to be good!"

That team is going to stomp the ever living shiat out of the Air Farce later today.

I thought something like this would happen with the Big East and Mountain West, but CUSA wasn't in the mix in my mind. Now I wonder if the MAC, WAC, and Sun Belt are thinking of a similar arrangement.
/Would love to see promotion and relegation in college football if four superconferences ends up happening.

Hobo Jr.: 80 teams. Four 20 team conferences. Eight 10 team divisions. It really is the only way to go. Get rid of the teams that don't make money.

That's a wonderful message to send to the students of the schools that you're throwing out.

Gosling: Hobo Jr.: 80 teams. Four 20 team conferences. Eight 10 team divisions. It really is the only way to go. Get rid of the teams that don't make money.

That's a wonderful message to send to the students of the schools that you're throwing out.

Fark 'em. They should have done better in high school so they could attend a school with plenty of funding. Or they could go get a trade. Plumbers can make some damned good money.

Cheesehead_Dave: With that many teams, they could just drop out of the NCAA and hold their own little national championship game and guarantee that one of their teams would win it every year.

Part of me really hopes that these conferences do this, start their own super conference complete with a tournament with its own bowls (or invite in the larger bowls that are sore about being left out of the BCS, and name their own champion. Eventually the NCAA is going to have to step in and fix the mess that it creates with two champions. (Remember the BCS National Championship only exists because there were often two champions.)

Hobo Jr.: 80 teams. Four 20 team conferences. Eight 10 team divisions. It really is the only way to go. Get rid of the teams that don't make money. Push them into div.2a. And then allow for teams to move up and down divisions like english soccer.

Never going to happen in the United States. Not in football, baseball, basketball, hockey, lawn darts in my backyard, checkers, polo, duck duck goose, etc. Not to pick on you specifically, but someone suggests this in every sports thread.

Relax subby. It won't come to anything that dramatic. They will scale this back and still come away with standard sized leagues that fit into the system quite well.

From a previous thread:
BIG XII
NORTH - Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State, BYU, Lousiville, West Virginia
SOUTH - Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas, Texas Tech, Baylor, Texas Christian

National Athletic Conference
BIG EAST - South Florida, Cincinnati, Temple, East Carolina, Central Florida, Navy, Memphis
BIG WEST - Air Force, Boise State, Nevada, Fresno State, Southern Methodist, Houston, San Diego State

Conference USA
WEST - Hawaii, UNLV, Wyoming, Colorado State, New Mexico, UTEP
EAST - Marshall, Alabama-Birmingham, Southern Mississippi, Tulane, Tulsa, Rice
*This is what is left of the C-USA/Mountain West merger which makes for a nice 12 team conference after all the shifting.

/getting even closer folks

iron_city_ap: Hillbilly Jim: The NCAA just needs to step up and schedule a playoff and crown a NCAA champ. Let the BCS do what it wants.

I would LOVE to see the NCAA do this. And throw in 'if you opt out, good luck getting into March Madness'

Funny you should mention March Madness because that's exactly what happened with basketball. Eventually the NCAA said that regardless of what the NIT did you had to play the NCAA tournament to be named national champion. Up until that point the national champion came out of the NIT and the NCAA was for the "not invited."

Imokwiththis.jpg

Smeggy Smurf: Fark 'em. They should have done better in high school so they could attend a school with plenty of funding. Or they could go get a trade. Plumbers can make some damned good money.

And if they picked the school because it's local? Or for reasons that have something to do with the actual academic program? It's amazing, but some people actually pick their colleges based on things other than how good the football team is.

This whole emphasis on football over the actual school aspect of school is sickening. It was gut-wrenching to watch the NFL combine have its way with Myron Rolle- the Oxford guy who went to Florida St.- and to hear about them accuse him of betrayal for going to Oxford.

It's sad that the top paid university employees at Div 1 schools are not the professors, deans or academic chairmen but the athletic directors and coaches. Some athletic directors make in excess of $2 million/yr*, and coaches' salaries can easily exceed 1 million/yr**

now factor in that less than 2% of NCAA football players will even be drafted by an NFL team***,
it reconfirms by belief that these schools care less about their student athletes or academic programs, than about bowl bids and booster money


* source:http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/story/2011-10-18/athleti c-director-salaries-cover/50671214/1

**http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/football/2009-coaches-contra c ts-database.htm

***http://www.ncaa.org/wps/portal/ncaahome?WCM_GLOBAL_CONTEXT=/ncaa/N C AA/Academics+and+Athletes/Education+and+Research/Probability+of+Compet ing/Methodology+-+Prob+of+Competing

Gunderson: It's sad that the top paid university employees at Div 1 schools are not the professors, deans or academic chairmen but the athletic directors and coaches. Some athletic directors make in excess of $2 million/yr*, and coaches' salaries can easily exceed 1 million/yr**

now factor in that less than 2% of NCAA football players will even be drafted by an NFL team***,
it reconfirms by belief that these schools care less about their student athletes or academic programs, than about bowl bids and booster money


* source:http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/story/2011-10-18/athleti c-director-salaries-cover/50671214/1

**http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/football/2009-coaches-contra c ts-database.htm

***http://www.ncaa.org/wps/portal/ncaahome?WCM_GLOBAL_CONTEXT=/ncaa/N C AA/Academics+and+Athletes/Education+and+Research/Probability+of+Compet ing/Methodology+-+Prob+of+Competing

I'll go one further. I worked at University of Michigan. Being a state school they had a policy of publishing salaries of all employees to encourage equality in pay. At the time Lloyd Carr was not only the highest paid school employee, but also the highest paid employee of the state of Michigan.

Gosling: Smeggy Smurf: Fark 'em. They should have done better in high school so they could attend a school with plenty of funding. Or they could go get a trade. Plumbers can make some damned good money.

And if they picked the school because it's local? Or for reasons that have something to do with the actual academic program? It's amazing, but some people actually pick their colleges based on things other than how good the football team is.

Tell me again how Harvard's football team is? A good school won't won't have a problem either because it's sports teams make the school money or the school is good enough to stand on it's own.

saminman: I thought something like this would happen with the Big East and Mountain West, but CUSA wasn't in the mix in my mind. Now I wonder if the MAC, WAC, and Sun Belt are thinking of a similar arrangement.
/Would love to see promotion and relegation in college football if four superconferences ends up happening.

The Mountain West - Conference USA merger looks like a done deal (new window)

Looks like the Big East got smart and decided that rather than try to snipe teams from them (Air Force, Boise), they'd be better off joining them.

As far as the haters saying that the conference would be a bunch of 2 tier teams, I would remind you that college football is not about winning: it is about money: it's not about gamblers and it's not about win/loss records: it's about who will buy team merchandise and watch the games.

Now look at the fan base here: not only in terms of the number of schools, but in terms of states and regions. How many people follow a team just because of geographic location? A lot!

And how many fans of a particular team will gain interest in other teams just because they're in the same conference? A lot.

For example, I live in Hawaii, where UH is pretty much the only game in town. Hence, I'm a UH fan. I'm currently watching the Nevada/Fresno Game because :

1. it's on my tv
2. it's a relatively close game
3. they're in the same conference as UH

-That third factor does make a difference: if they weren't in the running for the WAC championship, I probably couldn't care less.

I'm currently ignoring Nebaska/Minnesota (Big 10) as well as Auburn/LSU (SEC) for a WAC game because at the moment, the WAC game is more interesting to me (OK: I check updates during commercials, but I'm watching the WAC game). It doesn't matter that LSU and Nebraska are nationally ranked: I'm watching a fun game that is more relevant to my local interests.

And this is where such a superconference has relevance: I -on the far West coast- would start following teams on the East coast that I used to ignore, but are now relevant to my interests. This equals money to those East coast schools.