What is the end game?

[froginctown]

Why?

More people watched the Alabama spring game on TV than the NHL playoff game that same Saturday.

Those Southeasterners are mad dog football watchers evidently, willling to tune into a meaningless spring practice game.

100K+ showed up for OSU's spring game. And paid $5 a piece to watch an internal practice.

 

[whaler11]

I guess I cited a blog post about basketball and the NCAA tournament in a thread about football contracts, but if there is a threat to non P5 / non P2 basketball, I think it's more long term than immediate term.

Wrestling, rowing, etc men's sports, maybe even baseball on the other hand...

He did, not you.

He starts by comparing entities that are legally non-profits to for profit enterprise - and has the web bubble completely wrong - those companies weren't making money that's what made the whole frenzy especially stupid.

I have never read anything where anyone says there is any threat to
the popularity of the tournament. That's the problem the other 4-5 months of the season - fewer people care prior to March. That's the biggest strawman aspect.

That Turner and CBS do well financially is great - but the schools are already spending the revenue - so it has nothing to do with their spending unless someone thinks CBS and Turner plan on sending more sometime soon.

There are a lot more risks that ever before for college sports -
certainly that has never been more public support that the idea that this is amateur and should be treated as such is an absolute joke. I guess you can say that people have predicted things in the past and they didn't happen and the NCAA tournament is popular and profitable for networks so everything is going to be fine - but that seems to ignore a lot that can change.

 

[junglehusky]

The NCAA's response to the O'Bannon case was to divert a small percentage of the revenue from the blockbuster TV contracts and make it allowable to pay living expenses for athletes in football and other sports at major universities. It's an incremental change, I'm sure the plaintiffs hoped for more but it wasn't a big change and certainly won't stop the way business is being done. If more changes are in the pipeline, I think they will also be incremental.

Without having dove into the details, my sense is that the power schools have a sense of what kind of pittance they can distribute to the G5 schools to keep the NCAA operating as a not-quite-amateur, not-quite-semipro conglomeration. Maybe Villanova winning the men's championship this year will be an outlier and the G5 and FCS schools will gradually become unhappy and then the fabled breakaway will happen.

Maybe.

Right now I don't think that's super likely. What's more likely in the 5-10 year term is another round of realignment, and as I mentioned, non-revenue sports getting axed at some schools.

 

[billybud]

Maybe non revenue sports will go another way....like hockey in the south. FSU, LSU, Miami, Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Tulane, etc play each other in the AHCA Div. 3.

Also like the rugby teams...and men's non scholarship soccer teams, wrestlers, etc

Student athletes.

 

[shizzle787]

I don't know about the end game, but I have a guess at the intermediate game:
1) New Mexico St. and UMass drop to FCS in the next two years.
2) Hawaii and Eastern Michigan drop football entirely a year or two after that.
3) UTEP replaces Hawaii in the MW, and Marshall returns to the MAC; this leaves 12 teams in the AAC, MWC, C-USA, and MAC and 10 in the Sun Belt.
64 P5 teams+ 58 G5 teams+ ND, BYU, and Army= 125 FBS teams

 

[B1GOSU]

Eastern Michigan officials have stated they are not leaving FBS football status.

 

[shizzle787]

Eastern Michigan officials have stated they are not leaving FBS football status.

They may not have a choice: if the state budget says cuts to athletics have to be made, EMU football is the first to go.