Aresco's biggest challenge.

[frankthetank]

Frank,

Got a link for the assertion the ACC is going to get $40MM for its bowl? Last I saw, they didn't get a bid for it.

There's no link because they're still in the negotiation stage, but see the prospective opponents for the ACC in my post #28 and you'll see why that's the case. Also note that the TV contract for each bowl *includes* the semifinals that they are hosting, so any network that wants to get those playoff games will need to pay for the non-semifinal Orange Bowls. NBC and Fox certainly aren't going to let ESPN get college football playoff games on the cheap (which will drive up the price of the non-playoff Orange Bowl games if only because they are tied-in). Maybe the ACC won't get exactly $40 million per year, but the difference will end up being immaterial for the factors that I've stated above. The ACC is firmly and unquestionably in the "haves" category, whether it's fair or not.

 

[frankthetank]

In any event, ratings for the bowls are tanking. There are about 3 bowl games a year that do better than a Sweet 16 matchup from the NCAA Tournament, despite the fact that football significantly outdraws basketball during the regular season. People don't care about the bowl games, and fans are starting to walk. I have no idea how ESPN can afford that ticket for the Rose or Champions bowls, but they are going to take a bath on both in the next contract.

I don't think the bowl system makes it 10 years.

I see this argument a lot ("No one is watching the bowl games"), but the fact of the matter is that it isn't true. The Rose Bowl is virtually always the 2nd highest rated non-NFL sports event of the year (only after the national championship game itself) and even low level bowl games (we're talking Sun Belt vs. MAC-type matchups) get better numbers than college basketball and NBA games during that time of year.

Regardless, the #1 mistake that I see among college sports fans is that they assume that this is all solely about money. That's not the case.

Instead, the three rules of college football are: CONTROL, CONTROL, CONTROL.

The bowls are a mechanism for the power conferences to maintain control because they reward exactly what power conferences bring to the table over the Boise States of the world whether they are 12-0 or 0-12 in a given year: brand names, large traveling fan bases, and TV ratings. Now, that control is what begets money in the long-term (so they are associated), but it amazes me how few people realize how powerful of a hold that the notion of control has over the top conferences. If there's ever an expansion of the playoff system, it will only be to the extent that each of the 5 power conferences are guaranteed an auto-bid. There's NFW that we'll ever see an NCAA Tournament-style playoff granting auto-bids to every conference in our lifetime. The long-term control (which translates into long-term money) trumps the short-term money gains that they can get from a larger playoff. Believe me - the power conferences have already seen their regular season basketball TV rights dwindle down to commodity-level prices and they literally blame the NCAA Tournament for it. (This is why conference realignment is completely about football today.) They want NOTHING to do with that type of system in football.

 

[Marty Jackson]

I see this argument a lot ("No one is watching the bowl games"), but the fact of the matter is that it isn't true. The Rose Bowl is virtually always the 2nd highest rated non-NFL sports event of the year (only after the national championship game itself) and even low level bowl games (we're talking Sun Belt vs. MAC-type matchups) get better numbers than college basketball and NBA games during that time of year.

Regardless, the #1 mistake that I see among college sports fans is that they assume that this is all solely about money. That's not the case.

Instead, the three rules of college football are: CONTROL, CONTROL, CONTROL.

The bowls are a mechanism for the power conferences to maintain control because they reward exactly what power conferences bring to the table over the Boise States of the world whether they are 12-0 or 0-12 in a given year: brand names, large traveling fan bases, and TV ratings. Now, that control is what begets money in the long-term (so they are associated), but it amazes me how few people realize how powerful of a hold that the notion of control has over the top conferences. If there's ever an expansion of the playoff system, it will only be to the extent that each of the 5 power conferences are guaranteed an auto-bid. There's NFW that we'll ever see an NCAA Tournament-style playoff granting auto-bids to every conference in our lifetime. The long-term control (which translates into long-term money) trumps the short-term money gains that they can get from a larger playoff. Believe me - the power conferences have already seen their regular season basketball TV rights dwindle down to commodity-level prices and they literally blame the NCAA Tournament for it. (This is why conference realignment is completely about football today.) They want NOTHING to do with that type of system in football.

Sadly, I think you are 100000% correct on this. Control is the goal here...

 

[nelsonmuntz]

I see this argument a lot ("No one is watching the bowl games"), but the fact of the matter is that it isn't true. The Rose Bowl is virtually always the 2nd highest rated non-NFL sports event of the year (only after the national championship game itself) and even low level bowl games (we're talking Sun Belt vs. MAC-type matchups) get better numbers than college basketball and NBA games during that time of year.

Regardless, the #1 mistake that I see among college sports fans is that they assume that this is all solely about money. That's not the case.

Instead, the three rules of college football are: CONTROL, CONTROL, CONTROL.

The bowls are a mechanism for the power conferences to maintain control because they reward exactly what power conferences bring to the table over the Boise States of the world whether they are 12-0 or 0-12 in a given year: brand names, large traveling fan bases, and TV ratings. Now, that control is what begets money in the long-term (so they are associated), but it amazes me how few people realize how powerful of a hold that the notion of control has over the top conferences. If there's ever an expansion of the playoff system, it will only be to the extent that each of the 5 power conferences are guaranteed an auto-bid. There's NFW that we'll ever see an NCAA Tournament-style playoff granting auto-bids to every conference in our lifetime. The long-term control (which translates into long-term money) trumps the short-term money gains that they can get from a larger playoff. Believe me - the power conferences have already seen their regular season basketball TV rights dwindle down to commodity-level prices and they literally blame the NCAA Tournament for it. (This is why conference realignment is completely about football today.) They want NOTHING to do with that type of system in football.

I said that there were about 3 bowl games every year that outdrew an average Sweet 16 game. I stand by that.

You view of a playoff is very narrow. Why do you think the big conferences can't have control and make a boatload of money? Are those two choices mutually exclusive? Do the major conferences have trouble dominating the NCAA basketball tournament? I believe that there are more different participants in BCS games in the last 20 years than there are in the Final 8. Between 1989 and 2003, I don't believe a single non-football school made the Final Four, and I think that every team that played in a Final Four during that period is currently a member of a BCS conference. In recent years you have seen a rise of outsider programs, just as you have in football. That is driven more by a growing talent pool that the majors can not control. I also think it is from a recognition that allowing outsiders increases the pie for everyone by increasing national fan interest.

The majors will make a staggering amount of money in a playoff system in a time where virtually every state budget in the country is suffering from enormous financial pressure. The pressure on state schools to generate more revenue is huge, and a playoff is a magic money machine. I think the probability of an 8 or 16 team playoff is very high.

Who said anything about every conference having an automatic bid? That is quite a strawman. The basketball tournament has play in games, so why can't football? I could see the last 4 leagues playing 2 play in games for 2 bids, or there being a minimum ranking for even an automatic qualifier. There are a lot of ways to do it that do not entail every conference having an automatic bid.

 

[SAMCRO]

Straw-man argument: A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. To ‘set up a straw man’ or ‘set up a straw-man argument’ is to create a position that is easy to refute, then attribute that position to the opponent. A straw-man argument can be a successful rhetorical technique (that is, it may succeed in persuading people) but it is in fact a misleading fallacy, because the opponent's actual argument has not been refuted. ... It is occasionally called a straw dog fallacy, scarecrow argument, or wooden dummy argument." / "One can set up a straw man in the following ways: 1) Present a misrepresentation of the opponent's position, refute it, and pretend that the opponent's actual position has been refuted. 2) Quote an opponent's words out of context — i.e., choose quotations that are not representative of the opponent's actual intentions. 3) Present someone who defends a position poorly as the defender, refute that person's arguments, and pretend that every upholder of that position, and thus the position itself, has been defeated. 4) Invent a fictitious persona with actions or beliefs that are criticized, and pretend that the person represents a group of whom the speaker is critical. 5) Oversimplify a person's argument into a simple analogy, which can then be attacked.

It's a word thrown around this board quite a bit (and a behovior that runs rampant here). I've always known what it was implying, but was curious what the actual definiton/description was, so I looked it up. Thought I'd share .... proceed.

 

[Marty Jackson]

Straw-man argument: A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. To ‘set up a straw man’ or ‘set up a straw-man argument’ is to create a position that is easy to refute, then attribute that position to the opponent. A straw-man argument can be a successful rhetorical technique (that is, it may succeed in persuading people) but it is in fact a misleading fallacy, because the opponent's actual argument has not been refuted. ... It is occasionally called a straw dog fallacy, scarecrow argument, or wooden dummy argument." / "One can set up a straw man in the following ways: 1) Present a misrepresentation of the opponent's position, refute it, and pretend that the opponent's actual position has been refuted. 2) Quote an opponent's words out of context — i.e., choose quotations that are not representative of the opponent's actual intentions. 3) Present someone who defends a position poorly as the defender, refute that person's arguments, and pretend that every upholder of that position, and thus the position itself, has been defeated. 4) Invent a fictitious persona with actions or beliefs that are criticized, and pretend that the person represents a group of whom the speaker is critical. 5) Oversimplify a person's argument into a simple analogy, which can then be attacked.

It's a word thrown around this board quite a bit (and a behovior that runs rampant here). I've always known what it was implying, but was curious what the actual definiton/description was, so I looked it up. Thought I'd share .... proceed.

This whole board is a strawman...

 

[frankthetank]

I said that there were about 3 bowl games every year that outdrew an average Sweet 16 game. I stand by that.

You view of a playoff is very narrow. Why do you think the big conferences can't have control and make a boatload of money? Are those two choices mutually exclusive? Do the major conferences have trouble dominating the NCAA basketball tournament? I believe that there are more different participants in BCS games in the last 20 years than there are in the Final 8. Between 1989 and 2003, I don't believe a single non-football school made the Final Four, and I think that every team that played in a Final Four during that period is currently a member of a BCS conference. In recent years you have seen a rise of outsider programs, just as you have in football. That is driven more by a growing talent pool that the majors can not control. I also think it is from a recognition that allowing outsiders increases the pie for everyone by increasing national fan interest.

The majors will make a staggering amount of money in a playoff system in a time where virtually every state budget in the country is suffering from enormous financial pressure. The pressure on state schools to generate more revenue is huge, and a playoff is a magic money machine. I think the probability of an 8 or 16 team playoff is very high.

Who said anything about every conference having an automatic bid? That is quite a strawman. The basketball tournament has play in games, so why can't football? I could see the last 4 leagues playing 2 play in games for 2 bids, or there being a minimum ranking for even an automatic qualifier. There are a lot of ways to do it that do not entail every conference having an automatic bid.

I'll just say that it has nothing to do with my view of a playoff as being narrow. All of your arguments about an expanded playoff are perfectly logical and I've seen all of them many times over many years. It's just that the power conferences have never cared and I'll refer to about 100 years of past history that they'll continue to not care. In their minds, limited postseason access in and of itself makes the power conferences' primary revenue source that they don't have to share with anyone else (regular season football) more valuable and that's the ultimate goal for them. If they eventually believe that an expanded postseason can increase that regular season pie, then you might see some traction. However, guys like Delany and Slive don't trust that to be the case. They haven't been shy about how much they think regular season basketball has been devalued by the NCAA Tournament, so they absolutely won't allow that to happen to the even bigger moneymaker of football. Whether you or I disagree with them doesn't matter - they've seen regular season basketball TV rights get devalued on their watches even in the wake of the biggest TV rights fees boom in history, so a larger football postseason is a legitimate bogeyman to them that they don't want to take chances with. Personally, I think an 8-team playoff where the 5 "Contract Conferences" have auto-bids along with the next 3 highest ranked teams would be a monster TV property that would simultaneously increase the value of the regular season for the power conferences, but (1) the power conferences are still justifiably wary of what they've seen with basketball and (2) the non-power conferences are going to justifiably flip out about the unequal access (even though such unequal access is likely the only way that you'd ever get the power conferences to consider an 8-team playoff in the first place).