CFP expansion = el muerto

[CTFAN4LIFE]

@ UGA Championship Celebration today:

The bottom line is that given their prowess, commitment the top SEC schools have to winning, the addition of two more potentially top 20 programs (OK and TX) and other factors the SEC will likely get more than their "share" of CFP spots; 1-2 in a final four, 2-4 in a final 8, and another one in a final 12. They'll always be the best or second best in terms of participants and it seems they want to grow it so they grab more cash. The question remains if they over-dominate and the rest of the country/conferences tire of it will they actually have killed the golden goose. It might not be Sankey's issue but maybe his successor's one day.

 

[the Q]

@ UGA Championship Celebration today:

Gotta give him props for a nice gronk spike there lol

 

[the Q]

ACC would change their tune quickly if Florida st and Clemson jumped to the sec

 

[UConnJim]

It would be worth far less than the current one, at least at first. But could the P-5 (or P-4) schools have a tournament, generate less gross revenue but materially increase their payout per team? YES.

How are they going to materially make more money if they would have to finance the championships for the P4/P5 in every other sport except football?

 

[businesslawyer]

How are they going to materially make more money if they would have to finance the championships for the P4/P5 in every other sport except football?

Because four or five conferences, all with staffs that run their own championships, would not need much, if any, additional infrastructure to run championships for a 60 team or so super league. It’s not like they’re going to be paying enforcement staffs to investigate their members

 

[UConnJim]

Because four or five conferences, all with staffs that run their own championships, would not need much, if any, additional infrastructure to run championships for a 60 team or so super league. It’s not like they’re going to be paying enforcement staffs to investigate their members

I don’t think you understand what the money is spent on. For example, the NCAA pays for all the travel expenses for all of the teams and per diems. It probably makes up 70%+ of the championship expenses. And, they have to rent facilities, have officials,…

 

[businesslawyer]

I don’t think you understand what the money is spent on. For example, the NCAA pays for all the travel expenses for all of the teams and per diems. It probably makes up 70%+ of the championship expenses. And, they have to rent facilities, have officials,…

But the power conferences will just spend less on the championships for minor sports. They don’t care about them. And there will be smaller tournaments in almost all of the non revenue sports.

 

[UConnJim]

But the power conferences will just spend less on the championships for minor sports. They don’t care about them. And there will be smaller tournaments in almost all of the non revenue sports.

I state facts about what the money is spent on and you come back with speculation about how colleges feel about sports besides basketball and football and won’t spend at the same level. I don’t buy it.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

The entire education industry is on the verge of going over a cliff, and these P5 idiots think they are playing the long game by squeezing the NCAA. The NCAA is irrelevant long-term. College football's problems are much bigger than the NCAA. If I was one of the P5 commissioners I would want to be cashing in as much as possible as fast as possible. I would expand to 16 for next year.

 

[businesslawyer]

I state facts about what the money is spent on and you come back with speculation about how colleges feel about sports besides basketball and football and won’t spend at the same level. I don’t buy it

That makes no sense as a matter of logic. You are stating what the NCAA does. We are in agreement on what it does. I am hypothesizing that the P-5 could break away. Your response was I’m speculating on what they might want to do. Newsflash — we are both speculating on what the P-5 would do if it broke away. We can only speculate because it hasn’t happened yet. But saying that if they walk away from an organization they would run the new organization the same way is not a logical conclusion.

 

[UConnJim]

That makes no sense as a matter of logic. You are stating what the NCAA does. We are in agreement on what it does. I am hypothesizing that the P-5 could break away. Your response was I’m speculating on what they might want to do. Newsflash — we are both speculating on what the P-5 would do if it broke away. We can only speculate because it hasn’t happened yet. But saying that if they walk away from an organization they would run the new organization the same way is not a logical conclusion.

And saying that the P5 would deemphasize championships to save a buck is not a logical conclusion.

 

[UCFBfan]

The bottom line is that given their prowess, commitment the top SEC schools have to winning, the addition of two more potentially top 20 programs (OK and TX) and other factors the SEC will likely get more than their "share" of CFP spots; 1-2 in a final four, 2-4 in a final 8, and another one in a final 12. They'll always be the best or second best in terms of participants and it seems they want to grow it so they grab more cash. The question remains if they over-dominate and the rest of the country/conferences tire of it will they actually have killed the golden goose. It might not be Sankey's issue but maybe his successor's one day.

I'm pretty sure the SEC isn't worried about what happens if interest wanes or ratings drop at this point. They already have their $3 Billion deal all set. That won't change if things diminish for the rest of the CFB world.

 

[Hskies4Ever]

I don’t think you understand what the money is spent on. For example, the NCAA pays for all the travel expenses for all of the teams and per diems. It probably makes up 70%+ of the championship expenses. And, they have to rent facilities, have officials,…

The answer here is very simple and they already are getting it. TV money. And do you think a súper league wouldn’t generate more money?

And as it has already been laid out in this thread, without having to share revenue with Directional State U, their margins for whatever championship they develop will be wider.

Honestly, the only hope for the G5 now is to exit the NCAA first and find a way to straight up pay players. I don’t know if that’s possible. The only other thing to do would be to structure some significant NIL deals somehow.

 

[Hskies4Ever]

I suppose this also gives us a timeline of any hope of relevance. We have 4 years (unless the Super League had a relegation system, but it won’t).

 

[freescooter]

But the power conferences will just spend less on the championships for minor sports. They don’t care about them. And there will be smaller tournaments in almost all of the non revenue sports.

And they won’t be giving money to Wesleyan and SCSU or paying for their post season tournaments. The current NCAA tournament pays for all that.

 

[businesslawyer]

And saying that the P5 would deemphasize championships to save a buck is not a logical conclusion.

I’ve made my point and don’t need to continue. You have a nice day.

 

[Chin Diesel]

Why anyone would advocate for a bigger CFP is beyond me.

Clearly an expanded playoff would feature more blowouts and bad match ups.

Trying expansion as a way of disrupting SEC dominance and hoping for upsets to gin up excitement reeks of people in debt playing 3 card Monte as a plan to financial solvency.

 

[CTFAN4LIFE]

I'm pretty sure the SEC isn't worried about what happens if interest wanes or ratings drop at this point. They already have their $3 Billion deal all set. That won't change if things diminish for the rest of the CFB world.

I hear you on that, but if the CFP continues to wane in interest (it's been doing that for the past handful of years) then it hurts the SEC because it hurts college football overall.

If college football fans overall keep losing interest, then it is going to force the SEC to really go after the NFL model including expanding further and breaking away from the other ~ 100 schools.

And that becomes the big, longer term bet that we appear to be headed for - albeit perhaps not for another 5-10 years.

It's a bet because no one knows how fans will react to a AAA/minor league football model within the collegiate environment and in turn whether it will reduce/maintain/increase media rights deals.

 

[John Greene]

The big stadium SEC, B1G, etc. schools will not agree to an expanded playoff until they are certain it will not jeopardize the value of the regular season to their fan bases. As an example Bama has sports revenue in the range of 200 million. About 50 Million comes from the SEC payout. Most of the rest comes from revenue derived from game days at Bryant-Denny.

 

[metsfan2323]

The big stadium SEC, B1G, etc. schools will not agree to an expanded playoff until they are certain it will not jeopardize the value of the regular season to their fan bases. As an example Bama has sports revenue in the range of 200 million. About 50 Million comes from the SEC payout. Most of the rest comes from revenue derived from game days at Bryant-Denny.

I doubt expanding to 12 would hurt the regular season, more than likely it would make it more interesting as two loss teams currently out of the picture would still have a shot. The expanded playoff would also make the conference championship games far more important than they are now. In the early 90's when MLB only had four teams in the playoff they realized it was killing the regular season as most teams were out of it by early August.

 

[CL82]

I state facts about what the money is spent on and you come back with speculation about how colleges feel about sports besides basketball and football and won’t spend at the same level. I don’t buy it.

Jim, let’s try it this way. What expenses does the NCAA have now that a P5 breakaway wouldn’t have? The first is easy. Emmert’s salary of roughly $3 million. Link

The next is the $88.5 million that the NCAA pays towards Division II and Division III schools. Link

Assuming the NCAA did everything else the same, that’s $91 million annually that the P5 would make from breaking off.

Finally, about $43 million goes into the NCAA’s administration, so figure 40,000,000 in excess of Emmerts salary. Of that 40 million a significant amount is being paid towards enforcement, which has been notoriously unevenly enforced, and given the NIL rules, basically become pointless at this point. A P5 breakout certainly wouldn’t dedicate any serious amount of money toward that function. In fact there’s already been an accounting study saying that it ought to be dramatically reduced.

Now, that’s not all the money that the P5 would make by virtue of breaking off, those are just the obvious items for which I could quickly find documentation. Keep in mind this is an one off these are the amounts that the P5 schools would make annually. I’m betting if I spent more than five minutes on it be able to find significant additional amounts of money. I believe NCAA revenues are roughly $222 million a year largely all earned from March Madness that is too much money to leave on the table.

 

[Vowelguy]

So the P5 would have no administration expenses? No rules? No marketing?

 

[06029]

So the P5 would have no administration expenses? No rules? No marketing?

They already do and it does not change.

 

[UCFBfan]

The big stadium SEC, B1G, etc. schools will not agree to an expanded playoff until they are certain it will not jeopardize the value of the regular season to their fan bases. As an example Bama has sports revenue in the range of 200 million. About 50 Million comes from the SEC payout. Most of the rest comes from revenue derived from game days at Bryant-Denny.

This is very true, but would an expanded play off effect attendance at most of these SEC schools? Their culture and fanbase runs so deep that I can't see it matter if a P5 gets a bid or not. The regular season games matter. Heck, you could even add a high stakes OOC game and it still won't affect your chance at making an expanded CFP. The same can be said for many B1G schools. Even in down years, you see schools like Florida, Penn State, Michigan, LSU, still pack their massive stadiums.

 

[John Greene]

Personally I agree that an 8-12 school playoff should not reduce the importance of regular season games. On the other hand I also know two people close to the Bama AD who say they are not sure the AD would take the chance without the guarantee of a much bigger media payday over the present system. That means a much bigger payday for Bama not overall.

 

[UConnJim]

They already do and it does not change.

Again, people are underestimating what the NCAA does. Ever seen a manual for hosting an NCAA tournament round? I have been to NCAA tournaments in many different sports and it would be a huge task for a new organization to recreate them.

I do think college football will look different in the future as the P5 already controls almost all of the revenues and they want to play by their own rules. In general, the other sports work under the NCAA and it is funded by the men’s basketball tournament.

 

[Vowelguy]

They already do and it does not change.

They do for their league, but who would coordinate rules across the leagues? Tournaments?
Or would individual schools be allowed to offer however many scholarships and pay players whatever they wanted with no limit?

 

[the Q]

Jim, let’s try it this way. What expenses does the NCAA have now that a P5 breakaway wouldn’t have? The first is easy. Emmert’s salary of roughly $3 million. Link

The next is the $88.5 million that the NCAA pays towards Division II and Division III schools. Link

Assuming the NCAA did everything else the same, that’s $91 million annually that the P5 would make from breaking off.

Finally, about $43 million goes into the NCAA’s administration, so figure 40,000,000 in excess of Emmerts salary. Of that 40 million a significant amount is being paid towards enforcement, which has been notoriously unevenly enforced, and given the NIL rules, basically become pointless at this point. A P5 breakout certainly wouldn’t dedicate any serious amount of money toward that function. In fact there’s already been an accounting study saying that it ought to be dramatically reduced.

Now, that’s not all the money that the P5 would make by virtue of breaking off, those are just the obvious items for which I could quickly find documentation. Keep in mind this is an one off these are the amounts that the P5 schools would make annually. I’m betting if I spent more than five minutes on it be able to find significant additional amounts of money. I believe NCAA revenues are roughly $222 million a year largely all earned from March Madness that is too much money to leave on the table.

Yeah, you wouldn’t keep all of it; but you could significantly cut down on admin support and leave more of it to the ADs or committees of ADs

 

[ZooCougar]

The answer here is very simple and they already are getting it. TV money. And do you think a súper league wouldn’t generate more money?

And as it has already been laid out in this thread, without having to share revenue with Directional State U, their margins for whatever championship they develop will be wider.

Honestly, the only hope for the G5 now is to exit the NCAA first and find a way to straight up pay players. I don’t know if that’s possible. The only other thing to do would be to structure some significant NIL deals somehow.

Generate more money? That’s kind of irrelevant. First off they probably would make more money per member and they don’t have to share as much with everyone else.

 

[CL82]

So the P5 would have no administration expenses? No rules? No marketing?

Of course they would, but unless you feel that the NCAA is currently operating as efficiently as possible the savings there are likely to be considerable. Do you believe the P5 would pay an administrator 3 million a year? I don’t. And do you believe the P5 would have a separate enforcement arm, I don’t, but certainly it wouldn’t be anywhere near as big as the NCAA‘s current one. Read the study I linked in my prior post which suggests that it’s extraordinarily inefficient.

But even if the P5 break off operates as inefficiently as the NCAA currently does, which is extraordinarily unlikely, by virtue of eliminating administration expenses for division II division III and the G5 saves it over 100 million annually. I don’t know about you, but if I see $100 on the ground in in front of me, I’m going to bend over and pick it up. Eventually so will the P5.