The Realignment Landscape from a UConn Perspective

[UConnJim]

One team will be left out per year...but for how long? How many years will the 4 team playoff be in place before it becomes 8 teams...and then 16?

In the current P5 environment, I can see the playoff going to 8 teams: 5 conference champions, 2 at-large, and 1 G5. This makes the most sense long term and protects all of the conferences, allows for 2 really good teams that don't win their conferences (or ND) to make the playoffs, and incorporates the G5.

 

[UConnJim]

I don't know if it's possible, but a league that had UCONN, Buffalo, Cincinnati, ECU, UCF, USF, BYU, Boise, Northern Illinois, Houston, Fresno, and SDSU wouldn't be half bad for football. Enough local rivalries to develop and the travel would be football-only so not as bad. Top to bottom, it's probably as good as the ACC or B12 football (what I mean is that the bottom half of the league may be as good or better than those conferences' bottom halves). I have no idea if all of these schools are willing or able to adopt the P5 rules, but I think a conference along these lines (feel free to add/subtract wherever needed) should satisfy a SOS requirement for a playoff invite. But then again, that's only well and good if it can be done. There will probably be a fair amount of opposition to this concept from many areas (the P5 conferences, schools and the G5 conferences/schools that feel left out).

No offense, but this is a really bad idea for a number of reasons. Buffalo? You have to be kidding. Northern Illinois? Why add another directional school? What about Navy? And, what about basketball? The AAC is better than this league as Temple, SMU, and Tulsa are better than virtually all of the adds.

And, you are kidding yourself if you think this is even close to the Big 12 in football quality. The bottom of the current Big 12 is comparable to the top of the current AAC.

I like that the AAC will be 12 schools for football and 11 schools for basketball. The football is good enough, although adding Boise St and SD St instead of Tulsa and Tulane was preferred. The 11 school basketball conference gives UConn flexibility for scheduling as long as we don't have to play everyone 2x.

I say let the AAC settle for a few years, then reassess. How has the AAC performed athletically? What has happened with football playoff access? Will the next media contract be better? Have all of the schools committed to keep up?

 

[RegisteredUconn]

UCONN (basketball, even their chicks are good), Buffalo (who?), Cincinnati (I think I've heard of them but have no interest in watching them), ECU (who?), UCF (who?), USF (who?), BYU (don't fornicate, drink, or carry-on, therefore can't be a real college), Boise (didn't they have a fluke win over Oklahoma once?), Northern Illinois (who?), Houston (phi slamma who? maybe I should have gone to BYU), Fresno (who?), and SDSU (who?)

My impression of the national impression in italics.

 

[Dooley]

No offense, but this is a really bad idea for a number of reasons. Buffalo? You have to be kidding. Northern Illinois? Why add another directional school? What about Navy? And, what about basketball? The AAC is better than this league as Temple, SMU, and Tulsa are better than virtually all of the adds.

And, you are kidding yourself if you think this is even close to the Big 12 in football quality. The bottom of the current Big 12 is comparable to the top of the current AAC.

I like that the AAC will be 12 schools for football and 11 schools for basketball. The football is good enough, although adding Boise St and SD St instead of Tulsa and Tulane was preferred. The 11 school basketball conference gives UConn flexibility for scheduling as long as we don't have to play everyone 2x.

I say let the AAC settle for a few years, then reassess. How has the AAC performed athletically? What has happened with football playoff access? Will the next media contract be better? Have all of the schools committed to keep up?

Re-read my post dude. I said football only so I gave zero thought to basketball. Hey, I'm not in love with it either. Just trying to make lemonade here. And this would assume a lot of things that probably aren't going to happen anyway, like the AAC and other G5 conferences agreeing to some of their members to not play football in their leagues. The original post that I replied to said something along the lines of if the next AAC contract is renewed and isn't any better, than UCONN's AD should try to align with other ADs/schools to form a P6 football conference. If the next AAC contract is pulling in AT LEAST $10M/yr, then I agree with that 100%.

 

[Dooley]

Guys, if you think a G5 conference is putting a playoff entrant in a field of 4 or 8, you are fooling yourselves. The deck has been stacked against the G5. The P5 conferences want every single penny of football revenue and will do everything possible to lock out the G5. Reform? Just another way to shed the ADs with budgets less than $60M. Scheduling? P5 schools are shifting towards only playing against other P5 schools OOC. G5 SOS won't be there in the status quo. Then there's the Selection Committee. If any of you think that a Selection Committee will be "fair and impartial", you have been hit in the head one too many times. A selection committee will pick a 2-loss P5 school 100 times out of 100 over anything that the G5 can offer (look no further to the SMU basketball snub this past NCAAT Selection). As we currently stand, the bottom half of G5 conferences are absolute garbage. The ONLY way to see a G5 school in a 8 team playoff (still no chance at a 4 team playoff) would be to consolidate G5 conferences and the best play the best every year.

 

[pj]

You want Texas and major markets, so Houston and SMU are good. UCF and USF for the same reasons. UConn and Temple for northeastern markets. Navy and BYU have national followings. Cincy is about the best of the rest, Tulane was good at football once upon a time so maybe, Tulsa no, Memphis no, ECU maybe (good team but only a local following), Boise yes, SDSU yes, Fresno no - crap market falling apart economically, Colorado State and Buffalo are potential B1G partners one day so they should get consideration, but I would go with:

West: Houston, SMU, BYU, Tulane, Boise, San Diego State
East: UCF, USF, UConn, Temple, Navy, Cincy

Bench for 14: ECU, Colorado State

 

[pj]

Guys, if you think a G5 conference is putting a playoff entrant in a field of 4 or 8, you are fooling yourselves. The deck has been stacked against the G5. The P5 conferences want every single penny of football revenue and will do everything possible to lock out the G5. Reform? Just another way to shed the ADs with budgets less than $60M. Scheduling? P5 schools are shifting towards only playing against other P5 schools OOC. G5 SOS won't be there in the status quo. Then there's the Selection Committee. If any of you think that a Selection Committee will be "fair and impartial", you have been hit in the head one too many times. A selection committee will pick a 2-loss P5 school 100 times out of 100 over anything that the G5 can offer (look no further to the SMU basketball snub this past NCAAT Selection). As we currently stand, the bottom half of G5 conferences are absolute garbage. The ONLY way to see a G5 school in a 8 team playoff (still no chance at a 4 team playoff) would be to consolidate G5 conferences and the best play the best every year.

Two words: antitrust law. If they go to an 8 team playoff and there are 6 conferences in the new division and 5 get automatic bids for their champion (which they will demand, this will be the main motivation to go to an 8 team playoff), then you can't deny the 6th conference champion a spot too.

 

[Dooley]

You want Texas and major markets, so Houston and SMU are good. UCF and USF for the same reasons. UConn and Temple for northeastern markets. Navy and BYU have national followings. Cincy is about the best of the rest, Tulane was good at football once upon a time so maybe, Tulsa no, Memphis no, ECU maybe (good team but only a local following), Boise yes, SDSU yes, Fresno no - crap market falling apart economically, Colorado State and Buffalo are potential B1G partners one day so they should get consideration, but I would go with:

West: Houston, SMU, BYU, Tulane, Boise, San Diego State
East: UCF, USF, UConn, Temple, Navy, Cincy

Bench for 14: ECU, Colorado State

I would be on-board with something like this. Good markets, good football programs, and good recruiting areas. If it's football-only so we can stomach the travel outlier a few times out of the year for one sport. Personally, I would rather see ECU over Temple but I understand the market driven reason for adding Temple. Or replace Tulane with ECU.

Lemonade.

 

[Dooley]

Two words: antitrust law. If they go to an 8 team playoff and there are 6 conferences in the new division and 5 get automatic bids for their champion (which they will demand, this will be the main motivation to go to an 8 team playoff), then you can't deny the 6th conference champion a spot too.

Yeah, but what conference is going to the 6th? The AAC? MWC? MAC? CUSA? Sun Belt? Any one of them could theoretically cry foul if their conference champion wasn't included in a 8 team playoff. If the G5 consolidated the best of the best every year, then there is more of an anti-trust argument. If not, then a Selection Committee can pick whoever they want. And what they will want won't be playing in a G5 conference (as it currently stands).

 

[HuskyHawk]

If UCONN is not invited to The B1G or ACC by the end of The AAC's current media deal, I would hope that your AD would strongly look into negotiating with the top programs of The AAC, MWC, and possibly MAC about forming a new conference meeting P5 Standard. Fox and NBC would likely covet a national reaching conference with plenty of name schools in it. Enough to provide a respectable media deal. At that point a push for an 8 team playoff will likely be in swing. P6 Conference Champs + 2 wild cards.

This is where the potential break off of the P5 comes in. As I've posted dozens of times, I don't think the P5 can split with the current configuration, as it leaves too many schools out, opening up cartel claims. The options before a split are either (a) expansion by several leagues to something close to 5 x 16 or (b) a sixth P league. I think UConn and Aresco know, along with schools like BYU, that should further realignment not occur, the best of the MWC and AAC need to join together. Not a full merger, a 12 team league of only the top programs with east west divisions. That would yield more money for each to stay competitive, and it's a league that couldn't be kept out of the playoff on the same terms as the P5.

UConn, Cinci, UCF, USF, Houston, SMU (or ECU)
BYU, Boise, Colo State, Utah State, SDSU, Nevada

 

[UConnJim]

Guys, if you think a G5 conference is putting a playoff entrant in a field of 4 or 8, you are fooling yourselves. The deck has been stacked against the G5. The P5 conferences want every single penny of football revenue and will do everything possible to lock out the G5. Reform? Just another way to shed the ADs with budgets less than $60M. Scheduling? P5 schools are shifting towards only playing against other P5 schools OOC. G5 SOS won't be there in the status quo. Then there's the Selection Committee. If any of you think that a Selection Committee will be "fair and impartial", you have been hit in the head one too many times. A selection committee will pick a 2-loss P5 school 100 times out of 100 over anything that the G5 can offer (look no further to the SMU basketball snub this past NCAAT Selection). As we currently stand, the bottom half of G5 conferences are absolute garbage. The ONLY way to see a G5 school in a 8 team playoff (still no chance at a 4 team playoff) would be to consolidate G5 conferences and the best play the best every year.

The playoff brings money for each conference. Each P5 conference gets ~$50 million per year from the playoff and each G5 conference gets $18 million. There are some additional revenue sources such as $6 million per conference that gets a school in the semis and $4 million for each conference that gets into the 3 access bowls.

BTW, the reason football drives the bus is the way football money vs basketball money is divided. A large part of the NCAA basketball tournament money is kept by the NCAA to basically fund the NCAA and the non-revenue sports championships. The football playoff money is kept by the schools/conferences.

As for SMU, they deserved to be left out of the NCAA tournament due to their OOC scheduling which was beyond horrible. Since they hadn't competed for NCAA tournament bids in recent history, they had not figured that out before. (Virginia Tech has historically had this problem as well, even with They have fixed that for this year.

Building the AAC and creating separation with the other G5 conferences, which has already begun with the BCS win and men's and women's basketball championships, is a far better idea than becoming part of multiple conferences for the marquee sports.

 

[Dooley]

The playoff brings money for each conference. Each P5 conference gets ~$50 million per year from the playoff and each G5 conference gets $18 million. There are some additional revenue sources such as $6 million per conference that gets a school in the semis and $4 million for each conference that gets into the 3 access bowls.

BTW, the reason football drives the bus is the way football money vs basketball money is divided. A large part of the NCAA basketball tournament money is kept by the NCAA to basically fund the NCAA and the non-revenue sports championships. The football playoff money is kept by the schools/conferences.

As for SMU, they deserved to be left out of the NCAA tournament due to their OOC scheduling which was beyond horrible. Since they hadn't competed for NCAA tournament bids in recent history, they had not figured that out before. (Virginia Tech has historically had this problem as well, even with They have fixed that for this year.

Building the AAC and creating separation with the other G5 conferences, which has already begun with the BCS win and men's and women's basketball championships, is a far better idea than becoming part of multiple conferences for the marquee sports.

It would be nice if the AAC can separate itself from the other G5 conferences. I agree that that is the best approach. It's just nice to have a contingency plan in case the next AAC contract pulls in the same chicken scratch as the current one.

 

[Ldandy]

IMO you could put together a reasonably credible conference by bringing together the best of The AAC and MWC/BYU. You would have a handful of name programs, good TV Markets, and quality recruiting grounds to draw on. Its not going to be the SEC, but it doesn't have to be. If it could draw strong enough interest from both the TV Networks bidding on it and the fan bases comprising its membership, there would likely be enough momentum to force an expanded playoff. In the end I believe a school like UCONN, that has proven to be very resourceful over the years, can continue to compete across the board at 50% of the revenue of other conferences, but unfortunately not at 10%.

 

[whaler11]

IMO you could put together a reasonably credible conference by bringing together the best of The AAC and MWC/BYU. You would have a handful of name programs, good TV Markets, and quality recruiting grounds to draw on. Its not going to be the SEC, but it doesn't have to be. If it could draw strong enough interest from both the TV Networks bidding on it and the fan bases comprising its membership, there would likely be enough momentum to force an expanded playoff. In the end I believe a school like UCONN, that has proven to be very resourceful over the years, can continue to compete across the board at 50% of the revenue of other conferences, but unfortunately not at 10%.

That conference already existed. It didn't generate monetary interest from networks and the Western teams left.

 

[Fishy]

The AAC has UConn, Cincy and a bunch of teams no one cares about. You're not getting anywhere with SMU, UCF, etc. (People will argue, but if they had any real worth, they would not have been in the remaindered bin when Aresco had to go shopping.)

The Mountain West might have even less. You have Boise football as long as they keep their noses above water, but at the end of the day, they're in Idaho.

Mixing the two conferences just means adding smaller and smaller airports to our circle of hell.

 

[metsfan2323]

The AAC has UConn, Cincy and a bunch of teams no one cares about. You're not getting anywhere with SMU, UCF, etc. (People will argue, but if they had any real worth, they would not have been in the remaindered bin when Aresco had to go shopping.)

The Mountain West might have even less. You have Boise football as long as they keep their noses above water, but at the end of the day, they're in Idaho.

Mixing the two conferences just means adding smaller and smaller airports to our circle of hell.

Most teams only have regional interest. Boise and BYU probably have more national interest than 75% of teams in the P5.

 

[Ldandy]

That conference already existed. It didn't generate monetary interest from networks and the Western teams left.

No that conference did not exist. A 16 team WAC Conference comprised of too many small market programs did however. Not the same thing, but I assume you are being argumentative for the sake of doing so.

 

[whaler11]

No that conference did not exist. A 16 team WAC Conference comprised of too many small market programs did however. Not the same thing, but I assume you are being argumentative for the sake of doing so.

You must have forgotten when Boise and San Diego State were in the Big East.

 

[pj]

You must have forgotten when Boise and San Diego State were in the Big East.

Easy to forget, since they never played a game. But they did pay exit fees.

 

[Waquoit]

50% chance of P5 add circa 2025.

That's seems about right. The rest is just filler.

 

[Ldandy]

Easy to forget, since they never played a game. But they did pay exit fees.

Exactly. They got a better deal and they took it. No different than every other team that left the old Big East. Same as UCONN would with The AAC.

 

[whaler11]

Exactly. They got a better deal and they took it. No different than every other team that left the old Big East. Same as UCONN would with The AAC.

Yes and note the deal they took isn't good so what does that say about the combined entities? It means no one wanted to pay them.

 

[AZHuskiePop]

Besides UConn in basketball and possibly Boise State in football, what "name schools" are members of the AAC/MWC/MAC?

Outside of BYU,and the Service Academy's, probably Houston,SMU, San Diego State, Cinncy,Memphis,and shockingly Tulane have any national recognition.
Schools like CFU,ECU, are better football programs but new in a national sense.
Who actually stands out in the MAC ,it's a fun football conference because anyone can emerge from the pack.
If I where framing an argument against the P5 I certainly would play up the death of regional conferences like the MAC and Sun Belt as victims of the greed.

 

[B1GOSU]

The problem with markets for the AAC is that no school in the AAC is large enough/important enough to deliver a market outside of UConn. Houston and SMU don't really move the needle in the state of Texas. Top recruits don't go to Houston or SMU, so other AAC schools certainly can't expect to come in and grab 4 or 5 star recruits from the state when Houston and SMU can't even do that. Same with UCF and USF in Florida. There is no way the AAC would ever have its own TV channel, so those larger markets can't be utilized for a cable channel. The only market benefit would be for the national ESPN contract, and that isn't necessarily a great benefit. It's good in the sense that ESPN will pay more for Houston and SMU and the little they bring the Dallas and Houston markets than it would for Marshall or Middle Tennessee, which have no major markets at all.

The old Conference USA never was considered anything major, so why would it be so now as the AAC? UConn replaces Louisville. That is more or less the only difference. Temple is on the level of the old Conference USA. Everyone else is the old Conference USA.

How many of those teams have ever had a top 5 finish to even have a shot at the current 4 team playoff? I think a 2 loss team in every Power 5 conference would be considered first before an undefeated AAC team. I don't think an AAC team will ever sniff the playoffs, even if they do expand to 8 teams. Ten years ago, would anyone have said a Conference USA team has a shot at the playoffs if the playoffs existed? Of course not.

UConn is just stuck right now, whether its fair or not. I don't think its permanent. However, UConn needs to take care of business to ensure it gets out. I'm sure Cincinnati and others are thinking the same thing and are trying to position themselves to get their ticket out, so it can't be a forgone conclusion that UConn is next in line necessarily. You have to work at it to make sure it happens and don't just assume it will happen.

 

[Pudge]

Yes and note the deal they took isn't good so what does that say about the combined entities? It means no one wanted to pay them.

Let's not forget the time frame. When Boise and/or San Diego State joined ... were TCU, Pitt, SU, Louisville, (oops) Rutgers in or out? Once we slid and then slid again, you really never could talk Value of a TV package. It's not fair to just see this as anything but episodic slippage. Boise and SD State aren't in because the BE really never materialized as they were promised. Then ... of course, the money got worse.

 

[whaler11]

Let's not forget the time frame. When Boise and/or San Diego State joined ... were TCU, Pitt, SU, Louisville, (oops) Rutgers in or out? Once we slid and then slid again, you really never could talk Value of a TV package. It's not fair to just see this as anything but episodic slippage. Boise and SD State aren't in because the BE really never materialized as they were promised. Then ... of course, the money got worse.

Let's be honest. It makes no sense for them (Boise/SDSU). As bad as the AAC is the combined conference would skew very east. They would travel like crazy, play better teams on average and it would be much harder to win 8-10 games.

It makes more sense to make a touch less and beat up on the half of Mountain West that can't get out of their own way - without flying to Hartford, Phili, Orlando, Tampa and Raleigh.

 

[Fishy]

Easy to forget, since they never played a game. But they did pay exit fees.

San Diego State got out free.

 

[JayRU09]

Maryland negotiated a front-loaded deal - they'll get $32M after their first season and also will be given a travel subsidy to help them adjust to the additional costs of being in the Big Ten. Rutgers received no such concessions.

Rutgers was Maryland's plus-one - they were not getting the invite without Maryland.

We worked out a deal for $17M a year for seven years before receiving a full share.

 

[NickyNewark]

We worked out a deal for $17M a year for seven years before receiving a full share.

Thats what I'm talking about....its better than I thought!! That should keep us afloat for awhile. Sounds about like full ACC level untill "20/21"? I found it tough getting any real numbers outside the vague half share and 10% yrly percentages until full financial member after the sixth yr. Is this new/recent info?

 

[JayRU09]

Recent info from someone inside the AD. The B1G knows we need the help and I think when it became clear that they would reach their goals with the BTN it became easier to give us some extra help.