What is the end game in a P2 world?

[nelsonmuntz]

https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/06/opinions/college-football-playoff-championship-leitch/index.html

But in the long term, when you pattern yourself after the NFL in order to get some of their television juice, when you jettison the traditions and orthodoxies that made people fall in love with the sport in the first place, you stop being college football: You simply become Minor League NFL. And no one cares about minor league anything.

This is what a lot of people do not understand. Once college sports stop being a collective experience that a huge portion of the population can identify with, and becomes a club that only a few thousand fans belong to, most people, including many of those that are fans of teams in the club, will simply stop caring.

I do not agree with the author that the P2 would even be able to pull off being a minor league. The NBA and NFL would snuff them out if it gets small enough.

 

[Stinger92860]

I believe the endgame for P2 football is 32 teams. If the NCAA can be cut out of the bball tourney money, something similar will happen With bball. Men’s only.

 

[Kolumbo]

They can have 32 or 64 or 68 teams. Shorten the season to 8 - 10 games. Then have a 68 team dance, everyone is invited. Same 68 teams every year. Now the regular season won't matter at all and they can all save up for the tournament. They can even have a losers bracket so everyone keeps playing like the useless bowl games. Totally trash the sport for good.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

I believe the endgame for P2 football is 32 teams. If the NCAA can be cut out of the bball tourney money, something similar will happen With bball. Men’s only.

And you think fans of all the schools excluded will simply pick one of the remaining schools to root for?

 

[WestCoastHusky]

My main focus is on watching UCONN. I'm not particularly interested in what Alabama or Michigan is up to. Watching other schools doesn't capture my attention, and I believe many share this sentiment. If the system is disrupted by greed, fans might shift their attention to the NFL. College football might only retain interest from fans of those 32 teams.

 

[AZHuskiePop]

How long do you think the NBA and NFL are going to let the P2 develop into a competitor to them before the NBA and NFL crush them by forming their own minor league?

There is no equivalent to American college sports anywhere else in the world. In every other country, the minor leagues are just minor leagues, either as standalone franchises or affiliated with an upper tier franchise. America's primary minor league in basketball and football has been sports teams affiliated with colleges. These teams provided a deeper connection to their fan base than a pro team could, because the fans often actually went to the school or at least knew someone who did. Even if a particular fan's team was not competitive in a sport, the linked network of teams and connection with the college experience held fan interest.

Now those connections are fraying. These teams are becoming just glorified minor league teams that happen to have a school name on their jersey. The players are getting paid now, and the top programs are figuring out ways to pay the players even more. Furthermore, two conferences, solely by virtue of contracts with major sports networks, are trying to eliminate all the other schools that play professional sports. What is the end game?

If the P2 are successful in eliminating the other schools from competition for tournament access, broadcasting, and talent, what does the product look like in 10 years, and do fans follow it? If the appeal of college sports was always most fans personal connection to a program, what happens to that connection when the vast majority of colleges are not even allowed to compete? Michigan and Alabama just become two more minor league teams in a crowded entertainment market. And why would the NBA and NFL allow individual university-affiliated sports teams to generate nine figures of revenue leveraging a product that the NBA and NFL are promoting, and control. Why wouldn't they just promote their own minor league?

For the P2 scenario to work, not only does college sports have to somehow buck the trend that has swamped scripted movies and television towards fragmentation, but they need the NBA and NFL to allow them to do it. Good luck with that.

Minor leagues have been tried and the NBA G league is the best they can do. They’re a huge money loser.
Basketball and Football were both invented and popularized on the college level and huge sports before a pro league existed .
I understand the US is an anomaly but it’s somewhat due to the inclusive nature of US universities with distinct geographic identities.
These Universities bring huge fan bases which could never be duplicated on a minor league basis. These pro leagues have a free developmental league .
Name the best Triple A baseball team as some of them have been around for many years. The Toledo Mud Hens , or Providence
They have a following but nothing compared to a university with 30-50k students and hundreds of thousands of alumni ,plus other fans who feel pride in their state school.
The European model. may eventually work for a non revenue college. sport like soccer but it’s an incredible transition to that model in the two big revenue sports.

 

[NE Football]

I think the NFL could run a very successful minor league system. They have all of the facilities in place and football is the most popular sport in the US. One game per week also helps boost attendance.

 

[NE Football]

I believe the endgame for P2 football is 32 teams. If the NCAA can be cut out of the bball tourney money, something similar will happen With bball. Men’s only.

Well, the B1G and the SEC have 34 teams now. Can they get enough TV revenue to expand? Can they get 75% of their members to vote in additional members? Those are two big questions.

 

[Patman]

Minor leagues have been tried and the NBA G league is the best they can do. They’re a huge money loser.
Basketball and Football were both invented and popularized on the college level and huge sports before a pro league existed .
I understand the US is an anomaly but it’s somewhat due to the inclusive nature of US universities with distinct geographic identities.
These Universities bring huge fan bases which could never be duplicated on a minor league basis. These pro leagues have a free developmental league .
Name the best Triple A baseball team as some of them have been around for many years. The Toledo Mud Hens , or Providence
They have a following but nothing compared to a university with 30-50k students and hundreds of thousands of alumni ,plus other fans who feel pride in their state school.
The European model. may eventually work for a non revenue college. sport like soccer but it’s an incredible transition to that model in the two big revenue sports.

joke's on you, Pawtucket hasn't been in Minor League Baseball since covid. Moved them to worcester.

The euro sports model is not working in the US The reason the college model worked in the first place was because it was a subsidized model where people werent expected to show up and watch games.

 

[shizzle787]

From the article:

‘Little’ schools will be banished to the minor leagues, and ‘little’ may just mean your alma mater

The biggest losers of college football realignment this year were unquestionably Washington State and Oregon State. After years in the Pac-12, their conference imploded around them, and while everyone else found safe havens, they were stuck in the mid-tier Mountain West … with their days of national relevance likely behind them forever.

But if you feel bad for them, don’t get too comfortable: Your school could be next. An inevitable result of a two-conference, NFL-style system will be a consolidation of schools, which will mean, with geography no longer a determining factor, only the schools that get big TV ratings will get to play on the biggest stage. That’s immediate bad news for schools like Northwestern and Vanderbilt, small private schools that have benefitted from their history with their conferences, but if the number of schools in these conferences is whittled down to 48 or even 32 teams, the meat will be cut much closer to the bone.

Georgia, Alabama, Texas, Ohio State, Michigan, they’ll all be fine. But at 32 teams — which is the direction all this is going — well, does that leave room for, say, Missouri? Kentucky? Purdue? Illinois? Arizona State? Kansas? If your team isn’t a member of that 32, it will be as irrelevant as Washington State or Oregon State is now. If you didn’t stand up for them this time, who will stand up for you then?

Nobody is going to get banished: they are going to get priced out. There is a legal difference.

This is why I believe UConn will still be playing 1-A football and major college basketball when all is said and done.

UL Monroe, SJSU, the MAC, etc. likely won’t be able to afford paying athletes.

 

[RSTuthill]

https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/06/opinions/college-football-playoff-championship-leitch/index.html

This article is just so spot on that it resonates loudly with we UConn faithful. He forgot to put UConn into the biggest loser group. But next June he can rectify that when it happens again after another BB natty of whatever gender. FB though is rapidly heading to a very ugly place, however.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Minor leagues have been tried and the NBA G league is the best they can do. They’re a huge money loser.
Basketball and Football were both invented and popularized on the college level and huge sports before a pro league existed .
I understand the US is an anomaly but it’s somewhat due to the inclusive nature of US universities with distinct geographic identities.
These Universities bring huge fan bases which could never be duplicated on a minor league basis. These pro leagues have a free developmental league .
Name the best Triple A baseball team as some of them have been around for many years. The Toledo Mud Hens , or Providence
They have a following but nothing compared to a university with 30-50k students and hundreds of thousands of alumni ,plus other fans who feel pride in their state school.
The European model. may eventually work for a non revenue college. sport like soccer but it’s an incredible transition to that model in the two big revenue sports.

So you are saying that the NBA and NFL can't do a minor league successfully, but the P2 will once they cut out 90% of the current D1 basketball and 70% of the current D1 football schools?

Will you become an Alabama fan after they ban UConn from competition?

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Nobody is going to get banished: they are going to get priced out. There is a legal difference.

This is why I believe UConn will still be playing 1-A football and major college basketball when all is said and done.

UL Monroe, SJSU, the MAC, etc. likely won’t be able to afford paying athletes.

I would add that no one has thought through the implications on youth interest in the sport if the number of scholarship spots available drops by some huge percentage? How many parents are going to invest thousands of dollars in football and basketball over years when there are only 30 schools playing at the highest level in both sports? And what happens to fan interest when tens of thousands of families check out of sports much younger?

 

[John]

I would add that no one has thought through the implications on youth interest in the sport if the number of scholarship spots available drops by some huge percentage? How many parents are going to invest thousands of dollars in football and basketball over years when there are only 30 schools playing at the highest level in both sports? And what happens to fan interest when tens of thousands of families check out of sports much younger?

they already drop thousands on private club soccer which offers very little in terms of scholarship returns due to most schools recruiting heavily on the international circuit especially on the men's side. You have to understand that many parents drop thousands for the bragging rights that their kid is playing in college, not that they're looking for some massive scholarship windfall via the sport.

 

[Stinger92860]

And you think fans of all the schools excluded will simply pick one of the remaining schools to root for?

Not at all. It’s about the money and many folks will continue to bet and watch. If someone pays the 32 more money it will happen. You still need content which means the tier 2,3, etc. teams will continue to exist. Think English Football.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

they already drop thousands on private club soccer which offers very little in terms of scholarship returns due to most schools recruiting heavily on the international circuit especially on the men's side. You have to understand that many parents drop thousands for the bragging rights that their kid is playing in college, not that they're looking for some massive scholarship windfall via the sport.

As someone that has been around youth basketball for a while, I think I have a pretty good sense of why parents do it.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Not at all. It’s about the money and many folks will continue to bet and watch. If someone pays the 32 more money it will happen. You still need content which means the tier 2,3, etc. teams will continue to exist. Think English Football.

This is underpants gnomes level logic. The money for college sports comes because there are fans. When fans' schools get booted from competition, those fans are likely to follow.

 

[John]

As someone that has been around youth basketball for a while, I think I have a pretty good sense of why parents do it.

Your sense is way off then.

 

[Kolumbo]

they already drop thousands on private club soccer which offers very little in terms of scholarship returns due to most schools recruiting heavily on the international circuit especially on the men's side. You have to understand that many parents drop thousands for the bragging rights that their kid is playing in college, not that they're looking for some massive scholarship windfall via the sport.

These days kids often need to play private club soccer just to have a chance to play in high school. Some of these kids might get scholarships to private high schools or college so there is an incentive if they are developed early. But many are just playing so they have a chance to keep up until high school or they want to play with their friends.

 

[CL82]

The college football’s ideal fan is no longer a crazed Auburn message board poster or the sort of guy who sets up his weekend tailgate sometime around Wednesday afternoon. It’s instead a bored, distracted, unaffiliated gambling aficionado who doesn’t really care about college football but will look up from his phone when the television is showing a game with a brand-name team he recognizes.

And that leads us to this...

 

[Blades]

From the article:

‘Little’ schools will be banished to the minor leagues, and ‘little’ may just mean your alma mater

The biggest losers of college football realignment this year were unquestionably Washington State and Oregon State. .But if you feel bad for them, don’t get too comfortable: Your school could be next.
If your team isn’t a member of that 32, it will be as irrelevant as Washington State or Oregon State is now. If you didn’t stand up for them this time, who will stand up for you then?

Yep it's looking like it's going to play out, exactly how the Amazon guy said in this article 5+ years ago, I posted before, regarding ......

"Again, back to my friend at Amazon. “We’re still seven or eight years away,” he said, “but if we had to restructure the landscape today, we would not start by negotiating with a conference. We don’t care about the SEC, Big 12 of Big 10 as a whole. In our opinion, those entities are not our focus. “Instead, we would want to identify 30 or 40 teams that command the biggest audience. That may be by reputation or location, but generally we all know that there are members in every one of these conferences that frankly don’t move the needle. “We would not want to pay for broadcast rights for a team with a fraction of the audience when we could use most of our available cash to tie down high profile teams.

(May 30, 2018) Conference re-alignment will come -
“Conference realignment will come,” he said (high ranking executive at Amazon), “but probably not in the way you’re thinking.”

 

[Rufus]

Bowl season winners and losers: It’s Michigan’s championship, but it’s the Big Ten’s world

<p>Michigan won the final national championship of the College Football Playoff’s four-team format, beating Washington 34-13 on Monday night in Houston. But the Big Ten won the era. Well, the…</p>

sports360az.com

 

[Rufus]

Hayes: Michigan’s title was Big Ten football at its best (and not always in a good way)

Congratulations to Michigan, which won it all by turning the national title game into, well, just about every other Big Ten game.

www.saturdaydownsouth.com

 

[WestCoastHusky]

Yep it's looking like it's going to play out, exactly how the Amazon guy said in this article 5+ years ago, I posted before, regarding ......

"Again, back to my friend at Amazon. “We’re still seven or eight years away,” he said, “but if we had to restructure the landscape today, we would not start by negotiating with a conference. We don’t care about the SEC, Big 12 of Big 10 as a whole. In our opinion, those entities are not our focus. “Instead, we would want to identify 30 or 40 teams that command the biggest audience. That may be by reputation or location, but generally we all know that there are members in every one of these conferences that frankly don’t move the needle. “We would not want to pay for broadcast rights for a team with a fraction of the audience when we could use most of our available cash to tie down high profile teams.

(May 30, 2018) Conference re-alignment will come -
“Conference realignment will come,” he said (high ranking executive at Amazon), “but probably not in the way you’re thinking.”

I said this years ago as well. Basically, it is fairly easy to see which team can attract eyeballs these days with streaming. All the top teams will eventually be Independents signing individual deals like ND and UConn for football based on their media worth. They will put together schedules with each other and some lower tier schools for the streaming. I just can't see media companies keep paying huge money for schools like Northwestern or RU just because they are associated with Ohio State or Michigan.

The ultimate result is each school will be paid based amount of eyeballs they attract. In many ways, what UConn is doing is a glimpse in the future with indy football and everything else in the Big East. College football by itself will be a separate sport with its own schedule etc while rest of the sports will be in a regional league to minimze travel etc.