Now I’m going to lay out the case for why Jay and I may well be wrong.

If the WAC survives it will be because they add two or three FCS programs. With the loss of Boise State, Fresno State, and Nevada the WAC is weak and adding two or more FCS makes the league weaker. With the planned departure dates of those schools, the WAC has to have schools still in transition playing a season in the league despite not formally being FBS.

Let the WAC live and you are assured that when a writer names the worst conference it won’t be the Sun Belt.

The NCAA is adding another play-in game for the NCAA Tournament. Kill the WAC and a team that would have missed the play-in now ends up there because there is one less conference.

As I’ve argued many times before, don’t make plans based on the BCS. There is no assurance there will be a BCS in 2014 and no assurance that if there is that the revenue sharing will be the same.  If there is a BCS and the revenue share remains the same, the WAC is playing for 5th place money and the Sun Belt is playing for 3rd or 2nd place money.

There are five non-AQ leagues. Two have a conference title game and neither is financially lucrative. The MAC title game in 2008 knocked Ball State out of possible BCS contention. Expanding to 12 places a possible BCS buster at risk of missing the BCS or in the future knocking your best team out of the playoffs.

Killing the WAC doesn’t automatically guarantee improved TV revenue or exposure but ESPN is going to drop WAC payments dramatically now. Why bother adding La.Tech and NMSU when you can grab much of that revenue by being willing to offer a number of 8 pm Central games on Friday night? No point sharing boosted revenue if there is no need.

A conference works best when it is like-minded institutions. We know from past history La.Tech has never done anything that wasn’t in its best 20 minutes from now interest with little thought for the future. They’ve screwed up bowl deals to the detriment of their WAC brothers. A few years ago I asked former South Alabama athletic director Joe Gottfried about a Tech return. He told me that he had never worked with more difficult people and that they were determined to block any plan or program for conference improvement that required spending money or raising standards. A former ASU AD gave me the word of Tech’s departure before the news broke. I asked his opinion. “The only bad thing is they are happy. I’ve never worked with people so hard to deal with.” While Tech has changed AD’s since then, they are still under the same president. You don’t want to lock your indefinited future to a school that does not want to be in the league and has a track record from the Sun Belt to WAC of being impossible to work with.

Travel is an issue. For NMSU, its not a big deal. La.Tech is their second closest WAC opponent and UNT is closer than any WAC school. The problem is the Sun Belt schools have to go there. Right now we have an outlier situation in the east but the proximity of FIU and FAU to each other helps that. NMSU has no such relief. Adding them raises our cost of doing business. Similar to the Denver trip in cost but it involves more sports.

As we know Denver is looking to leave. A viable WAC, means a likely home for them. Take away their auto bid by taking a team away and its no longer viable. Denver is a great member but the trip is hard and expensive. If Denver finds a home, our cost of doing business goes down.

If the Sun Belt can make similar or even better money without expanding and improve reputation without the hassle of hard to deal with members why consider it?

UPDATE

An added reason. Kill the WAC and you can be nearly assured that San Jose State drops football or drops to FCS and Idaho will be forced to FCS as well. Politically not an example you want out there. Schools that aren’t in the elite and favored by the media face periodic attack suggesting dropping football or dropping a level from the media or faculty during rough times. You don’t want examples out there of schools that have actually done it in recent times for them to cite as models.

The WAC holds the world pipe dream record. There is a difference between setting goals and dreaming of things you cannot achieve.

The WAC in the past few years has made a public play to add Houston and Tulane and that ended with Tulsa, SMU, and Rice joining CUSA. Then when another CUSA opening happens, CUSA looks far west and takes UTEP as well. That was followed by a public declaration that they would add North Texas which was rebuffed and then they failed to punish UNT by taking Louisiana Lafayette when the Cajuns said no. Most recently the WAC was poised to add BYU as a non-football member and was reported to have invited UNLV and San Diego State with the result being neither joins and Fresno State and Nevada leave.

Since 1999, sixteen teams have quit the WAC. Our former conference mates from Louisiana Tech left to join the WAC because of its prestige. That ten team circuit lost Tulsa, SMU, Rice, and UTEP. So they then added our former conference mates Idaho, Utah State, and New Mexico State. Now Fresno State, Boise State and Nevada are leaving. In the case of La.Tech, seven of the schools that made up the 10 team circuit are gone. Only Hawaii and San Jose State remain of the conference they joined.

George Costanza’s it’s not you, it’s me, line doesn’t work for the WAC. Hawaii, San Jose State, La.Tech and now Idaho, Utah State, and New Mexico State need to understand that when it comes to their fellow western schools, “It’s not me, it’s you.”

In the old Big West, Fresno abandoned most of those same schools to join the WAC. Then the Big West was abandoned by SJSU and UNLV, then by Nevada, then by Boise, then there was no Big West. The WAC has watched first 8 core members go off the MWC, then Boise, then Nevada and Fresno State. With the exception of SJSU, same group pushing away from the same schools as before (with Hawaii and La.Tech added).

The WAC is teetering between life and death. Adding two FCS quickly has been done before, the Sun Belt did it to survive. Back then CUSA had a chance to step in and kill the Sun Belt by taking a Sun Belt team or two and passed. The league has lived and since 2005 has started narrowing the difference in the leagues. In hindsight probably a tactical mistake by CUSA.

Right now the Sun Belt has a chance to invite two WAC teams and finish the league off. Adding four football playing members out of FCS is a major stretch. Time to get the job done. The Sun Belt can add two, pick up an added bowl (maybe two though none other than the New Mexico Bowl are appealing) and the non-AQ money in the BCS can be split four ways rather than five.

The WAC right now is probably still scrambling to find a way to survive, maybe they pull it off but the league is damaged for years to come. It’s time for everyone to face reality and bring it to an end.

Most of us keep our frustration under wraps but you see it come out from time to time.

Want to see an excitement frenzy? Let ASU or UALR fans learn that one of their coaches or their AD will be on one of the local sports radio shows. It’s a rare enough event that it causes excitement, then frustration as the talk veers off topic on the show. Just recently there was excitement from Troy fans that Coach Blakeney would be on the Paul Finebaum radio show. Of course once it happened that frustration set in.

I’ve seen the same things over and over at every Sun Belt message board. Fans are so trained to be beat-down that they actually appreciate it when a scrap is thrown their way.

The traditional media explains that they have to cover the bigger college or the pro team because they get more interest. I understand that. That makes perfect sense.

What I don’t understand and what doesn’t make sense is that when the other guy puts four times as many people in the stands he doesn’t get four times the coverage. Even if you figure there are casual fans not attending and it should be more like 6X or 8X the coverage, the numbers usually don’t match-up. The most favored team doesn’t get 4X, 6X, or 8X the coverage, they get more than that. Don’t believe me buy your newspaper for two weeks once the season starts. Get out a ruler and count the number of column inches (ie. number of inches of type times the number of columns the story or photo covers) for the popular school and the number for your Sun Belt school and compare the difference. I’ll bet it won’t reflect the ratio between the big boy’s attendance and the Sun Belt attendance or even their attendance doubled vs. the Sun Belt school’s attendance. DVR the TV newscast of a station of a station for two weeks. Get out the stopwatch and figure out how much time the other gets vs. the Sun Belt. Be quick on the stopwatch though because “In Jonesboro, Arkansas State and Steve Roberts held on for a 24-21 win” doesn’t take long to say. Bet the findings are similar to the newspaper analysis.

None of that takes into account the tone of coverage. Arkansas State once got hammered in the Democrat-Gazette for its athletic fee. A few years later people were touting Central Arkansas as the new rising star in the state and there was plenty of talk of them passing by Arkansas State. No one cared that they were charging a larger athletic fee while offering fewer sports at the FCS level. Well… no one cared until their president suggested that local business ought to put up purple signs and flags instead of Razorback red ones on Saturdays. Suddenly the newspaper found all sorts of irregularities in how athletics were funded there and the now former president is being looked at by the FBI over his compensation while he was there.

This site and The Den exist because of the need for alternate coverage. While I’ve tried to find people who would volunteer to help keep it updated but the glory of BleacherReport or lack of desire has kept this from being a true fan alternative to traditional media. I intend to keep on slugging though.

While we are constantly dismissed as whiney crybabies because we’d like something remotely approaching fairness in coverage, you rarely get an admission from the insiders about what is going on. That changed with this blog post, don’t bother going to the original, its been deleted.

Love to hear your feedback in the comments.

It’s not the solution most sports columnists want.

It is a solution that is realistic.

Right now the BCS is built around four games, with an additional rotating game that pits 1-2.

History is huge in the format. The Rose gets preference for Big 10 vs. Pac-10, Sugar gets preference for SEC. The Orange has replaced the old Big 8 with the more local ACC, the Fiesta has the Big XII. Then we start plugging in the Big East, the highest rated “non-AQ” rated 12 or better, Notre Dame under certain circumstances and the at-large.

The system has a number of weaknesses. All the AQ’s are paid equally despite not bringing equal value. Second teams from a league are grossly underpaid. The non-AQ have to jump through added hoops to get in. While the money is badly needed, the non-AQ get paid to not play. Last year the three non-AQ took home around $2 million each to not play.

The problem with tradition

If you are director of the Sugar Bowl how happy are you that your traditional host, the SEC champion did not appear once in the game in the last contract cycle (2006-09 seasons)? The Fiesta missed its preferred partner twice and hosted the WAC champ twice. In the last six years Fiesta has hosted the WAC and MWC champs a combined four times and the Big XII champ three times. The Rose missed the Big 10 champ twice in the past four years.

The games are paying a premium for hosts that just aren’t coming to the game.

Plus One

The SEC has past advocated for Plus One. While it is a departure from tradition, Plus One allows bowls to be assured they get what they contract for. After the game you move on to the title game with the two schools rated the highest after the bowls. The BCS games become much more valuable because 3 to 6 games could impact who advances as opposed to none of the four now.

Timing isn’t that big of an issue. Play them all on or before January 1 and the championship a week plus a day or two later. For example in January 2015, New Year’s Day is a Thursday and the title game can be January 9 or 10, either Friday or Saturday. In 2016 play on Friday with the title game on the 9th, a Saturday. 2017 is problematic with New Year’s Day on Sunday and the game needing to be on the 9th a Monday or 10th a Tuesday unless the bowls reverse tradition and instead of playing on Jan 2, play on New Year’s Eve, a Saturday. 2018 falls on a Monday and the championship can be played on Tuesday or Wednesday. That handles the issue of preventing football from being a two-semester sport.

New Format For The Games

To respect tradtion, the Rose remains Big 10 v. Pac-10. Sugar continues to host SEC champ. Orange continues to host ACC champ. But we need more games involved for the new format. We open up the doors to bidding for the Big XII and MWC. Odds are no one wants both and neither the Sugar nor Orange find the funds to lock either in to play their contracted teams. The Fiesta and Cotton are likely the only two capable of bidding enough to be in this round. For argument sake, let’s say Cotton gets the Big XII moving closer to its roots and tradition while Fiesta gets the MWC, a league they’ve had good success with.

So now we have five games locked in and 6 of the 11 conference champs locked in. In a world where Boise is now in the MWC, the WAC, MAC, and Sun Belt all look rather alike with C-USA standing a bit ahead. We need another BCS game. I throw in Liberty because they are already tied to C-USA. The Liberty becomes the sixth BCS game pitting  its choice of the champion of C-USA, Sun Belt, MAC, and WAC. To keep it from being stale and to provide flexibility yet assuring best match-up, Liberty picks from a pool of the three highest rated remaining champs. Another bowl takes the two remaining teams.  Likely candidates, New Mexico because its geographic location makes it basically as inaccessible for all. GMAC which already pits Sun Belt and MAC would be another target.

Now instead of paying about $2 million to teams to NOT play, that money is added to the payout of the new games. Liberty currently pays a bit over a million so with all the new BCS funding and presumably a stronger BCS contract for Plus One, you are looking at maybe $4 million per team there and $3 million per team at the new game.

Filling the Field

The first part is easy.

Rose: Big 10 v. Pac-10

Sugar: SEC v. at-large

Orange: ACC v. at-large

Cotton: Big XII v. at-large

Fiesta: MWC v. at-large

The at-large pool is: Big East champion, and the next highest rated four teams not tied to one of those five bowl games as a champion (an extra goes into the pool to give bowls flexibility). The automatic teams in the Sugar, Cotton, Orange and Fiesta are ranked 1-4. The bowl with the highest rated team picks first, next highest picks second and so on.

Now Liberty picks two of the three highest rated teams from the champs of C-USA, WAC, MAC, and Sun Belt.

Then New Mexico or GMAC takes the remaining teams.

In the event the champion of CUSA, MAC, WAC, or Sun Belt is rated high enough to be in the at-large pool, they are available to be selected in the pool and a runner-up from CUSA, MAC, WAC, Sun Belt is available to replace them in the Liberty plus New Mexico (or GMAC) combo.

The Money & Other Matters

The money is fairly easily divided. Each bowl has a payout influenced by the bid of the bowl with a portion of the BCS championship game money added to it. MWC might not make what the Big XII makes but it is market influenced and the MWC gets a shot at playing for the title game. In the right year, even the Liberty could with the right breaks send a team on.

The championship game becomes like the Super Bowl or Final Four. Cities will submit their bid to host the event.  Tampa, Orlando, and Indianapolis may not be able to host one of the key games but they can get in the mix for the title game.

Get a BCS berth.

Improve their program.

Those were the two most common reasons cited.

The first is a gamble. The BCS is a series of four year contracts and each contract has seen significant changes. Revenue distribution has changed, ranking has changed, the number of games has changed, access for the “non-AQ” has changed, and a process to become AQ has changed to open the door to possible entry has been created. The BCS is an ever shifting target. If the SEC or Big 10 or Pac-10 think it no longer serves their interest, the BCS is as dead as the CFA, Bowl Coalition and Bowl Alliance. If the presidents approve of Plus One, the BCS as we know it may die or change in a major way. If the anti-trust investigation by the Department of Justice goes forward or the state of Utah pursues anti-trust the BCS changes or again or goes away. Making long-term decisions based on something that may no longer exist in 2014 isn’t solid thinking.

The other common theme is that changing the patch on a uniform creates a better program.

Utah isn’t heading to the Pac-10 because they have cool patches (the Pac-10 logo needs serious updating). They are going because it means ABC and ESPN Saturday telecasts and millions in new revenue.

If the Pac-10 had managed to get its full blown raid of the Big XII to work, the surviving Big 12 schools might have stuck together but it would no longer have been a league that distributed a minimum of $7.1 million per member. It would have produced revenue closer to the $3 million the MWC produced in buster seasons if that. No better than the MWC unless it raided that league heavily rather than CUSA, it would have been sharply diminished.

The WAC, while a recognized brand isn’t what it was. The league survived losing Arizona and Arizona State and produced a national championship in football nearly 30 years ago. Today only Hawaii remains of the line-up that saw the BYU championship team.

There seems to be a wide-spread assumption across many message boards that what league did before losing members will be replicated when the dynamic of the league changes. Louisville made it into the top 10 in football as a CUSA member but in the five seasons since no C-USA team has been ranked in the final football poll. Marshall made it to the top 10 in the MAC but since their departure only one team has been ranked in football, Central Michigan at #23 last year and they were unranked until beating Troy in overtime in the GMAC Bowl.

Success is much less about who you affiliate with and much more about what you do with the resources you can generate. Neither New Mexico State nor Utah State has won more than four football games in a season since joining the WAC. Idaho won 8 last year after winning a combined 9 in the first four WAC seasons.  Hiring the right coach, making the right facility investments, and getting local support is the real key.

I honestly believe there are few programs that have an eye on moving up that I couldn’t visit for a week and provide with a list of improvements to their scheduling practices, fund-raising and ticket sales efforts, facilities that could bring positive results that would be greater than what they would get by changing leagues and doing things the way they are now. The problem is it would likely involve replacing some popular people with strong ties to the program, changing the departmental culture, and making investments that the school may not be willing or able to make.

The important thing though is those changes would be permanent and have permanent benefits. The problem with hitching your star to who you are affiliated with is that you may not be affiliated with them in five years if something causes a neighboring league to seek members or a group of dissatisfied institutions choose to form a new league.

Memphis, East Carolina, Central Florida and Temple by all accounts would love to go to the Big East, but many if not all of the Big East football schools are keeping their eyes on the Big 10, ACC, and Big XII in the hope of moving. Fresno, Hawaii, and Nevada would love to be in the MWC but the schools in the MWC are eyeing the future of the Big XII hoping opportunity arises for them there. Every Sun Belt school has an eye on CUSA while CUSA schools are focused on possible opportunities in MWC, Big XII and Big East.

I often cite Utah State. When Utah and BYU left the Mountain States Conference to form the WAC in 1962, with Arizona, Arizona State, New Mexico and Wyoming. USU wanted to join the WAC to be back with their in-state rivals. The WAC picked 15 other schools before inviting USU, but by that time 15 schools had left and they were back with former Big West members plus Hawaii and Utah and BYU had been gone for seven years. Now they would like to join the MWC but Utah is already slated to leave that league while Boise is on the way to the MWC.

Without having a program of your own that can weather those storms, the fun of a new patch can be very short-lived.

As bad and as bleak as that future seemed the future that has been created by the decision to not destroy the Big XII may seem even less appealing when it arrives.

The University of Texas has made no bones about its interest in creating a new television network. Once Texas A&M balked at Pac-10 membership and the Pac-10 started exploring options without Oklahoma State, Texas pushed for the right to pursue its network and the Pac-10 balked. The soon to be left behind Big XII members were more than happy to oblige to avoid trying to find a way to slice $3 million or more out of their budget in the wake of a Texas departure.

They’ve set the stage for a new future.

If the Texas network is successful, the college athletic world we know today will look very different. Other schools with large and loyal followings will want to tap into this new revenue source.

Cable and satellite have capacity limits that AT&T and Verizon don’t face with their cable product. With cable and satellite, the signal for every channel streams into your home whether you subscribe to the channel or not. The IPTV system used by AT&T and Verizon is different. Their switches only send you the channels you are watching. They can add channels with ease.

More consumers are cutting cable and going to internet delivered television through Netflix, Hulu, and Apple. As that system becomes more robust  and can deliver even higher quality streams the old way of doing things makes less sense.

Texas or any other school can agree to rights fees for traditional delivery, for internet delivery (as ESPN does with ESPN3), go to a subscriber model of internet delivery or free ad supported model. Each day as the technology moves forward and more consumers become used to alternate delivery the room for more channels grows.

Having a healthy school network becomes more important than a great conference TV package as the model changes. When that revenue starts reaching higher dollar amounts sooner or later someone will ask the question, “Why are we in this conference TV package when we could make more on our own?”

In the 1970’s the idea that a conference rather than the NCAA would handle TV negotiations seemed a bit far-fetched. The clout of all schools was considered essential to getting a good deal. The arguments taken to the Supreme Court to break the NCAA TV monopoly in 1983 are identical to the arguments that Michigan, UCLA, or Alabama might use to break the television agreements of their leagues. If Alabama had its own network, the Tide might choose to only show their game with visiting Tennessee on that network, or their network might resell the rights to that one game to ABC, ESPN, or CBS.

Conferences no longer would be about negotiating great TV deals. They would exist to provide members with a stable schedule, compile conference statistics, name all-conference teams, stage championships, and assign officials. Schools with fat budgets enriched by conference TV contracts that they add little to, would see that money dry up.

The everyone for themself might be a decade or two away, but the drive toward it was just speeded up by the Big XII letting Texas move forward as a pioneer. If the effort fails, nothing lost, but if it is a financial success, we’ve seen the first shots in a new war. The Sun Belt fan may find it easier to see all the games of their favorite team but the money gap today will look small in that future.

Let me hear your thoughts in the comments.

As most know the Big 10 basically takes its distributable income and divides by the number of teams. It’s a neat clean system. For the members it makes sense, the league is the nation’s wealthiest so there is no conference in existence today that makes better financial sense for its members. The system reflects the league’s philosophy.

The Big XII on the other hand has a problem. While the elite of the league, Texas, Oklahoma, Texas A&M and formerly Nebraska are national programs capable of generating revenue at a level similar to the Big 10 and SEC, the bottom of the league draws much less interest. Their TV contract was older and not as inflated as the newer deals the SEC, Big 10, and ACC have. As a result the total revenue divided by the number of members lags the other two leagues.

The dilemma is how do you keep the elite schools in place? Simple solution. Unbalanced revenue sharing. The system works despite grumbling, like that of Nebraska. The Huskers never could grasp they made more money under the unbalanced system than a balanced one because they were so busy looking at what Texas and Oklahoma made. If not for unbalanced sharing, the Big XII would have fallen apart earlier because the top four are worth so much more somewhere else.

The unbalanced system fails when members fail to make an amount close to what they could in another league they would be willing to join. The Big XII hit that critical point and lost Nebraska and Colorado before the work was done to see what the future value could be with a new TV contract. Once the league was able to provide updated figures, they were able to stop the bleeding.

Now it seems unfair that some schools get more, but the simple fact is those schools could get that amount or more somewhere else. For Baylor and Kansas it may be frustrating but if the Big XII blew up they were looking at forming a new league, or joining the Big East, Mountain West, or Conference USA. None of those choices offered the ability to make what they haul in under the unbalanced Big XII deal. If those options did offer that sort of money, they would have joined and done their best to forget the Big XII and its headaches. Dignity and respect they might have obtained by refusing to agree to uneven sharing won’t make up a four to six million dollar budget shortfall that refusing would have created.

In contrast to the two, the Sun Belt offers basically equal sharing with a one-year bonus based on NCAA Tournament performance. The league’s revenue is such that any conference within reasonable distance offers greater money. A balanced share doesn’t mean much when little is at stake. That’s why earlier today in a message board discussion I advocated an unbalanced formula. The quick nutshell:

1. Each year the league takes one full NCAA unit so that there is always the revenue from six units to fund operations. Any extra units, the league takes 10% and the team earning the units takes 90%. Win two games and earn three units and you enrich your school by 90% of the value of two units and the league takes 10% of that and 100% of the first. Two schools make the tournament, the league takes 55% (100% of one unit and 10% of the other) and the two schools split what is left (45%). After the first round the league just takes 10%.

2. The league receives a distribution from the BCS. The BCS ranks the five non-AQ leagues 1 through 5. To reward success, if the league finishes above 5^th, take one-half the increased distribution and put it in a pool for distribution in equal shares to each school finishing above the median ranking of non-AQ schools.

3. When the next TV deal is done if it increases more than the rate of inflation over the current contract, take the amount of the increase above the inflation adjusted amount and put it in a pool. One share for each time a school appears on ESPN or ESPN2 in basketball and two shares for each football appearance.

4. Apply similar principles to any bowl profit for a major appearance that generates significant revenue.

This approach serves two purposes. First, it provides clear targets for members to strive toward to increase their revenue. Second, if a school is enjoying success, it potentially could reach a point where other league revenue may not be sufficient to entice them to leave.

Try the comment system and give your opinion.

The people covering these schools seem pretty baffled so this prediction probably goes poorly but here is my best guess with caveats.

Texas, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State are going to make a stab at saving the league. I think Texas A&M got their feelings hurt and looked at the SEC in a huff but the more they look the more they see it works and works very well for them. Aggies to the SEC. The other four to the Pac-10.

The Pac-10 has a slot to fill. Conventional wisdom, they take Utah. A terrible move for the Big XII defectors, the Utes negate a big element of what was going to make the Pac-10 work for them. Works nicely though for Arizona, Arizona State, and Colorado. Won’t be popular with Cal and Stanford. Texas, OU, Texas Tech and Oklahoma State don’t get a vote but they are going to lobby hard for Kansas. Among those who do get a vote, Arizona and Arizona State likely support Utah, Cal and Stanford likely support Kansas. The war is over the other six schools. Do they help their old rivals in Arizona or do they vote for dollars and academics.

Remember this, by all accounts, Pac-10 is going to start its own network, for it to work you need noon eastern time games. That’s 11 am for central time zone schools, 10 am Mountain and 9 am Pacific. Pick Utah and you have four Central time zone teams and Texas and Oklahoma won’t be playing the early game often, they’ll play the afternoon network game or a night game on ESPN. Oklahoma State and Texas Tech can’t carry the 11 am slot for a 14 week season. Kansas wins this point. When it comes to high viewership content, basketball has been a big winner for the Big 10 Network multiple games per week vs 11 am Central on Saturday in football. Kansas is a major national power. Kansas wins this point and thanks to what they bring to the table in basketball at least short-term they have a significant advantage in dollars brought to the table over Utah though I would expect the Utes to catch up.

If it is a pure business decision, Kansas gets the spot. If it is an academic decision Kansas is in the AAU, Utah is not and Kansas wins that battle as well. Utah gets the slot only if the Pac-10 wants to alleviate the burden on the Arizona schools. Illogic often rules but I think Kansas takes the slot.

So that is wrapped up. Next order of business. The SEC could go to 13 and stop but that creates a giant scheduling mess. They need a 14th. Two choices here. They can take a Big XII to clean up part of the mess but that screws up the divisions. The LOGICAL move is for Auburn to go east but you are looking at 6 division games and two crossover. A big problem emerges Bama can’t play both Tennessee and Auburn in crossover games every year. You can fix that by taking an ACC team adding one newcomer to each division. The question is who? Virginia Tech cashed every political chip it had to get in the ACC, that makes them unlikely. Clemson, Florida State, and Georgia Tech are in SEC states and likely not welcomed by their neighbors. North Carolina is the next best fit but they aren’t likely to leave Duke and probably can’t leave NC State. The SEC’s choices aren’t pretty here. If they raid the ACC I think they like Virginia Tech best but would have to settle for Clemson or Florida State. Assuming they are being truthful and are in the loop, SEC sources say there is no way they will raid the ACC.

That takes the focus back to the Big XII. Without a doubt, Texas or Oklahoma is their preference and likely neither is available. UT has disdain for SEC academics and OU has to know Texas isn’t going to schedule two big non-conference games and politically they can’t pick OU over Texas A&M. To keep the Red River Shootout they have to stay with Texas. That leaves Missouri. The Tigers aren’t going to be a favored pick. They would 10th in a 14 team SEC in attendance. Their overt courting of the Big 10 and subsequent rejection would leave doubt as to their loyalty. Then there is the matter of the divisions. In the east-west set-up some west school has to go east and it can’t be Auburn. That means Bama would have to go east and that really screws up the competitive balance. A better solution might be north-south placing Mizzou, Arkansas, Tennessee, Vandy, Kentucky, Alabama and Auburn in one division and TAMU, LSU, Ole Miss, Miss State, Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida in the south. For travel it sucks but it is the better option to maintain the most possible rivalries with one permanent rival and best balances power. If the SEC sources are right and the league doesn’t want to deal with the nightmare of scheduling 13, Missouri is it.

That leaves Baylor, Kansas State and Iowa State looking for homes. The Big East might be willing to take Kansas State and Iowa State but Baylor is likely out of luck. The MWC might take all three and pick up either Nevada or Fresno to round out their numbers but Baylor alone would be a harder sell. CUSA would take any combination of the schools and would likely add a Sun Belt eastern school to balance the sheet, unless they lose one team.

If I miss on Kansas to the Pac-10 or Mizzou to the SEC or both, then the remaining schools probably work with the Big East football schools to form a new league.

UPDATE 6/14/2010 8:10 am

Morning coffee sometimes helps you see things better. The rumor has swirled for some time that Fox is likely the partner to get the Pac-10 Network off the ground and they want to use that cozy relationship to get Pac-10 on Fox TV stations. ESPN is obviously throwing fat dollars at the SEC to get Texas A&M and Oklahoma since Texas is off the table to prevent losing everything in Texas and losing a major power like OU. They apparently won’t get OU.

There have been reports that SEC sources are saying they aren’t looking at any ACC school. The nature response is “Bull”. Several really attractive ACC programs out there.

To quote Deep Throat, “Follow the money”. The SEC will pay a premium for Texas A&M because ESPN is looking to lock-up key markets and inventory. They’ve already locked up the ACC with a new TV contract. ESPN isn’t going to bump an ACC team they are getting for X dollars under an existing long-term contract to the level they are paying for the SEC. The SEC would have to eat the difference, adding an ACC reduces the amount available per team even though that is offset by the premium for Texas A&M. ESPN can reduce what it pays the ACC but they will be adding a team that offsets part of the reduction and the ACC will argue part of the value is the championship game and ACC Tournament which aren’t as dependent on who is playing.

To get a premium, the SEC has to offer high value schools that ESPN doesn’t have under long-term contract. Missouri isn’t as valuable as Florida State, Clemson, or Virginia Tech in the overall picture, but to ESPN who has a long-term contract with the last three, Missouri is more valuable.

If the SEC truly passes on the ACC, it will be because ESPN made it worth their time to ignore schools who are a perfect fit in most every way except value to ESPN.

The realignment frenzy is at full throttle. The first step is to understand what is really in play. Hopefully this is handy primer that will help you and those friends you share it with get a grasp on what is really happening.

First toss off the stupid ideas of people who sit staring at maps crafting imaginary leagues and ideas of some grand plan to make everything even out. The idea of four mega leagues with 16 teams each is a sportswriter creation.

The FBS conferences are businesses in competition with each other. They are seeking the most lucrative post-season arrangements (within the framework permitted by the presidents) and the most lucrative multimedia rights.

Before Colorado started us off officially by joining the Pac-10, the primary wealth was concentrated in the hands of 66 schools for football and 73 for basketball in six conferences. Notre Dame a football independent is in one of the six leagues for all other sports. In the overall picture, the Big 10 and SEC stood a bit above the peers followed by ACC, Big XII, and Pac-10. At the bottom of the group you have the Big East.

TELEVISION

Television rights (now becoming multi-media rights) are the major driving force of their wealth. The reason for this is that media companies, Disney, CBS, NBC Universal, Fox, and Comcast (soon to be the owner of NBC) want to reach as much of the national audience as possible. We the members of that audience love a lot of college football so they show college football. Disney is the beast of this game with ABC and the ESPN family of networks holding some level of media rights for 10 of the 11 FBS leagues and by all reports their ESPN division is their biggest cash producer. Of particular interest is Saturday, the traditional day for college football when viewership for the product is highest. The major outlets almost exclusively reserve Saturday for the six conferences with automatic qualification to the BCS (the “AQ”). Why? Because that is the combination of schools that delivers the greatest portion of the national audience. To be dominant before realignment you needed those 66 schools.

Realignment boiled down to its basics consists of this. Moving institutions to other alignments so that you can achieve basically the same amount of the national audience with fewer schools. The value of televised sports is rising despite a soft advertising market in a bad economy because so many of us watch regular programs on a DVR and skip commercials, sports on the other hand we watch live meaning they are great for sponsors. In addition that rising value schools can get even more income if they share with fewer schools.

If every AQ school had equal value they would be worth 1.5% of the market. The truth as we all know is that some have more value than others. If you concentrate the higher value schools in a conference without adding lower value, the overall wealth of the league increases. Realignment is about removing high value programs from a league while leaving the low value behind.

A good indication of value is attendance. Schools drawing large crowds are likely to also have a lot of people watching their games on television. There were 21 schools in 2009 averaging 70,000 or more per game and only 7 more had an average of 60,000 or more. Pre-realignment 15 of those schools drawing 60,000 or more were in the SEC and Big 10. One of the 13 not in those leagues, Nebraska, has agreed to join the Big 10. It is expected that Texas and Oklahoma will soon announce they will join the Pac-10 which has three of the high attendance schools. As I write, Texas A&M is widely expected to join the SEC. If that happens, it means 22 of the best drawing schools will be concentrated in three leagues, the Big 10, SEC, and Pac-10.

That leaves six high attendance schools out. Notre Dame, coveted by the Big 10, Clemson, Florida State and Virginia Tech in the ACC, Missouri in the Big XII for now, and BYU in the MWC.
If Texas, Oklahoma and Texas A&M move as expected, the Big 10, SEC, and Pac-10 have everyone drawing 70,000+ except Notre Dame, Clemson and Florida State.

While TV markets aren’t the be all end all of the discussion since national audience is of high importance, consider this. Every Top 25 television market is well covered by the SEC, Pac-10, and Big 10 except: #1 New York, #7 Boston, #9 Washington, DC, #21 St. Louis, and #24 Charlotte. The first doesn’t have a major team in the market. The second and third on the list have teams within the market but they don’t draw very good crowds for football so they have less impact in the big picture. St. Louis while a Missouri market in college football, it has a significant Illinois presence and Charlotte doesn’t offer a program that is putting 60,000 in the stands. Football attendance in North Carolina is divided between two schools drawing a bit under 60,000 (UNC and NCState) and three drawing significantly less (Wake Forest, Duke, and East Carolina).
If Texas and Oklahoma join the Pac-10 and Texas A&M joins the SEC then those two conferences plus the Big 10 combined have near monopoly power over the domain of college football. Assuming the Pac-10 adds Utah (or Kansas) to replace Texas A&M in their plans and the SEC adds one more with Texas A&M, then with 42 schools (16 in Pac-10, 14 in the SEC and 12 in the Big 10) you have nearly the same market power as the 66 AQ schools. If Notre Dame joins the Big 10 with Rutgers or Missouri you’ve increased national reach with Notre Dame and picked off completely another Top 25 market (those 25 represent nearly half the national viewing audience). If you were to add Clemson and Florida State to the SEC as well, every school drawing 70,000+ is now in one of the three conferences but you don’t really need them.

If Texas, Oklahoma, and Texas A&M move as expected, those three conferences have near total control of the college football television market. If the Big 10 can add Notre Dame the game is over and everyone not in the Big 10, Pac-10 or SEC is locked into a much weaker league financially. The ACC with no changes remains financially relevant but they are on a different tier from the other three and no combination of Big East schools changes that.

THE BCS

The next issue writers get lost on is “BCS status”. The BCS isn’t big money to the SEC or Big 10. For those leagues, the BCS is less than 10% of their conference revenue. The current BCS contract expires after the 2013 season. The BCS has been a major headache for the schools with bad publicity, a Congressional inquiry, and possible Department of Justice action under anti-trust law.

That’s what’s funny about the MWC quest to get BCS status in 2012. It’s very likely that they will get only two seasons to enjoy it if they get over the hurdles.

If the presidents approve a “plus one” playoff there is no need for a BCS except to administer the championship game. Each conference just cuts its own deals for bowls then after the last bowl you run the polls again and the #1 and #2 team meet in the championship. Divide the money into two pools, one for participants and one to every FBS league based on power rating and you are done. Even if “plus one” isn’t adopted, you still don’t need the current BCS set-up. Each league agrees to make a team available if ranked #1 or #2 and all the other bowls are played under whatever contract the conferences come up with. You keep the double hosting model to rotate the championship game around. That eliminates the current BCS bowls being stuck with match-ups they don’t want and you share revenue as above. It is all very clean and neat and no more AQ conferences for Congress to ask you about. Want in the BCS? Finish first or second.

With BCS as we know it likely to die, ignore media reports that focus on what realignment does to BCS qualification. The conferences that are players are looking further down the road and you should too.

Next. Thoughts on who goes where.

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Jim Delany, the commissioner of the Big 10 looks like  a master of the game. When the Big 10 added Penn State, it was merely an independent joining a conference but as the other players joined the game it set off a series of events that led eventually to the demise of the Southwest Conference, the Big West, the Metro, and the short-lived Great Midwest. It also led to the creation of the Mountain West and the addition of football in the Sun Belt.

Delany seems poised to pull another block from the new tower. Nebraska. A minor move, the Big XII has 11 left and remains viable. Viable however doesn’t equal strong and by all accounts the Pac-10 and possibly the SEC are prepared to pull more blocked from the tower essentially ending the Big XII.

The Big XII nameplate might stick around but you have to wonder if Missouri, Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State, and Baylor might find it better to rebrand the league that emerges.

They are going to look toward the Big East. It’s easy to say just invite them to the Big East, but that option has problems. First, there are 8 members that don’t play football and while Mizzou, Kansas and K-State play good basketball, adding them upsets the delicate balance of the league. Second, you end up with a league that might have as many as 20 members for basketball, difficult to manage would be an understatement.

The logical move is for the remaining five or some mix of them to start their own conference and start raiding the Big East. Louisville and Cincinnati would be soft targets. Geography is less favorable but the other Big East football schools might be targets as well along with schools from CUSA and MWC.

A Big East split suddenly makes it easier for Notre Dame to consider conference membership. It gives the Big 10 a chance to save one or more Big East schools and invite them into the club without causing the Big East to collapse (at least no fingerprints at the scene).

By the time the dust settles, there is a new league where the Big XII once was it might or might not carry the name. There is no more Big East in football. Most likely the Sun Belt and CUSA names no longer exist as teams from both leagues have moved around and a new league replaces it.

The Big 10 will have once again triggered great turmoil, but it will have done it without ever pulling the piece that caused the tower to fall.