What have we learned in this first year of the 12-team college football playoff?
A. The current media power broker structure is geared and biased toward the SEC and B1G. A clear planned polarization of college football is underway
B. ESPN is not the ACC’s or Miami’s friend. ESPN gives the SEC more favorable time slots and the coverage on their website is mysteriously missing ANY Miami content. If you don’t believe it, just count the number of positive media touches (articles, video highlights, etc) on the website on Saturdays.
C. The ACC is trapped in court and the ESPN squeeze the media rights agreement. It’s all about money. The ACC schools are struggling to stay with the Power Two in an arms race. Northwestern just announced the construction of a new $850M Ryan Field. We’ll never see that at any ACC school in our lifetime. B1G and SEC are projected to receive $60-70M per school per year, while the ACC schools will average $45M. The Big-12 and ACC have no chance in this arms race.
In February, ESPN must decide if it wants to execute an extension with the ACC for their under valued media rights deal through 2036. If ESPN media conglomerate exercises their option, and we expect it to do so, it will essentially create a second tier of NCAA college football, a division II of sorts. The ACC, Big-12, AAC, Mountain West and PAC will be eliminated from the top tier of NCAA football.
If the "powers to be" push the Power Two, the NCAA will cease to be the definitive voice of college athletics. Don’t be surprise to see a palace revolt among conference schools resulting in the breakup of the NCAA.
At that point, it would not be surprising to see schools from multiple conferences (Big12, ACC, PAC-12, Mountain West and American Athletic Conference) form a new association of 44 schools.
Such a lineup of schools could be organized geographically, thus eliminating the terrible travel issues in the NCAA.
That would be novel, something for the student-athlete!?!
A new association might be organized into four divisions with eleven (11) schools each division. Each division would play a 10-game schedule. The four division champions would participate in a playoff to determine a national champion. A championship determined on the playing field.
No media polls! No selection committee! No network bias!
Again, a novel and bold idea.
Let’s take a look at a potential new association.
EAST: Notre Dame, Pittsburgh, UConn, Boston College, Navy, Army, West Virginia, Cincinnati, Louisville, Virginia Tech, Virginia
SOUTH: Clemson, Duke, North Carolina, NC State, FSU, Georgia Tech, Tulane, Miami, Memphis, UCF, USF
SOUTHWEST: Baylor, Houston, TCU, SMU, Texas Tech, Oklahoma State, Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State, Colorado, Air Force
WEST: Arizona State, Arizona, BYU, Utah, California, Stanford Washington State, Oregon State, UNLV, San Diego State, Boise State
With 44 schools, the new association could negotiate a new media rights deal (can we say NBC/Peacock?)
Finally, the new association could run their own championship tournaments, with a playoff of the four division champions to determine, on the playing field, their own national champion.
It would take bold leadership.
Something to think about…
GO CANES!
Comentários