They took Rutgers simply because they took Jack for a media share for years and brought in huge dollars when the model was solely based on passive TV market money. It had nothing to do with athletics or academics. Rutgers and Maryland were added to cash in on NY and DC TV markets, and nothing more.
If the Pac 12 and ACC both implode I have a hard time believing that all three of the B1G, SEC and Big 12 are only at 20 teams.
The big hangup here is that ESPN has no incentive to break up the ACC. They have the last big brands on the East coast locked up till 2036. And thanks to the weirdness of ND's sudo membership in the ACC, ESPN is able to block ND joining the Big 10.
You cant get to the above the line stuff without most of the below the line stuff. Unless you are going to throw half the Big 12 out, or have half the Big 12 join the Pac now. Thats just not going to happen now.
Hard agree. I see 24 per conference as the landing spot more than 20. Though, that is with the idea being that 30-40 of those will break away down the road and leave the Vanderbilts and Northwesterns behind.
My take is at some point we go with option A what you say.. Or,
Idk… I just don’t see a religious school in the big 10. Could see them trying to poach Houston instead. And I dont really think they are that concerned with Texas markets.
If you really dig into that full list of schools, there's a pretty clear top 20 or so in terms of value from fan attendance, media market, alumni base, TV viewership, etc. combined. Starts to diminish fairly rapidly after that. There's not a huge difference between school #21 and #50. But after that, there's another big drop. If you end up with only 32 schools between the B1G and SEC, you are going to have most (but not all) of the big-time programs. If you get to 40 (20 per league), you could probably end up with all of the national brands but a huge number of schools traditionally considered "power programs" on the outside looking in. For Iowa State, we certainly have to hope that the number pushes higher than 40. And where the number used to be 65 P5 schools, now that is 69 and unfortunately, BYU is a bigger asset than we are. We've elevated at least 1 school that people will pick ahead of us.
2036. That is the final deadline for the ACC. It could fall apart sooner, but right now ESPN is happy to have that conference under a network friendly contract for another 14 years.
Oh, I would be completely down for that. The only problem is the greed at the tops of the Big 10 and SEC who won't want to split the pie any more than they absolutely have to. But that will result in teams that aren't used to losing seeing some rough years, because at the end of the day, somebody has to lose those games.
Put it this way I hope it goes option B, cuz I think that will be at least a bit of saving grace for College Athletics. But who knows when the money gets to this level, the power dynamic is off the charts. This is an all out power struggle now.
