Realignment Megathread (All The Moves)
- Thread starter ISUcyclones11
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Probably done by a brother of the Penn State guy who didn’t know how to get ahold of Matt Campbell.
Good read here on the continued absurdity of the ESPN deal with the CFP.
In addition to two first round games currently being sublicensed by ESPN to TNT, a semi-final game is being sublicensed to TNT for the 2026 CFP. CFP expansion by itself isn't going to fix things, either. Only media rights pooling, NFL-style bidding of rights, 7x10 rational realignment and a separate G5 playoff will truly fix things and best monetize not only CFP rights, but regular season rights as well:
In addition to two first round games currently being sublicensed by ESPN to TNT, a semi-final game is being sublicensed to TNT for the 2026 CFP. CFP expansion by itself isn't going to fix things, either. Only media rights pooling, NFL-style bidding of rights, 7x10 rational realignment and a separate G5 playoff will truly fix things and best monetize not only CFP rights, but regular season rights as well:
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Interesting
www.cnbc.com
CNBC's Official College Sports Valuations 2025: Top 75 athletic programs
The programs are worth a combined $51.22 billion, 13% more than the top 75 in last year's rankings.
www.cnbc.com
Is it? Seems like just a circle of what we already know. Big 10 and SEC media rights deals pay more which drive up value.Interesting
CNBC's Official College Sports Valuations 2025: Top 75 athletic programs
The programs are worth a combined $51.22 billion, 13% more than the top 75 in last year's rankings.
Trying to cozy up with ACC ADs and get some good PR for when he goes on the offensive to grab ACC teams.
I can't speak for the OP, but here's what I found moderately interesting:
ISU ranked 4th in Big XII (46th overall) behind Kansas (39th), OSU (41st), and Baylor (42nd).
Top 3 drops in ranking from 2024 are all Big XII teams: TTU (dropped 16 spots), Arizona (dropped 14 spots), and TCU (dropped 11 spots). Meanwhile the largest Big XII riser was Colorado (up 8, currently 1 spot behind ISU)
If a 60-team super league was created based on this (it won't be, but just for the sake of conversation), KSU (62nd), ASU (63rd), Cincy (68th), UCF (70th), and Houston (73rd) would all be on the outside looking in while 'Zona (55th), BYU (57th), WVU (58th), and UU (60th) all barely make the cut.
This list makes the Big XII look bad, even compared to the ACC... they have 7 teams (Clemson, Stanford, FSU, Miami, Duke, UNC, & Louisville) ahead of the Big XII's top team, and only 3 teams outside the top 60 (Wake Forest, SMU, & Cal). The average ACC school is ranked 43.5 compared to 55 for the Big XII.
*note: I didn't include ND in any ACC calculations, despite this article listing them as a conference member.
If this included NIL (not rev share), I bet the results would be interesting to see.
I know we don’t like it, but objectively the ACC has better perception than the XII. They never lost their “big brands” so they ride on Miami, Clemson, FSU, etc. even if on field performance has lacked.
The ACC also has a massive geographic advantage. There's just flat more people there.
Hard to believe that Stanford is 23rd. They don't have fans.Interesting
CNBC's Official College Sports Valuations 2025: Top 75 athletic programs
The programs are worth a combined $51.22 billion, 13% more than the top 75 in last year's rankings.
Interesting
CNBC's Official College Sports Valuations 2025: Top 75 athletic programs
The programs are worth a combined $51.22 billion, 13% more than the top 75 in last year's rankings.
The methodology is pretty basic and PFA, in my opinion. They take in a bunch of variables, sure, but the #1 most important is profit (or free cash flow if you prefer), and they absolutely have no idea what that number is. They also use revenue times 4, and then add for conference affiliation which is HIGHLY correlated with revenue as well. Then some other available data and "other factors".
TLDR on the below: the ratio of value to revenue is a pretty strong indicator of brand and/or number of fans and their engagement.
I suppose its not super lazy, as some that have been published. An interesting way to look at this is by their Value-to-Revenue ratio. That kind of shows the non-financial value, maybe the best way to capture brand value. So two colleges with same revenue, but one has lots of alumni and passionate fans, and another does not - you expect the former to be worth more. Looking at that top to bottom, it does feel like a good gage of "how passionate are their fans?" Here's top 20, which is basically 500% +/-:
Those are all schools where I would say "they have lots of passionate fans".
Looking at the bottom, it really drops off fast- but it unsurprisingly has Rutgers, Cal, and a bunch of small schools (including the 3 former AAC that joined the Big12).
A little surprised about ASU. But the rest all scream "does that school actually have fans?"
Also BYU is at 385% which makes no sense to me - they have super passionate fans, you could even say they are religious about it (I will see myself out!). I would have thought BYU would be higher, esp with ND at 481%.
Look at Big12, ISU is first in value-to-rev. IDK if that is right, but it makes me think they put recent football success (or attendance?) as one of those "other factors". Ahead of Tech seems odd, but maybe MBB or even WBB attendance is in there too.
From the article:
To compile the values of college athletic programs, CNBC consulted AthleticDirectorU, which has an expansive database of college athletic program financials and information. AthleticDirectorU’s publisher, Jason Belzer, has advised universities on NIL and private equity deals. Belzer is a venture partner for Sequence Equity, a private-capital firm that has pitched a plan to make the playoffs of the NCAA’s Division I Football Championship Subdivision, or FCS, a separate entity outside the purview of the NCAA.
CNBC’s list reflects the current enterprise value of each program, starting with a base revenue multiple of four for all institutions, and then adjusting the multiple for variables, including conference affiliation, estimated NIL spend, school subsidies, number of alumni and other factors that can catalyze revenue growth and profitability.
To determine the rankings, CNBC and Belzer incorporated the expertise of several people knowledgeable about athletic program valuations who asked not to be named in order to freely discuss details of the programs.
Lots of revenue from endowment and lots of sports.
But if you look at the value-to-revenue (see my megapost above) that places them 52nd, around Georgia Tech, Syracuse, Va Tech, TCU.
Really interesting analysis. Although this article is just being paraded around by the Arkansas and Rutgers of the world to chest thump about their conferences.
Rutgers needs to talk to Arizona State on how to get rid of debt, which is have the university cover/forgive it. Isn’t that what ASU did?
Or they could just go the Beth Goetz/Iowa AD route and just refuse to pay the debt
I think so.
But in Rutgers case, the tweet says they hit a record deficit, which means their annual deficit continues to increase, despite the increase in media revenue they receive through the Big10.
So...it begs the question "why does Rutgers even have athletics"! How does the school benefit by having an athletic department?
