Very good summary. The bulk of the eco system is under serious threat. Hopefully the likes of Iowa, Purdue, Northwestern, the two Arizona schools, Utah, Wake Forest, Pittsburgh, Boston College, North Carolina State, Virginia Tech and many others like them around the country see this is coming for them too. Are there enough enlightened people to save the eco system by coming up with something new and more stable? It's going to take some creativity, but something that preserves most of what we like about college football can be built. The game exploded when cable allowed more games to be televised and included more opportunities for exposure. With all that's going on in media, perhaps we are on the cusp of a similar advance forward.An undeniable law of physics when it comes to college football (or basically any form of competition) is that one team's success must come at the expense of another team. And this simple law of physics is the fatal flaw of the superconference.
The "blue blood" programs became blue bloods because they had a long history of success in their respective conferences. They achieved this long history of success because their conferences included weaker programs.
When you stack these blue blood programs into the same conference, the majority of them will no longer enjoy that degree of success. Their fans will become unhappy and their coaching staff will turn over. Of course, all these blue blood programs think they'll still be successful, but it's mathematically impossible.
Having many conferences stocked with programs of varying levels of success is vital to the ecosystem of college football. ESPN and the SEC have just destroyed this ecosystem because they no longer feel that $50+ million per year in TV revenue is satisfactory.
College football as we know it is about to die and greed will be the cause of death.
It was announced this week that Barstool Sports took over naming rights to the Arizona Bowl and will also stream the game. I know not everyone likes them, and I am not saying Barstool becomes a major media bidder but it shows how the sports media world is morphing and fragmenting. Perhaps a new media structure/alliance/entities can be built that allows athletic departments like ISU to maximize their potential to monetize their product. We could find out what our true market value is. Wouldn't it be nice to have a true media "partner"?
$EC and ESPN think the future is in consolidation and rolling up the major brands and marginalizing everybody else. They'll run their hype machine 24/7 telling us how great it is. Most of us know that product will be much less appealing than what we have now. Millions won't watch it.
I also don't think we are trapped in an either/or as it relates to staying in a "Power Conference" or being relegated to something like the AAC. As long as everyone seems willing to destroy things, it's time to re-think the whole idea of conferences. A better managed process with a centralized league office can put together interesting matchups year in and year out while preserving some historical rivalries. Getting rid of the useless NCAA can hasten this type of reorganization of the game.
There's a way forward that can save most of what we like about the game, but it's going to take cooperation and coordination against the blue blood bullies and current corporate media. I am hopeful the beginnings of thought around that design is already occurring somewhere even as the lawyers gear up for the rear guard battle to make sure we get what's ours out of the current deals.