Our chance of being invited to the B12 is 0 unless UT leaves.and OU remains we may have a chance. If both UT and OU leave the B12 will be relegated to the G6 and it’s tv contract will be about what the AAC will get.
The PAC needs to break out from the west coast / mountain time zones and have a presence in the Central time zone. Plan A is adding UT and whoever UT will allow to come. If UT does not come then they have to fall back to Plan B. We are high on their list for any permutation of plan B.
The ACC. I have never heard of any interest from the ACC, only the dreams of some for us to join a conference that puts us in a worse geographical position than WVU. Somehow I don’t see playing Wake Forest and Boston College as being huge draws. That being said, it would be better than what we have now.
The SEC : We have flirted with and by the SEC in the past but I think that A&M will have enough votes to keep us out. I believe that SEC is interested enough in OU that they will OSU if they have to.
The BIG: They are very very proud of the fact that they consider themselves to be an academic conference as well as an athletic conference. They have never ever ever offered a non AAU school.
Right now, I am only concerned with how good we can be in the AAC. I am enjoying the present; I will let the powers that be worry about things that may or may not happen in the future and very possibly beyond my life expectancy.
Has not the AAC been a very competitive conference for us? With only one FB championship and 0 Basketball championships, I would say it has. Our conference games have been exciting and we’ve had some real barn burners. Were we in a P5 it would be the same except maybe against some bigger names. I have learned to be happy with what I get and not worry about what might have been. It makes life more pleasant.
I think there is a level of diminishing returns to the tv money that will have to start coming into play soon if the college football industry is to have a long term future. We’re still below that threshold, but the five contract conferences are well above it.
What I mean is that a lot of the money those schools get goes to waste rather than increased competitiveness, beyond a point. Obviously AAC schools are regularly capable of winning multiple games against contract schools. Further, the level required for debt servicing on stadiums is far below that annual revenue. They’re not paying people to attend games (far from it!). They don’t have more athletic scholarships than we have. So they have to dump that money somehow.
Some of them pay a lot for coaches, but that doesn’t account for all of the money. Most are still in the red, so they’re not saving or investing athletic (tv) revenue. Their uniforms and gear aren’t that much fancier than ours. Most of them have larger donor rolls. So somewhere they’re spending tons of cash. There are stories of closets full of stickers to be given away, overpaying for logo spangled backdrops for events and media rooms. Point is, there’s a lot of waste.
One day, with cable revenues teetering, the tv folks are going to realize that the arms race isn’t worth it. Our goal should be to highlight the fact that the AAC is just below the perfect level of investment, and the contract conferences are far above it, and the easiest route would be to equalize all conferences around the 15m per year per school mark. The competitive schools are competitive, the others are not, and the extra 40 million some of then get is not the difference.
But I would prefer PAC 12, because I live near Seattle so most games would be easy trips.
An interesting point to think about is what is happening with Comcast and the B1G contract where they are not offering if a school is not in that State. I would suspect the other carriers are watching and considering the same. If this is the case, it will cause Conferences to look at new States to expand. This is why the PAC, B1G, and ACC could be looking for schools in Texas during the next round.
I suspect we will see Texas in one of three places in the near future:
Big 12 with a revised financial structure and including Oklahoma.
B1G and probably with Oklahoma even though they are not AAU.
ACC as part of a deal similar as Notre Dame or Notre Dame and Texas rolled into the ACC.
PAC I doubt Texas would consider. They have passed on the PAC twice because of the time difference. Also, unless something changes the money will be better in the other choices.
I do not see any opportunities for us until we know where Texas is heading. Then I think we could be an option on any of the above that Texas does not accept. And I base that today on how the Carriers are starting to act. If what Comcast is doing becomes the norm, conferences are going to want to include a school from Texas in their conference because of the size and increasing population of the State.
One thing I can say with some confidence. There are no absolutes. The only constant is “change”. I am amused sometimes by people here who talk in absolutes.
I especially liked the last paragraph. Some major shade thrown at the PAC by espn
There was also a prickly situation last season between Washington and its largest media partner. After Huskies coach Chris Petersen complained about the lateness of kickoffs, ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit said UW “should be thanking” the network for airing its games. During an ESPN broadcast later that night, three actual cupcakes were lined up on the field as a method of illustrating the Huskies nonconference opponents last season (Rutgers, Montana, Fresno State).
We complain about 11am kickoffs in August but ESPN could say the same that we are lucky they are even televising us. However, if it’s between us and some of the other schools in our conference I bet we get better ratings.
One would be if the college football playoff system gets expanded. That could be bad news for KU, he argues. Sperber believes some of the Power 5 conferences are choosing to have a large number of members because only conferences of a certain size can have a conference championship game for football. Those games generate millions in revenues for a conference. But if the college football playoffs grow to 12 or 16 teams, which some have suggested, that may make the conference championship games less lucrative or feasible. If so, the need to have large conferences would be less.
The second trend is if television networks decide to change their models. Right now they deal with conferences, who then split the money fairly equally among their members. But Sperber thinks it is possible television companies may want to start dealing with schools directly. Why pay Kansas big-time football money when it struggles to beat mid-major teams and consistently produces poor TV ratings?
“Five years ago, I would have said, ‘no, KU will always be in big time college football, no matter what,’” Sperber said. “I’m not so sure anymore.”
If TV companies start dealing directly with schools, that will be the kiss of death to CFB as we know it. We’ve seen how destructive the LHN has been to that conference (B12) and the TV company (ESPN). At what point does the NCAA intervene? Oh wait, I know the answer to that one
Chancellor basically said Beaty was safe for this year, but made it sound like this will probably be it. Couple of Coogs on that staff (Kenny Perry and Justin Johnson) so I feel for them a bit.
The message I got from this is that they are worried about what happens when the B12 collapses and that they don’t think their “blue blood” basketball program is enough to stay in a power conference. They are bringing in a new AD now so that he can get settled in before they fire Beaty in December.
