That’s why I’m not with the whole Power 6 movement. It’s super forced. Mo matter how good any of our conference teams do, everyone will always view us as a G5.
IF UCF played GT and beat them they would have a moire legit argument. The bottom line is, regardless of designation, i.e. P5, or G6, all are D1 programs.
I think we need to go legal on this matter.
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I agree, this cartel needs to be broken up in the courts.
For the very first time i didnt feel like a G5 during michigan in march madness. I think perceptions are changing. Slowly, but surely. We just have to continue making tournaments and finals and eventually they wont be able to keep us out.
Side note- why not consider ourselves P6? wasnt SWC a power conference and now look where its at. I think considering ourselves top enough to compete and win is a P6 conference mentality. Who else can compete with blue bloods UTEP? Marshall? not knocking programs down but we wont even schedule G5 anymore.
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Someone already pointed out that one of the accepted rankings did have UCF #1. I don’t know the name.
UWhat would be legal case? How are the football playoffs any different from the NCAA tournament, except that the tournament takes more teams?
ESPN is under no legal obligation to give G5 conferences the same kind of monetary deals it’s giving P5 conferences.
I am not sure you can call P5 a cartel, sure they are doing everything they can to maximize heir revenues, but they aren’t deliberately keeping G5 from signing its own TV deals. I suppose the fact that P5 limit/control membership could be considered illegal.
Is it really illegal for universities to form conferences? How is an athletic conference different from the CIC or the AAU?
Also I think the case against the playoff selection committee would be quite weak. UCF playing 1 less game would be all the defense they would need.
Colley’s Bias Free Matrix Rankings. It was a BCS poll and is recognized by the NCAA
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Can it be a fair ranking when UCF played 1 less regular season game than the 4 playoff teams? That, I think is what collapses the entire case.
I would think that the suit would be for fraud or false advertising. the ESPN Invitational is marketed as “National Championship Playoffs” when in actuality it is an invitational that includes Alabama and three other teams. In no way, shape, or form does this resemble a national championship. College football was better off when the polls would declare a national champion and if they did not agree we could have 2 or 3 champions.
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Such a lawsuit, even if lost by the NCAA will not solve anything.
ESPN has been trying to create a 2 tiered system, tier 1 P5, tier 2 G5. UCF proclaiming itself national champion plays into.
UCF played the same number of pre playoff games as Bama. Can it be a fair ranking when Bama played 1 less pre playoff game than the other 3 participants?
There is no such thing as P5.
There is no such thing as G5.
There has never been a legitimate National Champion at the FBS level.
There is such a thing as FBS.
There is such a thing as a Conference Champion.
The difference between basketball and football playoffs is that every conference champion gets to play for the title in basketball. In football, the season is essentially over after the conference champion is crowned. The bowl games are meaningless scrimmages that offer no value outside of the scrimmage itself.
The idea that the larger conferences would LOSE money in a 16 team playoff is idiotic.
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Not the same. UCF played its conference CG yes, and Alabama didn’t, but UCF path to to its CG was easier because it played 1 less regular season game than everyone else. In the regular season Alabama played 1 more game than UCF did.
Ideally the playoffs would require that all participants have won their respective conferences, but no one wants to deprive the SEC of the right to field 2 teams. It’s the most ridiculous system, when a team that didn’t even win its own division in a conference, can be positioned to win the national championship.
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I don’t understand why this isn’t just an automatic disqualifier. I would even go so far as to say if you don’t win your conference, you are DQ’d from the playoff. At least until it’s expanded to at least 8 teams. I would rather see a 2 loss conference champ than a 1 loss non-conference champ get that shot. But maybe that’s just me.
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The NCAA tournament is actually put on by the NCAA and crowns an NCAA recognized basketball .
The football playoff is a deal put together by ESPN that is not sanctioned by the NCAA. The NCAA does not officially crown a national champion in football.
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Fair enough. So the NCAA could potentially have a case to prevent the ESPN sponsored playoffs winner from being called NCAA National Champion. Of course UCF faces the same problem, they can’t call themselves NCAA national champions. It will have to be like the old pre-BCS system of AP or UPI national champions.
Of course I am not a lawyer, so I don’t understand the legal basis, but what would give G5 members a strong case to take P5 and ESPN to court.
As a businessman, I see exclusive trade organizations and business partnerships taking place all the time. My own company has exclusive deals with several other companies, which means we trade only with each other for products we produce, even if an outside supplier can offer the same product cheaper, of course this does not happen very often. The partnerships even extend to create long term exclusive contracts with customers.
Every few years these exclusive partnerships are re-examined and can be renewed or modified.
The way I see it, P5 members have come together to form partnerships to sell a product to media companies. The media companies pay P5 more then they pay G5. There is no obligation to pay everyone the same.
There maybe be legal nuances I am not aware of, but as much as I want to see UH in a P5, I can’t see how legal action (or threat there of) can (or is even the right way) to accomplish that.
And say G5 members were able to win their lawsuit against the P5 and media companies, wha then? The P5 (probably under some innocuous sounding new name), will just band together with the media players, and find new ways to exclude anyone they don’t want to partner with.
Any insights from someone with a legal background would be great!
I’m an attorney, but I’m certainly no collusion expert and the only opinions offered here are really more just thinking out loud. The problem I have with all of this is P5 and G5 are both governed by the same competition rules proffered by the NCAA, but media contracts allow P5s an advantage that cannot possibly be replicated by G5s. While no one can outright pay players (although we all know it’s happening anyway), certain programs are able to generate so much revenue that they can lure players to their program indirectly with money, which makes the NCAA rules almost meaningless. My understanding of the entire point of NCAA competition rules is to create a level playing field and promote the “student” part of the term “student athlete”. As long as P5s are able to enter into lucrative TV contracts and actively exclude G5s, there can never be a level playing field and the so-called promotion of academics is laughable at best. You can’t make all programs accountable to the same competition rules, then give a certain segment of those programs an insanely unfair advantage. I don’t know if there is an actual legal claim there, but the rules of common sense and decency should certainly apply. If you’re going to allow these big TV contracts, then the only way to level the playing field is for the NCAA to implement a cap on how much TV revenue can be funneled into athletic departments. Otherwise, you either have to go full on capitalism and remove the rules, or full on socialism and bring everyone down to a common denominator.
I honestly think it’s time for the NCAA to just go away. It no longer serves any kind of useful purpose. As long as kids like Rob Gray are serving 1 game suspensions for accepting a $5 entry fee into a church rec league during the summer while programs like UNC are able to create fake classes for their athletes to remain academically eligible to play, what’s the point?
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It won’t be a g5 team or group that sues. The issue is they are making false claims about the so called playoff and championship. A consumer group is going to have to file a complaint with the FTC for false advertising and possibly file a federal lawsuit if the FTC turns them down.
Thanks for your legal take. Basically what you are proposing for a return to the old CFA days when the NCAA collected and distributed all revenues and decided who would be on TV. The result was that on a day when UT was playing OU, and Georgia was playing Alabama, the NCAA approved CFA “game of the week”, on ABC was Hofstra v The Citadel!
The CFA put severe restrictions on how many games a program could have on national or even regional TV. But at least all CFA members got similar payouts from the NCAA. So it’s now surprise that the schools like OU, UGA, UT, Alabama etc were so much against such an arrangement.
There were still haves and have nots, but depended on wealthy alumni support, merchandise sales, Home games ticket sales etc, not on massive TV contracts.
The Big schools and the networks hated arrangement. OU and UGA took the NCAA to court for anti-trust violations and won! (NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma - Wikipedia).
At least for college football, the NCAA has become more and more irrelevant with the passing of time. Now the NCAA is a toothless tiger as far as any rules enforcement is concerned, it can make loud growls, and that’s about all it can do, unless the ‘violator’ is a small program that does not have the backing of the networks, and a P5 conference.
I think it’s only a matter of time before the P5 break away completely from the NCAA. No way the NCAA will risk hastening that day by daring to cap how much revenue a school can put back into athletics. So who will put the cap? Universities voluntarily? Conferences? I don’t think so! Congress? I hope not? Their involvement may seemingly solve one problem, and end up creating 6 other problems!
If the conferences had any moral qualms, Baylor and Penn State would have been kicked out, instead of getting slaps on the wrists. If the NCAA had a backbone, Louisville and UNC would be facing severe penalties, maybe even the death penalty!
The NCAA is on borrowed time! The problem is that we can’t be certain that it’s replacement will me any better. If history is any indicator, the NCAA replacement will be great for the schools that create, terrible for the schools that get left out.
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And this right here is why there is no true NC in college FB. Pretty simple!