BCS leagues expanding - yeah?

True enough.

 

The ACC is probably operating with the assumption that FSU and Clemson are likely gone by 2026.

 

Or what?

What ESPN can do contractually is bump it up to a higher cost-per-subscriber in a home state. And then the cable company can decline to carry it. And if you held a dinner with everyone in Texas willing to protest losing the SMU football channel, it still might not bump you up to an automatic gratuity.

 

This.

Keep regional conferences for every other sport. Make football its own thing.

 

If you add up the current number of Power 5 teams plus Notre Dame, that gets you to 69 (nice). Pretty easy to guess the first four teams Chip wants to put on the ice floe. Who else does he propose take a bullet?

Terrible plan.

 

I do think we're kind of in that 16-team WAC era again. The MW (original WAC schools broke off). And I would love to see the Pac-12 reunite at some point - this isn't sustainable. College Football Inc. has been writing checks they can't cash for too long, and these drastic moves were desperation measures. It will probably take an external force to save the sport from itself, maybe some crew team sues in federal court to start the ball rolling. (also, check the ESPN thread).

 

I know presidents are ultimately the head honcho, but I've always found it kind of odd that school presidents have the final say on what is purely an athletic decision in conference membership.
Even at - or maybe especially at - the DII level. Years ago there was a school wanting to join the conference. It would have been a match made it heaven athletically: similar size school, similar financial resources, in the heart of the geographic footprint of the conference. Them joining would have been a win-win for everybody.
Because that school's president and a couple of others didn't get along well, the presidents rejected their membership based on "academic standards." These people don't even attend their own schools' athletic events.
What they did was shoot themselves in the foot financially be rejecting a potential member that was about two hours away from everyone in favor of a school that was 5-8 hours away for them.

 

Stanford football coach Troy Taylor says bring on the frequent-flier miles.

"I'm OK with traveling. Our guys love playing football, and if you've got to travel a little more, that means when people come play us, they got to travel," Taylor said. "We want to be in a great conference, and we're sure that will happen. The travel, if that happens, it's fine.

"People used to have to come across the country in a covered wagon -- it would take them months and they'd be completely different people by the time they got there. We get on a plane for five hours, six hours, that's not the end of the world. You get drinks served to you and some snacks, and it's not that bad."

 

Just shows how much Fox wanted to break up the Pac-12. It would only pay $35-40 million for the entire 10-team league, but now will pay $120 mil annually to UA, ASU, Utah and CU, and it supposedly added $150 million to the Big Ten's deal to get UO and UW at a discount rate.

Lowball the group, then buy the parts.

 

Hey Troy, then just make your guys fly commercial, like every other Stanford team.

 

By my count, 16-17 of the current “power” schools spent time exiled in minor conferences or as lightly-regarded independents. How much hubris does it take to decide this is the moment when we’ve got the total exactly right and shut the gates from anyone else ever rising up?