Yes, for football. And football will be king. (I was in a seminar recently where a women’s Gymnastics coach at a competitive SEC school basically said that they will need to endow themselves to survive as the money football brings in will be claimed by football. It’ll all be about the Natty. Perhaps that was just a doom-and-gloom scenario to raise funds, but he/she sounded sincere.
The Olympic sports will be on teh chopping block at many P4 schools.
The NCAA does not control/has little authority over football. Would it be an antitrust issue if 40-50 big football programs fulfill thier existing GOR commitments and then go somewhere else? For example, Alabama could remain in the SEC for all sports other than football. (Similar to Notre Dame and ACC.). Not much different than UCLA & USC who joined the BiG but left their water polo teams behind in the western conference.
Correct, and they are going thru that process now. In fact, it was the primary reason that that both joined the ACC as they recognized that the upcoming re-alignment (for a Championship football only conference) will be comprised of members in the the P4 and Notre Dame.
Cal has a particular issue as it funds 30 other sports from its meager TV revenues. To compete in football, they will need to spend those TV dollars on football, which means a huge deficit to fund the other sports. Decisions, decisions.
Paul Finebaum is a horse’s a**; and despite the fact that he graduated from the University of Tennessee, once he moved to Birmingham and took up sports “journalism,” he never lost an opportunity to trash UT in print or on radio/television. I have zero respect for him.
you would think so, but both schools forfeited a bunch of TV rights ($$$) for the first 7 years of the contract to get that last vote for the Invite to join. SMU is essentially joining for free and forfeiting most of its future TV rights. SMU alums are gonna pony up (pun intended) hundreds of millions so SMU can be a P4 school when the next re-alignment occurs.
Ballpark estimates that I have read is that CalFord will be taking a financial haircut in the millions annually (from pac12 to ACC) before the increased travel. The UC Regents are forcing UCLA to subsidize Cal to the tune of $10m/yr for the next several years to offset Cal’s financial situation and give it time to come up with a long-term plan. (Of course, long-term today is 3-4 years, tops.)
edited to add: SMU also offered up its facilities & dorms for free, if the ACC wants to host any type of multi-team tournament in Dallas, say bringing in CalFord and two east coast schools for a 3-day tourney.
Probably not, the draconian ACC exit rules make it nearly impossible to do a mass exit like the PAC12. Plus they have a decent TV contract. Sure it’s a little less than some of the other P4 leagues, but not by much, and definitely not enough to pay the outrageous ACC exit fees. FSU has been in and out of court over the exit rues, and it looks like it’s turning into a stalemate.
They would be in a similar situation that University of Hawaii is in regarding travel to away games in their conference (other than games against each other). The rest of the conference would be in a situation somewhat similar to whatever conference University of Hawaii is in. But then there is also SMU all by itself in Texas.
However, it is worth noting that the ACC has a large north-south spread, so travel between Miami or FSU and Boston College or Syracuse is not trivial either.
one of the richest athletic departments in the country planning to downgrade ~150 varsity slots to Club level. It’s going to be difficult for most of the ACC to match what Notre Dame and FSU and Miami can raise.
I have not read House v. NCAA yet, but I am interested in doing so to ascertain which, if any, changes are not mandated (not holdings in the case) but were actually based on dicta (non-binding advice which was not necessary to decide the issues presented).
One TV sports analyst was adamant that–prior to the Georgia Tech/FSU match-up in Dublin,Ireland–FSU did not deserve a Top 10 ranking (FSU was ranked #10 before todays new college football rankings). He was correct. Wish that I could recall his name.
