A little surprise this topic hasn’t hit the basketball thread yet as it will have a dramatic affect on basketball as well. Most likely not equivalent to football but nonetheless change the landscape
Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC
- Thread starter 9nationalchampionships
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Here’s some food for thought: with the possibility of a football super league growing, could we ever see something like this happen in basketball?
For example, let’s the football blue bloods break off and start their own thing. Could you see schools like Duke, Kentucky, Louisville, Villanova etc. ever coming together and creating something similar in basketball?
For example, let’s the football blue bloods break off and start their own thing. Could you see schools like Duke, Kentucky, Louisville, Villanova etc. ever coming together and creating something similar in basketball?
No. Not enough money. College basketball is the NCAA Tournament and part of its popularity are the Cinderallas
Agreed, they’re definitely not a blue blood in the traditional sense. I including them because, hypothetically, they’d likely make a super league for basketball.
I could see it in the sense that there would be different motivations for conference make-up and geography if FBS was outside of the NCAA. You can already see that to a lesser degree with Notre Dame putting all sports in the ACC or Navy playing in the Patriot League.
You might end up with a system like hockey or gymnastics or lacrosse where there are just sport-specific ad hoc conferences and not monoliths like we have now, motivated mostly by football revenue.
Of course, if you remove football scholarships and funding, NCAA and Title IX look wildly different.
Why not a super conference of the top thirty or forty basketball programs ? Think CBS is going to pay billions to the NCAA to televise an NIT level tournament ?
Without the NCAA the schools could lift the scholarship limits siphoning off more of the top recruits further crippling the lessor haves . Without the NCAA the schools can start paying the top recruits like they’re the employees they actually are .
Texas and Oklahoma aren’t moving to the SEC so they can lose football games to Alabama they’re going for the money . Times are a changing , where Pitt ends up is anyone’s guess , but I’m thinking they’ll be on the outside looking in .
Without the NCAA the schools could lift the scholarship limits siphoning off more of the top recruits further crippling the lessor haves . Without the NCAA the schools can start paying the top recruits like they’re the employees they actually are .
Texas and Oklahoma aren’t moving to the SEC so they can lose football games to Alabama they’re going for the money . Times are a changing , where Pitt ends up is anyone’s guess , but I’m thinking they’ll be on the outside looking in .
The conferences have so much authority within the teams in their own conference. People in power never like to give it up. The GOR limits participants. I too would prefer a P5 massive league but don't see it happening.
Unlike football, basketball is popular BECAUSE there is parity across the country. Nobody cares about the G League, and nobody would continue caring about college basketball if it were a semi-pro league either.
CBS pays billions for the tournament because Joe Sixpack likes to believe UMBC can beat Virginia every once in a while. In football, Texas and Alabama and Ohio State couldn't care less if 80% of the programs in the country folded. They already turn up their noses at UCF or Cincinnati.
The other reason basketball won't change is because it is actually easier for schools like Duke or Kentucky to recruit the way they do than if they had to go through an organized draft. If you can snag a few of the top-10 recruits every year, why would you want to give them away to 30 other programs?
But everybody cares about Duke , Kentucky , Kansas , UNC and all the other top programs in the country . Having a league that has games with the top programs facing off against one another all season long or watching games like a Pitt / Wake leaves very little to choose from for a college bb fan .
While the NCAAs has the David and Goliath aspect to it no one at CBS or the sponsors wants to see any to see the big boys eliminated early . What kind of viewership would a Akron / Providence championship game produce ?
Why change recruiting one bit ?
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It always ends up about the dollars and why would the big boys want to continue supporting the bottom dwellers ?
Did you see college athletes getting paid 10k / hr for doing interviews ? The landscape of college athletics is changing and money is what’s fueling this change and we’re just at the beginning of this so where it goes from here no one knows .
We don't get Akron-Providence championship games now, so the blue bloods get the best of both worlds already. The existing system provides the illusion of competitive balance while rewarding the biggest fish more often than not.
It is just like a Powerball lottery. They advertise "you could be the winner!" even though you have virtually no chance at all. You need all the dopes to put in their $2 to ever raise the giant jackpot.
My point was that if the big boys pull out of NCAAs and form their own league with their own championship you’ll get an Akron / Providence type championship game which hardly anyone would be interested in . CBS and the sponsors aren’t paying billions for the rights to televise that .
If this movement of Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC starts another round of conference alignment it will only be a matter of time before the major players decide that the NCAA is of no value to them .
It depends who pulls out. Gonzaga vs Baylor was a matchup of 1 vs 2 and had a lot of interest.
For a super conference to exist schools like Gonzaga and Baylor would need to be in it . Pitt ….nope .
You are clueless if you think super conferences care one iota about Gonzaga.
The talent in an average G League game is better than an average NCAA game, but nobody watches it. I'm not arguing that everyone in America loves Akron, I am saying the current system purports to represent allegiances across the country, and general audiences like that. People watch 16s lose to 1s every year because once a century UMBC beats Virginia.
If this basketball super-league was so interesting, more people would watch the Champions Classic every November. As it is, four of the top programs in the country barely register compared to the college football going on at that time. It's two different worlds.
Right, regular season college basketball is basically the NHL/MLS at this point.
I do kinda wish FBS football teams left the NCAA but kept their basketball/olympic sport leagues in tact. Its going to be annoying to eventually have to deal with USC being in the same basketball league as Rutgers in some 24 team Big Ten and Duke being in the same basketball league as Texas in some 24 team SEC. They are ruining basketball. I know no one cares but just saying
At this point, I think it actually seems more likely to me that there could be some B1G-Pac-12 agreement and maybe you see the ACC and Big East form some sort of bond. I don't think anyone outside the SEC really has a ton to gain by adding members directly.
It would be kind of cool if they could work out a B1G-ACC agreement and work in an semi-independent Notre Dame.
I hate when people make a big deal over scheduling agreements, like its some way to make boatloads of money or combat what the SEC is doing. I know you arent but some people out there think "well, if these 2 conferences can just agree to play 1 OOC game in football, everything will be fine." That said, the ACC should be playing 2 conference challenge games in hoops
I'm not talking about a few games. I am saying they basically agree to become the equivalent of the AL vs NL in MLB. As you mentioned, it doesn't necessarily enrich the product to say there's 30 teams in the ACC from Boston to San Diego.
I don't think many of the non-P5 teams out there (Cincy, UCF, etc.) add the requisite value for expansion, and it is extremely expensive to peel away a P5 team like the B1G did with Maryland.
The SEC is going to make a profit no matter what they do, but I think its nebulous for everyone else. ESPN is still hemorrhaging subscribers. NBC is basically folding NBCSN. It's murky how FS1 or FSN regional networks are going to survive after so many corporate mergers. The next wave is going to be the big streamers like YouTube, Amazon, and Apple, but I don't personally think any of the conferences are well positioned to make that leap. The idea that you should pay $200M or something in penalties and exit fees because you can make a few more dollars with BTN is not going to remain the case forever.
These players will be representing Duke, Kansas , UNC, Baylor and all the other major programs in the country just like they currently do not the New Rochelle mud hens with two or three future fringe NBA players .
Even among the top 40 programs in the country there will be overwhelming favorites and underdogs every yr .
It’s only a matter of time before these schools realize that the NCAA is of no value to them .
There road to having a successful super conference is that all the best programs in the country participant .
What?? Where was Gonzaga before Monson? Where will they be after Few? Baylor is in a P5 conference, so is Pitt. Gonzaga will still need to schedule really strong OOC games to survive.
No way that the Zags would be considered for a super conference. Nor will Creighton, Nova, Georgetown, Loyola or Marquette.
As is often the case, you don't know what you're talking about. Champagnie was nearly ACC POY and is almost certainly going to be in the G League next year. Fans are more interested in watching average college players than a league full of second round draft picks.
The elite NCAA programs are popular because they can put up records like when Pitt was 31-5. If those teams only play each other and finish something like 19-15 for a few years, that bursts their bubble.
There's no reason to think blue bloods like Duke or UNC or Kentucky have any reason to upset the system that currently serves them best by also including usurpers like Baylor or Gonzaga. The SEC is inviting Texas, not UCF.
If you were starting a bb super conference today you’d include Gonzaga and Nova and you’d certainly exclude schools like Pitt & Georgetown .
Neither Pitt Fb and bb deserve to be considered currently for any super conference consideration .
If your program fails to maintain a certain level of competence your placed on probation and then replaced if they don’t rectify their problems.
The amount of money generated and changing recruiting regulations would guarantee that all schools in the super conference would be better programs than schools outside the super conference. No limits on scholarships , paying top recruits and coaches would just about guarantee their superiority , plus they could institute minimal academic requirements.
Money talks just like in baseball, the teams with the money continually have the best players and generate the greatest revenues. It’s not fair , but where’s it written that life is fair !
What does the Justin C of the world have to do with anything this is about money and if schools like Duke , Ky ,Kansas , UNC etc decide they don’t want to share money anymore with the likes of Pitt , Wake , BC and other lousy programs they support then they will leave the ncaa /ACC or whatever conference they’re currently in and form a super conference and quadruple their revenues.
Why is Texas and OK leaving their conference……I know it’s to be with like minded schools ……bullshit it’s to make more money .
What does a school like Pitt bring to the table to ACC that warrants payments of excess of 35 million dollars .
ps ..I forgot woman’s volleyball and men’s soccer!
I already answered all of these questions in the last reply.
The big fish in college basketball cannot survive without feeding on the little fish. Look at once-powerful programs like UConn or Georgetown. They don't stay elite just by virtue of existing. They need to beat people. Even UNC routinely has terrible seasons.
The top programs in the ACC are at the top because they are able to beat teams like Pitt, Wake, BC, etc. Without the fodder of those weak programs and their hapless fanbases injecting their money, what you are proposing is a glorified G League. Duke and Kentucky fans might enjoy an endless stream of 1-and-dones competing against each other every night, but that is about the extent of it.
The ACC "upgraded" by adding Pitt, Syracuse, and Louisville, and it seems pretty clear that the conference is worse overall now than before we joined.
So if you need the little sisters of the poor to beat up on why would Texas and Oklahoma go into the meat grinder of SEC ?
I’ll tell you why …..more money !
The zags and Nova are relying on their current coaches. Both have tiny campus gyms and no interest in football. G-town is not much better. Pitt plays P5 FB and has a fine gym on campus We can garner more $$$ than the Zags & Nova could ever match. But, since some fans seem to insist that we're totally helpless all the time, it fits a goofy narrative that we are essentially useless.
Because SEC football is nothing like NCAA basketball. The SEC is basically positioning themselves as NFL-lite and admitting that their records don't matter and losing to Alabama is more meaningful than beating Virginia Tech. They've already proven that a one or two loss SEC team can be ranked higher than other teams with better overall records.
What you are suggesting is to pluck the top teams from each basketball conference and mush them together. The result is that by only playing each other, you guarantee that some are big losers. Those teams already beat their competition, earn the high NCAA seeds, and advance in the tournament. You are introducing more risk than reward.
Duke finished 9-9 and Coach K did nothing but whine about it all season.
Think a Pitt /Wake game or a Pitt /Syracuse game draws any national interest in either sport ?
Unless Pitt plays Duke or UNC in bb or Clemson or ND in Fb there’s no national interest , heck there’s hardly any interest in either sport in WPa ! Look at the attendance at the Pete or HF if you need proof . The factor that drives attendance is the opponent not fans supporting the Panthers .
ps ..that’s why Pitt Fb needs PSU and PSU doesn’t need Pitt
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What I’m suggesting is that big time college athletics is all about money and the logical progression is that schools will continue to try to maximize their revenues and a super conference is a way to do this . Why should schools like Duke ,UNC , Virginia that drive the ratings for the ACC continue to share equally with the likes of Pitt , BC , and Wake ?
There was more to it last season than Coach K just whining about his team being .500 . Covid ?
Pitt vs. Syracuse/UCONN/etc. were national events. The Pete was rocking before the administration screwed the pooch. A national hoops-centrix conference won't work. Too many schools want to play big in both sports.
Where was Syracuse before Boeheim?? G-Town before Thompson, UCONN before Calhoun, Duke before K, etc.?? Pitt had national level BB teams in the 70's, 80's, and from 2000 to Stallings.
But you think we can't succeed in anything. We won't be pushed out in FB, either. If the BIG expands, ND & Pitt will be in that mix.
Unfortunately your living in the past , I want Pitt Fb to be like the teams of JM1 and Jackie and have bb players like Charles Smith , Jerome Lane , B Shorter or like Jamie’s heydays of the BE , but the administration isn’t on board to run national level programs . You can’t win without the desire to win coming from the top and Pitt doesn’t have that .
Whats to stop anyone from playing big time Fb or bb in 2 separate conferences.
Why bring Pitt into a FB-only conference? Once again, Pitt's rep is stronger nationally than with our Pity-Me fans. And there are 16 other teams to find a home.
I think schools will realize that regional bias and rivalries are important. Still think that 5 conferences of 16 schools is the answer.
