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| Date | Title | Body |
|---|---|---|
| 1 day 15 hours ago | I don't think it'd be too hard to find 16 more teams . . . |
I don't think it'd be too hard to find sixteen more teams to add to the existing Big Ten, Big XII, Pac 12 and SEC in order to make four super conferences. Indpendents BYU and Notre Dame are the first two on the list. To keep it simple, you can add in the fourteen teams that are going to be in the ACC and you have your 64 right there. The question now becomes one of distributing them into the four larger conferences. Realistically, we both know that's not going to happen overnight, if at all, since the conferences operate as quasi-independent entities anyway. There's also no reason to say the super conferences won't comprise 20 teams divided into two 10-team super divisions. The teams in those divisions play a round robin among their members plus three more games beyond that. The winner of the division goes to the super-conference championship game with the winner advancing to a four-team playoff. The pre-Penn State/Nebraska Big Ten Conference would have been a Super Division. The same goes for the present Big XII or the Pac 12 prior to the recent additions of Utah and Colorado. Those entities operated fine as conferences, so there's no problem with them doing the same as Super Divisions. College Football's Division 1-A is soon going to have 125 members. Eliminate 45 of them and you'd have your 80-team entity for football, basketball and most every other sport within college athletics. The WAC is now down to two football schools (Idaho and New Mexico State), so they could be removed from 1-A. The Sun Belt will soon have eleven members, so you could remove them as well. That leaves Conference USA, the Mountain West, the Big East and the MAC to provide the remainining programs to eliminate in order to get down to 80 teams.
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| 2 days 11 hours ago | This probably ends the Notre Dame series . . . . |
I can't find the link, but David Brandon said something to the effect that he couldn't see Michigan playing Notre Dame, Nebraska and Ohio State and Wisconsin all at home or all on the road. Well, that's what we currently have and now that the 2015/6 schedule has been published, the schedule in those two years would have UM playing not only ND, UN-L and OSU all home or all away those two seasons, but it adds Wisconsin to the mix. With the Pac 12 home-and-home series starting in 2017, it likely means the Michigan-Notre Dame series is over. The current agreement allows either school to cancel out with a three-year notice, so I assume Michigan could do exactly that and cancel the series no earlier than 2015. That might allow Brandon the opportunity to replace Notre Dame with another major non-conference opponent, but that could be difficult. With college football in such flux concerning conference alignments and the post-season bowls and playoff, there might not be too many major programs willing to schedule a home-and-home on such relatively short notice with Michigan. Also keep in mind that Bill Martin had a bear of a time finding an opponent for the stadium dedication game. He finally had to agree to play a home-and-home with Connecticut in order to get any sort of BCS conference opponent in place. If past is precedent, Brandon may well have the same troubles. The Big Ten ADs approved the schedules last Tuesday and presumably Brandon knew about this possibility for awhile. Hopefully, he has done his homework regarding major programs that would be willilng to play in 2015/6 as part of a home-and-home series. A team like Georgia that doesn't have all its non-conference opponents lined up for those two years, for example, would be a good candidate. See http://www.sicemdawgs.com/football/sched/fb_sch.php. Note that Georgia has a home-and-home with Ohio State in 2020/1, so that means they might be amiable to playing a second Big Ten opponet in 2015/6. One other thing to keep in mind is that Jim Delany had to be mindful of Michigan's situaiton vis-a-vis Notre Dame when this conference schedule was put together. If the UM-ND series does end, it would be done with Delany's approval and probably with the understanding that Michigan would replace the Fighting Irish with a quality opponent. That may also mean that any attempt to keep Notre Dame "close" in the hopes it would join the Big Ten Conference in the future may well be at an end. It could also be a clear signal that the B10 doesn't consider ND such a quality opponent--or at least not one for one of its flagship football programs to play on a regular basis. Wisconsin AD Barry Alvarez recently mentioned wanted to have the Badgers play ND because he saw there might be an opening in the schedule. In the same article, Brandon was pretty circumspect about the future of the Notre Dame series beyond the next three years. Is this evidence that the series is at an end? We'll see.
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| 2 days 11 hours ago | This probably ends the Notre Dame series . . . . |
I can't find the link, but David Brandon said something to the effect that he couldn't see Michigan playing Notre Dame, Nebraska and Ohio State and Wisconsin all at home or all on the road. Well, that's what we currently have and now that the 2015/6 schedule has been published, the schedule in those two years would have UM playing not only ND, UN-L and OSU all home or all away those two seasons, but it adds Wisconsin to the mix. With the Pac 12 home-and-home series starting in 2017, it likely means the Michigan-Notre Dame series is over. The current agreement allows either school to cancel out with a three-year notice, so I assume Michigan could do exactly that and cancel the series no earlier than 2015. That might allow Brandon the opportunity to replace Notre Dame with another major non-conference opponent, but that could be difficult. With college football in such flux concerning conference alignments and the post-season bowls and playoff, there might not be too many major programs willing to schedule a home-and-home on such relatively short notice with Michigan. Also keep in mind that Bill Martin had a bear of a time finding an opponent for the stadium dedication game. He finally had to agree to play a home-and-home with Connecticut in order to get any sort of BCS conference opponent in place. If past is precedent, Brandon may well have the same troubles. The Big Ten ADs approved the schedules last Tuesday and presumably Brandon knew about this possibility for awhile. Hopefully, he has done his homework regarding major programs that would be willilng to play in 2015/6 as part of a home-and-home series. A team like Georgia that doesn't have all its non-conference opponents lined up for those two years, for example, would be a good candidate. See http://www.sicemdawgs.com/football/sched/fb_sch.php. Note that Georgia has a home-and-home with Ohio State in 2020/1, so that means they might be amiable to playing a second Big Ten opponet in 2015/6. One other thing to keep in mind is that Jim Delany had to be mindful of Michigan's situaiton vis-a-vis Notre Dame when this conference schedule was put together. If the UM-ND series does end, it would be done with Delany's approval and probably with the understanding that Michigan would replace the Fighting Irish with a quality opponent. That may also mean that any attempt to keep Notre Dame "close" in the hopes it would join the Big Ten Conference in the future may well be at an end. It could also be a clear signal that the B10 doesn't consider ND such a quality opponent--or at least not one for one of its flagship football programs to play on a regular basis. Wisconsin AD Barry Alvarez recently mentioned wanted to have the Badgers play ND because he saw there might be an opening in the schedule. In the same article, Brandon was pretty circumspect about the future of the Notre Dame series beyond the next three years. Is this evidence that the series is at an end? We'll see.
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| 3 days 17 hours ago | I disagree with many of your points . . . |
First off, the Michigan-Ohio State game has already been devalued in terms of winning the conference championship or going to the Rose Bowl. It's not the Big 2/Little 8 anymore--a number of other teams have gotten better and made the UM-OSU game a non-factor in the title. In recent history, we've seen Michigan beat Ohio State and end up in the Orange Bowl or the Sugar Bowl and also lose to OSU and still end up in the Rose Bowl. Secondly, if a 16-team conference uses a pod system and constructs it in such a way to make sure that rivalry or regional teams are in the same 4-team pod, then all the relationships that you'd like to see regarding trophy game, etc. can still be kept intact. Third, you completely discount the importance of a team having a strong regular season in terms of seeding for a post-season game. Yes, a program could go 9-3 in the regular season, win the conference championship game and end up with a 10-3 record as the Big Ten champion. But that program would likely be the last seed playing at an unfriendly site against the top seeded team in the country. Fourth, you also discount the strength of schedule component in making your assessment. If the hypothetical 9-3 team had a top five SOS and a 12-0 or 11-1 team had a SOS in the thirties, which team is better? You can figure it out a couple of ways using a computer or a poll or a committee. I have a better solution--let's see them in a playoff if they both won their conferences and decide it on the field. I actually do agree with you that getting each of the conferences to an equal number would be difficult. They all act out of their own interest and their membership does fluctuate. The Pac 12 is going to have an exceptionally difficult time getting four more members as long as the Big XII remains intact. But the trend as of late has been for larger conferences and barring any major changes, we'll see the five major ones having 64 teams in them (SEC & ACC with 14, Big Ten and Pac with 12 and Big XII with ten). Add in two independents (BYU and ND) and that's 66 teams. If Division 1-A/FBS were to downsize to 80 teams, we might see five 16-team conferences or four 20-team conferences that have two 10-team divisions. In the latter case, those divisions would be the same size as the current Big XII or the pre-1993 Big Ten or the old Pac 10. Play a round robin of nine division games plus three non-conference, then put together a conference championship game that would act as a de facto eight-team playoff quarter final.
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| 3 days 18 hours ago | More scholarships would help . . . |
If the NCAA went from 85 to 95 scholarships per team, it might spread out the attrition that you mention taking place. It doesn't set aside the commitment these players have to the sport, but it does at least allow teams to not have to play guys who are injured because there's really no good suitable substitute on the bench waiting to take his place. I'll also add that I don't know if there's a really strong appetite for a 16-team playoff. I suspect the logical cutoff most people will see is eight teams because going beyond that number means the bowl system is going to have a hard time surviving in its current form (although with a seven win requirement and now a four-team playoff on the horizon, we know the bowl system is going to change). Given the current structure of college football, it's inevitable that some of the teams that participate in an eight-team playoff won't be conference champions. There might be autobids for the top five conferences (ACC, Big Ten, Big XII, Pac 12, SEC) plus three at large bids that may or may not be in a conference championship game. Let's assume that an eight-team playoff. That means four of those teams may play up to 14 games that season--twelve in the regular season, one possible conference championship game plus the quarter-final game. There would be up to three weeks of so between the conference championship game and the quarter-finals. That leaves four teams left, two of which will play one more additional game (#15 of the season) and two that will participate in the final (Game #16). Depending on when those games are played, the season could extend into early or mid-January for two teams. Is that asking too much of these guys? When you're looking at four teams playing one or two more games than they normally would, then I'm hard pressed to say yes. Now if we went to a 16-team playoff, then yes, we might be getting to the tipping point where we're asking too much. One of the happy circumstances of an eight-team playoff is that it will provide college football additional revenue from the television networks. I've seen estimates of perhaps $700M per annum. If college football contracted to 64 teams that had 95 scholarships and paid an additional $3K per year additional to the players, then the price tag would be $18.24M. If there were 80 teams, then the amount goes to $22.8M for the football teams alone. That leaves another $680M or so to be given to the other scholarship athletes at these schools as stipends or cost of living scholarships.
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| 3 days 18 hours ago | With 16 team conferences, you start considering using pods . . . |
When the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) had 16 teams, it utilized the pod setup in order to ensure that at least every team played the other in the conference home and away over a four-year period. The Big Ten or any other conference could have the same sort of setup. If you go by basic geography and add four teams (Maryland, Pittsburgh, Rutgers, Notre Dame for this example), then the B10 pods could go like this: Pod A - Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Wisconsin Pod B - Illinois, Indiana, Northwestern, Purdue Pod C - Michigan, Michigan State, Notre Dame, Ohio State Pod D - Maryland, Penn State, Pittsburgh, Rutgers With a nine-game conference schedule, Michigan would play MSU, ND and OSU each year (which is what happens now) plus two teams from each of Pod A, B and D in Years 1 and 2. In Years 3 and 4, UM plays the other two teams from those three pods. Since this structure doesn't have divisions, a conference championship game could be set up between the top two teams record wise in the B10. If you want to have a division structure in place, then put Pods A and B together for two years in one division, with Pods C and D in another. Play seven games within your division plus two teams from one of the other pods. In two years, Pods B and C become a division and Pods A and D become the second division with teams play two games from one of the other pods. For example, if Pods C & D were put together for two years, Michigan would play Michigan State, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Maryland, Penn State, Pittsburgh, Rutgers and two teams from Pod A--let's say Iowa and Wisconsin. In the next two years, Pods B & C would be put together and Michigan would continue to play MSU, ND and OSU, but the other teams would come from Pod B (Illinois, Indiana, Northwestern, Purdue) and Pod A (Nebraska and Minnesota). That allows Michigan to play each team in the conference at least two times over a four year period, but sets up temporary divisions so that you can have a conference championship game between the two division winners. The WAC had three problems in its adoption of the pod system. The first is that their system broke up the conference rivalries, but this set up here actually ensures that most of the rivalry and/or trophy games are intact (although the Little Brown Jug game with Minnesota is now played two years out of every four). The second problem the WAC had was geography because that conference was really spread out. The expanded Big Ten I have above has the pods within a more confined goegraphical footprint and PSU is happy because of its eastern presence. The third problem people had with the WAC was keepin track of the divisions because they changed every couple of years. To be frank, there's not much you can do about that with a pod system. But if B10 fans have managed to master the Legends and Leaders Division titles, I suppose they can figure out the pod system.
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| 5 days 23 hours ago | This is why the playoff needs to have eight teams . . . . |
An eight-team playoff would be a large enough field to include not only the conference champions, but also the highly ranked non-conference champions as well. If Iwere putting together a playoff today with the way college football is currently structured, it'd be the five major conference champions (ACC, Big Ten, Big XII, Pac 12, SEC) plus three at large teams in the field. The one caveat I'd add was that if a conference champion isn't in the top 12 of the rating system utilized, then it's replaced by an at large team. This would have happenened to ACC Champion Clemson last year using the BCS rankings. For 2008, the ACC would not have been in the playoff because Virginia Tech (9-4) was ranked 19th in the BCS poll. That means four conference championship teams--Oklahoma (12-1), Florida (12-1), USC (11-1) and Penn State (11-1) would have been in the playoff with four at large teams. Those four programs would have been Texas (11-1), Alabama (12-1), Utah (12-0) and Texas Tech (11-1). At #9 in the polls, undefeated Boise State (12-0) would have been outside of the playoffs. If these first round games were played at the stadiums of the higher rated teams, then here's the lineup of games: #8 Penn State (11-1, B10 Champion) at #1 Oklahoma (12-1, Big XII Champion) #5 USC (11-1, Pac 10 Champion) at #4 Alabama (12-1, SEC At Large) #7 Texas Tech (11-1, Big XII At Large) at #2 Florida (12-1, SEC Champion) # 6 Utah (12-0, MWC Champion) at #3 Texas (11-1, Big XII At Large) If winning a conference championship is going to be used for post-season seeding with the top four conference champions getting the 1 thru 4 seeds, then the opening round playoff games would look like this: #8 Penn State (11-1, B10 Champion) at #1 Oklahoma (12-1, Big XII Champion) #5 Texas (11-1, Big XII At Large) at #4 Utah (12-0, MWC Champion) #7 Texas Tech (11-1, Big XII At Large) at #2 Florida (12-1 SEC Champion) #6 Alabama (12-1, SEC At Large) at #3 USC (11-1, Pac 10 Champion) Instead of Alabama and Texas hosting first round games, Utah and USC would be doing it in this post season setup. This would be an award for winning a regular season conference championship and further ensure that the regular season results do translate into the post-season. While Boise State would be left on the outside looking in, using eight teams instead of four better insures that most of the national championship capable teams are in the playoffs. Ultimate, what most fans want to see is the best teams that emerge from the regular season decide the championship out on the field with less reliance on committees, polls and computers to make the decisions on who participates. Also with eight teams, the major bowls would have plenty of teams in the existing inventory to stage games against name teams. The programs listed 9 thru 16 in the BCS polls were Boise State, Ohio State, TCU, Cincinnati, Oklahoma State, Georgia Tech, Georgia and BYU. Oregon and Virginia Tech were 17 and 19 in the BCS poll. Eventually, we'll see Division 1-A college football adapt some sort of eight-team playoff. It may come out thru realignment and restructuring as the conference championship games become de facto quater finals. The other alternative is something like the one I outlined above that makes sure the conferences get some skin in the game by giving the major champions autobids, but still ensure the better teams also participate with the minimum offering of three at-large bids.
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| 6 days 19 hours ago | One of the ironies behind all this . . . |
One of the ironies behind all this is that David Brandon recently said that one of the objectives behind the Athletic Department's master plan to spend $250M over the next seven to ten years is to enable UM's non-revenue sports to be able to host conference and national tournaments. See http://annarbor.com/sports/michigan-to-spend-250-million-to-upgrade-facilities-for-non-revenue-sports/?cmpid=mlive-@mlive-wolverines Michigan has just spent $300M over these recent years on massive upgrades to the football stadium and in building a state of the art practice facility with plans to spend another $9M to renovate and expand Schembechler Hall. But due to the Rose Bowl Uber Alles mentatlity in the Big Ten or because the conference felt it had to use the idea of semi-final games at home sites as a bargaining chip in order to get confrence champions autobids into a four-team playoff, UM will not be able to use any of it for post-season play. That strikes me as absolutely insane. Michigan isn't the only Big Ten program that's had major renovations in recent years to its stadium (or in the case of Minnesota, built a brand new stadium). Minnesota - Spent $288.5M to build TCF Bank Stadium that opened in 2009 Ohio State - Refurbished Ohio Stadium in 2001 for $194M Nebraska - Undergoing $56M expansion/renovation to stadium for next season Penn State - Had major renovation in 2001 to make it second largest stadium in country at the cost of $93M Wiscosin - Recently started renovation project at Camp Randall Stadium for $76.8M. The renovations that was completed about ten years ago cost $83.7M. I haven't listed all the Big Ten schools, but the six mentioned above have spent over a billion dollars on their football stadiums over the last decade. A more comprehensive list would probably push that final sum to around $1.5B or so. Does anyone not see something wrong with this picture? The other thing that I find rather head scratching about the Big Ten is that while they're evidentally conceding on the idea of having semi-final games at campus sites as a concession to the warm weather schools, they're also putting forward the idea of bidding out the championship game itself. In an ESPN article, the cities mentioned are Detroit, Minneapolis, Boston and New York. The first two cities have domed stadiums, but the last two are definitely outdoors (Gillette Stadium, The Meadowlands). How does the B10 expect to sell the idea of playing the college football championship game in New England or NYC or even Chicago (Soldier Field) in early January when it can't even get them to agree to the possibility (if the B10 team is rated #1 or #2 in the country) of having the semi-final games at campus sites? Does that make sense to anyone here?
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| 1 week 1 day ago | The conference commissioners have really missed the boat . . . |
I realize the Big Ten couldn't sell the idea of having the semi-final games at the stadiums of the higher ranked teams, but please don't defend it as if it's something that's good. In a four-team playoff, we're talking playing just two games on campus sites that may or may not be in cold weather. If the NFL can have playoff games in Chicago or Green Bay or Buffalo in January, then college football can manage to put together a couple of games in Ann Arbor or Columbus or Lincoln in late December. An eight-team playoff that has five auto bids for the ACC, Big Ten, Big XII, Pac 12 and SEC conference champions plus three at large teams is not going to dilute the regular season. If a conference champion isn't in the top 12 of the ranking system, then it loses the autobid and another at large team replaces it. If anything, it's going to make those conference championship games more exciting, and to get into those games, your program has to win its division. Couple that with homefield advantage for the higher seed and you'll have plenty of interest in the regular season. In five years or so, we'll have an eight-team playoff and the guys now who said it couldn't be done for such and such a reason will be talking out of the other sides of their mouths. They'll also realize that fans (including those from the Big Ten) are not going to travel to Pasadena for a semi-final game and then head to Miami for a possible national championship a week or two afterward. Maybe the local alumni groups of the teams participating will be there along with the fat cats in the luxury boxes plus whatever college football fans that are in southern Florida who might be interested. But the bread-and-butter fan doesn't have the time or the money to do both.
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| 1 week 1 day ago | The UM Athletic Department had projections of . . . |
The Michigan Athletic Department had a projection in the FY 2012 budget of an outstanding debt balance of nearly $210M projected for June 2012. See http://www.regents.umich.edu/meetings/06-11/2011-06-X-13.pdf When you look at the document, it's pretty easy to see that the luxury boxes and premium seating are providing revenues in excess of the annual debt servicing for the entire stadium renovation project. The total gift income from football is around $21M and the gross revenue for Michigan premium seating is slightly over $15M. The total annual debt servicing for the Michigan Stadium renovatioin is $9.4M with the entire debt service load for all the projects being financed is $13.2M in FY 2012. Michigan does have some leeway to finance additional projects based on those numbers and we've seen the Schembechler Hall renovation plus the newest Yost Ice Arena project recently be approved for around $25M. Since 2003, Michigan has set aside around $4.5M per year in a deferred maintenance fund that grew to over $35M at one time. I don't know if that fund has been tapped into yet, but it has or could be a potential resource to pay for some of these items. The biggest revenue grower for Michigan has been television. The Big Ten Network is providing almost half the television revenue now with ABC/ESPN and CBS making up the rest. The ABC/ESPN contract is due for renewal in a few years with expectations that it will be extremely lucrative. Add in the additonal money from the Big Ten Conference Championship Game (perhaps $1.5M per year) and the $30M to $50M additional the B10 will get from the four-team playoff and you can add perhaps another $2M to $4M to the annual revenue stream. The total conference distribution to Michigan in FY 2012 was projected to be $23.75M. In four years' time, UM could easily be looking at $30M to $35M from the conference on an annual basis. The next budget will be released in a month's time, so we should have a better idea on where all the revenues and costs are trending. That said, it will be intersting to see how the Michigan Athletic Department sees its future budgets and how it will match revenues to expenditures. I suspect a big chunk of that $250M Brandon is talking about will be used to expand Michigan Stadium's south endzone. There's been some discussion about adding another 8-10,000 seats to bracket the scoreboard. Beyond that, I assume some structure would be put in place to not only enclose the stadium, but to connect the concourses (at least on the south side). That will be a fairly expensive project that won't have the immediate payoff that the luxury boxes and premium seating was able to provide. All in all, MIchigan's been in good shape financially since Bill Martin took over and thru Brandon's time as AD. It will be interesting to see what happens with the athletic department's finances in five to ten years once these major projects are all completed and the debt is paid down. While I expect expenses to increase, it'll be interesting to see if the UM athletic department sends more money back to the university itself or is able to freeze ticket prices for awhile or has some other priority in mind.
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