BCS Conferences to break away?

eyekwah

eyekwah

Well-Known Member
"Some time in 2012 or early 2013 the six BCS conferences announce the end of the BCS as we know it when the current contract expires after the 2014 bowl season. The 70 schools in those six conferences will be joined by independents Army, Navy, Notre Dame, and BYU to form the College Football Association (Sound familiar? It should. The original CFA was formed in 1984 and broke up when conferences began negotiating their own TV deals). The CFA will crown its own national champion, either through the bowls and polls or through a playoff. The CFA will also expand the value of its scholarships to include the full cost of attendance. "


Divide might be coming, but which leagues will conquer? - NCAA Football - CBSSports.com
 
In case you don't want to read the article, I just want to point out that this is a hypothetical scenario created by the writer and isn't a quote from someone "in the know."
 
It's a smart plan, and will surely be put out there as a possibility if Big Government really does keep threatening to force a playoff or pull non-profit status.
 
I agree that it is good to have a Plan B if Orin Hatch and co keep pursuing the playoff. I hope they screw ND tho...and the other indys. You are either in a conference or on your own. No cherry picking big bowl purses to keep for themself by ND.
 
The following in the comments stood out to me:

"Football doesn't pays bills. Schools do. It's not about paying bills. It's about destroying and eliminating competition which is against the Sherman Antitrust Act. If Butler and schools like them get relegated to a lesser division from the teams they humiliate on a regular basis during the season and in the NCAA tournament, then there needs to be lawsuits issued against the enterprise of "big-time" college athletics. Major sanctions by the U.S. government should be handed down, tax-exmptions stripped, and government funding stripped to these schools. Obviously, the NCAA won't do anything. Look at the Scam Newton saga. Much more should've been done, and yet nothing was done. It's proof that schools in the Power $ix conferences do not care about academics. The athletics is the primary reason why these schools exist, and that is wrong."

I probably take a minority view on this but I think that the direction of major college sports merits discussion. Many people who embrace the course Jim Delany has set for the Big Ten I don't think see the big picture or won't necessarily like what we have when the dust settles. We live in a Darwinian world where the power elites in government, Wall Street, the military-industrial complex, etc. dominate and ignore the masses. It impacts people's lives in tangible ways. Many of us find college sports a welcome relief from all of that and don't want to see college atheletics head down the same path. We will find something that we love in our lives diminished.
 
Please. We already HAVE this, it is called FCS vs. FBS. So how is Butler's D-II football team or whoever relevant to this? 360 BB teams play D-I ball, but only 120 FB teams do. Why? Because it is so expensive!

Do you really want to have revenue sharing, where, say, 50% of all sports team revenue over $30 or $50 million a year is taken from school's (like Iowa) that *earn* it because of their popularity and strong donor base, and given to unpopular nobodies like New Mexico or Tennessee Tech that can't even sell out their 20,000 seat stadiums??? Seriously???

It's a free market system. Conferences and teams can negotiate their own deals. The B10, SEC, etc. are rich because they are popular. That's why they get such great TV contracts. Show me the Sunbelt TV deal. Show me the Mountain conference or MAC espn contracts, and how much they get annually from donors. This has nothing to do with freaking "ignoring the masses." Texas, OSU, USC, Florida, Penn State and Alabama are the freaking masses! That's why they're rich!

If there can be a difference between FBS and FCS schools based on their popularity and wealth, then there can be a difference between a new, 64 team, BCS conference "D-IA," and a "D-IB" made up of the Sunbelt and Conference USA's of the World. The only "subsidy" that would be needed would be for the "D-IA" teams to guarantee that all of their teams will play at least 3 games against "D-IB" teams each season so that they can continue to subsidize their poor, unpopular, loser programs.
 
hawkeyemark said:
The following in the comments stood out to me:

"Football doesn't pays bills. Schools do. It's not about paying bills. It's about destroying and eliminating competition which is against the Sherman Antitrust Act. If Butler and schools like them get relegated to a lesser division from the teams they humiliate on a regular basis during the season and in the NCAA tournament, then there needs to be lawsuits issued against the enterprise of "big-time" college athletics. Major sanctions by the U.S. government should be handed down, tax-exmptions stripped, and government funding stripped to these schools. Obviously, the NCAA won't do anything. Look at the Scam Newton saga. Much more should've been done, and yet nothing was done. It's proof that schools in the Power $ix conferences do not care about academics. The athletics is the primary reason why these schools exist, and that is wrong."

I probably take a minority view on this but I think that the direction of major college sports merits discussion. Many people who embrace the course Jim Delany has set for the Big Ten I don't think see the big picture or won't necessarily like what we have when the dust settles. We live in a Darwinian world where the power elites in government, Wall Street, the military-industrial complex, etc. dominate and ignore the masses. It impacts people's lives in tangible ways. Many of us find college sports a welcome relief from all of that and don't want to see college atheletics head down the same path. We will find something that we love in our lives diminished.
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There are dozens of cases under the Sherman Act regarding network operations, which sports leagues and conferences are. The BCS conferences would be free to break off and form their own league so long as they don't preclude other conferences from forming their own league. If someone starts a pro football team in Neck Moines, the NFL can lawfully exclude them from playing against the Chicago Bears, Green Bay Packers, etc.

As a season ticket holder at the University of Iowa (assuming HappyChef comes around), I get absolutely jacked every year for tickets so we can have a nice, 70k seat stadium and high paid coach. Schools that don't have fans that pony up like this have no reasonable basis for concluding they deserve revenues generated by fans of teams that travel well and pay for the facilities that drive revenues in major college sports. The Boise's of the world are merely engaged in rent seeking behavior, trying to get a slice of the pie that is disproportionately large to their contribution to the overall enterprise.

Whatever the newly formed league is, it will be set up as an LLC and will not be subject to taxation. It's members will be the schools, which themselves are tax exempt entities and all proceeds will flow through to them. Plus, the states with the big schools will insist there be no tax, so you'll have Hawaii, Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming and a few other states demanding federal taxation, but about 35 other states demanding none. Good luck taxing it.

BTW, did anyone see this week's South Park? Pretty epic.
 
I don't necessarily advocate revenue sharing and really don't have any answers. You can include me in the camp that feels that the NCAA has pretty much failed as an institution and that accelerates the trends that we see. My ignoring the masses comment comes from my belief that extreme inequality with power concentrated in the small minority that has the most wealth makes for an unhealthy society. It will make for an unhealthy situation in college sports as well.
 
PhoenixHawk said:
Please. We already HAVE this, it is called FCS vs. FBS. So how is Butler's D-II football team or whoever relevant to this? 360 BB teams play D-I ball, but only 120 FB teams do. Why? Because it is so expensive!

Do you really want to have revenue sharing, where, say, 50% of all sports team revenue over $30 or $50 million a year is taken from school's (like Iowa) that *earn* it because of their popularity and strong donor base, and given to unpopular nobodies like New Mexico or Tennessee Tech that can't even sell out their 20,000 seat stadiums??? Seriously???

It's a free market system. Conferences and teams can negotiate their own deals. The B10, SEC, etc. are rich because they are popular. That's why they get such great TV contracts. Show me the Sunbelt TV deal. Show me the Mountain conference or MAC espn contracts, and how much they get annually from donors. This has nothing to do with freaking "ignoring the masses." Texas, OSU, USC, Florida, Penn State and Alabama are the freaking masses! That's why they're rich!

If there can be a difference between FBS and FCS schools based on their popularity and wealth, then there can be a difference between a new, 64 team, BCS conference "D-IA," and a "D-IB" made up of the Sunbelt and Conference USA's of the World. The only "subsidy" that would be needed would be for the "D-IA" teams to guarantee that all of their teams will play at least 3 games against "D-IB" teams each season so that they can continue to subsidize their poor, unpopular, loser programs.
Click to expand...

Yeah, this supposed shakeup is about 2% different than what we have now. Meh.
 
If the conferences were to break away, the NCAA would not be a part of it I assume. How would the governing of conferences work? Teams like USC, osu, the SEC cheat like hell now so unless the conferences came up with a plan with teeth to stop cheaters the break away could be very bad for college fb. Heck, Iowa couldn't even come close to cheating as badly as osu, USC, Mich, and the southern schools...even if they wanted to cheat.
 
eyekwah said:
"Some time in 2012 or early 2013 the six BCS conferences announce the end of the BCS as we know it when the current contract expires after the 2014 bowl season. The 70 schools in those six conferences will be joined by independents Army, Navy, Notre Dame, and BYU to form the College Football Association (Sound familiar? It should. The original CFA was formed in 1984 and broke up when conferences began negotiating their own TV deals). The CFA will crown its own national champion, either through the bowls and polls or through a playoff. The CFA will also expand the value of its scholarships to include the full cost of attendance. "


Divide might be coming, but which leagues will conquer? - NCAA Football - CBSSports.com
Click to expand...
Not 2012 but October 21 2011...guaranteed.
 
NewMexHawk said:
If the conferences were to break away, the NCAA would not be a part of it I assume. How would the governing of conferences work? Teams like USC, osu, the SEC cheat like hell now so unless the conferences came up with a plan with teeth to stop cheaters the break away could be very bad for college fb. Heck, Iowa couldn't even come close to cheating as badly as osu, USC, Mich, and the southern schools...even if they wanted to cheat.
Click to expand...

NewMex, this represents a good part of the reason why I have reservations about this. The rich get even richer under this and I don't count on the conferences effectively policing themselves.
 
A break away from the NCAA would be met by federal regulations governing recruiting and other aspects the college sports world. I don't think the BCS schoold really want coaches and administrators going to jail for things that have no tangible impact under current NCAA rules.
 
I don't see a break away from the NCAA, but a break away by the BCS from the non-BCS conferences into a new division. Just like the FBS is separated from the FCS
 
I went back and re-read the article a couple of times and in fact it doesn't mention anything about these conferences and teams leaving the NCAA. We don't know of course if the power brokers driving this have that in mind or not but the media report here doesn't indicate that. If the end game here seems blowing up the BCS that at least seems a little more palatable. We'll just have to see how things play out and how far they get with the full cost scholarship idea.
 
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