JoeyLabasForPresident
Well-Known Member
The latter is no different than Iowa’s struggles with Wisconsin. Their paths to a division title couldn’t be more clear: beat Ohio State. Penn State did it once in recent memory, as did Michigan State.
Future Big Ten Realignment
- Thread starter AreWeThereYet
- Start date
JoeyLabasForPresident
Well-Known Member
Until the money dries up this is a totally ludicrous prediction. At schools like Drake and Coe where football revenues are very low between weak game attendance and poor/nonexistent television revenues, I can see your point, but in places like the Big Ten and SEC, monster television deals and the broader marketing benefits they bring will continue to support whoever can win the most lucrative positions. This is a total nonissue until either the PAC-12 or Big 12 disband or the SEC/Big Ten have the balls to boot out underperforming universities.
That'd be quite the domino starter there... The TV $ would have to start drying up. Be it steaming services & folks not letting their kids play football due to concussions/CTE... I think there's over a 50% chance we'll live long enough to see it happen. To say it couldn't would be pretty naïve. Not sure football would completely go by the wayside but it wouldn't take much to neuter it down a ton from what it is.
Zstatman
Well-Known Member
It will be interesting to see what moves the new B1G commissioner advocates. I suspect he'll add Arizona St for hockey, he got his masters there.
I've always thought ND should be in the B1G even though I've never been a fan. But add them to the B1G West and that adds some spice. Mark my words, Nebraska will be back at some point, may be 20 years but they'll never give up until they get bacl on top, all the programs that have had that kind of success never give up the dream of getting therer again.
I say keep the alignment as is, let the West join the East in toughness. Somebody once said 'every worm turns'.
I've always thought ND should be in the B1G even though I've never been a fan. But add them to the B1G West and that adds some spice. Mark my words, Nebraska will be back at some point, may be 20 years but they'll never give up until they get bacl on top, all the programs that have had that kind of success never give up the dream of getting therer again.
I say keep the alignment as is, let the West join the East in toughness. Somebody once said 'every worm turns'.
As far as realignment goes I sure hope they don't. I mean for competitive balances sake and geographys sake they aren't going to get it much better. And competitiveness changes year to year. I mean OSU PSU and Michigan are going to be up there no doubt. Being MSU and the rest of the east has to be frustrating because yeah they are fighting over 3rd place at best pretty much. 4th most likely as the years start going by. The west is more up in the air in a way but not really Wisky has a pretty strong stranglehold at the top. But they aren't unbeatable.
I like how it is well enough to not go tinkering with it. They'd be way more apt to make it worse rather then improve it in any way. Let some more time go by hell it hasn't even been all that long really. Everyone wants to tinker tinker tinker. The only tinkering I would do is go to 8 with the playoffs that's it.
I like how it is well enough to not go tinkering with it. They'd be way more apt to make it worse rather then improve it in any way. Let some more time go by hell it hasn't even been all that long really. Everyone wants to tinker tinker tinker. The only tinkering I would do is go to 8 with the playoffs that's it.
okeefe4prez
Well-Known Member
Northwestern has well over $10 billion sitting in their endowment, so their concern over Big Ten TV revenue is a lot different than schools like Nebraska or Iowa. They are one of the few schools where they can ax athletic scholarships and instantly fill the vacant scholastic seats at an exorbitant sticker price. They are kept afloat right now by a couple of huge donors because they do not have the fan support of programs like Iowa or Wisconsin where they can sell tens of thousands of season tickets for close to a grand a pop all in. I've heard that their athletic department is subsidized by the school itself, so while the football team can claim a "profit" by the time you subsidize the Title IX sports, the net effect is actually a loss for the school. And they don't have a rabid football culture in the upper level administration of the school. I totally wouldn't be surprised if they dropped football and some of the women's sports and basically just focused on stuff like basketball, golf and lacrosse.
okeefe4prez
Well-Known Member
When Standford changed their mascot to a tree, I didn't think it was a big deal. Now, Illinois can't even sell Chief Illiniwek merchandise. One of the top academic schools is going to have its admin kill football and it will start a domino effect. Someone like Standford, Duke, Vandy or NU.
AreWeThereYet
Well-Known Member
I threw Notre Dame in the mix mostly because of the geographical fit, and because it is one of the names that has often come up in the past.
If you ask me, Notre Dame really needs a conference affiliation. Notre Dame's current independent status doesn't really help them out much. They have some arrangements for bowl games, if they do well enough, but that lacks the flexibility and bargaining power to get good matchups. In their decent but not great years (like this year), they end up playing down to middling team (like Iowa State).
I still think the ACC is a far better fit than the Big Ten. The Coastal Division could use a more substantial team. I don't think Notre Dame fans would go for being stuck in the Big Ten West either, and quite frankly I think the Big Ten West is doing just fine without them.
AreWeThereYet
Well-Known Member
It's just as likely that Nebraska fans will totally screw their team into the ground trying to get the glory days back.
kameltoez102
Well-Known Member
This is how it should be even if they don't kick anyone out they can develop a rotation that makes sense. It should be a 10 game conference schedule and get rid of the divisions. Top two teams play in the conference game
kameltoez102
Well-Known Member
While this could happen I am not so sure it will. Northwestern just sank a ton of money into facilities something big would have to happen to the game for it to end that quick I think
Fryowa
Administrator
All it takes is one bad hire leading to another bad hire and in short order they're nebraska 2.0. People said it could never happen to that program.
Fryowa
Administrator
That's exactly what will happen.
Look at Charlie Brewer last night. That kid is going to be eating steamed carrots in a nursing home by the time he's 45 and he still says "he's fine."
In today's environment no sport will be able to take that sort of pressure.
Football will take the road of boxing in the next 20 years. No one watches it and the revenue is a microscopic percentage of what it once once comparatively. It used to be the biggest sport in the world and now it's waaaay out on the fringe.
Oh for sure that's always a possibility. Clearly they are exibit A for it. And hell Michigan not that long ago too fell. Not as far as Nebraska has so much but they sure weren't the 'Michigan' after Carr retired either. OSU feels pretty bullet proof in that regard. It feels like a coach would have to have a major scandal of some sort to mess it up. Otherwise it's on auto pilot. The rest have to work at it harder but Franklin at PSU and Harbaugh and Michigan aren't going to have those programs fall off much. Unless something unforeseen were to happen
okeefe4prez
Well-Known Member
People are bad at guessing how things are going to change and the extent to which people in positions of authority will capitulate to a mob.
We're mostly middle age or older. Think back to the '80s. We had somewhere between 3 and 5 TV channels. Then cable. Then super cable. Then streaming. Remember when no one had cell phones?
Think back to the '90's. Handy Man on In Living Colour made fun of the handicapped. SNL routinely made gay jokes and even had a gender unknown character that was the butt of jokes. And just 20 short years later, the State of North Carolina lost its ability to host NCAA tournament games because the state legislature wouldn't capitulate to a mob that wanted to allow biological men in dresses to be allowed to use the ladies restroom.
Look at the student sections for run of the mill games now. It ain't good. There are only a handful of teams that still draw students the same way they did 20 or 30 years ago. There are already very strained relationships between athletics and academics at a lot of schools and it's really only a matter of time before the status quo at some of the more elite schools is turned on its head. Iowa and most of the Big Ten and power conferences will be safe because as state entities, the voters will still have some degree of say in the direction of the schools, but places that don't have hundreds of thousands of supporters at the ballot box and tens of thousands buying tickets are going to be the first dominoes to fall as football's popularity falls off.
kameltoez102
Well-Known Member
I agree it very well could happen but to what extent. The Brewer kid will be lucky to finish halfway through next year if he is even able to recover fully this off-season. I watched the Big 12 game a few weeks ago and he wasn't all there for awhile when he was playing I am really surprised they put him out there last night to be honest.
College football is such a money maker I don't see it ever going away. With that said I think the game we have grown up watching is on its way out sooner than later.
How these changes affect the landscape of football may be hard to predict. It is really going to boil down to any new rules that are brought on. The sport is dying off now with the younger generations maybe some rules can help bring those numbers back. Not sure what that would be at this time but it could save the game but it will only be a shell of itself compared to now.
okeefe4prez
Well-Known Member
The extent to which college football is a money maker really depends on who you are as a school. For Iowa, absolutely. For Northwestern, nope. Iowa football and basketball creates a lot of engagement with fans and alums. It drives the brand of the University and some kids will want to go there because they grew up Hawk fans. The revenue that it creates gets reallocated to the university in the form of out of state scholarships for a ton of kids who otherwise wouldn't go to Iowa paying full out of state tuition.
But if you're Northwestern, there are very few benefits. You go to the Big Ten title game and like 5,000 people show up. You go to a bowl game and maybe you'll get 3,000 fans. The school is positioned as an academic powerhouse with a nice campus, you don't need the football or basketball team to draw prospective students and you can easily sell every seat occupied by a student-athlete for $50k per year. The admin has to deal with headaches like the union organizing attempt. The faculty gets pissed because some of the student athletes do not meet NU's high admission standards. And huge swaths of the faculty and admin couldn't give two shits if the "sportsball" team is playing or doing well.
Fryowa
Administrator
My kid is a seventh grader and played his first season of school ball this year. He played 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th grade tackle for a youth club here in my town. At this point I don’t see him playing in college unless something weird happens with his development, so I don’t push the issue. If I suspected he was good enough to play after high school, I’d be trying damn hard to get him to do something else. I’ve already pushed a little bit of the cross country angle (he’s a decent middle distance runner for his age) but he isn’t having it. He loves playing with his buddies too much to give it up but as long as he keeps it limited to HS and doesn’t have any concussions I’m ok. In high school football I worry more about him trashing a knee or breaking a wrist and not being able to play baseball than head injuries (selfish on my part).
I think many if not most of us played high school football and ended up fine. To me it’s once you go beyond that that it gets sketchy. Each level you move up the size and speed of the athletes goes up exponentially and (in addition to the length of time you’ve spent playing) so does your chance of dementia. There’s zero chance I would ever encourage my son to play college ball and I think that same attitude is what’s going to make the game go away.
Also, it bears mentioning that I’m in the "liberal" minority by far. Our youth football team went from 2 teams each of 3/4/5/6th graders with full offenses and defenses when my son started, to a single combined team of 5/6 playing iron man when he was done--in four years. I don't care what anyone says, football is on the way out and the mindset driving it's demise starts in elementary school parents. It will always have regional pockets of popularity in uneducated/disadvantaged/red necky geographical areas, but that's it.
ssckelley
Well-Known Member
I can't see this ever happening at PSU, OSU, or Michigan, at least over any real stretch of time. They could have a bad year or 2 but nothing like Nebraska. Those schools sit in hotbeds of talent and don't have to rely a lot on out of state recruiting like Nebraska does.
Even getting punished for enabling a pedophile couldn't keep PSU down, heck they won 15 games the 2 years they were ineligible for the post season.
