Wisconsin Football 2022- The Jim Leonhard Show ends, the Luke Fickell era begins

[wallus]

This makes me like college sports a little less.

[Cool Hand Lucroy]

The problem as I see it is this:

The NCAA and university presidents have different interests. Sure, the NCAAT is great for the NCAA. But you give big conference ADs and presidents the chance to avoid sharing with the MEAC, they would do it. That's my worry. The end point of this is a breakaway org. Hopefully it doesn't get there, but that's the economic logic at work here. Kentucky makes more money not worrying about getting dropped by a MAAC school. 

That kind of tourney, one with only big conference schools, likely draws less interest from the casual observer, but I bet CBS would still pony up HUGE to guarantee their March schedule features only massive brands every year.

Again, maybe sense prevails at some point. But if college sports become all about the $$$ and the TV deals, the NCAA is just in the way. And one negative consequence of that (and there would be positive too) is that you lose the best sporting event of the year.

 

 

[Samurai Bucky]

It appears Wisconsin will get even more money -- especially from Fox.  Absolutely no excuse to not have a baseball team now.  Probably another topic.

No

Excuse

[owbc]

9 hours ago, Cool Hand Lucroy said:

Again, maybe sense prevails at some point. But if college sports become all about the $$$ and the TV deals, the NCAA is just in the way. And one negative consequence of that (and there would be positive too) is that you lose the best sporting event of the year.

 

 

College sports has been only about the $ for a long time, but we’ve been stuck in this weird state with a conference system that was not designed for it. Not to mention the whole “amateur athletics” facade. 
 

This has been devastating for the majority of athletic programs out there. I can speak specifically to Washington State University, whose athletics program is massively in debt because they have to compete with UCLA, USC, etc. They still pretend that they have a football program that could make the Rose Bowl again. Realistically that dream died a long time ago and there’s no way to go back. 
 

After Cincinnati made the playoff I’m sure the conversation went something like “how do we make sure this never happens again.” 

The super conferences are about leveling the playing field among the big football programs (hopefully hurting the SEC dominance in football as well) and taking the pressure off of some of the mid-size athletics programs who have to siphon money from academics just to tread water. 

[patrickgpe]

1 hour ago, Samurai Bucky said:

It appears Wisconsin will get even more money -- especially from Fox.  Absolutely no excuse to not have a baseball team now.  Probably another topic.

No

Excuse

its not a revenue generating sport, its clearly all and only about the Benjamins. its not really about what the fans want, the student athletes or anything else. 

[NBBrewFan]

Imagine if there weren't any AAA, AA, A leagues and all minor league teams played at the same "level". Of course there would be massive differences in quality and ability of teams to "compete".  College football was just that.  A fake playing field that any "University" could compete with another, which is simply a long con.  Time to realign and create a structure that is relevant to the reality that so many university and colleges have no business wasting money trying to compete.

[patrickgpe]

i get what you are saying, but its not like upsets NEVER happen.

last season lowly Jacksonville St beat Florida State. Northern Arizona beat Arizona. 

in basketball, just remember St Peters beat the bluest of the blue bloods in Kentucky. 

 

[owbc]

1 hour ago, patrickgpe said:

i get what you are saying, but its not like upsets NEVER happen.

last season lowly Jacksonville St beat Florida State. Northern Arizona beat Arizona. 

in basketball, just remember St Peters beat the bluest of the blue bloods in Kentucky. 

 

There seem to be two primary pathways to upsets in NCAA football. 

One is early in the season because programs have not been properly ranked yet -- Florida State finished 5-7 last year, so it's hard to call any of their losses a true upset. Appalachian State over Michigan is the biggest true upset that I can think of since Michigan ended up being pretty good in 2007. It's pretty rare though...most of the time those early season games are little more than preseason warmups in front of half-empty stadiums, and it's not even a big deal if you lose since it doesn't factor into conference standings. 

The other scenario is a highly ranked team losing on the road in conference play. We see this all the time in the Big Ten and many of my favorite Big Ten moments have been Wisconsin, Iowa, Purdue, etc beating Ohio State, fans storming the field, celebrations that go through the night, and so on. That's the true beauty of college football. 

Conference realignment is likely to increase that second type of upset, which might be the biggest benefit to all of this. 

I feel like one of the arguments for an 8- or 12-team playoff field was to generate more high-stakes upsets, but whether or not that would actually work was kind of an unknown. More than anything I just want to move away from neutral site games, which I hope these big geographic gaps will help with. Wisconsin vs. Notre Dame in Chicago was underwhelming (it's too bad Lambeau was canceled but even that would have been no better than playing in Madison). Wisconsin@UCLA at the Rose Bowl? Sign me up for that one. And please, please, please make the SEC teams come north for first-round playoff games. 

 

[PeaveyFury]

Credible reports this afternoon that Oregon and Washington have been told that the BigTen is waiting on a decision from Notre Dame before considering any additional Pac12 teams.

 

[madbad2000]

33 minutes ago, PeaveyFury said:

Credible reports this afternoon that Oregon and Washington have been told that the BigTen is waiting on a decision from Notre Dame before considering any additional Pac12 teams.

 

That is interesting because Oregon and Washington are the next two up from the pac of interest.  What is the final number of teams?  Not like they take ND and stop at 17.  Are they targeting 18 and if ND accepts only one more comes aboard?  You would figure the big 10 probably wants at least 4 teams out west to create a bubble/division/pod.  6 probably makes more sense.  Bring in Arizona schools along with wash and Oregon.

[Cool Hand Lucroy]

5 hours ago, owbc said:

College sports has been only about the $ for a long time, but we’ve been stuck in this weird state with a conference system that was not designed for it. Not to mention the whole “amateur athletics” facade. 
 

This has been devastating for the majority of athletic programs out there. I can speak specifically to Washington State University, whose athletics program is massively in debt because they have to compete with UCLA, USC, etc. They still pretend that they have a football program that could make the Rose Bowl again. Realistically that dream died a long time ago and there’s no way to go back. 
 

After Cincinnati made the playoff I’m sure the conversation went something like “how do we make sure this never happens again.” 

The super conferences are about leveling the playing field among the big football programs (hopefully hurting the SEC dominance in football as well) and taking the pressure off of some of the mid-size athletics programs who have to siphon money from academics just to tread water. 

Yeah, I agree with most of this. Football is a runaway train dictating terms to everyone, and that's bad for a lot of Wazoo and Oregon State (and, yeah, maybe even Illinois Rutgers) types too because, as you say, they're stuck in an arms race. Alumni want/need football at those schools, but the resources it generated often stay silo'd within the football program.

This is probably the crux of the matter. Do basketball schools with football programs (Kansas, North Carolina, etc.) seek to apply a football model (and super conferences DO make sense in football) to basketball? It's, in my view, undeniably good for MBB that the Big East exists. That Gonzaga exists. That Murray St. and Belmont and Dayton and St. Bona and Davidson and the whole A10 (and a few other schools that either don't offer football or only play non-scholarship) have the chance to build a national profile by making the NCAAT. It's also bad for the Big XII because, the more of those smaller teams that make the field, the more they eat into the moneypot the whole conference shares when it's teams advance.

What's good for CBB then, isn't good for the conferences themselves. So, how much do they pursue self-interest? I think, to keep the NCAAT status quo, you really do have to make a more values, "social responsibility" argument. Like it's some sort of duty as a basketball citizen to allow those small teams to compete on the same level. Maybe that'll happen. But since I do believe college sports is all about the $$, I worry they won't care much about the emotional glory of the NCAAT.

[igor67]

Having lived out of state for a long time, I've maintained my home state loyalties, but rarely ever invested any money in getting access to games. Which might relate to a the long term danger zone for these super conferences. Basketball ends up being exciting because the tournament does give that feeling to a huge fraction of people that 'their' team has a stake. I've already got pro-Football, so at what point does giving into pure have and have nots erode the actual total market size of college football? Having lots of large state schools helps maintain that perpetual alumni base, but its not like the SEC plus new Big Ten will have anywhere close to all 50 states represented.

[LouisEly]

17 hours ago, owbc said:

The fact is, there are way too many D-1 football programs and most of them are losing money. Time for some of these schools to stop pretending that they can play with the big boys. 
 

The downside of that is how does the next Jerry Rice/Walter Payton/Donald Driver/Aaron Jones/T.J. Lang/Quinn Meinerz/etc. get a shot at the NFL?  What about the guys who develop later?

Do bigger schools get more schollies and go back to JV teams? 

[LouisEly]

(reply fail)

[OldHeidelberg]

1 hour ago, PeaveyFury said:

Credible reports this afternoon that Oregon and Washington have been told that the BigTen is waiting on a decision from Notre Dame before considering any additional Pac12 teams.

 

I think 20 is the number to get to if they add any more, if ND really did come in they could add the above schools and then one more east coast team and have 10/10 division split right along the central/east time zone line. It isn't talked about as much as schools like NC/UV but I think Miami makes a ton of sense for the 20th, it would make ND happy and Miami would benefit bringing all those well travelling midwest fans to fill up their big stadium. TV market is an obvious huge plus for the BIG. It would really stick it to the now more regionally bound SEC too.  

[madbad2000]

The nice thing about the timing is that the Big is doing their TV deal now.  The sec just completed theirs, so if the big decides to go to 18/20/34/30/32 whatever number of schools, the bid for the TV deal will reflect that.  I'm very interested to see where this goes.  It has the potential to get ridiculous pretty quickly.  

[Cool Hand Lucroy]

https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/football-drove-usc-and-ucla-to-the-big-ten-but-could-eventually-mean-big-changes-in-college-basketball-too/

GP is onto something here. And this is the worry from the basketball side. We're talking years down the line, but it's this thinking that has me concerned, and it's also why I really dislike how much football drives college athletics. It creates a lot of bad incentives across higher ed. institutions.

[NBBrewFan]

If this is only a football consideration I can see ND and maybe 2-3 other West Coast teams.  Seems Stanford and Berkeley would be considered for their bay area market interest.  If other sports drive any decisions, then Stanford is a slam dunk recruit as they are strong in a whole host of non-big (basketball/football) sports.  Stanford is # 1 and Cal is #10 in overall NCAA championships.  If they aren't at least discussed as part of the process then it's entirely a football $ discussion.

[igor67]

It got ridiculous awhile ago, but assuming the attraction toward 20 Stanford, Oregon, Washington, and ND make for the strongest overall group in my estimation. You pull in the Bay area market as well as the other obvious markets. Stanford and Oregon have pretty broad based athletic success. I'm not up on every non revenue sport, but those schools are strong Tack and Field schools, which complements a lot of other things going on in the Big Ten already. And you would be responsbile as a conference for a ridiculous fraction of the country's PhDs.

[OldHeidelberg]

1 hour ago, igor67 said:

It got ridiculous awhile ago, but assuming the attraction toward 20 Stanford, Oregon, Washington, and ND make for the strongest overall group in my estimation. You pull in the Bay area market as well as the other obvious markets. Stanford and Oregon have pretty broad based athletic success. I'm not up on every non revenue sport, but those schools are strong Tack and Field schools, which complements a lot of other things going on in the Big Ten already. And you would be responsbile as a conference for a ridiculous fraction of the country's PhDs.

I am fine with taking Stanford or Cal over Oregon but I think they stop at 4 PAC teams. USC/UCLA is a game changer as it means the Big Ten wants a national footprint to counter the SEC and I sort of think blue chips weigh heavier than markets right now. If you look at the remaining non SEC/B1G teams out there I would rank the football powers like this:

1. ND

2. Clemson

3a: Miami

3b: FSU

5. Oregon

6. Washington

7. Stanford

8 Utah? Colorado?

 

It's getting thin so I will stop there. Clemson/FSU I expect are SEC bound and aren't really Big Ten material when there are better choices. South Florida however isn't really SEC territory and like ND the Canes consider themselves a national program. While they may not have been enthused about joining a midwest conference before now they would probably jump at the chance with USC and potentially ND in the mix. It sure will be interesting to see where this goes. I do hope the goal of a big conference is 2 divisions rather than just throwing everyone together and having the top two teams go to the BTC. That sounds like an unbalanced schedule nightmare. 

 

 

 

 

[igor67]

I absolutely think it is worth considering other sports. Football is ascendant and will be until it isn't. Having other sports and that big of a footprint gives you avenues to explore getting revenue in many ways, expanded cable channels, streaming only channels etc. 

[NBBrewFan]

12 minutes ago, OldHeidelberg said:

I do hope the goal of a big conference is 2 divisions rather than just throwing everyone together and having the top two teams go to the BTC.

Well they could go BIG and shoot for 28 (4 divisions of 7 teams).  The link from Lucroy above discussed NC and Duke as possibilities for the B1G (mostly for their BBall, not their Football), which I like.  How about the following:

East
	Duke
	Maryland
	Miami
	North Carolina
	Penn State
	Rutgers
	UVA
Central
	Indiana
	Michigan
	MSU
	Northwestern
	Notre Dame
	OSU
	Purdue
Midwest
	Colorado
	Illinois
	Iowa
	Minnesota
	Nebraska
	Wisconsin
	Utah
West
	Arizona
	CAL
	Oregon
	Stanford
	UCLA
	USC
	Washington

[wallus]

The Big Ten should just get every school that isn't in the SEC. (I am being sarcastic because I hate this)

[patrickgpe]

19 hours ago, wallus said:

The Big Ten should just get every school that isn't in the SEC. (I am being sarcastic because I hate this)

I agree, i see where this is going. 4 super conferences comprised of (mostly) BIG and SEC schools, winner goes to the playoff, The excitement of schools like Cincinnati getting into the playoff is OVER. 

[Samurai Bucky]

On 7/2/2022 at 5:27 PM, patrickgpe said:

I agree, i see where this is going. 4 super conferences comprised of (mostly) BIG and SEC schools, winner goes to the playoff, The excitement of schools like Cincinnati getting into the playoff is OVER. 

With all of the money and the TV deals, could we have some type of relegation like in Soccer (Football).  Could you imagine bowl games at the end determining if somebody moves up or moves down?