What were the major factors in the changing landscape of college conferences?

[77ncaachamps]

I can only think of:

- media rights (TV, radio)
- college football
- large schools, mostly state schools

Rising costs cannot be one as most conferences are going outside of their previous boundaries.

Did I miss any?

[GGGG]

It's money, and the need for it to fuel the incredible expansion of athletic programs and facilities.  The increase in travel costs are marginal compared to the increase in revenue that a better affiliation would bring.

And of course, they increase facilities, pay coaches more, etc. because fans demand that they win, and they need these things to attract top level recruits and coaches.

And the sport that brings in the most money is football...that is why football is the basis for all of this movement.  And it is mostly large state schools because they have fanbases that are large enough to justify the contracts.

[muhs03]

You covered it. The only other factor is exposure/recruiting. The BE lost Miami and added USF due to the Florida recruiting hotbed. TCU was going to give the BE relevance in Texas.  

/note past tense

[texaswarrior74]

Football

[warriorfred]

+1 Football

Without football, 10 years from now, Marquette will be hoping to squeak by Xavier for the automatic conference bid to the NCAA tournament.

[ken8406]

I could also see stability for a reason. The ACC recently raised the exit fee from the conference to 20 million.

[Bob "Big Daddy" Wild]

The Big 10 Network.

It changed the game in college football.  Its success pays more to Big 10 schools than any other conference, or Notre Dame's NBC deal.  I remember reading an article last year that the Big 10 commissioner's goal was to destabilize the college football landscape so that Texas and Notre Dame were forced to join a conference...and the Big 10 had the most money to pay each of them due to the success of their network.

By taking Nebraska, you massively destabilize the Big 12, and Delany hoped that the SEC and Pac-10 would pounce...thus also destabilizing the already shaky Big East.  If college athletics moves to a 4 power conference with 16 teams each and a playoff system that breaks from the NCAA - the Big 10 will be the biggest winner.  Notre Dame would have to join the Big 10 in order to still compete for championships, and again they have the most money to throw at Texas.  You then have ND, Michigan, tOSU, Nebraska, Texas, and Penn State all in one conference...football wise that is a lot of winning tradition.

Not sure if Delany is the evil genious that the original article made him out to be, but it sure looks like things might play out that way.

[Dr. Blackheart]

Lack of vision.  There is nothing attractive about Syracuse football but for the want of what's next. They had a buyer willing to overpay so they jumped. What happens in 5 years when expansion is not an option? The brand will be dead.  College football has no excitement so the administrators went after basketball to kill.  Enter the lawyers.

[forgetful]

In the end I don't think there is anything meaningful driving this.  The idea is that there will be more money, but I don't see how that will be the case. 

Before the moves this year there were 66 teams in the 6 BCS AQ conferences (67 if you include TCU).  If they move to 4-16 team conferences that would be 64.  In the end having 4 conferences isn't going to get more total $'s for football, demand isn't going to go up.  So they will share increased revenue from excluding 2-3 poor earners (Iowa State, Baylor).

As for the idea of a Championship tournament, there won't be any additional draw over the 5 BCS games they already have, so no additional money there. 

In the end there will be consolidation and no increase in money then could have been had by just renegotiating contracts with ABC/ESPN/FOX.

[Boozemon Barro]

I think the most important factor is stability and revenue sharing. If Texas would have signed their television rights over to the Big 12 conference during the Big 12 meetings in early 2010 then none of this would have happened. Big 12 had unequal revenue sharing, but there was still a significant amount of money being shared with the schools that didn't generate much (Iowa State, Kansas State, Baylor, etc.) Texas was on the verge of signing a $300 million contract with ESPN for the Longhorn Network, of which none would be shared with the other conference members. Nebraska and Oklahoma had plans to create their own networks, but they wouldn't have been able to get anything close to what Texas got. There was such a gap between the haves and have nots in that conference that Missouri started making it publicly known they would like to join the Big 10. After that there were rumors of four Big 12 South teams and Colorado going to the Pac 10 which was about to negotiate a new television contract (after the expansion they signed the biggest television contract in the history of college athletics, but it will be dwarfed by what the Big 10 and SEC will get once their current contracts are up.)

  Nebraska saw how unstable the conference had become and they were worried they would be left out in the cold, so they approached Delaney about joining the Big 10. Once Nebraska left and the Longhorn Network was up and running the writing was on the wall for the rest of the Big 12 teams. If Texas would have signed their television rights over to the conference in 2010 the Big 12 would still be together and none of this would have happened. This is all just my opinion, but I'm from Nebraska and am a huge Husker football fan so I've followed this conference expansion stuff as closely as anyone.

[GGGG]

Lack of vision.  There is nothing attractive about Syracuse football but for the want of what's next. They had a buyer willing to overpay so they jumped. What happens in 5 years when expansion is not an option? The brand will be dead.  College football has no excitement so the administrators went after basketball to kill.  Enter the lawyers.

Don't let your personal feelings get in the way of this.  College football is the second most popular sport in the country, behind the NFL.  To say that there is "no excitement" in the game is simply false.

[MUMac]

Don't let your personal feelings get in the way of this.  College football is the second most popular sport in the country, behind the NFL.  To say that there is "no excitement" in the game is simply false.

I agree, but I wonder if the BCS Schools will overplay their hands?  That is the direction I see it.  The BCS has turned me off of college football.  If they play this too far with the haves/have nots, you could see a turning against college football.  It may not happen this way, but the potential is there.

[tower912]

I'll second that.   I doubt I will watch a single game on TV this year.    I can easily see this being a dot.com/real estate bubble, with the bottom falling out 10 years ago.    This honestly makes me glad we don't have a crappy D1 football team right now.    Then our best option would be to team up with Cinci, Louisville and USF and run to the remnants of the B12.    Yippee. 

[Henry Sugar]

Just because I haven't seen it mentioned yet.

A group of economists (including two of my favorites - Thaler and Berri), already asked the DOJ to investigate the BCS under antitrust law.  This was back in April

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703385404576259503598364680.html

Utah's AG was talking about filing a lawsuit less than a month ago.

http://businesslawdaily.wordpress.com/2011/08/28/utah-ag-vows-suit-against-college-football-system/

I have to imagine that the parties interested in anti-trust legislation just got quite a bit more incentive.

[GGGG]

I agree, but I wonder if the BCS Schools will overplay their hands?  That is the direction I see it.  The BCS has turned me off of college football.  If they play this too far with the haves/have nots, you could see a turning against college football.  It may not happen this way, but the potential is there.

It's not the BCS schools that will overplay their hands - it is the broadcasters that are giving them the money.  The schools are just cashing the checks.

[Dr. Blackheart]

Don't let your personal feelings get in the way of this.  College football is the second most popular sport in the country, behind the NFL.  To say that there is "no excitement" in the game is simply false.

Four BCS mega-conferences blanch the natural rivalries out of a short football season. It was the NHL pre-strike when it was thuggery and every team made the playoffs, which means the regular season doesn't count. I liked the way you described the brand the other day.

Now if the BCS ends up with some sort of playoff, great...but until then, there is just a blob of the season.

btw, I think that it was wise of Pitt and Cuse to join the stable ACC.  However, I am still hard pressed to see the long-term attractiveness of Cuse football to their product. I guess it gets them closer to NYC, knocks the competition for basketball out of the way...but I think that the move of BC to the ACC has not turned out the greatest for them as you can see how their football product has slipped significantly.  And basketball is a non-factor there.  

[bilsu]

I see two mistakes that the Big East made. One allowing Notre Dame to join as an independent in football. Why would you allow someone in that considered you not to be good enough. The threat of Notre Dame leaving was always a destabilizing threat. The second mistake was taking MU and DePaul instead of taking two other football schools or keeping the spots open to allow them to accept 2 more football schools when the opportunity arose.

[MUMac]

It's not the BCS schools that will overplay their hands - it is the broadcasters that are giving them the money.  The schools are just cashing the checks.

Poor choice of words.  I did not mean the schools, but he BCS (the administration and the leagues themselves).  Nice catch, sorry for the error.

[GGGG]

I do agree with you about Syracuse and the ACC.  It seems to me that it helps to save the ACC, but I am hard pressed to figure out what benefit it gives to individual members, who now see their 1/12th share drop to 1/14th...and possibly to 1/16th later on.

[Hards Alumni]

I see two mistakes that the Big East made. One allowing Notre Dame to join as an independent in football. Why would you allow someone in that considered you not to be good enough. The threat of Notre Dame leaving was always a destabilizing threat. The second mistake was taking MU and DePaul instead of taking two other football schools or keeping the spots open to allow them to accept 2 more football schools when the opportunity arose.

Notre Dame would never ever have joined the BEAST for football.  If they decided to jump ship for basketball it would have changed nothing.  They are as minor a player in all of this from a basketball perspective as there can be.

[Nukem2]

I can only think of:

- media rights (TV, radio)
- college football
- large schools, mostly state schools

Rising costs cannot be one as most conferences are going outside of their previous boundaries.

Did I miss any?

All about GREED.

[GGGG]

Hey, one person's "new opportunity" is another person's "greed."

Was MU greedy when they dropped the CUSA for the BE???  When they dropped the MCC for the Great Midwest???

If the ACC decides to take four basketball only members, I would happily leave DePaul, Seton Hall and Providence behind to make sure we are one of the four.

[Brewtown Andy]

I see two mistakes that the Big East made. One allowing Notre Dame to join as an independent in football. Why would you allow someone in that considered you not to be good enough. The threat of Notre Dame leaving was always a destabilizing threat. The second mistake was taking MU and DePaul instead of taking two other football schools or keeping the spots open to allow them to accept 2 more football schools when the opportunity arose.

I'm guessing the existing basketball schools weren't going to approve more football schools in order to maintain their ability to have a hand on the rudder going forward.