Was just reading some NCAA news and saw that the power 5 want autonomy, or there may be a division 4. Even mentioned more pressure on independents (probably meaning ND full membership). Was hoping to see some TKP input/news but didn't see anything. Anyone up on what is going on here?
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I saw this as well on ESPN.
Slive was saying that the power conferences have told the NCAA that they need to give them more autonomy to run their own ship and not have the same set of rules as the other divisions. I am sure there are huge financial reasons why this is great for the power 5, but in the interview he mentioned that schools in these conferences can afford things like an extra stipend, long term/after graduation medical care of their players and a few more things that schools that don't have their budgets can afford. So at least it sounds like they have altruistic notions.
But I also think it's a means that these conferences are trying to get ahead of more Northwestern actions as these were pretty much hand in hand with their complaints.
I would link the article but on my phone.
The only issue there is that not all of the power 5 conference members are financially equal. Do you think that Wake Forrest, Vandy, etc. can provide some of the extra perks that he is talking about? Then again how does that affect Title IX? Will they start having to pay the women's teams to make up for the stipends he is talking about?
I believe if this happens you would see a few things happen
1) revenue for power 5 would increase substantially
2) revenue payouts per team would increase substantially
3) things like long term medical care would be a league or Division sponsored program
No sure what you mean about title IX though. If the stipend increases I would assume it would be for all student athletes.
Vandy is expensive. A guy I played with in high school got a scholarship there late 90s and it was valued over $125k. Some of that has to get to the sport.
Here's an SI article by Andy Staples about it
Interesting development. Can't say it isn't a decent idea. Big schools can afford to do things smaller schools can't. That's just the nature of the game. But it does feel like college football is on a bit of a bubble at the moment, and lawsuits and public opinion of the NCAA threatens to burst it.
I'm not quite sure which parts of their proposals I'd like, but that will all come in due time.
Just let the ACC schedule the Bitter plan already.
Even with NCAA rule changes, my guess is that the SEC would beat us to the punch in any inventive scheduling. when SEC goes to the bitter plan, then the ACC will (4 years later!).
in all seriousness though, without the Bitter plan (or something similar), leagues will start to feel splintered, and we will end up with strong "us vs them" sentiment within the leagues at league meetings, etc. it's not good for business, so it will only be a matter of time before we see changes within the leagues scheduling, or we see leagues split back into smaller leagues. i would guess the former is more likely.
Leg for this.
Wow, I thought this would have much bigger interest on TKP than this. Not sure if people are overlooking the thread because of non-specific title though.
ESPN just came out with this article: Civil War
O'Leary at UCF is not happy with the idea of Div IV at all and likens it to the South and the Civil War. That is incredibly hyperbolic but his point is salient in that the gap from haves to have-nots will increase and only make it more difficult for teams to build a program up.
I can't say I disagree with him but on the other hand isn't that how every lower division team views the divisions above? there are a lot of barriers to jump divisions not the least is the financial commitments required by the school to build athletics in general, let alone allocate funds to be relevant in their chosen marque sport. Also I think that he's looking at the recent past (at least last 20 years) with some serious rose colored glasses. During this time when college football became king of Saturday TV teams were thrust into a golden age of increasing their brand awareness up to a national level. It made some teams that were regionally known move from obscurity to the heights of awareness (eg. VT) and other teams that were completely unknown to nationally known (eg. Boise State). But what about prior to this time, especially prior to the much despised BCS era? Teams struggled for decades and decades to become more than a well known local university team and even still couldn't hope for more than making a bowl game as that obscure opponent against the team everyone knows in hopes of winning and becoming spoken about. See Texas v VT. If football (sans major TV, BCS, national recruiting, social media, etc) had continued as it had prior to our win over Texas then we would still be a regional team outside looking in. Much like O'Leary is complaining about now.
This is a business and it's not like their handing out crystal participation trophies at the end of the year. Admittedly it sucks to be in the conferences not included and I'm glad the Hokies have gotten to that point already.
Anyone else?
I'll bite a bit.
Lower division/conference teams do pretty much have a beef. You mentioned Boise State, but if we look at all the lower-conference teams that have been pretty successful in football over the last decade (Utah, Fresno, Hawaii, UCF, etc), they are not part of the Group of 5 club. And most of them don't have a chance to get into that club.
Now, the big conferences are interested in separating so they have a different set of rules to play by. I understand their desire to make their own rulebook (who wouldn't want that), but I don't like how the smaller schools/programs get left out in the cold. If there was a way for smaller schools to work their way into the bigger club, I'd see this more fairly. After all, a DII school could win a whole lot, see their revenue grow, make a financial commitment to the sport, and get into D1. But a mid-major has already hit it's ceiling, for no other reason than they didn't exist when the club was initially formed. This is what I don't like.
But the 5 major conferences are private. They get to invite who they want and leave out who they don't. Your geography (read: tv market), alumni base (read: big schools), and history have already determined your lot. the big 5 are taking their ball and going home. If the smaller schools had the opportunity to move into a major conference, I'd be ok with this. Since you can move from DII to D1, this sort of advancement/achievement is already available to some extent, but once you get to D1, you're given a glass ceiling.
Major props to Louisville and TCU for getting themselves into a major conference, so it is possible, but I don't see nearly enough movement between conferences/divisions to think that adding another division is going to be fair to the rest of the country.
I look at it this way...
Sports at a Power 5 (being the ACC, Big 10, Big 12, Pac 12, and SEC) are taken far, far more seriously than in the other leagues. The only one where you might have some legit complaints are basketball schools within the Big East, but that's only because those schools have forfeit their options to field football programs, allocating all of their money to basketball. When you look at how schools like even the Vanderbilts of the world drive revenue compares to the East Carolinas or Boise States, there really is no comparison. There is a massive divide between the haves and the have nots, and the haves want to close the loophole where the have nots have been leeching money and funds away from the haves for years in the BCS, especially when you consider that most of the teams that made those BCS games over a team from a Power 5 conference only got there due to an incredibly weak schedule.
You might not like it, but I don't disagree at all with what is going on right now. If you ran a business where you had significant money being siphoned off by those who performed decently well only a small fraction of the time, and only when the work load you gave them was weak, you'd want to make a change as well, and dam up the leak.
So you're saying we need to go to a European football set up with promotion & relegation?
Yup. This is what it boils down to for me. Every time we get into this discussion, I always come back to this. It's the fairest setup in sports. You win a lot, you get promoted. You lose a lot, you get relegated. Doesn't matter how long you've been a power. Doesn't matter how much money you made. If you're as good as you think, you'll be promoted after beating up on the lower division teams next season. If you're not as good as you showed last year, after this year you'll be relegated back. Give each of the big 5 a mid major to pair with (ACC = CUSA, SEC = Sun Belt, Big Ten = MAC, PAC12 = MWC, Big 12 = whatevers left) and do the relegation thing.
But of course it would never happen. Because the conferences that would have to agree to it are the ones that have all the power, and don't want to put their club members in jeopardy.
I like this better:
ACC - Big East - SoCon
SEC - CUSA - Big South
Big Ten - MAC - Ivy (or NEC if Ivy decides to stay out of it)
Big 12 - MWC - MEAC
PAC 12 - WAC - Big Sky
Members of the Sun Belt, along with Navy and Army, would be split up based on geographic fit to their 2nd tier conference. BYU would be sent to the Pac 12 and ND would join the ACC.
Members of the Colonial, (maybe NEC), Mizzou Valley, Ohio Valley, Patriot, Pioneer, Southland, and SWAC get divided up based upon geographic fits to their respective conferences in the 3rd tier.
2 teams relegated among the conferences each year. Lowest 2 out of tier 1 would swap with highest 2 out of tier 2, and lowest 2 out of tier 2 would swap with highest 2 out of tier 3. Should be little to no geographic issues with swaps, and travel budgets should remain relatively stable. You could have this set up for all sports across the board, where your basketball program could be competing in the Big East or SoCon while your football program is in the ACC.
A couple years ago Spencer Hall and the rest over at sbnation put together an argument for a promotion/relegation system, and broke college football programs into different tiers geographically. I'll simply link the article because I think it would take up too much space if I tried to copy/paste all the images:
http://www.sbnation.com/ncaa-football/2012/5/16/3022653/conference-reali...
It's certainly pretty thorough, and I would love to see Bluefield College (the town I'm from in VA) work their way up the tiers. Nothing would be more fun than this in my opinion.
This sounds great. Two teams moving up and down would be great, too, although I might suggest the worst team in each division might be a good delineation as well. Obviously, geography would be the biggest piece of lining up a major with a mid-major and a DII school.
This would introduce a good way to penalize teams for sanctions as well. Academic scandal? Relegation down a league. Lack of institutional control? Down 2 leagues.
Where did the Sun Belt go? And I don't think the WAC has football anymore.
You're right about the WAC... I was looking at an old list... We can still make something work, though... Maybe by blowing up the MWC and Sun Belt we can populate both the Big 12 and PAC12 at the Tier 2 level, and just distribute the remaining Independents geographically through the Tier 2, except for ND and BYU, who would join their Tier 1 counterparts (Pac12 for BYU - ACC for ND)
And I love the idea for immediate relegation based on sanctions. You wouldn't force teams to stop playing, and if they are able to keep their players, they could easily be back to Tier 1 within 2 seasons. Would make the whole system a lot more fair and would make it a lot easier to implement and enforce.
Yup. Matching everyone up geographically would help to minimize travel costs, too, which is a good thing
WVU wouldn't have to travel halfway across the country all the time, but we might have to absorb them at some point
So, on second thought, scrap the whole plan, to hell with this! /OneLineOfSarcastica
They'd have to change a LOT for that to happen, for this reason:
You relegate someone to I-AA, they lose more than half their football scholarships by rule. That's akin to an SMU-style death penalty... just for not winning.
My idea would be also in part, abolishing the scholarship restrictions. If you can afford to give out the full amount of scholarships, there should be absolutely nothing stopping you from doing so. The end result would hopefully be full scholarships at every level, which would actually be good for everyone involved, and would even the playing field among tiers. If you can't afford to give full scholarships... well, you'll probably be in Tier 3 for a while until you get your revenue streams in order to be able to afford those schollys. This way, even if you sanction a school and relegate them from Tier 1 to Tier 3, they can still keep their scholarships, but they're going to be 2 years away, minimum, from competing at the highest level and to be in a position to win anything of importance.
One big reason why so many schools stayed I-AA when they split the division was because they either could not or would not pony up to give out 85 scholarships. That wouldn't change just because the restriction was lifted... instead, that level would become even more polarized than I-A is right now because the teams that got relegated wouldn't have to (and likely wouldn't opt to) reduce their scholarships. You'll have struggling-to-stay-mediocre teams like Wake Forest suddenly looking like rockstars in Western Carolina's conference.
Also, considering all the media carriage deals in place, how would those teams be able to make their books if they lose their media payout because ESPN/FOX/CBS doesn't carry SoCon games?
I think we can all agree that this plan would entail a massive overhaul of the current system. This would likely change scholarship levels as well. Though, if you had multiple tiers (more than two) you could have a more gradual reduction between tiers.
And on top of that, presumably your revenue would tank with relegation so trimming scholarships might be a good thing.
I could sort of see this working for a single sport, but there's no way you could have these changes ripple through all the other sports. I mean, we had a bad couple seasons in football, but does that mean our bass fishing team should be penalized for that?
I'd propose that each sport would exist in these tiers in their own vacuum, and that schools would more align themselves with Geographic-based affiliation instead of Conference-based affiliation. I would even go so far as to say revenue sharing would exist among all 3 tiers, but that a higher percentage would go to the top tier, a medium sized percentage going to Tier 2, and the smallest going to Tier 3. I mean, anything that allows for the possibility for UVa to be naturally relegated to SoCon football status is a good thing.
Agreed, each sport would need to be detached from each other. The school itself wouldn't be relegated, only the sports teams that can't compete.
EDIT: This would naturally lend itself to allowing club sports to graduate into sponsored sports, too. When your team gets good, it gets moved up to play against better competition. Finding funding may be a problem, though. If we had a whole bunch of club teams get really good, they'd play better competition, probably need to travel more + further, and the school would be on the hook for it. Maybe the conference should bear the burden of these costs, as having the 12 (or so) best teams in a sport is probably in their best interest.
Interesting idea. The only problem I see is that traditional rivalry games would be out the window; I doubt playing UVA when they're in the Pop Warner League will count towards our bowl eligibility...
THIS. I think the idea is worth discussing but I think a lot of tradition that is built into the season would be gone. As Guitarman says once your relegated who knows when you would play your rival again. Sure new rivalries would pop up but only long enough for you to win or lose enough to move tiers again.
Also I think this model would cause absolute chaos to a universities income year by year. If you get relegated after having spent tens or hundreds of millions on new facilities etc and then fans give you the big "F" you because they are band wagoners then you could bankrupt an entire school
How is it a bad thing to ask academic institutions to be financially responsible? If they go bankrupt because they invested in a program only to see the bottom fall out to the point where they become THE worst team in their conference (which is actually pretty hard to do... look at the standard that has been set in the ACC... you would have to be especially bad to get relegated) (or even better yet, because they got sanctioned due to breaking the rules) then that is on them for poor financial planning, and not because the system screwed them over.
well, not that I ever want them to be good for anything, but LOLUVA makes the case here. They are at the bottom of the league and could be relegated. They just built the indoor arena and I believe the committed to other athletic buildings. If they get relegated and the douches of doucheville attend even less than now that could be disaster. It's not about being financially responsible it's about your financial return model getting royally phucked midway through it's process. Schools would be scrambling to pay for things from academics. That's a serious negative for me.
Also, another point I just thought of while writing that, what about the other sports at a school. The idea of Div IV is that it would include all athletics at the school and not just revenue sports. So are you basing relegation only on football? or is it sport by sport? And if so how does that work in regards to Title IX and the disparity in financial commitments to non-revenue sports by division?
Hmm. This is an interesting case.
Let's say LOLUVA would be relegated after next year (which, given their history, is not out of the realm of possibility, even though relegation hasn't been established). Would we be able to play them every year still?
Yes. We would. We already play out of conference games, and LOLUVA would just become another out of conference game. Schools already play opponents that are in mid-majors and lower divisions, so it would just fit into that category.
However, scheduling would take a hit. We'd have to solve the problem of still playing UVA, as an OOC game, but then change the schedule to make sure we still played our full complement of conference games. A team would be promoted to our conference, so we'd get to play them, but rivalry weekend would still need to remain intact.
I don't think the logistics here are insurmountable, but it would require careful thought. And scheduling an opponent 9 years out wouldn't work anymore.
How bout this...
Guarantee that every school has 1 rival they must play every year, and also stipulate that every school must play one game against a school from each tier they are not a member of. That way, if your rival is in a different tier, then that game naturally becomes the crossover. Shouldn't impact SOS, and if you have an 8 game conference schedule, it still allows you to play 2 games against teams from other regions.
Nice. Would help to generate a little more funding for the small schools, too.
The only real problem at that point is you have to wait and schedule the upcoming year only after the current season has concluded. No more planning out home-and-homes with traditional powers, because who knows who's going to be relegated? If you count on a certain matchup happening in 2-3 years, then that team has a bad streak and moves down, then you're already playing your allotted teams of lower tier plus the commitment you've already made. Otherwise, you have to refactor the schedule and choose which matchup you want. No more built-up anticipation of games like The Battle at Bristol, so finances become a concern. It's as much marketing as it is anything else, and you lose that.
I think you misunderstood.
The stipulation of 'rival' and having to play one of the other 2 tiers once per season... Thats all intra-region. So, for example, at VT we would have to play UVa every year and one of the Big East and one of the SoCon, assuming that UVa is not in those divisions. We would be free to play whoever we wanted out-of-region, and it would not impact relegation, and would essentially be treated in the same way as friendly matchups are in Europe, where the big games are there purely for the benefit of the fans. That way, we could still schedule out games like Tennessee and Ohio State.
OK, I see that, so let me ask you - in the new proposed system, if the top tier are only ever competing for a national title, who decides the teams that compete, and is it based at all on SOS? Wouldn't the out-of-region matchups still matter? Say we play 8 good conference games, 2 soft in-region games, then 2 soft out-of-region games, and go 12-0. Is that as impressive as some other team that plays 2 hard out-of-region games and is 10-2 or 11-1? What are the criteria? And can such plans ever be made in advance or is the schedule a total free-for-all the moment the current season ends? Not saying it can't work, but I think it becomes a logistical problem at some level, because everyone has to wait and see who ends up where.
The National Playoff would be a 10 team tournament that begins with the Regional Championship Games. Of the Region winners, you seed based upon BCS standings as we know them from the past (this is the ONLY rankings will ever be used). Seeds 1-3 get a first round bye, with the 4th and 5th seed playing a 'play-in' game with the right to face the #1 team in the Final 4. You then play out the remainder of the playoffs as we have it currently set up.
This would all but eliminate the human meddling with the process (outside of the fact that we still use the BCS for seeding... so to counter that, release all the BCS formulas, and eliminate the reliance on the human polls... Tweaking of the BCS formulas are transparent, and can only happen once every 5 years). I really think this would be a true ideal setup, and would completely level the field for everyone.
how about promotion and relegation (sort of) just within the current conferences? each conference gets to decide how they do it, but all 10 FBS conferences would be included. basically, each conference gets to put a weighted amount of teams (no more than 50% of league) into the top division of competition each year (say it's 36 teams total broken up into 4 divisions of 9 geographically). the 4 division winners (who play an 8 game round robin) go to the playoff.
ie:
SEC gets to put 7 teams in
ACC gets to put 6 teams in
Big12 gets to put 5 teams in
B1G gets to put 6 teams in
Pac12 gets to put 5 teams in
MWC gets to put 2 teams in
AAC gets to put 2 teams in
MAC gets to put 1 team in
Sunbelt gets to put 1 team in
CUSA gets to put 1 team in
NO INDEPENDENTS!
all conference members would not need to be in the same geographic division (but could be). these 36 teams would not compete for their conference championship, only for the national title. the remaining conference members would still play for conference championships and the 4 unscheduled games for the top 36 could be used as "warm-up" games and/or to protect conference and non-conference rivalries lost due to the new format. think of them as "friendlies" in soccer, but the results could still impact rankings and conference weighting for future top 36s. as i said before, some national formula/committee would be used to determine the weighting for how many teams from each league are included in the 36, but the leagues themselves get to determine how to fill those spots.
for instance, ACC could say that their conference champ replaces the worst performing ACC team from the 36 every year while the SEC could choose to use some multi-year weighted formula to choose their teams.
money-wise, the conferences would still own the rights to all of their member home games, there would be no separate TV contract for them. and imagine promoting an ACC championship game to determine who gets to move up to the 36 next year...seems pretty cool!
damn, this started as a half joke, but now i really like my idea!
so conference championships don't actually feature any of the good teams from a conference? The phrase "fewer fans than at the LOLva spring game" comes to mind...
the conference championship could be for inclusion in next year's 36 team super league or whatever you want to call it. keep in mind, VT could be the worst performing ACC team in the super league and need the CCG a year later to move back up. i think it could be pretty awesome.
for the leagues with only 1 team, they could have their Super League member play in their CCG to help determine who goes next year. letting the leagues each dictate their own method could create some intriguing scenarios.
oh, ok, so it's exactly what I thought it was. Under your scenario, with the ACC's top 6 teams not playing in the conference championship, we would have seen Georgia Tech take on Boston College in the "championship" game. I wouldn't pay to see that game. Of course, if we were in it, that might be a different story, but you're asking fans to pass on seeing their team play one of the conference elite in something billed as a championship. At least Duke fans last year could look forward to seeing FSU in action and pray that their team pulled the upset.
Honestly, I get what you're saying but I just don't think it works out this way. As was noted below many of these small schools don't have the resources to ever move up. VT has a fairly small alumni base but it's massive compared to D2 and D3 schools. Financially it's just extremely improbable and therefore I would say not a good reason to keep open the idea that they can move up for parity sake.
But also I don't think that they are saying that no one ever is allowed up to Division IV, unless I missed it somewhere. I think they are saying: Those that can compete are allowed. Those that can't are not.
I am sure there would still be cross division scheduling. But also I am sure if a group of schools got it together and formed a league that could compete at this level and meet the financial obligations then they could step up and turn it into the Power 6.
Case in point, my proposal for the East West Conference:
WEST
Boise State
BYU
Nevada
Fresno State
Houston
Ball State (I know, not west)
EAST
ECU
Cincinnati
USF
Marshall
UCF
Arkansas State
The teams are debatable but really if you took the top leftover teams and split them geographically to east and west then these teams would have an argument. They are all on the cusp financially.
And if you look there are only 6 teams. Room for more. Speaking of which if Div 4 goes ahead then Notre Dame would have to go along and join a league. Or they are going to allow for independents in this Division as well which means you are an institution could enter without a league and play, so long as you could afford to.
I get that it create a bigger gap but I don't see why it's not warranted.
I hear what you're saying, but I have one little beef:
As far as I've been able to tell (and I may be way off on this), in order to move into D4, you'd have to join a conference that is already in D4 or be desirable enough to move in as an independent. I don't think there are many teams that would work as an independent in D4 (Texas, ND, Florida, Michigan, etc probably could), and I don't think the D4 conferences would allow just anyone in.
Case in point, Boise. They were good for many, many years, but never got into a major conference because their TV market wasn't any good. I'm not real comfortable with that, just because it focuses on finances more than competition.
EDIT: I guess my problem here is that it still sounds like it is up to the conferences to invite people, instead of setting a standard that, when achieved, results in promotion to D4.
haha, are you sure you are talking about the European model? That's all about finances first man. It's about finances more than anything else. It has the appearance of giving the underdog a chance but what it really does is make sure the top clubs have their finances in order. the finances keep the best players in the top clubs and all but ensures small clubs never last long when they move up.
Boise is a great example of a team that is getting the shaft purely on television rights. I get that, but if this was a relegated system as you propose maybe they move up but they would quickly, due to the sheer lack of donating alumni base, be shot back down because they just cannot compete financially. Is it really going to make a difference that they moved up for a season or two?
I think better that they get their house in order and make the move when they know that financially they can be there to stay.
As much as I enjoy playing ECU every year, I think this is a great idea