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It's definitely chicken/egg, just like almost everything in this sport. If a playoff system was created where every FBS conference champion got an autobid, then I bet there is less consolidation. But also, this is college football. The post season was an exhibition until the late 80's. We had Jim Delenay suggesting that the B10 would skip a BCS national championship bid because the Rose Bowl was more important than a national championship. I don't think a playoff model that was the same as every other American sport league was ever realistic.
When it became clear that the playoff was a sham and the most popular teams were going to get in every year all of the best teams clamored to be in the same leagues so they could bolster their cred purely by association and increase their odds of making the playoff.
Yea, I don't buy this. UW and Texas both made the 4-team playoff the year before they were departing from their conference. Until the FSU debacle, there was never a P5 conference champion that got bounced from the playoff in favor of team with a lesser or equal record who did not win a conference championship.
If only one team from the SEC is going to get in every year then Texas and OU probably hang out in the Big12 instead of jumping ship because in the Big12 all they have to do is win the conference championship (something both teams have plenty of experience doing) and then they've got a solid shot at the playoff.
I see it differently... I think that UT/OU saw that from 2007 through 2023 (when they announced they were leaving the B12), only 2 non-SEC programs had won a national title: Clemson and Ohio State. The SEC brand had/has cache with recruits. UT/OU were losing recruits to SEC programs, so they went to fix the problem by becoming an SEC program.
yeah, because for the last 1.5 decades all the resources have been flowing to the SEC and nobody is stopping it. The playoff never should have been about the best matchups. It always should have been about pitting the conferences against each other for bragging rights. Make your team win your league to make the playoff. I promise you if that's how it was set up in the first place Georgia wouldn't be head and shoulders above every team in the ACC but still not good enough to win their own league. The SEC champion could win every playoff but how is that any different than it is right now? I am arguing that if the SEC only got one team in the playoff resources would disperse to the other leagues. Kirby Smart wouldn't stay in the SEC if he was going to be left out of the playoff for losing to Saban every year - he'd go to, IDK, the ACC, where he has, ostensibly, a pretty easy path to the Playoff every year. You know what would happen? Coaches and Players would gravitate towards the "easiest path" which would make those paths harder. The ACC would be a much better conference if the SEC was only permitted one playoff spot. Because the ACC would get filled up with good-to-great coaches and players who think it's an easy league to to win in order to make it into the playoff and before you know it each of the Power conferences start to look easier than some of the others in some ways and then hungry players and coaches who want to make it to the playoff the "easy way" would make those conferences more competitive.
"So, if every major conference gets maximum 1 spot in the playoff"- you know I hate the SEC as much as anyone, but they have a point here. Take last season- Clemson won the ACC at 9-4. They got destroyed by Georgia, lost to unranked Louisville and lost to the SEC's 5th place team USCe. Compare that to Georgia- the SEC's second team that would be out of the playoff. 1. UGA beat them head to head, 2. and lost to 2 top 15 teams- Bama and Ole Miss. UGA has a much better resume.
conference re-alignment may not have such a big impact if, for instance, the playoff was structured properly to begin with. So, if every major conference gets maximum 1 spot in the playoff, and the only way to get that spot is to win the conference championship for your conference, then I don't think conference re-alignment has as big of an impact as you're saying it does.
Maybe it's a chicken and egg scenario. If we assume that the playoff stays at 4 teams and we say that all of the 5 major leagues have a shot at getting exactly 1 team into the playoff via the championship game and then make a committee pick the best 4 candidates from the 5 champions - maybe then you don't see the conference re-alignment happen at all. I could make a case that the flawed playoff structure from the outset CAUSED conference realignment. When it became clear that the playoff was a sham and the most popular teams were going to get in every year all of the best teams clamored to be in the same leagues so they could bolster their cred purely by association and increase their odds of making the playoff. If only one team from the SEC is going to get in every year then Texas and OU probably hang out in the Big12 instead of jumping ship because in the Big12 all they have to do is win the conference championship (something both teams have plenty of experience doing) and then they've got a solid shot at the playoff. But now with the SEC getting half of the playoff spots, and the playoff growing every two years, Texas and Oklahoma realized that they probably stood a better chance at making the playoff as the 4th or 5th best team in the SEC than they did as the best team in the big12.
Conference Re-alignment may be a symptom, not a cause. The decision to go to a playoff structure that isn't actually a playoff at all is more of a cause which has yielded utter shit. Shit like conference re-alignment.
Bingo- arguably the biggest sacrificial lamb is the 3 star HS P5 prospect. Many many of those spots are being taken by the portal thus players have to play down a level. Nobody cares about that though- a inconvenient consequence of the B.I.C.
You're really hammering the "conference realignment" drum. I do think it's hurt the sport but there is no single issue. It's an amalgamation of different decisions along the way that have all degraded the sport in their own ways.
I think it's the single thing that has hurt the fan experience the most AND the player experience the most over the last 2 decades. I think a lot of the frustrations with the current playoff system go away if conference realignment doesn't happen. I think that the money is consolidated in significantly more schools if conference realignment doesn't happen.
NIL doesn't change the fan experience IMO. Transfer Portal really does. But the consolidation of power programs in conferences has:
- Kills rivalries
- Made it harder for a lot of fans to attend away games
- Has drastically shrunk the 'middle class' of college football
- Made life harder for all college athletes
The media coverage of football is so unashamedly biased towards the P2 it is unwatchable.
If you're interested, I'm happy to point you towards some more interesting outlets.
Frosty is a stuffed animal and his adventures formed the basis of many bedtime stories. He does not get involved in those sorts of discussions. Besides, no organization (Penn State is my "favorite" place, a place that had Marcus Vick ...) can claim to be clean and pure.
Curious Frosty's opinion on Dave Bliss covering up a murder? Or Art Briles knowing their was a rape ring on the team?
1. Conferences expanded and ate the smaller conferences. Big 12 ate the SWC the ACC ate the Big East. The B1G added Maryland and Rutgers. This expanded markets and thus TV contracts. 2. There was so much money, that coaches salary's ballooned to 5-10 million per year. 3. With so much money "in" the sport, amateurism went out the window. 4. Schools had to spend money on facilities because they wanted the best players. They couldn't offfer them money, so they offered mini golf and arcades instead. 5. The more you win, the more you get from boosters to lure said players via facilities. 6. Global pandemic strikes and the NCAA stopped giving a shit about eligibility and transfer rules. 7. This opened a window for the players to double down and say not only can movement not be restricted (precedent), compensation can't be restricted either. Genie out of bottle. 8. The NCAA was is and remans useless- they have no power, no authority and where they do, they are corrupt to the core- giving UNC, Michigan others a free pass for cheating. 9. Absent any governing body, simply sue for direct payment to players, unlimited eligibility and put it in a judges hands who will always rule for the allegedly oppressed not free market. 10. The wild fucking west.
No, Frosty has his own rooting system. He's not attached to VT. His teams are:
Baylor Bears
Chicago Cubs
UCLA Bruins
Boston Bruins
Chicago Bears ...
You see the pattern.
But being a UCLA Bruins fan, he can't stand the California Golden Bears.
How in the hell did a game played with a leather ball as a form of fun and entertainment get this complicated.
6'5" regular height....Bucky height including the hair... /s
The data by seat says we are getting fans to games and those fans are spending money.
The biggest issue with that data is Lane capacity compared to other top schools. 65K seats versus over 100K seats. Even if those schools were behind us in per fan/per seat, if they get 90K in per game and we sell out every game, it's a 25K shortfall in terms of total revenue. Multiply by 6 and you have a 150K shortfall per season.
Clemson is 81K so 90% would put them around 73K or 48K more attendees across a season. We are about $6 per seat better than Tigers. By this data Clemson brings in about $320K more than us. Not a large number but still shows there are some flaws in presenting the data by seat without including total seat impact
UCLA - hey, this is Frosty's second favorite team after Baylor (he is from Texas)
Ummm....wouldn't that make UCLA his third favorite team? Or is VT below these two in Frosty's mind?
smh yall
"But are not translating this to success". Correct. We simply do not have the talent in the 2 major sports. Full stop. I was hoping Pry could/would raise the talent level on the roster, but he really hasn't. High school recruiting should have improved but it hasn't significantly. We have done OK in the portal, but not any better than Clemson, Nc State, Louisville, Maryland. We are treading water there too. Objectively the 25 portal haul is meh as well. We do not have the talent- that is what needs to "translate" into wins. In hoops, the only way CMY is going to win here and make the dance is to get "old" with his roster and shoot the lights out. Well it's tough to get old when players play for 1 year and leave or you have no money to pay your 5th year senior point guard. Pedulla's replacement wasn't near as talented. It's a talent thing if we are being honest.
I agree with you - my hang up has always been the revenue piece. We do not nee more tax revenue- we have shown this 10-fold throughout history. Half of our workforce doesn't even pay federal income tax and we are the strongest economy in the world with the largest military. We have plenty of "money" coming IN. Our issue is that we sign these ridiculous bills that include some great things to help society- but they also include a ton of bogus pork that you can't put back in the bottle once it's budgeted. So to avoid (more) riots in the streets, the government won't "cut" things like Welfare, the VA, etc, etc - because that is the end of the world. Get rid of the waste and pork, and spend it on critical things like healthcare, education, housing- you know what makes/breaks a society. Regardless, there is plenty enough revenue coming in.
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You do realize that all the death tax does is incentivize spending every dime you have
by and large, most governments need (and want) their citizens to spend money. So, yeah, the incentives are structured to encourage people to spend, not save. I'm not saying it should or shouldn't be this way, but that's the way it is and has been for a long time. Obviously this is an over-simplification but economies want money flowing, not sitting in savings accounts. So it makes sense that governments would incentivize spending over saving.
I think your last point has merits. Taxes are a necessary evil. Nobody enjoys paying taxes but many people enjoy the benefits that taxes pay for. The main problem I think every taxed society faces is that we can't all agree on how that money should be spent. It's tough to swallow the tax pill. It's even tougher when you either don't know or don't agree with where the money is going. When you have as large and diverse a country as the U.S. that's a huge problem that you're just going to always face. The answer isn't simple, just like the problem isn't simple.
I, for one, would be in favor of a system where each tax-paying individual can select which government programs receive their tax dollars. If the IRS provided a form with a list of all the potential receivers of your tax money and gave you the option to select which percentage that you pay goes to which item on the list that would be pretty cool. I'd hate taxes just a little bit less if I had a little bit more control over how the money were spent.
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So we lead the ACC here, which is nice, but are not translating this to success. Here are two initial thoughts: either the fanbase has been reduced to diehards and therefore the revenue per fan is up OR we need to figure out how to better get fans to games to maximize the passionate fans. I am trying to find a way to give Whit some credit for this, but the performance on the field and this data just makes me think the AD isn't getting it done with what they have to work with.
FOOTBALL REVENUE PER SEAT and PER FANFY2024 ('23 Season)Updated RevSeat and RevFan data for FY24, looking at gameday-related revenue.There're a lot to unpack in here, but three issues really stood out to me (below):What do you guys see as interesting takeaways?My Top... pic.twitter.com/echxaRknqN— Tony Altimore (@TJAltimore) June 9, 2025
This tweet puts an interesting contrast on the budget conversation.
Hokies are 12th in Revenue per seat and 15th in Revenue per fan in this data. I am sure the administration would use this to say Whit is maximizing gameday but keep in mind Seats don't Seat the same here with many top schools having a significant advantage over the Hokies in total seats.
My take is this points to Whit failing outside of gameday activities in terms of revenue generation. Clearly ACC TV deal plays a huge role as well.
Softball - yes. Baseball- hard no. 12/13th in the ACC is not "close" to competing for super regionals, etc.
Boomers get ragged on for "having it easy"- yet when they die and want to leave wealth to their family- well no fuck that, we need mucho tax money for other people besides their family. You do realize that all the death tax does is incentivize spending every dime you have and selling everything from your nursing home/death bed, right? Let's see- I can sign the house over to my son, so he gets killed on every single possible tax. Or? I could sell it- pay capitol gains only. Tough fucking decision. No american should ever favor more taxes. none. EVERY american should favor cutting waste and spending.
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We're closer than many probably think in both softball and baseball. Recruiting and coaching are where the immediate additional investments need to be made. The problem is that neither of these is a revenue generator.
Whit should be fired for that farce alone.
I really like the tone of the bass on this one.