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MEGA Conference Realignment and lawsuits Megathread: Stories, Tales, Lies, and Exaggerations

Juanka said:
The proposal, which was formulated by Clemson and Florida State and discussed by the league's presidents during Tuesday's regularly scheduled meeting, includes additional money going to schools with better ratings success in football and basketball.
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Interesting how it isn't tied to W-L record.
 
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Hurracanes said:
That’s the true scoreboard. However, TV ratings come with a long and consistent history of success. It’s very difficult to draw if you’re Boston College than FSU who has a brand and history.
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Not just brand and history ... BC and Syracuse are NOT in big time college football regions / markets. FSU is basically in SEC territory that is basically southern Georgia. The % of people who watch college football in the SEC region totally dwarfs the viewership % from other parts of the country ... especially the Boston / NYC and San Francisco bay areas. There is a reason that a Bama Spring Game draws 90,000 and Stanford can't draw 10,000 for a conference game. The only thing to do in Alabama outside of hanging out at the local gas station is go to a Bama "something".
 
Rickd said:
Not just brand and history ... BC and Syracuse are NOT in big time college football regions / markets. FSU is basically in SEC territory that is basically southern Georgia. The % of people who watch college football in the SEC region totally dwarfs the viewership % from other parts of the country ... especially the Boston / NYC and San Francisco bay areas. There is a reason that a Bama Spring Game draws 90,000 and Stanford can't draw 10,000 for a conference game. The only thing to do in Alabama outside of hanging out at the local gas station is go to a Bama "something".
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Now I feel bad for tuning in to watch Memphis *** **** the Semenholes last week, improving their TV ratings..............
 
Rickd said:
Not just brand and history ... BC and Syracuse are NOT in big time college football regions / markets. FSU is basically in SEC territory that is basically southern Georgia. The % of people who watch college football in the SEC region totally dwarfs the viewership % from other parts of the country ... especially the Boston / NYC and San Francisco bay areas. There is a reason that a Bama Spring Game draws 90,000 and Stanford can't draw 10,000 for a conference game. The only thing to do in Alabama outside of hanging out at the local gas station is go to a Bama "something".
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I respectfully disagree. If BC or Cuse had the success and history of a OSU or Michigan, they would be monsters in the NY/Boston market. Nobody in the NE cares about college football for many reasons but above everything, those schools in that market haven’t given them a reason to. Winning builds your brands.
 
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Rickd said:
Not just brand and history ... BC and Syracuse are NOT in big time college football regions / markets. FSU is basically in SEC territory that is basically southern Georgia. The % of people who watch college football in the SEC region totally dwarfs the viewership % from other parts of the country ... especially the Boston / NYC and San Francisco bay areas. There is a reason that a Bama Spring Game draws 90,000 and Stanford can't draw 10,000 for a conference game. The only thing to do in Alabama outside of hanging out at the local gas station is go to a Bama "something".
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I don't know, Lake Martin is pretty cool.
 
Hurracanes said:
I respectfully disagree. If BC or Cuse had the success and history of a OSU or Michigan, they would be monsters in the NY/Boston market. Nobody in the NE cares about college football for many reasons but above everything, those schools in that market haven’t given them a reason to. Winning builds your brands.
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Something the "leaders" at the University of Miami either forgot or didn't learn over the past 20 years.
 
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Rickd said:
Not just brand and history ... BC and Syracuse are NOT in big time college football regions / markets. FSU is basically in SEC territory that is basically southern Georgia. The % of people who watch college football in the SEC region totally dwarfs the viewership % from other parts of the country ... especially the Boston / NYC and San Francisco bay areas. There is a reason that a Bama Spring Game draws 90,000 and Stanford can't draw 10,000 for a conference game. The only thing to do in Alabama outside of hanging out at the local gas station is go to a Bama "something".
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College Football is king in the south. Always has been always will be. Plenty to do in Bama and Atlanta too, but people enjoy watching college football and tailgate in the South. Miami is a big event town. Even when Miami was king of college football, unless it was FSU, UF or other big-time school, the stadium is half empty. People watch the game at home because they are too lazy to fight traffic or in the background by the beach.
 





Some notes:

-During a regularly scheduled meeting of ACC presidents and chancellors on Tuesday, there were discussions about alternate revenue models, a person briefed on the meeting confirmed. Hours after that meeting, ESPN and Yahoo! Sports both reported that FSU and Clemson would be open to staying in the league if financial adjustments — more like concessions — are made. Gee, how kind of them.

Then there’s the second part to Clemson and FSU’s supposed pitch, reported by ESPN: potentially shortening the league’s grant of rights, possibly to 2030, which aligns with the expiration of the Big Ten and Big 12’s media contracts.

- Nine months into what would almost certainly be a years-long legal battle, the only thing FSU has earned in court is a healthy number of attorney billable hours. The same applies to Clemson’s six-month slog in court. There has been no indication that either school has a legal leg to stand on with its respective arguments — and even if they did, the ACC has made clear it will proverbially kick the can as far as possible, via time-consuming appeals and counter-suits.

-This new revenue proposal — which stemmed from court-mandated mediation in Florida — isn’t too dissimilar from what Clemson and Florida State proposed in the not-so-distant past. (Also, importantly, these discussions are so premature, so early on, that they’re more like … the concept of a plan.) Clearly, though, there wasn’t an appetite for such a structure at the time; the ACC instead settled on its current “success initiative” — which distributes new revenue, mostly from the expanded College Football Playoff, based on schools’ on-field and on-court success — as a way to close the growing revenue gap with the SEC and Big Ten. That initiative, in theory, should have benefited Clemson and Florida State more than anyone, as the league’s preeminent football powers. But when you start 0-3, as the Seminoles have, or when you get your clock cleaned by Georgia on national TV, as the Tigers did, that pool of “success” dollars suddenly isn’t so guaranteed.

-What reason does the ACC have to acquiesce to any of those schools’ demands, when they’re realistically powerless to change their situation for anywhere from three to 12 more years?

-FSU and Clemson have been, strictly speaking in professional terms, bad partners. They have complained, loudly, about perceived wrongs. They’ve taken “family” business and made it public, messily, with no apparent benefit in sight. They’ve tried to shirk a bill that historically, and presently, many other schools have paid, including Oklahoma, Texas, USC, and UCLA in the past three years. And now, perhaps the most ironic sin of all: falling short on the football field, the one thing driving all their behavior in the first place.

This is not a situation where the ACC needs to, or should, extend an olive branch to FSU and Clemson to convince them to stay, for stability’s sake or simply to end the public clash. Now, if you’re commissioner Jim Phillips, in-fighting ain’t a good look. It has, understandably, made the league something of a laughingstock, a constant PR nightmare from which there is no clear solution. And while that may eat at Phillips, you know who else it definitely eats at? ESPN… which, yes, is probably coming into that February 2025 “look-in” with some serious questions.

-The ACC holds every ounce of leverage, and Clemson and FSU saying they’ll stay in the league only under their terms is the ultimate walk-back, a desperation play. Which in turn means if the ACC goes along, it’s only offering those schools the dollar-lined off-ramp they’re desperately seeking.
 
AuoraCane said:
College Football is king in the south. Always has itbeen always will be. Plenty to do in Bama and Atlanta too, but people enjoy watching college football and tailgate in the South. Miami is a big event town. Even when Miami was king of college football, unless it was FSU, UF or other big-time school, the stadium is half empty. People watch the game at home because they are too lazy to fight traffic or in the background by the beach.
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The stadium makes it look worse than it is. Miami is actually on par with schools like Oregon and VT for attendance. We do well considering we’re one of the smallest schools in D1.
 
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Hurracanes said:
I respectfully disagree. If BC or Cuse had the success and history of a OSU or Michigan, they would be monsters in the NY/Boston market. Nobody in the NE cares about college football for many reasons but above everything, those schools in that market haven’t given them a reason to. Winning builds your brands.
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Got my MBA from BC - lived in Boston for 4 years. The only people in New England interested in BC football are actual students and alums. Period. There are something like 60 colleges and universities within a 100 mile radius of Boston. It’s a college region and everybody supports their own school.
 
Rickd said:
Got my MBA from BC - lived in Boston for 4 years. The only people in New England interested in BC football are actual students and alums. Period. There are something like 60 colleges and universities within a 100 mile radius of Boston. It’s a college region and everybody supports their own school.
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Not arguing with any of that. But if BC had the successful history like those programs, that wouldn’t be the case.
 
Been awhile since I’ve posted on this thread but I’ll say this, I think people are underestimating how much of a tactical blunder FSU and Clemson made with the route they chose.

We need to jump to the Big 10, but we gotta deal with the ACC in the interim. Miami knew it didn’t have the leverage it needed to force an outcome it wanted. Make a deep run this year and our hand gets much stronger. Also, our preferred outcome doesn’t necessarily kill the ACC. FSU and Clemson took a kill shot and, for now, missed.
 
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Gennaker Cane said:
All my opinion, some of which is more educated than other parts, but wtf, I'll try and bet I can do at least as well as the twitter/x "experts."
1. Anything is possible. But doubtful, the SEC and B1G don't want to give up power. Unless some entity is willing to guarantee every school and absurd amount of money to leave their conferences, and the conferences can't compete with that offer, I just don't see it.
2. If the news is leaking, it has "legs." May be a midget's legs, may be a super model, but this is something everyone in the major conferences and NCAA want. How many are involved is the question. 32-40 would get boring pretty quickly IMO, this isn't the NFL and fans like some variety more than the same thing every year.
3. Yes, for now. We don't have a guaranteed landing spot, for what it's worth I don't think anyone else does either. Stewart Mandel had a great point today- is all the money from the SEC worth it to Oklahoma to finish 8th every year? That made me thing, has it been worth it for Arkansas, who hasn't been a factor since joining the SEC? The money obviously doesn't suck, but they haven't even won their conference, once in 30 years. Now if Mario continues to build the powerhouse that we think we will have, someone is going to want us to enhance their ratings, and we can likely be more of a factor in one of the richer conferences than Arkansas. For now, though, it's wise to build and bide our time,
4. **** no, they both suck! Seriously, though, they will be a part of whatever the future is, unless FSU can't figure a way out of their implosion in the next few years.
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Thanks, that all makes sense. The argument I heard about the SEC and BiG is why have two conferences and pay all that overhead cost when they could merge the teams into a super-conference. And then per your point, that's not enough teams, so invite ACC, Big 12 and ND teams to join, make it revenue-share based, and chuck the NCAA altogether.

It makes sense from an efficiency and revenue perspective, would give them huge leverage over TV and marketing rights. But entrenched interests, especially the NCAA and conference admins, would work to kill it before it gathered any steam. Seems like we're stuck with the ACC for a long time.
 
@Rickd I'm trying to get caught up here.

To reach the 2030 date that's being tossed around now, doesn't ESPN have to opt in? Or does all of this require a new agreement with ESPN?
 
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