If you’ve ever wondered why UT blogger Chip Brown is widely mocked, here’s Exhibit “A”.
The only thing more bizarre than insisting the Big Ten and SEC would willingly forego their revenue advantage over other conferences is the idea that Florida and Georgia would willingly leave the SEC to join ACC-lite. Pure nutso stuff.
This is the best part, though:
If members of Congress cry foul and question the status of athletic departments as tax exempt, the P5 can have them call Texas athletic director Steve Patterson.
Patterson, the king of doom and gloom forecasts about the rising costs of college athletics, can tell Congress how every school is about to be coated in red ink.
Yes, because there isn’t a more respected name in college athletics these days than Steve Patterson.
Get The Picture 
Isn’t he the same dude that said there was no truth to rumors of aTm to the SEC?
LikeLike
And then switched to predicting the Big 12 would let TAMU go and fill the gap with Notre Dame.
LikeLike
Kansas and K-State in the EAST? This guy is crazy.
LikeLike
I will bet his power 5 source who complained about the inefficiency of the present quilt of television deals was not from the SEC, a big Ten or Notre Dame.
I suppose that said source suggested that the power five pool the players since it is so inefficient having the SEC and Ohio State having better players than the ACC.
LikeLike
Oh, and Senator, you are right about Patterson. He was so effective as a witness in O’Bannon, wasn’t he?
LikeLike
I just killed about 10 brain cells skimming that article.
LikeLike
I just lost about 5 minutes of my life to the most stupid, dumb, sports related article I have ever read in my fifty one years on this earth. I will never recover that precious time and can sense a certain loss of synaptic activity within the grey matter.
LikeLiked by 1 person
+1
LikeLike
Really? Please, that was a complete waste of time to read. I have to say, one of the biggest problems with the internet is it allows anyone to become a “journalist” and if they can make their page look legit enough, some people will actually give them some credence.
I think there’s a better chance of the tv money dropping in 10 years as millennials unplug from cable tv and cable unbundling forces viewers to pay $40 a month for ESPN, which a lot of people will not do. I could be very wrong, but I think my thoughts are more likely than this articles fantasy.
LikeLike
UGA and UF to the ACC? Wet dream on his part.
LikeLike
That said Ug, a conference with FSU, FU and Georgia in it would be a pretty good conference. He screwed up his model by moving Clemson out. Add Clemson and you have a really good conference. In fact, if the SEC expands why not just add FSU and Clemson to the already robust SEC?
LikeLike
no new tvs…
LikeLike
It would be a murderous conference for sure..but would Florida and SC want this? Being in the SEC is a huge selling point to recruits and it would, I believe, particularly hurt SC. But it would be better than getting two weak sisters. The fact that the State of NC doesn’t have a team in the conference is a consideration. That state is growing in leaps and bounds and the Charlotte area is surrounded by other cities that will eventually become the population center of the SE..if it isn’t already. So NC and NC State would get a look, but they love their ACC roundball. There is NC, NC State, WF and Duke…all ACC schools right there in one state. Imagine having 4 SEC schools from Georgia. I wouldn’t even want two (again).
One of them may want to make the leap. But none of them are on a par with Clemson or FSU. If the SEC took two teams from the ACC, that would pretty much do the ACC in as a football conference.
Last thought on your thought, Mac….It would distribute the SEC championship a lot thinner…winning it would become an amazing feat, and if the playoff stays at four teams, the SEC could more easily claim two of those slots.
LikeLike
Charlotte is currently the 5th largest metro area in the SE, not really close to Atlanta, unless you drive up 85….
LikeLike
But NC is out growing Ga. Faster rate…esp. in Raleigh/Durham..Lots of mid- sized cities there with great educational systems.
I think Atl is tarnished with too much of everything..esp. traffic.
LikeLike
Ahh – seems like this proposal comes up every summer and so many people dismiss it, but it is not detached from reality and it is something that has been floating around Div. 1 since the mid to late 1990’s. Twenty plus years later, I don’t know why this guy has dusted it off again – summer traffic doldrums or maybe UT is floating a trial balloon in period of time when people are on vacation?
In the late ’90’s, this very large international sports marketing firm, ISL, lost the rights to sell IOC sponsorships. As an aside they lost those rights to Chris Welton’s company. Even though ISL still had the international rights to FIFA, ISL made several attempts to win the marketing rights to the NCAA.
If I remember correctly, they initially made a bid with ESPN and it was about this time that a proposal of this sort started floating around. I can’t remember if the proposal was ISL’s – I suspect it was because they wanted to prove to the NCAA how much money they were purportedly leaving on the table. Plus ISL felt it had the audacity, connections and money (via graft) to pull it off. Remember they started out as a company to sell the rights to the IOC and FIFA so bribery was part of the business plan.
There were a couple of different versions of the super conferences – some had UGA staying with the core SEC group which then added FSU, Ga Tech, Clemson etc. I think another wild one was based on seeding system based on power rankings etc. (ala the World Cup). Each team would be given a seeding ranking (1-8) and then they would stage a conference draw. Each conference would get 2 team from every seeding via a lottery. It would happen every 5 years or so.
As they worked their way through the process, ISL evertually partnered with CBS which won the rights and agreed to have ISL handle sponsorship sales for everything but television. The deal moved Host Communications out of its long time place as the rights holder. But ISL then got caught in a bunch of scandals for tax evasion, embezzlment, bribery etc. ISL was shut down around 2000.
But their crazy little proposal continues to live on.
LikeLike
I would love to know how the NCAA could force the conferences to disband because some outside group owns the marketing rights. The opposite is infinitely more true, that the conferences would voluntarily choose to leave the NCAA.
LikeLike
Exactly. I wish the conferences WOULD leave the NCAA.
LikeLike
Remember – there is a symbiosis between the conferences and the NCAA. The conferences control football but the NCAA owns and operates the championships for all of the other sports. The big conferences could in theory divorce themselves entirely from the NCAA but the legacy of broken contracts, lawsuits of all kinds, money left on the table at the NCAA and the money needed to invest in starting up a new organization truly is not worth the risk.
Also think of the landscape in terms of the 1990’s and not 20 years later. The first round of major conference realignment/expansion had just happened a few years prior to this proposal. The BCS was in its infancy and the primary money maker for the majority of the college athletics programs was the NCAA basketball tournament. So even though the membership was approving of keeping the NCAA “hands off football”, they were not hesitant to at least listen and consider what a marketing company from Switzerland was proposing. Not only that but they were willing to do business with them despite this “far-fetched” proposal.
Had ISL been able to stay in business, I wonder if a college football playoff would have happened much sooner than it did.
LikeLike
I want to know why he gave the Golden Ticket to BYU. I guess that was just as ridiculously arbitrary as the rest of it though.
LikeLike
As a CPA and former auditor, I have a hearty LOL everytime one of these guys has the balls to say they are either swimming / in danger of swimming in red ink because the “costs” of college athletics are about to go up if Kessler has his way and I call bullshit at the lie that Texas athletics lost money last year. It’s easy to make yourself lose money when you can count payments to yourself as an expense. How about you show me that cash flow statement and we’ll see your true position.
LikeLike
Not to mention all those costs in “administration salaries ” buried in SG&A and CapEx for the waterfall in the locker room and IPF.
LikeLike
Texas, under Patterson , is moving forward into the world and having a “Kitchen Conversation” with China by sending Mac (Brown) and “Cheese” McConahey over to spread the Bevo drippings into the China Market. You won’t be using them as a doormat anymore when they show you all the attention (that’s escaped our attention) that China shows for CFB. The Chinese are especially interested in the cat/fish fries when they tailgate with Paul/GT.
LikeLike