That I have to use Dennis Dodd as a foil to Matt Hayes’ nonsense should be telling, but, damn, this is the current reality college football faces:
Can a credible playoff can be staged without Oregon and Washington being allowed to compete for a spot?
ESPN sort of answered that question when it thought nothing last summer of throwing the Big 12 on the scrap heap as Texas and Oklahoma moved to the SEC.
The network was telling us without telling us that the world wouldn’t end if the likes of Oklahoma State, Iowa State and TCU, among others, did not get a chance to finish in the top four of the College Football Playoff. The question was further answered when the Pac-12 was marginalized last week.
Ratings matter. They matter more when a 9-3 Oklahoma from the SEC might have a better chance of getting into a playoff than a 12-1 Oklahoma State from the Big 12.
One industry source called Oregon and Washington “tweeners” in realignment. They are certainly not USC and UCLA in terms of branding and marketability, but they’re not Arizona and Arizona State, either. That’s what realignment has revealed: The real things that make college football relevant to the only people that matter — TV executives, programmers, advertisers — are being exposed in increasing and specific detail. [Emphasis added.]
And that reality is that the noise made at Greg Sankey’s bully pulpit will always be drowned out by the sound of TV money being deposited in conference bank accounts. Anyone who believes otherwise is hopelessly naïve.
Get The Picture 
This is exactly why I believe if things are moving in this direction of realignment and consolidation, the Power 5 schools plus a few others should just say good-bye to the rest of the NCAA and stage all of their own championships. Would a scaled down March Madness command the same amount that today’s tournament does? Probably not, but the per conference amounts would probably be bigger from that tournament than the watered down 68-team event we have today. Would that hurt the Gonzagas and the Villanovas? Yes, but why should the big basketball brands care? The Power 4 should control the media rights for football, basketball, baseball, softball, gymnastics, soccer, volleyball, track & field, swimming & diving, tennis, and golf. Would this likely be the end of the NCAA? Yes, but I don’t think anyone will be crying over Mark Emmert and his ilk.
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Haven’t they pretty much already said goodbye to the NCAA? The NCAA could have played a real role here in mediation, but they all knew they and the organization itself had shared equal parts in relegating the NCAA to the outside looking in.
At this point I can’t see how it matters that the NCAA still exists in the FBS CFB world.
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In football, yes because the NCAA has never conducted a national championship at the highest level. The only reason the NCAA exists in division 1 is to conduct championships in all other sports. The Power 4/5 subsidize all of the other schools that want to participate in some sport at the D1 level. The NCAA controls those media rights. A full break would allow the power conferences to build their own governance and championship structure across all sports and sell their media rights for those championships together while keeping their regular seasons in their own media packages.
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To add to that, the only other thing the NCAA is tasked with is enforcing the rules. Since it’s clear the NCAA isn’t willing to enforce its rules, what good are they?
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Exactly. They have abdicated any meaningful role.
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Their role is to collect the money from March Madness and the College World Series and skim their share to pay all of the suits in Indianapolis off the top.
The existing Power 5+ would need to set up a new structure to run championships and set the eligibility rules (and enforcement). All of this can be done without a athletes’ union and an antitrust exemption if it’s thoughtful.
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Too many parties negotiating for too many varied interests. TV is not just Disney. They have to fight off FOX, CBS, Amazon, etc. The conferences and the schools are not aligned. You can’t get a common solution in that environment. Losing Supreme Court cases has neutered the NCAA. Hard to see how this comes together other than one entity with really big money putting an offer on the table everyone they want can agree to. The rest will be left wandering in the desert. That is not going to be a regional “product” that most of us enjoy.
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The value of the Pac 12 does not lie only in USC and UCLA. But if you can kill most of the value in the other teams by removing those two from the Pac 12, not only do you now own the best teams, but they’re now more attractive in comparison to the remainders that some other schlub can go try to peddle. What are we gonna do about it, quit watching football? No. We’re going to watch a little less football because all of those secondary rivalries we might have turned on after our game was over are gone. But it’s all going to be the football that ESPN owns.
That is the whole point of this. The end game is for us to only watch sports that ESPN owns. They couldn’t give two shits about CFB or any other sport beyond that. What they want is for us to watch college football when it’s college football time, watch NFL at NFL time, watch college basketball in March, then turn to Pro Basketball when it’s pro basketball time, etc. etc. Always on ESPN. That’s the goal. They may never reach it, but every single thing they do will be geared towards that goal.
These people can go die for all I care. Nothing good survives in this world anymore if it can be converted into a newer bigger yacht for the next ass hole.
I need a hobby that can’t be monetized. Maybe then it will last. CFB is now just dying a slow death akin to Alzheimer’s. I wish it would just go ahead and die so we can start the process of trying to build it back up to something worthwhile again. Realistically though, even once the public at large loses interest, the suits will manage to keep it as an NFL minor-league backed by colleges and a handful of fans running off the fumes of nostalgia. It won’t even be popular but it will still be kept a caged mutant zombie of its former self out of convenience for the NFL.
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I was never a big fan of the NCAA, but the Kolton Houston situation took away any respect I had for them. Common sense was not allowed to enter into the equation. The Luke Ford saga just cemented my opinion of their useless butts. Transfers for bullshit reasons were granted eligibility left and right while he was denied for the most legit of reason. Screen doors on submarines serve a more useful purpose.
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UO and UW are far superior programs than UCLA. Sad to see that happen.
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This is why I don’t get the blame on the networks. It’s the schools with their hands out choosing money over traditional rivalries and regional alignment. No one wants to be left behind, though.
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Sucky!
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