I like Andy Staples, but this hits me like a giant whiff:
First off, what’s with this “two leagues understand” BS? Last time I looked, it was Greg Sankey advocating a twelve-team CFP and Kevin Warren joining with his Alliance buds to shut that down.
Thanks for making me defend somebody’s playoff expansion stance, Andy.
Secondly, though, and more seriously, what Andy sees as a potential bug is embraced as a feature by ESPN, Fox and their broadcast partners. For them, abandoning regional passions in pursuit of a more general national fan is the path to greater profit. And the writing’s been on the wall for that for a few years now. I don’t get why this is something the SEC and Big Ten need to be warned about like it’s a new danger. Or even why it’s their responsibility to do something about it.
Get The Picture 
Even as a lifelong underdog-supporting, bleeding-heart commie pinko, something rubs me the wrong way about Andy’s statement that the SEC/B1G bluebloods “haven’t worked as hard to succeed” as the Okie States and Wazzus of the world. If it looks like Bama, UGA, Ohio State, and the other powerhouses don’t have to work particularly hard for CFP buzz, it’s because they spent decades building their programs, investing in infrastructure, and recruiting their asses off. It’s not like Nick Saban or anyone else just waved a magic wand and turned their programs into instant juggernauts—show me a program that won a national title without working hard. Yeah, it’s easier for the Georgias and Bamas of the world to garner support from their bigger, wealthier donor bases, but that’s life, you know? (And again, those donor bases didn’t just fall out of the sky all of a sudden—someone had to grow and cultivate them, too.)
I mean, I’m not particularly looking forward to college football being reduced to two superconferences. I feel for the programs that are going to be left out in the cold by this new phase of realignment, and for variety’s sake if nothing else, there’s a part of me that does wish for a little more parity in CFB as a whole. But in the end, there’s really no practical way to achieve it, short of a cabal of astronomically wealthy oligarchs throwing a billion dollars apiece at each of the sport’s have-nots. And that wouldn’t be “working hard” to achieve, now, would it?
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You dude… his point went way over your head. He’s not talking about the Bamas and Tosus of the world. Read it again. He says nothing about “blue bloods,” that your interjection or projection.
He’s talking about the Mizzous and the Indianas and the Vanderbilts and the Rutgers of the world.
THEY get to benefit, even though they don’t put half as much effort into football as the Okie States and Wazzus of the world.
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OK, you’re right, I missed some important context there. But I still think the statement’s a little off base. The Mizzou/Indiana/Vandy/etc. sad sacks will reap some monetary benefit from their conferences consolidating power, sure, but not enough to make them powerhouses overnight. Money or no money, a program that doesn’t prioritize football or put in the work isn’t going to come away with wins. And it’s not like a 2–10 Vandy team is ever gonna kick a 10–2 Oklahoma State program off TV just because of a sexier conference affiliation.
I’m sure I’d be less blasé about this if I were an Okie State fan, of course. But if I were an Okie State fan drawing up my enemies/grievances list, you’d have to go quite a ways down that list before you got to Vanderbilt.
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He really missed the mark on OK ST, I remember T. Boone Pickens, their own private billionaire booster. Unfortunately for them he died but I bet they were remembered in the will.
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If Oklahoma State had been in the SEC all this time, they would be the equivalent of Mississippi State.
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Maybe I’m an exception. I love college football, but I don’t sit in front of my TV all day waiting for the Dawgs to play when we are playing an away game. I’m not going to watch the Big Noon game unless an SEC team happened to be on. I’m damn sure not going to stay up to watch Pac 12 after dark. The sport is regional, and that isn’t going to change no matter how much the networks and the media want it to change.
The playoff isn’t going to expand because the conferences want it to be “inclusive.” It’s going to expand when the networks say here’s the size of the checks we’re willing to write for an 8, 12 or 16 team playoff. I keep going back to the premise that the Sankey proposal was a pretty damn good proposal. It’s too bad Phillips and Kliakoff let Warren derail the whole thing.
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During the BCS I watched much more outside the SEC but with the playoff the SEC champ gets in and likely another SEC team. So why watch the other teams? If the playoff expands the need to watch the SEC games declines.
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I could make a bunch of modern day analogies, but I won’t.
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“I don’t get why this is something the SEC and Big Ten need to be warned about like it’s a new danger.”
From Andy Staples point of view it’s their fault because no one but them and the TV media saw this coming. Or, if they did see it coming they chose not to do anything about it, and you know, life’s not fair when other people are more successful than you are. So, now they need to be warned.
Also, everything Doug said above is spot on. It’s not like Alabama, Georgia and Ohio State bought a few tickets and won the football lottery. Get a grip, Andy.
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No, Doug is wrong because he projected the idea of “blue bloods” when it was obvious that Andy was in fact specifically NOT talking about blue bloods.
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I mean, he’s not wrong. Mizzou or Indiana ain’t as devoted to football as Okie State or Wazzu are, and yet they’re going to reap the benefits based on where they lucked out on being.
But Senator, you’re right as well. This is almost all on Disney/ESPN. It’s not all on Sankey and Warren, though a lot is if we’re being honest. Sankey opposes automatic qualifiers for anything less than a 12 game playoff, which I’m sorry, but is stupid because 12 teams are too many. 8, with 5 automatic qualifiers, leaving 3 wild cards is more than enough and would keep everyone invested while feeling like the 8 in the Playoff were still the cream of the crop even with a 2-win conference champ automatic qualifier in there. 12 teams or more is just too much; it waters down the product. And Warren… well, he opposed the SEC’s plan because he’s a little bitch. Pure and simple.
A lot of blame to go around everywhere.
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12 is too many and 8 with all Power 5 automatic qualifiers isn’t enough (because in years where ND warrants selection, that means on 2 wild cards are in play). Staying 4 works for me if they changed the selection method. The committee isn’t transparent and does whatever the hell it wants to do. Some type of BCS style selection would be better to me especially if the polls didn’t come out until after the first month of the season.
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More than it’s all on Mickey, Mickey is gonna’ save us from ourselves, after the dust settles on conference expansion, you’ll start to fell the ground swell for cfp expansion, 6, 8,12, hell, 63 is a good starting number, Mickey runs the committee, that membership B.S. is just marionette show, the weekly poll crap, interviews, all on the WWL, not fox, not cbs, Mickey can’t control the season, per say, they want nd, they want usc, they kinda’ need the bammers, UGA football and tosu are along for the cfp ride…the more espn blurbbish type shit (this all american or that preseason ranking) the less I’ll swim in their crappola, unless it’s UGA football to the rescue, I’m all in, for a couple of hours, did Cincinnati need to get involved last year, they got a “why are you here” ass whippin’, a thank you note and some neat parting gift$…
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College Sports had a good run.
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I do think Staples is right about the possibility that super conferences might wipe out some of the college football audience. It won’t be the same and regionalism will fade thereby reducing overall enthusiasm. If that happens some fans might lose interest. I think he is probably wrong to suggest a bigger playoff will solve that. College football has exploded in fan interest during my adult life. If the suits take it where they are headed, I think we’ll see a retraction in interest, kind of like NASCAR.
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Yeah, Staple has been pimping the playoff over all for a while and this is the obvious conclusion, unless we go to a 64 team tournament. Of course then 65-128 will complain.
Go back to polls, split champions and long off-season debates about who’s #1. Heck, let UCF claim a championship! It’s better than this NFL-Lite crap Staples keeps pushing.
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I would gladly pick the pre-Alliance days of meaningful bowls and potential split titles over the direction we’re probably headed.
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It’s really too bad that horse left the barn and isn’t coming back.
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College football is like a piece of iron under a blacksmith’s hammer. ESPN, cbs, nbc, fox and any other tv outlet is beating CFB into the shape it wants, to fit their standard time slot.
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When the networks are finished with college football, it will be 1:45 of commercials mixed with 1:15 of action broadcast. Fitting the games into the TV windows is the only thing they care about.
Those of us in the stadium will see more action by the man in the red cap holding up the stupid countdown sign than actual plays.
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Living in Big XII country (at least until Texas becomes an SEC team), I can see where he’s coming from. Texas, OU, and Nebraska all took turns hollowing out the Big XII, and now the work is done.
Yes, flagship programs have invested and worked their asses off to be flagship programs. But at some point, the powers that be lose sight of the fact that the product is not individual teams like the Longhorns; it’s their schedule. That doesn’t become clear until one day you look up and the only game on the schedule anyone gives a shit about is played in Dallas every year. At which point, you find yourself swallowing your pride after years of deriding the “$EC,” and humbly placing a call to Birmingham.
Texas fans can spin it any way they want, but that’s not what any of them were predicting a decade ago.
But I don’t disagree with Doug. It’s not on Texas to do for Okie State what Boone Pickens couldn’t. Everyone’s going to act in his own self-interest, and, at some point, the Mississippi schools, Illinois, Rutgers, etc., will face relegation, their fans will tune out and then what? There won’t be another SEC/B1G to jump to.
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I seem to always be the apologist, but I don’t think Andy is saying Mssrs. Warren and Sankey have a responsibility. I think he is suggesting that, in their own long-term interests, SEC and Big10 leadership should pay attention to knock-on effects deflating national interest in top-tier college football.
Fair enough, but he should not get his hopes up. Long-term interests have been systematically disregarded for as long as I can remember.
In the long run we are all dead.
-JM Keynes
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Everyone talks about relegation of schools like the Mississippi schools. I don’t see that happening at all. The original members of the SEC aren’t going to kick out one of the other original members. That’s just not the way the conference agreements are structured.
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I mean relegation in a passive-aggressive sort of way. You know, like how Texas, A&M, Nebraska and OU just relegated everyone else in the Big XII. Or how USC and UCLA just relegated the rest of the Pac-12.
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That makes sense, but I just don’t see the SEC or the Big 10 telling a subset of their schools that they are out.
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No, but is it really inconceivable that one day the top halves of the B1G, ACC and the SEC started talking with ESPN or Fox and said “you know what would really make a lot of money …” ?
And then one day, Ole Miss, NC State, Illinois, etc., look up and are like, “Hey … guys? Guys? Huh. Where’d everybody go?”
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Correct. Nobody is kicking anybody out….but they might leave on their own and abandon the name “SEC” to them if Mickey tries to create a de facto Premier League.
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This is the most likely scenario to happen. There are billionaire’s out there who want to create a new national league…Bezos, Cuban, the Saudi’s, etc. They will create a new streaming College Football TV league with some twist to attract gambling and random soccer mom interest (i.e. neutral sites, new rules, weeknight games, etc.) and the stupid, irresponsible, greedy, selfish, ignorant university presidents will grab the money and run while hiding behind their AD’s…all in the name for the betterment of the university and “the kids”.
See LIV Golf for the roadmap.
And we will watch it because the schedule will be bluebloods vs bluebloods.
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I really don’t see this happening unless those schools drop their conference affiliations in all sports.
When blue bloods play blue bloods, someone has to take the Ls, those teams don’t stay blue bloods for much longer.
I’ve been wrong many times before (like when I should have just started buying Apple stock every week), but this concept of a national premier league (truly NFL Lite) just doesn’t make sense to me.
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Concerns over Ls can be paved over with $s. And Alabama can’t sign the entire ESPN 300. There’s a core cohort of teams where parity exists, and it probably doesn’t look much different than the top 15-20 teams in the recruiting rankings most years.
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Yeah, alumni love money more than wins for their schools (as long as my school is getting the money from the super league, I’m ok with the fact they lose 8 or 9 games a year). The only reason the NFL model works is 1) they share the media revenue and 2) they have an equitable method for talent distribution. A super league will have a draft because there’s no way those at the bottom are going to be willing to be the super league doormats.
What you are supporting is NFL Lite.
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I don’t think anybody is supporting that, just making an observation / prediction based on past behavior.
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“What you are supporting is NFL Lite.”
You misspelled predicting. When I say $s pave over Ls, I’m talking about ADs and presidents, not fans. I may not like it, but it’s never been about what I want.
We already have a draft. We’ve had it for decades, it’s just taken NIL to legitimize it and A&M to come out and say the quiet part loud.
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I apologize for misunderstanding your perspective.
No, we don’t have a draft. Vanderbilt or Fresno State has zero chance of signing the #1 overall high school prospect. The 5 star prospects aren’t spread across the teams that need to improve their talent base. What we have is an upside down draft if anything. The best players go to the best programs.
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Jokes on you, because there won’t be a SEC. There will be another tier of CFB. Think European Super League, only this time there won’t be the fan uprising to keep the rich clubs from making it happen.
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Who’s going to take the Ls? The logistics of a super league are practically impossible. When the SEC schools sign their next grant of rights agreement with Texas and Oklahoma, there’s no way it happens.
For all of you who think this is a formality, who will be in this super league? Who out of those 30-40 programs is going to be ok with being 3-9 because someone is?
Unless these schools fully break away for all sports, there will be an SEC.
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Well, by that logic, why haven’t Vanderbilt and say, Mississippi State made a break for the exit door from the SEC ? I mean, they’re always (mostly) the doormat, with very little prospect to be anything OTHER than the doormat.
Oh, the money. That’s right, the money’s good.
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Yeah, they understand where they are in football and also have viable sports programs in other sports. You’re talking about a completely different animal if 40 programs left their conferences for football to form a super league.
The conversations about this topic is so football-centric but doesn’t take into account the other sports on a college campus.
Will college basketball form its own super leagues for men and women? How about baseball?
Would you as a fan be happy with Georgia as a 6-6 team in a super league? Would you be ok with Georgia basketball being left behind in a super league?
Guess who was the first #1 in the CFP rankings?
I believe it was … Mississippi State.
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Who gets a s____?
They all drop diwn to 1-AA or FCS where there fans can watch them.
If you can’t run with the Big Dawgs, stay on the porch.
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Let’s face it Mickey has got the ACC and SEC by the balls. At least the B1G commissioner, being from the NFL, knew he would make more money from 3 networks rather than one. Credit where credit is due, if you are going to NFL Lite, get all the networks involved. SEC has hitched it’s wagon to the Mouse so good luck. The one thing that might happen is they will show more SEC games on ABC to try and cut into the B1G’s Fox, CBS, and NBC time on Saturday.
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Totally agree.
Staples has spent years blasting anybody who made a naive argument in favor of tradition. But NOW he’s decided that a bridge too far is on the horizon. So he’s squinting really hard and pretending that it’s in the financial interests of ESPN to keep Wake Forest at the table.
I don’t have much sympathy for the “burn it to the ground” CFB pundits who suddenly don’t like the all-too-obvious end game, NFL Lite.
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I’s got’s a question….
If the playoffs are expanded to 8 or 12, are the bowl games gone?
or
Are we calling playoff #1 team vs #8 the Gator Bowl..
#2 vs #7 the Sun Bowl
etc.?
If you expand the playoffs, the bowl games are kaput!
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I believe option 2 was the previous intent of the 12 teamer Sankey, Swarbrick & Bowlsby endorsed. But who the hell knows now. . . it’ll likely be name-sold out like crazy.
“The CFP & ESPN present The Play In Round of the CFB CFP Tournament (TM) with our first game, #5 Notre Dame vs #12 Pittsburgh in the prestigious Coke Zero Sugar Holiday Bowl brought to you by Amtrak in conjunction with Visit San Diego & San Diego Credit Union.”
Actually I mock, but I would totally go to that game, damnit. haha.
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The Sankey proposal:
5-12 games on campus of the higher seed
Quarterfinals and semifinals – rotate through what are the NY6 bowl games.
Championship – hosted by the highest bidding city as it is now
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Sorry Senator, I’m with Andy on this one. I think the Conferences should pay attention to this because it’s their future revenue at stake. Ask NASCAR if they still think it was a good idea to go national.
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Someone please place the blame squarely where it belongs, which is at the feet of the university presidents who are hiding behind the NCAA, their AD’s and their conference commissioners. Each of these report to the presidents. I’m dismayed and ashamed our own Morehead is in charge of this and would love to know what the hell he is thinking.
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I think everyone is missing the point. Andy’s article misses the point, the lesser programs miss the point, and even most people on this blog miss the point. It’s not about making the playoffs. When you started worrying more about playoffs in week 0 than beating UF and AU and GT during the season you were officially brainwashed and didn’t even know it. It’s about beating your rivals. Some filler games in between to enjoy, but beating your rivals was what it was about. Championships are great. The focus on only that sucks. Sadly the only fans that still get it are the Yales and Harvards of the world. They have no chance of winning national championships and it frees them not to care. 97 was a great season because we beat the mother fuckers in Florida. We had no illusions of a championship. We all need to remember and embrace hatred again.
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Spot on!
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I never lost my focus on the rivals. Beating the Big 3 plus Tennessee is what I focus on.
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UF, AU & ? Tell me don’t mean GT..they don’t care about football anymore than Vandy.
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I’d love nothing more than for a coach to be in a serious interview or press conference and look at the crowd or camera and say “X season wasn’t great because of a championship. No, X season was great because we beat the Motherfuckers in ____________”
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His statement of the problem is correct. Blaming Sankey is bizarre.
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The reality is; the ADs, the university presidents and the suits in the network offices are focused on making as much money as they can as quickly as they can. If doing so destroys the game of college football going forward, they are perfectly fine with that because they will have their money and will have moved on.
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