MondayNightPavs

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”We want fans to think that you know a game in the second week of November, even if you've already lost two or three games, still has a lot of value. That's the goal."When you're as deep as we are, we've got to do things to make sure that we have the access to the postseason that we think we deserve and has to be earned on the field,"

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Statements like this really piss me off. First off, until we overemphasized the national championship, games late in the season did matter a lot regardless of your record. Whether it was to get a good bowl, win the conference, beat a rival, or just straight pride, late season games did matter. Now if all that matters is making one of the 12 slots for the playoff, then yeah I guess a team with some losses really does have little to play for. But that’s the world the conferences and their commissioners and staffs created, so what’s his complaint.

Second, it sounds insane to say that you need to do something to make the playoff while at the same time saying that your conference is super deep. That’s a contradiction, either you are that deep and get teams in or your not and don’t. The results speak for themselves and the past two and a half decade show that the big 10 isn’t that deep. Complain all you want but that’s reality.

Ok so here is my concern. You’ve alluded to it with collective bargaining, but in essence the outcome you are describing is a pro league.

I think that would be such a radical change to the status quo that it would result in either an unrecognizable product or a collapse of the system.

The first issue becomes, why do these schools have pro teams they are hosting. I’ve said this before, but the justification right now is that athletics is part of the education, the whole mind, body, spirit thing. The trouble is that a pro team is not an educational endeavor and thus is contrary to the schools’ mission. This is even a bigger issue for state schools as, among other problems, it may hurt their academic freedom shield against state interference.

The other big issue is the economics of the league. D1 sports in total brings in about 18billion in revenue, but that is across like 300 schools and dozens of sports. I’ll need to find it, but an ncaa report showed where that money came from and how it was spent. On the whole it is not encouraging that a separate football league is viable. Let’s assume that the schools have to split off their football programs into a separate league, which is a real possibility. We now have the issue of facilities who owns them and would there be a fee for usage. Same goes for the names and brands of the schools, presumably they will license these to the independent teams.

If that’s not enough change consider the relationship with the nfl. Will CFB only allow 4 years of play in its pro league and then players must move to the nfl? Maybe, but maybe not. Let’s say it doesn’t, now CFB is directly competing with the nfl. The nfl will not like that and may say players can come straight from high school or maybe they set up their own development league. Or maybe the nfl will set up the indecent teams as farm teams, but if that’s the case are you really going to like the team called Tennessee volunteers if all it is is the minors for the titans?

I know this is a bit doom and gloom, but I really don’t see a pro league working out. At least not in a way that we as CFB fans recognize it.

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Anything the NCAA does which inhibits a player from getting paid runs afoul of the Sherman Act.

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Ignoring that this isn’t a final ruling and there are appeals etc. I have a question for you Smokey: why is this something you are so excited about?

Is it just so Nico can play? He’s really good but that’s no guarantee of team success. Or is it that you think this new paradigm will help Tennessee exclusively, or something else?

The reason I ask is that most sports leagues operate as allowed monopolies, and if we’re are heading to some version of pro CFB, which I think is problematic, the same will likely apply. That means there will be a regulator, ncaa or otherwise, that will have a bunch of rules in place, just like the nfl.

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College football is now a professional league. The NCAA has no business meddling into professional athletics.

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I’ve posted about this before but again, making this jump from amateur to pro is not quite as easy as snapping fingers.

First you are correct that a pro league will need rules like the nfl has to ensure parity, in other words cheating would still absolutly be possible and require enforcement.

Beyond that, the universities, especially public ones, will have some difficulty in justifying their operating a professional sports team which would have no educational function (the current argument is that the sports programs are part of the broader educational goals of the schools). This is because many state legislators may start asking a whole bunch of questions about why tax dollars are going to supporting a pro sports team and not education. These questions could also open the doors to arguments that by not being focused on educational programs, the schools cannot claim academic freedom when states want to get involved internally (often for political reasons).

Right now the system is full of shades of grey, and that’s because it serves everyone’s interest to keep it that way. Openly saying CFB is a pro sport now, threatens that. One solution might be to set up a league independent of the schools and then have the schools license their brand to these teams. But now where does that leave the NFL? Either the CFB pro league will choose to limit players to 4 years of play or the NFL now has a new competitor and they certainly won’t take that lying down. This is just one of a hundred complications, but I point it out to show that just saying CFB is pro now creates more issues than it solves.

I don’t want to be a doomer and it’s beyond overplayed to say the sport is dying, but I really thing this could be the critical point where either the ncaa is locked out of top tier CFB or potentially collapses all together.

There are some who will be really happy to hear this and that’s fair enough. However, all I would say is be careful what you wish for.

That and just the fact we picked a guy who had already failed in the conference.

And we all know how great it worked out.

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You can't reject what you weren't offered.

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We don’t know if he was or wasn’t, none of that info is public. The only thing we know is his public statement, which is worded in a way that makes it sound like he does not have any future interest leaving Oregon.

Bama may be one of the best jobs in the abstract, but following up Saban is not the best job to have in real life.

This shouldn’t be that hard to understand.

Look I’m no fan of espn so them not getting exclusive rights is fine by me, however I cannot find an article expressing media rights as the reason the three conferences initially voted against expansion. It seems that since everything was behind closed doors it’s all speculation. However if we look at who voted against it, things again look suspicious. I did find an SI article that said while espn holds non first round rights through 25, they also could end the existing agreement and attempt to strike a new long term deal. So if that’s the case I sort of have my doubts media rights was the sole or major sticking point.

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They should've been #3. Playoff expansion doesn't change that.

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I’m sorry, but I just do not see fsu as number 3, at least as they currently are. I would put them in the top 12 so expansion would have fixed their inclusion though.

But answer me honestly, why are you so upset they got excluded? I really hope it is something other than not liking Alabama or the sec or something like that, everyone thinks there is bias against their side. I have always felt that the four team playoff was intentionally made to retain controversy out of a fear that a proper playoff would remove that and also much of the interest in the sport (or that was what was perceived to cause the interest rightly or wrongly). So if you are annoyed that fsu being left out is because we are not settling it on the field, then your issue is with the intentionally limited playoff structure.