NCAA CHANGING FOREVER

Well said. Sports has perverted the educational mission of universities and I ran track at UT so it's not like I have zero knowledge on the matter...

The recent ESPN contract does the exact opposite. It forces women's b-ball and a few other championships to subsidize rest of the unprofitable championships (including track & field and cross-country) with the bundling for the next eight years. WBCA wanted a stand-alone contract so that they can keep their money in their sport. NCAA is offering a modest payout as compromise.

The NCAA is a deadman walking, absolutely no reason for them to exist. The Power conferences will form their own business entities to manage Football and maybe Basketball in a proper manner.

Agree with this but the magic question is how much will the universities make for these licenses and rents? Will it be enough to fund the entire department (which will no longer include these premier sports)? Hard to think the lower-P5 and mid-major $$ will be enough but possible.

Few D1 schools would consider moving to D3. Playing in D1 brings national name recognition. D3 does not. D1 football, even if you're not very good, allows you to send your team to Ann Arbor or South Bend for a likely awful beating and a guaranteed fat check. D1 gives you a shot at the D1 basketball tournament even if only from shared revenue with the rest of the teams in your conference. D3 does not.

Occasionally a D1 school moves to D3. Hartford just did it. New Orleans and Seattle were going to do it but neither seems to have followed through. Neither plays football. I really think a more sustainable path would be to drop football but that's not going to happen very often. I think there will be continuing belt tightening at a lot of lower tier D1 schools. Scholarships for non revenue sports could become more rare than they are now. But D1 is going to survive.

The issue for the bad d1 teams is that even with 'fat checks' for losing, small share of NCAA hoops money, TV share and half empty stadium tickets revenue...the athletic department still loses money.

It's the continuous loss of money that forces weak d1 schools to cut sports or drop to d3.

Yes, looked at in isolation most college athletic departments lose money. But looked at as part of universities' overall financial picture that is not the case:

sportico.com

Maybe Colleges Should Be Adding Sports, Not Dropping Them

Eben

University of Idaho President Chuck Staben thought he’d found the perfect solution. In 2018 the state’s board of education had told its flagship university to cut its athletics expenses by $1 milli…

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Sorry but not sorry. If students is not has time to do a full time job then they is should getting paid. We is a new generation. Time to move forward.

I liked college sports having their connection to the schools, but I'm feeling more and more like they are pretending to be something they aren't. I've been swinging more and more to preferring the NFL over college football lately.

These are the dumbest.

You're looking at this from the old model perspective. Mid-major D1 will be a completely separate entity from the minor-league teams (former P5/P2). There will likely be zero TV money for mid majors, no payout games. It will rely on fundraising and student fees and what the institution decides to give it. The good news is all of the schools stuck in that level will be in the same boat. But don't be surprised at seeing a bunch of former P5 schools in that boat. Think schools like Boston College, Pitt, Northwestern, Kansas State, maybe even Vanderbilt that won't be chosen to be in the 48 or so that consitute the new league.

Maybe. Neither of us really know and no one else does either. Big time schools like some early almost guaranteed home wins against the MAC, A Sun, and a 1-AA team where you get a win and a sell out and a win. No football coach wants to play a ranked opponent every week. And you're going to have a hard time filling out a 48 game league if you're kicking out schools like Pitt and Northwestern. Pitt was ACC champ two seasons ago and Northwestern was Big Ten West champion in 2022.

And remember that your Michigans and Alabamas also want basketball revenue. They'll want to play in the NCAA Tournament. To do that they'll need to deal with the rest of the NCAA. Staging their own championship tournament and calling the winner national champion is going to be a hard sell if their tournament didn't have Villanova, U Conn, Gonzaga, etc. in it in most years.

Actually, they won't. They will play in the new 48 team tournament of those 48 football schools, which would immediately be a more desirable tournament. These schools then get to keep all the bball money, not share with all schools.

Imagine the hole in the NCAA tourney with all the p5 schools gone.

If your 48 schools happened to be 64, even better.

Let's say the big schools that go out on their own have their own basketball tournament with 64 teams. Do they have 64 teams in their tournament? If so, there goes the drama of who's solidly in, who's on the bubble. There goes the need for a conference tournament. Here comes complaints about why a 5-32 team gets to play for a national championship. There goes the first two days when a lot of interest is about the mid majors potentially puling giant upsets. There goes speculation about who might be this year's St. Peters or UMBC. Or do they have a smaller field so the accomplishment of qualifying is maintained. A smaller field means fewer games to televise which means less TV revenue.

A split where the big football schools have a basketball tournament will leave a hole in a tournament that those schools aren't playing in and their tournament will have a hole because some big time "basketball schools" won't be there. It's not in anyone's interest, financial or otherwise, to destroy the basketball tournament which means both groups need to find a way to live with each other.

I'm on your team, but sadly every call has been about how schools can avoid sharing money. That's why football playoff was organized thru the bowls not NCAA, and why silly moves like fall of PAC are happening.Schools will simply put priority on keeping money. You're 100% right with your points, but a power 5 hoops tourney still becomes compelling at the round of 32, round of 16 etc with great matchups. It will get a TV contract, and leftover NCAA tourney will have the history and Cinderellas, but no blue bloods anymore. NCAA tourney will slowly go way of nit.

It sounds like football and associated television companies (ESPN, Fox) are driving the decisions of individual institutions (e.g. USC and UCLA taking the money and running to Big10, killing the Pac12 at at critical negotiation point) and from how I understand it, basketball has been more small potatoes (perhaps because NCAA owns the tournament?)

What happens if College Football excises itself from NCAA?

I think it was stated that there would be win-win partnership with these football businesses and their affiliated colleges to work together to market the college branding. So why not go there now?

And to others who argue on importance of perception of amateur, good ole college try football: college football is already the minor leagues, especially now with one year rental players via NIL ... but it is dolled up in tradition and marketing so that I think it will continue regardless if it is housed under NCAA jurisdiction or becomes its own entity.

Part of me thinks it would be good to separate college football from the rest of college sports -- that colleges could reposition themselves to focus on these other sports and Olympic sports rather than see them as fledgling programs of little overall importance. Is that Polyanna-ish?

It just makes me sad to see these schools dropping distance running whether it be Brown or Georgia or now LMU (do they even have a football team?) I feel like it spoils it for all programs -- if NAU and BYU and OSU and NC State are the only programs left - while I am sure they would continue to be outstanding, it would seem they would lose their power and resonance and victories would carry little meaning. So many teams and athletes throughout the country put their hearts out there for conquests at Regionals, perhaps qualify at Regionals (or even win?!), celebrating those (and themselves) who make it to Nationals. And by nurturing a country wide college scene for running, the National winning team can touch us all in their accomplishments either vanquishing the team we celebrate directly by stomping them at Nationals, or indirectly by stomping our vaunted victorious adversaries.