Bill Powers, President of the University of Texas

A well written realist look at Big Ten and Pac-10 Expansion, from the (hypothetical) desk of Bill Powers.

over 2 years ago SlingStone 9 comments 0 recs |

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interesting article

I really enjoyed Boise state need not apply

Never insult seven men when all you have is a six shooter --COL Sherman T Potter

by psu in the w-b on Feb 16, 2010 9:19 PM EST reply actions

I think this is one of the better pieces on the issue.

good to see academics take a front seat to athletics.

"Every player we have, someone-maybe a parent, a grandparent, someone-poured their soul into that young man. They are handing that young man off to us. They are giving us their treasure, and it's our job to make sure we give them back that young man intact and ready to face the world."

-J.V.Pa.

by psume06 on Feb 16, 2010 10:54 PM EST reply actions

Well written,

and I like the detail on research funding. But by the end the only problem I have with the idea is the whole going to 14 or 16 teams.

Does anybody else have issues with only playing some teams in the ‘conference’ once every 4 years? That means there will be students that go their entire college career that will never see 4 teams play in their stadium. 16 teams is too damn many. That’s not a conference, it’s a league with 2 separate conferences meeting at the end of the season to play a championship game!

Adding 1 more team works, I really don’t like the idea of a 13+ team conference.

by bconway6 on Feb 17, 2010 11:18 AM EST reply actions

Agreed

by DerryPharmer on Feb 17, 2010 11:51 AM EST up reply actions

it's inevitable

Eventually, the NCAAF = NFL in terms of organization, post season, and revenue streams. Schools are holding on to tradition, but that fades with every new AD, and every passing decade. Every new AD licks his chops when he sees the NFL’s bankroll, and how insanely profitable their business model is. Right now they’re sacrificing money for tradition, that won’t always be the case.

Eventually I think you’ll see around 4 16 team super-conferences, 8 teams per division, and a huge playoff. There seems to be a desire of those in charge to squeeze out the mid-majors and historically bad programs, the dead weight; the Fiesta bowl this year was a huge indication of that. If each football program in a major conference is responsible for funding it’s athletic department, it’s going to have to grow increasingly profitable. The key is TV deals and growing the audience. The two biggest ways to do that is to shrink the field of teams that matter, and give it an NFL style postseason.

I’m not in favor of this, but the way I see it, it’s inevitable.

"We hugged as grown men do. It was a great moment. Then, it was business as usual." -- LJ Sr.

by millzners on Feb 17, 2010 1:45 PM EST up reply actions

8 teams per division....

sounds a lot like 8 (smaller than today) conferences with a playoff at the end. Just that each conference winner will know from which other conference their champion will play in the first round of the playoffs (also sounds a lot like bowl tie ins). So I guess I am really just disturbed by the semantics as it wouldn’t be radically different from what we have today just with the addition of a playoff.

As far as the money demands and squeezing out the dead weight, that’s possible. However that amounts to reducing the number of teams in the tournament. That would be like NCAAB going from 64 tournament teams to 32. But in fact, the NCAAB tournament is going in the opposite direction and considering expanding the field (again).

by bconway6 on Feb 17, 2010 4:14 PM EST up reply actions

Well I think it’s hard to compare NCAABB to NCAAF in this case. NCAABB has it’s own model, and it does exceptionally well. That’s why they’re expanding the field for the tournament: it makes a lot of money now, and it could potentially make even more with the expansion.

With football, the audience the NCAAF is after are the NFL die hards. The guys that laugh at the idea that they have to pay attention to 121 teams, that think NCAAF is just an NFL AAA, and who refuse to invest time in a sport that can’t effectively crown a champion. Those guys don’t care about NCAAF because the scope is so broad and most of the games aren’t pitting quality opponents against each other, not to mention the post season debacle.

The reason the NFL is so easy to digest is the difference between the quality of the teams isn’t that vast, so you have more competitive games. Plus there’s only 32 teams. Now if you make up for that by shrinking the field, and fixing the post season, you get their attention. Then when they start watching they’ll be hooked b/c every team runs a different system instead of the cookie cutter crap in the NFL.

"We hugged as grown men do. It was a great moment. Then, it was business as usual." -- LJ Sr.

by millzners on Feb 17, 2010 4:47 PM EST up reply actions

Fair enough...

the models of NCAAF and NCAAB are pretty different.

I suppose you are right in that the NCAA would like to draw more NFL fans to the game. Having a clear playoff would help immensely in that regard. I don’t think the answer is to limit the number of teams in major college football. Emulating college after the NFL just makes it even more of a minor league NFL and even more ignorable.

To the last point about being easy to follow; if the fans are too daunted to weed out the important teams out of the whole field what are the chances they’re going to be overly impressed by watching the spread go against the pro set or against the triple option?

I think the thing that would go the farthest to drawing in more casual fans (something the NFL is great at) is to implement a playoff at the end of the season.

by bconway6 on Feb 17, 2010 9:23 PM EST up reply actions

RE: NCAAB vs NCAAFB

don’t forget that there are also almost 3 times as many division 1 college basketball programs as there are FBS football team. Right now, with 65 teams going to the dance, that’s about 19% of the teams going to the tournament, which isn’t that ridiculous.

If the FBS shrunk down to about 64 teams (half of what it is now) and cut out all the dead weight (seriously, no one really cares about a game vs Eastern Michigan, or San Diego St.), then you’d have essentially 8 of the 64 teams going to the “playoff”. That’s 12.5%, and doable.

I don’t really think we need to cut out all those other teams, though, as it is nice to have some opening round fodder in the tournament.

by The JuggerNitt on Feb 18, 2010 12:19 PM EST up reply actions