Arkstfan

Odd to have FCS that far out. We don't have any past 2016. I expect to add some but just none scheduled yet.

Why 30? We both know if there are 30 then sixty spots after the playoff spots are going to the P5 then AAC, CUSA, Sun Belt, MWC, MAC get what's left. The increase in bowls shifts the power from bowl directors to conference commissioners. When there were fewer bowls non-AQ commissioners went to bowl directors begging for games and had to take games on terms they dictate. Now there are more games, commissioners can extract terms they like better or go somewhere else and put the game out of business. The International Bowl folded because no conference other than the MAC would agree to a new contract. The Motor Pizza Bowl wanted to move to Tiger Stadium when they were kicked out of Ford Field. No one other than the MAC would agree to sign on. When there were few bowls you had: Today's Capital One Bowl moved from a lower division to major bowl by tying to the MAC. Soon as they get that status, goodbye MAC. Fiesta was created as a WAC bowl. Booted them Holiday was created as a WAC bowl. Booted them Independence was created as Southland bowl. Booted them (year before the reorganization to I-AA). Las Vegas Bowl was created as MAC vs. Big West. GoDaddy was WAC vs. CUSA, WAC bailed because they couldn't afford the travel. MAC replaced them with a multi-year deal that expired after the CUSA deal. When CUSA expired, bowl signed ACC who never had a team eligible. Constrain the supply and the bowls hold the cards and they will maximize profit by ditching G5 programs whenever possible to get P5 who bring bigger TV audiences and generally do better selling tickets. Wanting to reduce bowls is like being a person who does not have capital investments favoring a low capital gains tax. Low tax capital gains tax encourages people to cash out so they can get the gain at a low tax rate, a higher rate encourages staying invested to defer the tax as long as possible. When USA Drug sold out to Walgreens and the large bank chain in Arkansas, Liberty Bank sold to Centennial, being able to take advantage of the current low rate was cited in both cases and in both cases resulted in hundreds being laid off. Low rate has its benefits but if you are living paycheck to paycheck it generally means you are at higher risk of losing your job when the owner cashes out early. Fewer bowls = more chance G5's get left out in the cold.

AAC's western-most bowl on a regular basis is Birmingham. Unless you are drawing at 3 or 4 million viewers TV isn't paying a bundle to show your bowl. If you aren't making a lot from TV then you have to make it by keeping costs down and selling tickets. AAC's additions in the west are perfectly logical. Orlando not so much.

You want a model that works? Starts at the CEO's office. Most university CEOs are not athletics people even if they are fans and enjoy sports they don't get the nitty gritty. So they are looking for an AD, they look at the athletic budget and the first thing that jumps out is athletics needs more money, donations seem too low, ticket revenue seems too low. Conclusion. I've got to hire someone who can solve that problem. So the final list of five candidates will be made up of three types of people. 1. Someone with a fund-raising background who has some awesome project to their credit. Never mind that the skills involved in getting T Boone to donate to OKST or the Gaylord family to donate to OU do not transfer to Denton, Jonesboro or El Paso. 2. Someone with a ticket sales background even though the skills involved in selling tickets in Austin or Baton Rouge are not the same ones needed at a G5 or struggling P5. 3. Some locally connected business person who knows how to run business but knows little of NCAA compliance, government budget process or fair rates for games and salaries. A quality AD is going to miss on coaching hires but should get it right more often than not, should be able to watch a team and be able to figure out if an 8-4 football team is more likely a 5 or 6 win team but for some good breaks and not over-react to the winning in making decisions, likewise has to be able to see if the 12 win basketball team was well coached and is suffering from inexperience or injuries and should improve enough the next year to warrant riding out a bad year. They also have to understand the big picture. When Malzahn was at AState, a new operations center for football was priority one and the AD had drawings done and all that. New AD comes in and first thing he says is "I'm not making a $20 million project that produces no revenue and has a limited impact on competitiveness my top priority". Press box renovation with suites, loge boxes and club seating became the top priority, spending $7 million for a project that will generate over a million in direct revenue was a higher priority especially once he secured a $5 million gift and another just short of a million to build it without borrowing. Indoor practice facility was priority two (construction began on it first because you can't gut your press conference during the season) because it was cheaper to build and impacted more sports (football, soccer, baseball, and track) and depending on the year the impact on competitiveness could be huge (for example AState baseball this year got in like two practices in four weeks because of the weather, football has had rain at two of three practices so far this spring other years we lose few if any practices). Ops center is up next but it has been redesigned to include suites and loge seating so it will generate some revenue and the revenue from the press box will help fund it. Understanding and thinking strategically about these things is a big deal, Maryland nearly had to drop numerous sports before the Big 10 rescue because they did a massive department wide construction project that they borrowed a lot of money for and planned to fund with new premium seating even though there was virtually no wait list for existing premium seating. Someone who understands you need to hire people to help you win and understands college athletics finance is far more important than hiring the person who handed T Boone his receipt or managed to increase ticket sales 15% when the football team had its best year in a decade.

Baseball is a money pit if you are in a region where you can't play at home the first third of the season. Across the south (especially near the gulf) it can be a nice revenue source, ditto the far west like Arizona and southern California.

It causes nightsweats for AD's because of the outlaw reputation but if I were hiring a hoops coach I'd look really hard at a juco coach. Anyone successful in juco is tight with AAU coaches and Division I coaches who have placed players with them. Those connections can be a real boost.

The NCAA wanted to reopen the TV contract and had to do something to get CBS to kick in more money. The original idea was to expand the tournament to 96 teams and that was received like feces in the punch bowl. Then the NCAA cooked up the idea of the "first four" that was going to be the eight lowest seeded teams playing for the right to win and get the brains bashed in by the four 16 seeds. CBS yawned and said how about have the last eight at-large teams play to come into the bracket as the four 11 seeds. So they split the baby and two games feature teams playing to enter the field of 64 as 11 seeds and two games where teams play to enter as 16 seeds. My idea of going back to 64 but spreading the first two rounds over six days instead of four and cutting out or back on the games during work hours was apparently not considered.

Technically they don't sign because they are transferring FBS to FBS. They could sign an NLI but it isn't binding. AState is adding one DL and maybe an OL from UAB

CUSA looked at FIU for five months and took them in the first wave.

Anyone wanting to send the students representing their school to Lubbock or Stillwater on a regular basis just hates young people.

Sun Belt looked at UMass and said no thanks. Travel wise it's like going to Troy or AState. Fly in and bus an hour. They are a traditional campus outside of the Boston market. Stadium isn't close to being up to snuff so they play half their games at the Pats stadium which is 100 miles from campus. Key to remember with UMass. The MAC was in the middle of their TV negotiation when they gave them the all or nothing ultimatum. That means they meant very little to the MAC's TV value compared to the issues of scheduling 13 in football. CUSA enters this realignment issue presumably negotiating the next TV deal since it expires in 18 months. If CUSA doesn't take a team by June 30 that might not be a good sign. If adding is close to revenue neutral CUSA will expand because 13 is terrible for scheduling football and basketball. Even a near wash makes it worthwhile. If there is $14 million in TV on the table it keeps revenue near constant (hoops revenue is currently declining) and if less than $150,000 (difference per team in splitting current revenue 13 ways instead of 14) makes a difference to the membership there are programs in deep trouble. If there is more than $14 million on the table expanding is the only logical choice.

"A" win is not program defining. The Sunday after AState beat TAMU my column on my site said the win wasn't that big unless it was given context. ULM has had some big wins but how many of those wins came in championship seasons? 0. Beat a big name and finish up bad or mediocre and it was "any given Saturday". If it is part of a run, then it shows just how good you are. AState choked away giving the TAMU win context. We blew a two score lead in the fourth quarter at ULL, got plowed by Bama and blew a two score fourth quarter lead at FIU in one three game stretch and despite that went to Troy with a chance to tie for the league and take it by tie-breaker over Troy with the New Orleans Bowl on hand to give us a bid if we won and Birmingham sitting there ready to invite Troy if we won. Fell on our face and NOB took Troy and Bham took an ACC leftover. Most hardcore AState fans if asked to name the biggest win will say Kent State because we beat a ranked team with our defensive coordinator coaching and Gus sitting in Auburn or last year's win over Ball State because we blocked a FG to win and put the Harsin error to bed. Those wins had context.

Regarding the stadium. One thing I didn't/don't understand was why it wasn't the front-burner issue in 2002, 2003, 2004 when people felt good. The grand mystery of the Sun Belt to me was 2001-2010 everyone who went to the top said "Woo Hoo we are the best" and didn't do squat to stay there. Once AState and ULL got good we turned goodwill into concrete and steel.

The thing is college sports aren't a business. If it is a business its a terrible business to be in because there aren't any schools that can justify the net profits on what they've poured in the last hundred years. If presidents in the P5 told their ADs that they would get zero from the school or students and finish the fiscal year with $4 million cash on hand and turn $2 million of that over to academics they could all do it. Now assistants might not make a million and head coaches might not make three million and the locker room craze wouldn't be so crazy but they could do it and most of the G5 could run at or close the break even if commanded to do so. Salaries would be more like the MAC and teams would be more interested in how many bus trips they can make. There will be others who fall. They may be carrying too much debt or unable to afford what they do now because enrollment falls.

Sixteen is insufficient, there is no combination of 16 that can produce even half of what one of the G5 leagues produces in revenue. If you watch The Walking Dead you know the answer. A few walkers are no match for any halfway equipped person, but swarms can come in with such great numbers the best equipped and most skilled can't take them on. The only solution is a LARGE league and 16 ain't large. No smaller than 24 and the ideal would be more like 32. To make it work, you have to have schools in every time zone. You have to have schools in every region within those time zones. If you are serious about you don't waste time figuring out who has a fat budget for women's rowing or men's soccer. You look at four things. 1. Football facilities and funded football capital projects, 2. Basketball facilities and funded basketball capital projects, 3. Football salaries for head coach and assistants, 4. Men's basketball salaries for head coach and assistants. If you are trying to take on the Power 5 football and men's basketball are all that matters. Kudos to those who pay the women's softball coach well but that's like judging a military's combat readiness based on how well their fire arms drill team performs. You've got a serious problem in that you have a vast swath of the nation that does not fund its athletics programs at a high level. NIU football staff pay is highest in the MAC but below 10 CUSA schools (9 if you omit UAB and assume Rice is lower which I doubt) and below three Sun Belt (four if Troy delivers on their vow about pay) and is below everyone in MWC and AAC. You really need some midwestern schools but can any step up in pay? You have to find a network to love you. That means someone willing to slot games head-to-head vs. the Power 5 in addition to the usual off-beat dates and times. The conference has to be so large to reach critical mass that it is really more an association than a conference in the traditional sense but that size geographic reach has to be large in order for there to not be a substitute to what is being offered. That's the only way it can be done and if you do it, how do you get past the local squabbles about who is too close, I mean unworthy to be involved?

And the AD got fired not long after we hired Gus. He couldn't figure out how to raise money to build an indoor practice facility, renovate the press box or build a new ops center. Today two are under construction and the third probably breaks ground next fall.

Arkansas State has a career services program just for athletes, Georgia started one this year.

Their stadium plan hinged on a number of non-binding financial committments (pledges) and a naming rights estimate. AState is making people wanting our premium seating sign a binding seven year contract so we can use that money to build a new ops center. Arkansas State has its own board. Five people appointed by the governor to five year terms. Currently all five board members are alums, and two were lettermen. Our board is aggressive. We are absorbing yet another two year college come July 1 as long as things don't fall apart, using a provision in state law that permits certain mergers without state approval. Our board is opening an English language only campus in Mexico as a "private" college using Foundation assets because then we don't have to have state approval. We are opening a medical school as a private college on our campus in partnership with New York Technical Institute because as a private school, it avoids state approval. And despite that, they don't play fast and loose with the money, their guidelines with budgeting are such that we can absorb a small dip in enrollment without cutting the budget and the major services just upgraded our bond rating because of our budget practices. I think this is the official seal of our board.

Success in athletics does not start with the Board of Regents, the President, the AD. It starts with the mob in the parking lot. If the mob in the parking lot is bugging the life out of them they feel they have to do something (that's why you see a 6-6 coach fired at Houston, it's why Nebraska made a change). If the mob is silent, then hey they are fine with where things are, I can devote my energy to something else. As the saying goes, "You get what you tolerate". There are obviously real financial caps on what the administration can carve out to support athletics but if the mob in the parking lot is content there is no reason to work extra hard to find ways to increase the support. In December of 2010, AState fired Steve Roberts after a second 4-8 season took him to 45-63. But the mob had lit the torches and grabbed the pitchforks earlier. A year prior in 2009 when he was 4-8 and was 41-55 overall the mob was starting to turn and the reason why they turned was because it was discovered that Roberts had been denied an extension at 6-6 in 2008. Why was that a big deal, because an email was uncovered where he complained about being denied an extension that year when he had been granted one the previous year at 5-7. He wanted to know why 6-6 wasn't worthy. Fans wanted to know what was wrong with the administration to sneak through an extension at 5-7. It got ugly in 2009 and much much uglier in 2010. When Roberts was fired, the AD started piddling around with a search and the fans went ballistic and were backed up by my site, the Jonesboro newspaper, ArkansasSports360.com, and others demanding that the administration not waste our time and hire Hugh Freeze. The AD didn't want to hire Freeze but the heat got turned up so high that president ordered him to hire Freeze. The coaching search expected to last 10 to 14 days lasted three days because the fans by God demanded it get done.

The last great cooperation effort that I know of. While CFP was being negotiated the five leagues agreed they would walk from the discussion unless they gave up a certain percentage of revenue. They walked in the room, the Power 5 said "We will give you this amount but it's not negotiatable" Some how the five managed to not say "Swell that's more than we were asking for" and screw up the deal. A brief history of cooperation. Prior to the last BCS deal that covered 2010-13, The AQ propose a change to the buster rule. Instead of a team only qualifying if they met the criteria (Be a champion, rated 12 or better, or be 16 or better and rated above an AQ champ) the criteria would be this. The five non-AQ champs would be rated 1-5. On the first Saturday in December the #1 and #2 rated non-AQ champs would meet with the winner guaranteed a slot in the BCS. MWC and CUSA opposed the play-in concept so it died. Shortly after it was rejected MWC put forward their own plan to revise the BCS that used various criteria to determine 7 AQ leagues, needless to say that plan got support from one of the 11 conferences. And while we are at it. Remember the awful greedy BCS? The six AQ leagues shared the revenue equally. There was a token payment of around $4 million for placing a second team (AQ schools have been known to spend up to two million traveling to a BCS game). There was no well the Big 10 and SEC are stronger and command more TV viewers, so we need a bigger share than the Big XII, Big East and Pac-12. The BCS powers turned to the non-AQ and said "we will give you this amount of money, you figure out how to divide it." The only way they were able to get an agreement was to compromise with the MWC and CUSA demands that a portion of the money be divided based on the power ratings of the leagues, they wanted all of it divided based on performance. I imagine the AQ commissioners got a big laugh any time the non-AQ folks complained about how the big boys hoarded the money since they shared equally within their group. Go trawl the Marshall and NIU message boards, two fan bases who feel they got shafted because they landed in a champion vs. champion bowl and didn't get a match-up they "deserve". Hell read this board, UNT is two years removed from Sun Belt membership and the league is beneath many of the posters here. The G5 are doomed to their lot because it is a giant crab bucket where anyone trying to crawl out is grabbed and pulled back in. AAC doesn't want a combined TV deal that could make them four million per team if there is a chance MWC could make that as well and some CUSA, MAC, and Sun Belt team could make three million in a good year. Right now they can say they make more than double CUSA, why would they want a deal where CUSA makes 75% of what they make, even if the dollar gap remains the same? It hurts how they position themselves. Why would they want a deal where a Sun Belt champ running the table might get a TV slot they have now? SMU doesn't want North Texas recruiting under the same banner they recruit under. Why would UTSA want TXST to recruit under the same banner they are under?

UAB squandered 20 years to develop such a following and support level that board politics couldn't kill it. They came up with $5 million in committments after the deal was basically done. Do that two years ago and they can't touch them.

Want to reform the G5? Let's start with an easy step that OUGHT to embraced by everyone. Reform the G5 bowls. Take a tiny baby step and take the four champs not selected for the access bowl and pit them in two bowl games. Rank 'em 1-4 and have 1 play 2 and 3 play 4. Odds of producing ranked teams goes up. Got the courage to think a little bigger? The five leagues starting next year have 27 ties with Navy going to AAC (28 counting access) and only six pit G5 vs. P5 (counting access). Dump the league ties and take 22 bowl ties not hooked to the P5 and guarantee each league same number of selections they have now but flex the selections (not the stupid oh we take this league in these years and these leagues in other years) put together a selection board with commissioners, some bowl folks and TV try to put together logical games that respect geography while trying to make good games that TV sense. Feel really courageous? Have the stones to understand five conferences that don't move the needle much for TV negotiating TV independently is the height of stupidity. Throw all the TV rights into one LLC to negotiate TV. The model for sharing the money was in place for around 40 years. The model the NCAA used. Each network contracted with pays first a flat fee to be part of the deal which is split equally then pays off a rate card for each game selected. The price on the rate card reflects the network carrying the game, the day of the week and the time slot. The network picking up a game writes a check to the two teams playing for the game. If you are more attractive to TV you get on, you get paid more. TV can no longer leverage one conference against the other to force a deal by pointing out they can always get another conference that has teams in the region that will be willing to take the money.

That is an unlikely outcome. There are four CUSA schools that have greater reliance of school subsidies (direct transfers and student fees) than UAB had. While I would expect none of FIU 77.54% ODU 73.35% MTSU 70.89% FAU 67.61% are close to dropping football, a dip in enrollment coupled with falling state funding could create a financial crisis and if they have a different administration than they currently do, they might change direction. You just don't want to set the precedent that you can drop football and everything will be OK.

That would likely be a big factor. With the current deal expiring next season, I would be surprised if there aren't already negotiations underway and this has to be a complicating factor that will require looking at 13, 14, and 16 team models. I would expect the deal is still in the exclusive negotiation window so right now CUSA cannot talk to anyone but Fox, CBS, and Sinclair for input without violating the contract (a mistake CUSA made when it left ESPN and had to give the title game to ESPN to settle the lawsuit). I would further expect there would be a look at what various schools would do for strength of schedule calculations given the fact that the selection committee ranked Marshall below Boise before Marshall lost. Each step in the performance bonus scale is worth $1.6 million and selection to the access bowl is worth $6 million.

Schools have a say if they are invited. If you are ESPN are you going to pay Big XII more for Clemson and FSU when you own those rights already via the ACC and are obligated to pay the ACC for those games even though they are in Big XII? Cincy and Memphis bring more dollars to the Big XII because ESPN is obligated to pay ACC for the two teams no matter what league they are in.