Million Dollar Flag

Arkstfan · July 10, 2008

When UNT fans grouse about the one play only CFL sized end zone at Austin, consider this...

An illegal procedure penalty against Arkansas State last year that was admitted to be an error by the Big 12, may have cost the Sun Belt a million dollars.

The Sun Belt passed the MAC in BCS revenue sharing and was one key non-conference win from passing CUSA.

Other games that could have changed the day?

ASU's 6 point loss at Southern Miss.

UNT's loss to SMU

MTSU's barn-burner point every half minute game with Louisville

MTSU's loss on a late FG to Virginia

Troy's loss at Georgia

Maybe UNT's loss to Navy

Maybe ULL's loss to Ohio

One game. That was the difference in over a million dollars and being #3 among the non-automatic bid conferences and being #4.

http://www.dnj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?A.../807100311/1006

UNTflyer · July 10, 2008

Only 48 days until this college football season starts.

VideoEagle · July 10, 2008

It certainly shows the differences between the Conferences is not nearly as large as some would believe. It also highlights the need to schedule winnable out of conference games verse being a sacrificial lamb for a big payday.

Eagle1855 · July 10, 2008

interesting numbers. Really would have liked to have that Navy game, OBVIOUSLY.

UNTflyer · July 10, 2008

It certainly shows the differences between the Conferences is not nearly as large as some would believe. It also highlights the need to schedule winnable out of conference games verse being a sacrificial lamb for a big payday.

I agree. I think we need to keep at least one of those games every season, but we need to schedule more mid-majors. It would be great to consistently have two OOC home games.

untphd · July 10, 2008

It certainly shows the differences between the Conferences is not nearly as large as some would believe. It also highlights the need to schedule winnable out of conference games verse being a sacrificial lamb for a big payday.

Totally agree.

NT80 · July 10, 2008

It certainly shows the differences between the Conferences is not nearly as large as some would believe. It also highlights the need to schedule winnable out of conference games verse being a sacrificial lamb for a big payday.

The differences are way larger than BCS revenue sharing. Sponsorship $$, media $$, donor $$, not to mention image in general thanks to print and TV media all shapes the public's view of the conferences more than this one category.

Arkstfan · July 10, 2008

The differences are way larger than BCS revenue sharing. Sponsorship $$, media $$, donor $$, not to mention image in general thanks to print and TV media all shapes the public's view of the conferences more than this one category.

Perception of quality rises more slowly than an improvement in quality because perception is based on bias. Central Michigan defeated Michigan State in consecutive years but the change in perception was too slow to allow CMU to build a program that could sustain its position relative to MSU.

If you weren't born or were fairly young on January 1, 1984 you do not perceive Miami football as anything other than a major national program. The next day Miami won its first national title while playing in only their second bowl game since 1967 and posted its fourth consecutive winning season for the first time since 1964-67. They had been a dog and if they hadn't won again would have been relegated to the trash heap with BYU as a fluke.

Last season was nice with football and basketball in the Sun Belt but it will take a couple more years of doing that to change perception. Most people folk to buy a hot stock after it becomes hot. Most people adopt the new fashion fads after others have adopted it. If Wal-Mart and Target are selling it, the fad is just about to end.

Conferences are sort of like stocks, you've got to look at their fundamentals. Right now in football the WAC is hotter than the MWC, but the MWC's worst team was UNLV and they were better than the bottom three WAC teams and arguably about equal to the next two WAC teams. If you compare WAC 1-3 to Sun Belt 1-3 clearly the WAC is ahead in any power rating you look at but when you look at WAC 4-9 compared to Sun Belt 4-8 the difference just doesn't exist. The demise of the MAC on the other hand is overstated. MAC 1-13 fit snugly just below Sun Belt 1 and ahead of Sun Belt 7-8.

Right now if you look at the future near term prospects of the five non-AQ leagues you should be able to say pretty clearly that the MWC is THE conference between the Rich 6 and everyone else. The margins of difference between 2-5 are pretty slim. If I were picking how the leagues rank three seasons from now I'd predict MWC #1 and feel comfortable filling 2-5 by drawing names from a hat.

College football cycles. Early 80's BYU pops up and Miami pops up and there is a reason for that, periods of parity. When BYU became national champion in 1984 they were the first undefeated national champion since Clemson popped up in 1981 (what an ACC team playing for a national title? Shocking when it happened). After BYU's undefeated team it didn't happen again until 1986.

What the heck happened? Simple I-A was restructured from about 140 teams to 101. Thanks to the BCS, bowl proliferation, more I-AA games and the vast increase in TV exposure across the board, we are hitting a new era of parity. The BCS means only two teams have any shot at being champion at the end of the year and the margin for error to be in the hunt is fragile. Schools in the top leagues that aren't going to one of the BCS bowls fairly regularly are going to bowls no better perceived than the New Orleans (remember Shreveport and Boise tend to get more jokes than the New Orleans) and match teams far down the pecking order. Today you can reach as many recruits by posting the top five to ten highlights of each game on YouTube as you can with one or two ESPN appearances.

GoMeanGreen1999 · July 11, 2008

Only 48 days until this college football season starts.

Can't wait either.

NT80 · July 11, 2008

Last season was nice with football and basketball in the Sun Belt but it will take a couple more years of doing that to change perception.
What the heck happened? Simple I-A was restructured from about 140 teams to 101. Thanks to the BCS, bowl proliferation, more I-AA games and the vast increase in TV exposure across the board, we are hitting a new era of parity.

Last season's FAU drubbing of Memphis in the New Orleans Bowl and WKU doing well in basketball did help the SBC's image on a national level. We need more sustained years like that and from multiple SBC schools.

As for the BCS, as more 1-AA teams continue to move up and swell the numbers after the moratorium is lifted, I have fears of the BCS breaking off to form their own upper-tier of college football. A new era of 1-A and 1-AA evolving again with the top 70 schools in their own league?

Arkstfan · July 11, 2008

Last season's FAU drubbing of Memphis in the New Orleans Bowl and WKU doing well in basketball did help the SBC's image on a national level. We need more sustained years like that and from multiple SBC schools.
As for the BCS, as more 1-AA teams continue to move up and swell the numbers after the moratorium is lifted, I have fears of the BCS breaking off to form their own upper-tier of college football. A new era of 1-A and 1-AA evolving again with the top 70 schools in their own league?

The purpose of the moratorium was to study whether the criteria for switching from I-A to I-AA should be changed. Don't assume the saber-rattling about moving up will be accomplished until we know if there will be a criteria change and if there is one, what the change is.

untjim1995 · July 11, 2008

As for the BCS, as more 1-AA teams continue to move up and swell the numbers after the moratorium is lifted, I have fears of the BCS breaking off to form their own upper-tier of college football. A new era of 1-A and 1-AA evolving again with the top 70 schools in their own league?

Arkstfan · July 11, 2008

As for the BCS, as more 1-AA teams continue to move up and swell the numbers after the moratorium is lifted, I have fears of the BCS breaking off to form their own upper-tier of college football. A new era of 1-A and 1-AA evolving again with the top 70 schools in their own league?
I think that this will happen--the money behind it just makes too much sense to the AQ-BCS. Right now, there are 66 teams in that category for football. It wouldn't surprise anyone if they said we are going to close ranks here and maybe add bigger programs from a support standpoint to the list. There are other teams that I could see moving into this elite category: The entire MWC, the upper WAC teams, and then the upper-CUSA teams. Each of these three conferences have bowl games that they can bring with them, which doesn't hurt, either.

Follow the money.

The BCS share paid the six wealthy leagues works out to about $1.9 million per team but that is before deducting the expenses related with playing in those games.

A playoff is estimated to double or triple that revenue so we are talking gross revenue of $2 million to $4 million which is a lot of money on my budget or even the budget of a Sun Belt team but it ain't jack. Those schools are grossing between $13 million to $30 million per year on football ticket sales and that is assuming all tickets sold are the cheap ones and donation is required. The SEC's TV income JUST FOR FOOTBALL was 2.3 times the SEC's BCS revenue.

Post-season money isn't a big deal. The real money is in keeping the fans happy enough to buy tickets and donate to get those tickets, followed by television money. If you went to most message boards you would think that the SEC or Big 12 are rich because of the BCS, followed by TV money, then tickets, but that is exactly reverse order.

The wealthy six leagues want to walk a fine line. I-A becomes too large and you dilute the brand value. Allow it to become too small and you are faced with having to increase the number of lower tier opponents, you increase the number of games against quality opponents making won/loss records worse, you flatten the bell curve of quality because instead of approximately 3,000 student athletes signing I-A letters each year that number drops to around 2,000 each year in an 80 member I-A. That means 1,000 quality players distributed across 40 schools are now out there for the remaining 80 to recruit with less competition.

The NCAA has done a series of massive realignments over the years. The first was breaking up the old University/College I/College II structure and criteria into the new Division I, II, III structure, then breaking I-A into I-AA. The odd thing that has emerged from looking back through those realignments has been that when the top level of football has fewer than 120 members the greater the gap between the number of members and the "magic number" of 120 the faster teams have moved upward. As it nudges close to 120 the pace slows down. As it begins moving past 120 the more pressure there is to trim down the top level. In the mid-70's the NCAA revenue sharing structure got severely stressed because the NCAA TV contract money bumped up rapidly and triggered a gold rush pushing Division I rapidly past 120. So first the I-A/I-AA split was created to grab a couple really low tier Division I leagues and to grab a bundle of schools moving in like the Yankee and MEAC. That was followed by stricter rules cutting I-A back further that caught folks like UNT and the Southland.

Whether or not there is an intent to pick 120 as the "magic number" (I don't think there is intent but has to do with psychology and the economics of needing a certain percentage of the Division to be lower tier so that existing conference members can schedule enough non-conference games to create an impression of competitiveness) it seems to be a real barrier. Western Kentucky filed its intent to reclassify I-A which will make them member #120 in FBS football and shortly thereafter the NCAA adopted a moratorium to study the FBS admission criteria.

There may be a group get a wild hair to pare back to 65, 70, 80 but the last major drop in numbers resulted in a disruptive era where programs like Miami and BYU emerged as national contenders and the SEC and SWC were racked by cheating scandals, if there is a paring, it will be followed by programs trudging back up joined by some rising programs finally stepping forward.

NT80 · July 11, 2008

Follow the money.
The BCS share paid the six wealthy leagues works out to about $1.9 million per team but that is before deducting the expenses related with playing in those games.
A playoff is estimated to double or triple that revenue so we are talking gross revenue of $2 million to $4 million which is a lot of money on my budget or even the budget of a Sun Belt team but it ain't jack. Those schools are grossing between $13 million to $30 million per year on football ticket sales and that is assuming all tickets sold are the cheap ones and donation is required. The SEC's TV income JUST FOR FOOTBALL was 2.3 times the SEC's BCS revenue.
Post-season money isn't a big deal. The real money is in keeping the fans happy enough to buy tickets and donate to get those tickets, followed by television money. If you went to most message boards you would think that the SEC or Big 12 are rich because of the BCS, followed by TV money, then tickets, but that is exactly reverse order.
The wealthy six leagues want to walk a fine line. I-A becomes too large and you dilute the brand value. Allow it to become too small and you are faced with having to increase the number of lower tier opponents, you increase the number of games against quality opponents making won/loss records worse, you flatten the bell curve of quality because instead of approximately 3,000 student athletes signing I-A letters each year that number drops to around 2,000 each year in an 80 member I-A. That means 1,000 quality players distributed across 40 schools are now out there for the remaining 80 to recruit with less competition.
The NCAA has done a series of massive realignments over the years. The first was breaking up the old University/College I/College II structure and criteria into the new Division I, II, III structure, then breaking I-A into I-AA. The odd thing that has emerged from looking back through those realignments has been that when the top level of football has fewer than 120 members the greater the gap between the number of members and the "magic number" of 120 the faster teams have moved upward. As it nudges close to 120 the pace slows down. As it begins moving past 120 the more pressure there is to trim down the top level. In the mid-70's the NCAA revenue sharing structure got severely stressed because the NCAA TV contract money bumped up rapidly and triggered a gold rush pushing Division I rapidly past 120. So first the I-A/I-AA split was created to grab a couple really low tier Division I leagues and to grab a bundle of schools moving in like the Yankee and MEAC. That was followed by stricter rules cutting I-A back further that caught folks like UNT and the Southland.
Whether or not there is an intent to pick 120 as the "magic number" (I don't think there is intent but has to do with psychology and the economics of needing a certain percentage of the Division to be lower tier so that existing conference members can schedule enough non-conference games to create an impression of competitiveness) it seems to be a real barrier. Western Kentucky filed its intent to reclassify I-A which will make them member #120 in FBS football and shortly thereafter the NCAA adopted a moratorium to study the FBS admission criteria.
There may be a group get a wild hair to pare back to 65, 70, 80 but the last major drop in numbers resulted in a disruptive era where programs like Miami and BYU emerged as national contenders and the SEC and SWC were racked by cheating scandals, if there is a paring, it will be followed by programs trudging back up joined by some rising programs finally stepping forward.

Good post, it will be very interesting to see what the new move-up provisions enacted will be. The BCS schools need their 7 home game revenue, plus their Bowl eligibility yearly. Anything that messes with that messes with their money, and they won't stand for that!