I’m going to think about what the new conference would look like and post it up in a few days.
I think the future of college athletics is smaller participation amongst schools. The money is going to get too big, it’s going to cut out a lot of small players, and the whole thing is going to condense considerably…
What’s going to be funny is that the quest to pay athletes and provide equal opportunity is probably going to eliminate opportunities for a lot of people to get a free education, whom otherwise wouldn’t receive a higher education at all.
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This is my big worry. The big fish get bigger, and the small fish get eaten. The opportunities for thousands of small to mid size fish athletes will diminish rapidly. The value of a college education to some of these kids is absolutely astronomical. Sometimes more so by taking them out of their hometown and showing them a brand new world.
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I would love that!
I am 150% for that. Mostly since I live in the Phoenix area. Otherwise, the XVI East is a tough division!
TFW you start liking posts, then realize they are 6 months old. :-/
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lol well mine was new, so go like that one.
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Interesting. Although I don’t relish the travel
I really don’t think the travel would be that difficult, for OSU you play the other 7 in the division, offset the Arizona’s so you only make one trip there a year, then follow the SEC and only play 8 conference game. You make the long trip maybe west once a year, they come here the next. OSU is currently on the cycle of having to go to Ames and Morgantown in the same season.
I once made geographical conferences for every team in the video game NCAA Football 14, which I can’t seem to find the spreadsheet for.
However, I also made what I called “Money conferences” where I looked at school’s enrollment, market size and program tradition to remake the Power Five conferences. Each conference got 12 teams. Here is what I came up with (at least the first 25 of those schools according to program tradition)
I made all that a few years ago, so I’m not sure how much I would fight for the decisions I made at this point, but I thought it was interesting.
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You should write something up on that.
A) Big 10 would never add Kansas State because academics.
B) it wouldn’t really make financial sense for the Big 12 to add Oregon State or Washington State.
C) in fantasy land if you could boot TCU and Baylor and keep the Kansas schools that would be great.
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Academics as a factor in sports conference alignment is ridiculous.
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I mean… they are academic institutions…
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Yes, but they aren’t re-aligning for the College Academics National Championship…
Also, why the heck would the Big 10 let Nebraska in, but not KSU? Is Nebraska really that great academically?
They have to at least keep up the facade that this is all for education.
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