In any crisis, those who hesitate to act become much easier game. Likewise, those who are proactive and willing to strike hard have the best chance to survive.
Mack Brown could sell ice to an Eskimo, as they say. He is quite persuasive about any subject that matters to him. So Mack Brown could be the major factor in what UNC does in this crisis. Like me, Brown grew up in Tennessee and so was steeped in SEC sports before he ever left for college. He also knows the southwest inside out from his days at Texas. No one is likely to have greater combined knowledge of the old SEC, the expanded SEC, the ACC, and the southwest than Mack Brown. Even if he weren't silver tongued, his experiences mean people should listen to him.
Reality is what must be faced. None of this stuff has just come about randomly with no planning, no vision. For example, on October 24, 2011, Los Angeles Times reporter Nathan Fenno tweeted: "LSU chancellor Michael Martin: "I think we could ultimately end up with two conferences: one called ESPN and one called FOX." Laughter."
More than a decade ago, the Chancellor of one of a university with one of SEC's most powerful football programs was halfway joking that soon there would be only 2 Major conferences, and each would be backed by a network to the degree that the conference could be called the network. That is where we are: SEC/ESPN and Big Ten/Fox. NBC hopes to be part of the fun by hanging onto ND Home football games, but showing 6 or 7 games per year means nothing. The only hope that the ACC has to be remain fiscally within the ballpark is that Notre Dame wants no part of joining either Big Ten or SEC and ESPN agrees to give the ACC a significant raise in order to keep the ACC at full strength. But ESPN is invested fully in the SEC. The ACC is a far distant #2 in the eyes of ESPN.
The reality is that the ACC, being hopelessly naive enough to trust the Big Ten, acted against the desires of ESPN in rejecting the expanded playoff. So ESPN is certain to be less than merrily generous with the ACC. If ESPN being generous with the ACC gets Notre Dame away from any possibility of joining the BT, then ESPN will be happy to do so. But that would be to secure Notre Dame, not to save Wake Forest and BC in the ACC, not to save the ACC as a Major/Power conference.
Except for the really ignorant basketball-only fans, everybody now, after Southern Cal and UCLA have left the Pac for the BT, should realize that the decade old LSU Chancellor joke is right here, right now. There are now, and there will be, only 2 Major conferences in fiscal sense: SEC and BT. Get into one, or over time you get left farther and farther behind. Equally important, those 2 Major conferences will be increasingly known as the leagues of a network. ESPN especially wants the SEC to be known as the ESPN conference. That is a way to get handle on why ESPN would prefer to have any ACC teams it values most in a super-sized SEC than in an ACC deemed to be a Major conference. The one to one congruence makes it easy for people to grasp the brand, which should help maximize profits.
The SEC and BT, and nobody else, will make all future decisions about Major College football post-seasons. And they also almost certainly will demand that they control the NCAA basketball tournament. In fact, they may well leave the NCAA entirely and run all things for themselves. By doing so, they would maximize the basketball and baseball values of their members, as well as own and control almost all the wealth of college football.
It does not matter a teeny jot what conference emerges over the next few months as the third most powerful. The SEC and BT almost certainly decided some time ago that when the time was right, they would strike and become the only 2 conferences that matter in football. If you want to be in the top division of college football in the future, you must become part of those two conferences.
The good news is that there is no number, such as 16, that is the limit on their memberships. More, there is reason to believe that each has been planning for years to expand to at least 20 and perhaps as many as 32. For years, I have seen fans of both SEC and BT talk about having a super-sized conference that has 4 divisions and so requires a semi-final before the Conference Championship game. Those SEC and BT fans invariably talk about each league having its own playoffs - perhaps that start with 8 teams rather than 4 - and then the two league champs meeting in what amounts to the college Super Bowl.
And that is where Mack Brown comes in. I think he needs to be a major spokesman for the ACC, and not just UNC, with ESPN and the SEC. The BT now has an advantage over the SEC in that the BT has added from far outside its midwestern basis. It should be known to all that the country has two regions in which college football is king: the South and the midwest. The northeast has been a region with little interest in major college football since the dawn of the 1960s. Over the past 30 years or so, the Pacific region has seen a steady loss of fans of college sports. But the northeast and the Pacific region have the nation's two most important media markets: New York and Los Angeles. So while any surviving Major conference must be rooted deeply in either the South or the midwest, between them, they must also have a number of schools that are northeastern and far western in order to prevent college sports, and most specifically football, from being seen by peoples in the northeast and the Pacific as being just about the heartland. The SEC can take such a step by incorporating most of the ACC.
Wake Forest is to Major College Sports conferences what Rice was in 1990. It is the smallest school in a conference with too many private schools to remain highly profitable in a new age. Neither SEC nor BT could ever consider adding Wake. BC is the ACC's Wake part 2. It is too small, and in a TV market that cares barely more than literally nada for college sports to help any conference draw fans. If the SEC were to add the other 12 ACC schools, the super sized SEC would have 28 members. In addition to owning the entire South, the super SEC would also have quadrupled its national TV audience for basketball and the basketball history of its members. Not only is Syracuse the only Major Conference member from NY, but Syracuse has the largest basketball fan base in the northeast. The SEC also would have Pitt, which means having a school in PA: historically the most important northeastern state to division 1 college athletics.
How much could the football program of Pitt, located 30 miles from talent rich Ohio, revive to its glory days with SEC money? I think a good deal, and that growth would grow at the expense of Penn St and the BT.
That 28 team SEC could have 4 divisions of 7 teams each. But the SEC would not stop have to stop there. The SEC then would want to entice Notre Dame because having the Irish would guarantee that the SEC would remain a major player across the midwest for TV viewers of college football. It would be a huge blow to the BT.
From there the SEC also could add from its west or its east. Adding WVU would surely strike fire with games against its historic rivals while also helping to neuter Maryland. Adding Cincinnati certainly would be a blow to the BT and its most important member, Ohio State, which has benefitted immensely from never having had in-state Major Conference competition. The SEC would be pushing right into BT country and staking its claim.
In addition, the SEC could move westward. BYU has the largest fan base for both revenue sports in the entire Rocky Mountains region, and that includes many BYU fans living in CA. Arizona and Arizona State are old WAC rivals of BYU, and each has a sizable alumni and fan base in southern California.
Like the BT, the SEC now needs to expand to become seen as a national college sports conference.
If the Big Ten has added SC and UCLA to try to equal the depth of football quality and excitement that the SEC has, then the BT will be disappointed. That will not do the trick, nor would adding Notre Dame. What the BT requires to pull even with the SEC in football quality and then perhaps to leap past the SEC is to get planted deep into the South by adding multiple ACC teams from VA down through FL. At the same time that the ACC is talking to the SEC and ESPN about 12 teams being incorporated into the SEC, the ACC also needs to talk to the BT. To get the best deal from ESPN, the ACC has to be ready to act violently: the ACC must be ready to dissolve and then its members as independents joining the BT to make the BT truly the lone National conference. ESPN and the SEC will not want the BT and Fox to hold any part of the South.
At this point, ESPN assumes that it has the ACC in a stranglehold and that it can therefore do to the ACC what it wants. UNC needs to lead the ACC to be ready to chew off a leg in order to escape a trap that means certain death by 2036.
Mack Brown could sell ice to an Eskimo, as they say. He is quite persuasive about any subject that matters to him. So Mack Brown could be the major factor in what UNC does in this crisis. Like me, Brown grew up in Tennessee and so was steeped in SEC sports before he ever left for college. He also knows the southwest inside out from his days at Texas. No one is likely to have greater combined knowledge of the old SEC, the expanded SEC, the ACC, and the southwest than Mack Brown. Even if he weren't silver tongued, his experiences mean people should listen to him.
Reality is what must be faced. None of this stuff has just come about randomly with no planning, no vision. For example, on October 24, 2011, Los Angeles Times reporter Nathan Fenno tweeted: "LSU chancellor Michael Martin: "I think we could ultimately end up with two conferences: one called ESPN and one called FOX." Laughter."
More than a decade ago, the Chancellor of one of a university with one of SEC's most powerful football programs was halfway joking that soon there would be only 2 Major conferences, and each would be backed by a network to the degree that the conference could be called the network. That is where we are: SEC/ESPN and Big Ten/Fox. NBC hopes to be part of the fun by hanging onto ND Home football games, but showing 6 or 7 games per year means nothing. The only hope that the ACC has to be remain fiscally within the ballpark is that Notre Dame wants no part of joining either Big Ten or SEC and ESPN agrees to give the ACC a significant raise in order to keep the ACC at full strength. But ESPN is invested fully in the SEC. The ACC is a far distant #2 in the eyes of ESPN.
The reality is that the ACC, being hopelessly naive enough to trust the Big Ten, acted against the desires of ESPN in rejecting the expanded playoff. So ESPN is certain to be less than merrily generous with the ACC. If ESPN being generous with the ACC gets Notre Dame away from any possibility of joining the BT, then ESPN will be happy to do so. But that would be to secure Notre Dame, not to save Wake Forest and BC in the ACC, not to save the ACC as a Major/Power conference.
Except for the really ignorant basketball-only fans, everybody now, after Southern Cal and UCLA have left the Pac for the BT, should realize that the decade old LSU Chancellor joke is right here, right now. There are now, and there will be, only 2 Major conferences in fiscal sense: SEC and BT. Get into one, or over time you get left farther and farther behind. Equally important, those 2 Major conferences will be increasingly known as the leagues of a network. ESPN especially wants the SEC to be known as the ESPN conference. That is a way to get handle on why ESPN would prefer to have any ACC teams it values most in a super-sized SEC than in an ACC deemed to be a Major conference. The one to one congruence makes it easy for people to grasp the brand, which should help maximize profits.
The SEC and BT, and nobody else, will make all future decisions about Major College football post-seasons. And they also almost certainly will demand that they control the NCAA basketball tournament. In fact, they may well leave the NCAA entirely and run all things for themselves. By doing so, they would maximize the basketball and baseball values of their members, as well as own and control almost all the wealth of college football.
It does not matter a teeny jot what conference emerges over the next few months as the third most powerful. The SEC and BT almost certainly decided some time ago that when the time was right, they would strike and become the only 2 conferences that matter in football. If you want to be in the top division of college football in the future, you must become part of those two conferences.
The good news is that there is no number, such as 16, that is the limit on their memberships. More, there is reason to believe that each has been planning for years to expand to at least 20 and perhaps as many as 32. For years, I have seen fans of both SEC and BT talk about having a super-sized conference that has 4 divisions and so requires a semi-final before the Conference Championship game. Those SEC and BT fans invariably talk about each league having its own playoffs - perhaps that start with 8 teams rather than 4 - and then the two league champs meeting in what amounts to the college Super Bowl.
And that is where Mack Brown comes in. I think he needs to be a major spokesman for the ACC, and not just UNC, with ESPN and the SEC. The BT now has an advantage over the SEC in that the BT has added from far outside its midwestern basis. It should be known to all that the country has two regions in which college football is king: the South and the midwest. The northeast has been a region with little interest in major college football since the dawn of the 1960s. Over the past 30 years or so, the Pacific region has seen a steady loss of fans of college sports. But the northeast and the Pacific region have the nation's two most important media markets: New York and Los Angeles. So while any surviving Major conference must be rooted deeply in either the South or the midwest, between them, they must also have a number of schools that are northeastern and far western in order to prevent college sports, and most specifically football, from being seen by peoples in the northeast and the Pacific as being just about the heartland. The SEC can take such a step by incorporating most of the ACC.
Wake Forest is to Major College Sports conferences what Rice was in 1990. It is the smallest school in a conference with too many private schools to remain highly profitable in a new age. Neither SEC nor BT could ever consider adding Wake. BC is the ACC's Wake part 2. It is too small, and in a TV market that cares barely more than literally nada for college sports to help any conference draw fans. If the SEC were to add the other 12 ACC schools, the super sized SEC would have 28 members. In addition to owning the entire South, the super SEC would also have quadrupled its national TV audience for basketball and the basketball history of its members. Not only is Syracuse the only Major Conference member from NY, but Syracuse has the largest basketball fan base in the northeast. The SEC also would have Pitt, which means having a school in PA: historically the most important northeastern state to division 1 college athletics.
How much could the football program of Pitt, located 30 miles from talent rich Ohio, revive to its glory days with SEC money? I think a good deal, and that growth would grow at the expense of Penn St and the BT.
That 28 team SEC could have 4 divisions of 7 teams each. But the SEC would not stop have to stop there. The SEC then would want to entice Notre Dame because having the Irish would guarantee that the SEC would remain a major player across the midwest for TV viewers of college football. It would be a huge blow to the BT.
From there the SEC also could add from its west or its east. Adding WVU would surely strike fire with games against its historic rivals while also helping to neuter Maryland. Adding Cincinnati certainly would be a blow to the BT and its most important member, Ohio State, which has benefitted immensely from never having had in-state Major Conference competition. The SEC would be pushing right into BT country and staking its claim.
In addition, the SEC could move westward. BYU has the largest fan base for both revenue sports in the entire Rocky Mountains region, and that includes many BYU fans living in CA. Arizona and Arizona State are old WAC rivals of BYU, and each has a sizable alumni and fan base in southern California.
Like the BT, the SEC now needs to expand to become seen as a national college sports conference.
If the Big Ten has added SC and UCLA to try to equal the depth of football quality and excitement that the SEC has, then the BT will be disappointed. That will not do the trick, nor would adding Notre Dame. What the BT requires to pull even with the SEC in football quality and then perhaps to leap past the SEC is to get planted deep into the South by adding multiple ACC teams from VA down through FL. At the same time that the ACC is talking to the SEC and ESPN about 12 teams being incorporated into the SEC, the ACC also needs to talk to the BT. To get the best deal from ESPN, the ACC has to be ready to act violently: the ACC must be ready to dissolve and then its members as independents joining the BT to make the BT truly the lone National conference. ESPN and the SEC will not want the BT and Fox to hold any part of the South.
At this point, ESPN assumes that it has the ACC in a stranglehold and that it can therefore do to the ACC what it wants. UNC needs to lead the ACC to be ready to chew off a leg in order to escape a trap that means certain death by 2036.
