With NCAA Embroiled in Chaos, Notre Dame’s Swarbrick Calls Division I Breakup ‘Inevitable’
- Thread starter WoadBlue
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I'm thinking early 2030s. Once it becomes financially feasible, these schools, specifically ACC schools, will leave and create a super conference. Most of the ACC going to the Big and SEC, with some staying behind in a diminished ACC or going to a G5 conference.
ESPN has the ACC TV rights until 2036. There is no way that ESPN would allow just UNC, Dook, and UVA to leave ESPN for Fox. The longer the contract left, the more each team leaving it has to pay.
ESPN would be tickled to the pinkest pink to allow Wake and BC to leave, probably also Pitt and Louisville, perhaps even GT and Moo and Cuse, even Miami. But ESPN would demand full payment for any of the rest of the ACC to leave.
If this new division is going to be semi-pro, then UNC's leadership may pass on it. If UNC is going to be part of it, and UNC wants to keep the ACC, then UNC is going to have be ready to cut Wake and BC. And that could just be to start.
If UNC is resigned to the ACC not being part of this new division, then UNC needs to arrange to go either SEC or BT with as many ACC schools as we can carry with us.
I don't want it to happen, just think it's inevitable. The ACC is just too far behind and I'm not sure if there is anything, including ND joining, that could even get it close to the big two. And based on some surveys I've received from UNC, they are already thinking about it. In a perfect world, a nine team ACC exists with a round robin schedule. We don't live in that world, though. The world we live in will require UNC to leave the ACC. Doesn't matter what the fans want.
The ACC and various schools were asking people those questions at least a decade ago. So, yes, they are aware, and have been aware.
Not grasping and acting on the full implications of what you are doing always means major trouble down the line. The 7 schools leaving the SoCon (UVA was then an independent) did so primarily about fighting with/against what most people have called 'the small schools' over football. There are two key meanings there: 1 is that football is the central focus of the founding of the ACC. The other is that there is always trouble from 'small schools' and their leaders if you wish to have Major college football.
When the ACC was founded, 4 of its members (Maryland, Dook, Clemson, and UNC) were recognized as fairly significant football powers. And almost anybody with sense knew that SoCar, Moo, and even UVA could become fairly significant in football with the right administrations. But the ACC very quickly was shifted into a basketball-first mentality. That happened because enough administrators and faculty willing to act wanted it that way. So the primary reason the ACC was founded out of the SoCon was undermined almost immediately.
And, as part of the above, there was Wake Forest. Wake was added to the ACC because of the close ties with UNC, Dook, and Moo. And Wake was the very epitome of 'small school' that everybody else left the SoCo to get away from. Dook also was a small private school, but it had been to 2 Rose Bowls. So the problem was not that small size alone ruins, but that the smaller the school, the more football history and future it must have not to hurt a conference.
If Wake had been left among the small schools in the SoCon, VPI probably would have been an ACC charter member. Being a land grant, VPI with Major conference membership starting in 1953 would have seen its football rise then, rather than having to wait until Big East membership in the 1990s. At least as important, if Wake had not been in the ACC, then the resentment toward the state of NC for controlling the ACC with half its members would not have arisen. When SoCar left, it had nationally ranked football and basketball programs and was a very close 2nd to Clemson in football attendance.
If VPI had been in the ACC rather than Wake, and SoCar in 1968 had been happy about its ACC future, then almost certainly ACC leadership then would have snapped up GT before its football would tank slowly across the 1970s. By 1968, Bobby Dodd was trying to get GT back into the SEC because it was clear that GT could not make it successfully as an independent. But those bridges had been burned. An ACC not led around by basketball would have recognized that adding GT by 1970, with its then still powerful football legacy and a sizable fan base filling the stadium, would have added a football-crazy state loaded with players to the ACC.
What would SEC trained Bill Dooley have been able to accomplish if he had been able to recruit GA kids as players from an ACC state? I assume that such an ACC would have recognized very quickly (no later than 1980) that talent in FL was exploding and that FSU would be the ideal 10th member. I also assume that such an ACC would have been an ideal landing spot for Penn St and Pitt, which remained a significant force in CFB until its slow demise starting in the mid-1980s. Paterno never looked at the ACC because he saw it as basketball-first. He would have looked at the ACC if it had acted wisely from its inception, which would have made it a much more powerful football conference with a much larger TV audience. As Pa is the state from which the NCAA's 12 or more members rule to have a CCG, the ACC could have been the state that began that enriching process after adding 1980s football name brands Pitt and PSU.
For football, there never could have been a perfect world of 9 members. But if the ACC had always acted football-first, the ACC today would not be facing this situation.
ESPN round table on Emmert retiring and the future of the NCAA.
Most important quote: "Mark Schlabach: The toothpaste is out of the tube and it's not going back in. For years, I've been told that major college sports is headed toward another major division break, between the big boys in college football and the have-nots, and it's probably going to happen sooner rather than later. If the Power 5 conferences want to allow the NCAA to stage national basketball tournaments and championships in other sports, that's about the only way I can see a significantly relevant NCAA surviving."
Most important quote: "Mark Schlabach: The toothpaste is out of the tube and it's not going back in. For years, I've been told that major college sports is headed toward another major division break, between the big boys in college football and the have-nots, and it's probably going to happen sooner rather than later. If the Power 5 conferences want to allow the NCAA to stage national basketball tournaments and championships in other sports, that's about the only way I can see a significantly relevant NCAA surviving."
The SEC and B1G want to go to a super conference and try to control all of the football money so if the left out schools have even a tiny brain they kick those schools out of whatever is left of or replaces the NCAA in every sport. Those other schools then control March Madness and every other championship. See how that goes for those 30 schools who now are only competing amongst themselves in every other sport if they even have enough to compete. If SEC and B1G want to be asses then let them fend for themselves if they don't want to be better and fairer partner schools. See what other athletes want to go there and how that affects their TV money for everything outside football.
The BT has been acting to eliminate competition in order to remain the richest and to proclaim itself the best since at least the early days of trying to blackball Notre Dame. Bribing the Rose Bowl to close was surely the most successful of the BT plans in that regard.
Yes, today the problem is doubled because the SEC has in that sense become the BT South. When you have a pair of super rich corporations in the same economic sphere, they eventually will realize that to fight each other could leave both weakened, a bit less profitable. So they agree to work together behind the scenes to destroy all small and/or less wealthy competitors, thereby sharing the monopoly. There are major elements in both the BT and the SEC that have been working to that end for most of this century.
Outside of those two leagues, there are several schools that they really need to add: Notre Dame and Southern Cal for starters. To make SC workable, they need UCLA and Oregon, which likely requires Washington. If both ND and SC make the leap, then Stanford and Cal might also.
I think Jack Swarbrick clearly wants ND to pal up with Ohio St. That he has not been removed as AD is a bad sign.
They also need UNC, primarily for basketball, which means they need Dook. They also need UVA to make UNC more at ease. UNC, Dook, UVA, ND, Stanford, Cal along with Vanderbilt and Northwestern will allow them to show their concern for high ranking academic institutions. They need FSU and perhaps Miami to own FL. They need Clemson. If they are very serious about basketball, they also need KU. They probably need either Arizona or AZ St and Colorado for geographic reasons.
It matters, a good deal, what an Ohio St AD says. The BT has always been the darling of the NCAA. The NCAA used to rent space from the BT. That very close relationship is the reason that Ohio St, which as an athletics program is as dirty across as many sports as has ever existed and yet has barely been punished, even when caught.
Gene "Smith, who said he was "just throwing ideas out" in a brief interview with ESPN at the Big Ten spring meetings, said the schools that offer 85 scholarships "need different rules." He said they could create minimum standards for membership."
It is that last sentence that is truly interesting.
Gene "Smith, who said he was "just throwing ideas out" in a brief interview with ESPN at the Big Ten spring meetings, said the schools that offer 85 scholarships "need different rules." He said they could create minimum standards for membership."
It is that last sentence that is truly interesting.
ESPN has a round table discussion of Jordan Addison entering the portal. Here is an All-American, Biletnikoff winner, going into the portal, and he was on the champion of a P5 conference that returns enough 2 deep talent to be repeat champions if all goes well.
He isn't leaving to play in a P5, nor to escape a losing program. He isn't leaving because his his talent is overlooked because of where he plays. So why does a guy like that enter the portal?
Money. NIL has made CFB like the Roaring '20s. Wide open graft is everywhere, turning everything askew.
The round table ends with Paolo Uggetti asserting: "Pro sports also have an impossible task in attempting to appease many stakeholders, but they at least have the systems to collectively bargain and reach some sort of agreement. Until we reach that point, whenever it might be, maybe it's just best to embrace the chaos."
Just above that, David Hale concludes: "If college football has reached an era of de facto free agency, then the sport simply needs to go all-in. The fence-straddling, largely lawless nature of player movement right now is what most riles fans, coaches and administrators. Indeed, it's potentially dangerous for players, too, in the long run. Guardrails and regulations do not need to be prohibitive for players, but contract offers should be above board; transfers need to happen during designated windows so free agency isn't a 24/7/365 season; and schools should be playing by the same, clearly stated (and enforceable) set of rules. If that means designating athletes as employees, allowing them to unionize and collectively bargaining the rules for the college marketplace, so be it."
ESPN sure seems keen on all the talk about what would be semi-pro football.
He isn't leaving to play in a P5, nor to escape a losing program. He isn't leaving because his his talent is overlooked because of where he plays. So why does a guy like that enter the portal?
Money. NIL has made CFB like the Roaring '20s. Wide open graft is everywhere, turning everything askew.
The round table ends with Paolo Uggetti asserting: "Pro sports also have an impossible task in attempting to appease many stakeholders, but they at least have the systems to collectively bargain and reach some sort of agreement. Until we reach that point, whenever it might be, maybe it's just best to embrace the chaos."
Just above that, David Hale concludes: "If college football has reached an era of de facto free agency, then the sport simply needs to go all-in. The fence-straddling, largely lawless nature of player movement right now is what most riles fans, coaches and administrators. Indeed, it's potentially dangerous for players, too, in the long run. Guardrails and regulations do not need to be prohibitive for players, but contract offers should be above board; transfers need to happen during designated windows so free agency isn't a 24/7/365 season; and schools should be playing by the same, clearly stated (and enforceable) set of rules. If that means designating athletes as employees, allowing them to unionize and collectively bargaining the rules for the college marketplace, so be it."
ESPN sure seems keen on all the talk about what would be semi-pro football.
i've been re-thinking my opinion that booster money now buys championships. NIL money can bring in talent, but winning a championship takes more than talent. championship teams need discipline, focus, sacrifice, coachability, and team attitude, which may be harder to achieve when your kids are flush with NIL money.
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Pete Thamel has an article up at ESPN. His focus is the failures of NCAA leadership to ever solve an issue that is doing harm to college sports. Here is what I think the most important quote: "The conferences need to take the lead. And the Power 5 leagues outside the Big Ten and SEC should be sounding the alarms in their conference offices daily to stress how much the revenue gap projections could undercut their future.
While all this NIL tail chasing is happening, the Big Ten and SEC are pulling so far away from their alleged peer power leagues so quickly that we appear poised for another seismic realignment shift soon because of the revenue gap. And the only reason people haven't seen this coming is they are distracted by nonsense."
Well, that is not the only reason. The other one is naivete. We still have both fans and university administrators who simply find it hard to believe that any conference could be run by for sharks eager to use their money to destroy competition. The BT has been run by such people since at least the WW1 era, and now the SEC is as rich as the BT and has as vicious a leadership.
While all this NIL tail chasing is happening, the Big Ten and SEC are pulling so far away from their alleged peer power leagues so quickly that we appear poised for another seismic realignment shift soon because of the revenue gap. And the only reason people haven't seen this coming is they are distracted by nonsense."
Well, that is not the only reason. The other one is naivete. We still have both fans and university administrators who simply find it hard to believe that any conference could be run by for sharks eager to use their money to destroy competition. The BT has been run by such people since at least the WW1 era, and now the SEC is as rich as the BT and has as vicious a leadership.
The BT is never going to do anything that financially helps anyone else, even the Pac. The BT is the original super money whore. But I don't know if the SEC is any better now.
The ACC has always waited too late to make the moves that must be made eventually. The ACC needed to replace SoCar and waited for a decade. Over that decade, GT football collapsed so badly that the school actually was ready to drop to 1AA if the ACC did not take the school. GT would have been better for ACC football if it had entered in 1973, perhaps better.
FSU or PSU (preferably both) had to be added for football, and that should have been obvious no later than 1985. The ACC did not begin to face that fact until after PSU was added to the BT and the SEC had added Arkansas and was ready to offer FSU. The ACC should have known when the Big 12 was formed that a CCG was about to become a requirement to be a Power/Major conference. If the ACC had faced that fact and acted wisely, the 2000, 2001, and 2002 Miami teams would have been in the ACC. So would the Hokies with Michael Vick.
Acting too late often is almost as bad as not acting at all.
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