Blind Man's Bet

I've been something of a realignment nerd since it kicked off with the Big Ten picking up Nebraska followed by Maryland and Rutgers. (See, Exhibit A and Exhibit B and Exhibit C) I loved trolling the message boards and comment sections on ESPN and listening to the fevered speculation about which school is going to end up where and how it's all going to break down. Somehow, even today, I've ended up with a random Twitter account showing up on my feed who is convinced beyond convincing that Florida State is moving to the B1G...and soon.

But the implosion of the Pac-12 has sort of soured my love for the rearranging of deck chairs, because now they're starting to feel like they're on the Titanic. When the Big 12 seemed headed for extinction, I wondered what would happen to Iowa State. Would they get left behind? Now, with the Pac-12 in rubble and down to four teams, there's a real risk that Oregon State and Washington State are the ones who get left behind.

Fevered speculation abounds as to where this is all going to end up. Will there be a super league? Who will be in it? Are we heading for another divisional split as we saw when 1-A split from 1-AA back in the day? (More laughably, a Washington Post column advocated getting sports out altogether because there's too much money mixed up in it now- as if higher education is somehow 'just about the academics.')

There seems to be two main predictions emerging: one is that television networks are going big and putting the top brands with the most eyeballs into as few pots as possible because they think that linear television is going to die and we'll all end up on a direct-to-consumer streaming model at some point any way.  If this is, in fact, the case, then the deal Apple brought to the Pac-12 seems like it was a decade too soon.

The other school seems to think that if they consolidate down to two and then go further and form a super league, they'll pick up casual fans who don't know much about college sports but know that Ohio State and USC are teams and they'll watch that game.

That notion couldn't be more wrong.

Now, I say this as an Iowa fan. In lists of 'prospective Super Leagues' we usually make the cut, but it's not a guarantee. We've got a fairly big retirement looming at some point (I mean, unless the secret to longevity is chewing a lot of gum and punting whenever and wherever possible, Ferentz has got to retire some time, right?) and we're one bad hire away from sliding down the rankings and potentially being on the outside looking in should they actually go for that. 

I hope they don't, because I think it'll destroy the sport as we know it. Not that the sport isn't in enough trouble as it is- there's an enrollment cliff looming over higher education. Tuition costs and excess bureaucracy (I say this being employed as a small cog in the bureaucratic machine, so it's not comfortable to contemplate) needs to be reigned in. Higher Ed is heading for rough waters and less people means less connection with those gameday experiences that build fandom.

So, long term demographics don't help the 'millions of casual fans' argument.  But the real issue I have with that argument is that it ignores the best way to capture those fans- getting the playoff right will be far more of a cash cow and make networks far more money than some artificial soulless Super League ever will. You saw it when the soccer leagues tried it in Europe: no one gives as shit if Arsenal plays Barcelona in the regular season. They'd much rather see Arsenal play Everton. But if Arsenal is playing Barcelona in a Champions League final, they're going to watch that.

Same deal here: no one is going to give a shit about Ohio State playing Auburn on a Saturday in September. Ohio State plays Michigan. Auburn plays Alabama. That is the order of things in this world. You don't mess with that. 

Ohio State versus Auburn in the quarterfinals of the playoffs? Now that will get you some eyeballs. 

I don't know about the future of linear television argument. If they're really trying to get as many eggs as they can into as few baskets as possible, it's going to get to the point where you're playing in regional pods that pretty much have most of the rivals you care about in them, so at that point, why not just go back to conferences?

If it's me, I'd do the following--

1. Where ever the playoffs end up, make room for Cinderella. Part of the joy of the NCAA Tournament is that there's always at least one team that takes down a Goliath at some point in the process. Give the G5 or the P3 some auto-bids to build that in.
2. Fix the FCS playoffs. This will take money and the twin mountains might be too steep to climb, but there's another playoff system that is underserved and underpromoted that is just sitting right there for the taking. I would a. see what it would take to get the Ivy League to drop their post season play ban and b. figure out how to preserve the Celebration Bowl and still allow HBCU teams to get into the playoff and c. find money to make travel for these schools easier.  The FCS is so close to a really fun, really cool, national playoff- whether you can get the HBCUs and Ivys onboard, I don't know, but if you can and you can make the money work you can do a lot more with this than you have been doing.

Do I think either of those two things will happen? Honestly, no. This is being driven by television networks who want to cash in just in case it all collapses on them. It's weird how ESPN was ready to pay the Pac-12 $30 million a year, but now somehow can't find the cash- but can find the cash to get into sports betting? Funny how that works.

And for all the fevered speculation about super leagues and streaming and direct to consumer models, you just have to look at Hollywood to see that none of these people have a single fucking clue where things are going and what's going to happen next- if they did, Hollywood probably wouldn't be on strike at the moment. They could be right, of course. But this whole thing is start to feel like a blind man's bet and if that's the case, what if they're betting on the wrong horse?