No college administrator is going to do that.

by JRT, Island of Misfit Toys, Tuesday, March 09, 2010, 15:01 (5935 days ago) @ Pete
edited by JRT, Tuesday, March 09, 2010, 15:14

Under a "doomsday scenario" where Notre Dame was aced out of the national championship playoff (I'll give an example later) ND would probably have two or three years to blowup the BCS by having a great team left out of the new playoff/championship, or else recruiting would fall off (as kids would have no chance of winning a title) and the football program would die on the vine and our 50 million (?) a year is potential revenue would disappear.

On the other hand, if and when the doomsday scenario comes, we'd had the option of joining a conference and guaranteeing a healthy revenue stream from football into the future.

What do you think a college administrator is going to do?

*Doomsday Scenario possibilities: I think a doomsday scenario requires some combination of: further conference consolidation, conference imposed scheduling restrictions, and changes to the BCS system. Perhaps most frighteningly, I think through some simple changes to conference scheduling practices we could be in a very bad spot.

Consolidation: For example, what if the SEC poaches Miami, Fl. St., Ga Tech and Clemson from the ACC. The Big Ten adds Pitt, Syracuse, Rutgers, UConn, and West Virginia. The Big 12 adds TCU, and Boise St. The Pac-10 adds Utah and BYU.

BCS: It's possible the conferences (or mega conferences) would give themselves all the spots in a playoff.

Conference Scheduling: I think the single biggest threat to our independence is having the major conferences (or all conferences) simply schedule conference games, and only conference games, the final x (4, 6, 8, depending on the number of conference games) weeks of the season. The Big 11 would have to go to an even number of teams, but they seem likely to accomplish this. If every conference did this, or if the major conferences did this and swallowed all our viable opponents, we would probably be in a do or die situation where we had to assert ourselves and break the BCS within a couple years, or permanently be relegated to second-class status playing also-rans in October and November, far away from the national championship hunt.

I really doubt a risk-averse college administrator is going to hinge a 50 million dollar revenue stream on the random factors attendant in producing championship level football, even though I would love to see us break the BCS/major conferences/NCAA.