Playoff discusson on Yahoo Sports radio

They had a weekend roundtable type discussion, and the consensus was pretty interesting.

Among the items agreed upon with the Yahoo staff:

The playoff will be a Top 4, with a BCS type/selection used.

The bowl games will be a part of it, there will be no neutral site semi-finals.

There will be a lot of conference shuffling. Boise may stay in the Mountain West, but and this is the one that surprised me, Boise may end up in the Big 12. One thing is certain, they won't be in the Big East very long.

FSU is moving. Guaranteed. Their athletic department is broke, and they need to sell out to the highest bidder, and the Big 12 will come calling.

I can't remember if Peter Brown or Wetzel said this, but one of them made the remark that Iowa State beating Oklahoma State not only changed college football's post-season, but it made the Big 12 stable and rich. Without Iowa State upsetting Oklahoma State, there is no drive to change the BCS and the Big 12 is still on shaky financial legs. Now, the system is being gutted, and teams like FSU are trying to move into their league.

Notre Dame came up toward the end. And I am pretty certain it was Wetzel who said, that ND is in a perfect position to continue being an independent, he thought our other sports would move toward the Big 12--(Just a guess he said), but from everyone he talked to, ND isn't making a conference move for football anytime soon.

And, my favorite part of the discussion is how teams agree that strength of schedule should have more of an impact in the selection process, and body bag games with FBS schools will dry up. Too much at stake to even risk scheduling an FBS school for the big boys.

It was a good discussion, I caught it driving home yesterday.

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http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/football/ncaa/05/14/florida-state-realignment/ind...

I want to assure you that any decision made about FSU athletics will be reasoned and thoughtful and based on athletics, finances and academics. Allow me to provide you with some of the issues we are facing:

In support of a move are four basic factors argued by many alumni:

1. The ACC is more basketball than it is football, and many of our alumni view us as more football oriented than the ACC.

2. The ACC is too North Carolina centric and the contract advantages basketball and hence advantages the North Carolina schools.

3. The Big 12 has some big football schools that match up with FSU.

4. The Big 12 contract (which actually isn't signed yet) is rumored to be $2.9M more per year than the ACC contract. We need this money to be competitive.

But, in contrast:

1. The information presented about the ACC contract that initiated the blogosphere discussion was not correct. The ACC is an equal share conference and this applies to football and to basketball there is no preferential treatment of any university with the exception of 3rd tier rights for women's basketball and Olympic sports. FSU is advantaged by that aspect of the contract over the majority of other ACC schools.

2. Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska and Texas A&M left the Big 12, at least in part because the Big 12 is not an equal share conference. Texas has considerably more resource avenues and gains a larger share (and I say this as a former dean of the University of Texas at Austin -- I watched the Big 12 disintegration with interest). So, when fans realize that Texas would get more dollars than FSU, always having a competitive advantage, it would be interesting to see the fan reaction.

3. Much is being made of the extra $2.9M that the Big 12 contract (which hasn't been inked yet) gets over the ACC contract. Given that the Texas schools are expected to play each other (the Big 12 is at least as Texas centered than the ACC is North Carolina centered), the most likely scenario has FSU playing Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State, and West Virginia on a recurring basis and the other teams sporadically (and one more unnamed team has to join to allow the Big 12 to regain a championship game), we realize that our sports teams can no longer travel by bus to most games the estimate is that the travel by plane required by FSU to be in the Big 12 appears to exceed the $2.9M difference in the contract actually giving us fewer dollars than we have now to be competitive with the Big 12 teams, who obviously do not have to travel as far. Any renegotiated amount depends not just on FSU but the caliber of any other new team to the Big 12.

4. Few believe that the above teams will fill our stadium with fans of these teams and so our lack of sales and ticket revenue would continue.

5. We would lose the rivalry with University of Miami that does fill our stadium.

6. It will cost between $20M and $25M to leave the ACC we have no idea where that money would come from. It would have to come from the Boosters which currently are unable to support our current University athletic budget, hence the 2% cut in that budget.

7. The faculty are adamantly opposed to joining a league that is academically weaker and in fact, many of them resent the fact that a 2% ($2.4M) deficit in the athletics budget receives so much attention from concerned Seminoles, but the loss of 25% of the academic budget (105M) gets none when it is the most critical concern of this University in terms of its successful future.

I present these issues to you so that you realize that this is not so simple (not to mention that negotiations aren't even taking place). One of the few wise comments made in the blogosphere is that no one negotiates their future in the media. We can't afford to have conference affiliation be governed by emotion Â¬ it has to be based on a careful assessment of athletics, finances and academics. I assure you that every aspect of conference affiliation will be looked at by this institution, but it must be a reasoned decision.

Eric Barron
President

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It's high time that universities started acting less like jilted asshole NFL wide receivers clamoring about the extra million or two that they aren't getting and acting more like, y'know, universities. That shitbird on the FSU board who whined like Veruca Salt's illegitimate brother should be run out of town for his insolence, not to mention his facile, shortsighted business sense. Or at least forced to clean the elephant stables at Florida State's clown college.

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It was especially interesting to see him take things like travel costs and visiting fans into account - two things it seems like almost no one is considering, even though they make a big difference in the financial picture.

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Advantage as a verb? Really?

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http://www.foxsportsradio.com/pages/rss/podcast.html

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Although Sirius replays a lot of the weekday stuff on weekends---so I have no idea when it aired live.

I will try and find it out and provide a link.

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They seem to be the type of school that should be able to make money on football and therefore fund their athletic department without issues.

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Behind the numbers: Explaining FSU's athletics budget shortfall:

http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/sports_college_fsu/2012/05/behind-the-numbers-explaini...

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My formatting didn't work, but here's a link to the publicly available information.

http://ope.ed.gov/athletics/GetOneInstitutionData.aspx

Type in Florida State.

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But what's "Not Allocated by Gender/Sport" under expenses? That's almost $45 million (compared to $44 million for all sports)!

Also, this link will take you to the FSU page.

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As would general fund allocations.

What else? You're guess is as good as mine.

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the Polo Grounds

Playoff discusson on Yahoo Sports radio

FSU memo from the prez

A surprisingly thoughtful and reasoned statement.

Yeah. That was excellent.

Memo from Greg to the Prez

What time were you listening? All shows are archived (link)

It was on Sirius..roughly 2PMish----

Why is FSU's athletic department broke?

per the Orlando Sentinel

That's a fantastic question.

I'm not a forensic accountant

Student fees would go into that category