CFP meeting today expected to get interesting

[MDUte]

Dodd is reporting that today’s the day the SEC/B1G make their demands known. Anticipation for both the P2 to want more automatic qualifiers for their conferences and a greater share of the revenue. They hold all the leverage and if given resistance, they can always split off and host their own playoff. Maybe that’s what they’re wanting/planning anyway.

Wednesday could be one of the most consequential days in modern cfb history if, as expected, SEC/B10 flex at CFP meeting https://t.co/YaXt5BhKto

— Dennis Dodd (@dennisdoddcbs) February 21, 2024

[utefansince79]

Having a 12 team CFP with 10 or more teams from Big10/SEC would be about as interesting as March Madness with no teams from the “mid majors” and all 64 teams from about 6 power conferences.

[Central Coast Ute]

Yep. But that’s where we’re going.

[Tony (admin)]

Will we be eating at the kiddie table and if so, how long?

[MDUte]

Yes, we are most definitely at the kiddie table. It’s starting to sound like the ACC is going to allow FSU to negotiate its way out of the conference. And if so, then Clemson, UNC, and Miami would probably follow right behind them out the door. And that would cause another seismic shift in the landscape. Notre Dame would probably need to leave independence behind at that point and join the P2.

Would all of the above be enough movement to involve Utah?? Who knows. But personally, I think it’s going to take the P2 consolidating their own by forming a whole new league to make way for teams like Utah to get promoted.

[MDUte]

SEC/B1G have requested 4 auto qualifiers each for both conferences. That leaves 4 remaining spots between B12, ACC, Notre Dame, and G5. Anyone who thinks the B12 is getting more than 1 school into the CFP each year is crazy.

Washington State prez Kirk Schulz told @RossDellenger in new 12-team playoff 4 automatic qualifiers from 1 conference was proposed. If so, it wouldn’t be just 1 so both SEC & B1G would each get 4 auto bids leaving only 4 bids for remaining 7 conferences/Notre Dame. At that point,…

— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) February 21, 2024

[EagleMountainUte]

Seems like it is just to force Notre Dame out of their independence.

[utefansince79]

Imagine down the road (5-10 years) a reformed PAC looking like this

Oregon State
Wazzou
Cal
Stanford
Utah
UNLV
Arizona
ASU
SDSU
Fresno State
Colorado
Air Force

Somewhat logical travel pairs for hoops
Would move conference football and basketball title events back to Sin City
All the teams are in a couple of time zones and we can drive to pretty much all of the other schools

If the BIG12 is left out of the party, I’d rather be in the above league than stuck in a league
where we are at the “kiddie table” with many of our conference road games 1000s of miles away and the title games are in Kansas and Texas.

If Utah does get an invite to the “Big 2”, then at least we would be at the “adult table” making lots of $$$$ (with travel situation a bit worse than what we will now have in our new conference).

[Extra Medium]

I think this is the most likely scenario with BYU, Nevada, Hawaii, and Boise State making it a 16-team conference. You can’t leave out BYU. They are too big of a brand to leave them out of the new PAC.

Best case scenario is Big 10 being forced to take more teams out West to appease Oregon, $C, and UW. Nobody cares what UCLA wants. In that scenario Utah is in the top 3 programs available to expanded West Coast Big X solution. (Stanford/Cal/Utah)

We just have to keep winning. We have to continue to win conference championships after Whitt leaves. That will determine the long term success of this program. Can we maintain it after losing a legendary coach?

[2008 National Champ]

i’m capable of leaving the parochial school out of any scenario. I don’t even have to try very hard

[Tony (admin)]

I can see we are going to get along very well.

[Utah]

You can easily leave out BYU. They don’t bring a tv market, they aren’t easy to work with, their beliefs suck and are always wrong, their fanbase is dying off, their userbase gets smaller and smaller every year the more and more that comes out about them.

That corp will always have a presence in Utah due to how much money they have, but they aren’t the BYU of the 1980’s. Their program sucks and they have very little to offer.

[UTE98]

Not to be a contrarian, oh yes I do. I don’t see Colorado moving back to that conference. Colorado would need to be replaced. Colorado never really fit in the Pac, and honestly they couldn’t wait to bolt to the Big 12. Big hat, no cattle. Prime needs to really show out this year, not just in the first five games of the season.

Sadly BYU is an option instead of Colorado. Or as Medium said bring along Nevada, Hawaii and Boise State but that only brings it to 15 without Colorado. Not sure anyone else moves the needle, except perhaps CSU. None of the other California schools are good enough, ie. SJSU, etc. Cal will definitely pinch their nose at SDSU and Fresno St.

I think the football dawgs in that conference become Utah, ASU or Arizona, SDSU, Boise State, and possibly BYU.

I’d rather be in that conference than the XII+, even without Colorado (living in Denver I’ll take Air Force over the Buffaloes). Bison!!!

[Utah]

That’s too many teams. It will look like:

Utah
Arizona
Arizona State
Stanford
Cal
Washington State
Oregon State
SDSU
Fresno St
UNLV
UCLA
Colorado or Colorado State.

There is no need to go bigger. You just add smaller markets, more mouths to feed which equals less money per school.

[utefansince79]

I had BYU on my list before removing them as some Utah fans hate the idea of us being linked to them, but very likely we are stuck with each other for quite a while.

Indeed ideally bring more ‘western’ teams (consisting of some/all of Utah, Zona, ASU, Cal, Stanford, Colorado, BYU) into the Big10 and make a western division (with the 4 who already left the PAC).

Play most events in your own division (ideal to cut down travel time/expense for athletes and fans), with a handful of conference games against other divisions.

Whole situation really sucks. I feel bad for Oregon State and Washington State in particular. Essentially after almost a century in a once proud conference, they have been relegated to a lower division and there is little chance for promotion.

[Extra Medium]

We’ve all been relegated but yes it sucks most for Wazzu and OSU. They literally have NOTHING going for them to push them back to where they once were. Small college towns and mediocre athletic programs at best.

In the MWC we were a 2nd tier program. Now in the Big XII we’re back to being a 2nd tier program and G5 is now 3rd tier. We have more momentum than we did in the MWC to make a case to get back into the top tier but I think it takes the Big X, SEC and ACC all imploding after the next round of GoR/media contracts. Fox and ESPN aren’t going to be happy paying Illinois, Indiana, Northwestern, Maryland, Rutgers, Vandy, Arkansas $120M+ per year (estimated based on the trajectory of the last few rounds of contracts). I think the destruction of the Pac-12 was a blueprint for how the media companies can and will handle things with these conferences going forward. Lowball until the in-fighting destroys them. Have a few people on the side encouraging Alabama, Ohio State, Michigan, LSU, FSU, Clemson, Notre Dame to all join up to make the best college football league.

The college football audience is shrinking. The next 10-20 years the kids who would rather watch people play video games instead of actual sports are going to be the “disposable income” demographic. The money in CFB money will stop growing at the rate it has been for the past 20 years. When that happens loyalty goes out the window and all the blue chip programs carrying these conferences will demand their “share”. Hopefully Utah can be “Best of the Rest” if those conferences crumble. Hopefully we’d get a call when it comes to putting together the National College Football League of College Students in the United State of America except Alaska. The NCFLCSUSAeA of course.

[DataUte]

Fox and ESPN aren’t going to be happy paying Illinois, Indiana, Northwestern, Maryland, Rutgers, Vandy, Arkansas

Yeah, how long do these conferences keep these teams around other than for ‘easy’ wins? Seems costly, but gotta buy wins somewhere/somehow. Seems like in conference expansion, there is a need for contraction or sluffing off some of these perennial bottom feeders. It’s a different environment and the haves are separated from the have nots. For some of these schools, it would probably be better to drop down a level anyway (either G5 or even FCS).

[MDUte]

The Tier 1 Super League doesn’t need bottom feeders to deliver wins anymore. Saban said it best when he talked about the goal of the NFL is to have the entire league hovering around 9-8 and 8-9 at the end of the regular season.
Parity is the goal because it means exciting games each and every week, delivering the best product possible to viewers/fans. That drives the best ratings vs body bag games that nobody wants to tune in to watch.

[The Miami Ute]

Personally, I think that the B1G and SEC need to remember that they’re not the NFL and that college football is based on regionalism. No matter what they think, their product doesn’t really have the same relevance outside their regional footprint that the NFL does. I can only speak for myself, but I haven’t watched any of their regular season games for years and I can’t be the only one.

[Duhwayne]

Wait you think I care about Jacksonville Jaguars vs Atlanta Falcons? The only way I might be curious is if there are Utes playing. Growing up in SLC I feel no allegiance to any NFL team. My cousins love the raiders but for god knows why. The Niners and the Broncos are closest but I feel nothing for either. If it becomes SEC vs B1G I expect the left half of the US will watch something else. Given that something like 2/3 of the US lives east of the Mississippi the suits probably don’t really care.

More time to gymnastics, skiing and rodeo I guess?

[UteBacker]

What have they done to this beautiful sport? It’s gut-wrenching.

[Utah]

Unregulated capitalism. This is a republican’s wet dream.

This. College football. This is what republicans want for America.

[RoboUte]

True. Other than the fact that America beat college football here by quite a while.

[MDUte]

Today’s College Football Playoff commissioners meeting included a discussion of growing the field to 14 or more in 2026 and beyond.

Also discussed potentially more auto-bids for leagues.

“We discussed everything,” AAC commissioner Mike Aresco says. “No conclusions.”

— Chris Vannini (@ChrisVannini) February 21, 2024

[The Miami Ute]

Brother, I don’t know what you studied, or if you studied anything at Utah but I can surely see it wasn’t political science. Your take is about three or four generations obsolete. You think Jeff Bezos is a Republican? How about Mark Zuckerberg? How about Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple? Bill Gates? How about doing a search of the billionaires in this country and seeing where their political leanings lie. You might be surprised. Fact is that nowadays having money, and wanting to make lots more vía any possible way, has zero correlation with a person’s political affiliation.

[Brettski]

Well said.

[EagleMountainUte]

It is so funny to see liberals stuck in a time period as if they are not the establishment currently. They still think there is this filthy empire of GOPers running this country. Just like Star Wars.
If they actually became self aware they would realize conservatives are also politically unrepresented in America.

Capitalism is still the worst economic system that happens to be better than all of the others. I think Churchill said that. Which I still agree with. America isn’t even close to capitalism let alone unregulated terribleness.

[krindor]

Capitalism is still the worst economic system that happens to be better than all of the others. I think Churchill said that.

Not a knock on capitalism, but the quote you’re thinking of that’s attributed to Churchill was about democracy being the worst form of government that’s better than all the rest. Not about capitalism

[EagleMountainUte]

I would actually disagree with that quote under that context. Funny I actually saw that quote today on a YT video discussing the game Disco Elysium.

Which if you know anything about that game is it was a game production company that all loved communism. But when it came to taking credit for the video game essentially one of the developers didn’t like Communism so much anymore. It is a case example for the irony of communism and socialism that always happens.

I don’t understand why people want the continued regulatory body of the NCAA. As if it was better. As if some other ethical regulatory body will spring from Zeus’s head like Athena. To bring a better age of reason to regulating college football for more parity.

[Uteanooga]

Capitalism creates wealth inequality while socialism distributes misery evenly to all- another Churchill quote.

Sports leagues are inherently unequal because larger populations have more resources. What country has cities that are all exactly the same size? Most people in S. Cali don’t care about college football very much but there are a whole dang lot of them. Hence USC and UCLA being so valuable.

But these issues are not specific to the U.S. Where is the socialist utopia that has the greatest sports leagues where small cities have equal resources to the big cities? China? Russia? Please enlighten us about socialist sports. Cuba? They have generated some fine baseball players and boxers but I don’t think many see Cuba as utopia and probably none who have actually been there. Virtually all of their athletes would jump at the chance to experience some of our capitalism. You don’t see many American baseball players secretly defecting to play baseball for Cuba.

The big soccer clubs in Europe just about destroyed their major leagues over the exact same issue. The top clubs have a lot more money than the smaller clubs and the top clubs from multiple countries nearly dismantled the historic leagues like the English Premier League, La Liga, etc. They were going to consolidate their resources, improve their own profitability, and shut out the smaller clubs. What stopped them? The fans insisted that this not happen and so it didn’t.

College football fans have shown no such loyalty to their leagues. Fans of every team that has moved up the food chain have been excited including us. We could have said no thank you to the P10 but we were all excited about it. The Zoobs criticized us for this at the time and now we feel the same way about the Trojans. I certainly resent USC for wrecking our league. We would have jumped to the B10 in a heartbeat but sadly we don’t move the needle enough. Such is life.

[Central Coast Ute]

I don’t know. I keep hearing about how our medicine and education system should be like Cuba’s. Nevermind the fact the people will risk lives by floating to Florida on a tube. We should be more like them.

[2008 National Champ]

if only there was some way to get empirical data.,, perhaps if there was a hypothetical line drawn where everyone on one side of the line lived by one set of rules and everyone on the other lived by different. then you could count the number of people willing to risk their lives sneaking from one side of the line to the other to determine which was the better system.

[The Miami Ute]

Well, I don’t see many Americans fleeing the States for the socialist paradises of Cuba or Venezuela. Isn’t that evidence enough?

[Central Coast Ute]

One would think so, but here we are.

[ABC123]

What is the Berlin Wall?

[bopahull]

What p**sed me off about USC leaving is how they voted down expansion when the PAC had the opportunity to grab the descent BIG 12 schools. USC purposely tried to kill the PAC on their way out, and succeeded.

[bopahull]

A little insight into the meetings

[MDUte]

Staples/Wetzel talk for 40 min about how to fix the CFP, national signing day, bowl games etc. Lots of good common sense that’s worth a listen.

So @DanWetzel and I fixed everything.

Come for the easier, common sense CFP bracket, stay for Dan’s suggestion that whining coaches get fined $250k (to be paid to their school’s rival’s collective). https://t.co/CRT6DjUmV7

— Andy Staples (@Andy_Staples) February 23, 2024

[MDUte]

I like the idea of a 16 team CFP best. This way there would be no byes. Eliminate all of the CCGs and start the 1st round that week (Dec 7th). Top 8 seeds would host 1st round games on campus. And likely these games would be at really cool, historic venues, such as the Horseshoe, The Big House, Death Valley etc. Then second round games would also be another opportunity to host games on campus at the stadium of whoever has the higher seed (Dec 14th). Then make the Quarterfinals at the 4 NY6 bowl venues: Peach, Orange, Cotton, and Fiesta (Dec 21st). Then a week off for the holidays. The Semifinals would always be hosted on New Year’s Day at the Rose Bowl and the Sugar Bowl. Lastly, the NC game would be played at a neutral site rotating each year around the country a week later.
Even though the CCGs have been considered cash cows for the conferences, the experts are all saying that the money made from 1st round CFP games would eclipse the money made by CCGs and could be pooled together and shared at the end. That makes more sense to me. The regular season should decide the seeding, no need for CCGs anymore IMO.

[Uteanooga]

16 Makes the most sense and provides more home games to the top seeds. It virtually guarantees any team with a real chance to win the national championship will be in. The bubble teams will be too far down the probability curve to matter- like the basketball tourney is now. There is still argument about the basketball bubble teams but as 16 seeds have only won a game twice, and have never made the sweet 16, it is hard to get too upset about the selection around the bubble teams.

As for getting rid of the conference championship games- I agree that they seem superfluous in some ways. On the other hand, the SEC and B10 are too big to name a champion without the championship game. It is worth something to win a conference championship and the schools may well not be ready to give this up.

[Author]

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