May 29, 2008
Can the SEC change the college football landscape?
Tim Stephens of the Orlando Sentinel displays an uncanny knack for indulging in too much tequila... or not quite enough in list latest blog post, suggesting that the SEC should play the role of corporate raider and take over college football.
While the analogy is a bit of a stretch, Stephens does manage to land a few shots and -- if nothing else -- open up some rather interesting discussions.
Stephens notes that the SEC is publicly saying that the notion of SEC TV is on the table at this year's spring meetings. While we've heard about SEC TV every since the Big 10 launched its failing... err, I mean fledgling... network, this is the first time that SEC TV has been a public agenda item for the conference. And the discussion comes amid the dynamic landscape of college football over the next few years.
-- The BCS and the networks will negotiate to extend the current arrangement for four more years beyond the two currently still on the books with Fox. After that, billions upon billions await a legitimate playoff system that the BCS schools will want to keep away from the NCAA.
-- Virtually every major deal between the conferences, the bowls and the television networks will expire;
-- All of the major television contracts between conferences and the networks for regular-season games will expire;
-- The Big East Conference's moratorium on membership changes expires;
-- And the NCAA's $6 billion contract with CBS for rights to the NCAA Tournament expires in 2014.
In a nutshell, there's a lot of money to be made over the next few years.
Stephens suggests that the SEC take the nation by storm and execute a hostile takeover - a change which would ensure the SEC can maximize every contract and rake in every dollar.
1) Get moving on SEC-TV or whatever you are going to call it. Have it ready to trot out in 2009 at the latest. Be prepared to beat the Big 12 and ACC, who'll also probably create their own TV networks, to the punch. This will be important as you'll be competing for the same access to cable systems.
While I do not expect the SEC (which already has a national TV contract a la Notre Dame) to actually launch its own network, the SEC channel is the single biggest bargaining chip that the conference has. If they can't get the contract that they want with CBS/ABC/NBC/Fox/etc, then you go nuclear with the SEC Channel.
2) Begin your secret negotiations with Texas and Texas A&M to join the SEC. Remember, this is cutthroat business. Adding the Texas market to SEC TV would strengthen negotiating power with the cable companies and greatly enhance the value for the SEC while diminishing the Big 12's. You may have to beat the Big Ten in the race for Texas, by the way.
This is where an interesting dynamic (that we don't talk about too often) starts to come into play -- television markets. Who's got 'em? Who wants 'em? While some staunch traditionalists may not be prepared to accept the notion, it's becoming more and more clear that the future of conference membership will be greatly influenced by television markets. For example, why do you suppose the ACC was so hell bent on landing Boston College?
3) Make private overtures also to ACC and Big East schools that are within the SEC footprint and would add value to the SEC. Doing so may not bring those those teams into the SEC but it would pressure those schools and leagues to get on board with the real plan here: The emergence of the era of the true superconference and the establishment of a multi-billion dollar college football playoff.
4) As leader of the pack, begin the push to 4 to 6 "super conferences" ranging from 12 to 16 members. The SEC. The ACC. The Big 12 (er, Big 14?). Maybe the Big East (or whatever it might be called by then after the football-playing schools split in 2010). And, reluctantly, the Big Ten and Pac-10, who will have no choice but to capitulate this time.
5) Conspire with the ACC and Big Ten to purge the Big Eastern Something of its marquee programs. Folding Syracuse, Rutgers, West Virginia, et al, into existing leagues would enhance TV network values and might eliminate the Big Whatever as an auto-bid league. Ditto for the Notre Dame dilemma. Now, while they are in a weaker-than-usual bargaining position and may not have that NBC lifeline forever, is the time to push the Irish into a league.
The emergence of the mega-conference is not all that far off. Stephens suggestion for the ACC & SEC to gut the Big East may very well become an economic reality for all three conferences. And it's hard to deny a certain degree of Machiavellian-ism in Stephens suggestion that should the SEC go to 14 or 16 teams that the rest of the conferences would follow. Megaconferences would make the market ripe for a college football playoff -- the grandaddy-est "cha-ching" of them all.
6) TV potential will carry some weight. That could mean reevaluating existing membership and perhaps even pushing out small-market teams that don't add value and replacing them with rising programs that do. Tradition, while still a big part of college football, will not be as important as potential and TV market. Baylor types, you are on the clock. And the UCF types, you are, too.
Again, ultra-traditionalists aren't going to enjoy this part, but certain teams are likely to become economic casualties in the next round of conference expansions. Stephens notes that Baylor has little more than sentimental value in the Big XII. (Of course, the Big XII didn't want Baylor in the first place but Texas lawmakers put pressure on UT and A&M to ensure Baylor and Texas Tech were put in the conference, but that's another story.)
The sad truth is... teams that add little in terms of television exposure are not guaranteed a spot in the mega-conferences. While Vandy is a nice school with a strong history, the SEC has the Vols, which guarantees the conference every television market in the state. Vandy doesn't add a lot of national exposure, so the Commodores may be expendable in favor of... Cincinnati/Texas A&M/Texas/Missouri/Houston/Syracuse/Rutgers.
7) Working with the other cartel members, begin negotiations with an outside marketing organization such as this one to form an eight-team college football playoff. This is a deviation from the Kramer Doctrine, as he was a staunch opponent of the bowl system. But the playoff train will leave the station sometime in the second half of the next decade. The tracks are being laid now.
8) And finally, if the non-cartel schools with nothing to add in this new landscape want to complain too loudly about their table scraps, break away from the NCAA. Entirely. A much bigger, better version of this can become your new March Madness. You can rewrite the rule book and get rid of archaic bureaucracy. You can be the leader toward streamlining into a more modern organization that attends to the needs of the most powerful without holding them down in the interest of "fairness" to programs that have neither contributed to the creation of the wealth nor made the commitments or built the infrastructure necessary to do so in the future.
OK. Stephens may have eaten the worm with that last suggestion... but can anyone really say it is "unthinkable" for the SEC to take its megaconference members major sports -- basketball and football -- and just go start their own NCAA??
So... what say you... is Stephens smoking the rock... or could the SEC change the landscape of college football?
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