“Alabama has no professional football team” = this is debatable.
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What I didn’t miss is the fact that from 2016-2018, Ohio Stadium had a renovation project ongoing that reduced capacity on both a temporary and permanent basis so they could, among other things, add luxury suites and loges. And season ticket sales were down in 2020? You mean the year of the pandemic in which the Big10 initially canceled the season and Ohio State allowed seasons ticketholders to get a refund with no adverse effects as to long term buying status/seat priority and ended up playing with only family members in attendance? Shocking. They also started offering mini-plans for 2019 with 3 or 4 game packages which do not count as season tickets.
How worried is Ohio State about ticket sales? They added per seat contributions (up to $1,500/seat/season) starting in 2022. More than 2/3rds of season ticket seats will see price increases. Just what you do when you are worried about selling tickets. LOL
We talked at length about the Michigan-ND game you attended back in the college football/Covid thread. No need to revisit. But ultimately, the big football draw schools have certain allotments for visiting fans. Majority of ND fans you saw in Michigan Stadium bought their tickets from scalpers. Michigan already sold the tickets. Scalpers were happy though.
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Interesting tidbits offered by outkick.com. Most interesting is the assertion that USC has a wandering eye and that if the Big 10 adds west coast schools, viewers can watch Big 10 games from early morning to midnight as the Big 10 conference would then stretch coast-to-coast.
Any Pac 12 team that joins the Big 10 is likely to more than double its annual TV / media rights revenue payout.
Conference issues are much better clickbait than the various pre-season ranking/prediction pieces are. Likely as reliable.
Agreed. Nevertheless, significant movement is likely beyond Texas & Oklahoma to the SEC.
If the 14 team Big 10 could only add two teams, then Notre Dame & USC would be the best choices. This should result in massive TV / media rights payouts for all 16 Big 10 teams from the 2023-2024 season. Massive. Possibly $100 million per team. The current Big 10 payout–the highest in college football–is about $55 million per team. Regardless as to whether or not the Big 10 expands, the current payouts are almost certain to increase starting in the 2023-2024 season.
In order to attract Notre Dame, USC might be enough. Otherwise, if Clemson & FSU jump to the SEC, then Notre Dame may be open to serious discussions about joining the Big 10.
But, with or without Notre Dame, the possible addition of USC to the Big 10 is intriguing.
There are a lot of possible moves that are intriguing. Saw someone talking about Ohio State and Michigan moving to the SEC. Possibilities are endless. And mentioning biggest names gets the biggest attention.
Saw somewhere today that Clemson has an agreement with ACC that TV rights stay with ACC until 2036 or something. If correct, they could buy that out but it would be expensive. If ACC implodes may not be relevant.
To me the ADs/Presidents most worried now are those being carried by their conference. Big names will find landing places that are good for them. Others will struggle with that and may well end up somewhere less lucrative than what they have now.
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The difference is that Ohio State & Michigan are not looking whereas Texas & Oklahoma were expected to join the Pac 12 in the not too distant past, but that move never materialized. Likewise, USC’s dissatisfaction with the Pac 12 has been discussed over the past few years. And Notre Dame is semi-avilable even though a semi-member of the ACC for football.
My point is that any move out of the Big 10 by Michigan or Ohio State is fantasy, while Pac 12 adjustments and Notre Dame affiliation are real possibilities.
The remaining Big 12 teams have to do something since the top 2 teams–Texas & Oklahoma–left. So there will be more movement soon in the world of college football.
And the remaining Big12 teams do NOTHING for the B1G or PAC.
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I agree except to the extent that the Pac 12 or Big 10 want to attract Texas recruits.
I read an article today which suggested that the Big 10 teams need to play any non-conference games against teams based in the South since most of the top recruits for D-I football come from the South.
A big unknown is the effect that NIL (name,image,likeness) will have on D-I football recruiting.
Scalpers? You mean the legal secondary market where some ticket company, like a Ticketmaster, has partnerships with colleges and gets a cut of the sales?
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We’re not talking about “sports injuries”. We’re talking about BRAIN injury as the result of an activity promoted by institutions whose mission is to promote intellectual (brain) development. It’s a betrayal of their founding mission,
We’re not talking simply about “injury”. We’re talking about early death. Greg Clark at age 49 just a couple of weeks ago. Mike Webster also at age 49. My goodness, Junior Seau at age 43! All College and NFL stars. How many more lives must be sacrificed.
And this is not at all off topic.
Injuries caused by playing sports are sports injuries. Semantics. And more girls/women suffer concussions playing soccer than football. So start there.
Football fans today complain the game isn’t the same anymore, because of all the safety rules that have implemented. The game has changed dramatically since Junior Seau played.
College football is fact. It’s not going to disappear any time in our lives. This thread is about ND and football expansion, not about sports injuries.
I did start with concussions. Re-read what I wrote. The science says that concussions are a separate issue and not the cause of CTE. It’s repeated sub-concussive episodes in high frequency that is the cause, similar to shaken baby syndrome. Concussions are a separate but important issue.
Dismissing permanent brain injury, severely diminished cognitive function, and early death as comparable to any old “sports injury” is beyond my ability to comprehend. For schools to ignore activities which result in chronic brain disease for their students is the height of irresponsibility.
The claim that the game has changed due to safety rules is nonsense. Safety rules are designed to protect highly visible players like quarterbacks. It’s linemen like Mike Webster or linebackers like Junior Seau in my earlier examples who are at greatest risk. The so-called safety rules don’t protect them.
Realigning teams in athletic conferences is a trivial matter by comparison. If only institutions of higher education would give the same attention to conditions which are damaging the lives of the athletes whom they are exploiting. That’s my comment on the topic of Notre Dame or any other team changing conferences.
Football is a contact sport with risk of significant injury some of which have long term consequences. New rules focus on minimizing the chance of incurring a concussion.
Seems like someone should be able to improve the helmet design to reduce further the likelihood of suffering a concussive impact.
P.S. American football has gotten much safer over the years even though players are much bigger & faster.
Concussions are also incurred in soccer. Repeated headers can result in a concussion. It would be quite easy to have soccer players wear headgear that American high school football players wear during non-contact drills during practice.
I have seen high school football players practice wearing just Guardian Caps–without a helmet–during non-contact practice drills as a precaution against incidental contact.
FWIW: I played high school football on a prep team which included PG players headed to D-1 football programs. Our team had one of the longest winning streaks in the nation. Our middle linebacker went on to become the starting middle linebacker at Notre Dame. We knew how to hit. Football practice was demanding & rough. (During summer 2-a-days we were given handfuls of salt tablets to take with water to replace substances lost through sweat.) The football contact was nothing in comparison to what our wrestlers endured. Not even close. (The wrestling team is now very highly ranked including some national championships.) My point is that with respect to concussive head impacts, football may be safer than soccer or wrestling and certainly safer than boxing.
This is the best article to date regarding likely Big 10 expansion:
The article lists current Power 5 conference payouts:
Big 10 = $54.3 million
SEC = $45.5 million
Big 12 (pre Texas & OU departure) = $37 - $40.5 million (can now be reduced to about just $9 million per school based upon contractual provisions regarding departure of Texas & Oklahoma)
Pac 12 = $33.6 million
ACC = $30.9 million -$37 million
Oy. Clearly you haven’t read the MANY rule changes that have been made over the years to both to the college and professional game. There are too many, but I’ll give two different examples.
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Ejections from the (college) game being played and the first half of the next game, for hits to the head of anyone.
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Limited practice time for contact drills.
There are just too many rule changes to list here. Also, Junior Seau retired in 2009. Webster retired in 1990.
Look, if Americans have the right to NOT wear a mask and to NOT to be vaccinated against Covid-19, thereby getting other people sick, putting many of them in hospitals and coffins, then what’s the problem with a safer game of football? Time to step back and look at the big picture.
I’m moving on from this superfluous discussion of sports injuries from a game, where rules have made it safer, and no one is forcing anyone to play.
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@LasVegas oddsmakers: Among the NCAA, the Big 12 conference, and Notre Dame football independence, which will last the longest ?
In light of the recent bombshell ruling by the US Supreme Court against the NCAA, and with the upcoming creation of super mega-conferences, will the NCAA become irrelevant thereby leaving college athletics to govern itself (along with any contractual obligations regarding media rights) ?
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Bad news for Notre Dame as a football independent:
The last sentence in the above referenced article:
“Remember the commissioners of the Big Ten, Pac-12, and ACC weren’t in the room.”
Notre Dame was relying on expansion of the College Football Playoff to 12 teams in order to make remaining independent a viable option.
Independence is still viable. ND has already made it into the CFP and they’ll likely do it again. They still have a TV contract with NBC, access to the CFP and they’re still recruiting extremely well each year.
The top recruiting classes for 2022 so far:
#1. Ohio State
#2. Penn State
#4. ND
Even if Clemson and FSU leave the ACC, Notre Dame still could schedule games as they do now, maybe with some modifications.
As for basketball, the final four consisted of UCLA, Baylor, Gonzaga and Houston. Any SEC teams? Nope. And as much as football is the big money maker, it’s only the Fall season. Other sports create revenue, though maybe not profits.
