Glass Joe

Here’s another fun rushing stat….45% of Texas’ 53 rushing attempts went for 2 or fewer yards …. against UTEP!!!

Let’s hope we can do the same !!

Thank for sharing. This chart summarizes all the discussion points in the posts above very succinctly. And there are some profound implications: * today, there are 65 teams across the P4 conferences (inc ND). If only 18 teams generate half the media revenue of the entire D1 (140 schools), that implies that 47 schools in P4 conferences are being somewhat subsidized by the big 18 revenue schools. If you prefer softer language, 47 schools currently in P4 are receiving outsized media revenue relative to their own individual media revenue value. * it also implies that more than half of the current P2 schools (SEC and Big Ten collectively are 34 schools today) are below average contributors to their own conferences media revenue. Note; there are 15 current P2 schools on the list of 18 schools above. In other words, even within the P2 conferences, 15 schools pull more than half the revenue weight of the other 18 schools. This is what I mean when I state the next great battle in college sports may be WITHIN the P2 conferences. Think Vandy, Rutgers, Minnesota, or Northwestern being a part of the final 40-48 schools of major college football. Hmm… * Once the largest ACC schools (Clemson, FSU, UNC) are added to the mix, it’s doubtful that any other ACC or Big 12 schools will be above mean (average) contributors to the media revenue generation of the major college football league. NONE! This is why the biggest 18-20 schools will be very reluctant to expand the P2 conferences beyond the 40-48 schools mentioned above. * To bring things full circle, you now should understand why Cody Campbell is worried about the future of Texas Tech. Keep in mind, Campbell is now the Chairman of the Board of Trustees at Tech, not just some football booster. His school’s future is predicated on being part of the finalized major college football league in 2031, and he realizes he’ll be part of the “subsidized” group of schools, NOT the group of outsized revenue generators. And that’s going to be a tough sell for a Lubbock, TX school.

The ACC as we know it will be going away in 2031. There’s no need to consider the B12 after the few valuable schools (ASU, Utah, Colorado) leave that conference to force their way into the P2 after the ACC dissolves in 2031. So, the “FSB1” you propose above really needn’t consider the ACC nor B12 as conferences to include in it. It’ll be two conferences, and any membership from current ACC or B12 schools will be highly restrictive and selective.

The issue with the approach outlined above is the wide disparity WITHIN the “FBS1” group as defined above. What do you think the individual media rights value is of (say) Wake Forest compared to Alabama? Or of Cincinnati compared to Notre Dame? Or of Kansas St compared to Texas? It’s not a stretch at all to assume the media rights of the biggest brands in the SEC and Big Ten are worth 10x - 20x some of the schools currently in the ACC or B12. For proof? Some of the current B12 schools were part of the MWC, American, or C-USA within the past decade, so that $3.5M media rights figure you cited above actually applied to current B12 schools (UH, TCU, Utah, Cincinnati, etc.). These schools didn’t suddenly become more valuable in the last decade, instead they were simply added to the B12 and got a better media deal on the coattails of Texas, OU, etc. That gravy train ends in 2031 for these schools. Further proof? SMU is paying the ACC to be a member. What does this suggest about SMU’s stand-alone media value? Stanford and Cal were bypassed by the Big Ten when they grabbed USC, UCLA, UW, and Oregon. Effectively, Stanford and Cal are viewed by the Big Ten as peers of Oregon St and Washington State. Now, they get a half share of the ACC’s value…which itself will plummet in 2031 when the biggest brands (FSU, Clemson, UNC) exit. And on and on. The hard reality is that there aren’t 64 schools that are peers in terms of economic and media value. The number is lower - somewhere between 40-48 schools. This is just like the NFL, where 32 franchises are awarded based on the concept of each franchise bringing a relatively similar market value by occupying a large MSA market. Economics of franchising 101. This allows for equal revenue sharing by NFL teams as they pool their markets / MSAs to shop for the highest media rights deals. This forms the basis of an economically equitable league, where a competitive balance is achieved amongst all 32 franchises, which itself is a key to growing the popularity of the league among fans dispersed across 50 states. There is a reason to there isn’t an NFL franchise in Boise or Des Moines or Wichita. This is where college football is heading. The same corporations (Disney, Fox, NBC, and CBS) that define the NFL economic model are the ones who signs the media checks for college football. The only thing left is to decide what is the number of franchises and where are they located to maximize the national viewership interest of major college football. In my opinion, the SEC and Big Ten will serve as the analogs to the NFC and AFC, and there won’t be a third conference in major college football. The biggest issue to resolve is how willing are the dominant revenue drivers in college football (Texas, ND, tOSU, Bama, UGA, PSU, Michigan, USC, LSU, OU, Florida, etc.) willing to share their name with other schools for the maximization of the national media rights pie for the collective whole of major college football? I’m guessing it’s 48 schools maximum, though I can see it as low as 42 schools. I’ll let the data analysts and economic modelers at Disney and Fox figure out the optimized number of schools / MSAs to maximize the media deal.

(Bonus KU/Mizzou fact: Mizzou has the same number of Big 12 wins between 2008 and 2023 as Kansas, despite being in the SEC since 2013.) That is an astounding factoid. Ugh, poor KU.

Yeah, I think Campbell is focused on 2031 when the media rights deals of the ACC and B12 expire. And more importantly, the CFB Playoffs contract is up for renewal. This will mark the Waterloo of college football as many of us have always known it. Campbell realizes the ACC powers are heading for P2 conferences (FSU, Clemson, Miami, UNC, and a few others), and the ACC as we now know it will go the way of the old Pac-12. When this happens in 2031, you’ll have something like 40-44 schools in the P2 conferences (today, it’s 34 schools, add ND, and add the top 6-7 schools that leave the ACC in 2031 = 42 schools). The media partners will then be faced with a big decision of the P2 conference media deals, and the CFB Playoff deal. The issue will be: do we close off the P2 with 42-44 schools? Or, do we invite a few additional castoffs from the B12 and call it a 48-school P2 structure? Campbell is trying to get Tech to be one of those small handful of B12 schools that gets an invitation to the P2 in 2031, should any B12 schools get invited at all. I imagine the P2 will wind-up at 48 schools, so that leaves 5-6 schools openings, but the B12 schools will also be competing with those non-top 6 ACC schools that haven’t already been invited into the P2 (FSU, Clemson, UNC, Miami, UVA, et al). Here is where things can get dicey. Disney / ESPN already exclusively own the rights for the SEC and ACC schools. They are likely to be the media partner that gets first dibs on the top ACC schools, since Disney controls their rights until 2036. That means as the SEC expands to add top ACC schools, it’s likely to be adding schools that make sense for its geographic and demographic viewership. That means the southeast U.S. and into the mid-Atlantic region. More importantly, it does NOT extend to the western or midwestern U.S. That means FOX will be the media entity selecting the final 5-6 refugee schools from among the B12 and any ACC leftovers that SEC (Disney) doesn’t want. How will FOX approach this decision? Well, they have already invested in the west coast (USC, UCLA, UW, Oregon), but do they want to add a few schools to form a 6-8 school division? Say, Arizona State and a Bay Area team (Cal or Stanford)? What about adding some presence in the mountain states (Colorado, Utah)? Or, does FOX want to buttress its presence in the mid-Atlantic media markets (Eastern time zone) to offset SEC encroachment? Maybe WVU or UVA or VT? It doesn’t take too long to figure out that the B12 schools in the central / plains aren’t going to be the top choices here. KU, ISU, KSU, Baylor, Tech, Okie State, etc. There simply isn’t any incremental media revenue to be additive to a media rights deal by including these schools. The Big Ten already owns the corn belt (Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana), so doubling down with ISU / KSU / KU / OSU makes little sense. I would say this to Campbell’s idea that growing the pie solves his problem: Just because the pie gets bigger, doesn’t mean your slice of it will too. It’s still a competitive feeding situation, not just a bigger trough. A quick look at B12 football viewership plummeting in the last season (sans Texas and OU) tells you all you need to know about the individual value and viability of most of the current B12 schools. And Campbell shouldn’t expect the executives at Disney and FOX to be too dumb to realize this as well.

All that matters is Sark’s shoe game. It’s elite.

All I was thinking about when USF made that game winning FG was Heze Kent and K.Guervil standing on the Florida sideline thinking to themselves WTF?

There are some interesting cross currents impacting Bama / DeBoer and navigating them will be difficult for Bama fans to digest. In the bigger picture, NIL is changing the college football landscape and hierarchy. More than anything, it’s changing the motivations and decision-making of the players themselves. Gone are the days of Saban being able to stack a 3-deep roster of elite talent based on the hope of winning championships and being developed over time for the NFL. Why? Because money is now a consideration for those players, which causes the players (and their advisors) to think to themselves “gee, I can now get paid a million dollars to play at another school, get on the field earlier, and still get to the ultimate goal of reaching the NFL”. Bama / Saban can no longer uniquely sell “come to Bama to get developed over time, win championships, and you’ll get to the NFL”. Instead, other schools can now sell “come to my school, get to the field immediately, make a million dollars in college, and still be in the NFL after 3 years”. It’s a different world now with NIL (and Portal). There’s a reason Saban quit abruptly when he did. He saw this coming. Shifting gears, more specific to DeBoer and 2025 Bama, there is certainly a cultural issue that DeBoer has to deal with that Saban never had to. As background, all the elite talent at Bama started to quickly hit the Portal in the immediate aftermath of Saban retiring (Julian Sayin, Caleb Downs, etc). The talent flight got so dicey for Bama, that their boosters had to step in and pay lots of money to stop the players from hitting the Portal. Then, DeBoer gets hired. So, culturally, you have a situation where the remaining talent originally chose Bama to play for Saban, but then chose booster money to remain at Bama once Saban retired. None of these players chose to play for DeBoer. And it showed last year. Milroe in particular was said to be resistant to DeBoer, and even chose not to show-up to practice occasionally…and he’s your supposed team leader! This offseason, it has been reported / opined that DeBoer cleaned out some of the malignant players and now the “culture is his”. But, many of the remaining talent is still there due to booster NIL paychecks post-Saban (not necessarily due to DeBoer being the coach, per se). This is going to be a difficult cultural landscape for DeBoer to navigate. His upperclassman never really chose to play for DeBoer as much as they chose Saban and then NIL to be at Bama. Additionally, Bama fans are not going to just accept that NIL and the Portal have forever changed what their expectations of Bama football should be going forward. It’s not that Bama can’t win championships any longer, it’s that Bama can’t dominate all other peer schools as they did for a decade and a half under Saban (or even under BeaR Bryant decades earlier). While Bama still has a top 5 talented roster in 2025, they need to adapt their mentality toward an NFL mindset. The KC Chiefs will likely lose 3-5 games each season and yet still be in the Super Bowl. Bama may lose 2-4 games each season, and yet still make the future expanded CFP Playoffs. You don’t have to win every Saturday, and it’s now okay to lose a few games. Adapt or die. My advice: allow DeBoer some time to let his Bama program adapt to the changing currents of college football generally, and to implement / own his culture at Bama specifically. The last thing Bama needs to do is fire DeBoer, burn $60m in buyout dollars, and then rinse-and-repeat the cycle of paying players to remain when the hire the next up and coming HC.

I think we lack the short area quickness, burst, “make a guy miss” element but not necessarily the straight-line speed element. There is no J.Blue acceleration on the current team. There is no S.Bolden zero-to-top speed in a blink guy either. Nor is there a guy with the speed / cuts of route running that we had in Bond or Golden. That is how you get open most of the time. D.Moore may have 10.6 speed, but he doesn’t have great quickness in and out of routes, nor great deceleration (stop-n-start). He’s a straight line guy. Wingo has elite straight line speed (10.5), and has great burst / acceleration, but he runs upright and kinda stiff. He is a guy who can win in wide space, but not short area space. I would not call the 2025 team a bunch of plodders, but they are not a team of guys who win with quickness / burst, not make you miss elusiveness.

@Gerry Hamilton do you think Bryant’s circle / agents want him to follow in the class after Dia Bell? Or does a path to playing time not matter as much here?

Sounds like Arch has been really…

Does anyone know the 3 groupings of NIL referenced in the chart above? A guess: ”Commercial” is legit NIL from a 3rd party commercial interest. Ex. Quinn Ewers and Dr.Pepper ads ”Collective” is the deals with the school booster collectives which tend to be more charitable-centric activities for compensation. Ex. Horns with Heart ”Collegiate” is the revenue share payments directly from the school?

I’m guessing the percentages for each positions group are an aggregation of the numbers players in each group. So, if Texas has 15 OL on the roster and 5 TE, we’d need to gross up the TEs to get some comparator of NIL spend percentage. In this example, 3.5% times 3 = 10.5%, which would reflect having an equal number of OL players and TEs on the roster. It also shows that having just 4 QBs on the roster still commands 15%-23% of the total NIL bucket.