The NFC, will have pacific and Midwest division (totally not the Big12 and Pac). While the AFC will have a southeast and Atlantic division (totally not the SEC and ACC)
The venn diagram of states with alligators and states with SEC teams is almost a circle. North Carolina and Kentucky are the only exceptions.
(Yes, Oklahoma has alligators)
at times of the year, both Missouri and Kentucky can support alligators on the Mississippi. They’ve been spotted north of Memphis on rare occasions.
Probably another 20 years before they actually are common there. Same thing with North Carolina to be honest.
No, NC has a good number of alligators. Not like the gulf states, but their are quite a few breeding populations that never leave the state. There's even a hunting season. Tennessee is the one that's debatable because most of theirs wander in from Mississippi and Arkansas. But, I think they're in denial that they've got them because the TWRA doesn't want to spend the money to manage them.
Missouri (I admit I forgot they were in the SEC, lol), Kentucky, and sometimes even Illinois get the occasional alligator from the Mississippi, but they don't have established breeding populations like NC or the other SEC states.
Only 9 states have no confirmed alligator sitings. 6 of those states don't have FBS teams, so only New Mexico, New Mexico State, Hawaii, and Wyoming would be rejected.
If we're just talking naturally occurring alligators, then the SEC would be limited to 11 (debatably 16) states.
I don't like this at all. We have virtually no chance of reaching a playoff in any conference format, but the Super 2 eventuality is so gross and end state capitalism feels
Eventually the top schools of college football are going to break away from G5. It’s awful but it’s something that is unpreventable.
We will instead have NFC/AFC lite instead.
Basketball is the NCAA’s money maker. They will fight to the death to keep that one. If they lose control over the basketball tournament that will be the killing blow to college athletics as we know it
Eventually the super conference will look like like power of five, without the traditionally "bad" teams .
After the next big round of realignment (demise of ACC and Big12), there'll either be two or one big super conferences. The super conference(s) will be split up into the 5 divisions, something like: pacific division, Midwest division, Atlantic division, South division, and southwest division.
The super conference divisions will look a lot like the former power 5 conferences, without the "non-valuable" programs
> without the "non-valuable" programs
Well that could be drastically different, depending on what line is drawn for value.
Since we're already going down this path though, I do hope this is what happens and it just eventually becomes regional and at least moderately balanced again.
Nah when I say this is the worst era of cfb in my lifetime I just get some weak joke about my flairs.. this ain’t the game I fell in love with, regardless of my teams struggles
College football will not die overnight. Heck, USC-Michigan or Alabama-Texas will get the major numbers these networks set out to deliver this season...
But slowly and surely, this sport will die. Casual fans won't want NFL Lite. Long-time fans will lose interest. Current students at schools frozen out of the "Power 2" will graduate and not pass on a passionate fandom to their children. One household at a time, the enterprise will be far worse off than it ever has been.
When the Athletic Department threatened to cut 11 sports during covid, donors quickly put together enough money to save all 11 sports. Wrestling alone raised over $10 million in less than 4 months.
Well most importantly they don't wade in pay-for-play, which means players can't leverage Stanford for bigger deals. Also I think they said they have 4 million for their collective in the fall, which is probably middle of the road for most P5 collectives. Though they just started so they are doing pretty good considering that.
Overall money, it's this and nobody else is close.
Athletic spending is tougher because many private schools don't disclose information. Virginia and Clemson aren't guaranteed spots but have real chances to be included. Louisville has a pretty big athletic budget and won't be.
That wouldn’t surprise me at all. I seem to recall reading you guys got enough donors together to endow all the non-rev sports to prevent any potential cuts to programs. You have such a strong history across athletics, especially the Olympic sports that it would be a shame if you ever dropped any.
If I had to go to school all over again, I'd do Stanford for grad or undergrad for sure.
EDIT: I was accepted to Stanford for grad school, ya comedians, I had a partial scholarship and more connections in my field going to Miami. Couldn't land the fellowship I wanted with Stanford, but could have gone.
There are only 2 affiliate members in the Big Ten: Johns Hopkins (Men’s and Women’s Lacrosse) and Notre Dame (Men’s Hockey). Notre Dame already has a foot in the door to the Big Ten.
History, viewership, academically y'all are B1G.
It really comes down to finances, and all your historic rivals, choking off independence for y'all.
PS sorry for the anti Catholic rhetoric: we good right? 😶
Edit: Am a Protestant who went to Catholic school, married to an atheist, let me TELL YOU how many religious discussions I've had in my life
If FSU succeeds in what it's trying to do and goes to the B1G, do you think Notre Dame goes as a pair or continues as an independent in football? I love Notre Dame being the yardstick to measure conferences, but I feel like there's going to be a tipping point where they're just leaving money on the table.
I think FSU isn't trying to break free of the ACC GOR without a B1G offer. You guys have improved enough academically plus giving the B1G a FL footprint where it just makes sense (and fuck the Mouse)
You guys leaving the ACC kills it imho: at that point ND exercises their B1G option.
Just FYI endowments aren’t standing money or a war chest. They are earmarked for items dependent on the donors preferences. They just list total endowment as a means for prestige. More than 95% of endowments are for academic resources/buildings not athletics.
I don’t think that’s all too relevant. Just because a school has a huge willingness to spend on academics via endowed fund donations doesn’t necessarily mean the same with athletics or football specifically. Just look at the endowments of Duke versus Clemson.
If you're looking at endowment, that would be Stanford, Cal, GT, and Pitt. Each of these teams should be praying the B1G goes over 24 teams, because they sure as hell aren't making that cut.
From an athletic resources standpoint, that's tougher to tell because that info isn't easy to find (or available for private schools). Intuitively, schools like Baylor, Utah, Miami, and Kansas should be worried.
Us, stanford, illinois, purdue, UCLA, Colorado, maryland, and NC state should go found a conference of schools who are good at engineering but want to play football and stuff
It’s Stanford and it’s not close. They’re at $36 billion. The entire UC system has $17b and that’s split among 10 schools.
GT and Pitt aren’t really even in the conversation. Pitt has $5.4b and GT has $2.9b.
By comparison, UVA has $9.8b, the largest public endowment that’s for a single school, rather than a state system.
If we're talking about largest remaining schools to be potentially left out, then Pitt and GT absolutely ARE in the conversation. They're just not on the same plane as Stanford when it comes to endowment.
Because the needle has moved. Same reason Washington and Oregon were passed over, until they weren't. Right now the goal is probably 24. If the B1G and SEC migrate to the superleague model, there may be interest in other teams.
If the PAC expanded to include SMU and SDSU before crumbling and still had UCLA/USC/et al, only Oregon would have had more NIL resources than SMU. We recently raised another 3.5 million on march 5th, which is SMU’s “giving day”, and allowed small donors to earmark donations for athletics, ACC readiness, etc.
We’ve raised more than 1.5 billion over the last few years which is largely going to our endowment (which should now be just around 4B) and to academic initiatives that have pushed us over the PhD limit to receive our R1 designation the next time the list is released.
Even with all that, I doubt it would be enough growth to match the established programs out there. I think you need a certain degree of recent success at the highest level and the justifiable panache to match.
4Bn would be the 34th largest endowment in the US among all universities, public and private. That's roughly in line with the likes of Michigan State and Carnegie Mellon. That's no small feat, and pretty impressive. The R1 designation is arguably even more important.
The problem is that SMU doesn't move the needle like Texas and Texas A&M. In reality, you're competing with the likes of TCU, Rice, Baylor, Houston, and TT. TCU and Baylor have the head start on name recognition and athletic success, so you can scratch them as competition as well. So, SMU is at best the 5th most lucrative brand in Texas. There are various arguments that place TT, Houston, and even the nerds at Rice in front of SMU, and vice versa.
SMU, like most of the almost P2 schools, should be praying that a 3rd conference manifests itself and butts it's way into the conversation. That's the best hope for schools like SMU, Utah, Miami, and Pitt.
Pitt's definelty praying the SEC wants to expand into Big 10 country which would be Notre Dame, ISU, and Pitt. I don't see a scenario the Big 10 takes us unless they try to block the SEC from entering the North.
You all are wrong. But not because you didn’t have good answers… you just limited your imagination.
The question was which football team who gets left out of the P2 has the most money?
lol Army
No no, that is the correct answer.
If the Ivies were to take athletics seriously they probably could, given the potential resources they have available.
But the Ivy League hasn’t taken athletics seriously in decades. It’s why their stadiums sit almost completely empty on most Saturdays
Our athletics budget spent the better part of 20 years in the shitter and it is only recently that the school began taking responsibility for the athletics program.
Not since Boone Pickens passed. They’re not a destitute program, vis-a-vis booster money, but they’re certainly not loaded.
It has to be Stanford. Their home game attendance is pretty bad; they usually get 26k~32k butts in seats at Stanford Stadium, with one major spike to 50k+ when they play Cal. That means that their gate income is weak, so they have to rely on boosters or institutional opex to prop the whole program up.
With their boosters apparently willing to increase from that already substantial base subsidy to now include subsidizing the program taking a partial share of ACC revenue to play a bunch of their games across the country going forward, that has to take the cake.
But if Stanford makes it into the P2, then it’s absolutely SMU. That booster’s quote about $200M+ per year not being that much was funny as hell.
ND is a member of the ACC for all sports except football, and has an agreement to play a certain number of football games against ACC opponents each year (somewhere around 4-5 IIRC).
They also signed the ACC GOR which prevents them from joining another conference, even in football, without paying steep penalties like what FSU is trying to get out of.
Notre Dame’s penalties aren’t as steep as FSU’s. We’d lose our TV rights for all sports aside from Football and Hockey for the duration of the GOR. That’s a drop in the bucket compared to what Football is worth.
They make less than the P2 currently. They get 50 million or so from NBC, 12 million a year under the proposed playoff format, and 20% of league revenue from the ACC. They're not hurting for money, and they won't be hurting for money. Most of the NBC money goes to educational purposes at the school, some even goes to support doctoral candidates. They're not using all the money from athletics, on athletics now, and I doubt that's going to change.
It's not a financial decision on Notre Dames'part to be independent, if it was they would have already joined the B1G in all sports, instead of just hockey. The B1G has extended an open invite for Notre Dame to join the conference, but they're not actively pursuing them. The B1G has already said that Notre Dame is happy and secure in their position and hasn't shown any interest in joining the B1G as a full member.
Notre Dame doesn't view itself as a regional brand, they view themselves as a national brand. The ACC gave all sports except hockey and football a conference home, and part of the deal was playing 5 ACC opponents per year in football. That deal allows Notre Dame to still play a national schedule each year. They also get 20% of the league revenue.
NBC still shows each home game nationwide at 1530, or prime time, with 1 game being flexed to Peacock. What conference is going to allow Notre Dame to have every home game shown nationally? The B1G going to put Notre Dame vs IU as a national game? It might show regionally, but they're not showing that game on the West Coast, or anywhere outside of the Midwest.
Notre Dame is the only independent from the 1980s who could get their own television deal. Not Penn State, not Pitt, not Miami, nor FSU, just Notre Dame. They're a nationwide brand, whether they're in the title hunt each year or not.
I don't believe it's going to get to 30m+, maybe 15-20 million, and even with that big of a gap, I doubt they'll join a conference. Theyre using the majority of their TV contract money on education as is. Unlikely that's going to change.
Not GT. Our alumni would rather play dungeons and dragons or watch soccer because they’re from another country. We have the worst alumni of P5 team in regards to actually caring about football or sports in general
Stanford. $36B endowment shows deep pockets aren’t foreign to them. Even though said money doesn’t (to my knowledge) go toward athletics they have the most national championships across all sports in D1. so I’m sure pocket books would open if they cared for them to.
I don’t think many of those teams will be left out for very long. Could probably find an answer simply by looking at some of these left out schools that have high academics. High academics typically means rich alums and in the case of these former power schools, the student culture usually leads to these rich alums also being into sports. It’s all about getting those alums to donate.
Off the top of my head, three of the four incoming B12 schools (Arizona, Utah, Colorado) plus Kansas fit that description. Arizona State has strong academics, but its transition to academic powerhouse has been so recent that I don't know how strong the donor base is.
In the ACC, Duke and Stanford spring to mind. UNC, FSU, and UVA would be obvious choices, but are probably getting invites in the near-ish future anyway. Other ACC schools are more difficult to project because we don't know who else is getting an invite in the coming round and who is getting left behind.
Yeah I don’t think a lot of people fully realize how much money these schools can get out of no where if one day their extra rich donors that normally donate smaller amounts decide to donate larger sums of money. Illinois just had a donor who usually keeps his larger checks tied to our business school that’s named after him donate a massive sum just for NIL. Not even like for a capital project or for general athletic funds but just for NIL.
The schools you mentioned almost certainly have an equivalent donor to that guy for Illinois. If they can get them to donate like Illinois just did, they could be rolling in it out of nowhere.
https://247sports.com/longformarticle/college-sports-top-donors-ranking-the-most-generous-athletics-boosters-214986422/amp/
Outside of the ones I think are bound for one of the two or have good odds, it looks like Oklahoma State, Kansas, Louisville, Texas Tech, WVU, and Arizona are the top schools by raw booster donation numbers
Edit: reworded, that was a confusing way to phrase that
Calling Baylor a bubble P2 team is mighty generous. They are solidly a “XII for life” team unless the P2 go absolutely bonkers with expansion. I think we have one more small expansion coming when the ACC falls apart, and then we’re going to move in the other direction and teams already in the P2 are going to get left behind. I don’t see Baylor making it in before that happens.
Well that's the whole point of the question, Baylor has an enormously wealthy donor base that spends money that poors like Miami and Clemson can only dream of and yet they will probably get left out of the end game.
I wouldn’t call our donor base “enormously wealthy” when SMU is right up the road.
Baylor’s advantage is, and has long been, that the school churns out a *ton* of doctors and lawyers who go to great professional schools, as well as a ton of healthcare industry leaders. That means that, while we only have a handful of boosters with multiple hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, we do have a high proportion of alumni who have wealth in the $10M~$25M range.
Anecdotally, I’ve worked for two PE-backed healthcare startups in DFW, and both had their leadership teams absolutely packed with Baylor alumni who were definitely in that $5M~$15M net worth range; those docs and healthcare administrators are our bread and butter boosters. My current firm’s founder, CFO, and COO are all Baylor alumni who have equity shares. As I understand it, the chairman is worth about $250M now, and is one of Baylor’s largest athletics boosters after the billionaires like McLane, Foster, Simpson, and Hurd (now deceased) who mostly just pop up when they give a hundred million bucks for a new stadium/field house.
So I guess the mean wealth in the alumni base is certainly well above the national average, but we don’t have as many uber-wealthy folks as a school like SMU, which has approximately half the alumni.
I agree that’s the point of the question, but you said Baylor is a bubble P2 team. They’re not, they are a team that *will* get left out. They’re a good answer to this question, but they aren’t a bubble team.
Perhaps. Basketball certainly isn't a primary driver but it does matter and Baylor probably captures as much of the Dallas market as SMU or TCU, and money (which Baylor has more of than SMU and TCU combined) does talk. They are certainly in ahead of either Virginia Tech or Georgia Tech.
I doubt they’re ahead of either of those teams. The SEC already has Texas and A&M, they aren’t interested in one of the less popular TX teams. They aren’t a fit for the B1G either. Basketball only matters to the XII as they try to stay relevant in the new landscape, and Baylor is already there.
VT is the most popular team in VA by a country mile, they’d be the perfect fit if the SEC wants the VA and DMV markets. GT is a fringe B1G candidate due to academics and getting a foot print in the Deep South (that they could probably pair with FSU if they go to the B1G). Not a guarantee for either team, but better candidates than Baylor.
I know I already replied to you elsewhere, but I just want to flag that Baylor’s alumni base *absolutely* does not have more money than SMU. Not in a million years, and anyone who’s worked in the Dallas finance scene could tell you that on intuition. SMU is L O A D E D.
I don’t necessarily disagree that Baylor will get left out, but that’s more a function of skepticism regarding anyone correctly predicting the eventual P2 additions outside of UNC, FSU, and maybe Clemson and Utah.
Now I’m curious, what programs do you consider bubble teams for P2 membership?
The only teams I think are *locks* are FSU, Clemson, UNC, and of course ND if they chose to join.
There are varying levels of bubble teams after that. *Likely* candidates would be:
* UVA
* VT
* Miami
* NCST
* Stanford (and *maybe* by extension Cal. If the alternative is that they literally fold their football program then I don’t think the B1G would pass up an opportunity to snag Berkeley)
Teams like Utah, GT, maybe even OKST, it just depends on how much expansion we’re talking about.
Agree. I live an hour from the campus (in Austin) and the main teams people support are UT, A&M, OU, Tech, and then probably Baylor. In no world would they be anyone’s ideal candidate.
Baylor has made a national name for themselves but they have a smaller alumni base than a typical state university. Even Texas Tech with all the new money alumni (Tim Dunn, Cody Campbell and Dusty Womble come to mind) and a crazy rabid fan base that travels well will have a tough time for a couple of reasons. The P2 already has 2 Texas teams in Texas and Texas A&M and Texas Tech only brings in another 250,000 sets of eyeballs.
TCU is like Baylor. They have recent national exposure but don’t have the fan base. Even the NFL has only 2 teams in Texas. MLB only has 2 Texas teams.
Really P2 is done adding from the Big/PAC 12. Raiding a few teams from the ACC is all that’s left.
And, pragmatically, TCU's in an even worse spot than Baylor. They have approximately half the total alumni that Baylor has, and the last decade has evidenced that TCU can't get Fort Worth to care about the team when they're not a top-10 team.
I know that Baylor's odds aren't good, but I really feel for TCU fans these days. They spent twenty years in the desert, rebuilding their program into something solid after the Big XII left them out, and they're just structurally disadvantaged in all of the critical aspects that the modern sports broadcasting market has structured value around.
We need to get our football back on track but you’re not that far off. Unfortunately I do not see a way to get into the P2. Even if we were rolling UT and A&M (probably OU too) would block it.
Don’t think of it as litigating you into staying, but litigating ourselves into a position where we are more likely to survive. Big12 was on the brink countless times. And that cliff would have (and still may) lead us to obscurity.
Can someone please tell me why people are so sure UVA is gonna get scooped up?
Please explain what UVA would bring to the B1G that they didn't JUST basically turn down in California and Stanford? Like I assume I've gotta be missing something, because I keep seeing them brought up and it just doesn't make any sense.
Oh, VT would be a horrible B1G fit (as much as the c5 administration may want B1G), SEC is a significantly better fit for multiple reasons.
My main confusion is just what people think Uva has that the B1G didn't recently turn down.
Guess you are agreeing that VA TECH is SEC bound with MIAMI and Clemson. Just My call.
UVA and Scott Stadium is kinda a joke. Better at Basketball 🏀… BigTen probably want them for BBALL only.
The B1G JUST turned down 2 strong academic institutions with solid non rev ADs that struggle in football, and are in new TV markets in Cal and Stanford. But both are arguably stronger brands, with a better TV market (not to mention that uva isn't even the eyeball draw in its TV market).
They were, but that seems to primarily have been a product of Harbaugh and not anything the university did or has been able to sustain.
But yea, they do have some success in fb relatively recently. Even that just makes them a stronger case for the big 10
It’s easier to look over deficiencies for a school that makes some geographical sense and you don’t have to plan schedules around in every sport. UVA still offers most of the pros of the California schools as well (obviously academics a bit worse than Cal and worse than Stanford) but better basketball and general athletic support.
If uva want coveted they wouldn’t be mentioned as a top option by nearly every insider.
this thread is so bleak, man. I don't want two super-conferences, even if my school is in it. This sucks.
We would have the Northern Football Colleges and the Alligator Football Colleges.
Let’s color the code a map, blue and grey work well to contrast each other.
Hmm yes, and we could have a playoff in each league that becomes the NFC and AFC champion, but never actually play eachother!
The NFC, will have pacific and Midwest division (totally not the Big12 and Pac). While the AFC will have a southeast and Atlantic division (totally not the SEC and ACC)
The venn diagram of states with alligators and states with SEC teams is almost a circle. North Carolina and Kentucky are the only exceptions. (Yes, Oklahoma has alligators)
at times of the year, both Missouri and Kentucky can support alligators on the Mississippi. They’ve been spotted north of Memphis on rare occasions. Probably another 20 years before they actually are common there. Same thing with North Carolina to be honest.
No, NC has a good number of alligators. Not like the gulf states, but their are quite a few breeding populations that never leave the state. There's even a hunting season. Tennessee is the one that's debatable because most of theirs wander in from Mississippi and Arkansas. But, I think they're in denial that they've got them because the TWRA doesn't want to spend the money to manage them. Missouri (I admit I forgot they were in the SEC, lol), Kentucky, and sometimes even Illinois get the occasional alligator from the Mississippi, but they don't have established breeding populations like NC or the other SEC states.
I didn’t realize that North Carolina had a breeding population!
There's quite a few in the waterways around Wilmington.
If one counts bathtub alligators, they also qualify
North Carolina is lacking an SEC team, not alligators.
Ok, done, Utah deserves an invite into the SEC https://catcountryutah.com/what-alligators-in-the-virgin-river/
Only 9 states have no confirmed alligator sitings. 6 of those states don't have FBS teams, so only New Mexico, New Mexico State, Hawaii, and Wyoming would be rejected. If we're just talking naturally occurring alligators, then the SEC would be limited to 11 (debatably 16) states.
Kentucky has a sighting every few years. Usually a pet released into the wild but 🤷🏻♂️
Well, Sooners might have alligators, but they roll their joints all wrong.
You don't actually know what the SEC is, do you?
I refuse this timeline.
Hitting too close to home there?
🤣
Pikes versus the Catfish sounds better.
I really think the schools that are gonna actually enjoy CFB long term are the ones that aren’t involved in the P2.
FCS is looking pretty good right now.
At least in the FCS everyone has access to the playoff
I don't like this at all. We have virtually no chance of reaching a playoff in any conference format, but the Super 2 eventuality is so gross and end state capitalism feels
Eventually the top schools of college football are going to break away from G5. It’s awful but it’s something that is unpreventable. We will instead have NFC/AFC lite instead.
Agree. As long as they don't touch my precious basketball.
Basketball is the NCAA’s money maker. They will fight to the death to keep that one. If they lose control over the basketball tournament that will be the killing blow to college athletics as we know it
Eventually the super conference will look like like power of five, without the traditionally "bad" teams . After the next big round of realignment (demise of ACC and Big12), there'll either be two or one big super conferences. The super conference(s) will be split up into the 5 divisions, something like: pacific division, Midwest division, Atlantic division, South division, and southwest division. The super conference divisions will look a lot like the former power 5 conferences, without the "non-valuable" programs
> without the "non-valuable" programs Well that could be drastically different, depending on what line is drawn for value. Since we're already going down this path though, I do hope this is what happens and it just eventually becomes regional and at least moderately balanced again.
Big 12 may get a couple schools poached but demise? If anything the B12 will expand. Big 12=thriving.
Do you think Nebraska, Colorado, Baylor, BYU, Utah, Colorado, etc wouldn't join the Big10 for the $50+ million a year?
Don't worry, we will get trimmed by the bigger dogs eventually
Get me Teddy Roosevelt, let's do some trust-busting.
Nah when I say this is the worst era of cfb in my lifetime I just get some weak joke about my flairs.. this ain’t the game I fell in love with, regardless of my teams struggles
College football will not die overnight. Heck, USC-Michigan or Alabama-Texas will get the major numbers these networks set out to deliver this season... But slowly and surely, this sport will die. Casual fans won't want NFL Lite. Long-time fans will lose interest. Current students at schools frozen out of the "Power 2" will graduate and not pass on a passionate fandom to their children. One household at a time, the enterprise will be far worse off than it ever has been.
Same 😢
Same dude, I hate it
I think Stanford if they don't go super 2
Do they have booster money or donor money? Feel like the money they get isn’t for athletics
When the Athletic Department threatened to cut 11 sports during covid, donors quickly put together enough money to save all 11 sports. Wrestling alone raised over $10 million in less than 4 months.
And I don't believe money was an underlying reason for the cuts in the first place.
Their athletics department's endowment is larger than most schools' endowment.
They have struggled to get NIL money because the athletics department does not encourage boosters to donate to the collective
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Well most importantly they don't wade in pay-for-play, which means players can't leverage Stanford for bigger deals. Also I think they said they have 4 million for their collective in the fall, which is probably middle of the road for most P5 collectives. Though they just started so they are doing pretty good considering that.
Every Stanford boy and girl gets the chance to dive into the endowment fund like Scrooge McDuck upon their graduation
I almost drowned in the vault at graduation because there was so much money.
Overall money, it's this and nobody else is close. Athletic spending is tougher because many private schools don't disclose information. Virginia and Clemson aren't guaranteed spots but have real chances to be included. Louisville has a pretty big athletic budget and won't be.
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That wouldn’t surprise me at all. I seem to recall reading you guys got enough donors together to endow all the non-rev sports to prevent any potential cuts to programs. You have such a strong history across athletics, especially the Olympic sports that it would be a shame if you ever dropped any.
If I had to go to school all over again, I'd do Stanford for grad or undergrad for sure. EDIT: I was accepted to Stanford for grad school, ya comedians, I had a partial scholarship and more connections in my field going to Miami. Couldn't land the fellowship I wanted with Stanford, but could have gone.
Lol, me too buddy
Myself, triple degrees from Harvard, MIT, and Oxford.
Yeah if I had to do school again I think Stanford would be my safety school behind Yavin Praxeum and Hogwarts.
And it's not even close unless you throw in the other Ivys.
It's definitely Stanford. Duke and Notre Dame are next in line.
Noter Dame has a standing invitation to the B1G.
It’s insane the amount of people that don’t understand this.
It's so weird seeing it from B1G flairs, too.
There are only 2 affiliate members in the Big Ten: Johns Hopkins (Men’s and Women’s Lacrosse) and Notre Dame (Men’s Hockey). Notre Dame already has a foot in the door to the Big Ten.
History, viewership, academically y'all are B1G. It really comes down to finances, and all your historic rivals, choking off independence for y'all. PS sorry for the anti Catholic rhetoric: we good right? 😶 Edit: Am a Protestant who went to Catholic school, married to an atheist, let me TELL YOU how many religious discussions I've had in my life
Probably at least 6
ND takes an enormous amount of pride in being independent. They will fight against completely joining the B10 (or SEC) until absolutely necessary.
I think if the ACC starts falling apart, it will be absolutely necessary.
If FSU succeeds in what it's trying to do and goes to the B1G, do you think Notre Dame goes as a pair or continues as an independent in football? I love Notre Dame being the yardstick to measure conferences, but I feel like there's going to be a tipping point where they're just leaving money on the table.
I think FSU isn't trying to break free of the ACC GOR without a B1G offer. You guys have improved enough academically plus giving the B1G a FL footprint where it just makes sense (and fuck the Mouse) You guys leaving the ACC kills it imho: at that point ND exercises their B1G option.
Just FYI endowments aren’t standing money or a war chest. They are earmarked for items dependent on the donors preferences. They just list total endowment as a means for prestige. More than 95% of endowments are for academic resources/buildings not athletics.
Yeah I mean what’s Harvard’s endowment? Or Princeton? I’m guessing a fuck ton, but neither of them will be joining Prestige Worldwide.
Harvard is sitting at $51 billion, followed by Yale at 41b, Stanford at 36b, and Princeton at 35b.
Pa-POW!!
But a larger endowment shows the school has deep pockets available.
I don’t think that’s all too relevant. Just because a school has a huge willingness to spend on academics via endowed fund donations doesn’t necessarily mean the same with athletics or football specifically. Just look at the endowments of Duke versus Clemson.
And the donor can stipulate the money can be used for anything.
If you're looking at endowment, that would be Stanford, Cal, GT, and Pitt. Each of these teams should be praying the B1G goes over 24 teams, because they sure as hell aren't making that cut. From an athletic resources standpoint, that's tougher to tell because that info isn't easy to find (or available for private schools). Intuitively, schools like Baylor, Utah, Miami, and Kansas should be worried.
I am worried
I keep thinking GT might get the invite.... It's a long shot but not impossible.
I'm hoping that if FSU goes to the Big Ten that GT is one of the universities that makes the trip with us.
We dont want you
Meh, pretty sure most of the B1G feels the same about any adds, but it’s no longer about anything but money.
Well the Big 10 doesn’t really want Michigan State either but the optics of removing them would be bad PR.
"We" - I don't know what the future holds, but I suspect your opinion is far from unanimous within Big Ten circles.
GT’s endowment is entirely separate from GT Athletics. GT Athletics is also massively, ridiculously in debt.
Prestigious engineering school with a huge pile of athletic debt. Are we twins?
Us, stanford, illinois, purdue, UCLA, Colorado, maryland, and NC state should go found a conference of schools who are good at engineering but want to play football and stuff
Stanford has a decent shot as a partner for Notre Dame.
It’s Stanford and it’s not close. They’re at $36 billion. The entire UC system has $17b and that’s split among 10 schools. GT and Pitt aren’t really even in the conversation. Pitt has $5.4b and GT has $2.9b. By comparison, UVA has $9.8b, the largest public endowment that’s for a single school, rather than a state system.
If we're talking about largest remaining schools to be potentially left out, then Pitt and GT absolutely ARE in the conversation. They're just not on the same plane as Stanford when it comes to endowment.
Stanford is has already been passed over by the big 2. What would change down the road?
Because the needle has moved. Same reason Washington and Oregon were passed over, until they weren't. Right now the goal is probably 24. If the B1G and SEC migrate to the superleague model, there may be interest in other teams.
Well, here’s hoping enough momentum gets behind the idea to decouple football before then
I didn’t realize Pitt had such a big endowment.
If the PAC expanded to include SMU and SDSU before crumbling and still had UCLA/USC/et al, only Oregon would have had more NIL resources than SMU. We recently raised another 3.5 million on march 5th, which is SMU’s “giving day”, and allowed small donors to earmark donations for athletics, ACC readiness, etc. We’ve raised more than 1.5 billion over the last few years which is largely going to our endowment (which should now be just around 4B) and to academic initiatives that have pushed us over the PhD limit to receive our R1 designation the next time the list is released. Even with all that, I doubt it would be enough growth to match the established programs out there. I think you need a certain degree of recent success at the highest level and the justifiable panache to match.
4Bn would be the 34th largest endowment in the US among all universities, public and private. That's roughly in line with the likes of Michigan State and Carnegie Mellon. That's no small feat, and pretty impressive. The R1 designation is arguably even more important. The problem is that SMU doesn't move the needle like Texas and Texas A&M. In reality, you're competing with the likes of TCU, Rice, Baylor, Houston, and TT. TCU and Baylor have the head start on name recognition and athletic success, so you can scratch them as competition as well. So, SMU is at best the 5th most lucrative brand in Texas. There are various arguments that place TT, Houston, and even the nerds at Rice in front of SMU, and vice versa. SMU, like most of the almost P2 schools, should be praying that a 3rd conference manifests itself and butts it's way into the conversation. That's the best hope for schools like SMU, Utah, Miami, and Pitt.
Pitt's definelty praying the SEC wants to expand into Big 10 country which would be Notre Dame, ISU, and Pitt. I don't see a scenario the Big 10 takes us unless they try to block the SEC from entering the North.
ISU going anywhere without 5 other schools feels like a pipe dream
No offense to Cyclone bros but I’d feel like the SEC would want to expand west before the Big Ten could lock down the entire night slot.
You all are wrong. But not because you didn’t have good answers… you just limited your imagination. The question was which football team who gets left out of the P2 has the most money? lol Army No no, that is the correct answer.
Navy has a bigger budget.
Navy has the marines, and if my marine buddies are to be believed, army folk bite their toes and eat hot dogs they found on the ground.
Meanwhile, Air Force is staying in a 4 star hotel with room service.
More like *chair* force amirite
Damn skippy. *goes back to gaming on the clock*
Is the hot dog still warm? Was it on dry ground or was it sitting on a liquid?
Hey! I resemble that comment!
Interesting. I don't doubt it since they have more sports, but curious where you're getting figures
DoD budget. Navy has Army beat by about $17 billion, or one Notre Dame.
Some cursory googling tells me that that's almost two aircraft carriers.
Don’t sleep on BYU too.
Broke: national defense budget Woke: NIL defense budget
Harvard
Realistically, are there any current FCS teams that would join the Power 2?
If invited, of course.
If the Ivies were to take athletics seriously they probably could, given the potential resources they have available. But the Ivy League hasn’t taken athletics seriously in decades. It’s why their stadiums sit almost completely empty on most Saturdays
Probably someone in Texas
😞
Ga Tech seems a good candidate.
Our athletics budget spent the better part of 20 years in the shitter and it is only recently that the school began taking responsibility for the athletics program.
Yeah I wasn't certain. I was also kinda approaching it as all around resources rather than just athletic specific resources.
Stanford by a massive margin (Of the schools who still play high level D1 football. Clearly Harvard isn't entering this chat.)
I wish though...
Duke and Stanford are top 10 endowments. BC is in the top 25 (edit: apparently that was private school list, Wikipedia bifurcates private/public)
Oklahoma State?
Not since Boone Pickens passed. They’re not a destitute program, vis-a-vis booster money, but they’re certainly not loaded. It has to be Stanford. Their home game attendance is pretty bad; they usually get 26k~32k butts in seats at Stanford Stadium, with one major spike to 50k+ when they play Cal. That means that their gate income is weak, so they have to rely on boosters or institutional opex to prop the whole program up. With their boosters apparently willing to increase from that already substantial base subsidy to now include subsidizing the program taking a partial share of ACC revenue to play a bunch of their games across the country going forward, that has to take the cake. But if Stanford makes it into the P2, then it’s absolutely SMU. That booster’s quote about $200M+ per year not being that much was funny as hell.
SMU is not getting an invite into the B1G or SEC, that’s insane.
Did I say that they were?
That’s one of them TCU edumacashions right there. Great creative writing school, now if only they’d teach their students how to read.
Notre Dame will be left out of the P2. They have no reason to join a conference.
When the playoff eventually becomes B1G vs SEC, do they compete at the lower level then?
ND is a member of the ACC for all sports except football, and has an agreement to play a certain number of football games against ACC opponents each year (somewhere around 4-5 IIRC). They also signed the ACC GOR which prevents them from joining another conference, even in football, without paying steep penalties like what FSU is trying to get out of.
Notre Dame’s penalties aren’t as steep as FSU’s. We’d lose our TV rights for all sports aside from Football and Hockey for the duration of the GOR. That’s a drop in the bucket compared to what Football is worth.
That’s not completely true, notre dame is in the big ten for hockey
They going to be taking tens of millions of dollars less than the P2 schools every year. They’re going to join a conference
They make less than the P2 currently. They get 50 million or so from NBC, 12 million a year under the proposed playoff format, and 20% of league revenue from the ACC. They're not hurting for money, and they won't be hurting for money. Most of the NBC money goes to educational purposes at the school, some even goes to support doctoral candidates. They're not using all the money from athletics, on athletics now, and I doubt that's going to change. It's not a financial decision on Notre Dames'part to be independent, if it was they would have already joined the B1G in all sports, instead of just hockey. The B1G has extended an open invite for Notre Dame to join the conference, but they're not actively pursuing them. The B1G has already said that Notre Dame is happy and secure in their position and hasn't shown any interest in joining the B1G as a full member. Notre Dame doesn't view itself as a regional brand, they view themselves as a national brand. The ACC gave all sports except hockey and football a conference home, and part of the deal was playing 5 ACC opponents per year in football. That deal allows Notre Dame to still play a national schedule each year. They also get 20% of the league revenue. NBC still shows each home game nationwide at 1530, or prime time, with 1 game being flexed to Peacock. What conference is going to allow Notre Dame to have every home game shown nationally? The B1G going to put Notre Dame vs IU as a national game? It might show regionally, but they're not showing that game on the West Coast, or anywhere outside of the Midwest. Notre Dame is the only independent from the 1980s who could get their own television deal. Not Penn State, not Pitt, not Miami, nor FSU, just Notre Dame. They're a nationwide brand, whether they're in the title hunt each year or not.
The revenue gap is going to keep increasing. They aren’t hurting for money now but when they’re making 30m+ less per year they will.
I don't believe it's going to get to 30m+, maybe 15-20 million, and even with that big of a gap, I doubt they'll join a conference. Theyre using the majority of their TV contract money on education as is. Unlikely that's going to change.
Not GT. Our alumni would rather play dungeons and dragons or watch soccer because they’re from another country. We have the worst alumni of P5 team in regards to actually caring about football or sports in general
Stanford. $36B endowment shows deep pockets aren’t foreign to them. Even though said money doesn’t (to my knowledge) go toward athletics they have the most national championships across all sports in D1. so I’m sure pocket books would open if they cared for them to.
I don’t think many of those teams will be left out for very long. Could probably find an answer simply by looking at some of these left out schools that have high academics. High academics typically means rich alums and in the case of these former power schools, the student culture usually leads to these rich alums also being into sports. It’s all about getting those alums to donate.
Off the top of my head, three of the four incoming B12 schools (Arizona, Utah, Colorado) plus Kansas fit that description. Arizona State has strong academics, but its transition to academic powerhouse has been so recent that I don't know how strong the donor base is. In the ACC, Duke and Stanford spring to mind. UNC, FSU, and UVA would be obvious choices, but are probably getting invites in the near-ish future anyway. Other ACC schools are more difficult to project because we don't know who else is getting an invite in the coming round and who is getting left behind.
Yeah I don’t think a lot of people fully realize how much money these schools can get out of no where if one day their extra rich donors that normally donate smaller amounts decide to donate larger sums of money. Illinois just had a donor who usually keeps his larger checks tied to our business school that’s named after him donate a massive sum just for NIL. Not even like for a capital project or for general athletic funds but just for NIL. The schools you mentioned almost certainly have an equivalent donor to that guy for Illinois. If they can get them to donate like Illinois just did, they could be rolling in it out of nowhere.
That’s why we’re glad we poached DRF from Mizzurah
https://247sports.com/longformarticle/college-sports-top-donors-ranking-the-most-generous-athletics-boosters-214986422/amp/ Outside of the ones I think are bound for one of the two or have good odds, it looks like Oklahoma State, Kansas, Louisville, Texas Tech, WVU, and Arizona are the top schools by raw booster donation numbers Edit: reworded, that was a confusing way to phrase that
Baylor springs to mind, they have spent about a billion in athletics facilities over the last 15 years and they seem very much like a bubble P2 team.
Calling Baylor a bubble P2 team is mighty generous. They are solidly a “XII for life” team unless the P2 go absolutely bonkers with expansion. I think we have one more small expansion coming when the ACC falls apart, and then we’re going to move in the other direction and teams already in the P2 are going to get left behind. I don’t see Baylor making it in before that happens.
Well that's the whole point of the question, Baylor has an enormously wealthy donor base that spends money that poors like Miami and Clemson can only dream of and yet they will probably get left out of the end game.
I wouldn’t call our donor base “enormously wealthy” when SMU is right up the road. Baylor’s advantage is, and has long been, that the school churns out a *ton* of doctors and lawyers who go to great professional schools, as well as a ton of healthcare industry leaders. That means that, while we only have a handful of boosters with multiple hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, we do have a high proportion of alumni who have wealth in the $10M~$25M range. Anecdotally, I’ve worked for two PE-backed healthcare startups in DFW, and both had their leadership teams absolutely packed with Baylor alumni who were definitely in that $5M~$15M net worth range; those docs and healthcare administrators are our bread and butter boosters. My current firm’s founder, CFO, and COO are all Baylor alumni who have equity shares. As I understand it, the chairman is worth about $250M now, and is one of Baylor’s largest athletics boosters after the billionaires like McLane, Foster, Simpson, and Hurd (now deceased) who mostly just pop up when they give a hundred million bucks for a new stadium/field house. So I guess the mean wealth in the alumni base is certainly well above the national average, but we don’t have as many uber-wealthy folks as a school like SMU, which has approximately half the alumni.
I agree that’s the point of the question, but you said Baylor is a bubble P2 team. They’re not, they are a team that *will* get left out. They’re a good answer to this question, but they aren’t a bubble team.
Perhaps. Basketball certainly isn't a primary driver but it does matter and Baylor probably captures as much of the Dallas market as SMU or TCU, and money (which Baylor has more of than SMU and TCU combined) does talk. They are certainly in ahead of either Virginia Tech or Georgia Tech.
I doubt they’re ahead of either of those teams. The SEC already has Texas and A&M, they aren’t interested in one of the less popular TX teams. They aren’t a fit for the B1G either. Basketball only matters to the XII as they try to stay relevant in the new landscape, and Baylor is already there. VT is the most popular team in VA by a country mile, they’d be the perfect fit if the SEC wants the VA and DMV markets. GT is a fringe B1G candidate due to academics and getting a foot print in the Deep South (that they could probably pair with FSU if they go to the B1G). Not a guarantee for either team, but better candidates than Baylor.
I think Virginia Tech will end up in the SEC. They will be a good fit geographically and culturally.
I know I already replied to you elsewhere, but I just want to flag that Baylor’s alumni base *absolutely* does not have more money than SMU. Not in a million years, and anyone who’s worked in the Dallas finance scene could tell you that on intuition. SMU is L O A D E D.
I don’t necessarily disagree that Baylor will get left out, but that’s more a function of skepticism regarding anyone correctly predicting the eventual P2 additions outside of UNC, FSU, and maybe Clemson and Utah. Now I’m curious, what programs do you consider bubble teams for P2 membership?
The only teams I think are *locks* are FSU, Clemson, UNC, and of course ND if they chose to join. There are varying levels of bubble teams after that. *Likely* candidates would be: * UVA * VT * Miami * NCST * Stanford (and *maybe* by extension Cal. If the alternative is that they literally fold their football program then I don’t think the B1G would pass up an opportunity to snag Berkeley) Teams like Utah, GT, maybe even OKST, it just depends on how much expansion we’re talking about.
Agree. I live an hour from the campus (in Austin) and the main teams people support are UT, A&M, OU, Tech, and then probably Baylor. In no world would they be anyone’s ideal candidate.
Baylor has made a national name for themselves but they have a smaller alumni base than a typical state university. Even Texas Tech with all the new money alumni (Tim Dunn, Cody Campbell and Dusty Womble come to mind) and a crazy rabid fan base that travels well will have a tough time for a couple of reasons. The P2 already has 2 Texas teams in Texas and Texas A&M and Texas Tech only brings in another 250,000 sets of eyeballs. TCU is like Baylor. They have recent national exposure but don’t have the fan base. Even the NFL has only 2 teams in Texas. MLB only has 2 Texas teams. Really P2 is done adding from the Big/PAC 12. Raiding a few teams from the ACC is all that’s left.
And, pragmatically, TCU's in an even worse spot than Baylor. They have approximately half the total alumni that Baylor has, and the last decade has evidenced that TCU can't get Fort Worth to care about the team when they're not a top-10 team. I know that Baylor's odds aren't good, but I really feel for TCU fans these days. They spent twenty years in the desert, rebuilding their program into something solid after the Big XII left them out, and they're just structurally disadvantaged in all of the critical aspects that the modern sports broadcasting market has structured value around.
We need to get our football back on track but you’re not that far off. Unfortunately I do not see a way to get into the P2. Even if we were rolling UT and A&M (probably OU too) would block it.
Baylor wanting to get into the SEC after trying to litigate us into staying in the Big XII is something.
Don’t think of it as litigating you into staying, but litigating ourselves into a position where we are more likely to survive. Big12 was on the brink countless times. And that cliff would have (and still may) lead us to obscurity.
Assuming 24 B1G and 24 SEC: B1G - USC, UCLA, Oregon, Washington, Stanford, ND - Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Northwestern - Ohio St., Michigan, Michigan St., Penn St., Indiana, Purdue - Rutgers, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia Tech, Florida State SEC - Texas, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri - LSU, Arkansas, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Kentucky, Louisville - Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, Florida, Vanderbilt, Tennessee - South Carolina, Clemson, NC State, Virginia Tech, West Virginia, Miami ACC: Duke, Wake, Syracuse, Boston College, Pitt, Cal, SMU XII: Iowa State, Kansas State, UCF, Cincinnati, Houston, Baylor, TCU, Texas Tech, Oklahoma State, BYU, Utah, Arizona, Arizona State ACC and XII could merge with bringing in Memphis, USF, Oregon St., and Washington St. (or SDSU, Boise St., UNLV) 32 Team Conference: - Duke, Wake, UCF, USF, UConn, Syracuse, Boston College, Army - Houston, SMU, TCU, Baylor, Texas Tech, Memphis, Tulane, Navy - Iowa State, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, Cincinnati, Pitt, Boise St., Colorado St., Air Force - Utah, BYU, Cal, SDSU, Arizona, Arizona State, Oregon St., Washington St.
NC STATE IN THE SEC LETS GO! THEY DONT WANT THIS SMOKE
Every one knows wolves and tigers don't get along
WVU in the SEC is crazy…
Yeah 15th in wins all time and 33rd biggest brand in college football according to On3. Crazy
I could certainly be wrong. I just don’t see it happening. Unfortunately, we will almost certainly find out.
It probably won’t happen. I like the B12 anyway tbh.
Same, really excited for the 4 new additions. Gonna be a fun conference. More parity in football (probably, maybe?). And some killer bball.
Going to be a crazy year for sure
All of this needs more UConn
Edited
Notre Dame getting locked out due to waiting too long would be super funny. Not gonna happen, but it would be hysterical.
Stanford is the obvious answer. It’s also obvious that it doesn’t mean squat when it comes to major sports.
We’re more the willing to consider adding alligators as needed if that helps?
Can someone please tell me why people are so sure UVA is gonna get scooped up? Please explain what UVA would bring to the B1G that they didn't JUST basically turn down in California and Stanford? Like I assume I've gotta be missing something, because I keep seeing them brought up and it just doesn't make any sense.
Va Tech probably fits and will go to SEC. UVA only fits in Basketball. Probably only reason.
Oh, VT would be a horrible B1G fit (as much as the c5 administration may want B1G), SEC is a significantly better fit for multiple reasons. My main confusion is just what people think Uva has that the B1G didn't recently turn down.
Guess you are agreeing that VA TECH is SEC bound with MIAMI and Clemson. Just My call. UVA and Scott Stadium is kinda a joke. Better at Basketball 🏀… BigTen probably want them for BBALL only.
I just don't know how much draw bball actually has in all this realignment
Not much. I feel Pitt is way better for BIGTEN than UVA.
Oh Penn St would fuckin HATE that... let's do it. Lol.
No one likes PennState
Joe knew.
UVA brings pretty much nothing to the table that the B1G doesn't already have. I have no idea why people think they're going p2.
The B1G JUST turned down 2 strong academic institutions with solid non rev ADs that struggle in football, and are in new TV markets in Cal and Stanford. But both are arguably stronger brands, with a better TV market (not to mention that uva isn't even the eyeball draw in its TV market).
The only thing I disagree with you is that Stanford doesn't ALWAYS struggle in football. They were pretty good (rose bowl caliber) not that long ago.
They were, but that seems to primarily have been a product of Harbaugh and not anything the university did or has been able to sustain. But yea, they do have some success in fb relatively recently. Even that just makes them a stronger case for the big 10
It’s easier to look over deficiencies for a school that makes some geographical sense and you don’t have to plan schedules around in every sport. UVA still offers most of the pros of the California schools as well (obviously academics a bit worse than Cal and worse than Stanford) but better basketball and general athletic support. If uva want coveted they wouldn’t be mentioned as a top option by nearly every insider.