Slive lays out plan for new NCAA subdivision.

It could be called the Premier Division of college football. Has a nice ring to it.

The NCAA is a victim of its own success. College Football becoming a multi-billion dollar sport made the NCAA the power it is...but will also run the train off the tracks. It's the only sport that carries as large of a roster and staff and also draws the insane number of fans to games. It's what created the demand for TV, making everyone (excluding the players...not hashing that out here) involved billions. No other college sport could do what football did.

That is what makes the "super conference" thing so interesting. It is driven by football...and not really any other sport. Sure, basketball generates a lot of money and TV space from January-March, but it's riding shotgun.

I have no problem with it at all. It's just interesting to see how college football makes almost every single decision about intercollegiate athletics.

TIDE-HSV said:

Looks like he took the NCAA proposed rules and ran on from that starting point. If the proposed rules get turned down - which would be by the small schools block-voting - I think the odds of the big five breaking away skyrocket. The new proposed rules by the NCAA are really an admission of defeat. Everybody (and his brother) knows that the smaller schools can't afford to effectuate the new rules. I'm beginning to think this may really be the death knell of the NCAA and its decades of trying to "level the playing field." (How the hell did that ever get to be a goal of the NCAA, anyway?)

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To me, it seems like years ago, someone involved with NCAA athletics in some fashion (conference administrators maybe?) realized that the money to be made by leveling the playing field and propping up these lesser schools and conferences, thereby increasing the number of bowl games, games that could be played on tv, etc., was a huge potential widfall of cash. Of course, the bigger conferences were made to sacrifice their dominance of the big money sports, namely football, by limiting what they could actively do with their programs. It has now come full circle where the big conference schools still dominate football, but they now can support the huge tv contracts and bowl allotments without really needing the smaller conferences as filler. As a result, the big conferences are about to ceremoniously kick the small guys to the curb....

TIDE-HSV said:

Looks like he took the NCAA proposed rules and ran on from that starting point. If the proposed rules get turned down - which would be by the small schools block-voting - I think the odds of the big five breaking away skyrocket. The new proposed rules by the NCAA are really an admission of defeat. Everybody (and his brother) knows that the smaller schools can't afford to effectuate the new rules. I'm beginning to think this may really be the death knell of the NCAA and its decades of trying to "level the playing field." (How the hell did that ever get to be a goal of the NCAA, anyway?)

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I guess the allegations at the time were that by doing all this sort of stuff it would somehow clean up football and make it more pure or some other nonsense. All it did was open the floodgates to a lot of programs that never had any business on that level and really, the level of "care" they provide their student athletes is vastly inferior. Then you go to the point that a school couldn't even feed their players so that UAB can afford their program.

I hope the smaller schools get it though. They have poisoned a good thing and if they don't back off, they'll destroy it entirely.

I just don't trust Slive or the NCAA to do the right thing. I'll believe it when I see it.

I hang out on a board dedicated to FCS discussion and I can tell you they have the same view of their own subdivision.

Memberwise, they are about the same size as the FBS, having around 125 schools. However, just like the FBS, not all football programs are created equal.

First you have the SWAC, which doesn't participate in the playoffs so they can have their own championship game. Then you have the Ivy, which is run by a bunch of old fuddy duddies who think football playoffs are beneath them, yet participate in every other sports playoff the NCAA offers.

There is the Pioneer League, which has no football scholarships but plays in the FBS because they can't be Division III in football and still offer scholarships in every other sport. Another league only gives 40 scholarships rather than the allotted 63.

Many of the fans of the power programs in FBS don't like that everyone makes up their own rules and get to claim they are DI despite doing football on the cheap. That is why schools like Appalachian State and Georgia Southern have moved up o the Sun Belt. Some of the fans of schools left behind think they are foolish for chasing a pipe dream of being the next Boise State when they will likely be the next Marshall or Western Kentucky, schools that were powers competing where they belong and now toil in obscurity.

With the proposed subdivision of the big boys, they are hoping the lesser FBS schools will join the upper level schools of the FCS and form their own group and leave the ones I mentioned earlier to do their own thing.

This would seem to be the ideal solution. You'd have three subdivisons in DI, each competing on a somewhat level playing field, where each would be able to make their own set of rules and limitations and have their own playoff format.

GrayTide said:

I just don't trust Slive or the NCAA to do the right thing. I'll believe it when I see it.

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Yeah those words might as well have come out of Phil Fulmer's mouth.


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I can see schools scrambling to ask acceptance to the Pac 12 and the Big 12. I'd also hate to see the Academy's left out. Navy to the SEC anyone?

CullmanTide said:

I can see schools scrambling to ask acceptance to the Pac 12 and the Big 12. I'd also hate to see the Academy's left out. Navy to the SEC anyone?

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Go Navy, Sir!
Beat Auburn, Sir!

It does have kind of a ring to it...

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CullmanTide said:

I can see schools scrambling to ask acceptance to the Pac 12 and the Big 12. I'd also hate to see the Academy's left out. Navy to the SEC anyone?

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I'm a big fan of the service academies, but I'm not sure their mission fits with the mission of efforts to carve out a super conference or whatever it is that is being attempted to create a division for major college football.

that being said, what of schools in major conferences that are perennially horrible like UVA or Rice?

do they really deserve a seat at the table? or is the theory that if they are included they will become more competitive due to their inclusion in a more exclusive group?

I use UVA as an example because their program is a complete joke...from the performance on the field to the support of the team by their fans.

davefrat said:

I'm a big fan of the service academies, but I'm not sure their mission fits with the mission of efforts to carve out a super conference or whatever it is that is being attempted to create a division for major college football.

that being said, what of schools in major conferences that are perennially horrible like UVA or Rice?

do they really deserve a seat at the table? or is the theory that if they are included they will become more competitive due to their inclusion in a more exclusive group?

I use UVA as an example because their program is a complete joke...from the performance on the field to the support of the team by their fans.

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If there is a near complete separation from everyone outside the big 5, teams like those mentioned will be relegated to bottom feeding. Somebody has to be the doormat.

Be careful what you ask for. All I'm saying.

If this doesn't happen, I could see a far more radical approach.

That would entail conferences and the like as we know it dissolving. This might sound crazy at first, but consider this, not every school in a conference would want to go along with some new reality of college football as unionized, semi-pro, etc... in turn, as they are talking bigger money, having a Vanderbilt around starts to sound worse and worse.

But, in the current structure, if they big schools can't vote their way out, what else can they do? They'd have to leave the NCAA entirely, and basically leave their current conferences. This would be really complicated (I've used terms like giant mess), but I could see the football powers then making reasonable facsimiles of conferences outside the reach of the NCAA.

For instance, the SEC's replacement might be without Miss. St, or Vanderbilt, but retain most of the other schools. In this scenario, I'd think we'd see 4 regional conferences. Rather than schools on the outside being included, I'd think we'd see the weaker schools in the power conferences excluded. Oh what a legal mess that would turn into though, but if they make college football distasteful enough, more schools will willingly part ways.

CullmanTide said:

I can see schools scrambling to ask acceptance to the Pac 12 and the Big 12. I'd also hate to see the Academy's left out. Navy to the SEC anyone?

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I have totally respect for the academys but they are just not up to par with the big programs.

The NCAA has always been about leveling something, usually, in the name of leveling. Yet, they can't be involved in seeing that all conferences play the same universal schedule. Nor can they legislate conference championship games so every team in the NC hunt truly has the obligation to go through the same seasonal attrition.

The directors met today and agreed to vote on the new plan in August. One step closer to autonomy with the Big 5. Link

bamachile said:

Go Navy, Sir!
Beat Auburn, Sir!

It does have kind of a ring to it...

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NICE! Post of the Year! lol