AND HERE COMES THE CHANGE
- Thread starter mtfblue
- Start date
I don't pretend to know how all this shakes out. The Division 4 language is a little worrying. I think this is very likely to end up with some sort of formal split between the upper levels and lower levels of FBS.
I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that there's no place for the G5 - there's still an appetite for mid-week games, bowl games, off prime time games and games vs certain P5's (teams like BC, Vandy, Northwestern) trying to get bowl eligible and you're not going to convince even lower end P5 schools to fill that role.
But all in all, I'm thinking this is another feather in the MAC cap.
I get the sense that, while no one is saying it's the big 10 or will ever be, the MAC has a grudging amount of respect for what they do and the niche they've carved out. If anything it's going to be a lot harder to sideline a conference with 75 years of tradition willing to fill a certain demand. As opposed to a conference with weak leadership filled with nomad schools no one else would touch, with no real link of tradition or success or shared purpose who's only real reason for being in the conference is that there's no place else to go.
I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that there's no place for the G5 - there's still an appetite for mid-week games, bowl games, off prime time games and games vs certain P5's (teams like BC, Vandy, Northwestern) trying to get bowl eligible and you're not going to convince even lower end P5 schools to fill that role.
But all in all, I'm thinking this is another feather in the MAC cap.
I get the sense that, while no one is saying it's the big 10 or will ever be, the MAC has a grudging amount of respect for what they do and the niche they've carved out. If anything it's going to be a lot harder to sideline a conference with 75 years of tradition willing to fill a certain demand. As opposed to a conference with weak leadership filled with nomad schools no one else would touch, with no real link of tradition or success or shared purpose who's only real reason for being in the conference is that there's no place else to go.
The autonomy given to the P5 conferences years back is reason CFB is the way it is now. Inmates running the asylum and we will see deals to overlook certain indiscretions, if not already.
We'll see what happens. They essentially want to give more power to individual schools/conferences instead of having the NCAA run everything. I think it's a terrible idea personally because you need centralized authority with something like college football and college basketball. They are already ruining college athletics with NIL as we all know they're going to want more and more and more and more (Give them an inch, they want a mile). The amateurism of college athletics is doomed.
It won't happen over night, but I fully expect college athletics to lose all of it's amateur luster and essentially become professional sports. They are so money hungry I could, eventually, see them extending eligbility well beyond 4 years, allowing professional players to return and play if they're cut from a team, etc.
Imagine Tim Teblow being able to play QB at Florida for 8 years, getting a check from the school for 100k a year and maybe 250k a year after winning a national title. They would have gone for that in a heart beat if there was nobody there to stop them. And now, there won't be anybody to stop there.
These schools are trying to sell a product. And they will blur and change the lines in every way possible to maximize their revenues, regardless of it's impact on the game.
It won't happen over night, but I fully expect college athletics to lose all of it's amateur luster and essentially become professional sports. They are so money hungry I could, eventually, see them extending eligbility well beyond 4 years, allowing professional players to return and play if they're cut from a team, etc.
Imagine Tim Teblow being able to play QB at Florida for 8 years, getting a check from the school for 100k a year and maybe 250k a year after winning a national title. They would have gone for that in a heart beat if there was nobody there to stop them. And now, there won't be anybody to stop there.
These schools are trying to sell a product. And they will blur and change the lines in every way possible to maximize their revenues, regardless of it's impact on the game.
Last edited:
This will be the end of us competing at the "highest" level of college football. We are already FBS in name only just like all other G5 schools. There is a very very slight chance this year the G5 gets representation in the playoff, but the committee will do their best to make sure it doesn't happen.
The biggest risk to the P4/5 whatever it ends up being to splitting off is anti-trust issues.
One of the things that wasn't thought out with this NIL stuff (well actually a lot of it wasn't well thought out) is the way they've turned college sports into a business they really set themselves up for huge lawsuits if they try to operate what's basically a for profit athletics division while most of the schools are public institutions receiving both state and federal tax dollars.
One of the things that wasn't thought out with this NIL stuff (well actually a lot of it wasn't well thought out) is the way they've turned college sports into a business they really set themselves up for huge lawsuits if they try to operate what's basically a for profit athletics division while most of the schools are public institutions receiving both state and federal tax dollars.
