The Jed Clampetts see their Texas Tea coming into focus.
I know White T-Shirt Guy isn’t some of you guys’ favorite. Dial this up to 37:00, and you get a tour de force crushing the fake arguments made for expansion. Didn’t the powers that be say that schools would schedule up in a 12-team expansion as well. If you believe that at this point, you’re nothing but a sucker.
Greg Sankey and the SEC, you’re our Obi-Wan Kenobi against this madness.
Pate is right on that. I’ll believe the scheduling will improve when I see it. And not just games announced. Once they are actually played. Look at all the great out of conference games Georgia had scheduled only to have them cancelled.
The SEC 9th game has been good for viewers. Still dumb from conference standpoint as far as getting teams in the 12 team format, but good for TV watching. The B1G still can’t produce any interesting matchups despite all of its expansion. The middle and bottom of that conference is so uninteresting.
The expansion is coming. We all know it. They can’t help themselves. My hope (and hope isn’t a strategy) is they mandate Power 4 OOC games into it to give the fans some fun games to watch. One cupcake game and then two Power 4 OOC games required. I’m not holding my breath though.
The 9th game wasn’t stupid. The scheduling philosophy that everyone has to play everyone twice over a 4-year period is what was stupid. That painted the SEC into the corner of either 1/7 format in the 8-game format or 3/6 in the 9-game format. Mickey wanted all of those games it was going to lose as annual games, so they are paying for the additional SEC game. No way would the league have given that away for free.
If they had done a 2/6 format, it would have been harder on the schedule makers.
A school like Georgia who has a permanent Power 4 OOC opponent wasn’t going to play 11 P4 games without assurances that it would be rewarded by the CFP selection process.
Every bit of the scheduling problem comes back to one thing … the CFP selection committee and its process.
Everytime changes have been made because people are pissed that CFB determines its champion (or contenders therefore) by a “beauty contest” rather than “best team”, the people in charge just double-down again on keeping it a “beauty contest”, which is the ultimate root of the scheduling problem (along with the fact that there are too many teams, and thus not enough direct connections to make head-to-head comparisons).
Correction on your spelling of the word “proce$$”….GO DAWGS!!
I can’t see Tech being a “permanent” opponent going forward. If either side wants out the other will accept. We are a huge problem to tech making the top 24. The committee doesn’t reward us for playing them.
We aren’t letting Fech out of the agreement unless it happens after this year. As long the Drought remains the one thing they can hold on to, we will insist on playing them.
I also don’t think the powers that be under the gold dome and in the BoR will allow this to happen.
If we allow one of the Big 3 to no longer be an annual game due to all of this, the sport is done.
WTF? Gotta make sure “everybody gets a trophy (💰) , nobody gets their feelings hurt and we can all have a group hug and sing coom ba ya! Then we can all skip merrily home saying how great the sport has become!! They can all kiss my a—!! Glad I’m old!!
He’s correct. There is no logical reason for this at all. They aren’t even hiding it now.
Pate also said 2026 Florida’s offense will be compared to 2019’s LSU offense. So there’s that.
I didn’t say he knows ball. 🙂
Who cares who anybody plays in the regular season if the games are of no real significance since CFB is now just a dumb tournament sport like college basketball. Hell, we are even going to lose a reasonably logical way to win a conference championship. Fuck these money chasing assholes.
In this model, we don’t get anything last year. Alabama is the SEC champion. I hate it.
This is the thing the powers that be don’t get. If they make the regular season into a “Wake me up when the playoff starts” mindset, a lot of the money the big schools have taken for granted … donations and season tickets … may be gone and never fully recovered. Mess with that at your own peril.
But that sweet sweet Mickey Money will more than replace it. Until it doesn’t.
Mickey money may make a dent in it, but it isn’t going to replace it … ever.
That’s like saying the NFL TV package could replace money generated over time by stadium PSLs (that’s what the Hartman contribution is). I may offset a portion, but it won’t make it revenue-neutral. In today’s world of the House settlement, if it isn’t revenue-neutral in total, it’s dead in the water.
NFL stadiums are smaller with more suites. You’ll see Sanford and other venues converted the same way. Young alumni at the Hartman minimum will be priced out. Your grandchildren won’t see the hedges because they can’t grow in a dome.
NFL stadiums are in big cities with lots of corporate clients to shell out tax deductible marketing expenses for games at the local stadium. Athens doesn’t have that.
Agree, they should keep the conference championship games (they mean something!) and cut a cupcake so that the season can end before the end of January…..
Some valid points in here, I’m not going to give him my viewership.
Conference and playoff expansion haas had more impact on my diminshing interesting in watching football than NIL and the Transfer portal. Going to Texas A&M hasn’t been a priority for me. I’m more sad future games with Clempson and FSU were cancelled.
I miss vacationing in Tennessee Knoxville or Nashville in the fall when we had tickets. If we had tickets now I’d rather do that than go to Arkansas, Texas, or OU. I passed on free Arkansas tickets in the past as I didn’t have the time to take drive out there. The games in the state of TN can be done without taking a weekday or a flight. College is a regional game, the NFL is more national.
Making the college game like the NFL destroys what made the college game great.
Further expansion will have little impact as I have not watched play off games that don’t involve UGA and currenly I’m watching UGA’s game and usually about half of some other game.
I very much enjoyed how one game could change the national championship picture. Now, if Ohio St drops a game what real impact does it have on teams I’m pulling for?
Conference expansion past 12 was stupid. CFP expansion past 4 was stupid. The first stupid move made a 9 game SEC schedule more important “so everyone plays everyone.” That costs us a lot of in conference rivalry games. It also cost us the Nov breather game. Everyone plays them, why should the B10, etc get a say in when we play ours? Stupid. It was done in anticipation of the second stupid move. That costs us the inter-conference matchups. Why beat yourself to death in 9 SEC games, plus play the pencil necks the week before the SECC?
The SECC is the premier conference championship game by a mile. The other conferences? Nobody cares about their championship games. Expansion now means we lose ours. There aren’t 24 teams with a legit chance for an NC. There aren’t 12. There really aren’t 8. But all those extra game will generate money. Pro leagues have done this for years. Who cares about the| regular season? Just get in “the tournament” and you’re golden (like 2024 ohio state).
It’s all, and only, about the money. The rest of the lame excuses are just PR. They pee in our ear and tell us it’s rain>ng. I hate it all.
Let’s go back to 10!!
The big picture is that encouraging all non-conference games to be shit and only having conference games allows for introduction of the next “fix”:
A super conference with required and regularly scheduled intersectional matchups.
Its all part of the evil Disney plot.
After that, we’ll have salary caps and a draft and contracts and a restricted portal and yada yada yada. All roads point to NFL-lite.
The SEC’s participation in the NCAA’s shenanigans is not mandatory. The SEC can simply break away and just move forward as is, with crowning our Conference winner as the nat’l champ. Keep the 9 game schedule and then fill the other weeks 1 OoC game and 2 non power 4 opponents. Just say FTMF’s to the rest of them. Mickey would pay mega bucks for our Champion to play their tournament champion.
No one in the Power 4 is going to play an SEC team OOC in that scenario. That isn’t in ESPN’s best interest as the holder of SEC media rights including OOC home games.
The NCAA has zero to do with the governance and crowning of an FBS national champion.
So you are relying on an AD turning down money. I guess there is a first time for everything. Mickey does not have a permanent media rights contract.
But if your assertions are on target, the Power 4 OoC rivalries would be toast. UGA, Florida, Kentucky or SC would get an extra home game every year would be the offset. Never heard that ESPN balked at the 1st 3 weeks, cupcake games across the conference. Giving up the conference championship game vs retaining the game is a lot bigger deal, even if the money is matched, I don’t think that makes it equal.
I recognize the NCAA is not governing the Football side just using for inclusiveness vs naming all others.
You do realize that the visiting school typically gets $0 for a Power 4 home and home when they are the visiting team. That’s why so many of these marquee OOC games are moving to 1-time neutral sites if they are being played at all. Both teams get paid and they are more profitable than the cost associated with the home and home.
From The Athletic – The postseason across most sports has become a market for mediocrity. Every league seems to have arrived at the same quiet conclusion. Hope is more valuable to sell than excellence.
It just sux. The value of season’s ticket is next to nothing when this occurs.
It never should have expanded the first time. Who gives a shit who the fifth and sixth best teams are? I hate “Cinderella stories.” Win your games. The ninth conference game sucks too.
I like the 9th game … as mentioned, that’s the only thing that kept the DSOR as an annual game.
I read an article that the viewership for ESPN college football so far this year has slipped a lot. Now given that most team schedule the “Little Sisters of the Poor” for the first two games, I’m not surprised. College football has shot itself in the foot and it can’t be saved until the slow ass congress passes the Save College Sports Act. You don’t know whose on a team until the game starts.