I’m sure that nothing but good will come of this.
If anything, why are they leaving two other conferences out of the conversation? Why doesn’t Notre Dame get a seat at the table, or are the South Bend Saviors fine with the leftovers and self-sustaining through their robust coffers?
We already saw the decrease in the regular season game’s value, which was foretold would be the result of expansion. Now that the mission has been accomplished, people will see the rivalries as less important as well as the regionalism of prior conference affiliation (see PAC teams playing in the other three conferences), resulting in a final mass conglomerate of the money makers of college football.
So what will they call the final merger of all conferences? The Herbstreit Conference? The ESPNCAA? Fantasyland?
If you go to 14, go ahead and go to 16 to have an even bracket.
Automatic bids suck. The seeding process sucks. The committee sucks.
ESPN is the devil.
Rant over.
Or as Ranger Russ would say FTMF.
I agree. At this point, it’s a tournament sport instead of a seasonal sport. Might as well make it 16.
They want the auto bids so they don’t have to stress about whether the committee thinks Joey Freshwater’s 9-3 squad is better than a 1-loss Minnesota that avoided the B1G heavyweights.
I’m a little more cynical. They want assured cuts of the money. Neither commissioner gives a damn about anything other than money.
The auto bids were forced by the ACC, B12, and ND. The SEC and B10 wanted expansion to ensure more of their teams gained access to playoff football. As a result, the lesser conferences said automatic bids or no deal. We can complain about ESPN all we want, and for the most part it is fair, but don’t ignore what the SEC and B10 did.
Sankey led the process and had to satisfy multiple parties to get the change earlier (they had to have all agree to a change during the contract). ND wanted expansion. They could have cared less about the ACC getting an auto bid. ND just didn’t want to be forced to join a conference and was willing to give up a potential bye for that.
I think that we are saying the same thing, but stating it differently. The auto bids were demanded by the other conferences and the SEC and B10 agreed in order to achieve playoff expansion. This was never done for the betterment of the game, nor to improve the fan experience. Everyone involved in the process has mud on them, no one is clean.
This applies to the ACC, Big12, etc. and further to us fans in another way…….
I am never watching Georgia basketball again.
I have said that 100s of times over the 40 years I have been watching. I think, all things considered, we have been the worst basketball program in the SEC during that time. It’s just a terrible watch the vast majority of times. No idea how to fix it.