darvon

It goes without saying that one of the prominent philosophers of the 20th Century is Dr. Suess.

One of his seminal works is The Sneetches. Let me quote:

Now, the Star-Bell Sneetches had bellies with stars.
The Plain-Belly Sneetches had none upon thars.
Those stars weren’t so big. They were really so small.
You might think such a thing wouldn’t matter at all.

But, because they had stars, all the Star-Belly Sneetches
Would brag, “We’re the best kind of Sneetch on the beaches.”
With their snoots in the air, they would sniff and they’d snort
“We’ll have nothing to do with the Plain-Belly sort!”

The moral of this story is that basically, "Sneetches are Sneetches".

Which brings us to college football.

Each year the conferences in the BCS make about $900 Million from TV Revenue only. Making simple extrapolations, you get to about 1.25 Billion for total revenue, perhaps a bit more.

Contrast this with $9 Billion for the NFL.

So what does that have to do with Sneetches? Simply this. NFL and College Football, if properly managed, should produce approximately the same revenue (+/- let's say 40%) they are BOTH sneetches.

The NFL has been managed very well. It probably is making as much as it can right now (until they drive it off the CBA cliff). College Football has been managed poorly. Mostly it happened in the 70s, and culminated in the 1984 Supreme Court case in which the NCAA lost. It became balkanized is not managed well as a whole.

If managed well for a period of years, College Football should be making at least 50% of what the NFL makes. And if both are managed TOGETHER, it is possible to boost NFL revenues too.

AND realize that the player salaries are....$0. They take chits for classes instead of cash. Why even sometimes OTHER people pay your employees cash to play.

What kind of idiot management cant make money in that scenario. It's raining money and College Football has its bowl upside down.

So the vision is clear. College football needs central management. And needs GOOD central management. Colleges are probably leaving $3-4 BILLION dollars per YEAR on the table until they get it. But to do that, you will have to over throw the Conference-based fractured management in power today.

Until that happens, you can kiss the $4 Billion per year goodbye.

Longhorn Network is going in the exact opposite direction. So is Big Ten Network.

Will centralization happen? Not from the NCAA. My candidate is The NFL. I think the NFL can gobble up rights to broadcast secondary Conferences and schools, and then ease into schedule making to freeze out the big conferences. And show them how to do it.

I would go get the broadcast/merchandising rights to the Big East and the ACC and the MW and all the D1AA leagues and go from there.

Just get the broadcast rights first, then get scheduling rights.

Eat it up from the bottom and then start to pick off some big boys.

In 30 years, the NFL should be "virtually" running college football and leave the admin to the NCAA for peanuts.