🏈 Exploring the Future of College Football and Conference Realignment! 🤔💥 Join Julian Martinez and Kyle Ledbetter as they dive into the dizzying world of college football's current state and its exciting yet confusing future. From teams switching conferences to the intriguing dynamics of power in college football, they break down the chaos and consolidation. Discover how TV contracts, realignment waves, and school branding play a pivotal role in shaping the landscape. Find out why the PAC-12's demise isn't a surprise, and what's next for conferences like the ACC. Will we see a new era of stability or a mega conference emerge? Plus, explore the potential separation of football from the NCAA and its implications for college athletes. Share your thoughts on the future of college athletics, give this video a thumbs up, and don't forget to subscribe for more sports insights! Stay tuned for engaging discussions and stay safe out there. See you in the next video! 📺🔥 Julian Martinez: [00:00:05] Kyle you know that meme of Mr. Krabs where he's dizzy and just looking around all confused. That's how I kind of feel about the current state of college football, because when I look around, it's all over the place. There's team switching conferences left and right. There's teams that are on the Pacific Coast that are now moving to the Atlantic Coast Conference. We have a BIG-10 division that has like 18-20 teams in it. Now, I just don't know what the current state of college football is now. I think a lot of these conferences honestly have to do a little rebranding. But what is the future of it? Because it seems like we're consolidating. It seems like we're shrinking down and we're we move from power five. Seems like we're a power four. Where do you see this going next? [00:00:49][44.1]
Kyle Ledbetter: [00:00:50] Even the power four is kind of a power or two and a half at this point because like the BIG-12 might put a team in the College football playoff. Your guess is as good as mine in which team it's going to be. Right. I mean, the college football playoffs can expand to 12 soon. So granted, everyone's going to get a chance. But like in the final eight, it's going to be hard to find a BIG-12 team right now that's going to make it to the final eight teams at the end of the season. So it's kind of more of a power two and a half at this point. And the half is the key, which is being held up right now by two things. Well, three things. One, Clemson 2. The money of Florida State and three, a television contract that has screwed over the conference because the next step in college football realignment is that the ACC is going to go to their lawyers and try and break their television contract because the aCC, for those who don't know when they signed their last television contract with ESPN, they created the ACC network. There was a question about whether the conference would exist in the last stage of realignment because Maryland left for the BIG-10 and for a couple months there was like, Oh no, is this going to be the exodus of a bunch of schools? And then the Big East fell apart and a bunch of those Big East schools like Boston College and Louisville move over to the ACC and they signed a television contract with ESPN for 18 years. It runs through 2037. The ACC can't break their television contract because it's too expensive for the schools to buy out ESPN on their TV contract because ESPN is paying them approximately $720 million over 18 years and each member school is getting payouts. It's $40 million a year divided by 15 schools. Each school is getting a three and a half million dollar payout. And to buy yourself out of the contract, the school's got to find a way to pool $400 million, which they can't do right now. So these schools are locked into a television contract. That means they can't jump to another conference. And by the way, if you've been following what's happening, Florida State is running around with like a knife, trying to, like, pressure the commissioner to let them out of their contract and they just can't do it. So they're conferring with their lawyers. They would totally be jumping ship right now and going to another conference if they weren't locked into their television contract. So now that the PAC-12 no longer exists, now that there's 16 teams in the BIG-12, now that there's 20 teams in the BIG-10, and now that the SEC has, they're 16. When you include Texas and Oklahoma, the next step is can the ACC get out of their television contract? And they are lawyering up to figure out if they can break this contract without having to pay $400 million. [00:03:40][170.3] Julian Martinez: [00:03:41] Are you going to miss the PAC-12? [00:03:42][1.0] Kyle Ledbetter: [00:03:43] No, I am not going to miss the PAC-12, because I feel like because there's so many laughs. [00:03:49][6.0] Julian Martinez: [00:03:50] So many good memories. [00:03:51][0.7] Kyle Ledbetter: [00:03:51] It did it served its purpose. And I got a joy going back through the history and remembering that in a six year period, the PAC-12 South saw all six teams Arizona, Arizona State, Utah, Colorado, UCLA and USC. All six teams won the division within a seven year span and they went 0-6 in the conference championship game. Like that division was just absolutely awful and I'm glad that it no longer exists because again, in the last eight years of the College Football Playoff and remember, it's only been around nine years. So if you take out the Marcus Mariota Oregon team in the last eight years, the PAC-12 put as many teams in the College Football Playoff as the AAC. And by the way, the AAC should have had to because UCF should have made the College Football Playoff in 2017. So UCF and Cincinnati really reflect more success in the last eight years than anything the PAC-12 has put together. So good riddance to the PAC-12. They're going to make documentaries about your one day, about how you just royally screwed up this conference. And now four schools go to the BIG-12, four schools take the parachute, the BIG-10 and Cal, Stanford, Washington State, and Oregon state are left in the wilderness waiting to see who will come collect them as part of the next conference. Oregon State and Washington State are definitely going to the Mountain West, Cal and Stanford. This reporting is funny because the ACC, the Atlantic Coast Conference is thinking we can make some money off of Cal and Stanford and Cal and Stanford are saying we'll take 17 years of a television contract as a security blanket WE'RE Cal and Stanford. Stanford's won three Rose Bowls in the last decade and Cal had Aaron Rodgers 15 years ago. So, yeah, no, they're like, we have nothing right now. We'll take the security blanket of a 15 year television contract with the ACc. And according to most recent reports, the vote right now is seven. Yes, eight. No. For Cal and Stanford to join the conference. So, yeah, they are. They need one person to flip. They need one school to flip to admit Cal and Stanford, which is just another hilarious turn of this college football realignment wave, is that we have basically it's just becoming succession at this point, which is like all of the war criminals at Stanford are going to the ACC board and they're like, look, what can we do to convince you to flip? What do we need to do to get your vote to flip? But then so it's basically just succession at this point. Counting votes in board meetings is basically where Stanford and Cal are at trying to get into the ACC again. [00:06:31][160.0] Julian Martinez: [00:06:32] The biggest thing with that situation that blows my mind is just the naming of the conference. Like it's been the dumbest thing for years anyway since conference realignment really took off but teams on the Pacific playing in the Atlantic Coast Conference please if we're going to go any further with any of these realignments, just rebrand, come up with something. I don't care. [00:06:57][25.7] Kyle Ledbetter: [00:06:58] Wouldn't it be wouldn't it be such a dick move if they called it the Pacific Atlantic Coast Conference and it became the PACC and then they called it the PAC 16 or the PAC 17 or whatever it's going to be. That would be such a dick move if they even stole the PAC. Yeah, they stole the PAC-12 branding and just called it the PACC instead of the PAC PAC. That would be hilarious if they just stole the PAC-12 branding as well. But now these schools are branding. Now the BIG-10 is a brand. The BIG-12 is a brand. It sucks that it doesn't make sense in the math, but it's a brand. Now, it would be like changing the NFL to be like the NAFL. It's like, no, at this point they're just brands, so they're not going to change any of the names of the conference. Even if CAL and Stanford get admitted, they're not changing the name of the conference. It's just it's branding at this point. [00:07:47][49.3] Julian Martinez: [00:07:48] Well, I guess, you know, you had you had Hawaii and you had them in the mountain West. Right. And I guess there's volcanoes in Hawaii. Sure, if, That counts as Mountain West. [00:07:55][7.5] Kyle Ledbetter: [00:07:56] Hawaii is Hawaii is technically west. So I guess that that's what they got going for them. So in terms of the future of college football, you have the the short term Cal and Stanford are going to get resolved and then Oregon State and Washington State are going to join the Mountain West and the PAC-12 will cease to exist as we know it. Okay. That's the short term change. The long term is aCC is going to sort out their realignment situation and then we're not going to have much change in college football for a good call it ten, 15 years, because that's usually what happens in college football is you have a three year wave of realignment and then 10 to 15 years of stability. It's basically with every television contract because television is now where the majority of like football related revenue comes from. They still make money from selling tickets to games and also and the gameday experience and stuff. But the predominant amount of revenue for these conferences comes from television deals. And so every time a new television deal comes up, you're going to see conferences switch and conferences realign. And the next step is, one, whether the ACC can break their television contract. But after that's resolved, you're going to have not much realignment for the next ten years and then around 2030 ish, because I believe the SEC signed a 12 year television deal with Disney and ESPN and the BIG-10 signed a nine year deal with like the Fox, CBS, NBC Partnership. So say around 2032 or 2033, that's when you're going to potentially see one giant mega conference that gets formed because they're going to be like, why would we compete against each other when we can just create a mega conference? The seC BIG-10, a conglomerate that all plays against each other in 164 team league because it will maximize television and they will probably get an antitrust exemption and they will form a the new version of a super league with 64 teams or 32 teams or whatever they end up doing. So that'll. The next stage ten years from now. [00:10:05][129.5] Julian Martinez: [00:10:06] Do you think at some point, because obviously we're approaching this from a football standpoint, I'm sure it's going to bleed over a little bit into another profitable sport in basketball. Do you think at some point these conferences will just become about football? Because I just question the economics for sending volleyball teams across the country or soccer teams across the country. Running joke right now is Rutgers having to go all the way to Eugene, Oregon, and having the fifth longest travel schedule of any team, not just college, but team. [00:10:36][30.8] Kyle Ledbetter: [00:10:37] It depends how brazen they want to be about keeping the ball in place, because the reason they're keeping the ball in place of like football funds these other programs, is they don't have to pay their labor If the Supreme Court rules, hey, college football, you have to pay your labor like salaried employees. What's going to happen is that you're going to create a separate football league that uses the branding of all the schools, basically. So it's like the league won't be affiliated with the schools, they'll still play in the same stadiums and all that stuff, but it will be a separate league and the schools will license their branding to the teams and get paid a whole bunch of money for licensing out their branding. Well, it will essentially be a football league where labor is getting paid. [00:11:23][46.3] Julian Martinez: [00:11:24] Well, that would make sense because and the reason I ask this is because I've seen personally, too, even with my own alma mater, how they were in the Sun Belt for football, yet they were still in the WAC for basketball. So I know it can be done. And things think that that might be the future that you're honestly suggesting. I've heard a lot of people suggest this of college football just being its own thing and the NCAA being its own other thing. Should college football separate from the NCAA? I think that's been a question a lot of people have been asking for years. And a certain point it just feels like the money is pushing it in that direction. [00:11:58][33.8] Kyle Ledbetter: [00:11:59] So college football is already separate from the NCAA. They have no I mean, the NCAA is the governing body, but it doesn't essentially govern anything in college football. The conferences negotiate the College football Playoff at this point. So college football is already separate from the NCAA. [00:12:14][15.1] Julian Martinez: [00:12:15] But if the NCAA wants to come down with the suspension, they still can. [00:12:17][2.9] Kyle Ledbetter: [00:12:18] Yes, but that's because the schools still give the NCAA that power. They would rather the NCAA, which is kind of a like fake governing body and like a fake police at this point, they would rather them be the legislators than having to legislate themselves. And at some point in the near future, that's going to change. Obviously, the NCAA puts on March Madness. They pull the rest of the sports into like one collective television contracts, like 40 something sports that they have a TV deal with, with ESPN. The next television deal, the women's basketball tournament, is going to be its own separate television contract, similar to the men's basketball tournament. But right now, the women's sport is all in that group of 40 sports or something. The future is if it's ruled that you have to pay college athletes salaries, you will essentially see a league that essentially operates as college football super League, but it includes all of the schools and their licensing. They will pay them in both salaries and with ability to attend these universities that they choose to play for. That is ideally my version of the future, because that would mean college athletes are no longer being exploited for their labor. [00:13:23][65.4] Julian Martinez: [00:13:24] All right, guys. Well, let us know. How are you feeling about the future of college athletics? College football, specifically in this case, I guess, with the conference realignment. I'd like to hear your thoughts. Please like the video, subscribe to the channel, follow us on all our social media is juju and Kyle. Stay safe, happy and healthy. We'll see you next time. [00:13:24][0.0] [788.5]
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