I say let’s keep the NCAA in one form or another.
There has been so much speculation about what will happen next with conference realignment, you can read almost anything you want to hear or don’t want to hear.
For example, will the ACC survive if Clemson and Florida State bolt for the SEC? Will Carolina entertain offers from the Big Ten even if leaving without N.C. State will create a political mess in the university system? And is there a way to have a Super Conference in football and leave the NCAA to run everything else, especially keeping the lucrative basketball tournaments?
I kind of favor the last option because I would like to see the ACC remain, replace members that leave and see what the TV landscape looks like when the dust settles. A Super Football Conference may be the answer.
By that I mean, say, 40 to 60 of the best college football programs band together in a Super Conference that will control all the TV rights, like the College Football Playoff does now. That just might happen organically if the Big Ten and SEC expand to 20 or more football members each.
Sure, UCLA and Southern Cal say they are joining the Big Ten, but I think that will leave the rest of the conferences angry. The Pac 12, Big 12 and ACC are already mad because Texas and Oklahoma announced they were heading for the SEC. Those three remaining Power Conferences supposedly formed an alliance to keep working together on a future plan. How did that go so far?
Wouldn’t it be better to have a self-governed Super Conference of 60 big-time football programs that can be members of different leagues and still protect and support all the other sports, especially basketball. Would you really like it if UNC left the ACC for the money and lost its franchise rivalry with Duke? Even if they played once on a neutral court every season, that wouldn’t be the same.
Before any contracts were signed, what if the Super Football Conference idea came together, giving all regular season and postseason TV revenues to those schools directly. Each could then use the money for whatever they wanted – higher coaching salaries, bigger facilities or larger recruiting budgets for all of their programs.
All the schools that were left out could still realign their conferences and play for a football title, getting their own TV contracts and supporting their athletic teams with money from the Super Conference and their own TV deals.
It could be better than UCLA having to send its volleyball team across the country to play Rutgers. How would that work?
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I love it when Chansky chants…”Wouldn’t it be better to have a self-governed Super Conference of 60 big-time football programs that can be members of different leagues and still protect and support all the other sports, especially basketball. Would you really like it if UNC left the ACC for the money and lost its franchise rivalry with Duke? Even if they played once on a neutral court every season, that wouldn’t be the same.”
No, Chansky. Your idea would not be better.
You quoted Dean Smith the other day, asking what would Dean do? Dean was an egalitarian socialist. Dean would say, “The university system is not a business corporation.”
All the money from the so-called super conference would go in a big pot, and every member of the NCAA would get a share. In this case, socialism would work. Dean would be happy.
I ask the UNC leadership to reject entirely the premise that more money serves the university mission. I would rather be a poor church mouse, in our own family ACC conference than be an SEC-football factory,
The only re-alignment we need at UNC is to re-align our moral values with our university mission.