College Football Expansion - Who is Next and Why
The USC/UCLA move to the B1G has set off all sorts of social media speculation as to who is next. It's complicated by the ACC Grant of Rights (GOR), the idea of expanding outside the conference footprint (sometimes by thousands of miles), and wondering if any of the eligible candidates can actually contribute enough to the conference revenue pie to justify their equal piece. When looking at college football economics, there are three things to look at that drive the value of a potential member - the basic cable market, average TV viewers ("eyeballs"), and the College Football Playoffs (CFP). Let's take a look at these 'Three Rails" of college football economics - Markets, Eyeballs, and CFP:
1. Markets. "Market" was all the rage in the 2007-2014 timeframe when the B1G channel was launched, followed by the SEC and others. Basically, the economics at the time was that if you could get your conference channel included in the basic cable package you got paid a "per-subscriber" fee whether someone watched the channel or not. If the SECN was available in a market where there was an SEC team, the SEC received an "in-footprint" subscriber fee that was greater than the "out-of-footprint" fee received where there wasn't an SEC team. This is why the SEC grabbed Mizzou in 2012 and the B1G grabbed Rutgers in 2014. Expanding the basic cable market in general, and having in-footprint fees more specifically was the goal. The Rutgers acquisition was the gold standard for this type of move when the BTN became "in-footprint" for not only New Jersey but also the entire state of New York.
The problem with this rail of CFB economics is that the market is dramatically shrinking, and geography isn't as important in an ever-growing streaming world. The following are estimates, but fairly accurate. Around 2014 there were about 90 million households with basic cable. By 2027 that number is estimated to be around 40 million - basically more than a 50% reduction in subscribers meaning far less revenue from this economic rail. Cord cutters who don't want basic cable have gone to streaming content like NetFlix and Prime. Those that still want a full line-up of channels can get the streaming equivalent of cable through YouTube TV, Hulu, Sling TV, Fubu, and the like. While the major conference networks are available on those platforms, they aren't geographically restricted. A conference doesn't have to have a team in Los Angeles to get a subscriber fee from ESPN or Fox through YouTube TV. This is why the "LA market" isn't as important to the USC/UCLA move as the other two rails. There is still money to be made, but as detailed in the article below(1) it could be as little as $20 million per year for the LA market which is almost a rounding error in a media package of more than a billion dollars.
With far fewer subscribers and being able to get a fee without being in a particular geographic area, thinking that market component is a big deal is so 2012-ish.
2. Eyeballs. TV viewership is where the big money is right now. How many people watch your games? How many premier matchups of greater than 4 million sets of eyeballs can you get? The idea of the Four Million Club (FMC) was first posited by Andy Staples of The Athletic(2):
What’s the Four Million Club? It’s the group of football games that draw more than four million viewers.
These are the games networks are willing to pay premium prices for, and they’re also the type of games the SEC’s addition of Oklahoma and Texas will add to that league’s inventory. In conversations with television executives and consultants, conference officials and athletic directors, it has become clear that the hunt for premium television product will drive this round of realignment (or, in the case of the alliance, rearranging). So I asked a trusted source who has been involved with many television contracts what audience qualified as meter-moving in this ever-splintering environment, and that source drew the cutline at four million. (emphasis mine)
It makes sense then that the networks are looking for the matchups that will drive the most eyeballs. Looking at data from 2015-2019, here are some of Staple's observations:
Those five seasons featured 1,593 rated telecasts and dozens more on the ACC Network, Big Ten Network, Pac-12 Network and SEC Network, which weren’t measured for audience size.
Of those, 198 telecasts made it into the Four Million Club. The audience size ranges from massive (16,841,000 for the 2016 Michigan-Ohio State game) to just above the cutline (4,010,000 for the 2015 Louisville-Auburn game). And the conference distribution of the games is quite telling.
35 Alabama
31 Ohio State
26 Michigan
17 Auburn
17 Notre Dame
16 Florida
16 LSU
15 Clemson
15 Georgia
14 Oklahoma
13 Tennessee
12 Penn State
11 Michigan State
10 Texas A&M
This explains why the SEC accepted OU and UT. Almost all games that include any of the top SEC teams and OU/UT will be in the Four Million Club. This also explains the scheduling moving to 9 Intra-conference (IC) games. Instead of teams playing each team every 6 years, with a 3-6-6 scheduling format (3 permanent rivals, 6 of the other 12 teams every other year), the top teams will play each other annually, or at least every other year. This greatly increases the number of Four Million Club games to at least four times the number of such games prior to the acquisition of OU/TX and the expansion to 9 IC games. The quick napkin math for this is that we now average about 12 of these per year with SEC teams only (there are more with Out of Conference games - OOC). The 8 SEC teams on the list above will now play 3 times more frequently. When you add TX and OU that results in approximately 10 more FMC games per year. That comes close to quadrupling the number of FMC games to almost 4 per week instead of 1 per week.
This is also why the B1G went after USC and to a lesser degree UCLA. While neither of those teams appears on the list above, games like UM v. USC, tOSU v. USC, and PSU v. USC will likely add to the FMC inventory. That said, I believe it also shows why the SEC got the better end of expansion - the new SEC has 8 teams on the most Four Million Club games list, while the B1G only has 4. And neither new team is on the list while OU is and if Texas should be in the future. OU will drive more eyeballs than USC, and UT will likely drive more eyeballs than UCLA, their poor performance over the last decade notwithstanding.
These numbers provide guidance as to who the SEC and the B1G will want to expand with going forward. If they don't draw eyeballs to the TV screen, they aren't attractive. With the "Market" rail shrinking, even a great market like LA won't make up for the lack of having high average viewership numbers.
3. CFP - the College Football Playoff. The third economic rail is the CFP. For the purpose of this section, I am going to assume that CFB will go to a 12-team playoff which means we go from 3 games (2+1) to 11 games (4+4+2+1). That means we will have almost quadruple the number of CFP games. Fortunately, Navigate has done all the math for us,(3) and even if these numbers are not totally accurate, they are close enough to illustrate how this rail will drive expansion:
- The current CFP payout for NY6 bowl games – including the 3 CFP games – pays all conferences $670M per year.
- The new CFP payout for 11 playoff games that also take over all NY6 game relationships in a 12-team playoff pays all conferences $1.9B per year
Navigate notes that "the current model pays 63% of payout to base payments to conferences and the remaining 37% goes towards conferences in NY6 bowls and playoff games" and they assume the same will apply in the new CFP model. To me, that is a conservative assumption because the SEC and the B1G now run college football. If anything, the payouts might be skewed more to the schools in the NY6 bowls and playoff games which will mostly be SEC and B1G schools.
To allocate the non-base payouts, Navigate "looked back at the last 10 years of college football performance and assumed the new proposed 12-team playoff rules are used for participation to estimate the number of teams included in the playoff each year." Again, I think this is conservative based on SEC and B1G dominance. Here are the payouts. Note the dominance of the SEC and the B1G, but also the amount that Notre Dame gets. They are the big fish that is left that would drive a lot of revenue.
Anyone who argues the CFP should stay at 4 teams or only go to 8 teams needs to look at the multiplier effect here and know that it is going to be 12 teams and the money it generates.
In looking at the CFP money, with billion-dollar plus media contracts, you can see that the CFP will equal 25%-45% of those packages and one of the major three rails of CFB economics.
What does this mean regarding expansion?
I can't see anyone reasonably arguing that the SEC didn't get the best of the most recent expansion. Never mind the dysfunction that having teams two thousand miles to the west causes. Never mind that UCLA is basically a throw-in. Never mind the "LA Market" - that's the smallest part of the 3 economic rails for CFB. When it comes to what really counts - eyeballs and CFP - the SEC grabbed the two best properties, with only Notre Dame being more valuable.
What about going forward? It is obvious that markets don't matter as much. What matters is eyeballs and CFP involvement. Below are rankings of the 3 economic rails of CFB - eyeballs, CFP involvement, and markets.
1. Eyeballs - looking at potential expansion candidates for the SEC and the B1G, ranked by 2021 average viewer rankings, this is the list with SEC candidates in bold, B1G candidates underlined, and italicized teams for context(4):
6 Oklahoma — 3.46M
9 Notre Dame — 2.84M
10 Oregon — 2.57M
13 Texas — 2.26M
19 Clemson — 1.74M
22 Oklahoma State — 1.58M
25 Florida State — 1.27M
28 Cincinnati — 1.216M
29 UCLA — 1.18M
32 Southern Cal — 1.11M
35 Miami — 1.038M
36 North Carolina — 1.032M
37 Utah — 994K
38 Washington — 985K
40 West Virginia — 948K
46 Stanford — 778K
47 Arizona State — 739K
49 Boise State — 657K
51 Louisville — 616K
52 Virginia — 611K
54 Pittsburgh — 550K
55 Kansas — 540K
56 Wake Forest — 526K
57 NC State — 525K
59 Washington State — 483K
61 Georgia Tech — 459K
62 Virginia Tech — 447K
64 Colorado — 366K
67 Arizona — 337K
69 Oregon State — 321K
76 California — 222K
77 Syracuse — 219K
84 Boston College — 156K
97 Duke — 64K
- Notre Dame and Oregon are the two big ones here. Notre Dame is also on the list of the top Four Million Club teams, while Oregon isn't.
- Some of the best geographical matches for the SEC are at the top of those available - Clemson, FSU, Oklahoma State, Miami, and UNC.
- Note Dame and Oregon to the B1G makes sense, and the B1G would likely go after UNC, perhaps Miami. Washington and Stanford are in the top 50, but not great values.
- None of the rest are sure-fire winners based on average viewership or the Four Million Club.
2. CFP Involvement - I compiled the following list of schools that would have made a 12-team playoff if there had been a 12-team playoff from 2012-2021. Again, SEC candidates are in bold, and B1G candidates are underlined, and italicized teams for context:
10 Alabama
9 Ohio State
7 Clemson
7 Oklahoma
6 UGA
5 FSU
5 Oregon
5 Notre Dame
4 Florida
4 LSU
4 PSU
4 Stanford
4 Wisconsin
4 Baylor
4 Michigan State
3 Boise State
3 Kansas State
3 TCU
3 UCF
3 Washington
2 Auburn
2 South Carolina
2 Texas A&M
2 USC
2 Cincinnati
2 Oklahoma State
2 Ole Miss
2 Utah
1 Arizona
1 Arkansas
1 Coastal Carolina
1 Colorado
1 Houston
1 Indiana
1 Iowa
1 Iowa State
1 Memphis
1 Miami
1 Miss State
1 Missouri
1 UNC
1 Northern Illinois
1 Western Michigan
1 Pittsburgh
- Once again, some of the best geographical matches for the SEC are at the top of those available - Clemson, FSU, Oklahoma State, with Miami and UNC at least on the list.
- Notre Dame and Oregon are on the list for the B1G, but I think we can somewhat discount Stanford and Washington as having been early in the date range and not as recently relevant.
- Clemson, FSU (even though they have dropped off), Notre Dame, and Oklahoma State are the most attractive here.
3. Market - while it doesn't matter as much, it does matter some. Looking at the top 100 Media Markets in the US(5) with SEC candidates in bold, B1G candidates underlined, and italicized teams for context:
2 Los Angeles - USC, UCLA
6 San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose - Stanford, Cal
8 Atlanta - GaTech
9 Washington, DC - UVa, VaTech
12 Phoenix - Arizona schools
14 Seattle-Tacoma - Washington
16 Miami-Ft.Lauderdale - Miami
18 Denver - Colorado
22 Portland, OR - Oregon
23 Pittsburgh - Pitt
27 Raleigh-Durham - UNC, NC State, Duke, Wake
31 Kansas City - Kansas
33 Salt Lake City - Utah
34 Cincinnati - Cincy
38 West Palm Beach-Ft. Pierce - Miami
43 Norfolk-Portsmouth-Newport News - UVa, VaTech
45 Oklahoma City - OkSU
46 Greensboro-High Point-Winston-Salem - UNC, NC State, Duke, Wake
49 Austin - UT
50 Louisville - Louisville
58 Richmond-Petersburg - UVa, VaTech
61 Tulsa - OkSU
65 Charleston-Huntington - WVU
67 Roanoke-Lynchburg - UVa, VaTech
68 Tucson - Arizona schools
81 Syracuse - Syracuse
89 South Bend-Elkhart - Notre Dame
92 Tri-Cities, TN-NC-VA - UVa, VaTech
- The PAC schools to the B1G get a boost here with the 2nd, 6th, 14th, and 22nd largest markets.
- Miami and the North Carolina schools get the next best of the markets with Miami at 16th and 38th, and the NC schools at 27th and 46th.
- I am discounting the Virginia schools because I believe the north Virginia markets are more of a melting pot or lean Maryland, and not UVa or VaTech.
What are the SEC and B1G going to do? With the ACC Grant of Rights (GOR), and the fact that neither the SEC nor the B1G want to be involved in litigation, I think the ACC will be off-limits until 2033-ish. Also, each new team needs to bring in $100 million or more in value and I can't really see that happening with many of the teams available. But let's assume that isn't the case and the ACC can be plundered, and that each new team will bring in revenue to earn their share of the pie, or the long-term outlook of more teams and larger conferences allow the conferences to bring in more money in the future.
I have seen some predictions that the two conferences will expand to 24 teams, with four divisions of 6 teams, and then a conference championship with the top 4 teams. I don't agree.
- Having the 4 division champs play each other causes the same problem we see in the SEC West and the B1G East where you have 2 or more of your better teams in a single division. You want your playoff to be the four best teams. I believe that lesson has been learned already and that's why conferences are moving away from divisions.
- I see the survivor/remnants of the PAC/B12 staying relevant enough, along with the G5 that we aren't ready to go fully to an SEC/B1G-only playoff. A lot of the economic value in expansion is in the CFP and I believe that will preclude conference playoffs leading to a final championship game for now.
- I just don't see 16 teams (8 for each conference) that are valuable enough to get them to 24. Getting to 20 or 22 and not losing per team share value will be hard enough.
If you look at all the 3 rails of CFB economics, I believe that a 20 or 22-team conference is most likely and best.
- I believe that each conference can find 4-6 more teams that would be worth their share of the pie in the long term. It's certainly easier and more likely than finding 8 teams each.
- A 20-team conference allows you to have a 4-5-5-5 format for scheduling, while a 22-team conference allows you to have a 3-6-6-6 format. Both are 9 IC schedules that allow for the traditional year-end OOC rivalries (although some will now be IC games), and other great OOC games that will dramatically increase the Four Million Club. You then get the 3 or 4 permanent rivalries, and then play each of the remaining 15 or 18 teams once every 3 years. That frequency isn't as good as every 2 years but will be necessary with expansion. Between the two, the 20-team format allows you to go to a 4 permanent rival format which is arguably better than 3. For example, UGA could have UF, Auburn, and South Carolina - a popular selection in the 3-6-6 format - but then add Clemson. This would create even more Four Million Club games as you would get Bama v. LSU annually (an annual game that is lost in most 3-6-6 mock schedules), and the OU/TX/ATM group could play annually. Because you are adding 4 more teams to the mix, it would allow them to be injected into logical rivalry groups without losing any of the rivalries that exist in the 3 rivalry format. It's really hard to justify the economics of adding 8 teams while adding 4 or 6 is likely doable and greatly increases premier game inventory.
I am torn between the two. I like the flexibility that the 4 permanent rivalry format provides. And I am not confident the economics are there for finding 6 more teams. The SEC is more likely able to do it than the B1G. But getting down to just 4 more teams leaves out some teams that would be logically good fits for the SEC. With that in mind, let's take a crack at the teams that each conference may choose:
SEC: will stay within their existing footprint, or states contiguous thereto.
22 Teams:
Clemson
FSU
Miami
UNC
Oklahoma State
One of Lousiville, Duke, UVa, or Kansas (that's my order of preference)
20 Teams:
Clemson
FSU
Miami
UNC
First team out: Oklahoma State
B1G: will have to create a west division for travel and non-football sports, but will also go after some of the ACC schools.
22 Teams:
Notre Dame
Oregon
Washington
Stanford
Cal or Colorado
UNC
One of Duke, UVa, Miami, or Kansas
20 Teams:
Notre Dame
Oregon
Washington
UNC
A lot of what constrains the B1G is the fact they have already committed to the west, and the fact that they have an academic profile they don't seem to want to waiver on - AAU schools that bring in big research dollars. That really "means more" to the B1G. If the B1G doesn't want to go out west more, then there is going to be a heck of a fight over the ACC teams like UNC, Miami, and UVa.
If this works out this way, the SEC will move ahead of the B1G by a decent but not daunting margin. The B1G will be fine with that as they count their research dollars.
References:
(1) An article that explains this and gives some monetary numbers for the LA market: https://awfulannouncing.com/ncaa/adding-usc-and-ucla-could-be-huge-for-big-ten-network.html
(2) https://theathletic.com/2772414/202...d-pac-12-its-all-about-tvs-four-million-club/
(3) https://athleticdirectoru.com/artic...n-expanded-college-football-playoff-generate/
(4)
(5) https://www.stationindex.com/tv/tv-markets
The USC/UCLA move to the B1G has set off all sorts of social media speculation as to who is next. It's complicated by the ACC Grant of Rights (GOR), the idea of expanding outside the conference footprint (sometimes by thousands of miles), and wondering if any of the eligible candidates can actually contribute enough to the conference revenue pie to justify their equal piece. When looking at college football economics, there are three things to look at that drive the value of a potential member - the basic cable market, average TV viewers ("eyeballs"), and the College Football Playoffs (CFP). Let's take a look at these 'Three Rails" of college football economics - Markets, Eyeballs, and CFP:
1. Markets. "Market" was all the rage in the 2007-2014 timeframe when the B1G channel was launched, followed by the SEC and others. Basically, the economics at the time was that if you could get your conference channel included in the basic cable package you got paid a "per-subscriber" fee whether someone watched the channel or not. If the SECN was available in a market where there was an SEC team, the SEC received an "in-footprint" subscriber fee that was greater than the "out-of-footprint" fee received where there wasn't an SEC team. This is why the SEC grabbed Mizzou in 2012 and the B1G grabbed Rutgers in 2014. Expanding the basic cable market in general, and having in-footprint fees more specifically was the goal. The Rutgers acquisition was the gold standard for this type of move when the BTN became "in-footprint" for not only New Jersey but also the entire state of New York.
The problem with this rail of CFB economics is that the market is dramatically shrinking, and geography isn't as important in an ever-growing streaming world. The following are estimates, but fairly accurate. Around 2014 there were about 90 million households with basic cable. By 2027 that number is estimated to be around 40 million - basically more than a 50% reduction in subscribers meaning far less revenue from this economic rail. Cord cutters who don't want basic cable have gone to streaming content like NetFlix and Prime. Those that still want a full line-up of channels can get the streaming equivalent of cable through YouTube TV, Hulu, Sling TV, Fubu, and the like. While the major conference networks are available on those platforms, they aren't geographically restricted. A conference doesn't have to have a team in Los Angeles to get a subscriber fee from ESPN or Fox through YouTube TV. This is why the "LA market" isn't as important to the USC/UCLA move as the other two rails. There is still money to be made, but as detailed in the article below(1) it could be as little as $20 million per year for the LA market which is almost a rounding error in a media package of more than a billion dollars.
With far fewer subscribers and being able to get a fee without being in a particular geographic area, thinking that market component is a big deal is so 2012-ish.
2. Eyeballs. TV viewership is where the big money is right now. How many people watch your games? How many premier matchups of greater than 4 million sets of eyeballs can you get? The idea of the Four Million Club (FMC) was first posited by Andy Staples of The Athletic(2):
What’s the Four Million Club? It’s the group of football games that draw more than four million viewers.
These are the games networks are willing to pay premium prices for, and they’re also the type of games the SEC’s addition of Oklahoma and Texas will add to that league’s inventory. In conversations with television executives and consultants, conference officials and athletic directors, it has become clear that the hunt for premium television product will drive this round of realignment (or, in the case of the alliance, rearranging). So I asked a trusted source who has been involved with many television contracts what audience qualified as meter-moving in this ever-splintering environment, and that source drew the cutline at four million. (emphasis mine)
It makes sense then that the networks are looking for the matchups that will drive the most eyeballs. Looking at data from 2015-2019, here are some of Staple's observations:
Those five seasons featured 1,593 rated telecasts and dozens more on the ACC Network, Big Ten Network, Pac-12 Network and SEC Network, which weren’t measured for audience size.
Of those, 198 telecasts made it into the Four Million Club. The audience size ranges from massive (16,841,000 for the 2016 Michigan-Ohio State game) to just above the cutline (4,010,000 for the 2015 Louisville-Auburn game). And the conference distribution of the games is quite telling.
- 58 games between either independents or teams from different conferences (including all five Army-Navy games played during that period)
- 55 SEC-only games
- 49 Big Ten-only games
- 13 ACC-only games
- 12 Big 12-only games
- Five Pac-12-only games
- One American Athletic Conference-only game (2017 South Florida at UCF)
35 Alabama
31 Ohio State
26 Michigan
17 Auburn
17 Notre Dame
16 Florida
16 LSU
15 Clemson
15 Georgia
14 Oklahoma
13 Tennessee
12 Penn State
11 Michigan State
10 Texas A&M
This explains why the SEC accepted OU and UT. Almost all games that include any of the top SEC teams and OU/UT will be in the Four Million Club. This also explains the scheduling moving to 9 Intra-conference (IC) games. Instead of teams playing each team every 6 years, with a 3-6-6 scheduling format (3 permanent rivals, 6 of the other 12 teams every other year), the top teams will play each other annually, or at least every other year. This greatly increases the number of Four Million Club games to at least four times the number of such games prior to the acquisition of OU/TX and the expansion to 9 IC games. The quick napkin math for this is that we now average about 12 of these per year with SEC teams only (there are more with Out of Conference games - OOC). The 8 SEC teams on the list above will now play 3 times more frequently. When you add TX and OU that results in approximately 10 more FMC games per year. That comes close to quadrupling the number of FMC games to almost 4 per week instead of 1 per week.
This is also why the B1G went after USC and to a lesser degree UCLA. While neither of those teams appears on the list above, games like UM v. USC, tOSU v. USC, and PSU v. USC will likely add to the FMC inventory. That said, I believe it also shows why the SEC got the better end of expansion - the new SEC has 8 teams on the most Four Million Club games list, while the B1G only has 4. And neither new team is on the list while OU is and if Texas should be in the future. OU will drive more eyeballs than USC, and UT will likely drive more eyeballs than UCLA, their poor performance over the last decade notwithstanding.
These numbers provide guidance as to who the SEC and the B1G will want to expand with going forward. If they don't draw eyeballs to the TV screen, they aren't attractive. With the "Market" rail shrinking, even a great market like LA won't make up for the lack of having high average viewership numbers.
3. CFP - the College Football Playoff. The third economic rail is the CFP. For the purpose of this section, I am going to assume that CFB will go to a 12-team playoff which means we go from 3 games (2+1) to 11 games (4+4+2+1). That means we will have almost quadruple the number of CFP games. Fortunately, Navigate has done all the math for us,(3) and even if these numbers are not totally accurate, they are close enough to illustrate how this rail will drive expansion:
- The current CFP payout for NY6 bowl games – including the 3 CFP games – pays all conferences $670M per year.
- The new CFP payout for 11 playoff games that also take over all NY6 game relationships in a 12-team playoff pays all conferences $1.9B per year
Navigate notes that "the current model pays 63% of payout to base payments to conferences and the remaining 37% goes towards conferences in NY6 bowls and playoff games" and they assume the same will apply in the new CFP model. To me, that is a conservative assumption because the SEC and the B1G now run college football. If anything, the payouts might be skewed more to the schools in the NY6 bowls and playoff games which will mostly be SEC and B1G schools.
To allocate the non-base payouts, Navigate "looked back at the last 10 years of college football performance and assumed the new proposed 12-team playoff rules are used for participation to estimate the number of teams included in the playoff each year." Again, I think this is conservative based on SEC and B1G dominance. Here are the payouts. Note the dominance of the SEC and the B1G, but also the amount that Notre Dame gets. They are the big fish that is left that would drive a lot of revenue.
Anyone who argues the CFP should stay at 4 teams or only go to 8 teams needs to look at the multiplier effect here and know that it is going to be 12 teams and the money it generates.
In looking at the CFP money, with billion-dollar plus media contracts, you can see that the CFP will equal 25%-45% of those packages and one of the major three rails of CFB economics.
What does this mean regarding expansion?
I can't see anyone reasonably arguing that the SEC didn't get the best of the most recent expansion. Never mind the dysfunction that having teams two thousand miles to the west causes. Never mind that UCLA is basically a throw-in. Never mind the "LA Market" - that's the smallest part of the 3 economic rails for CFB. When it comes to what really counts - eyeballs and CFP - the SEC grabbed the two best properties, with only Notre Dame being more valuable.
What about going forward? It is obvious that markets don't matter as much. What matters is eyeballs and CFP involvement. Below are rankings of the 3 economic rails of CFB - eyeballs, CFP involvement, and markets.
1. Eyeballs - looking at potential expansion candidates for the SEC and the B1G, ranked by 2021 average viewer rankings, this is the list with SEC candidates in bold, B1G candidates underlined, and italicized teams for context(4):
6 Oklahoma — 3.46M
9 Notre Dame — 2.84M
10 Oregon — 2.57M
13 Texas — 2.26M
19 Clemson — 1.74M
22 Oklahoma State — 1.58M
25 Florida State — 1.27M
28 Cincinnati — 1.216M
29 UCLA — 1.18M
32 Southern Cal — 1.11M
35 Miami — 1.038M
36 North Carolina — 1.032M
37 Utah — 994K
38 Washington — 985K
40 West Virginia — 948K
46 Stanford — 778K
47 Arizona State — 739K
49 Boise State — 657K
51 Louisville — 616K
52 Virginia — 611K
54 Pittsburgh — 550K
55 Kansas — 540K
56 Wake Forest — 526K
57 NC State — 525K
59 Washington State — 483K
61 Georgia Tech — 459K
62 Virginia Tech — 447K
64 Colorado — 366K
67 Arizona — 337K
69 Oregon State — 321K
76 California — 222K
77 Syracuse — 219K
84 Boston College — 156K
97 Duke — 64K
- Notre Dame and Oregon are the two big ones here. Notre Dame is also on the list of the top Four Million Club teams, while Oregon isn't.
- Some of the best geographical matches for the SEC are at the top of those available - Clemson, FSU, Oklahoma State, Miami, and UNC.
- Note Dame and Oregon to the B1G makes sense, and the B1G would likely go after UNC, perhaps Miami. Washington and Stanford are in the top 50, but not great values.
- None of the rest are sure-fire winners based on average viewership or the Four Million Club.
2. CFP Involvement - I compiled the following list of schools that would have made a 12-team playoff if there had been a 12-team playoff from 2012-2021. Again, SEC candidates are in bold, and B1G candidates are underlined, and italicized teams for context:
10 Alabama
9 Ohio State
7 Clemson
7 Oklahoma
6 UGA
5 FSU
5 Oregon
5 Notre Dame
4 Florida
4 LSU
4 PSU
4 Stanford
4 Wisconsin
4 Baylor
4 Michigan State
3 Boise State
3 Kansas State
3 TCU
3 UCF
3 Washington
2 Auburn
2 South Carolina
2 Texas A&M
2 USC
2 Cincinnati
2 Oklahoma State
2 Ole Miss
2 Utah
1 Arizona
1 Arkansas
1 Coastal Carolina
1 Colorado
1 Houston
1 Indiana
1 Iowa
1 Iowa State
1 Memphis
1 Miami
1 Miss State
1 Missouri
1 UNC
1 Northern Illinois
1 Western Michigan
1 Pittsburgh
- Once again, some of the best geographical matches for the SEC are at the top of those available - Clemson, FSU, Oklahoma State, with Miami and UNC at least on the list.
- Notre Dame and Oregon are on the list for the B1G, but I think we can somewhat discount Stanford and Washington as having been early in the date range and not as recently relevant.
- Clemson, FSU (even though they have dropped off), Notre Dame, and Oklahoma State are the most attractive here.
3. Market - while it doesn't matter as much, it does matter some. Looking at the top 100 Media Markets in the US(5) with SEC candidates in bold, B1G candidates underlined, and italicized teams for context:
2 Los Angeles - USC, UCLA
6 San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose - Stanford, Cal
8 Atlanta - GaTech
9 Washington, DC - UVa, VaTech
12 Phoenix - Arizona schools
14 Seattle-Tacoma - Washington
16 Miami-Ft.Lauderdale - Miami
18 Denver - Colorado
22 Portland, OR - Oregon
23 Pittsburgh - Pitt
27 Raleigh-Durham - UNC, NC State, Duke, Wake
31 Kansas City - Kansas
33 Salt Lake City - Utah
34 Cincinnati - Cincy
38 West Palm Beach-Ft. Pierce - Miami
43 Norfolk-Portsmouth-Newport News - UVa, VaTech
45 Oklahoma City - OkSU
46 Greensboro-High Point-Winston-Salem - UNC, NC State, Duke, Wake
49 Austin - UT
50 Louisville - Louisville
58 Richmond-Petersburg - UVa, VaTech
61 Tulsa - OkSU
65 Charleston-Huntington - WVU
67 Roanoke-Lynchburg - UVa, VaTech
68 Tucson - Arizona schools
81 Syracuse - Syracuse
89 South Bend-Elkhart - Notre Dame
92 Tri-Cities, TN-NC-VA - UVa, VaTech
- The PAC schools to the B1G get a boost here with the 2nd, 6th, 14th, and 22nd largest markets.
- Miami and the North Carolina schools get the next best of the markets with Miami at 16th and 38th, and the NC schools at 27th and 46th.
- I am discounting the Virginia schools because I believe the north Virginia markets are more of a melting pot or lean Maryland, and not UVa or VaTech.
What are the SEC and B1G going to do? With the ACC Grant of Rights (GOR), and the fact that neither the SEC nor the B1G want to be involved in litigation, I think the ACC will be off-limits until 2033-ish. Also, each new team needs to bring in $100 million or more in value and I can't really see that happening with many of the teams available. But let's assume that isn't the case and the ACC can be plundered, and that each new team will bring in revenue to earn their share of the pie, or the long-term outlook of more teams and larger conferences allow the conferences to bring in more money in the future.
I have seen some predictions that the two conferences will expand to 24 teams, with four divisions of 6 teams, and then a conference championship with the top 4 teams. I don't agree.
- Having the 4 division champs play each other causes the same problem we see in the SEC West and the B1G East where you have 2 or more of your better teams in a single division. You want your playoff to be the four best teams. I believe that lesson has been learned already and that's why conferences are moving away from divisions.
- I see the survivor/remnants of the PAC/B12 staying relevant enough, along with the G5 that we aren't ready to go fully to an SEC/B1G-only playoff. A lot of the economic value in expansion is in the CFP and I believe that will preclude conference playoffs leading to a final championship game for now.
- I just don't see 16 teams (8 for each conference) that are valuable enough to get them to 24. Getting to 20 or 22 and not losing per team share value will be hard enough.
If you look at all the 3 rails of CFB economics, I believe that a 20 or 22-team conference is most likely and best.
- I believe that each conference can find 4-6 more teams that would be worth their share of the pie in the long term. It's certainly easier and more likely than finding 8 teams each.
- A 20-team conference allows you to have a 4-5-5-5 format for scheduling, while a 22-team conference allows you to have a 3-6-6-6 format. Both are 9 IC schedules that allow for the traditional year-end OOC rivalries (although some will now be IC games), and other great OOC games that will dramatically increase the Four Million Club. You then get the 3 or 4 permanent rivalries, and then play each of the remaining 15 or 18 teams once every 3 years. That frequency isn't as good as every 2 years but will be necessary with expansion. Between the two, the 20-team format allows you to go to a 4 permanent rival format which is arguably better than 3. For example, UGA could have UF, Auburn, and South Carolina - a popular selection in the 3-6-6 format - but then add Clemson. This would create even more Four Million Club games as you would get Bama v. LSU annually (an annual game that is lost in most 3-6-6 mock schedules), and the OU/TX/ATM group could play annually. Because you are adding 4 more teams to the mix, it would allow them to be injected into logical rivalry groups without losing any of the rivalries that exist in the 3 rivalry format. It's really hard to justify the economics of adding 8 teams while adding 4 or 6 is likely doable and greatly increases premier game inventory.
I am torn between the two. I like the flexibility that the 4 permanent rivalry format provides. And I am not confident the economics are there for finding 6 more teams. The SEC is more likely able to do it than the B1G. But getting down to just 4 more teams leaves out some teams that would be logically good fits for the SEC. With that in mind, let's take a crack at the teams that each conference may choose:
SEC: will stay within their existing footprint, or states contiguous thereto.
22 Teams:
Clemson
FSU
Miami
UNC
Oklahoma State
One of Lousiville, Duke, UVa, or Kansas (that's my order of preference)
20 Teams:
Clemson
FSU
Miami
UNC
First team out: Oklahoma State
B1G: will have to create a west division for travel and non-football sports, but will also go after some of the ACC schools.
22 Teams:
Notre Dame
Oregon
Washington
Stanford
Cal or Colorado
UNC
One of Duke, UVa, Miami, or Kansas
20 Teams:
Notre Dame
Oregon
Washington
UNC
A lot of what constrains the B1G is the fact they have already committed to the west, and the fact that they have an academic profile they don't seem to want to waiver on - AAU schools that bring in big research dollars. That really "means more" to the B1G. If the B1G doesn't want to go out west more, then there is going to be a heck of a fight over the ACC teams like UNC, Miami, and UVa.
If this works out this way, the SEC will move ahead of the B1G by a decent but not daunting margin. The B1G will be fine with that as they count their research dollars.
References:
(1) An article that explains this and gives some monetary numbers for the LA market: https://awfulannouncing.com/ncaa/adding-usc-and-ucla-could-be-huge-for-big-ten-network.html
(2) https://theathletic.com/2772414/202...d-pac-12-its-all-about-tvs-four-million-club/
(3) https://athleticdirectoru.com/artic...n-expanded-college-football-playoff-generate/
(4)
(5) https://www.stationindex.com/tv/tv-markets
