nelsonmuntz
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Everyone is focused on TV contracts and the consolidation of the P2 over time. I expect one or more of these things to happen in the next 5 years:
1) Gambling scandal - This is almost certainly going to happen. It is too easy to get to the players and gamblers are all over sports for it not to happen, and when it happens, it will be in big games because those games have enough action to hide suspicious betting. There were already some odd looking NCAA Tournament games, and football is easier to fix than basketball because there are less scoring events. A safety "missing" one assignment late in the 4th quarter that results in a touchdown would make a big difference in a 24-20 game where one team is a 6 point favorite. That a scandal will occur is easy to predict. College sports' reaction is much more difficult.
2) The final death throes of the bundled cable model - Iger, who is one of the Top 10 CEOS of the 21st century so far, has gotten DIS way up since the beginning of the year, in part because the market thinks ESPN's DTC Streaming model is going to be a hit. It might be, or it might not, but no matter how successful it is, it will be a very different product than ESPN's linear business. A DTC Streaming business needs a broad spectrum of content. Alabama/LSU will still get good numbers, but nothing like it used to without the best time slots on cable, and one game does not drive the number of subscriptions that ESPN needs to get to make a DTC model work. We already have a lot of data on this through the existing content streamers, where content has fragmented to viewer tastes. This changes what streamers are willing to pay for, and how much they will pay for it.
2.A) I don't see how ESPN does not migrate to a performance-based payment model eventually, where schools are paid based on subscriptions they bring, not based on their conference affiliation. The Apple offer to the Pac 12 is what TV deals are going to look like in the future. This will have an impact on conference composition.
2.B) Games are the Product, not the Teams - I think there will be a major re-evaluation of the Frankenconferences that have been formed with unrelated, far flung teams that casual fans do not care about. I would not be surprised if the conferences re-evaluated scheduling to focus on getting games fans want rather than random games in the name of "competition". 90% of the teams in the major conferences are not playing for a national championship, so getting games fans of those teams want is a priority to keep them engaged.
3) Litigation - this is a catch all, but historically litigation has driven most major changes in college athletics, most recently the Alston case. The problem for college sports is that the plaintiff almost always wins. I can not think of the last serious anti-trust lawsuit against college sports that was not successful. The FSU/Clemson cases are the next canaries in the coal mine, but there will be more. Until now, schools were reluctant to sue each other. The Big East lawsuit from 2002 did garner negative publicity for the plaintiffs, even if it was successful in keeping the Big East's BCS bid for 10 more years. Now, schools are hurling lawsuits at each other as if the publicity doesn't matter, because it doesn't.
This increased willingness to sue by schools is bad news for the P2 and good news for everyone else. I think we are within 5 years of the first anti-trust lawsuit where one or more G5 or left-behind P5 schools sue the P-Whatever for anti-trust violations, and the plaintiffs are almost certainly going to win. The only way I see this not happening is the P2 paying more money to and sharing more access with the other D1 schools.
3.A) Not so much litigation, as college sports needs some kind of legal framework to operate, because right now it has none, and is a lawsuit away from players being able to switch teams at halftime. College sports is pleading for Congress to step in, and I don't see another way to fix this problem. This issue is too big and amorphous to predict exactly how it will work, so let's just assume it will work itself out somehow.
4) The P2 Breaks Away - Despite the fact that it will almost certainly lose an anti-trust case if it does this, it is possible that the P2 still breaks away because large incumbents blowing up a good thing by making reckless cash grabs has happened in business since the Phoenicians.
5) FSU/Clemson - This could break up the ACC, and whatever happens is certain to generate more litigation, including (ironically) a tortious interference lawsuit by the ACC against whatever league FSU and Clemson try to join. The weird thing about this lawsuit is that it feels like the parties are fighting over FSU's and Clemson's desire for a bigger share of the linear cable revenue stream that is ending soon anyway. I also feel like the existing ACC contract could look pretty good in 5 years. This is one of the weirder litigations I have ever paid attention to.
6) Demographic Cliff and College Attendance - Higher education is in the first inning of a seismic change that could wipe out 20-30% or more of universities in the next decade or two. This is a huge issue and is happening a lot faster than most educational experts expected. This issue is so massive and complex that it is hard to address on a sports message board, and some posters make it political and I don't want to get this thread locked. Let's just put a pin in this and say it is a massive issue.
6.A) Prestige Universities - One area that is worth addressing is that there are several schools who do not get as much out of affiliating with what is becoming a minor league as other schools do. While I am sure they like the checks, Northwestern and Vanderbilt derive very little value in terms of student interest from their athletic programs getting stomped by pro teams. They did not try to compete in the pre-NIL/Transfer Portal world, and they certainly are not going to bid up to bring in the caliber of free agents necessary to win against Michigan or Alabama. These schools can afford to compete, they just don't want to because that is not how they generate their real money, which is alumni donations.
I was surprised that Cal and Stanford did not take the lead on this, but we may need one or two of the other shocks to the system to happen first before the prestige universities break off to form their own league. I think Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Duke, Cal, Georgia Tech, Wake Forest, Stanford, Miami, Rice, Tulane, Boston College and maybe some wildcard like the University of Chicago could form a league of likeminded schools. It would still be possible to compete nationally in basketball out of a league like that, but those teams wouldn't have to take the poundings in football, and their alumni would LOVE it. Notre Dame would commit felonies to get its hoop programs and Olympic sports into that league. I think this league would probably turn away 20+ applicants. I am a little surprised it has not happened yet.
This is related to #6 above in that these schools spend millions on branding themselves as exclusive, premier educational institutions, and playing Mississippi State or even Florida State on Saturdays does not help with that branding at all.
1) Gambling scandal - This is almost certainly going to happen. It is too easy to get to the players and gamblers are all over sports for it not to happen, and when it happens, it will be in big games because those games have enough action to hide suspicious betting. There were already some odd looking NCAA Tournament games, and football is easier to fix than basketball because there are less scoring events. A safety "missing" one assignment late in the 4th quarter that results in a touchdown would make a big difference in a 24-20 game where one team is a 6 point favorite. That a scandal will occur is easy to predict. College sports' reaction is much more difficult.
2) The final death throes of the bundled cable model - Iger, who is one of the Top 10 CEOS of the 21st century so far, has gotten DIS way up since the beginning of the year, in part because the market thinks ESPN's DTC Streaming model is going to be a hit. It might be, or it might not, but no matter how successful it is, it will be a very different product than ESPN's linear business. A DTC Streaming business needs a broad spectrum of content. Alabama/LSU will still get good numbers, but nothing like it used to without the best time slots on cable, and one game does not drive the number of subscriptions that ESPN needs to get to make a DTC model work. We already have a lot of data on this through the existing content streamers, where content has fragmented to viewer tastes. This changes what streamers are willing to pay for, and how much they will pay for it.
2.A) I don't see how ESPN does not migrate to a performance-based payment model eventually, where schools are paid based on subscriptions they bring, not based on their conference affiliation. The Apple offer to the Pac 12 is what TV deals are going to look like in the future. This will have an impact on conference composition.
2.B) Games are the Product, not the Teams - I think there will be a major re-evaluation of the Frankenconferences that have been formed with unrelated, far flung teams that casual fans do not care about. I would not be surprised if the conferences re-evaluated scheduling to focus on getting games fans want rather than random games in the name of "competition". 90% of the teams in the major conferences are not playing for a national championship, so getting games fans of those teams want is a priority to keep them engaged.
3) Litigation - this is a catch all, but historically litigation has driven most major changes in college athletics, most recently the Alston case. The problem for college sports is that the plaintiff almost always wins. I can not think of the last serious anti-trust lawsuit against college sports that was not successful. The FSU/Clemson cases are the next canaries in the coal mine, but there will be more. Until now, schools were reluctant to sue each other. The Big East lawsuit from 2002 did garner negative publicity for the plaintiffs, even if it was successful in keeping the Big East's BCS bid for 10 more years. Now, schools are hurling lawsuits at each other as if the publicity doesn't matter, because it doesn't.
This increased willingness to sue by schools is bad news for the P2 and good news for everyone else. I think we are within 5 years of the first anti-trust lawsuit where one or more G5 or left-behind P5 schools sue the P-Whatever for anti-trust violations, and the plaintiffs are almost certainly going to win. The only way I see this not happening is the P2 paying more money to and sharing more access with the other D1 schools.
3.A) Not so much litigation, as college sports needs some kind of legal framework to operate, because right now it has none, and is a lawsuit away from players being able to switch teams at halftime. College sports is pleading for Congress to step in, and I don't see another way to fix this problem. This issue is too big and amorphous to predict exactly how it will work, so let's just assume it will work itself out somehow.
4) The P2 Breaks Away - Despite the fact that it will almost certainly lose an anti-trust case if it does this, it is possible that the P2 still breaks away because large incumbents blowing up a good thing by making reckless cash grabs has happened in business since the Phoenicians.
5) FSU/Clemson - This could break up the ACC, and whatever happens is certain to generate more litigation, including (ironically) a tortious interference lawsuit by the ACC against whatever league FSU and Clemson try to join. The weird thing about this lawsuit is that it feels like the parties are fighting over FSU's and Clemson's desire for a bigger share of the linear cable revenue stream that is ending soon anyway. I also feel like the existing ACC contract could look pretty good in 5 years. This is one of the weirder litigations I have ever paid attention to.
6) Demographic Cliff and College Attendance - Higher education is in the first inning of a seismic change that could wipe out 20-30% or more of universities in the next decade or two. This is a huge issue and is happening a lot faster than most educational experts expected. This issue is so massive and complex that it is hard to address on a sports message board, and some posters make it political and I don't want to get this thread locked. Let's just put a pin in this and say it is a massive issue.
6.A) Prestige Universities - One area that is worth addressing is that there are several schools who do not get as much out of affiliating with what is becoming a minor league as other schools do. While I am sure they like the checks, Northwestern and Vanderbilt derive very little value in terms of student interest from their athletic programs getting stomped by pro teams. They did not try to compete in the pre-NIL/Transfer Portal world, and they certainly are not going to bid up to bring in the caliber of free agents necessary to win against Michigan or Alabama. These schools can afford to compete, they just don't want to because that is not how they generate their real money, which is alumni donations.
I was surprised that Cal and Stanford did not take the lead on this, but we may need one or two of the other shocks to the system to happen first before the prestige universities break off to form their own league. I think Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Duke, Cal, Georgia Tech, Wake Forest, Stanford, Miami, Rice, Tulane, Boston College and maybe some wildcard like the University of Chicago could form a league of likeminded schools. It would still be possible to compete nationally in basketball out of a league like that, but those teams wouldn't have to take the poundings in football, and their alumni would LOVE it. Notre Dame would commit felonies to get its hoop programs and Olympic sports into that league. I think this league would probably turn away 20+ applicants. I am a little surprised it has not happened yet.
This is related to #6 above in that these schools spend millions on branding themselves as exclusive, premier educational institutions, and playing Mississippi State or even Florida State on Saturdays does not help with that branding at all.
