quote:
If I am not mistaken, the Big 12 grant of rights is good until 2025. That means any program that leaves the Big 12 before then loses all media rights and I can't see any program walking away from that unless they can get out of it.

Agreed. I don't know how many schools have to vote to dissolve the G-of-R, but I assume it's at least a majority. That means unless at least three of Baylor, Texas Tech, TCU, Iowa State, Kansas State, WVU and Oklahoma State get safe and secure landing spots, there won't be a majority voting to get rid of it. Oklahoma, Texas and maybe Kansas would likely be OK with getting rid of it because they would probably think they have a good shot of getting into a better or at least equal situation. Maybe in a longshot, OSU could ride OU's coattails into a good spot, K-State could try to do the same with KU, and WVU could maybe try to find a way into the ACC, Big Ten or SEC, but that's about the only hope of getting a majority to agree to dissolve the grant-of-rights, which would be tantamount to dissolving the conference.

It's a huge mess, and losing the Big XII would not only be bad for the member schools, but would also hurt college football. One of the great things about CFB compared to the NFL is the large number of schools from all over the country. The sport benefits from having major football powers spread out among several conferences. It's in danger of being down to four power conferences which contain all of the big-time programs. In the long run, I don't think that will be good for college football. The huge and ever-growing gap between the haves and the have-nots may cause a problem when there aren't enough haves to sustain national interest.

It's a pipe dream, I know, but I really think it would be good if the whole FBS simply agreed to redistribute all 128 teams among eight 16-team conferences with two divisions each, with each division winner advancing to a conference championship and each conference champion advancing to an eight-team playoff. This would help eliminate all the subjective factors influencing playoff selection. Schools could play seven divisional games that would be the only ones that would count toward the standings for CCG and playoff purposes. There could be a lot of great non-conference/division scheduling because teams wouldn't have to worry about non-division losses hurting their playoff chances. Keeping an eye toward maintaining competitive balance with the distribution of schools among conferences and divisions, along with equal sharing of media and bowl/playoff revenues among all of them, might maintain enough nationwide interest and parity to keep the sport thriving everywhere for a long time. They could even introduce a promotion/relegation system with FCS to keep things interesting for all the programs regardless of status.

Again, yes, I know it would never happen, but I think it would be better than the current system. In addition, there's a strong chance that the sport would make more money overall and everybody, including the players, coaches, schools, networks, bowls (as part of the playoff system or even just as exhibitions like they are now) and certainly the fans, would come out winners.

This post was edited on 6/8/17 at 4:53 pm