(shout to Chris for the pic)
While you’ve been searching for conference realignment hope in the bowels of message boards and attempting to discern the authenticity of photoshopped tweets, the A Dime Back staff has been grinding, preparing this mailbag to pull you back from the brink of insanity.
Remember: If your question wasn’t answered or you’ve been living under a rock and are just hearing about this, you can submit your questions here or on Twitter (@ADimeBack).
Dan asks: what’s your best argument for convincing basketball fans to go to a football game?
Well, for starters, you can buy beer, which you cannot do at Gampel. There are lots of food and beverage options; Bear’s Smokehouse is there, and also a host of food trucks. And, in all seriousness, the football itself has gotten a lot more fun to watch. On a beautiful fall day I can’t think of many better things to do than hang out with some friends, eating, drinking and watching football outside.
The tailgate experience at the Rent is really, really fun. So fun, in fact, that we’re introducing a new feature here at ADB.
[insert alert siren emoji]
As a season ticket holder, I’ll be at the games enjoying myself anyway. It seems only right to add video to the proceedings. I’ll be doing A Parking Lot Report (or whatever we decide to call it when we come up with a not-terrible name), where I may or may not be crashing people’s tailgates. I’ll be the one in the Derpy Jonathan T-shirt. So if you’re there, you might get to hang out and drink with me. I will probably eat your food and judge it. But it will be fun, and maybe you’ll get to be on the Internet! If you’d like a visit from me, hit me up on Twitter or at meghan@adimeback.com.
Husky Army asks: Build your 14 team dream conference.
All I’m asked to do is build a 14-team conference. There’s nothing in here saying it needs to be realistic or based in any reality whatsoever. So here’s the scenario I’m going with: there are 351 Division I schools and they are all independent. I’m assembling a conference consisting of any 14 teams I want. In order to create a stable conference, schools should meet as many of these criteria as possible:
– Being good at sports (exception: Rutgers)
– $$$$ potential. This means big markets, football, large fanbases
– Provide quality fall, winter and spring content for a network
– Rivalry potential. Ties in with geography and like-minded institutions with large fanbases (again).
– Strong academics. (100% to exclude Memphis, we’ll let some of the others slide.)
Boston College
Cincinnati
Connecticut
Kentucky
Louisville
Maryland
Notre Dame
Penn State
Pittsburgh
Rutgers
Syracuse
Temple
Virginia
West Virginia
For football, they split into the following divisions:
Russ Division: Boston College, Cincinnati, Connecticut, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Temple, West Virginia
Steinberg Division: Kentucky, Louisville, Maryland, Notre Dame, Penn State, Rutgers, Virginia
I’d be willing to add Villanova and Georgetown as associate members as well, but they have to take a lot less money and I’ll find other ways to humiliate them for not playing FBS football.
Storrs South asks: since NCAA is a disaster, how would you restructure the college athletics landscape & what would you call the new organization?
You say disaster, I say corrupt criminal enterprise but that’s probably just semantics. My first priority in any college sports reform effort is to improve the position of the players. The NCAA is the only big time sports organization in the country where the players have no voice in its rules, management or revenue distribution. College sports will remain fundamentally broken until the athletes get representation and a seat at the table. Here’s a piece we did way back in 2013 with some suggestions to that end.
Beyond that, the current power structure of conferences has essentially neutered the NCAA. The Power Five now controls most of the money, most of the media and even a substantial portion of the rule-making responsibilities. I’m not sure the NCAA needs to exist at all anymore — and it certainly doesn’t deserve to exist as a tax-exempt entity. I say blow the whole damn thing up. Let the schools or conferences form new divisions based on their values (some schools still value education, believe it or not), and negotiate as larger blocks for media rights, and for the benefits of their respective players.
College sports would fundamentally transform, and officially and permanently cement divisions between the haves and have-nots. It’s radical. But it would eliminate the insulting pretense that college sports is a universally benevolent endeavor committed to education above all else. And to answer your inevitable concern, all of the things you care about — the NCAA Tournament, bowl games, established rivalries — would survive for the same reason everything else is now broken: money.
BONUS MAILBAG! This comes from Rob via email. It’s not a question but it would be irresponsible of us to not publish it.
Comment: I’ve called the Dairy Bar again this year to get them to supply me large amounts of ice cream to sell at a popup in NYC from June-August. They said there isn’t enough to go around. I’m calling BS – we’ve seen those cows standing around and they never look very busy. Lets stop clowning around and get those cows a milkin. 6th Borough Assimilation begins on a full stomach – Work with me people!
Menu Extras:
** ConFLict Crunch will be, like the stadium, SOLD OUT
** You can order Sherbet..but, as usual, only Orange gets served
** Its free if you can eat a dozen scoops: we’ll call it the Big12 Challenge
