Five Wide Fullbacks returns this month of August as football is almost around the corner. Today, we’ll discuss Georgia quarterback’s new haircut, giving someone a new stadium, the best rivalries in college football, a new NBC deal for Notre Dame, and Vegas over/unders for the Fighting Irish opponents.
1) What are the current top 5 best rivalries in college football?
So, I think the top 4 are all locked in for most fans, at least they should be. It’s just a matter of where you’re placing those 4 rivalries in order, especially if you’re putting weight on recent results. I’d go like this:
#4 Ohio State vs. Michigan – Way too lopsided in recent memory, despite last year, for this to be higher.
#3 Army vs. Navy – Nearly 10 million were watching the ending of the 2021 game and it’s been a lot more fun recently as Army has become more competitive.
#2 Oklahoma vs. Texas – The state fair, the early time slot, the divided stadium. This one brings us some bonkers games, too.
#1 Alabama vs. Auburn – The Iron Bowl is arguably too lopsided to be number one (Alabama has won 10 out of the last 14 with 6 comfortable wins included) but this rivalry has brought us some of the most watchable content in recent memory.
Which rivalry is #5, though??
USC-Notre Dame, Florida-Georgia, Florida-Florida State, BYU-Utah, and Ole Miss-Miss State would be the contenders for that spot in my view. If we are going to base things on competitiveness because the other 4 series have seen long stretches without that in recent years, I think you have to put the Egg Bowl in the 5th spot.
2) From your perspective, which Power 5 programs have the worst stadiums and if you could give a school a new one which would it be?
Duke has a very small and bland stadium. There are a few in the Midwest like TCU, Kansas, and Texas Tech that don’t have many redeeming features. Maybe you could throw Oregon State and Washington State in there from the Pac-12, too. In the SEC I can’t remember ever hearing anyone say anything interesting about Kentucky or Vanderbilt’s stadiums.
The old Pitt Stadium.
However, my answer out of the kindness of my heart would be for Pitt to get a brand new stadium. It’s never felt right for them to be sharing a NFL stadium (first at Three Rivers and now the newly re-named Acrisure Stadium) with the Steelers. Their old Pitt Stadium had a lot of character and always felt much more in line with the vision of their program.
Building their own new state-of-the-art stadium would breathe so much life into that program.
3) Georgia quarterback Stetson Bennett came to fall camp with a new haircut, what does it mean for the 2022 football season?
This has been one of my favorite off-season stories. Stetston Bennett has curly and wavy hair and throughout his time in college football he’s worn it either somewhat shaggy or more close cut but still with a bit of length. Coming into camp some Georgia players cut their hair as the “Buzzcut Boys” and apparently Bennett joined in on the fun:
Baller alert or nah?
That is no buzzcut! My boy came to the football facility with the tightest of fades and accompanied that with a Biggie tee-shirt. Just take a look at the player in the background absolutely shook at what he is witnessing.
There are only 2 outcomes here. One, Georgia never loses again while Bennett is quarterback and he goes down in history as one of the most improbable college football stars in history. Or, perhaps the more likely scenario is that the Dawgs shockingly lose 5 games this year and we blame this haircut.
4) Which team from Notre Dame’s 2022 schedule will go over their Vegas win total and which team that will go under their win total?
This will be a beat of a sneak peek into my Top 20 pre-season poll but Clemson sitting at 10.5 wins seems like a smart idea to hammer the under on that prediction. Now, you could argue their schedule doesn’t approach anything you’d see in the SEC. Yet, they still face Wake (road), NC State (home), BC (away) in a tough (for ACC standards) 3-game stretch plus Notre Dame and Miami later in the season.
Their defense should be excellent, but who knows how they handle the loss of long-time coordinator Brent Venables? Also, quarterback DJ Uiagaleieli was a nightmare last year and I’m not sure the Tigers have a ton on offense that is going to scare opponents even if they get good QB play again.
I was recently looking through some preview magazines and a couple outlets have Boston College pretty damn high in their pre-season polls. The essence of this thinking is that a better-than-you-think BC defense is going to have a good year and a healthy Phil Jurkovec is poised to lift their offense into one of the strongest in the ACC.
Now, I would personally sell that proposition with Jurkovec who I think will run extremely hot and cold. Still, just 6.5 wins feels awfully low for the Eagles. You’d think Rutgers, Maine, UConn, Duke, and Syracuse would be 5 easy wins. Can they not trip up there and then take 2 more wins from Virginia Tech, Florida State, Louisville, Wake Forest, Notre Dame, NC State, or Clemson?
5) All signs have been pointing to Notre Dame remaining an independent and re-upping with their NBC deal in the coming weeks or months. What is your prediction on the overall price of this possible new deal?
I feel weirdly bummed out about this situation. For the past 6 weeks I’ve had an article in our editor ready to be worked on titled “Why It’s Time from Notre Dame to Move On From NBC” that was mostly driven by the lack of money in the current contract mixed with other smaller issues like the rumors of Jac Collinsworth taking over play-by-play duties from Mike Tirico.
Then the bombshell from the west coast came as USC and UCLA are set to join the Big Ten in the future and for a couple days it really seemed like Notre Dame was going to bolt into that conference, too.
The more and more things move along the more it seems like Notre Dame is willing to receive less money to stay independent. But the question remains, how much less?
Earlier this week, CBS finalized a deal to pay the Big Ten $350 million per year for the 3:30 time slot.
Big Ten on CBS intro pic.twitter.com/jGFKxS4QGv
— Colton Denning (@Dubsco) August 9, 2022
ESPN is out for the Big Ten rights (something was too expensive for ESPN!?!) and NBC is rumored to be stepping in. So, the Big Ten is going to have a weekly college football lineup looking like this:
Noon – Fox
3:30 – CBS
7:30 – NBC
Plus, they’ll have overflows games on FS1 and the Big Ten Network, with a specified amount of games on the NBC Peacock streaming service. And there’s also rumors that Amazon or Apple streaming could be part of the new Big Ten package, as well.
The details are interesting, but either way we’ve known for a while that the Big Ten is going to be commanding somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.2 billion per year which is over $85 million per year for the current 14 schools and $75 million per year once USC and UCLA jump onboard.
The relationship between NBC and the Big Ten is interesting as it relates to Notre Dame. The reports are that NBC will be paying the Big Ten around the same as CBS ($350 million per year) and if you do the math that deal is worth more per school than what NBC is currently paying Notre Dame for the entire season.
So if you’re NBC what do you do? If you’re Notre Dame and you have 7 games per season to offer what price are you looking for in a new deal?
Broken down on a per game basis NBC is expected to pay roughly $27 million per game for those Big Ten rights. However, that is for primetime Big Ten matchups, both better matchups and all in that eastern time night slot. On average, Notre Dame is offering 2 very good matchups at home per season and both are usually moved to a night time slot leaving the afternoon timeslots a lot less appealing.
If you’re NBC, don’t you have a lot of the power in these negotiations? I’ve always felt that Notre Dame’s relationships with NBC (it has been 30 years!) meant a new deal would be so much more likely and is ND suddenly going to go running to ESPN now? That seems unlikely, and doesn’t NBC know that?
To answer the question, I think the new deal with NBC and Notre Dame is going to fall somewhere in the $50 million to $70 million range when it’s announced. Notre Dame could argue that if CBS is paying that much money for what will mostly be second and third-tier Big Ten matchups then the Irish should command $20 million per game, and that’s being conservative!
That would bring the deal in the neighborhood of $120 million to $140 million per year and I don’t see that happening at all. No way will NBC pay for one game what they’ve been paying for an entire season of Notre Dame football.
The big question is how long this new deal will be, and I’d hope it’s not longer than 5 years. I believe the Big Ten is signing things for 6 years. Notre Dame can probably afford (literally and figuratively) to get paid a bit less for 2023-28 and survive as an independent but they really shouldn’t be signing up for something that keeps paying them, let’s say $60 million per year, when the Big Ten’s next contract is going to be taking their programs somewhere roughly twice that amount.
Either way, Notre Dame has to like NBC getting involved with the Big Ten and being a bigger player overall in college football. It’ll position the Irish to stay independent and make any transition to the Big Ten, should it come, a little smoother.
In general single concourse stadiums are the ones that need to go, including the B1G House, whose single concourse gets very narrow at a couple spots for no good reason which exacerbates the problems having 100k Michigan fans in one place already presents. Vandy’s stadium is old and small at 39k and change capacity, and only one concourse, so they’d be a good candidate, except I don’t think very many Vanderbilt fans ever go there.
Kentucky’s stadium is a modern dual-concourse, two jumbo-tron, LED-stripped, 61k seat stadium. It’s totally acceptable to keep doing minor upgrades to and doesn’t need a tear down.
I have a persistent negative impression of Neyland Stadium that I think I developed back in 2004 as a rickety massive wreck of a stadium, but I can’t vouch for the value of twenty year old recollections.
They’re already getting a new stadium and I don’t think they qualify for the Power 5, but I do not like the Chicago Bears stadium at all.
Bears are getting a new stadium?
My understanding is that they’ve closed the $200 million purchase of the old Arlington International Racecourse to tear down and build a new stadium on the site. So it’s going to be a bit still until it’s open, but yeah, they’ve got a new stadium in their future.
Huh, interesting.
City of Chicago is still trying to keep them at Soldier Field by offering a dome, among other improvements/modifications. (I’d personally start by replacing the crappiest grass known to man with something a bit more 21st Century)
The biggest problem is the seating capacity, which for some inexcusable reason is the lowest in the NFL. Plus by going to Arlington Heights, the Bears could do what the Rams and others do and build a whole lot of development around it, which isn’t an option by Soldier Field.
This is going to end hilariously poorly for both the city and the team. Arlington Heights is not a place anybody wants to visit. It’s further from the city than O’Hare, and everybody complains about the commute to O’Hare. There’s not a great way to access the location the Bears have agreed to purchase. There’s not a ton of space to add both parking and development. People are going to go for the game, then get out of dodge immediately.
On the flip side, what’s the city going to do with Soldier Field? Nothing. For as terrible as the Arlington Heights location is, driving to Soldier Field is awful. There’s nothing to do there before or after games. The stadium is way too small for an NFL team, but it’s not really built to handle anything else properly (like concerts or other events). And of course, it’s completely unusable (except for football) for much of the year due to weather. If the two sides can’t come to an agreement on Soldier Field, both sides are going to hate the results.
I think the Chicago Fire of the MLS recently moved back to Soldier Field after doing some time out in Bridgeview, not to suggest that would be enough for Soldier Field.
They did, which was a wise move. Bridgeview’s stadium was actually nice itself but it was also a terrible location for the fanbase
The Patriots play an hour+ from Boston. There is one train, and it leaves exactly 15 minutes after the whistle. So it’s essentially useless. Foxborough has always been horrible to get to and a nightmare to leave.
BUT. Kraft invested a huge amount and turned it into Patriot Place with all sorts of shops and restaurants, and it has become a super popular spot all year round for the burbs. Still has horrible weather, so not sure what the venue is used for in the winter, but Patriot Place is absolutely bumpin every weekend.
So Arlington Heights will probably be very happy. Actual Chicagoans, less so. I lived in Boston for 10 years, went to 2 games. It absolutely sucked to get to and is so effing expensive.
Yep that’s definitely the model the Bears are running. bUt tHe MeTrA rUnS tHeRe yeah people really want to park or commute to downtown Chicago just to get on a metra train out there. I’m sure plenty of people will indeed do it but it’s not ideal. Transportation in/around Chicago is, not surprisingly, basically a spoke/hub system so unless you’re heading to the hub (downtown) it’s not ideal to get around. Having 355 nearby helps but I still think it’ll suck
Oh yeah, agreed. The NFL mentioned maybe adding a second NFL team back in Soldier Field some day, which I’d be fine with, but I completely agree that moving to Arlington Heights is turbo dumb from a fanbase / getting to the game perspective.
Related:
https://twitter.com/JasonLieser/status/1557447600126795778
Pitt has to travel about three miles to get to Heinz field, Miami has to go about 17 mile to get to Hard Rock. Vanderbilt stadium has more of a group of 5 feel to it than Power 5, same for Duke and Wake Forest.
I think that ND will command 70 Million plus per year in new contract. It will probably be back loaded a little bit. But 10 million per ‘home’ game seems quite reasonable for NBC, especially if they can pair it up with another game before or after. With NBC having the 7:30 slot with the BIG, does this mean that ND doesn’t play anymore primetime home games? I have to think ESPN is saving their $$’s for the SEC.
Yea, I would think that would be bad for ND if we were shut out of a primetime 7:30 slot. Perhaps they left a couple slots open a year for ND?
ND USC could be a night game I guess now that USC is in the Big Ten I guess.
When it’s a USC home game.
I’m not sure that knowing the general format of the contract is that “NBC will have a B1G night game” necessarily means that “B1G gets prime billing every week of the season”.
NBC is buying an inventory of games, it’d be pretty normal based on the last round of contracts for NBC to have the right to flex a certain number of games either to a sub-network or a different timeslot if they need that time on NBC to show a more valuable property.
I doubt NBC would pay a premium for a night game only to put it on to some sub-network – maybe peacock(?). I don’t think they can put it in a different timeslot though.
Once they’ve paid for their inventory of games the goal becomes to make as much money as possible showing the games. So if you’ve got FSU and ND (7.8 million viewers last year) and the nobody-cares-how-many-th contest for the Old Oaken Bucket (0.4 million viewers last year) they’ll make their choice and take their chances. Plus it’s possible that NBC can flex some B1G games to 3:30 and show the both just in their preferred timeslot, not just to USA/Peacock. Those kinds of details are totally unknown.
Also, why wouldn’t NBC put a top tier game on Peacock in an attempt to drive new subscribers? Isn’t that the point of a streaming service?
I agree, I would expect in the next contract the network would push for more of a streaming angle for the purpose of attracting subscriptions. I’ve listened and read a lot of sports media business types where the current strategies for the networks aren’t “emphasize viewership totals being as high as possible to make money off games on ad revenue”. It’s shifting into “showing subscriber growth/retention on premium streaming services” as the industry’s priority and putting exclusive content on those platforms to get consumers to subscribe (with a goal of keeping for 6+ months).
As it becomes more normalized for the public to use Peacock or ESPN+ or Amazon (NFL games this year) for live sports it will be more of the norm in the future for the traditional broadcasts to slide from TV to streaming.
And retention is the name of the game, so I wouldn’t doubt a future strategy to make a Marshall/UNLV type game in September a Peacock exclusive and then come back for a Clemson/USC type of game in November as another one. That way they lock in most for 3 months (or 2 for very savvy customers who drop out in Oct) and count on others forgetting to cancel or finding enough value in the other content to stay subscribed after the season.
And, at worst, they’ll get a lot of people to pay $10 for 2 games that would otherwise be free to watch.
Right but this isn’t going to be a way to retain subscribers.
You won’t get everyone, but just a fraction of the people that are watching ND games will subscribe, and that’s $$ they weren’t getting previously.
They might subscribe for one month but that’s still not a retention plan.
They aren’t making a ton of money off people who are subscribing for one month.
Again, you’re being myopic and only focusing on those that will be one and done. There will be plenty that keep the subscription going.
If you say so I guess it must be true.
But how is what you’re suggesting any different than someone who loves “Parks and Recreation” subscribing for a month to rewatch the series and then dump their subscription? I’m not saying that won’t happen, but you seem to just be arguing against a streaming service in general at this point. This is why Netflix/Amazon/Apple TV+/Disney+ create original programming. It gets people to subscribe to watch Stranger Things/Bosch/Stranger Things/Ted Lasso/The Mandalorian and then stick around for all the other random crap they also have.
I don’t see how saying people who sign up to watch one event on one day are not likely to continue to subscribe is arguing against streaming services.
At this point, I just think people who subscribe to streaming services for more than a month are not basing it on one sporting event. They subscribe based on (as you said) many of the other possible options. Think of all the outrage last year for having ND on Peacock for one game. Were all those people happy to pay for a few months after their subscriptions ran out? What I’m saying is I highly doubt it – though I’d be happy to see numbers.
As I said, I could see it working if there were a slate of games that one could see for the subscription but I find one game hard to believe that is helpful.
But you’re not factoring in the rest of the catalog that Peacock (or any other streaming service) has. “The Gray Man” – a Netflix original movie – had a $200mm budget per Wikipedia. I can’t fathom a whole lot of folks who are going to subscribe exclusively to watch that movie, but it adds to Neflix’s exclusive catalog.
You know when you sign in to Peacock right now, it’s not just one tile with the ND-Toledo game from last year, right?
From what I heard, even capturing like 40% of a sports audience being driven to streaming for singular or major events (WWE Wrestlemania on Peacock, NHL exclusive hockey games on ESPN+, ND games on Peacock) and keeping them on for six months at a time was considered a big win and a success. Anything beyond that (like 10+ months) is a huge coup for their numbers and figures.
It’s debatable if the strategy would pay off, and that’s some of the struggles places like Netflix are currently dealing with as their subscriber base issues are popping up. But it does seem the way of the world.
I’m not in that industry, but I would imagine a NBC/Universal deal that gets a large majority of ND fans to subscribe to Peacock for at least 3 months would be worth a significant investment in broadcast fees alone, with the hopes of roping them into staying longer.
3 months I could see being a small victory. But that would take more than one big game (as long as we are not counting paying for one month to get 3 months worth of the streaming service).
More for the laugh than claiming it’s an equivalent service, but AOL still had 1.5 million people paying either 9.99 or 14.99 per month to use AOL as of last year. So people clearly aren’t good about canceling useless subscriptions.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/03/aol-1point5-million-people-still-pay-for-service-but-not-for-dial-up-internet.html
What?? OMG, those poor people someone save them.
These are the people that can’t figure out how to cancel.
I was looking ahead to the next contract and projecting a schedule of Peacock exclusive games in Sept and Nov to accomplish that. Plus if you want to watch the spring game, that’s the month of April.
Their challenge will be building out content and giving enough to make it worth it (maybe they could offer broadcasting the pep rallies or exclusive home of Freeman’s pressers, etc) but they certainly could piece quite a few fall months together and count on people failing to cancel or find other content to watch to make it worthwhile.
Plus, it’s not just the Notre Dame fan they’re courting, NBC will surely be having Big10 games on Peacock too. So if you’re a college football fan in general that wants to watch midwest football, subscribing to Peacock will soon be mandatory to have access to all the games. Just the way the world is going.
It’s debatable whether it’s a good or bad strategy, but streaming is going to be the future for sports/live events.
That I agree with Hooks. I think they could easily put some package together that would make it worth it for a lot of fans to subscribe including some version of Drick said below:
That would of course be way more than just one big game.
You’re still using the argument that “college football fans (or ND fans, specifically)” ONLY watch/have interest in colllege/ND games. That’s absolutely not true. I like comedies, food/travel shows, other sporting events, documentaries, stuff for my kids to watch IN ADDITION to the 13-15 weeks of college football. All of that other crap factors in to what services my household subscribes/doesn’t subscribe to.
Of course the other things factor in. And if someone wants to subscribe to peacock or any other service they will do so.
My point is only that those who have chosen not to subscribe to peacock will not be overwhelmed to subscribe long-term because of one additional good college football game (or at the very least few who are in this category will subscribe long-term). A slate of games, or some other kind of package including off the field stuff is a different story.
https://theankler.com/p/will-peacock-exist-in-a-year#details
Peacocks not doing all so well.
Really hoping for a streaming/general tv crash that makes the networks try to get out of the inflated Big Ten deal.
Yup…ive been mad for weeks that none of Netflix, Amazon, AMC, and Disney had Minions currently…it had simply been too long since i last saw it. Then my TV told me Peacock had it…so Peacock gets an extra month out of me that they wouldn’t have had i waited til football started
From a fan perspective I really hope I won’t have to subscribe to 4 different services in addition to some kind of youtubetv for live local channels to watch all the games I can watch this year. At some point it’ll get too expensive.
On the other hand, if I can subscribe to 4 different services and that’ll include all the potential games, then it’ll become cheaper for me.
Part of the problem, but true. Even now, for 2021 ND football you needed ACC Network, ESPN, Peacock and USA. That’s already a pretty robust cable subscription (for ACC) and/or a couple of subscription packages to legally be able to view it all.
Some of the consolidation can work out, like drlck was saying. For instance, I used to buy the NHL Center Ice package through cable (which was $129 per season) and now it is through ESPN+. So I had to add something different but I got the same hockey stuff now for $59 for a year + access to all of the other ESPN content available as well.
If you wanted to watch WWE, their stand-alone streaming was $10 per month, now it is a part of Peacock and that $10/month includes all the NBC content as well.
So it can be a good thing in some ways. But it is annoying and a hassle that all these changes and extra avenues are necessary as well.
I think YTTV has ACCN, ESPN & USA (and SECN, CBS Sports, BTN, FS1, FS2), so it would just be that and Peacock
Yes, that’s right. That’s what I did last year and will probably do this year (well not peacock because there are no games on peacock this year, right?).
I don’t think at this point they’ve announced any, but Marshall/UNLV are screaming for it
yea, when did they announce it last year? Was it sometime mid-august?
You are right thought – those would be the games they’d put on.
Article I saw announcing the Toledo game was from 8/5/21, so any day now. (If they were smart, they’d move the Clemson game, IMO)
When NFL Thursday night games are on Amazon, there’s a cool feature that allows/allowed you to pick a different broadcast crew. So I feel like I could see a world where each fan base could pick their own crew (or just the crew that doesn’t have a Flutie/Johnson/Klatt on it). Just a neat feature of streaming – they could probably figure out something similar for “regular” TV as well.
Peacock separate audio feed where it’s just me praising Buchner all game long and chalking up his mistakes to there being too many haterzz.
I know there’s paranoia around letting people have access to All 22, but if I could get that from Peacock on demand then I’d subscribe.
Do an “All or Nothing”-esque show each season, some sort of tailgating show and a Marcus Freeman/Jack Swarbick show every Monday after games would be a good package.
I never noticed this. Who were the crews you could pick? Who will it be for this year?
I don’t remember specifically, but I feel like the “other” crew was Michelle Tafoya and another woman, maybe?
Dang, I was way off, except that I remembered it was two women:
I think this would be different than what amazon is doing insofar as the NFL will have 15 games on Prime. So it makes sense that if you want to watch those NFL games you subscribe. But to put just one game on a streaming service just kind of angers people that they have to subscribe for a month. I could see a point where they have a whole host of college games on Peacock which might also include a top-tier game at some point but I don’t see one top-tier game driving Peacock subscriptions.
^And that’s why you’ll never be the head of Peacock
how are they going to retain subscribers by having one big game on peacock?
Because people will also see that they can then watch [insert B1G game here]/The Office/Premier League/Wrasslin’/Harry Potter-verse/Universal’s catalogue.
They’re not paying for a night game. They’re paying for the third choice of B1G games each week, which is typically worse than whatever ND might be doing. NBC would be chicken-fried idiots not to give themselves the flexibility to shift ND to prime time in certain instances.
To slightly nitpick, it’s 5 miles and going past downtown and across a river from Pitt’s campus to the Steelers stadium. Which has been a total drag for the program’s energy and buzz in the city. Though in a weird way, they try to shine it for the advantages of sharing a facility and some resources with an NFL team. But I’d agree with Eric, the gain from a new Pitt Stadium to hearken back to the Tony Dorsett/Dan Marino days would do a world of good. Though nothing is in the works any time soon.
Interesting thoughts on how much ND might get from NBC. It seems the reports that ND is looking for 75 million would be in the right ballpark – that would be slightly over 10 million per game.
Good point about the length. Let’s hope it is an easy lesson to learn from ACC’s mistake and how this sport is just getting more popular (and so one can make more money as the years go on). Having it expire the same year the big 10’s deal expires would set off all kinds of conspiracy theories (though would that require only a 4 year deal?).
I remember reading on The Athletic from national writers that the response around the country was kinda like “$75m is ALL Notre Dame is seeking?”. And that kinda makes sense given what Eric wrote above about paying $27m per game for Big 10, which does have some advantages and better matchups, but the ND draw should still make for a very attractive partner.
NBC/Universal stance in general with sports feels very weird and conflicting to me. They dropped their NHL coverage that they had for ~15 years, shuttered the NBCSports network and now oddly have some soccer/NASCAR content airing on USA, which is now more of a catch-all type of network. But they paid big for Big10, they paid huge for WWE (which I believe is a huge draw for their streaming) and I think will retain some of the EPL.
So they have a sports imprint, but not as big of one as previously. Kinda odd
Notre Dame has a $20 billion endowment. A $1.5 billion budget per year. In my opinion, this is essentially a $20 million choice that should have very little impact on ND’s decision-making. IF the NCAA eventually allows schools to pay players, fine, then this might be important. But until then, I don’t really care how much the TV deal is.
If the administration thinks Independence is the best way forward for the program, take a smaller payout and don’t think twice about it.
One thing I’ve seen come up is that conferences might pay players NIL money from their media rights deals. If that’s a real possibility that $20 million dollar difference is huge. And, even if that doesn’t happen, even with ND’s endowment, $20 mil a year is nothing to sneeze at with an escalating arms race happening in college football.
Yes – if there is some form of formal or informal revenue sharing, it would be a massive own goal over time to take less money so we can play Navy and Stanford every year while our NIL payouts are lesser than those of, e.g., Wisconsin.
I think the problem is those numbers…By 2027 and onward, it’s not going to be a $20 million gap from BIG10/SEC to Notre Dame. Conference schools will be drawing media rights from their multiple national partners and their own network to really throw it out of whack, and the gap will widen with every passing year.
Notre Dame was able and willing to meet a price on Marcus Freeman, rising DC star in 2021 to keep him away from LSU with a competitive offer, but what happens in 10 years when SEC/BIG 10 teams are doubling current HC salaries and tripling elite coordinator salaries? Or collectives morph into taking money more directly from programs to players? Will ND be willing (and maybe more importantly fluid enough in real time) to make decisions to stay competitive? That’s probably more the worry.
ND isn’t poor, but at some point they won’t have the appetite to keep up with the power and focus of super conferences once they really kick into gear. As Eric said in the article, that’s not necessarily a short-term issue, but the storm clouds are definitely in the horizon.
How much of that endowment is for football or sports more generally though? I thought almost nothing since football revenue is likely to support the whole athletic program I would think.
The question then isn’t whether they have the money that they can spend on sports but whether they want to.
I’ve always understood it that football profit goes immediately back to the university as a whole, and not even the athletic department. I think this explains why (after football ismaking $30 million per year or whatever the figure is) there’s still haggling over a <$100 million renovation project to the Gug. Football doesn’t get to hoard the profits and do what it wants.
To MikeyB’s point though, I think ND is ready to accept less for the time being. “Monitoring the landscape” and everything. I don’t see it as a long-term strategy though.
Totally concur with this post, Eric. Nice summary of the situation. It’s evolved quite a lot from when I was little, as the football revenue used to be the golden egg — but all for the better. The indicator was when alumni donations kept rising despite long stretches of football mediocrity.
As for #5 — ND-USC, for me. The long stretches of dominance by one team or another simply characterize the rivalry.
So that supports my argument even more. Having a big endowment then is not only not for sports but sports are for the endowment so to speak. In other words, having a big endowment that supports football is not the reason for accepting less money in sports.
For sure, Notre Dame has been very clear over the years and never changing that:
A) Football revenue is the university’s money
B) Endowment has basically nothing to do with football
C) Notre Dame will chase that $$$$ in most instances
All of the excess football revenue leaves the program and adds to the endowment. Any increase in football revenue, as of now, would not benefit the football program at all, and instead would add to the endowment. In the future, ND’s President/Trustees could change their minds. But as of now, Jenkins has made it clear that there is a solid cap on how much the football team can keep and spend, and the rest goes to the school. So weather the football programs generates $50 million or $150 million in revenue, the same amount goes to the football program regardless.
Again, as of today.
I would imagine that if that’s true the cap would go up with a huge increase in the TV contract. If right now the football program keeps 15 million and 10 million goes to the school it’d be hard to imagine that if they got 75 million total that the football program wouldn’t get something like 45 million and the school 30 million or even 50/50 (37.5 each) so that the football program still makes out big time with the huge increase.
I highly doubt that a 300% increase in revenue would just keep the same cap unless the cap is a percentage to begin with. It wouldn’t make sense even from a business perspective. ND should want to invest enough money in the football program to keep it elite to make this kind of money.
You would think that, but Father Jenkins would disagree. If ND wanted to invest enough money to keep football elite, Kelly wouldn’t have been leaving town for an enormous pay raise.
How do you know? This is a new situation coming up with the huge pay increase. Has he said anything about it?
He has made himself clear on football revenue and spending in the past. Sure, I suppose he could drastically change his mind. But this is the same braintrust that claims we would join the Ivy League before we would ever pay players, so I don’t see it.
New situations often call for new decisions. I’d wait until the new decision is made before throwing them under the bus about whether they’ll change in a more reasonable way.
One of the reasons Kelly left.
I don’t think Kelly envisioned a HUGE bump from tv contracts though. (Besides it would be too late for him perhaps with him being older and not wanting to wait 3 more years to take effect, so to speak.)
Principals wouldn’t enable his combination of ego and laziness? Sounds about right.
Here’s one that will upset the subset of ND fans who wail and gnash their teeth whenever recruiting players’ parents comes up:
While Peyton Bowen’s commitment is rumored to be shaky his mom is very excited about the prospect of having both him and his brother, 2024 4* CB Eli in South Bend together.
Yea, from what I’ve seen Bowen is very solid and some of the visits can be chalked up to visiting with little brother rather than real interest from himself with these other schools.
I’d like to see ND adding two more ACC games beginning in 2025. That would stabilize the ACC and trigger a renegotiation of that contract with ESPN. The Stanford contract ends then. 2025 & 2026 schedules have ten games at this time. Would ND with eight games in the ACC be enough for us to qualify for the ACC Championship and sweeten a new ACC contract with ESPN? Are we really going to play Central Michigan and Tenn State next year?
Adding two games would essentially ND be joining the conference.
I agree that the bottom of our schedule seems to have gotten worse recently but the answer isn’t to join the ACC. The middle to bottom tier of the ACC doesn’t provide attractive opponents either.
We could simply schedule differently if we wanted to.
Yep. For good teams in conferences and their scheduling, they typically get an FCS opponent, a low-end FBS and then a P5 rival (likely state/geographical) for the most part. Like Clemson’s true open games this year being Furman, La Tech, South Carolina.
For Notre Dame, the schedule would be cupcake + Navy + USC and then ACC teams. Joining the ACC would not be the path to eliminate the non-exciting game(s), probably does the exact opposite.
Right. Adding two more ACC teams would commit to seven per year. The other five in 2025 would be A&M, Purdue, Arkansas, USC, Navy. The five in 2026 would be Wisconsin (in GB), Purdue, USC, Michigan State and Navy. 2025 is the first year without Stanford. 2027 is the first year without USC.
Whether seven Irish games per year is enough for the ACC to commit to us qualifying for their Championship is debatable. That may be more workable with their new scheduling model. Is it enough for ESPN to renegotiate their current contract with the ACC including the Championship that ND may be in?
As for playing our first FCS opponent in Ten State, I do like the idea of scheduling a HBCU team.
If Notre Dame is going to go deeper with a conference, I don’t think the ACC makes sense. Might as well just join the Big10 since they offer more rivals, a national footprint, better games and competition top-to-bottom, and most importantly the most money. I’d have no interest in trying to prop up the ACC when the world is shifting toward two super-conferences, and the ACC isn’t going to be one of them.
Counterpoint: the Big Ten is the worst and should be shot into the sun
Michigan sucks
Why would ND want to play in the ACC Championship game, though? No upside.
That just isn’t very logical, literally all the commissioners agree the playoff is expanding in 2026. There will be more access for Notre Dame, by all accounts than the current four team system. The ACC getting Notre Dame for seven games doesn’t help them (no ticky, no laundry if it’s still not a full member) and doesn’t help ND maintain independence by playing 7/8 of a conference schedule.
Surely they would need to have ND as a full member for TV rights, not get further into bed but not all the way with them. What you’re saying would mean the ACC gets to sell 7 ND away games every two years, which is barely more than the current agreement (which averages to 5 away games every two years). One extra ND game per season is not enough to re-negotiate a major TV contract — clearly ACC and their networks are going to want/need ND as a full member at that point. Can’t be three quarters pregnant in that regard.
And that still wouldn’t make Notre Dame’s schedule that much better or more interesting to replace the Central Michigan/UNLV games on the schedule with more games against the soft under-belly of the ACC instead.
Try thinking of it this way. ND can’t go to the Big 10 without breaking the ACC contract or it being renegotiated. Joining the Big is a pipe dream until that happens.
The CFB will expand and with two conferences dominating the landscape multiple teams from each will go. The Pac 12 and Big 12 teams will each soon have a weak conference SOS and thus maybe one team each goes.
Does the CFB go to eight or sixteen? Sixteen with Championship games eats into the academic year. College football teams love the twelve regular season games, so that isn’t changing.
How would you break down an eight team CFB? Two each for the Big and SEC. Maybe three. Do you exclude a Penn State or Michigan State team that lost to Ohio State, the conference champ, by one? At that point, national rankings are mean less than those conferences placement and conference win differential.
There’s an underbelly to every conference. Playing Maryland, Rutgers, and Indiana yearly doesn’t excite anyone. Perhaps Purdue and Northwestern move over to the East Division to accommodate USC and UCLA to the West. Whoopee! I’d prefer Syracuse, Boston College and Pitt.
…But then you’ll play Duke, Louisville and Georgia Tech too. Not so great.
The whole concept just doesn’t add up. Independent (no pun) of the Notre Dame/Big 10 point, ND having more involvement but still not being a 100% member of the ACC is impossible to reconcile as being satisfactory for either side.
Having 1 extra ND football game a year isn’t going to be a re-negotiation point for the ACC. It doesn’t help the ACC to let a partner get 7/8 of the way in and get the benefits without just being a normal member like everyone else.
It doesn’t help ND to potentially lose in the ACC title and hurt their chances, when they can stay on their own, and it doesn’t help them to pick up playing Duke/GT/Syracuse more instead of playing their own cupcakes that they can pick as they want and do these days.
Yea I don’t see any upside or positives for joining the ACC.
We aren’t tied to the ACC grant of rights like the other ACC schools are. We’ve only given them our grant of rights for non-football sports. So my understanding is we could pull our non-football sports out of the ACC which would free us up to join the big 10. Yes, we wouldn’t have our rights for non-football sports but that’s not really much of a deterrence compared to the windfall that ND would get by being a part of the big 10.
Hmm… So ESPN signed a twenty year contract with the ACC that included the possibility that ND could leave at any time during the deal for football by paying the exit fee (equal to three times the ACC’s most recent annual revenue) without grants of right for ND football. Would that possibility be enough for ESPN to renegotiate to keep those ND-Clemson, Florida State, Miami etc away game matchups? Savvy Jack.
I doubt 2 or 3 games a year would be enough for ACC to renegotiate the ESPN deal – especially since 1 or 2 of those are not likely to be primetime games. They only televise what are away ACC games for us.
I’m not even sure that the ESPN deal has much to do with our football grant of rights because they are for away games only – which I would think are governed by some other deal depending on who we play.
The increase in games and ACC Championship potential would be the carrot for ESPN. We’ve talked that through and eliminated that as a possibility.
Since ND does not receive full membership for ACC distribution money $10.8 mill vs $37 mill for Member schools, an argument could be made that ND should only have to pay 3 times the $10.8 mill. ND seems to have an easier exit than the Member schools.
The relative payouts between the Big and ACC – now and until 2036 – will make ND more likely to pay the exit fee and leave for Fox/Big 10. Does ESPN want to prevent that enough to renegotiate?
As the CFB Playoff expands with the new contract, does ESPN see an advantage to a strong ACC placing more teams resulting in adding viewership and interest, especially in the east coast markets? I imagine the CFB contract will end up as a battle between Fox and ESPN.