I think you are underestimating how many students don't realize that people go to football games until they move into the dorms.

you're not going to make much shorting something that is already at zero

lol...fair point

That's kind of my point though. I think the administration is drastically underestimating the knock on effects.

Academic prestige is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Cal is the #1 public school in the country, so lots of smart people choose to go there instead of other schools, so then it's filled with smart people, so the cycle repeats.

But UCLA is right behind Cal and very similar in a lot of ways. Now, say you give one school a decided advantage over the other - say, you cancel the architecture school at Cal or something. Now anybody who is very interested in architecture will go to UCLA instead of Cal, and you'll lose some % of the best students, but there won't be strong knock on effects.

But if you get rid of sports, that's a big deal because it will have knock on effects, because the sports fans are the nucleus of a lot of the social life on campus as well as a lot of the alumni donations. You get rid of sports, the "smart kids who also really like sports" who are probably currently 70/30 going to Cal will now 90/10 go to UCLA. Then, when you lose those kids, the social life at Cal will deteriorate, and it will be somewhat less fun. After a a few iterations of this, the social scenes will start to decay, and eventually it will become a self fulfilling prophecy and it'll start to become more like UCSD - a good school that isn't fun.

Then, a few years down the line, every kid in California who is going to go to public school, UCLA will be their first choice and Cal will be (at best) second, and then Cal's yield against UCLA and all the other UC's will go down, and play this forward long enough, Cal will drop in the rankings, and that will also become cyclical.


It's not like, a problem for society or anything, the same kids are all going to go to college and have a good experience, just a different one. Sucks for Cal fans and alumni, but a boon for other schools.

It's just so dumb that the administration doesn't see this coming and let this bomb go off in their face.



Hopefully this whole time line is long enough that the inevitable (interdependent CFB super league) happens first, and hopefully Cal can do what it takes to survive and stay relevant until then.

The Harbaugh suspension that got called off is now back on and it's for 3 games instead of 4. Lol

This time it's self-imposed though.

3 games is funny because that would have been the part for not cooperating with NCAA investigators from the negotiated 4 game suspension. So they're basically saying he didn't to anything wrong expect for being not so truthful when he got questioned.

It's weird being the one school on the planet that still takes the NCAA seriously.

Ridiculous.

Edit. Slow pony I guess

Goldenbears is spot on as usual.

When Texas won the national championship in football in 2005 applications went through the roof and they were able to pick better students and the overall student body became better.

The current admin at Texas realizes this and unlike most of the previous administrations is all-in on helping the Football team do well.

There is also a direct correlation between donations to the academic side and the football team. The better the team is doing the more donations flow in.

there's no doubt about the donor benefit from a winning football team
sometimes the whales fret about their onlysportsfan bill and tithe a few milly towards the capital campaign to offset the guilt

If you haven't yet seen the Johnny Football doc on Netflix, I highly recommend it. It's great. It also touches on this some about how the entire university and everyone around it or even with a mild connection to it (including recruiting sites for AnM)started profiting bigly after JFF's Heisman year.

Re: Manziel

Kliff Kingsbury seems chill AF. Are there many coaches that would've put up with all of Manziel's crap and given him a shot? I guess Sumlin deserves credit too.

The thing that is crazy to me is that Manziel couldn't just keep his nose clean for a couple weeks leading up to the NFL draft. I get that he just wanted to party and have fun, but damn, just be semi well behaved a couple weeks and cash in on the biggest payday you'll ever get. That was possibly a $20 million difference if he could've convinced some GM he was buying in and had cleaned up his act.

Swamp kings just released on Netflix last night. You watch any of that yet?

Hope his absence doesn't hurt them in those grueling games against ECU, UNLV and Bowling Green.

Absolute travesty that Michigan can play 3 top-40 opponents all year (and 5 sub-75 opponents) and cake walk to the playoffs

Learned it from the SEC, obviously.

the masters of the anti "grind of mediums" slate

Wish Cal could go independent and cobble together some slightly tougher schedules than what BYU had the last few years

Notre Dame
UCLA
Tennessee
Penn State
Michigan
Stanford

Rice
New Mexico State
UMass
UNLV
SJSU
1-aa team


ideal schedule right there

Go 6-0 against the cupcakes.

Most years we'll go 2-4, finish 8-4, beat one marquee opponent, play in a nice bowl game, okay!

Even if you go 1-5 or 0-6, okay, crap season but you're still bowling, no better or worse than going 7-5 or 6-6 against the traditional P5 schedule.


Once in a while you pull a couple big upsets and you go 4-2 and now you're 10-2 with 3 top-25 wins which is a pretty reasonable playoff candidate under the new system.

Then every decade or so you catch lightning in a bottle and go 5-1 and now you're 11-1 and ranked in the top 5 and in the playoffs with a high seed

this just in
cal will coax less than four wins out of their schedule this season and the coach is not to blame

The middle and the bottom of the SEC routinely skull-****s the middle and bottom of the B1G in bowl season

Which has absolutely nothing to do with out of conference scheduling, of course.

When someone is good at something -- the SEC has mastered the art of playing charmin-soft OOC schedules -- you copy it. And you give credit to the originator.

I mean, Georgia is playing UT-Martin, Ball State, UAB and Georgia Tech. Brilliant. Saban is playing Texas for some dumb reason (as Michigan will do next year), otherwise it's Middle TN, S Florida and Chattanooga.

In the 4 team playoff era, you don't want to take a "good" OOC loss, because if you drop one in conference you're done. So just play cupcakes already. Maybe it'll be different when it expands.

Yeah, since the pollsters are dumb, it's very clearly the right strategy.

I genuinely think that if the pac never went from 8 to 9 conference games, there is a very real chance they would never have died

Tech used to be a competitive rivalry; it's not UGAs fault they've gone to **** in recent years.

Also, when UGA ends up with a schedule like this, it's usually because someone bitched out on a home and home (e.g. those bitches at Ohio State)



Sent from my motorola razr plus 2023 using Tapatalk

Cal and Stanford to the ACC is preposterous on so many levels, but I guess that's our best option right now.

But like... why is NC State voting no?

FSU and Clemson I get want the ACC to fall apart so they can join the SEC, and UNC I seems like they'd be a lock to get a B1G invite, so that all makes sense. But why is NC State blocking the move? ACC stability is the best it's gonna get for them, they're never getting an SEC or B1G invite if the conference falls apart.

My friend is saying it's the NC regents hoping they can force the B1G to take NC State along with UNC, but that seems pretty far fetched to me

**** dem smart kids

see post #21 itt GB

- - - - - - - - - -

just stumbled upon this Stewart Mandel thought experiment from last week. this would be pretty sweet for the average Joe sports fan. a CFB Premier League consisting of the top programs and collegiate athletic brands. 28 teams. 4 divisions of 7 teams each. the top 2 in each division (+ 4 wild card teams) qualify for the 12 team playoff (looks like division winners get a bye, but he doesn't go into the playoff specifics). elite CFB could morph into something close to this in five yrs or less



whatever took shape for all the other current D1 teams would be a pretty sweet competition to follow too and would hold a lot of interest

Ok, this is my fever dream.

ACC breaks apart

SEC scoops up big national football brands FSU, Clemson and Miami. They take NC State to get to 20

The B1G scoops up all the stuffy smart schools, picking up UNC, Duke, UVA, Cal and Stanford. Seeing the writing on the wall, ND finally has to join a conference to get to 24

The Big-12 goes on a buying spree to cement itself as the coast to coast hyper competitive #3. They pick up Wazzu, Oregon State and SMU, then the ACC leftovers Louisville, GT and Wake. They add USF over Boise for regional balance and they pick up UConn for basketball. They're at 28


BIG 12
BIG 8 RETRO DIVISION
Baylor Bears
Iowa State Cyclones
TCU Horned Frogs
Oklahoma State Cowboys
Kansas Jayhawks
Kansas State Wildcats
Texas Tech Red Raiders

PAC LITE DIVISION
Oregon State Beavers
Washington State Cougars
BYU Cougars
Utah Utes
Arizona State Sun Devils
Arizona Wildcats
Colorado Buffaloes

BIG EAST RETRO DIVISION
West Virginia Mountaineers
Pittsburgh Panthers
Syracuse Orange
Boston College Eagles
UConn Huskies
Cincinnati Bearcats
Virginia Tech Hokies

ACC LITE DIVISION
UCF Knights
Louisville Cardinals
Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets
Wake Forest Demon Deacons
SMU Mustangs
Houston Cougars
South Florida Bulls




BIG-10
LEADERS LOL
Michigan Wolverines
Ohio State Buckeyes
Penn State Nittany Lions
Indiana Hoosiers
Michigan State Spartans
Northwestern Wildcats


LEGENDS LOL
Wisconsin Badgers
Iowa Hawkeyes
Nebraska Cornhuskers
Illinois Fighting Illini
Minnesota Golden Gophers
Purdue Boilermakers

PAC HEAVY
Washington Huskies
Oregon Ducks
Stanford Cardinal
California Golden Bears
UCLA Bruins
USC Trojans

ACC NERDS
Duke Blue Devils
North Carolina Tar Heels
Virginia Cavaliers
Notre Dame
Rutgers Scarlet Knights
Maryland Terrapins




THE SEC
EAST
Florida Gators
Georgia Bulldogs
Kentucky Wildcats
Tennessee Volunteers
Vanderbilt Commodores

WEST
Alabama Crimson Tide
Auburn Tigers
LSU Tigers
Mississippi State Bulldogs
Ole Miss Rebels

ACC HEAVY
Clemson Tigers
Florida State Seminoles
South Carolina Gamecocks
Miami Hurricanes
NC State Wolfpack

SWAC
Missouri Tigers
Texas Longhorns
Oklahoma Sooners
Texas A&M Aggies
Arkansas Razorbacks




How does it work?

Big-12
2 noncons
6 games against your division
1 game against an opponent in each other division
1 "flex" game, where the Big-8 and Pac-lite play each other and the Big-East and ACC-lite play each other. The #1s play, the #2s play etc
A final championship game between the #1/#1 winners

Big-10
2 noncons
5 games against your division
1 game against an opponent in each division
1 open conference game that the league office will schedule a few weeks in advance to maximize playoff spots
1 flex game
championship


SEC
2 noncons
4 division games
2 games against your partner division (east+west, acc heavy + swac)
1 game against each non partner division
1 open conference game that the league office will schedule mid season
1 flex game
championship




The point of the open games is to allow you to adjust schedule strength mid-season. if you have a top ranked team that is undefeated, then you schedule a weak opponent for them. Then you take the teams that were supposed to be playoff contenders but are thus far underperforming, and match them against each other and give one of them a chance to vault back in to contention.