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Message: [QUOTE="Lou_C, post: 790171, member: 3201"] Agree with a lot of this. I truly think the B1G has an issue in terms of footprint talent. At some point, all the money in the world isn't going to matter. Ohio State and Michigan will always be able to recruit nationally, and will get the best of the footprint, but I just don't see any way their footprint supports the athletes needed. This is something nobody's talking about, and it's probably controversial or politically incorrect, but it's not just about total population or weather. The cultural "college football is king" advantage is going to be multiplied exponentially in coming years due to injury concerns for football. I think you've got to really anticipate fewer participants overall, and look at what part of the country is most likely to put those fears out of mind to see Johnny be a Friday night star. I just don't see any way that the B1G footprint has anything more than a precipitously declining portion of the talent base. I'm not sure I agree about the television network as much as I once did. I'm not against it by any means, I just think that the ACC needs to be cautious about it. They need to really make sure they're getting paid, because once you're in with ESPN on a network, you're kind of married to them. If it's not financial gangbusters, I'm not sure it's worth giving up total free agency at the end of the contract, and the leverage that comes with that. If it's going to take 2-3 years to launch, then 2-3 years to show any revenue, and then it's a million or two a year per team, you're almost to the end of the contract before any real cash is rolling in. I don't know if that's worth giving up the leverage. At the end of the contract, if you want to do a network, you can build a heck of a lot more equity into it than you could now, or what the SEC has been able to do. Right now, there will be three conference networks, one that is 50% owned by the conference, one that is 100% owned by the conference, and one that is 0% owned by the conference. I'm not sure the market has decided which is the best model, but if we launch a network under our current deal, the 0% model (SEC) will be the only one to choose from. In 10-12 years or so, we will know which is best, or even the no network model is best. There's just so much uncertainty in the cable/content industry right now that unless there is really big bucks attached to it in the short term, I'm not sure we're not better off being total free agents at the end of the contract. [/QUOTE]

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