2012-2013 Bowl Thread

[MrBug708]

NIU to the Orange Bowl to face FSU?

[Young Drachma]

I want them to make it just so the OU fans on Twitter can go apoplectic. That's not a knock against OU fans in general. Just people on twitter who don't understand the system.

[Young Drachma]

Would be the first 1-loss non-AQ team to make the BCS.

[Cuckoo]

As an OU fan, I don't care much either way, though for the sake of a match-up we don't get much, I would greatly prefer Florida in the Sugar or LSU in the Cotton to A&M. For those who would go to the game (not likely for me), it would be nice, I'm sure, to go to New Orleans over Dallas.

[Neuqua]

Yay.

[SirFozzie]

Wow, NIU made it to the BCS?

[SirFozzie]

My pick for the Lines:

BCS Championship: Alabama (-6) vs Notre Dame
Fiesta: Oregon (-4) vs Kansas State
Sugar: Florida (-14) vs Louisville
Orange: Florida State (-11) vs Northern Illinois
Rose: Stanford (-6.5) vs Wisconsin

[JPhillips]

I suppose the Rose Bowl is a decent matchup, but the rest of them don't interest me much.

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by SirFozzie

My pick for the Lines:

BCS Championship: Alabama (-6) vs Notre Dame
Fiesta: Oregon (-4) vs Kansas State
Sugar: Florida (-14) vs Louisville
Orange: Florida State (-11) vs Northern Illinois
Rose: Stanford (-6.5) vs Florida

My son came down and immediately saw that you had Florida twice; need Wisconsin in the Rose.

[molson]

It's kind of a letdown that NIU (apparently) is going to the Orange Bowl, but the game's not even important enough for the head coach to stick around for. I wonder if this would still be the standard coach hiring timetable if there's an 8-team playoff someday (or even with the 4 team playoffs)...will coaches leave their teams for new jobs before the playoffs start? It's just a different kind of sport with different priorities - the regular-season rivalry games and the conference championships are so more important the bowl games.

[RainMaker]

I think it's cool because they are local and I know some alumni. They really should have beaten Iowa. But they definitely aren't a top team. But these are all consolation games anyway so who cares. Beats some shitty re-tread.

[RainMaker]

And while it's cool, it'll cost the school a ton of money to play in the Orange Bowl. Just don't see them travelling well. So the school will lose a couple millions which they could have used for a new head coach.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by molson

It's kind of a letdown that NIU (apparently) is going to the Orange Bowl, but the game's not even important enough for the head coach to stick around for. I wonder if this would still be the standard coach hiring timetable if there's an 8-team playoff someday (or even with the 4 team playoffs)...will coaches leave their teams for new jobs before the playoffs start? It's just a different kind of sport with different priorities - the regular-season rivalry games and the conference championships are so more important the bowl games.

I imagine the timetable will always be how it is. It's just the nature of the business. It does suck in terms of optics (it'd be like an NFL coach quitting to take a new job on the eve of a wild card game) but given the bowl games are just glorified dog and pony shows anyway, other than the whole "stay for the team" thing, there's no real reason for him to be there. Other than maybe closure.

But I suspect he'll be in contact with his staff and stuff well in advance of the game. And it does give whoever his top assistant was, a chance to showcase himself in a huge game.

So there's that.

Two sides to the coin. I appreciate what you're saying and agree with it. I think that's just the way it goes for mid-major coaches and programs. Obviously no one is going to leave Oregon on the eve of the Rose Bowl to go somewhere else or some top SEC team. But when you're hanging in the mid-tier, you gotta go or else, they'll get someone who will in most cases. (Unless you're Petersen or somebody hot.)

[molson]

Originally Posted by Young Drachma

I imagine the timetable will always be how it is. It's just the nature of the business. It does suck in terms of optics (it'd be like an NFL coach quitting to take a new job on the eve of a wild card game) but given the bowl games are just glorified dog and pony shows anyway, other than the whole "stay for the team" thing, there's no real reason for him to be there. Other than maybe closure.

But I suspect he'll be in contact with his staff and stuff well in advance of the game. And it does give whoever his top assistant was, a chance to showcase himself in a huge game.

So there's that.

Two sides to the coin. I appreciate what you're saying and agree with it. I think that's just the way it goes for mid-major coaches.

Ya, I don't think it's a good or a bad thing, but it is an argument against playoffs. It's not like other sports that culminate at the end of the season. It uniquely culminates about 5 weeks before all the games are done. If there was ever a sport that didn't need a playoff, this is it.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

And while it's cool, it'll cost the school a ton of money to play in the Orange Bowl. Just don't see them travelling well. So the school will lose a couple millions which they could have used for a new head coach.

Yeah, but you gotta figure it's a kind of exposure that they'd never be able to buy nationally though. Even if eight people are watching, more folks are going to know about NIU now than ever did before, so they'll benefit on the backend even if they're essentially paying for it.

[Matthean]

So NIU who is losing their coach gets in over OU. About sums up the reputation of the Big 12.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by molson

Ya, I don't think it's a good or a bad thing, but it is an argument against playoffs. It's not like other sports that culminate at the end of the season. It uniquely culminates about 5 weeks before all the games are done. If there was ever a sport that didn't need a playoff, this is it.

I think for ages all of the BCSniks are basically calling what we have now a playoff, it's just a playoff with two teams. I don't see an expanded playoff as much different really. The games are being played anyway, they might as well count for something. Even if you have to add another one the following week.

It seems like a small reason to be anti-playoff though.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by Matthean

So NIU who is losing their coach gets in over OU. About sums up the reputation of the Big 12.

That's got nothing to do with it. It was just the way the system was setup, had nothing to do with OU. It's actually everything to do with the failure of the Big East and Big Ten not to have a team ranked higher than Top 16 in the BCS standings.

[Buccaneer]

I still bothers me that fans and media are still wanting the post-season to be a bigger deal than it should be. All bowls games (of which there are too many) should simply be a reward for a successful season - nothing more, nothing less.

[SirFozzie]

Originally Posted by Matthean

So NIU who is losing their coach gets in over OU. About sums up the reputation of the Big 12.

And this is with the Big 12 coaches trying to stuff the ballot box:

: "Among the 59 voters in the coaches poll, Oklahoma's Bob Stoops, Baylor's Art Briles, Iowa State's Paul Rhoads and West Virginia's Dana Holgorsen all either voted the Sooners No. 6 and/or the Mid-American Conference champion Huskies No. 24 in Sunday's final regular-season balloting. Stoops did both. No other voter had Oklahoma higher than eighth, and only one, Michigan State's Mark Dantonio, had the Sooners that high."

[Matthean]

Originally Posted by Young Drachma

That's got nothing to do with it. It was just the way the system was setup, had nothing to do with OU. It's actually everything to do with the failure of the Big East and Big Ten not to have a team ranked higher than Top 16 in the BCS standings.

I went a read something that cleared it up. I think it is still something that needs to be tweaked though. An undefeated BSU type of team is one thing, but I'm just not feeling the need to add in NIU when OU is sitting there.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by Young Drachma

Yeah, but you gotta figure it's a kind of exposure that they'd never be able to buy nationally though. Even if eight people are watching, more folks are going to know about NIU now than ever did before, so they'll benefit on the backend even if they're essentially paying for it.

What is the exposure really going to do? I don't think they're going to start stealing talent from the Big 10 anytime soon. One game isn't going to get teams to come to DeKalb or pay huge television rights. If anything it'll get some schools to avoid them more.

It's fun for the school I'm sure but having to dish out $3-4 million to play in this game when your football budget is only $7 million is a big hit.

[molson]

Originally Posted by Young Drachma

I think for ages all of the BCSniks are basically calling what we have now a playoff, it's just a playoff with two teams. I don't see an expanded playoff as much different really. The games are being played anyway, they might as well count for something. Even if you have to add another one the following week.

It seems like a small reason to be anti-playoff though.

Maybe it's not a reason to be anti-playoff, it's more of just a reminder that the games aren't as important as the networks try to sell them as. Imagine if all of the college basketball coaching changes took place right after the conference tournaments and before the ncaa tournament. If that was the setup, the ncaa tournament would be seen as a fun post-season exhibition tournament, which is what the bowls have been, and what a playoff would be. That's not a bad thing, fun exhibition games can be fun, as long as you realize they're not more than that.

In this season its particularly jarring though, because the NIU coach is leaving for a school where his odds of ever returning to a BCS bowl aren't particularly good. (though, maybe they're getting better by the day if the ACS implodes and he he gets a couple of years like the Big East has had with an automatic bid, post-implosion.)

[RainMaker]

You guys are trying to make sense out of the most retarded system in all of sports that was setup to filter money toward fake non-profits. It wasn't meant to be good for the fans or schools.

[Matthean]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

It's fun for the school I'm sure but having to dish out $3-4 million to play in this game when your football budget is only $7 million is a big hit.

Considering the payouts of BCS games, does it really cost the school that much just to go there? I would think a school would have to spend something like $17 or so million to get that type of debt.

[molson]

Ya, the whole having to split bowl payoffs dozens of ways is preposterous also. They still sometimes talk about that Boise St. kicker's "$12 million miss" in that game against Nevada that would have sent them to the Rose Bowl. No, apparently that kick actually saved them a fair amount of money. And if Coach Peterson wasn't personally attached to Boise, he would have left before the game anyway for some crappy ACC school.

[Swaggs]

Originally Posted by Matthean

Considering the payouts of BCS games, does it really cost the school that much just to go there? I would think a school would have to spend something like $17 or so million to get that type of debt.

The BCS bowls typically promote and sell the most attractive tickets themselves and then stick the teams with 15-20K of the worst seats in the house to sell through their ticket offices. Most conferences equally share (or prorate) expenses and profits, but some do not. In the year that WVU was slated to play in the BCS title game if they had beaten 4-7 Pitt but lost, they ended up losing well over a million dollars by going to the Fiesta Bowl.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by Matthean

Considering the payouts of BCS games, does it really cost the school that much just to go there? I would think a school would have to spend something like $17 or so million to get that type of debt.

They have to split the payout with other schools. But the big loss comes from the bowls forcing schools to buy a ton of tickets above market value. So if your school doesn't travel well or buy their tickets through cheaper outlets (Stubhub, Ticketmaster, etc), you have to eat millions.

[tarcone]

Hey! Iowa beat No. Illinois. I guess thats something.
Good thing the basketball team is fun.. And wrestling is in full gear. December wont be too bad.

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

They have to split the payout with other schools. But the big loss comes from the bowls forcing schools to buy a ton of tickets above market value. So if your school doesn't travel well or buy their tickets through cheaper outlets (Stubhub, Ticketmaster, etc), you have to eat millions.

And a playoffs or an expanded one will somehow make this better? I think it would be worse since then you would forcing the schools to buy a block multiple times (depending on success). Even in FCS or March Madness, "first round" games do not do well attendance-wise, I believe.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

And a playoffs or an expanded one will somehow make this better? I think it would be worse since then you would forcing the schools to buy a block multiple times (depending on success). Even in FCS or March Madness, "first round" games do not do well attendance-wise, I believe.

Higher seeds host lower seeds. Those games are far more profitable than any bowl game is for a school. Play the NC game at a neutral site which has never had an issue selling out.

Plus the TV revenue would be substantially higher.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

Plus the TV revenue would be substantially higher.

Huh? on this part.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by molson

It's kind of a letdown that NIU (apparently) is going to the Orange Bowl, but the game's not even important enough for the head coach to stick around for.

2nd time in 4 years, Kelly left for the ND job in the same sort of situation.

[BishopMVP]

Originally Posted by SirFozzie

My pick for the Lines:

BCS Championship: Alabama (-6) vs Notre Dame
Fiesta: Oregon (-4) vs Kansas State
Sugar: Florida (-14) vs Louisville
Orange: Florida State (-11) vs Northern Illinois
Rose: Stanford (-6.5) vs Wisconsin

Bama will be about -10. Gotta think FSU will also be around the -15.5 they got vs. GT too.

Overall, yeah, ND/Bama and Oregon/K-State look good, other 3 I'll watch if nothing else is on on a Tuesday night.

Originally Posted by RainMaker

What is the exposure really going to do? I don't think they're going to start stealing talent from the Big 10 anytime soon. One game isn't going to get teams to come to DeKalb or pay huge television rights. If anything it'll get some schools to avoid them more.

I'm not going to argue the bowls aren't also corrupt and set up without the best interests of the schools involved in mind, but the exposure isn't for the football team, it's for the school. It's impossible to accurately quantify, but name brand recognition and applications will go up. (Ask UConn, another team who lost a couple million on a BCS bowl, how their successful athletic programs have fueled application increases, and in turn a better academic profile for incoming students.)

[BishopMVP]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

2nd time in 4 years, Kelly left for the ND job in the same sort of situation.

And there's at least a chance Charlie Strong leaves Louisville as well.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Huh? on this part.

The TV deal just went from $150 million to $470 million a year by adding a measly 4-team playoff.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by BishopMVP

I'm not going to argue the bowls aren't also corrupt and set up without the best interests of the schools involved in mind, but the exposure isn't for the football team, it's for the school. It's impossible to accurately quantify, but name brand recognition and applications will go up. (Ask UConn, another team who lost a couple million on a BCS bowl, how their successful athletic programs have fueled application increases, and in turn a better academic profile for incoming students.)

But UConn has an athletic budget over 3 times that of NIU. It has a much bigger endowment and much bigger booster base. Sure no school wants to eat a few million, but UConn can absorb that much easier than NIU. I'm just saying that it's a big hit for a small school like NIU.

I also don't know if the exposure is that big of a deal. I don't think Hawaii has reaped huge rewards from their bid. They'd have to maintain this for a number of years like Boise State did to capitalize on it. And that's not that easy playing in the MAC where you have almost no exposure.

I just don't think NIU ever becomes a football powerhouse. It's not a big deal in DeKalb and I think their ceiling is winning the MAC and maybe knocking off a meddling Big 10 team every year. It's a nice event for the students and alumni that will cost millions for a school with big budget issues all around.

[Young Drachma]

Meh. From a (working in) college marketing perspective, having your name said a few hundred times for a month for something not involved with a shooting, murder or something terrible is good business.

Public schools are usually woefully underfunded, but running deficits isn't the same as being broke. I get the point, but it's not like they weren't going to go to SOME bowl and lose SOME money anyway, might as well go to the best bowl in school history.

People get paid to figure out how to fill those gaps and I figure they're a hell of a lot easier to fill if NIU is on national television in a major bowl. They'll manage.

[PurdueBrad]

NIU lost money on all their MAC bowl appearances, usually around $150,000 to $250,000 per year. However, the Orange Bowl has a $17,000,000 per team payout (of which $8,500,000 goes to the conference) so NIU should come out of this ahead actually, even after travel and ticket costs. I also know that NIU will travel very well for this. We have a lot of bandwagon jumpers here as well as suburbanites that will jump in the Florida in January trip. I would guess that NIU will sell 85% of their ticket allotment at minimum. They should be good.

The bigger problem for NIU is that the MAC schedule, needing to play on weird nights just to get seen on TV will actually be made worse by this I believe. I think ESPN will want more weeknight games involving NIU so they're going to continue to play bizarre nights, short weeks, bad kick-off times (the Toledo game was an 8:20 local time kickoff even though it was a home game), etc.

I also agree that this will scare teams off from facing an NIU. They've made a lot of their name by hanging with the middle-of-the-road BCS teams or beating them (see my Boilermakers a couple years back and likely next year) and I think these kills their ability to schedule those teams, outside of the MAC-B1G tie-in and I'm not sure it'll ever be in the best interest of the good mid-majors to play each other early (i.e. a Boise State-NIU matchup).

[BishopMVP]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

The TV deal just went from $150 million to $470 million a year by adding a measly 4-team playoff.

No, it tripled almost entirely because costs for football inventory in general has skyrocketed - look at every conferences new TV deal vs. 5 or 10 years ago. The additional 2 games that matter (or 1 additional bowl game if you want to look at it like that) probably helped bump it from maybe $400 to $470 million.

Originally Posted by RainMaker

But UConn has an athletic budget over 3 times that of NIU. It has a much bigger endowment and much bigger booster base. Sure no school wants to eat a few million, but UConn can absorb that much easier than NIU. I'm just saying that it's a big hit for a small school like NIU.

I also don't know if the exposure is that big of a deal. I don't think Hawaii has reaped huge rewards from their bid. They'd have to maintain this for a number of years like Boise State did to capitalize on it. And that's not that easy playing in the MAC where you have almost no exposure.

I just don't think NIU ever becomes a football powerhouse. It's not a big deal in DeKalb and I think their ceiling is winning the MAC and maybe knocking off a meddling Big 10 team every year. It's a nice event for the students and alumni that will cost millions for a school with big budget issues all around.

One year isn't worth as much as sustained success, but take a guess why UConn has such a bigger endowment. Take a guess why their applications have more than doubled in the last 10 years, and why they've been able to use that to be more selective and thus achieve their highest academic ranking ever. It's not 100% due to their athletic success, but there is a large correlation there.

The other reason why NIU loses money is the conference sharing mechanism - which hurts them more than other teams because the MAC is unlikely to get teams in, but more than averages out for any BCS conference team like UConn or Cincinnati that loses money off their one BCS year. Every other MAC team just made about $1.1 million (which unfortunately probably does not include UMass this year as a transitional FBS team.) So while I agree that part of it is a screwed up bowl system, it would be pretty easy for any conference to set it up so that the team that actually made the BCS game gets an additional $1-$2 million to cover the increased ticket costs vs. playing in the Little Caesars Motor City Bowl on December 26th.*

(EDIT - unless PurdueBrad is right and the Orange Bowl gives $8.5m to the school and $8.5 to the conference.)

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

The TV deal just went from $150 million to $470 million a year by adding a measly 4-team playoff.

I thought you were saying that playing the games at home sites would increase the revenue. My bad, totally misunderstood.

[Young Drachma]

There's TONS of conflicting information out there about how bowl money gets divided, but this article (From 2006) is pretty good.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sport...-payouts_x.htm

Boise State fattens take for second tier

While the six conferences with guaranteed spots in the Bowl Championship Series each receive at least $17 million, the five other I-A leagues will receive a total of approximately $18 million. That's double what they would normally make because of Western Athletic Conference champ Boise State's spot in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl.

The non-guaranteed leagues (Conference USA, WAC, Mountain West, Sun Belt, Mid-American) receive 9% of the projected BCS net revenue, or about $9 million on an annual basis, according to the BCS. That increases by another 9% when a team from one of those leagues is in a BCS game.

The leagues then negotiate a split, with the biggest share going to the participating conference. Of the WAC's money, more than half will go to Boise State. Athletics director Gene Bleymaier projects that at $3 million to $3.5 million.

So based on that, the money isn't actually divided evenly among the conferences (which didn't make any sense how it kept reading in so many articles) but rather, the leagues have to sit down and negotiate the pie akin to playoff shares. So the MAC and NIU should do all right in that instance or at least, break even.

[PurdueBrad]

Originally Posted by BishopMVP

(EDIT - unless PurdueBrad is right and the Orange Bowl gives $8.5m to the school and $8.5 to the conference.)

My understanding is that the MAC gets and splits half of the team's bowl payout among the conference schools and the team gets the other half which is a massive windfall if that holds here.

[PurdueBrad]

Thanks for that post Drachma, that is a solid description and the info out there is hard to wade through.

[Matthean]

Michigan vs. SC in the Outback bowl.

[MrBug708]

I thought SC had to go to the Sun?

[Matthean]

Originally Posted by MrBug708

I thought SC had to go to the Sun?

It's on ESPN and Michigan's FB page reported it as well. Nebraska vs. Georgia in the Capital One Bowl.

[Matthean]

Originally Posted by MrBug708

I thought SC had to go to the Sun?

SC, not USC.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by BishopMVP

No, it tripled almost entirely because costs for football inventory in general has skyrocketed - look at every conferences new TV deal vs. 5 or 10 years ago. The additional 2 games that matter (or 1 additional bowl game if you want to look at it like that) probably helped bump it from maybe $400 to $470 million.

That's nonsense. That $150 million was negotiated just a few years ago. Sure TV rights are going up, but it didn't triple that quickly.

[MrBug708]

I thunk its time to call them Southern Cal