rjd970
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- Sep 19, 2007
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Forget it. You're now just simply asserting that the "top is getting smaller" and not really providing any backup. There have always been a handful of dominant programs than run the sport, and I've tried to show that via some statistics, but you just will never buy it. At the moment, we are seeing programs like Alabama, Ohio St, and Oklahoma, who have had periods of extreme dominance in the past, have yet another period of extreme dominance. It isn't unprecedented.
There have been big differences between the haves and have nots that have always existed. Back in the day those differences were caused more by things like stadium size (huge stadium = more money) or the size of the university (large university = bigger alumni base of support). Differences in TV revenue have always existed as long as the games have been broadcast on TV; again, not a recent phenomenon. Some schools would have TV revenue of zero, because none of the games were on TV, and some schools like Michigan would have multiple nationally televised games per year. It was a big differentiator then, it is a big differentiator today. You're looking at the recent proliferation of the conference TV networks and thinking it's something totally different. It isn't. Used to be that there were some schools that had zero TV revenue and some schools that had some...today some schools have some and some schools have a lot.
In the really early days of the sport, when independence was the norm and the conferences were this newfangled idea, if you got left out of a conference you got left in the dust. Except Notre Dame. I mean think about it...all of the big programs in a particular geographic area organized themselves into a club and kept all the money for themselves. This was occurring as early as the 1910s. A bunch of those schools who were left out of the initial founding of the conferences ended up de-emphasizing varsity sports and eventually became DII and DIII schools (even some small schools that got in the conferences eventually left them). Today's superconferences are just a continuation of that.
This is all short-sighted. The sport is changing in dramatic and significant ways. Hell - the QB for Alabama is making a Million $ and Saban is openly recruiting on that.
Not providing backup its getting smaller? Are you serious? Forget the conference...TCU and Texas Tech may not be in the same league at OK in the near future.
Let me say it really clear: Dominance by the top teams is not new. The level at which they are currently consolidating that dominance is. I will happily eat crow if it happens, but I don't see FSU or Miami or Michigan ever attaining the level that Bama, OSU and OK have right now. That would have been unheard of even 20 years ago.