Digging on stuff about sports and food; mainly concerned with sports and food in the south. Favorite Literature: Eastbay
Eatonton, GA
Joined December 2009
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Another guy that played in the NBA summer league coming back to school. This is stupid as hell
NEW: Saint Louis center Robbie Avila has been granted a preliminary injunction for a 5th year of eligibility, @studurando reports.
The ruling prevents the NCAA from applying its roster limits, clearing the way for Avila to play tomorrow against Missouri.
on3.com/rivals/robbie-avila-…
Matt Wilson retweeted
The People's CFB Viewing Guide - Week 10
Multiple-TV weekend for one of the best slates in recent CFB history.
Odds via @DKSportsbook
Downloadable PDF: dropbox.com/scl/fi/z7j5tgcsy…
Matt Wilson retweeted
The People's CFB Viewing Guide - Week 9
Odds via @DKSportsbook
Downloadable PDF: dropbox.com/scl/fi/m9lu09odz…
Matt Wilson retweeted
The People's CFB Viewing Guide - Week 8
Odds via @DKSportsbook
Downloadable PDF: dropbox.com/scl/fi/0knsmr6b8…
Matt Wilson retweeted
So let’s recap how Tony Petitti and the Big Ten played the SEC into voluntarily squandering what was about to become a massive longterm revenue advantage
2024
- B1G athletic director whose own school just went through a historic scandal is suddenly elevated to the chair of CFP selection committee and trots out lines like “teams can only play the schedules they’ve been assigned.” The CFP rankings are stacked by the loss column after the 12-team format promised to create more meaningful out of conference games between big brands
2025
- Sankey wants CFP expanded to 16 teams after SEC becomes nervous about how much harder it’s schedules are than everyone else’s…
- Petitti agrees to go to 16 if SEC moves to 9 league games, but pulls out after Sankey uses an interim president to push through a vote to move the SEC to 9 league games.
- Now the SEC programs are even more distressed about access.
- Meanwhile, the B1G’s TV partners are dismayed over how much lower their regular season ratings are than the SEC’s.
2026
- The SEC’s fantastic regular season TV ratings are setting them up for a huge contract boost in the next round of negotiations. The B1G schools won’t see the same amounts of revenue in their future TV deals if nothing changes.
- Petitti and the B1G office start pitching a 24-team playoff. Fans hate it. They believe it will devalue the regular season.
- SEC gives in on 24 instead of waiting and pressing it’s ever growing advantage. SEC folds a hand that would have led to it’s schools having TV contract revenues that would have likely been worth tens of millions more than their B1G counterparts in a decade.
- Fans react to news by saying they will watch less regular season college football, which means the B1G’s problem is probably only a couple years away from no longer being a problem. If nobody lives and dies with the SEC’s regular season games any longer then their huge market advantage is gone. Now it will all just become filler until the postseason tournament starts.
The SEC was a short wait away from having an insurmountable advantage. Today’s news ended that possibility. Petitti didn’t make his league any stronger in all of this, but the SEC’s longterm position will likely end up being much weaker than it was before the move to 24.
Devalue the regular season, devalue the SEC.
Matt Wilson retweeted
The thing about 24 that bothers me most is…
Who is this for?
It’s not because TV was begging for it. ESPN had to be convinced.
It’s not for a boatload of new cash. Losing conf champ games is gonna make this a minimal gain.
It’s not because the 22nd team has any shot at a natty. It doesn’t.
It’s certainly not done with the health, safety, or academic success of the players in mind since they don’t even get a say in this.
It’s entirely to appease the people donating the money that keeps a financially irresponsible business model afloat. It’s discounting success so schools can say “look what your donation bought.”
It’s an industry hellbent on treating investors and bosses as the customer, and customers as an infinite resource that will keep coming back no matter what.
Matt Wilson retweeted
On this date in MLB history (10/14/92) Doug Drabek runs out of gas after throwing 8 scoreless in Game 7 of the NLCS. Francisco Cabrera becomes the most unlikely postseason hero knocking in David Justice & Sid Bream to send the @Braves to the World Series #BravesCountry
Matt Wilson retweeted
A fan led group called Stop24 has launched a website citing academic papers, tv ratings and more to lobby against expansion of the CFP field
It asks to “Keep Saturdays consequential” and shows that 30 of 40 teams ranked 17-24 from 2021-2025 had 3 losses
stop24.org
Matt Wilson retweeted
Ben’s article goes well with some research I did in the offseason
The SEC would be silly to agree to a 24 team CFP that devalues the regular season. If they wait until the next round of TV deals they’ll have a revenue advantage over everyone. One reason why other leagues want 24
The Big Ten is winning National Championships and making more TV money than the SEC. But there is a growing problem...
The widening gap in TV ratings and the quality of the TV product itself, compared to the SEC, has many hitting the panic button.
awfulannouncing.com/college-…
Amen!
Spot. On.
I think the people running sports have forgotten why people fell in love with them in the first place.
There used to be something simple about it. Saturday was college football. You knew the games mattered because losing one could wreck your entire season. Baseball was part of the rhythm of summer. The postseason felt different. Rivalries mattered. Traditions mattered. Going to a game felt like an event instead of another opportunity to squeeze another $20 out of you.
Now everything has to be bigger. More playoff teams. More games. More TV windows. Larger conferences. More subscriptions. More commercials. More premium seating. More money.
And somehow we’ve convinced ourselves that more automatically means better.
I love college football as much as anybody, but I don’t need a 24-team playoff to make me care about it. I cared because Georgia losing on a random Saturday in October mattered. That tension was the product. The regular season was basically a playoff before we ever had one.
That’s what worries me about where all of this is headed. The people making these decisions seem obsessed with maximizing the value of every individual piece without realizing they may be slowly killing the value of the whole thing.
There’s a limit to how much time and money people can give you.
You can’t keep adding games, adding subscriptions, raising ticket prices, changing conferences, moving kickoff times around for TV, and then act surprised when fans eventually say, “You know what, I’m good.”
Sports were supposed to be the thing we escaped TO.
At some point they started feeling like something else we have to keep up with.
Maybe sports haven’t peaked. But I definitely think we’ve reached the point where more isn’t better anymore.
Matt Wilson retweeted
You sure that’s true?
Penn State-SMU was a playoff game that got 6.4 million TV viewers
The Pop Tarts Bowl that same year got 6.8 million
Matt Wilson retweeted
I’ve never seen cfb fans agree this much on not wanting something
Making the regular season perfunctory for the programs that are the biggest TV draws in a sport that is all about the regular season is, quite literally, the dumbest business move in the history of college sports
CFP leaders are closer than ever to expanding to a 24-team playoff. They are talking buyouts of conference title games and scheduling logistics of doubling the field.
Foregone conclusion?
“If we can get a decent (TV) deal, we are definitely going to 24.”
bit.ly/4jv642P
The people in control are killing the what makes the sport special. I hate this
CFP leaders are closer than ever to expanding to a 24-team playoff. They are talking buyouts of conference title games and scheduling logistics of doubling the field.
Foregone conclusion?
“If we can get a decent (TV) deal, we are definitely going to 24.”
bit.ly/4jv642P
Matt Wilson retweeted
On September 11, 2001, Mark Dodge, a 20 year old Army soldier, survived the Pentagon attack and returned with his unit to help others. He moved survivors to triage tents and searched the wreckage for survivors and victims’ remains. His unit spent days on recovery efforts and nights patrolling the capital
Five years after those acts of heroism, the Army veteran made his Texas A&M debut. He played linebacker from 2006–07, recording 168 tackles and two interceptions, earning honorable mention All-Big 12 honors
