The Big Ten, The SEC, and Bowl Posturing

College football playoff conversations are reaching a fever pitch and like usual people are missing the point.  It's not about making the fairest matchup or protecting the student athlete.  College football hasn't ever been about that.  It's about the money.

Someone made this comment on the Ozone forums:

I thought Delaney conceded on the first round playoff games being played at home (which the SEC was fighting), so we could have a playoff with all conference champions. What happened? It appears the SEC is rolling the B1G again.

And got the following response:

Don't do what the Media Fruit Flies are doing. They are taking public statements as something more than...posturing. It isn't. As Delaney said, none of the people commenting and publishing opinions are "in the room."  The Fruit Flies seem to think that the SEC positioning itself for its perceived best interests is somehow superior to the B1G and PAC 12 doing the same thing. 

I agree with that line but went a little further:

I think most of the posturing is the Big 4 masking figuring a way to exclude the rest of the conferences from the system.  Just an example...

Imagine if the B1G/P12 keep pushing to protect the Rose Bowl and a plus 1 system. Wouldn't that "force" the B12/SEC to put their champions in the new bowl they just announced? It's just too bad they 4 couldn't come to some sort of agreement (snicker). Wouldn't the fact that the winners of these games would most likely face each other a week later in the plus 1 game push the tv money for these 2 games into the stratosphere?  Wouldn't it make most of the other bowls pale in comparison? That would expecially be true if Delany "forced" the SEC to agree that only conference champs could play in the plus 1 game. I'm sure there would be years that a team like Florida State, Miami or Notre Dame (j/k) could sneak in but this is about money not making the fans happy. That will only happen (imo) if they ever to an 8 game playoff but Delany isn't interested in that.

In the meantime, the Big 4 will lament that it is too bad they couldn't come to an agreement as they take their piles of money to the bank and the lesser conferences slip into mediocrity.

One thing I didn't say was just how important do you think the conference championship games would be if they were the "quarterfinals" to these games.  Can you imagine if these 4 leagues agreed not to schedule anything opposite each other and the 4 games ended up in prime time the week after Thanksgiving?  Every day the media would focus on each conference game and the nation would tune in. With Super Bowl ads getting $4 million a minute is it unthinkable that the networks could get $1 million for the 60+ minutes of commercials during these game plus more money for the pre and post game coverage?  The money we are talking about could rise into the stratospheric for the 4 leagues.  Everyone else would be left behind.

It's like an argument I got into on the ESPN forums (pointless but silly fun).  Someone said -

B1G you screwed up by not coming out with one voice as a conference. With this confusion in the B1G, lack of solidarity, compared to the Big 12 And SEC, I am now seeing the big 4 as PAC, Big 12, ACC, SEC.

My response was:

This is all posturing. What they are really doing is giving Delany options so he can try to negotiate for the conference. Delany is the one voice for the B1G and the presidents trust him to get the best deal.

Perlman's comments were the best indicator of this when he made the veiled threat if things didn't go the way they wanted they'd walk away entirely and go back to the old BCS system. Don't believe what you read in these articles. Most of what is released is just conference spin and we have no idea what is going on behind closed doors.

Conversations like this make me laugh as most fans don't think like a commissioner or a college president.  The goal here is to maximize money and there are two goals in the playoff talk -

•  improve their product on New Years Day to improve ratings and 
•  keep as much money in the hands of the conferences that drive television ratings (B1G, SEC, B12, and P12).  

Everything else is secondary and while I'm sure the SEC/B1G aren't 100% in line in their thinking they both have these two goals in mind.  The problem is public opinion and more important is doing this in such a way that the government doesn't have a reason to get involved.

Public bickering is a good smoke screen.

Stay tuned.  It should get interesting to see how this all shakes out but anyone that thinks that Delany and the B1G won't end up with the best deal possible is kidding themselves.