Mandel (who I never read and apparently has nothing useful to do), assumes you can pick 24 schools to represent tier 1 football and the rest of the USA will still bother to watch, leaves a lot of holes in his case:

Two representatives from the state of Michigan, and none from the more populous state of North Carolina (and the gap is widening).

High School kids in omitted fertile recruiting grounds of North Carolina, Virginia, and DC are supposed to keep being awesome and run off to play for Arkansas and other faraway destinations.

4th and 5th most populous states New York and Illinois, along with media centers NYC and Chicago omitted.

Assumes the B1G will abandon their academic affiliations with research-minded universities like Iowa, Rutgers, Purdue, et al. to play with Arkansas.

Arkansas is a representative.

The who's who of omitted basketball powers (UNC, Duke, Kentucky, Kansas, UCONN, Syracuse, Arizona, etc.) are omitted. Is this a football-only league?

Ruts and MD were added to the B1G to give PSU close play partners - the proposed division for PSU doesn't have any opponent even close.

Assumes that something like this has a remote chance of ever being allowed by the senators from the jilted states.

The top jilted schools would immediately form a competing all-sports conference, probably larger, with better hoops and a mandate never to play any of the 24 in any sport or associate them in any academic capacity. Boom.

Forgets that college football serves a marketing purpose to lure to students to attend universities - his TV model is limited to fans paying $250/yr. (11 million viewers). Do you think OSU only wants hardcore fans watching?

Assumes Notre Dame will join a conference which we all know is lunacy :).


Just a stupid, stupid fantasy piffle from Mandel. So unlikely (impossible imo) to ever happen that it's hard to even begin the criticism.




[Post edited by lawhokie at 05/16/2016 11:06AM]