Hello FSU?
- Thread starter wheezer
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From a purely football centric, fan, culture, economy of Tallahassee and tailgating standpoint, the SEC would win, hands-down
From a more logical, top down, academic and research oriented, national footprint, and better overall reach standpoint, the Big Ten is the clear choice
Hi Jay. You’re obviously tied in / connected with stuff surrounding FSU. Given your posts above and other tidbits I’ve read - the big 10 appears to be quite interested in FSU.
I still look at FSU and Clemson as SEC schools/ targets when all is said and done with the Big 10 getting UNC / UVA etc. once this whole GOR thing is settled.
When you say above , FSU fan base / admin is split 50/50 - do you mean that 50% of it’s fan base / admin would prefer big 10 over sec?
Thanks as always and keep up the great info as I always enjoy reading your FSU info. Always good to read about other fan bases and potential expansion targets.
Why. I think B1G fans would be quite enamored with the idea of getting to Florida and out of Midwest weather for regular season games. I see more Wisconsin fans headed to Talllahaseee than day Ole Miss ones.
I think it’s two-fold
1. Smaller overall fanbases spread out further away
2. Airport sucks flying into. Not a lot of flights, expensive as hell, and nothing direct except from CLT/ATL/DFW
On a regular, I could see the following B1G schools bringing 5-7k
Rutgers
Sconnie
Iowa
Nitts
Bucks
Michigan
Sparty (debateable)
Huskers
SEC bringing that amount would be
Barn
Bama
Gates
Vols
LSU
Cocks (debateable)
Dawgs
Ole miss
Miss st (debateable)
Texas
Aggie
Oklahoma
Hey bud!
Hope all is well and you’re enjoying the summer!
For the Fans I’d put it at 60/40 SEC (being up here close to New York with a lot of alumni SKUs that number, if you were down south, it would probably would be closer to 70/30 or 80/20)
Powers that be who call the shots is closer to 50/50
However, The academia part clearly wants the Big Ten. They have a lot of pull and that is why they chose the ACC back in the 90s over the SEC.
You’re gonna have to convince me how the B1G has smaller fanbases.
And having spent the last few years visiting colleges I have to tell you pretty much the entire B1G and SEC sucks to get to
SEC is driveable for a lot of those fanbases whereas the B1G isn’t
Top to bottom SEC has more fans. Bigger stadiums. Better ratings. Also, Bottom dwellers of SEC dwarf those of B1G
I bet If you googled the biggest 25 football stadiums they’d both have around 10. And 3 biggest are B1G. Think you are reaching a bit here
There’s a big drop off from
Mich/Buckeye/Nitts to the rest (Huskers 15k behind them, then wisc / sparty well begin them)
SEC has Bama, Texas, Aggie, LSU Tennessee over 100k then UGA, Gates, Barn, and Oklahoma all within 15k
You’ve got a couple hammers in the big 10 no doubt, but you have more hammers in the SEC and again the middle to bottom dwelling SEC teams have more fans than the middle to bottom Big Ten teams
I’m telling you the airport thing is huge, on average it’s over $650 to fly from Newark or Philly to Tallahassee round-trip
Throw in a two night minimum at a hotel and spending money for food, tickets etc and your easily looking at $1500
You can’t throw in Texas without discussing USC and UCLA.
You can believe it’s a big difference but it really isn’t. And they probably have about the same number of schools in the sub 70k
As for travel, I know lots of kids who go to FSU. Exactly zero of them have every flown into Tallahassee. Would be the same for fans. That’s like saying it’s expensive to fly into south bend. No crap, everyone goes to Chicago and drives.
That’s fair, but the reason I have made them as I’m looking closer to average attendance and not just capacity.
Both SC and UCLA have capacities near 100 K, but there’s no way UCLA averages above 60,000 and USC I would imagine is in the mid-70s
Comparing South Bend to Tallahassee is not apples to apples, as Tallahasee is literally one of if not the most isolated college town, this side of WSU
There’s a stat that Tallahassee is the most isolated major college, amongst all power, five schools with an X amount of hours to a big city with X amount of people
Re ND, Off the top of my head, Chicago to South Bend is probably an hour and a half
The closest major airport to Tallahassee is Jacksonville, which is a solid 2 1/2 hours, and it’s nowhere near the volume, size or popularity as O’Hare (and that’s not even consider in Chicago has two airports)
Additionally, you can fly into Orlando or Tampa, or Atlanta, which I’ve done all three and driven, and it is a solid four hour ride each way, not counting traffic
That’s a big reason that people were questioning when FSU expanding the stadium to 83,000 back in the 90s, as even though they were rolling, getting to Tallahassee is an epic pain in the ***, especially compared to schools in that region and their associated peers
Just keep in mind that if it happens FSU will have to resolve internally which conference they want to go to first. The B1G is not going to let the official process get anywhere close to an offer to a school that is not committed to joining.
Call me a traditionalist but I'd much rather have any two of the following admitted to the B1G : Va, UNC, ND, Stanford, Washington or Berkeley .
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B1G won’t get played, e.g. SEC vs B1G on a national stage
But they’ve let them know they’re in if they want it once the GOR gets straighted out
It’s pretty well known that Certain teams down south won’t play , and can’t play in warm weather. Nothing new here.
UF is that team
They haven’t played a team up north in like 30 years
FSU has played, and won more times then not, against many northern / bad weather teams during my lifetime
OTTOMH
Michigan
Buckeye
BC
Maryland
Nebraska
Notre Dame
Colorado
BYU
Pitt
Cuse (indoors)
Not to mention a few kickoff classics and ISU in KC
Giant conferences are boring…darn shame the old model no longer works. The old conferences made so much sense and led to real rivalries…our one and only chance is Maryland
The ol B8, SWC, Pac, ACC and originaL big ten…Rutgers in a real eastern conference (had it formed) and we’d have three or four real rivalries by now. As it stands, we have none.
pointless and moot point… that ship not only sailed, but it hit an iceberg and sank long ago!
Wish I could like this more than once.
I like this poster.
Well he's not wrong.
Paterno f*cked us - and pretty much the whole landscape - in the mid 80s. Dick.
FSU absolutely DOES NOT have an offer from the B1G.
ND DOES NOT have an offer or a standing offer from the B1G.
No interest in arguing this point
B1G won't get into a bidding war, but when GOR is straightened out, if FSU wants into the B1G, they're in
If you don't think the B1G would accept ND tomorrow, I don't know what to tell you
The 120 has already been raised
GOR is the obstacle, which is being worked on as we speak
So you agree that ND doesn’t have a B1G offer. Just like FSU doesn’t.
If any conference has standing offers to schools, it cheapens the offer significantly. No halfway decent conference would ever do that. And certainly not the B1G. Never.
SEC doesn't really need FSU. With 2 'gold' conference options you can't really afford to sit on any supposed offer from 1 of them. Will be interesting how this all shakes out. There's an argument for the BIG to take both UM and FSU - similar to USC and UCLA - but this is not 1999 anymore and those schools aren't the same caliber institutionally as the Cali ones. And that's 2 more mouths to feed and neither is the University of Florida. I can see a world where UM is passed over and ends up in the Big12 remnants league. I do like the idea of Florida being in the league footprint for recruiting purposes, but we essentially own Cali now so is that all that necessary? Still think Oklahoma and Texas was a missed opp for the BIG.
They don't, but the conversation then shifts to do they let the B1G come into Florida, expanding their footprint and solidifying its status as a national conference, while the SEC continues to be a regionally focused one
Re. Texas, I'm shocked they went SEC instead of B1G
If GOR is squared away…. Lololololololol. Exactly how is GOR getting squared away? Please use details.
Not a lawyer and don't pretend to be privy to GOR details
I worry more about the football aspect, recruiting, road tripping, NIL, etc. aspect
The legal stuff I leave to the legal guys, many of whom are much more connected to the situation then I am, live closer so they have a better pulse, know more about the technical aspect, and who write the checks to determine what's what
*** As I've said for awhile now, I've been explicitly told it'll happen shortly, and FSU will be out of the ACC within 2-3 years
Good luck with the GOR. It is a nasty, debilitating contract.