Considering an article in today's Dispatch says that the SEC will distribute $20.9 million to each of it's schools this year excluding an additional $16.8 million of bowl revenue, it's probably time for the MAC to give up the pipe dream of playing at the D 1 level.  The gap just keeps getting bigger and bigger and it's time to quit chasing these guys.

Recently there's been a coordinated effort by the SEC to drive this narrative of P5 autonomy- along with these comments about D4, guys like Nick Saban have been quoted as saying he would prefer it if P5 teams only scheduled other P5 teams for non conference games. This wasn't some football coach spouting off random ideas, this was the CEO of Alabama Football, Inc, a subsidiary of SEC Inc., using planned talking points to drive a corporate agenda. The rich, greedy, "power" schools want more money and more power and are using empty threats to further strengthen their position.

This is the equivalent of the 1% threatening to not "create jobs" if their Bush era tax cuts were not extended. First off, rich people aren't "job creators", secondly, where are the jobs? But the threat worked, they got their tax cuts.

Here are some very telling numbers to keep in mind anytime you hear someone from the SEC pushing this threat about breaking away from the G5:

- The new, multi-year contract with ESPN is between ESPN and the Football Bowl Subdivision of the NCAA. It's for all of the FBS. Similar deals with MLB, NFL, etc. have the revenue distributed to all members under the contract evenly, but not college football. The terms P5 and G5 were created to create a systemic power imbalance- the rich teams will stay rich, but just as important, the poor teams will stay poor. As a result each P5 conference will receive roughly $50m/yr, vs $18m for G5 conferences. Remember this when the P5 complains about the G5's financial limitations preventing the P5 from doing what they want to do. Keeping half of the teams in the league poor is critical to the P5's long term success.

- The SEC has 14 teams that play 56 conference games and 56 non conference games. Here is a breakdown of their non conference schedule in 2014-

vs P5- 9 games
vs Non P5- 47 games

Away- 9 games
Home- 47 games.

- The 47 games vs the G5 and FCS account for 42% of all games played by the SEC. Anyone who tells you that they are in favor of trading those games against teams with HUGE financial disadvantages to games vs financially competitive opponents is a liar (Nick Saban).

- If the P5 only played other P5 teams their 56 non conference games would consist of 23 home and 23 away. There's no way the SEC will sacrifice the revenue that comes from playing an additional 19 home games, all in the name of autonomy. Not to mention the added travel costs of 19 more road games.

- By keeping half of their opponents systemically poor the P5 have been able to lie, cheat and steal their way to achieving every possible advantage to insure their success. Going autonomous with their own division will destroy the smoke and mirrors they've worked so hard to achieve.

- This is the 1% trying to claim that they can survive without a middle class. Don't believe them.

Watch em. You don't have a clue. What I mean is that they will get what they want, the P5 has the power to get what they want from the NCAA and the have nots need the draw that the big schools offer. If the big 5 can play the FCS schools now they can continue to play the G5 schools even as they get bigger and richer.

The level immediately below where the very rich are headed - a level that we can afford and that will still provide true entertainment value.

Of course, you're assuming that a .500 record would still be needed to go to a bowl.  After they get autonomy, I think all bets are off on that.  If a bowl sponsor is willing to take a sub-500 team, I'm not sure the NCAA could or would stop them.

Plus, if they expand the playoff beyond four teams, they might have the playoff teams going to multiple bowls, such as using four of their lesser bowls as quarterfinals and two of their major bowls as semifinals.

jobs are created when the demand for a company's products or services reaches a point that adding additional employees is required to meet the demands of the consumer and to capture lost earnings that exceeds the cost of the additional heads.

If there are not enough consumers with disposal income (i.e. a strong middle class) to purchase these goods and services then companies will sell less of their products, which in turn will generate less earnings, which will ultimately result in a reduction of jobs.

The economy is driven by consumers, not rich "job creators". A CEO that makes 400x what his average employee makes does not purchase 400x the milk and bread, or 400x the gasoline, or 400x the chipotle burritos. Our economy cannot sustain itself on the spending habits of the richest 1%. They do not create jobs. Period.

But what do I know, I was a Fine Arts major.

Not bad for a Fine Arts major - you are correct, consumers are job creators.  It does not matter that I own a company, if no one wants my products/service, I produce no products, nor jobs.

What will be interesting in this situation is the power conferences need their broadcast partners to go along with it all, but the ESPN's, SportsSouth, etc. need the other conferences and teams to fill programming.  They have a delicate play going forward. 

Edit: I don't want to derail this discussion about how government spending creates jobs with my rant against the NCAA. (sarcasm warning)

And there is the problem. As bad as the financial picture is for the bottom of the FBS, it is worse for the top of FCS, which is why so many FCS schools are trying to escape FCS. Going backward would be going to a worse situation, which is why no one is going that direction.

Now, if Ohio wanted to drop to Division II or III, I believe the economics there are notably better. As an example, consider U. Chicago. They used to be in the Big Ten. They chose to give up football entirely in 1946, but now have football again, but this time around they have been in Division III since 1973. To me FCS is a no-man's land between the viable extremes.

My comments were about the creation of jobs, not wealth. There's a difference. I'm not anti-wealth, I'm pro middle class. As it relates to football, I'm not anti-P5, I'm pro G5 with better opportunities to achieve their own success, without relying on the P5 for handouts.

When it comes to economics, I've given up supporting or opposing individual policies. That's pointless because people and parties are going to do what they are going to do, regardless of how wise or foolish their proposed policies are. Rhetoric and emotional appeals carry more weight these days than valid economic discussion because, sadly, few voters actually have even a basic understanding of economics, and that's probably true of most politicians as well.

While you are correct that jobs and wealth are different, wealth is strongly related to the quality of jobs. If the total wealth in the economy goes down, the quality of jobs goes down. If wealth rises, the quality of jobs goes up with it. If you decrease wealth (or fail to increase it), but then try to force the quality of jobs up by minimum wage increases, the quantity of jobs goes down.

Thus, you can only have a prosperous middle class with a rising standard of living if the overall wealth of the economy is rising. That's why I hate to see people proposing trying to create jobs via government action, or via consumption. Both are apt to decrease the overall wealth in the economy, and in the long run, do more harm than good. They may well temporarily create jobs, but over the long run, the quality of jobs will fall.

By the way, personally I think that the distribution wealth, something a lot of people focus on these days, is not really an important number at all. Instead what I think is important is the mobility between income groups. So long as you have a good number of people moving up, and moving down, all is good. If a person has a reasonable chance of going from the bottom 20% to the top 20%, and vice versa, then to me the economy is functioning in a reasonable way.