It's not a merger, but an alliance to offset the increasing influence of the SEC.

I see a huge lawsuit on the horizon.

I actually think the alliance is great news or at least good news for any of the group of 5. Because that means we are not going to immediately go the route of super conferences. Which means your still involved.

This alliance is all about drawing revenue and increasing payouts to each school. I think every conference is going to go 9 conference games and then each team from this alliance will play another power 5 game against a team in the alliance from another conference every year. this puts you to 10 power 5 games. or say even at the worst every team from the alliance plays 2 alliance games a year that brings your total to 11 games. So there are still going to be plenty of buy games out there.

The bigger point a lot of people seem to be missing is how much power this gives these three conferences if they want it. What is the SEC going to do? yes you have 16 teams and your going to probably play 9 league games but if every PAC 10, ACC and big 10 team already has 10 or 11 power 5 games scheduled. Who are you scheduling for your out of conference games? All are either going to have to be group of 5 or 1-AA

This might actually open up more pay days or potential match-ups with bigger teams for group of 5.

I think 1-AA fall games are going to go away. I think traditional spring games are going to go away so instead of Ohio having a inter team spring game. You are going to bring in 1-AA team the way spring ball is spread out a lot of these games could be televised and schools could charge admissions another pay day for everyone.

just my 2 cents

Because their scheduled pay days are too high for them to do anything about it. The P5 will say "oh you don't want $1M to play us? Fine we'll give that money to someone else."

To me, they aren't even looking at the real problem. The problem isn't the SEC, Big Ten or these other P5 conferences/schools banding together. The problem is ESPN. For years the G5 has been picking at the remaining carcass of the antelope of TV money while the bigger conferences basically get a blank check to do whatever they want, courtesy of ESPN. The MAC made an absolutely dreadful TV deal when they re-upped with ESPN a few years ago.

ESPN owns the College Football Playoff, so they're gonna pay for whatever they want to put on TV, which is probably why we'll never see G5 in the playoff's current format because it doesn't agree with their business model.

It really doesn't matter anyway. We're headed for a second-tiered division of football here in the next decade or so. The schools who should be really upset are these schools like Cincinnati, UCF, South Carolina, Illinois, Boston College, etc. Those schools that are on the fringes of power status or in the basement of their current conferences are gonna get left behind once ESPN and these leagues decide they can make a pseduo NFL Minor League with 20-30 teams and that's it.

I don't know, to me if you cut out all those large programs and have some kind of actual National Championship to play for amongst everyone else, maybe it improves it. I agree a new division for themselves would suck, because the sport is fun when little schools upset big ones. But the money is driving this bus and schools like Ohio and Rice simply don't have it.

TV money can be blamed for the current state of college football's regionally divided interest also. The sport is more fun when everyone has a vested interest, but half the country doesn't even pay attention because the PAC 12 just isn't on the same level. Recruits who were penciled in for USC or UCLA are now bolting East toward the SEC. This all could change a little with the NIL deals taking place. Think of how much money a kid could potentially make on his NIL in Los Angeles versus Columbia, SC or Athens, GA.

What I see in this is the Big Ten is realizing that if they don't prop up the PAC-12 and ACC those conferences and the prestige of the Rose and Orange bowls are in jeopardy. They are circling the wagons and the Big 12 is absent.

This is ominous for the Big 12. For the MAC probably a good thing as the P4 only has 57 members with 16 of those in the SEC squarely in their own camp. SEC teamed up with the Big 12 and G5 in the playoff expansion committee which is resulting in more access for the MAC.

It is too unwieldy to merge into a 41 team conference. The Big Ten was looking into adding PAC-12 schools but that is too much travel. PAC-12 universities have their own in-state rivalries they don't want to leave behind in most cases.

The rump Big 12 (watered down Big8) are not a power conference without Oklahoma and Texas, neither in terms of recruiting nor in terms of revenue once those contracts adjust to reflect the less valuable inventory.

Syracuse & West Virginia on the home schedule will help recruiting at the very least. Had these games been pre-pandemic they could have tested the capacity of Peden. At this point all bets are off.

Because having a product that fewer people want is not an anti-trust issue.

One thing the FTC and DOJ look at in an antitrust analysis regarding alliances among competitors is whether the alliances have the potential to adversely affect prices OR limit output in the market. Defining the market is always the tricky part. If you define the market as OOC games, an argument can be made that an alliance would limit the output of available OOC games if the three conferences agree to only have OOC games, or to have a certain number of OCC games, among themselves each year. Non-alliance teams would be precluded from a segment of the market controlled by the alliance. Individual conferences reducing OOC games by increasing the number of conference games shouldn't be a problem. But an alliance of conferences -- who up to now have been competitors -- acting together might be.

And if a severe limitation of OOC games causes non-alliance teams to get in a reverse bidding war for available OOC games with alliance teams that results in lower payouts than what had been in the marketplace before, that could be evidence of antitrust activity in adversely affecting prices.

I'm sure the well-paid lawyers for the three conferences are looking to avoid these kinds of things, but if their clients want to move ahead with an alliance that reduces the number of available OOC games, expect somebody not in the alliance to sue.

Sounds like the Alliance was agreed to today with a handshake, but not a formal document. Naturally the SEC and their media interests like Paul Finebaum are calling it embarrasing, and a desperation move. Whatever the case, it does appear that the Alliance wants to cut down on payout games to the mid majors like the MAC. We shall see what the end result might be. Would the MAC, the American, the Sun Belt, and Conference USA enter into some kind of their own alliance?

As I have stated before, the biggest chearleaders of this might be some mid-major presidents and their staffs (including some from the MAC) who would love nothing more than to leave big time sports behind and become something like a glorified Ohio Athletic Conference or the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.