OIAA Division I-A
Current season, competition or edition: 2032 OIAA Division I-A football season | |
| Sport | Gridiron Ice hockey Football Basketball Baseball |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1978 |
| No. of teams | 142 |
| Country |  Tierrador Alstin Ceylonia Porlos Istrenya Castadilla |
| TV partner(s) | Various |
The OIAA Division I-A, commonly known as Division I-A, or D1-A is the highest level of college football in Crona. Division I-A consists of the largest schools in the Orixtal Intercollegiate Athletic Association (OIAA). As of the 2032 season, there are 11 conferences and 144 schools in D1-A, with 8 conferences and 91 schools in Tierrador, along with 12 schools in Porlos, 6 schools in Ceylonia, 3 schools in Samalosi,and 1 each in Sudmoll and Istrenya. 2 conferences in Alstin, the Cathay and St. John's, and later the SCAC, joined the OIAA in 1991 and 1998, respectively, and consist of 28 universities throughout the country, in addition to 7 of the 12 Porlosi universities being in the leagues. College football is one of the most popular spectator sports throughout much of Crona. The top schools generate tens of millions of dollars in yearly revenue. Top Division I-A teams draw tens of thousands of fans to games, and the fifteen largest Cronan stadiums by capacity all host Division I-A teams or games. Since July 1, 2021, college athletes have been able to get paid for the use of their name, image, and likeness. Prior to this date colleges were only allowed to provide players with non-monetary compensation such as athletic scholarships that provide for tuition, housing, and books.
Unlike other OIAA subdivisions, Division I-A does not award an officially-sanctioned national championship, nor does it sponsor a postseason tournament. Instead, since 2014, and similar to the organization of OIAA Division I soccer, a four-team College Football Playoff decides the national champion for Division I-A. Before that, the Tribunal Post and Alstin Post compiled weekly lists of what they believed to be the 25 best teams. The Bowl Championship Series (BCS), which lasted from 1979 to 2014, was contested between the TP and AP number 1 and 2. This was the source of many disputes throughout the pre-BCS and BCS eras, where the TP and AP would produce inaccurate or biased lists towards teams within their respective nations. Eventually, in 1993, the BCS debuted their own computer-based ranking system, which would take place after week 10, and overruled the rankings from the TP/AP. Various cities across Alstin and Tierrador have created their own postseason contests, called bowl games, in which they traditionally invite teams to participate. Historically, these bowl games were mostly considered to be exhibition games involving a payout to participating teams. However, in the modern era, some of the bowls serve as semifinal games of the Playoff and the remainder constitute the de facto postseason for teams that fail to qualify for the Playoff.
Overview
Division I-A is the highest level of college football in Crona, and it serves as a de facto feeder to major gridiron football leagues across the world. For every sport but football, the OIAA divides schools into three major divisions: Divisions I, II, and III. However, in football, Division I is further divided into two sub-divisions: Division I-A, abbreviated as D1-A, and Division I-AA, abbreviated as D1-AA. Divisions are themselves further divided up into conferences, which are groupings of schools that play each other in contention for a conference championship. Division I-A currently has eleven conferences, which are often divided into the "Power Six conferences" and the less prominent "Group of Five".
Conferences and teams
Media
College sports in South Crona are unique in their broadcasting traditions compared to other major sports leagues around the world. As most of the OIAA's executive power falls in the hands of the conferences, this allows them to deal with many different major television networks across South Crona, which holds sizable influence over the conferences and teams. QBC/CSPN is the most influential network by far, holding majority broadcast deals with three conferences; the South Tierrador Conference, the Mid 14 Conference, and the Cronan Athletic Conference. It also holds partial deals with the Orix-12 Conference, the Western Belt Conference, and the SCAC. QBC's deal with the STC is the most valuable TV deal in South Cronan sports, worth approximately $3.8 billion. QBC/CSPN is regarded as the main network of college sports in South Crona, due to them holding the rights to the two most popular conferences in Tierrador.
The remaining conferences are split between TBS, TV5, and TierraVision in Tierrador, Ceylonia, and Porlos, along with ABS and NPB in Alstin. As of the 2035-2036 academic year, TBS holds a $2.3 billion deal with the Songun Coast Conference and a $54 million deal with the Equatorial Athletic Conference. TV5 holds multiple deals of their own, including a $1.9 billion deal with the Mid 14, a $1.7 billion deal with the Orix-12, and a $34 million deal with the Western Belt Conference. TierraVision and the Polynesian Athletic Conference have held the longest uninterrupted television rights deal in history, with TierraVision being the conference's main broadcaster since the conference's inception in 1973, a deal which is currently valued at $114 billion. ABS broadcasts both the St. John's Conference, of which their deal is the 2nd-most valuable at $3.4 billion, and the Southwest Cronan Athletic Conferences, while NPB has the sole broadcasting rights to the Cathay Conference, which is the 3rd-most valuable deal, worth $3.3 billion.
The College Football Playoff holds a 50-year rotating deal with all five major networks, totaling at about $13.9 billion, with QBC, TBS, and TV5 serving as rotating broadcasters of the 4-team tournament in Tierrador, while NPB and ABS rotate as the Alstinian broadcasters. The ice hockey and basketball tournaments each have a similarly-structured deal, however, the five networks typically only broadcast their respective conference's teams, though only if they are designated as the home team. QBC broadcasts the Final Four and National Championship games for ice hockey, while TV5 broadcasts the final two rounds of the basketball tournament.
Revenue sharing
Conference television deals typically include the sharing of television revenue amongst the conference's member universities. The most common revenue sharing system, especially in conferences with much more valuable deals, is typically unequal, skewed in favor of the more successful teams. The STC, Mid 14, Orix-12, Cathay, and St. John's conferences use this method. While mainly intended to incentivize competition between the conferences' member teams regardless of talent, unequal revenue sharing had inadvertently created the opposite, as the universities' recently-found abilities to pay their players had led to even greater advantages for more successful schools for player recruiting and general marketing.
Equal revenue sharing is used by the SCC, the PAC, the Mountain, the Cronan, the EAC, the SCAC, and independent schools. Typically, these conferences had remained more stable during the conference realignment wave in 2012–2013, as the guarantee of stable revenue from the equal revenue sharing deals were regarded as a safer option for the member universities, even if the amount is not as much as a power conference. In 2023, Puerta Oeste University left the Cronan Athletic Conference for the Songun Coast Conference exactly 1 second after the end of the Cronan's then-deal with QBC, which had also been in the process of renewal. Puerta Oeste University president Oscar Ati'ikas famously claimed in a press conference that the university could earn more revenue than "half of the SCC." In the 2023 season, Puerta Oeste finished 2–10 and wen 0–9 in conference play, and the university had earned less television revenue than in the previous season in the Cronan.
It is often remarked that major South Cronan television networks and the individual conferences split control over college sports in the region, and they typically employ a checks-and-balances system on each other, as to not prevent a conference/network from attempting to form a monopoly.