For College Sports Enthusiasts Tony Altimore May Have the Most Interesting Site on X

STILLWATER – I was originally tipped by a story from Zach Barnett on FootballScoop.com, but then I decided to go to the source of Barnett’s story to @TJAltimore on Twitter/X. That is where I found a treasure trove of information that appeared to be solid research and analytics on a wide variety of college sports comparisons and projections from television revenue, CFP revenue, football attendance, college football television viewership by conference and school, projected damage by certain schools leaving certain conferences, and much more. Altimore especially likes to mix up athletic success, academic success, and college and university prowess in both athletics and academics. Seemingly fair, he uses a variety of reputable souces for his numbers.  

Twitter/X

Tony Altimore - it looks like college days.

First, who is this guy, Tony Altimore. Currently, he is a senior consultant at Monitor Deloitte, but previously he served both domestically and abroad as an officer with the Central Intelligence Agency, managing the strategic and business needs of U.S. intelligence collection. He also worked as an Investment Banking Analyst at Credit Suisse, where he focused on a number of leveraged transactions for clients in the defense, aerospace, consumer products, hospitality, gaming, and real estate industriesYou know to have done all that and currently work at Monitor Deloitte that has has to have been educated and educated very well. Lets start with the honors program at the University of Southern California, with a BS in business administration and a concentration in corporate finance from the USC Marshall School. Then you have to get that MBA and he did that at the prestigious Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, majoring in strategic management, and works extensively with outreach programs at Wharton.

Credentials confirmed, Altimore has formulas that he bases his graphs and conclusions on. I found these to be of particular interest to me as a member of the media that cover Oklahoma State with Pokes Report and Triple Play Sports Radio as well as a fixture on the Cowboys Sports Network from Learfield. 

I found it easiest to use the Director’s Cup points (Learfield based) as the order on my easy-to-read results.

This was another graph that had me diving in head first. It combines school enrollment in combination with football attendance averages over the past decade (2013-2023). 

Agaiin, I thought it would be easier to see them ranked in order, again the top 32 by football attendance. You are not going to find Johns Hopkins, Emory, Tufts, MIT, or Washington University in St. Louis on this list.

By far the most important, by my estimations, and the list and research that could have the biggest impact on Oklahoma State and many of the schools in the Power Four (formerly the Power Five) and the entire college football landscape is  his Realignment Attractiveness Score.

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Greg Sankey is very much in the middle of the college landscape and process.

If SEC commissioner Greg Sankey is going to combine with Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti and take all of their bigger marbles and put them with the next biggest available and create that supreme college football/college athletic league. That league of schools that will make the major television networks that want a piece of college football and athletics pay the most handsomely for the opportunity. Altimore’s Realignment Attractiveness Score is the best measuring stick that I’ve seen to give schools an indication of where they stand. 

This graph includes everybody, Power Four, Washington State and Oregon State, Notre Dame (in the ACC), and all of the Group of Five schools. It assigns one handy little number that came from the following: 

Football Success - most heavily waited by far

On Field Success (last 5 years, last 20 years, all-time)

TV Attractiveness (2016-23 - total viewers, avg. viewers, rated games, network games)

Fan Support and Facilities

Resources and Investment

Market Potential 

Local/Regional Market

State Market

Football Prominence Rank in State

Athletics and Hoops Success

Resources and Investment

Scale (Teams/Athletes)

On Field Success (Director’s Cup points, team NCAA championships, athlete NCAA Championships)

Men’s Basketball Success (last 5 years, last 20 years, all-time NCAA Tournament success)

Basketball Fan Support

Institutional Resources and Academic Success

U.S. Institutional Rank

Global Rank

Research (single campus and aggregated)

Resources (budgets and endowments)

Size and Scale (enrollment, graduates, FTE staff)

Popularity (applications and yield rate)

Selectivity (admition rate)

Key Bonus Factors

AAU Membership, State Flagship Status, Land-Grant Status, and Elite Academic Status (Top 100 National or LAs)

Pat Kinnison - Chief Photographer

Oklahoma State game days are special.

Again, we will do the simple list with the number that Altimore applies from his research. If you are an Oklahoma State fan that doesn’t like to see bad news then you may not want to look at this. Oklahoma State University is not in the top 32. We go 50 with our list here because I think with the top 50 you will get all potential candidates depending on it this eventual supreme league of college football/college athletics number 32, 40, or 48, even if it is 64 then you can tell who is in really good shape and who has work to do. 

Based on current conditions, I would say Oklahoma State is strongest in football, which fortunately is weighed the most in this process. I would say it is the general University and certainly a basketball program that has been mostly out of the NCAA Tournament mix that hurt the Oklahoma State ranking. 

Realignment Attractiveness Scores

Just for fun the schools that make up 51-64 are (in ranking order) are: Louisville, Syracuse, Iowa State, Kansas, Texas Tech, Mississippi State, Kansas State, Boston College, Army, Houston, Washington State, Vanderbilt, Baylor, and Cincinnati.

If you are in the top 32 then you are guaranteed a spot. There is no doubt that the eventual survivor of big-time college athletics will number 32. From looking at this list I would say it would be advantageous for television and to keep more of the nation engaged to go 36-40 deep. Personally, I would go all the way to 64, but that may be more mouths to feed) schools to share the revenue from television) than the powers would like.

This is interesting, but I would like to see Oklahoma State bump up about 6-10 spots to be more comfortable.