Kinda trite to say, but there's not more, there's less.
It's the TV ratings. That's what the actual decision makers at the networks are looking at, and it has the quality you're looking for where there are subtle gradations between the various schools.
Right, but I’d love to see the research they do. For example, is there an untapped Cal or Maryland fan base if they had a breakout season in their markets where their ratings would increase by a lot? Are there enough alumni/fans not engaged now because they aren’t that good but COULD be engaged, or is it an Iowa State situation where they might be at their ceiling for consistent viewers? How much of the variation in ratings due to channel and game time alone? Penn State and Wisconsin didn’t draw significantly better than Illinois when they played at similar times on BTN last year, and Illinois got pretty good ratings when they got to play on the big-time networks.
I mean look, I am not the President of ESPN, even though I should be. I'm not in the room. But both the actions that have been taken and the concrete reporting on it, plus some level of knowledge of the guys and Type of Guys that are in these rooms indicates pretty clearly to me that they are absolutely not considering things in these terms and it is a strictly hand-to-mouth exercise and it has been pretty openly stated that the networks are telling the conferences what to do and not the other way around.
SDSU honestly seems like a good pickup for the Pac-12, just as UCF seems like an underrated pickup for the Big XII. We think of both schools as "small-time" simply because that's the way it's always been, but both have big alumni bases in big markets ... it doesn't take a visionary to see them paying off as good investments if the proper cash is pumped into their athletic departments. I actually think both get really good support in their metros, too, all things considered.
Honest question. Would you consider UIC a promising expansion addition for, say, the Big East by the rationale you're using?
I mean, no, as the support for UIC in Chicago is non-existent. The support for SDSU in San Diego was pretty impressive when I was there, and (IIRC) UCF has the largest student body in the nation. I would compare UIC more to adding a Florida International "for Miami," whereas SDSU and UCF seem more "ready for the jump" to me. Obviously neither SDSU nor UCF are moving the needle for these conferences to inch closer to the Big Ten or SEC, but those days are long gone. They're decent additions for survival.
I've experienced the same in San Diego, incidentally. But as to UCF I note that the claim is still enrollment-based rather than actual support-based.
Iowa and Michigan State seemed to have had a lot of alumni in the Chicago area.
While true overall, I would think that advertisers are still interested in teams that draw in large and profitable media markets (assuming their overall ratings are also good), even if it's being streamed through Hulu (I'm sure Hulu keeps track of things like me having a 60610 zip code in the Chicago market). I admit I do not know, but I honestly believe Illinois drawing 1.2 million viewers and doing disproportionately better in the Chicago and St. Louis markets at the same time is at least SLIGHTLY more valuable than Iowa drawing 1.2 million viewers in smaller markets. Obviously the era of "get Rutgers so we can get $__ per household in the NYC market for BTN!" are dead/dying, but I'm not sure it's ENTIRELY irrelevant yet. Overall viewers is the most important (Boston College drawing well in Boston but horribly overall means squat), obviously.
They certainly do, but I don't think either would have "delivered the Chicago market" in the sense that people used that term back in the Rutgers/Maryland expansion days. That term effectively meant, if the Big XII acquired Iowa or MSU in 2014 and there was a pretty robust Big XII Network, would all of the cable networks in the Chicago media market pay to add it to their basic package, adding a huge windfall for the network? That is why several factors went into it, ranging from a team physically located in the market but not popular there (like Georgia Tech in Atlanta) to a team with a massive alumni/fan base in the market even though it's not physically located there (Illinois in Chicago) to a team that has a decent alumni/fan base there but also has shown a high (if inconsistent) ceiling to deliver huge ratings in that market when they're good even if current ratings suck (Rutgers in NYC).
... I thought I saw one time a while ago that MSU actually had the biggest Chicagoland alumni base of Big Ten teams after Illinois, but I cannot find any articles on this anymore. These were "contemporary" numbers that I could find:In NW burbs I can’t go a day without seeing Iowa paraphernalia. Drives me nuts. But Illini is everywhere so that helps.They certainly do, but I don't think either would have "delivered the Chicago market" in the sense that people used that term back in the Rutgers/Maryland expansion days. That term effectively meant, if the Big XII acquired Iowa or MSU in 2014 and there was a pretty robust Big XII Network, would all of the cable networks in the Chicago media market pay to add it to their basic package, adding a huge windfall for the network? That is why several factors went into it, ranging from a team physically located in the market but not popular there (like Georgia Tech in Atlanta) to a team with a massive alumni/fan base in the market even though it's not physically located there (Illinois in Chicago) to a team that has a decent alumni/fan base there but also has shown a high (if inconsistent) ceiling to deliver huge ratings in that market when they're good even if current ratings suck (Rutgers in NYC).
Back then, I think only Illinois, Notre Dame and Northwestern "deliver" Chicago to any new network expanding there. A good comparison of Iowa/MSU to Chicago is Penn State to DC. While PSU has a huge alumni base in DC, it was not enough to "deliver DC" for the Big Ten without Maryland. Now with streaming services being so big, it seems it's just shifted toward total viewers, and "all viewers are created equal" is a bit more of the outlook, though I personally still think there might be some advantage to getting your 1.2 million viewers disproportionately from a massive consumer market like Chicago vs. spread evenly ... but that's only if the team with viewers spread evenly isn't outdrawing you in the first place because their a "national draw" with a very low floor for viewers.
Anyway, after all of that incoherent rambling
Illinois: 220,000 (155,000 for UIUC separately)
Indiana: 43,826 in Illinois and counting ALL campuses (so hard to gauge IU-Bloomington grads in the Chicago Area)
Michigan State: 34,000
Iowa: 31,000
Michigan: 28,000 in Illinois (so maybe 26k in Chicagoland?)
Wisconsin: 26,000
I sure do see a LOT more Michigan stuff than any school besides Illinois here, though.
I grew up near Bloomington-Normal/Peoria and you could see Iowa garb pretty regularly. If a kid didn't get into Illinois and didn't want to go to Illinois State, it was pretty common for them to go to Iowa.
Iowa was going to be my safety school but I never bothered to apply.
Good man.
It's worth noting that certain fan bases just wear their gear a LOT more than others, and this will easily distort people's perceptions of "who has more fans" in a given area. I always joke with my (Hawkeye fan) father in law that I refuse to have my funeral back in Iowa City (where my parents now live and where I went to high school) because everyone will show up in a black Hawkeye polo. They wear their gear literally every day of the week like freaks, haha.
