Conference Realignment

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#27      

ChiefGritty

Chicago, IL
I would seriously give anything to be a fly on the wall during discussions about what schools to add for expansion; I find it so interesting. While there are obvious "home runs" like Texas or whatever, there is pretty clearly a lot more that goes into this than what we have available to us fans.
Kinda trite to say, but there's not more, there's less.

The Big Ten sent college sports over the event horizon because Fox told Kevin Warren the TV deal would be bigger if he did, and the academic leadership of the various schools weren't in the habit of second guessing whatever was in the best financial interests of their athletic department. That's all there is. Zero vision about the future of college sports and what kinds of entities are well positioned to succeed where we're going went into it by any party. Zero.

And everything since is just desperate flailing, again with TV network communication of revenue numbers being the sole data involved.

I continue to be mystified by the romance for this. It's like rooting for a coal mine.
 
#28      
I guess what I meant to say is, I wish I could see the numbers behind what schools make the Big Ten money vs. what schools do not. Also, it would be interesting to compare, say, an Iowa State vs. a Colorado. I would be inclined to say a coach who got CU's football humming along makes more money for his league than a good ISU program, but Iowa State is probably "more valuable" if you just look at isolated statistics for this current year like "average viewers per game" or "total athletic revenue."
 
#30      

ChiefGritty

Chicago, IL
I guess what I meant to say is, I wish I could see the numbers behind what schools make the Big Ten money vs. what schools do not.
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.

It adds up to the unsatisfying conclusion though that all possible expansion candidates mean less money therefore they won't happen.
 
#31      
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.

It adds up to the unsatisfying conclusion though that all possible expansion candidates mean less money therefore they won't happen.
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’d be surprised if the TV execs didn’t know how many alumni of each school lived in a massive media market or have some type of estimate for each school’s “untapped fan base” that might help deliver exceptional ratings IF they were good (e.g., Rutgers getting really bad ratings right now but setting the all-time college football viewers record for the NYC media market in their huge game vs. Louisville in 2006). I’d love to hear how they value a program like Oklahoma State (little brother in a small state but good enough that their fans are engaged and tuning in at high levels) vs. Missouri (flagship for a much bigger state with two significant media markets but currently bad so not drawing big ratings).
 
#32      

ChiefGritty

Chicago, IL
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?
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.

Then people with sportswriter brain (of which you and me are both guilty) build these carnivals of rationalization atop what is just brute economic force.

I say all this hoping to convince you on some level of course. If how ugly it is won't sway you, take stock of the truth of how irrational and under-theorized it is. There's something to displease everyone here.
 
#34      
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.
 
#35      

ChiefGritty

Chicago, IL
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?
 
#36      
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.
 
#37      

ChiefGritty

Chicago, IL
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'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.

UCF is better supported than UIC, I don't mean to make a 1:1 comparison. But both are lacking in real legitimacy in an extremely saturated sports marketplace. I think that will be an addition the Big 12 lives to regret.

SDSU is trickier. San Diego is a dramatically, almost shockingly under-served sports market, and SDSU has been very good in both sports, you can imagine them performing well in much the way Utah has (SLC another under-served market). But it's hard to see them elevating the per-school TV revenue numbers of the leftovers, especially if they'd require a still-weaker partner to keep the number at 12.

It's all deck chairs on the Titanic anyway. We'll see what can be pulled from the wreckage in a decade or so.
 
#38      
San Diego State has a nice football program.They dominate the Mountain West wining 10 games or more 5 of last eight years.
Not sure how they would fare playing Oregon, Washington and Utah.

They used to play in front of 20k to 30k at Jack Murphy Stadium (capacity 59,000). They just built a new stadium with 35,000 capacity.

That is why the Pac12 has not leaped to add them to the conference. Their main redeeming characteristic is they give the Pac12 a footprint in SoCal. I can't image that many TV watchers in LA market are Aztec fans.

The B10 pulled of a major coup by bringing in USC and UCLA. The SoCal TV market

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#39      
^ I probably wouldn't give Iowa "credit" for the Twin Cities media market anymore than I would for Chicago ... just out-of-state metros where a lot of their alumni came from/move. It really is crazy if you look at what is left (for power conference teams only) in the top 20 when you take out markets the Big Ten dominates...

5. Dallas: Texas, Texas A&M, TCU, Texas Tech ... Oklahoma/Oklahoma State/Baylor? (SEC, Big XII)
6. Bay Area: Cal, Stanford (Pac-12)
7. Boston: Boston College (ACC)
8. Atlanta: Georgia, Georgia Tech (SEC, ACC)
10. Houston: Texas A&M, Texas, (soon) Houston (SEC, Big XII)
12. Phoenix: Arizona State, Arizona (Pac-12)
13. Tampa Bay: Florida, Florida State (SEC, ACC)
14. Seattle: Washington (Pac-12)
16. Miami: Miami (FL) (ACC)
18. Denver: Colorado
19. Orlando: Florida, Florida State, (soon) UCF (SEC, ACC, Big XII)
20. Sacramento: ... anyone?!

Big Ten gobbles up the top 4, and most of the rest are pretty split.
 
#40      

ChiefGritty

Chicago, IL
The marketplace is dominated by event-sized headline games between premier programs. It's about national draw, not local market size. The market size stuff is a Xerox of a Xerox of the BTN's cable bundle-exploiting revenue model that's actively dying and not repeatable to any new entrant.

Under any possible arrangement of the college football world below the new Big Ten and SEC, headline-level collisions are few and far between.
 
#41      

MoCoMdIllini

Montgomery County, Maryland
San Diego State has a nice football program.They dominate the Mountain West wining 10 games or more 5 of last eight years.
Not sure how they would fare playing Oregon, Washington and Utah.

They used to play in front of 20k to 30k at Jack Murphy Stadium (capacity 59,000). They just built a new stadium with 35,000 capacity.

That is why the Pac12 has not leaped to add them to the conference. Their main redeeming characteristic is they give the Pac12 a footprint in SoCal. I can't image that many TV watchers in LA market are Aztec fans.

The B10 pulled of a major coup by bringing in USC and UCLA. The SoCal TV market

View attachment 24583
Iowa and Michigan State seemed to have had a lot of alumni in the Chicago area.


I think the SF Bay area would be more about San Jose State than Stanford, at least from a sports viewing perspective.
 
#42      
The marketplace is dominated by event-sized headline games between premier programs. It's about national draw, not local market size. The market size stuff is a Xerox of a Xerox of the BTN's cable bundle-exploiting revenue model that's actively dying and not repeatable to any new entrant.

Under any possible arrangement of the college football world below the new Big Ten and SEC, headline-level collisions are few and far between.
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.
 
#44      
Iowa and Michigan State seemed to have had a lot of alumni in the Chicago area...
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 :ROFLMAO: ... 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:

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.
 
#45      
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 :ROFLMAO: ... 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:

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.
In NW burbs I can’t go a day without seeing Iowa paraphernalia. Drives me nuts. But Illini is everywhere so that helps.
 
#46      

Shief

Champaign Area
In NW burbs I can’t go a day without seeing Iowa paraphernalia. Drives me nuts. But Illini is everywhere so that helps.
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.
 
#49      
In NW burbs I can’t go a day without seeing Iowa paraphernalia. Drives me nuts. But Illini is everywhere so that helps.
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.
 
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