Conference Realignment

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#376      

mattcoldagelli

mattcoldagelli
The Transfer Portal
mattcoldagelli
ChiefGritty said:
committing a strategic blunder in our longer term cold war against the SEC with this move.
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And this is where we disagree. In said war against the SEC (in which, it should be said, I am an enthusiastic participant), it is hard to see having pretty much the "entire rest of the country" as a conference footprint is a disadvantage.
 
#379      

Battle89

Battle89
Battle89
sbillini said:
In the corporate world (which this very much is), this type of consolidation usually happens when the companies know that growth is going to slow. Automotive manufacturers in the mid-1900s come to mind as an easy example, but there's a ton of them out there. When the tide stops raising all boats, you're left with the boats scrambling to get as big as possible by swallowing others. Just get as big as possible so you can get as big of the smaller growing pie as you can (vs other conferences, but also vs distributors, suppliers, etc.).

After decades of unadultered growth, i'm expecting things to flatten out over the next few years.
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I've been trying to formulate a post like this for a few days, thanks.

At some point scale starts trumping everything else.

Edit for what @mattcoldagelli said also.
 
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#380      

Shane Walsh

Shane Walsh
aka "Captain Oblivious"
Cynthiana, Kentucky
Shane Walsh
Coffee Mug said:
We'll be hanging out in L.A., looking for the real killers.
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oj simpson make GIF
 
#381      

ChiefGritty

ChiefGritty
Chicago, IL
ChiefGritty
mattcoldagelli said:
And this is where we disagree. In said war against the SEC (in which, it should be said, I am an enthusiastic participant), it is hard to see having pretty much the "entire rest of the country" as a conference footprint is a disadvantage.
Click to expand...
In the 90's NASCAR experienced a big boom in popularity and visibility.

They responded with massive national expansion, taking their product to new and big markets with huge untapped potential viewer bases. For awhile, it jumped to never before seen heights of mainstream popularity.

But, as the years went by, the casual viewership that expansion had attracted started to flag a bit. They tweaked the cars, tweaked the rules, messed with the schedule, expanded more and more and more, but that slippage just kept going.

All along, a rump of cranky old fans stuffed into the dustbin of history had been saying: these gleaming cookie-cutter oval tracks all over the country aren't NASCAR, they're selling out, they're spoiling this. Easy message to ignore, you have those fans anyway, take a seat old man, growth is the future.

Turns out? The legacy and aesthetic and history, the vibe if you like, of that old Dixie NASCAR that was tossed aside for glittering megabucks modernity was what the appeal of the sport was to outsiders in the first place. They'd been tuning in for the vibes. Bringing the product to their doorstep wasn't serving these customers when it was an anonymized soulless shadow of itself.

NASCAR still lives. Anyone who works in the Loop knows all too well that it does, lol. The sport is anything but dead, anything but bankrupt, anything but invisible. It's all still there. But it has unmistakably shrunken since those 90's salad days. The expansion has rolled back for lack of interest. And they're starting to realize where they went wrong. North Wilkesboro Speedway, a grimy old relic in the middle of nowhere North Carolina which had literally been left to seed by the sport in the heart of its glittering expansion has been reclaimed and reopened and it just hosted NASCAR's All-Star Race. More events are planned. Why? Because now that the throngs and their dollars have lost interest, the powers that be can hear the voice of their actual fans above the roar.

So it shall be for the Big Ten.
 
#382      

TentakilRex

TentakilRex
Land O Insects between Quincy-Macomb-Jacksonville
TentakilRex
WeWillWhen said:
This is ultimately going to be the BIG22 or BIG24, isn't it?

Power 2, indeed.
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I am being contrarian, I think the Big 12 will be the Cadbury-Schweppes (division of Dr Pepper-Keurig) of the B1G-SEC's Coke vs Pepsi. Heck it could be a Playstation-XBox-Nintendo situation where the "third brand" could be sell the most systems.
 
#384      

illiniCA

illiniCA
DC Area
illiniCA
ChiefGritty said:
In the 90's NASCAR experienced a big boom in popularity and visibility.

They responded with massive national expansion, taking their product to new and big markets with huge untapped potential viewer bases. For awhile, it jumped to never before seen heights of mainstream popularity.

But, as the years went by, the casual viewership that expansion had attracted started to flag a bit. They tweaked the cars, tweaked the rules, messed with the schedule, expanded more and more and more, but that slippage just kept going.

All along, a rump of cranky old fans stuffed into the dustbin of history had been saying: these gleaming cookie-cutter oval tracks all over the country aren't NASCAR, they're selling out, they're spoiling this. Easy message to ignore, you have those fans anyway, take a seat old man, growth is the future.

Turns out? The legacy and aesthetic and history, the vibe if you like, of that old Dixie NASCAR that was tossed aside for glittering megabucks modernity was what the appeal of the sport was to outsiders in the first place. They'd been tuning in for the vibes. Bringing the product to their doorstep wasn't serving these customers when it was an anonymized soulless shadow of itself.

NASCAR still lives. Anyone who works in the Loop knows all too well that it does, lol. The sport is anything but dead, anything but bankrupt, anything but invisible. It's all still there. But it has unmistakably shrunken since those 90's salad days. The expansion has rolled back for lack of interest. And they're starting to realize where they went wrong. North Wilkesboro Speedway, a grimy old relic in the middle of nowhere North Carolina which had literally been left to seed by the sport in the heart of its glittering expansion has been reclaimed and reopened and it just hosted NASCAR's All-Star Race. More events are planned. Why? Because now that the throngs and their dollars have lost interest, the powers that be can hear the voice of their actual fans above the roar.

So it shall be for the Big Ten.
Click to expand...
Im not convinced Oregon and UW are this type of over expansion. It’s possible but those brands are very recognizable and popular where I live in the mountain states. Cal and stanford ……. that would be a mistake IMO
 
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#390      

Stevegarbs

Stevegarbs
Mokena, IL
Stevegarbs
ChiefGritty said:
In the 90's NASCAR experienced a big boom in popularity and visibility.

They responded with massive national expansion, taking their product to new and big markets with huge untapped potential viewer bases. For awhile, it jumped to never before seen heights of mainstream popularity.

But, as the years went by, the casual viewership that expansion had attracted started to flag a bit. They tweaked the cars, tweaked the rules, messed with the schedule, expanded more and more and more, but that slippage just kept going.

All along, a rump of cranky old fans stuffed into the dustbin of history had been saying: these gleaming cookie-cutter oval tracks all over the country aren't NASCAR, they're selling out, they're spoiling this. Easy message to ignore, you have those fans anyway, take a seat old man, growth is the future.

Turns out? The legacy and aesthetic and history, the vibe if you like, of that old Dixie NASCAR that was tossed aside for glittering megabucks modernity was what the appeal of the sport was to outsiders in the first place. They'd been tuning in for the vibes. Bringing the product to their doorstep wasn't serving these customers when it was an anonymized soulless shadow of itself.

NASCAR still lives. Anyone who works in the Loop knows all too well that it does, lol. The sport is anything but dead, anything but bankrupt, anything but invisible. It's all still there. But it has unmistakably shrunken since those 90's salad days. The expansion has rolled back for lack of interest. And they're starting to realize where they went wrong. North Wilkesboro Speedway, a grimy old relic in the middle of nowhere North Carolina which had literally been left to seed by the sport in the heart of its glittering expansion has been reclaimed and reopened and it just hosted NASCAR's All-Star Race. More events are planned. Why? Because now that the throngs and their dollars have lost interest, the powers that be can hear the voice of their actual fans above the roar.

So it shall be for the Big Ten.
Click to expand...
Not that there aren't some salient arguments here, but the analogy is difficult due to the huge role tobacco money played in all motorsports, especially in NASCAR's premiere Winston Cup series. The loss of that sponsorship money was the overwhelming driver in the change in their economic model, and dramatically magnified the errors in their overexpansion and ticket price gouging.
 
#391      

ChiefGritty

ChiefGritty
Chicago, IL
ChiefGritty
Stevegarbs said:
Not that there aren't some salient arguments here, but the analogy is difficult due to the huge role tobacco money played in all motorsports, especially in NASCAR's premiere Winston Cup series. The loss of that sponsorship money was the overwhelming driver in the change in their economic model, and dramatically magnified the errors in their overexpansion and ticket price gouging.
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Cut off a bit of cable TV cord 4 or so inches long and it looks rather like a cigarette, does it not?
 
#392      

altgeld88

altgeld88
Arlington, Virginia
altgeld88
sacraig said:
They'd probably argue the opposite since their climate is moderated by the sea and doesn't get so bitter cold as the prairie.
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Bitter cold rarely arrives during BT football season until the very end. We do, certainly, have our share of overcast November days, however. The cloud and drizzle when I've been in Seattle in the fall seems relentless.
 
#393      

WeWillWhen

WeWillWhen
WeWillWhen
ChiefGritty said:
In the 90's NASCAR experienced a big boom in popularity and visibility.

They responded with massive national expansion, taking their product to new and big markets with huge untapped potential viewer bases. For awhile, it jumped to never before seen heights of mainstream popularity.

But, as the years went by, the casual viewership that expansion had attracted started to flag a bit. They tweaked the cars, tweaked the rules, messed with the schedule, expanded more and more and more, but that slippage just kept going.

All along, a rump of cranky old fans stuffed into the dustbin of history had been saying: these gleaming cookie-cutter oval tracks all over the country aren't NASCAR, they're selling out, they're spoiling this. Easy message to ignore, you have those fans anyway, take a seat old man, growth is the future.

Turns out? The legacy and aesthetic and history, the vibe if you like, of that old Dixie NASCAR that was tossed aside for glittering megabucks modernity was what the appeal of the sport was to outsiders in the first place. They'd been tuning in for the vibes. Bringing the product to their doorstep wasn't serving these customers when it was an anonymized soulless shadow of itself.

NASCAR still lives. Anyone who works in the Loop knows all too well that it does, lol. The sport is anything but dead, anything but bankrupt, anything but invisible. It's all still there. But it has unmistakably shrunken since those 90's salad days. The expansion has rolled back for lack of interest. And they're starting to realize where they went wrong. North Wilkesboro Speedway, a grimy old relic in the middle of nowhere North Carolina which had literally been left to seed by the sport in the heart of its glittering expansion has been reclaimed and reopened and it just hosted NASCAR's All-Star Race. More events are planned. Why? Because now that the throngs and their dollars have lost interest, the powers that be can hear the voice of their actual fans above the roar.

So it shall be for the Big Ten.
Click to expand...
I disagree. The most passionate fans of the Big Ten are mainly fans of the conference’s component schools. Those all remain, plus four more large fan bases. To wit, the BIG is acquiring half of the PAC-12 football viewers by taking on just four of its schools.

And now the conference has more slots on linear television each week, which increases the opportunities for the causal fan to stop and watch while they channel surf on a Saturday.

I still think the conference should wait on adding schools until we see how the ACC shakes out with FSU, ND, NC and Clemson.
 
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