We need to field a healthy team that is competitive anywhere before we complain too much. The UCF game specifically I would cringe about during the best year because it sucks for our guys. But we have a decent set of matchups and some recruiting options around the country and exposure If we can show up.
Conference smack stops for me until we not only win but dominate. Do I want to be in the BXX? Doesn’t matter. Culturally Utah is way more like this conference than the other 3. I’d like to pretend otherwise. Academically we edge out things but this is football and our mouth breathers are about the same as everyone else.
And again…scoreboard. We need to put up or shut up and that means both in conference and in bowl games.
I’m actually looking forward to some of these new matchups just to see…do I miss the PAC wine and cheese? Yep. But daddy lost his job and we don’t live on the east side anymore so I’m gonna get used to Arby’s going forward if I want to eat
Bravo. This whole post is great and I love this part. Also, I think this is a temporary housing. The 12 team playoff is only an agreement for 2 years. I think we are going to see something bigger happen.
Also, I keep bringing up hoops. This conference in hoops is going to be fun and brutal. You were able to enjoy the Pac and now this:
Something nobody is talking about, the principle question of whether the networks collectively may have bit off more than they can chew when is comes to these GOR contracts. It has been well publicized the issues ESPN is having with money troubles. What once was the cash cow of Disney is now having to figure out how to simply sustain itself in a shrinking cable/satellite market. The same can be said for FOX and FOX Sports. Love it or hate it, NBC moved an NFL playoff game to Peacock to test the waters of transition to streaming. Finally, CBS and CBS Sports is trying to figure out where is fits in the new multi platform world.
I guess I am not betting the farm on whether all this stays in place simply because as the eyeballs keep shrinking, the money will inevitably dry up, invalidating the contracts via force majeure. Unless Netflix, Amazon, Apple, and Google buy up the content to transition it, the money will go away and pandemonium will reign.
Josh is right the “jailbreak” is going to happen. It just won’t be for what he thinks.
Many millions of cable/satellite customers with little interest in sports (who have had $$$$ go to ESPN every month even if they don’t know the channel numbers for those stations) are dropping subscriptions and moving to streaming services (Netflix, Paramount, MAX, Youtube, etc.) which has to hurt ESPN’s bottom line.
I think we could soon be to where cable/Dish/DirectTV are gone and everything is done via streaming.
My season tickets went up 9.3%, about $350 from last year. Last year paid $494 per game for 4 tickets. This year $618 per game, roughly a 20% increase per game
Why do I read these comparisons and think we are going from driving a Cadillac SUV to driving a 1975 Ford Courier? Going from heated Corinthian Leather to cold Santiago shinyl vinyl?
There are two B12 FB pages I’m a member of. Everyone hates Utah and the fans come off as very insecure when it comes to the strength and appeal of the conference. Also, many of the BYU fans that I know are upset when I point out that I preferred the PAC. To add insult to injury for them Utah consistently is picked as a top 10 program next season. Deep down they know it’s true and they are collectively squirming in their skin over it.
We are where we are and although we would all prefer that the PAC had stuck together. Even then, the conference would have been different without USC and UCLA. Adding SDSU and SMU would not have moved the needle. Oregon and Washington would still be more interesting than any BIGI2 schools, but are any of the others (Cal, Stanford, OSU, WSU) significantly different from a competition standpoint than most of the Big12 schools?
Yeah, top Pac-12 programs aside, they are arguably similar in football quality - they’re just located exponentially further from where our fans and alumni live (and of course, all sports are impacted). That’s what makes it a tough sell for folks. But, it is what it is.
Yes from a football standpoint the on field quality is around the same. But the proximity and locations for away games in the PAC 12 were far superior. I would still rather go to a game in Corvallis or Pullman than pretty much any place in the Big 12.
Dude, I live in the Eastern Sierras of California. I have not lived in Upstate New York since I got my PhD a billion years ago. And being a Syracuse fan, I never ever brag about the football program, except in the 1990s with Donovan McNabb at QB. I follow Syracuse football because I am an alumnus, but I am much more into Utah.
I’ll humor the point, since this is our situation.
We have a trickle of a FL pipeline that needs to become more than that. Huntley and Moss are good examples of what FL kids can achieve by coming to SLC.
To the extent Utah will expand into the B12 footprint for recruiting, FL is the best recruiting territory beside Texas.
B12 is not SEC or B1G, but for kids that want to play in front of family just a bit, Utah represents a nice opportunity to get out of FL, with the potential to follow the footsteps of a Huntley or Moss.
If UCF helps our recruiting tick up, I care. If we can be a bigger dog in this new league and get a bigger pipeline out of FL, great.
