I don’t see Stanford leaving a conference with North Carolina, Virginia, Wake, Syracuse, BC & Duke for Fresno and Boise. Can’t wrap my head around that one.
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sports360az dot com slash
mailbag-all-about-pac-12-expansion-the-cfp-factor-options-for-the-final-spots-and-the-future-of-the-mountain-west
Link to Wilner mailbag with useful facts and analysis about the new PAC-12 strategy. $10mm is approximate expected.
I’d like to take your thoughts a step further by citing a parallel from World War II that has come to mind. This reminds me of the Wehrmacht’s Ardennes Offensive in December, 1944. That was a surprise strike, which caught the Allies flatfooted. It also depended as much on chaos and confusion as it did tanks and bullets.
Initially, it succeeded. However, it was really just a last-gasp, desperation roll of the dice. Even if Germany had succeeded, tactically, and driven all the way to Antwerp, strategically, it was fatally flawed and doomed to failure. Other than split the US and British forces and capture their biggest port for incoming military supplies, it was an exercise in futility because the Allies had other ports from which they could unload far more supplies and men and easily withstand a successful advance to the Belgian coast. Germany was outnumbered and out supplied, which the Ardennes Offensive could only delay or temporarily halt the heretofore relentless advance. When it failed, it actually hastened the collapse of the Third Reich, five months later.
While no comparison is perfect, this likewise seems like a last-chance attempt to halt a relentless tide of separation and relegation that, IMO, no combination of MWC and AAC teams can prevent, only perhaps delay for a while. The timing of this move is not good and smacks of weakness, not strength. The revenue gap will continue to widen. As a recent USA Today article put it, four teams are leaving the MWC, which competes with the AAC as the fifth best conference, to join another conference which will compete with the AAC as the fifth best conference, all the while expending a good chunk of OSU’s and WSU’s one-time largess.
I can’t fault the Cougs and Beavers for trying and derive no satisfaction in seeing schools left behind at the train station. Unfortunately, the P4 train has departed, IMO, with the only question in my mind being whether it will have additional cars uncoupled down the track to form a P3 or P2 train.
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P12 with 6 teams will take whatever they can get. They have no bargaining leverage at all and will be lucky to get 10m/yr.
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Given the smaller media markets (Sans SDSU), it looks like another MWC. Truth be told, the PAC 8 and PAC 10 schools used to ■■■■■ a lot about having Oregon State and Wazzu in their conference. I can remember many years ago the rumors some wanted to dump them to go back to being the PAC 8.
There are a many millions reasons not to go back. Then again, given the ongoing earthquake in the sports broadcasting sector, and the fact we are now essentially “broadcasting” our own home games, maybe there is going to be some other path emerging. One thing is for sure, it won’t be going back to the PAC 12.
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Yep, I saw something where a bunch of media analysts weighed in at around $11M. It’s going to be all about who else they can get to join.
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I don’t want to be in any conference with byu-provo. They have nothing in common with Utah. Let them join a crap conference like that, I’d rather be in the B1G with real schools, academically and athletically similar.
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Genuinely funny we (Utah State) got into the PAC-12 before byu even if it’s just the MW with lipstick
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Another data point for the argument against a hard break between so called super conferences and the rest (in the form Whittingham has postulated), why this Pac 12 jockeying is relevant, and why a continuum model is more likely:
This ratings table showing how valuable inventory actually is. Utah has obviously been and is a much football better team than Nebraska or Colorado, and yet more people are watching those games. Also, teams who clearly would be out of the top 64 like say App State are still generating views much greater than many other streaming and other TV. I would expect App State’s access to game against the top half of FBS contributes to those ratings.
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I read somewhere that it would probably be in the range of $8-$12
Speaking of expenses, my duaghter goes to UVA. We were in C-Ville last weekend for parents weekend, having Saturday lunch, when the Stanford field hockey team came in. We all wondered how minor sport teams are going to afford that travel.
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I would like to see data on how big of an issue this actually is. Intuitively it seems like it’s an issue, but like 15 years ago somehow the club university of arizona ice hockey team managed to travel back east each year for games and nobody went bankrupt.
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The population footprint in the B1G is really big. After the Huskers smacked the Buffs, people in B1G country started paying attention to them.
With CU a lot of people watch to see what happens next in that CFB version of the Kardashians.
Utah has been punching above our weight for a while, but our population footprint is quite small.
(Box Elder county is bigger in size than 3 states back east, comparable in size to another 5 states, same for Tooele county. Both of those counties are just slightly smaller than New Jersey… together they are bigger than 9 states. It’s that dang “water” issue, again.)
In the Big-12 footprint, I’ll guess K-State vs Okie State will have a sizable viewership drop off, and BYU will see a bump. Our game vs UofA will be past many TVs’ bedtimes.
Eyeballs in Big-12 territory are modest in number, overall, compared to B1G or SEC, or even ACC.
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Law school?
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Sure there are many factors to explain each week and each year - media markets, brand names (how many dedicated Nebraska bars are there?) as well as teams rising and falling etc.
The point is that people watch a lot of football, and it doesn’t seem that having fewer games is likely to maximize revenue year over year.
Also Utah is the perfect continuum model team based on your criteria - making it appear that the playing field is level by in fact doing better than the economics, market and brand would predict -and the dream that any team could become a “Utah” in the right combination of circumstances.
undergrad; second year.
Time zones are a problem too. I’m up on Saturday morning well before the earliest East Coast games start, but the Utah-Arizona game will end well past 1AM in the Eastern time zone.
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Scheduling so far seems to indicate big 12 is getting the “after dark” market and the b1g west coast teams are going to be earlier games. The great Dave Flemming basically said as much during the BYU game.
It’s just basic segmentation.
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Fans and schools from (for example) Penn State would not at all be happy playing a game out west that started (for them) at 10PM.
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You’re never going to be able to retire, are you?
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