I think that we are far from done with the restructuring of College Football, and I fear that Utah will be left out.
The SEC and Big 10 are flexing their muscles, suing the NCAA for trying to impose NIL restrictions, getting the biggest TV contracts, attracting te best players and more.
And we’re stuck in the Big 12 with schools that just aren’t on our level in football. South Florida? Who cares. BYU? Who cares, since they’re a group of 5 school that got lucky. West Virginia? Who cares.
The Big 12 has no marquee brands. It has nothing.
And if the Big 10 and SEC form two super conferences that controls football, where does that leave Utah? I hope that we can get into the Big 10 with the other academic schools (ASU, Colorado, UA). Then we can play USC and make them cry again. I don’t care if we beat UCF, it’s boring.
I’m just worried that Utah is in a different version of the WAC.
It’s more likely that the B1G, SEC etc. will give way to a football-driven breakaway league. The ‘lesser’ football programs from those conferences won’t make it to the new league, and whether Utah does depends heavily on the size of the league.
Not really even a matter of ‘dumping’ them as we’re ultimately talking net new league. But, yeah those are all examples of programs that don’t add much in quality, market, fan base etc.
Utah is going to be a bubble program. It lies in a small state but a state that is growing quickly. It has had some Nice success recently but was not able to win the bowl games. Utah’s Rose Bowl teams looked completely outclassed by the B10 runner-up teams.
The NFL has 32 teams I expect the new college football alliance to have something similar. My gut feeling is that Utah has a roughly 40% chance of inclusion but could improve this if we manage to convincingly win the B12 one or twice over the next 3-4 years.
Now if the new alliance decides to go a bit bigger say 40-50 teams then Utah should be in. We need to win and we need the powers that be to decide that capturing a wide fan base is important.
It’s not clear how this will affect college sports, but I can’t imagine how it will not, eventually.
Fox, Warner Bros. Discovery and Disney Create New Sports Streaming Venture
Service to be available to ESPN+, Hulu and Max subscribers
Fox Corp., ESPN and Warner Bros. Discovery are creating a joint streaming platform to share sports assets, a move that comes as the price of sports rights is dramatically increasing.
The stand-alone service will be available to ESPN+, Hulu and Max subscribers and each company will own one-third of the product, according to people familiar with the matter.
The as-yet unnamed platform is essentially a sport-streaming bundle, said one person with knowledge of the plans. It is expected to launch later this year.
Both Fox and Disney are to announce their quarterly earnings on Wednesday. Warner Bros. Discovery reports earnings on Feb. 23.
ESPN is still exploring options for a strategic partner. In July, Bob Iger, Disney’s chief executive, announced that he was looking for a strategic partner for the sports network and was open to selling an equity stake.
ESPN has been in talks with the National Football League, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League about the possibility of a strategic partnership, The Wall Street Journal previously reported.
The decision comes as ESPN is charting a streaming future, with plans to make its flagship channel available direct-to-consumer in the next two to three years or once its reach in the cable TV world falls below 50 million households, the Journal reported.
ESPN and Warner Bros. Discovery’s TNT are both renegotiating their rights packages with the National Basketball Association, one of their most valuable assets. Some experts expect the NBA to command three times its last deal, which would mean a rights package worth about $78 billion over a decade.
When AM radio was “the thing” and certain stations were given preferred status - including KSL and their vaunted “50,000 watt clear channel” ability to broadcast over the top of smaller stations (esp at night) - there were competing radio stations in Mexico that blasted up to 250,000 watts.
(How cool is that? In its own way, more impressive than the Baconator or even the Shaqaroni pizza!)
Since Mexico apparently won’t pay for the wall, maybe they can setup enormous TV broadcast antennae that would cover the US with free sports programming, or maybe the same price we pay now, just enumerated in pesos.
I would go for that. I’d be OK watching commercials in Spanish. I’m tired of the corporate buzzards of sports media.
Haha. Remember it well. This song got a TON of airplay on 91X, a San Diego alternative rock station that was broadcasted from TJ.
San Diegans were absolutely convinced that it was referring to “The X.”
