Despite USNWR rankings being cited everywhere, they give a lot of weight to peer surveys (in other words, a popularity contest) instead of simply data-driven formulas.
Big 12 Expansion - Looking at Numbers
- Thread starter AppleCornCy
- Start date
The idea of UCF is not what they are now, but what they will be ten years from now. I wouldn't be surprised if they were happy to be the big fish in the small pond for a bit longer, and after stacking up a bunch more wins having a huge profile for a jump in the future.
This is not me saying I think adding UCF is a great idea, just that I can see the thinking on it.
Ignore it then... not that hard.
Expanding the Big12 is a non starter unless you're adding teams from another P5 conference.... so I thought I'd provide an option that actually saves our athletics program.
Thanks. We are indebted to you eternally for imparting your wisdom Captain Obvious.
Thanks!
Seriously though... do you believe that adding a BYU and Houston, or Cincy to the Big 12 keeps it viable in any way?
What kind of revenue drop will ISU see if that happens? Would we make enough to keep our athletics department afloat?
Were these university rankings from us news?
These are false ratings, but they have survived scrutiny for whatever reason. The super conferences vote their members up and will vote competing members down.
Best example - see Nebraska rating before and after big 12 exit. They entered a 14 team league and their old league went down to 10 members. Their ratings improve instantly while an independent organization, the AAU, kicks them out.
The ratings from big 10 presidents immediately went up for Ne, and a key university (Iowa state) ratings immediately go down. That's how this game is played.
I don't think most of the CFB decision makers give a flying **** what we want or what's best for any of us. If that's the case, then yes, it keeps us viable in some way and we will have to make due. Yes, it would suck very very hard. Get as much $$$ out of UT OU ESPN as possible becomes a must.
Attendance:
College Football Attendance 5-Year Average For Every School
Why does attendance matter so much? For college football – far more than the pro sports – the ticket revenue and the money generated from having fans in the stands means everything to m…
collegefootballnews.com
I trusted CFN’s numbers for the averages, but I did look at the NCAA’s yearly data for comparisons and trends.
University Rankings:
TV Market Rankings:
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia, created and edited by volunteers around the world and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation.
www.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia was used to figure out the county where some of the schools are located so that I could determine through the DMA map which TV market they are located within.
Since it is apparent that every option other than BYU would be more of a taker than a contributor - in other words, their value to a TV deal would be under the league average - and because of the likelihood of an expanded CFP that includes conference champion autobids, I am leaning more in favor of a BYU + 1 expansion option and remaining a 10-school league. All else being equal, you enter each season with about a 10% chance of making the CFP. Many Big 12 schools would make the CFP more frequently than most SEC/B1G/ACC/Pac-12 schools would. Why add two more schools that would both lower your revenue AND your odds at competitive success?
UCF is probably the best option to go with BYU, but Cincinnati would also make sense and is a bit more geographically correct. And if BYU declines the invite, which is quite possible, then do UCF + Cincinnati to go to 10. In this case I expect Houston and other power brokers in Texas to lean very hard on Tech/TCU/Baylor to get one of those invites, though.
Their official attendance is surprisingly high.
You keep complaining about viability. If no other P4 league takes on Big 12 teams then this is the best option. And it is very possible that no other P4 league will do so.
I'm sure JP is trying to get a B1G invite etc. but it might not happen. Keeping and expanding the Big 12 is what comes next if none of those shake out. How hard is it to understand this?
ECU has a very passionate fanbase and there are communites throughout the eastern 1/3rd of North Carolina that are majority ECU fans, which most people don't expect.
People can talk about game attendance and media markets and how that impacts cable and streaming subscriptions all they want. But the big money remains the marquee over the air games. And cable subs are probably losing value and streaming hasn't been able to add equivalent value. ESPN paid the SEC $300 million a year for ONE game per week and the conference championship game on ABC.
The problem is even with expansion, the Big 12's best game to sell might be Farmageddon while the SEC is selling the Red River Shootout, Iron Bowl, and Largest Outdoor Cocktail party.
www.athleticdirectoru.com
www.sportspromedia.com
The problem is even with expansion, the Big 12's best game to sell might be Farmageddon while the SEC is selling the Red River Shootout, Iron Bowl, and Largest Outdoor Cocktail party.
Why The SEC On CBS Deal Is Worth (at least) $300M Annually
At least $300 million per year. That is the ask the SEC should pose to CBS in its negotiations to extend the current Tier I rights deal for football games. Yes, it is a massive increase on the current deal valued at $55 million per year, but it is what the market suggests the SEC game of the...
www.athleticdirectoru.com
SEC leaving CBS for ESPN in US$3bn deal from 2024 - SportsPro
Disney confirms exclusive rights to conference’s marquee football games for ten years. [...]Read More... from SEC leaving CBS for ESPN in US$3bn deal from 2024
www.sportspromedia.com
You make good points, but I didn’t rely very heavily on market rankings. As I said, you have to take them with a giant grain of salt. If they were the be-all, end-all then Army and Temple would be two of the most followed teams in the country and TCU and Baylor would be the most popular teams in the Big 12. Neither of those are true, as the attendance numbers show. Also, schools like West Virginia and Oklahoma State are on the fringe of their TV markets and aren’t the most popular teams in those markets.
I mainly included TV market data to give an idea of the conference’s footprint and eliminate a couple of the candidates in tiny markets.
Attendance matters to an extent, but there is more. If school "A" has the same attendance as school "B", but is able to command $150 more per season ticket than school "A", School "B" has more demand, even if attendance is lower. And since much of the seating at higher level programs also has donor requirements, that revenue should be factored in as well.
As for the argument about "spraying" content inefficiently via networks versus streaming, there are two sides to that coin as well as other considerations. First, they do have the means to effectively measure antenna/cable/satellite viewership. Is it 100% accurate? No, but it's more than close enough to accurately measure. In your observational example of SF, there may be 10 such bars in the area that do that for our fans. You're still only talking about 50-100 people. It doesn't move the needle. And there are probably similar fan enclaves for 30 other schools with passionate fan bases as well. But it does show the role that we as fans can play in building our brand. It was our fanbase that landed Matt Campbell.
Two, in regards to the value of advertising, digital advertising actually hurts networks and TV contracts. Why? Because it's those inefficiencies in the system that put money in networks' pockets. The ability to microtarget offers a tremendous value to an advertiser, and one for which they will pay a LOT more to reach their market on a per person basis, but the flip side to that is they can target far fewer people and spend less money. That's where the networks lose.
Three, I think we are all underestimating ESPN's ability to understand fanbases and how that turns into eyeballs. I'm sure over the past few years they've been gathering streaming data and that likely played a roll in orchestrating this move.
