Big 12 Expansion - Looking at Numbers

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?
The Next three to four years are going to be rough.....I really don't know if the remaining big 12 schools can stay together but at least now we know that ....
Texas Tech...Baylor and TCU, GOT TURNED DOWN BY THE PAC 12 CONFERENCE....
 
Big ten, a stitched together conference would be a disaster and the AD would suffer. You can’t go backwards on the money you make now you just can’t it’s not sustainable. You can’t go from 40+ million to 20 million or less.
 
If you make $30 an hour at your job then suddenly you make $15 an hour who here would be okay with that? Nobody, just like ISU can’t drop to half of what they make currently.
 
  • Like
Reactions: SEIOWA CLONE
None of those expansion candidates looked good nor brought any value before Texas and OU left, and they still don't. Like I've said before staying in this conference and adding any of the teams here is a death sentence. Adding G5 schools is not going to help us increase or even maintain our current income, not even close.

Unless there is more turmoil in other conferences for us to gain other P5 members the only viable option is to find a new P5/4 home.
Once again - I agree. But if we cannot find a P4 home, this is probably the best alternative.
Not big time money, but better than the alternatives. I am pretty sure the powers at ISU will do everything possible to land us in a great place, but it requires an accepting partner. Many people seem to ignore that - you will not get in just because you want too.
 
In the last round of realignment, someone from the Academies said they have no interest in playing a the P5 level, it is a matter of safety for their players. They can do it for 3 games or so, but to load up on it wouldn't be safe as generally their players are not as big, strong and fast as P5
The academies are a completely different animal all together and I think that will stay that way. I don’t see that changing for a lot of reasons.
 
  • Like
Reactions: agentbear
I initially just liked your post and kept moving, but then thought, "This is too good to just like and scroll past."

Excellent post - I appreciate the unique approach and original thought, and I just really love the idea. I tend to watch ISU FB games on very minimal delay (maybe live or up to 3 or 4 hours behind live), but I often DVR ~8 or 9 other games (usually most other Big XII games and a few highly competitive games from other conferences) and watch them over the rest of the weekend or even into Monday/Tuesday of the next week.

I think many would love a program like you've suggested.

I typically pause throughout the game to let the dogs out, make lunch, etc, and then try to click past the commercials to catch up to real time. Sometimes I forget, and will be a couple minutes behind while I'm reading or commenting on social media about a particular play.
 
I certainly haven't read every post in every thread on this topic, so SIAP. Talking about live game attendance and cable viewer eyeballs really doesn't look at the entire picture. The entire picture includes the fan base of each of the competing teams in each game and for that matter the fan base of the entire conference collectively. We're Iowa State fans first but also fans of the Big 12 (or most of the Big 12, anyway.....).

So, I think that in the next round of media negotiations for football, MBB and WBB, the conference needs to look beyond live, real time eyeballs and into archiving. Whatever conference we wind up in should negotiate with its media partner the creation of a [insert conference name here] web site that not only streams games in real time (in addition to the over-the-air, cable, and satellite distribution systems) but also makes them available in an archive of all games in that conference covered by that network and can be acquired from other networks.

If I were a cord cutter and didn't get the games on TV, or if I lived in Alaska or the UK or Antarctica, I could watch Cyclone games in real time if I were awake or on the archive whenever it was convenient to me. Games I enjoyed I could watch over and over. Games would be streamed with their commercials, or subscribers could pay a premium rate to watch without commercials, as with MLB-TV.

Such an add-on to the base media rights agreement wouldn't cost a lot extra to the provider but would expand the viewer base to worldwide dimensions and make the archives quite compelling to advertisers.

I would jump at the opportunity to subscribe to such a service at the premium rate, not just to watch ISU games but also many other conference games, and I think the overall demand would be significant. Wouldn't matter where the viewers were or what time zone they were in. How much additional revenue could ISU and other conference members gain from this?

I have often had similar thoughts about ISU specifically. On the ISU website you can go through the history of all of ISU's games... but, I often thought that they should have links there so that you could re-watch the games. If no video is available, pictures, stories, etc. of the games. I agree, it would be great to have that platform at the conference level. But also think ISU could create a revenue stream. I know Cyclones.tv had some old games and I watched a few there... but I think linking that content to the rest of the cyclones.com site would have been better. Also, not sure if all of that is gone now with the ESPN+ deal? Or if Cyclones.tv still exists..
What the SEC is doing is bad for college football and college sports as a whole. Time for university leaders across the nation to step forward. Perhaps all non-SEC schools should consider forming their own NCAA sans SEC schools, with their own playoffs. Nip this SEC power-grab in the bud. That'll force the SEC, not wanting to go-it-alone, to cave. After the SEC caves, some sort of mass realignment to occur that is a) centered around conferences based on reasonable regionality/geography as in the past and b) on leagues limited to 12 or so teams, not 14 to 20. Conferences/leagues spanning the nation or totally dominating is bad bad bad.

Yes.... I agree. I think this will come down to the remaining brands outside the sec. They can join a "super" division and see how it works out. Or they can set aside what is "best" for them individually (short term) and look bigger picture, partner with the other schools and conferences and set a new path forward.

If every school is focused on what is best for them now, we will end up with power conferences. If those outside the sec finally take a stand and try to do what is best for the sport, we may have something that still looks pretty similar to what it is now.

College football has no NFL structure that keeps the dallas cowboys and the jacsonville jaguars in the same game, playing by the same rules, and keeping things competitive. I am not looking for everything to be perfectly equal for significantly increasing parity in college sports. But I would like to see leaders emerge that will drive what is best for college sports and not force each school to act in their best interest at the cost of the collective good.
 
The Next three to four years are going to be rough.....I really don't know if the remaining big 12 schools can stay together but at least now we know that ....
Texas Tech...Baylor and TCU, GOT TURNED DOWN BY THE PAC 12 CONFERENCE....

Do you have a link to an article that asserts that they did? I haven't seen that.
 
Big ten, a stitched together conference would be a disaster and the AD would suffer. You can’t go backwards on the money you make now you just can’t it’s not sustainable. You can’t go from 40+ million to 20 million or less.
It all depends how highly leveraged you are. That includes 'expectations'.
 
  • Like
Reactions: KidSilverhair
Big ten, a stitched together conference would be a disaster and the AD would suffer. You can’t go backwards on the money you make now you just can’t it’s not sustainable. You can’t go from 40+ million to 20 million or less.

I see this said a lot. “Iowa State athletics can’t survive financially in an expanded ‘new’ Big XII, or in the AAC! There’s no way they can withstand the loss of revenue! Why are we talking about adding BYU or Cincy or USF, it doesn’t matter, it would be unsustainable!”

Okay, obviously that kind of move would be a shattering blow to ISU athletics, I get it … but what’s the alternative? If the B1G and the Pac-12 decide to not grant membership, what’s your plan? Close up the athletic department? Go D-3 and join the ARC?

Come on, man. We‘ve got to keep our options alive. If the Hateful 8 can hang together, the possibility of adding BYU can help keep the Big XII as a viable conference … the others I hear mentioned (Cincy, Houston, UCF, USF, maybe Memphis) don’t add a bunch, but they don’t hurt a lot, either, at least not in comparison to joining the MAC or becoming a wandering minstrel independent program.

Of course we want a B1G invite. Of course we’d take a Pac-12 invite if that didn’t happen. But if neither one comes through, we don’t need the doom-and-gloom about how it’s “the end” for Cyclone athletics. It’s going to be different, it’s going to suck … but plenty of programs are making do at a MAC/MWC/CUSA level … and there’s no reason for Iowa State to sink down that far. Bringing BYU and maybe the best of the AAC would make a viable Big XII, with huge budget cuts, sure, but it’d still be a program, and likely still considered a Power Five, maybe.

It‘s not B1G or the athletic department dies. There are other, somewhat sucky options, but the Cyclones can keep playing big-boy football and basketball.
 
Here's one possibility for the future: The Supreme Court decision will eventually lead to some schools paying student-athletes a part-time stipend equal to what teaching assistants get, which would cost each school that does so around $10-$15 million. (I'm assuming women's golf is going to be paid the same as football.) The NCAA will then reorganize its divisions into D1 (scholarship+stipend), D2 (scholarship only), D3 (non-scholarship). The question then will not be whether ISU remains in a P5-conference or not, but whether it remains in D1 or not. There won't be a clear prestige division within the new D1 as there is now between P5/G5. I think that's why Texas & OU jumped in the first place: To pay these stipends in the future without disrupting their existing budget.
I think NIL will trump the equal stipends from the AD. The power schools all have ridiculous facilities funded by boosters and once those costs are covered the ongoing booster money will get funneled directly to football and basketball players thru NIL. Like the Miami health club guy paying each football player $500/month, only on steroids for teams like Alabama. If NIL remains ungoverned don’t be surprised to see the Alabama football team with a $20/$30/$40 million annual payroll. One player is already approaching $1 mil. And I don’t think the NCAA will be the governing body.
 
One player is already approaching $1 mil.

Not just “one player,” but a player who has NEVER STARTED A COLLEGE FOOTBALL GAME and has thrown a total of 22 passes in live action.

I get how big-time players feel like they should leverage their performance advancing the interests of their school into a financial return for them (it makes sense) - but having this NIL system result in a sophomore with zero career starts getting nearly a million bucks is insane. The donors for the big-time big-name schools are going to pay off huge for those players, whether they actually play or not. And that’s not good.
 
First time, long time...

Last week I was thinking about actual eyeballs on games last year, not just a convenient narrative. Did some digging and found the TV data from 2020 and parsed out the b12/b10 data from within the aggregate.

Granted last year was a COVID year so one could argue the data as a one-year snapshot is less accurate. On the other hand, one could argue COVID may had driven viewership as people hungered for sports especially in the B10 where schools were allowed VERY limited attendance.

It jumps off the page that the B10 does not have a TV contract; Ohio State has a TV contract that Michigan and WISC participate in and the rest of the conference has a parasitic relationship. The highest rated B10 game not involving one of the big 3 was Iowa vs Nebraska; but that game lagged the highest viewed B12 game that did not involve TX or OU, was ISU vs Ok State.

Can’t argue that ISU had three absolute TV dogs (Baylor, TCU and KU) but not a hard stretch to imagine ISU performing very well when compared to the B10 teams outside of their big three.

Sheet 3 - For some reason there is no data on the Iowa vs PSU game on 21 November so the data set is not absolute.

If you remove ISU’s most watched game (Fiesta) ISU’s average number of viewers was 500,000 HIGHER than Iowa’s. In fact, ISU had three REGULAR season games with more viewers than Iowa’s highest viewed game, Black Friday against Neb.

Can't attach a spreadsheet but here is where the data is found: https://www.statista.com/statistics/748033/college-football-tv-ratings/

A screenshot of ISU compared to iowa
 

Attachments

  • Image 8-3-21 at 11.46 AM.jpeg
    Image 8-3-21 at 11.46 AM.jpeg
    238.5 KB · Views: 35
First time, long time...

Last week I was thinking about actual eyeballs on games last year, not just a convenient narrative. Did some digging and found the TV data from 2020 and parsed out the b12/b10 data from within the aggregate.

Granted last year was a COVID year so one could argue the data as a one-year snapshot is less accurate. On the other hand, one could argue COVID may had driven viewership as people hungered for sports especially in the B10 where schools were allowed VERY limited attendance.

It jumps off the page that the B10 does not have a TV contract; Ohio State has a TV contract that Michigan and WISC participate in and the rest of the conference has a parasitic relationship. The highest rated B10 game not involving one of the big 3 was Iowa vs Nebraska; but that game lagged the highest viewed B12 game that did not involve TX or OU, was ISU vs Ok State.

Can’t argue that ISU had three absolute TV dogs (Baylor, TCU and KU) but not a hard stretch to imagine ISU performing very well when compared to the B10 teams outside of their big three.

Sheet 3 - For some reason there is no data on the Iowa vs PSU game on 21 November so the data set is not absolute.

If you remove ISU’s most watched game (Fiesta) ISU’s average number of viewers was 500,000 HIGHER than Iowa’s. In fact, ISU had three REGULAR season games with more viewers than Iowa’s highest viewed game, Black Friday against Neb.

Can't attach a spreadsheet but here is where the data is found: https://www.statista.com/statistics/748033/college-football-tv-ratings/

A screenshot of ISU compared to iowa

You won't find many ratings for BTN or SEC Network games.
 
Do you have a link to an article that asserts that they did? I haven't seen that.
NO I do not have a link...I was reading an article re the Texas Senate Committee investigating the Texas OU move to the SEC...When this was stated that the Three Schools could not gain admittance to the Pac 12... (The statement from the Pac 12 was...."We are not expanding").....I really think that the Texas Pols are worried that the only big time school in Texas has just screwed the rest of the IN STATE SCHOOLS!
 
NO I do not have a link...I was reading an article re the Texas Senate Committee investigating the Texas OU move to the SEC...When this was stated that the Three Schools could not gain admittance to the Pac 12... (The statement from the Pac 12 was...."We are not expanding").....I really think that the Texas Pols are worried that the only big time school in Texas has just screwed the rest of the IN STATE SCHOOLS!
I would guess that most conferences said that right away, except the AAC who had been let in on things a bit, since they were caught off guard. They are getting an opportunity now to take it at a slow and methodical speed thanks to the remaining 8 not freaking out and scattering.
 
  • Like
Reactions: HawaiiClone

Latest posts

Help Support Us

Become a patron