Realignment Megathread (All The Moves)

[Die4Cy]

And if Amazon really wants to overpay, I see no reason for putting any games on cable. To hell with ESPN, and FS1 viewership is awful. If we can get teams to schedule more conference games and bye weeks in September, and let's say that we hypothetically have 16 teams each playing 9 conference games and let's say 2 home non-cons, that would be 104 games over 13 weeks, or 8 games per week. I'd say the most optimal outcome would be selling 4 to over-the-air and 4 to Amazon. Provided that we can actually Fox/CBS/NBC to buy 4 games and that Amazon really does want to overpay. That would be a pretty sweet outcome IMO.

The risk in this is putting your games outside the reach of the average fan. The current paradigm has its problems, but until it shifts, having games exclusively on streaming is going to hurt both in terms of viewership and buzz among those who have not made the jump. ESPN has no reason to talk about you, no matter how good you are, at that point.

 

[Stormin]

I mean, that's exactly why the Big Ten landed USC and UCLA. They now can fill the 9:00 PM Central timeslot with a game, giving them another premium timeslot for ESPN/Fox/Apple/Amazon to bid on and coverage from 11:00 AM to 12:00 AM Central time every football weekend. Two teams allows them to design the schedule in such a way that they can put a game in that timeslot every weekend during conference play. It also means it would be nice if the Big Ten could add more West coast games (for things like double-headers on Friday and Saturday night and to give them more flexibility), but it isn't crucial.

The problem the Big 12/ACC are going to run into versus the Pac 12 is that the Big 12 and ACC play all their games in the same television windows as the Big Ten and SEC, so the Pac 12 is inherently going to have more value.

Then WHY was the PAC 12 offer so much less than the other Conferences if what you claim is true? Pac 12 value is diminished because of their time zone. It is a liability.

 

[Gunnerclone]

 

[heitclone]

If the p12 goes all in on the 1030 est kickoffs, that means Oregon, Washington and Utah will be playing at that time most weeks. It helps those teams but the other teams will get pushed to less attractive time slots, losing the current bump they get from having no power conference to compete with. If the purpose of the league is going to be to try to prop up the best 3 or 4 programs at the expense of the other schools TV numbers, why would the others be interested at all? Their numbers will drop to keep the schools with one foot out the door relevant to the b1g.

 

[cyIclSoneU]

The best example of how lame Mandel’s “analysis” is.

The networks always put OU and UT on the best channels, so there were only 12 non-OU/UT games on those four channels per year. This number will go way up after they leave. As Bradshaw says, the AAC is contractually guaranteed 20 of those games. The new Big 12 will get more than that (if it stays with an ESPN contract).

So Stew’s attempt to take out the schools that are leaving heavily underweighted the games on channels that people actually watch. It makes the Big 12’s numbers look much worse, without any basis for doing so.

 

[CoKane]

Here are the numbers he came up with.

"Below is a chart of the remaining Pac-12 and Big 12 schools’ average TV ratings, from 2015-19 and 2021. (Games against Oklahoma/Texas and USC/UCLA are excluded.)"

Oregon	1.96 million
Stanford	1.83 million
Washington	1.73 million
Washington State	1.59 million
Colorado	1.49 million
Utah	1.44 million
Oklahoma State	1.28 million
California	1.27 million
TCU	1.22 million
Arizona State	1.19 million
West Virginia	1.10 million
Baylor	1.07 million
Iowa State	1.04 million
Texas Tech	866,000
Arizona	815,000
Kansas State	748,000
Oregon State	723,000
Kansas	409,000

If Wazzu was 4th there would be 0 talk of them being left out

 

[12191987]

So millions of fans are going to watch those games on a Saturday night because they care so much but they don’t even halfway fill their own stadiums…. Bold take.

This talking point isn’t terribly accurate.

Washington was 4-8 last year. They averaged >62k at home last year.

They closed out the season in the Apple Cup against a 6-5 Wazzu in front of >68k.

Oregon mostly filled Autzen last year. They played Utah in the Pac-12 title game in front of a healthy 56k in Las Vegas. For comparison, OU vs. Oregon in the Alamo Bowl was 59k.

 

[JM4CY]

This talking point isn’t terribly accurate.

Washington was 4-8 last year. They averaged >62k at home last year.

They closed out the season in the Apple Cup against a 6-5 Wazzu in front of >68k.

Oregon mostly filled Autzen last year. They played Utah in the Pac-12 title game in front of a healthy 56k in Las Vegas. For comparison, OU vs. Oregon in the Alamo Bowl was 59k.

You can nitpick if you want and always find little things.

Now incorporate the rest of the league and make an argument that conference gives two f*cks about football.

 

[VoiceOfReason]

Then WHY was the PAC 12 offer so much less than the other Conferences if what you claim is true? Pac 12 value is diminished because of their time zone. It is a liability.

I simply don't agree. The only time slot they miss out on is 11:00 AM Central. Also, it's a little unfair to judge current TV deals that were signed over a decade ago into a very different media landscape and even if we were, their deal is marginally different than the current Big 12 deal and I think the Big 12 losing Texas and Oklahoma will ultimately have a bigger impact than the Pac 12 losing UCLA and USC. We will see, I guess.

 

[CyCrazy]

All of the so-called analyses proffered up thus far have have been flawed and/or based on obsolete data.

My own model properly weights attendance by percentage of stadium capacity and from the most recent season (2021), as well as the on-field results using the last season not played under the specter of realignment (2020).

It predicts neither USC nor UCLA is a reasonable addition to the Big 10. However, interestingly ISU is grossly undervalued.

I’m short, you sheeple can believe what you want…but JP is going to start cashing those fat Big 10 checks any day now. USC and UCLA are both going to be begging the MWC for a spot.

Are you drunk?

 

[JP4CY]

If Wazzu was 4th there would be 0 talk of them being left out

I went to the Alamo, Wazzu was shocked at how many Iowa Staters were there.

 

[12191987]

You can nitpick if you want and always find little things.

Now incorporate the rest of the league and make an argument that conference gives two f*cks about football.

Lemme guess, that the Pac-12 has two current members that have made the playoff and, even more telling, a Pac-12 team actually won a game is actually further proof they’re not serious about football?

Because….THE CFP IS OREGON’S SUPERBOWL!!!

Congratulations, CycloneFanatic forum, you’ve now gone full-Hawkeye.

 

[JM4CY]

Lemme guess, that the Pac-12 has two current members that have made the playoff and, even more telling, a Pac-12 team actually won a game is actually further proof they’re not serious about football?

Because….THE CFP IS OREGON’S SUPERBOWL!!!

Congratulations, CycloneFanatic forum, you’ve now gone full-Hawkeye.

 

[CascadeClone]

I think one thing we don't really talk about on here is that while the number of viewers is important, how much are advertisers going to pay for those ad spots? I would assume the mid day and prime time games are more valuable than those 10:30 pm games because people are more focused during the earlier games. By 10:30, while the viewers may be inflated because its the only sports related game going on at that time at night, how many people are actively watching it? I would bet advertisers have data on which time slots drive more sales/attention to their product and thus, how much they are willing to spend.

I am not addressing demographics, which I think is what you are getting at, but I do have a side point.

It's my belief (not knowledge) that the value of games to the networks goes up EXPONENTIALLY with viewership. Low end games are almost valueless, because they can get de minimus viewers for free, just showing rerun cop shows for nearly nothing.

So breaking that down with some guesswork:
The SEC has 56 conference games. And if they are getting roughly $700M for them (no CFP money in this), that's $12.5M per game.
What if the 10 highest viewer games drive 80% of the value? e.g. 10 games are worth $55M each, and the other 46 games are only worth $3M each? And even of those, it probably splits that 10 games with 2-3M viewers are worth $10M each, and the other 36 games with <1M viewers are worth $1M each.

It would explain why an expanded CFP with 11 games would be worth $1B as we see in the reports and estimates. They'd all be the highest rated games of the year.

 

[AuH2O]

I also believe that games on the Pac-12 network don’t have the viewership numbers reported. Well those are all of the worst matchups, and so the majority of Pac teams get to shield 5 or 6 low viewership games in there. Imagine if we could throw out KU, UNLV, etc and get our numbers over 2 million per game.

I'm not sure, but I believe that he might actually count streaming games as zero, in other words count them in the denominator, but count it as zero viewers. Now, that sounds like a big difference, but when you look at the number of games on PACN by team, and what the matchups are, they would've otherwise likely been on FS1, FS2, ESPN2 or ESPNU. If you assume that and give some estimated viewership for those, the best case for the PAC probably allows CU and WSU to then jump above KU, and Stanford jumps TCU. That would change them like this:
1. Oregon
2. Okie St.
3. ISU
4. Cincy
5. Baylor
6. Utah
7. UW
8. WVU
9. TCU
10. BYU
11. Stan
12. TTU
13. ASU
14. KSU
15.WSU
16. CU
17. KU
18.UCF
19 Arizona
20. Oregon St
21. Houston
22. Cal

 

[CascadeClone]

This is the place where Andy Staples got the data for his Athletic article and what I used for the 2019 data. But the annoying thing is that it requires copying and pasting or scraping (and 2021 data is in images, so it's completely manual data entry). Plus the years before 2018 or 2019 require extra cleaning because it uses varying name formats for schools (like IA State, ISU, Iowa State, Iowa St., etc.).

You're not kidding, that's a lot of manual typing.

We have an OCR reader in our pdf software; I will see if I print, scan to pdf, and then OCR, if that will turn it into a spreadsheet.

 

[Kinch]

Lemme guess, that the Pac-12 has two current members that have made the playoff and, even more telling, a Pac-12 team actually won a game is actually further proof they’re not serious about football?

Because….THE CFP IS OREGON’S SUPERBOWL!!!

Congratulations, CycloneFanatic forum, you’ve now gone full-Hawkeye.

Lemme guess. You are the one who supplied the vodka to Sam.

 

[12191987]

Lemme guess. You are the one who supplied the vodka to Sam.

Well, I’m not inclined to knock somebody who knows how to have a good time.

 

[JM4CY]

Well, I’m not inclined to knock somebody who knows how to have a good time.

 

[AuH2O]

It's a fair point to speculate about. Without OUT, will the B12 be allotted the same number of ABC/FOX/ESPN TV slots? Same with the P12, would they gain or lose spots on the prime networks? Say the B12 has 2 prime network slots per week which are currently generally occupied by OUT. Will we now get ISU/OSU, BU/OSU, etc in those ABC/FOX/ESPN slots? Or, will those games continue to be played on ESPN2/FS1, etc and OUT's prime network slots move with them to the SEC?

I think that even if we assume Mandel's point about tv network slots is generally correct (i.e. those primetime ABC kickoff spots move to the SEC with OUT and Oregon remains in the P12 long term), I think you still see a decline in P12 viewership because USC and UCLA will move B1G games into those late night timeslots and take viewers from the remaining P12.

One thing that is clear is getting a game on ABC, Fox and ESPN certainly boosts ratings.

So on one hand, it is true that playing a late night kickoff is not favorable, all things being equal. However, all things aren't otherwise equal. The Pacific time zone allows for games to be on late on better networks than they would be otherwise.

The question is do the 4 corner schools along with BYU broadcasting on later time slots do better with a conference that in the last year or two watches a lot more football, but reside in Central and Eastern Time zone?

I guess all this arguing about value doesn't really matter. The networks will ultimately make that decision. I'm guessing PAC $ probably have a fair amount of Oregon uncertainty baked in.