I’ll make sure to invite you to the next meeting, free copium for all attendees
Realignment Megathread (All The Moves)
- Thread starter ISUcyclones11
- Start date
If 4 more leave and the quality they add back is as described above idk how they stay P5 for long.
I want to say "Super MWC" but I think we already experienced "Super MWC" when TCU and Utah were dominating before they went B12/Pac. Boise St was actually in the WAC at that time and joined just as they left.
Some Pac/MWC hybrid will still be the #5 conference over the depleted American but it won't be any better than the MWC was at that peak period.
SDSU might be running in place.
This is literally a graph of fan enthusiasm and it’s rate of change. It is worth a lot more than most give credit.
I see it living in So Cal. I guarantee Des Moines is a drastically bigger market than San Diego for college sports in terms of real viewers and ticket buyers. I mean radically bigger. Some of Iowa’s other cities might also more than hold their own head to head vs San Diego. You’re talking about half of adults watching college football vs maybe 1% of adults watching it.
College sports just does not register out here other than transplants like myself. I have plenty of UCLA and SDSU alumni friends, just none of them follow sports of any kind.
I agree the percent is way higher but there are so many people in SoCal that the execs don't really care. ESPN/fox channels comes with almost everyone's cable or streaming package anyway.
At some point actual viewers will matter most. We’re halfway into it now. The closer we get to that the better for the ISU/KSU of the world and the worse for the Pac.
I can tell you truthfully that absolutely nobody in LA is actually watching college football on tv. I go entire seasons feeling like I’m the only college football fan. NBA, NFL and MMA (maaaaybe the dodgers) are the only things that register and even those aren’t nearly as popular as somewhere like Chicago, nyc or Philly.
They just aren't worth that much. Right now they are good in MBB. Their alumni don't care the city they are in doesn't care, their only supposed value is they are in SoCal but SoCal cares even less about college sports than I care about the Russian women's boxing league.
I'm really surprised OSU has problems selling tickets. Now if you said Michigan I would understand that.
Worth much or not, the P12 is trying to be proactive here and fill the southern California market with another team.
Teams on the West coast have two major problems, the time difference, which causes them to start games late on the east and central time zones, and most of the large cities are professional sports centric, that could care less about the college game unless they are winning championships. When USC was rolling the coliseum was a happening place to be and was packed, once they started downhill, people reverted back to the pro teams.
The P12 right now is fighting to stay alive, knowing that its two best teams are out the door the moment it opens to the Big 10, and a couple other teams that might jump so they can get settled before the crap hits the fan. If they sit back and do nothing, they are dead, they might as well expand, show that they are trying to do something and see what happens.
Most likely it will not help them, but they have to try.
Market size truly means next to nothing any more. Big 10 is the one league that actually has the potential to cash in on old school market size, and could snap their fingers and get into new markets like DFW, Seattle, Denver, Phoenix and NoCal, yet they seem to have no interest.
Why does ESPN care about market size if it doesn’t turn into viewers. Whether it’s new ESPN+ subscribers or ad value, for every other league not named the Big 10, it is solely about actual eyeballs.
Know it wouldn’t impact % capacity much but I’m curious to see the total attendance numbers in the new B12 without OUT. Would we still be above the others?
It'd be interesting to see event (ticket, parking, concessions) price correlation.
I think a few other possible reasons worth mentioning are:
- weather: as mentioned before, when I lived there I was outdoors most of the time
- ethnicity: it's widely known the Asian rim is acquiring an ever-growing percentage of CA real estate; their interests not likely college sports
- affordability: cost of living in CA is, quite simply, high; making the marginal ticket price less reachable. Yes, it might equate higher media viewership, but not sure.
It'll be really interesting to see where USC/UCLA will sit regarding attendance over the next 5 years; guessing an initial jump before settling into declining due to less 'visitor' attendance.
I agree, but just because they are a poor choice for the B12, does not mean that they are also a poor choice for the P12. The B10 would never give a school like Cincinnati the time of day, but they are a great choice for the B12. Each conference is different and therefore has different needs in what they are looking for in new schools to expand the conference.
The P12 should have been proactive and offered 4 to 6 schools from the B12 when it was announced that OU and UT were leaving, they could have destroyed the league while also strengthening their own, they chose not to, and now they are the ones about to be gutted.
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I think Matt Rhule might be the make or break hire for Nebraska. He’s the 6th coach since Osborne and the last two have been terrible. If he doesn’t turn it around then we may see the Huskers’ attendance finally break. Especially when they finally capitulate on the phony sellout streak.
I also think removing divisions will water down Iowa, Nebraska and Wisconsin. The easy path to the CCG will be gone. It would be like MLB removing divisions and going back to a pennant race.
UCLA really has no fan presence at all. Zero. I used to live not too far from campus and now I live 5 miles from Rose Bowl. They are going to get a massive attendance bump, but it will be from big ten fans making it a vacation since the stadium, weather and area are incredibly beautiful and UCLA has almost no ticket demand of its own.
USC is a little different. While none of their games sniff the ticket demand for ISU vs Iowa, they do have an actual fan presence on game day. If you’re near the stadium on game day you know a game is going on. You see the gear and you see fans. In Westwood or Pasadena you have no idea a UCLA football game is even happening unless you drive right up to the rosebowl. I’d rather go to a UCLA away game as a b10 fan.
I’m told when USC is a title contender it suddenly changes and USC tickets skyrocket, they’ve only been so so the nine years I’ve been around so haven’t seen it.
Fwiw as a cubs fan, 2016 NLCS tickets started at $120 in LA and well over $1000 at Wrigley. The US Open was basically on UCLA campus a few weeks ago and absolutely nobody in the area cared at all.
When you see such low fan support for these PAC teams you realize just how easy they have had it. Whatever tv numbers they pump up are basically due to only having to compete with the mwc for viewers. It seems some schools understand that and know streaming will doom them now that they big ten and big 12 will be playing late games.
The trouble they are in now is nothing compared to the trouble they'll be in when streaming eventually becomes the norm. They have another deal or so to build their brands or they'll be left behind.
It's funny to see them mock the big 12 "anons" when many of them would willingly take a **** deal that hamstrings their future just to spite those big 12 fans.
The trouble they are in now is nothing compared to the trouble they'll be in when streaming eventually becomes the norm. They have another deal or so to build their brands or they'll be left behind.
It's funny to see them mock the big 12 "anons" when many of them would willingly take a **** deal that hamstrings their future just to spite those big 12 fans.