The Big Ten appears to be stepping up the timetable for expansion dramatically, where what once looked like a 12-18 month process might now result in announcements prior to the end of June. So, this is a perfect time for a guest post from Slant reader Patrick, who is a long-time veteran of the television industry. (This means that he can actually drop some knowledge, as opposed to being a speculative Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer like myself.) If you’ve been following the comments on last week’s post, Patrick has been providing incredibly insightful analysis based on industry information and has pinpointed some critical items in the Big Ten Network revenue model that definitely has changed some of my prior thoughts on expansion. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that he has provided the most informative viewpoint that I’ve come across since the Big Ten announced that it was exploring expansion back in December and it has changed a number of my views on the candidates. So, everyone should give Patrick some major kudos for investing his time on this critical issue. Here’s what he has to say (and my take on it thereafter):
With all the talk of Big Ten expansion lately I could help but wonder why the richest conference with the highest pay outs would want to expand. Wouldn’t that break up the pie into smaller pieces? Wouldn’t that cut the take from the current conference members? In short, NO, a resounding NO! The Big Ten schools together made roughly $214,000,000 as of the last report. $100,000,000 from ABC / ESPN, $2,000,000 from CBS, and the schools collected $112,000,000 from the newly formed Big Ten Network. That is $19,454,545 per school. The regular network haul of $102,000,000 per year isn’t going to change. Any new members would need to make up that difference, plus carry their own weight of $38,146,166 in new revenues to the Big 10 Network. The conference only controls 51% of the Big 10 Network, FOX News Corp owns the other 49% and takes 49% of the overall profits. So each possible addition would need to earn the conference $19,454,545 per year AND earn FOX News Corp $18,691,621 AND make up the difference in the take from ABC / ESPN / CBS to break even for the current members. Since the conference reported a $112,000,000 payout, the actual profit margin of the Big Ten Network is around $219,607,840. In addition, there are a number of news stories indicating that the universities take this year was just shy of $22,000,000. I haven’t seen anything official on that but if it is true than the BTN made around $272,000,000 in the most recent year. Almost a $50,000,000 climb year to year for a brand new network. So why would anyone mess with that? How could any university earn that much for the BTN?
Advertising!
By the Big Ten’s own admission they are clearing about $0.36 per subscriber per month for the states inside it’s footprint. They also tell us that there are 26,000,000 subscribers and it is AVAILABLE to 75,000,000 people. The BTN wants to increase the available number but even more important is to increase the subscriber numbers, and there is an opportunity to do that within the current footprint. Regardless, at $0.36 per month for 26,000,000 households over 12 months I only came up with $112,320,000 for a cable carry rate. Well short of the $272,000,000 that the network likely made last year. The other $160,000,000 is advertising revenue! Live sporting events get big advertising dollars and the BTN is loaded with them. As Frank pointed out, if the conference were to expand, many more games would be on the BTN. Football, basketball, and maybe down the road a Big Ten hockey conference. Throw in a few conference championship games in different sports and expansion makes money just by added Live programming and increased quality of programming. A few creative tweeks in the scheduling and you could have every Big Ten game make it to air somewhere, which is good for everybody. For the Big Ten to get to 12 schools the addition would need to equal $38,200,000 to break even, for 3 schools they need to reach $114,500,000 combined, and for 5 schools a whopping $190,800,000. If I were to just pull the #2 – #6 schools from my estimate they would bring in roughly $266,000,000. In that scenario, FOX News Corp profit (by adding 5 schools) goes from $107 million up to $201 million. It would not surprise me to see FOX News Corp gently nudging this process along. If advertising is earning the BTN in the ballpark of what I am thinking, then FOX has realized they opened a gold mine and want to see how deep it goes.
But what about the schools being batted around? I did my level best to average numbers, to play it conservatively, to be fair across the board with finding any schools potential. Notre Dame and Pittsburgh are a little tough to gauge because they don’t add any new television markets. But I found that by extrapolating what is already happening with the conference and the Big Ten Network, combining that with my television experiences, and taking into account some of the posters comments and thoughts I came away with what I feel is a pretty fair assessment of the potential of the candidates. As many of you have noted, game attendance and athletic revenue are important. I used attendance to gauge the level of support and fan interest to help me put a dollar value on ratings potential. If the fans won’t even fill their own stadium, how valuable is the team overall? Any team that joins the Big Ten will share in the Big Ten pie, so I subtracted off the current tv pay out for those teams to gauge strength in their home markets. Then extrapolated to find a decent estimation of a new tv markets potential for advertising revenue. I also averaged in the carry rates for the home market or markets with the number of cable subscribers. I did add a category to try to account for additional Live programming on the BTN and gave each school a flat $10,000,000 for the additional sports coverage, that is probably too low but I am leaning to the conservative side. The following is a summary of the totals of my findings.
CANDIDATES TOTAL ADDED REVENUE ESTIMATE Texas $101,369,004 Rutgers WITH NYC $67,798,609 Nebraska $54,487,990 Maryland $50,818,889 Boston College $48,382,692 Notre Dame $47,629,255 Kansas $46,320,092 Missouri $45,901,459 Syracuse $43,504,813 Connecticut $38,080,271 Pittsburgh $34,365,175 Iowa State $31,831,077 Syracuse WITH NYC $65,874,573 For a full chart with my calculations, please see this Word document:
Big Ten Candidates TV Analysis
This table could be read many different ways, I have no clue what the Big Ten will do. I could make a strong argument for Nebraska, Missouri, Rutgers, Maryland, Pittsburgh, and Kansas. If Syracuse can deliver NYC then they might be in but the amount of research they do will hurt their cause. Texas is an absolute no brainer, they lead in almost every category. I don’t think Iowa State is viable, but I was VERY conservative with these numbers. It would be hard to ignore Notre Dame and Nebraska being the #2 and #4 most valuable college sports franchises. Interesting that Kansas is right there behind Nebraska and ND in athletic revenue. If anyone wants to pass along better or more current numbers, I would appreciate it. In addition, with the talk and discussions that were flying around Sunday about the AAU meetings and the accelerated time table, I firmly believe that my estimates are probably too low. The fact that they want to move this quickly with an expansion means that the potential revenue is HUGE and the decision isn’t even a tough or close one. Also in some of the statements coming from the Big Ten brass and Notre Dame, I highly doubt Notre Dame is going to be included in the expansion. I now think that the expansion will happen, and I think that they will go all the way to 16 teams. I believe they will get AAU member schools, and the Big Ten presidents seem to be very interested in graduate research.
I for one can’t wait, Bucky Badger playing against Nebraska would be an awesome sight!
– Patrick
Based on Patrick’s analysis, there are a few important things that I take away from this:
(1) The 60/40 Rule – This might be the most important piece of information regarding Big Ten expansion that I’ve seen to date: the Big Ten Network makes 60% of its revenue from advertising and 40% 0f its revenue from carriage fees. I’ll be honest with you – I thought that it would’ve been the other way around and it has definitely altered the lens through which we need to look at expansion candidates. What this basically means that if push comes to shove, the Big Ten should pick a school that has a great fan base (which translates in viewers for ad revenue) as opposed to market size (which contributes to carriage fees). This actually brings some common sense back to the discussion, where somehow the world has been convinced over the past few months that Rutgers must be the most valuable school on Earth due to the location of its campus. We’ve been very focused on footprint sizes and research funding in our discussions lately, but at the end of the day, ad revenue is the #1 source of dollars for the Big Ten Network and that’s based on finding schools that Joe Blow in Anytown, USA will want to watch. Here’s a chart of some of the expansion candidates with their football TV ratings from last year. (Note how well Nebraska and Pitt performed compared to everyone else.) Now, that doesn’t mean that expanding the footprint is irrelevant (as the New York City market is still an important target for the Big Ten), but it definitely lets people “think like sports fans” a little bit here.
(2) Pitt MIGHT make money for the Big Ten – Most of the readers out there know that I personally love Pitt as an academic institution and athletic program, but just couldn’t find any way how the school could add to the Big Ten’s coffers financially. Well, if Pitt’s ratings for football and basketball are good enough (and judging by the chart I linked to above, they probably are), then the school can end up being financially viable. Patrick has stated that his figures for Pitt and Notre Dame are very conservative, so if Pitt continues to draw high football ratings, it changes the equation significantly. Now, Pitt can’t really be put into the same category as Notre Dame or Nebraska where the national draw clearly overrides a lack of new BTN households, yet it does have the advantage of being one of the few expansion candidates that has strong programs in both football and basketball. Speaking of Nebraska…
(3) If the Big Ten wants to make a ton of TV money, it will invite Nebraska – I’ve been increasingly become more and more supportive of Nebraska joining the Big Ten lately and Patrick’s analysis completely sealed it. Nebraska’s small market be damned – the Husker fan base is as rabid as any other in the country and they will tune in anytime, anywhere. (If you were wondering, the photo at the top of this post is evidence of how Nebraska fans completely took over South Bend a few years ago when they played Notre Dame.) In fact, Patrick’s figures mean that we should remove Nebraska from the realm of “Well, they might be coming instead of Missouri” or “They’re a good back-up if Notre Dame doesn’t want to join” and put the Cornhuskers into the “lock” category instead. I will now officially be shocked if Big Ten expansion occurs without Nebraska involved.
(4) 16 Schools = Huge Inventory – The 60/40 rule that favors advertising revenue also gives a whole lot more credence to making a 16-school conference financially viable. I recalled this piece from Don Ohlmeyer on that examined how ESPN chose to schedule programs:
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=ohlmeyer_don&id=4582425
The message that I got from this was that LIVE EVENTS = RATINGS. A live hot rod competition after a college football game actually holds more viewers than a studio show that talks about said game, even though they have nothing to do with each other at face value.
The Big Ten expanding up to 12 schools really doesn’t increase the inventory of conference football games (which are the higher value games) very much at all. Assuming that the Big Ten continues with an 8-game conference schedule, it would have 48 conference games as opposed to 44 conference games in a season. At 14 schools, it would go up to 56 conference games. At 16 schools, though, the Big Ten would almost certainly go to a 9-game conference schedule, which would catapult the inventory up to 72 conference games.
What does 72 conference games allow you to do? Well, let’s assume that the Big Ten provides 4 games to ABC/ESPN every week (2 games on ESPN and ESPN2 at 11 am CT, 1 game on ABC at 2:30 pm CT, and 1 prime time game), which is a package that would likely see a substantial increase in rights fees when it’s now presumably including Notre Dame and/or Nebraska on top of the current Big Ten members plus a conference championship game. This leaves 2 conference games for the BTN for every single week of the season (except for maybe Labor Day weekend, which is reserved for MACrifice games). With non-conference games mixed in, the BTN could have football triple-headers virtually every week. Going up to 16 schools increases the amount of live football on the BTN in a dramatic fashion and if twice as much live football compounds the amount of ad revenue earned, then I’m starting to see how going up to 16 schools makes more financial sense under the BTN model than 12 or 14 schools.
Then, we get to basketball, where a 16-school conference can get at least one basketball game onto the BTN onto every day of the week except for Friday, whereas now the BTN usually only has games on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. That’s a dramatic jump in the number of high quality basketball games on more nights of the week. This also still leaves enough for the Big Ten to add 1 or 2 more basketball games on ESPN per week for widespread exposure (and likely garner a rights increase there, too, if schools like Syracuse or Pitt added to the mix). Of course, Friday night can be reserved for the new Big Ten Hockey Conference game(s) of the week if Notre Dame joins. There’s even some side benefits in the spring with baseball (as Nebraska and Notre Dame lift up the quality of that league substantially) and lacrosse (where a new Big Ten league could be formed with Syracuse as the national headliner if that school is invited). Other sports such as women’s basketball and volleyball can end up with new national (and TV-friendly) brand names, too.
So, maybe that’s why the chatter about a 16-school conference has taken center stage: if you have that many more high value football and basketball games plus a ton of other sports of interest where you’ve got live programming every night of the week that’s comparable to the college games on the ESPN networks, that can increase ad revenue dramatically (and in turn, carry rates could increase as the BTN becomes more “essential” to viewers’ lives).
(5) My Latest Prediction That Will Change in a Week – Looking at Pat’s figures, it’s clear to me that the Big Ten pretty much has to at least try for the New York market unless Texas and Texas A&M come walking through that door. The question will be whether the Big Ten believes that it’s worth it to take both Rutgers and Syracuse. I get the feeling that the Big Ten’s university presidents have a fondness for Rutgers as fellow public flagship (and I’ve stated before that they make sense in a multi-school expansion), even though my personal choice would be Syracuse if we had to take one or the other. The academically-minded people in the Big Ten love Pitt and I think that if there’s any financial case for the conference to to be able to take them, they’ll likely do it. Missouri, although it doesn’t have gangbuster financial numbers, would probably be seen as a “safe” option because it can at least be counted on with reasonable certainty to deliver any households in its home state that don’t already carry the Big Ten Network on basic cable at the Tier 1 rate.
The one item that I disagree with Patrick on is Notre Dame – if his figures are close to correct, then I have a hard time believe that the Irish will turn down such a huge windfall for playing a lot of the same teams that it already plays annually in football (especially if its home for basketball and Olympic sports is destroyed). I feel pretty good that Notre Dame, Nebraska, Missouri and Rutgers would all be involved in a 16-school Big Ten. This essentially leaves Pitt and Syracuse for the last spot (unless the Big Ten wants to cut further into the Big XII by taking a school like Kansas). If the Big Ten wants the better institutional fit, it will choose Pitt. If the Big Ten really thinks that locking down New York is possible for college sports, then it will choose Syracuse. With such a large-scale expansion, the Big Ten may put more emphasis on institutional fit to ensure maximum cohesion (especially since renegade Notre Dame is very likely to be involved), which would give the edge to Pitt (as much as it pains me as an avowed Syracuse supporter). I know that this an about-face from what I’ve been saying for quite awhile.
So, here’s my current bet on who will join a 16-school Big Ten: Notre Dame, Nebraska, Missouri, Pitt and Rutgers. If Notre Dame continues to balk, I believe that we’ll see Nebraska, Missouri and Rutgers added for a 14-school conference. This will probably change by the end of the week (and I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if Pitt is replaced by Syracuse in the 16-school scenario), but that’s my line of thinking right now.
(Follow Frank the Tank’s Slant on Twitter @frankthetank111)
(Image from Ning)
Excellent analysis! I am another one anxious to see that Wisconsin/Nebraska matchup! June can’t come soon enough!
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Not sure where this is going to go in the comments but whatever
re sec expansion by taking acc schools
as a UVA (grad) student I like to think I have some insight but it is mostly my speculation.
If Clemson is invited they are gone yesterday. If there is one school in the wrong conference anywhere it is Clemson.
Fsu actually declined an sec invite before they joined the acc in 91. However they are the next most likely to join if asked.
Gt was actually part of the sec and left under nonamicable terms. I highly doubt that they would be invited back.
Miami sees itself as a northeast school that happens to be in the south. I doubt they would want to self identify as a southern school.
All of these previous have some chance of joining the sec. However I simply cannot envision any scenario where the nc, va, or md schools would entertain bids. These schools are just too strongly connected in so many ways (culturally, academically, atheletic sport preferences, history). This is also why the Maryland to the big ten idea is such a stretch, even with some of the academic reasons removed. I realize many of the same arguments apply to old big eight schools, but there does not seem to be any of the animosity that exists in the big xii.
My guess is that if the sec takes Clemson or fsu, the acc just takes whatever of Pitt, syr, or uconn are left to fill back out to 12. It will relatively content to remain a top notch bball conference and a just below top tier football conference.
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M, could not agree more. Miami to the SEC has been blithely mentioned by many posters in the SEC 16 scenario. Miami attracts its out-of-state students from the greater NYC and Boston areas. They will not want to be viewed as a “southern school.” As I mentioned earlier, if the Big Ten, PAC and SEC expand to 16, ND, UConn and one other school will join the ACC. By 2020, the 12th school could be… Richmond? Just a wild speculation.
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@Rich2 about ND joining the ACC
I am always befuddled by suggestions that ND should join the ACC. On some level, I understand the argument for staying independent, but I do not know why if a conference is necessary why the ACC is preferable to the Big Ten (or honestly the Big East, Pac-10, or Big XII) for ND. I will lay out why I think the ACC is a bad idea as well as my guesses as to why you (and a sizable number of other ND fans) would prefer and I would like your response.
First, 8 of the current schools are located in states in the lower half of the US in terms of Catholic percentage. 6 are in states in the bottom 12 in this statistic. While I realize that not every fan of Notre Dame is Catholic, I doubt they receive much support in these areas.
By the same statistics, if ND’s Catholic identity is threatened by playing in a conference whose schools have sizable Catholic student populations (Big Ten, Pac-10, really anything but ACC or SEC), I would think it would be even more threatened in one where they do not. Assuming state-proportional representation, there are more Catholics at Penn State than UNC, NC State, Duke, Wake Forest, Virginia, Virginia Tech, and Clemson combined. Do you think the leaders there would be conducive to a Catholic viewpoint?
From a national draw standpoint, an ACC schedule simply does not match with ND’s usual independent schedule or even the current 7-4-1 schedule. The two most “needle-moving” teams are Miami and FSU, which are not even the most popular in their (admittedly populous) state. This lack of national or even regional attention can be seen from their bowl tie-ins, to their lack of at-large BCS bids (0 in 12 years), to their dismal television contract.
I’ll now try to guess why ND fans seem to prefer the ACC. First, the perceived similarity of institutions due to size and focus. ND fans like that many of the ACC schools are (at least closer to) the size of ND. They also have a history of high quality undergraduate education. This argument is correct. The only point I would like to bring up is that these are still massive research universities as well (except BC and Wake Forest). If ND wants to be with institutions like itself, it should disband 1-a football and continue on in the Big East.
The second reason why ND fans might prefer the ACC is a belief that they might receive preferential treatment both in joining and while in that conference. It is difficult to dispute a hypothetical, but currently the ACC is an equal (television money) sharing conference. If they did not make those sorts of concession for Miami, I don’t believe they would do so for ND. An even more apt comparison might be FSU entering in ’91 which basically took ACC football from nothing to having a major power.
The third possibility is the “Michigan and OSU would run the world, we would just live in it” argument. If there is a part of the overall discussion which confuses me more than ND-to-ACC, its this perception. I have never heard any fan of any team in the conference espouse this view. I think this represents a lack of understanding of the relationship between these two schools. Quite simply there is no way OSU would do anything to improve UM’s position and vice versa. It’s like saying if ND joined the conference, UM and ND would work together to screw over everyone else. If anything these two schools help to balance each other out, preventing a single school from controlling everything (e.g. Texas in the Big XII).
Overall, I would just appreciate hearing why ND’s fans seem to prefer the ACC to the Big Ten.
(PS I realize that my last point will be met with “You just have the wool pulled so far over your eyes that you can’t see anything”, so responding to that is probably unnecessary.)
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I strongly disagree that Nebraska is going to be invited.
Teddy Greenstein of the Chicago Tribune has been at the forefront of this story since the beginning. He has consistently listed Syracuse, Rutgers and Pitt as prime candidates in every single story that he was written on the subject. I doubt he is speculating.
Now, today he has also thrown Connecticut — a school that has funds research $$ then AAU Kansas and will probably make the AAU in no time — into the mix. I think the expansion is based on two factors.
1. Capture NYC
2. Get Notre Dame
#2 gives the Big 10 the best opportunity long term, in conjunction with UM, PSU and OSU, to have a syndicated TV channel on basic cable everywhere.
I’ve thought the five schools leaked in initial report — Syracuse, Rutgers, Pitt, ND and Missouri — were the five schools likely to join the conference. I believe four of those schools are at the top of the list, and the 16th spot is between Connecticut and Missouri.
If the Big Ten can land Notre Dame by inviting Uconn over Missouri, I believe the Huskies — with their powerful basketball programs — will get the call.
So put me on record, the schools invited will be Notre Dame, Syracuse, Connecticut, Rutgers and Pitt.
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In the Greenstein interview (4/19) cited by “KingOttoIII” below, he said:
http://www.cnycentral.com/sports/video.aspx?id=445814
Five team expansion more likely than 3; looking west, mentioned Missouri and Nebraska; looking East mentioned RU, SU, UConn and Pitt, where UConn with RU and SU could put “stranglehold” on NY metro region.
RU has best potential and “more and more” thinks SU is invited in a 5 school expansion.
He covered the Northwestern vs Syracuse game last year (SU won) and said “obviously (SU) football facilities are very good”. (Obviously he hasn’t spoken to Mushroom.)
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If you listen very carefully you’ll hear Teddy say the facilities “aren’t” very good. Needless to say he likes them as a candidate.
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@Rick – No, he said “obviously the facilities are very good.”
Not everyone is anti-dome.
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Re Rick: Listen again
“Obviously the football facilities are very good”
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Believe me, I am pro SU as an expansion candidate and I personally don’t have a problem with the Dome. The place rocks when times are good for football. It does have expansion issues but all in all fine for now. I just didn’t hear it that way on my computer but will check again.
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Re Greenstein on SU facilities (Rick)
Let me know if I misheard what was said. The link is provided.
There is a BIG difference between someone like Greenstein saying the football facilities are very good and saying they are not very good.
I felt Greenstein’s opinion of SU football facilities was worth noting first since he was recently there at the Northwestern game, second because a lot of improvements have occurred in the last few years and most importantly a poster named “Mushroom” has made some truly questionable comments about the facilities.
The Dome just broke a NCAA record attracting over 30,000 fans to a BB game against Villanova.
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He said very good on third listen.
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c..
on the “record” the top game is..
MSU vs UK = 78,000
IU vs UK = many games of 42 – 48 thousand folks in the old hoosier dome
all well above 30,000 (and the game this year was a in conference game).
the MSU/IU vs UK games were regular season non conference games..
that said, JB is an excellent coach and the orange have a strong basketball following.
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@duffman – the record c is referring to is for “on-campus” games. The games you cited were all off-campus.
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Re top BB attendance (duffman and omnicarrier)
Thanks for corrections.
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The longer this goes, the more I think ND *will* go to the Big Ten. Alumni revolt be damned. For an extra $12mil/yr, it might not be worth it. For an extra $25mil/yr I can’t see them saying no.
People will howl. Notre Dame may well lose what made it special in the first place. But that’s a Sh!tload of money, and I doubt TPTB have the stones to turn it down. Damn it.
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I think you’re right, though I’m guessing it would require a multi-phase solution like Frank has detailed. If the revenues continue to rise with 14 schools, the administration may use that as cover for the jump.
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….and the Big10 Presidents might just be traditionalist enough to pursue ND. As you can tell from the postings here, most Big10 fans are rather ambivalent about adding ND; if ND actually brings in no more money than Kansas or Syracuse, I’d personally rather add KU and/or SU, but I think the Big10 presidents would prefer ND over KU & SU even if the money’s the same.
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Adding
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Adding.
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All I can say is that I think the SEC regrets going the ESPN route now…
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An interesting thoughts.
Is it any coincidence that immediately after the SEC locked its rights fees for the next fifteen (15) years the Big 10 aggressively pursued expansion?
The Big 10 is potentially poised to now dwarf the SEC in total revenue for the next 10-12 years, and unless the SEC contract has an escape provision — doubtful given the amount of money ESPN handed it — the SEC really cannot do much about it until 2025.
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I believe there is an escape clause somewhere that allows them to start their own cable network. Besides the Big10, they’re really the only other conference that’s well poised to start their own network (with their collection of name brands, rabid support, and population base that’s just a little smaller than the Big10’s). However, they’d have to go through 2-3 years of hard work, fighting with the cable companies, and years of little/no profit (like the Big10 went through). We’ll see if they have the stomach for that.
BTW, no, I don’t think it’s a coincidence. I noted several months ago that this is the ideal time for the Big10 to expand.
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And lets not forget the financial situation the economy finds itself in. When the Big10 network was set-up, investors were throwing cash at investment opportunities, no matter the risk. Now a days how easy is it going to be to get together enough money to start a new television channel…even one for a conference as well watched as the SEC?
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PSUGuy,
2008 and the first half of 2009 were very tough. Maybe the toughest ad sales (down sales, percentage wise) in the history of television. It has been getting substatially better this year. We are planning like 2011 will still be difficult but 2012 should be fully back to normal.
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Perhaps for ad sales yes, but I’m speaking more of venture capital. Its going to take billions(?) and years of work to start up a new television station to work through the contracts with the cable companies. Advertising will probably return to normal quickly as people in economic downturns tend to stay home and enjoy “low cost” entertainment (aka television), but I have to believe the cost/work/risk associated with a new television station is going to daunt folks at this time (why take the risk on a new station when if you think tv will make you money in the coming years you can easily, and more safely, invest in those stations already turning a profit?)
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Ad sales are picking up YTD. My daughter is an Account Exec for COX TV stations based in Atlanta and she says her ad sales business, and the company’s as well, is beating targets for the year so far and those targets are for increases this year over last. She is encouraged although her stations are Network (only Fox, NBC, ABC, CBS) not cable. Needless to say things are not as bleak as last year.
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@ Richard Don’t forget, that unlike the Big Ten, the SEC has a competing brand inside their own footprint in the ACC. Which in turn means that they might not be able to get the same rights fees in the states of Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina as they would elsewhere in the footprint.
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Maybe not SC and parts of Florida (South Florida and the panhandle), but everywhere else, the SEC is the dominant brand. It’s the ACC that’s going to have the most trouble starting it’s own network because it’s footprint is so small and most of the terrtory is shares with the SEC is dominated by the SEC.
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I don’t know… I see Nebraska getting the nod before Missouri. Something about Missouri just doesn’t excite me. Perhaps it’s the argument that the Big Ten already penetrates the markets we attribute to Missouri.
What are the odds of Nebraska, ND, Rutgers, Pitt, and Syracuse/UConn? I can’t help but think that, if we’re expanding by five, we’re not going to leave Pitt by the wayside. It’s a good brand. Not sure how thrilled I am at the prospect of leaving UConn or Syracuse to the ACC either. I’ll go crazy and call… Nebraska, ND, Rutgers, Pitt, and Syracuse — unless ND walks officially, then sub in UConn. Big Ten will roll the dice that Nebraska and Pitt add enough umph for football, and the others can continue their upward swing and help elevate advertising up for basketball season.
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just adding
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I retired to central Florida many years ago. Spent five years in the U.S. Submarine Service, totally on the east coast from Nova Scotia to the Florida Keys. There was one University very popular with sports fans wherever I went into town which was everywhere. It was followed well during basketball, lacrosse and football seasons. Everyone knew of Jim Brown, Floyd Little, Larry Czsonka and Ernie Davis! The best tight end today receives The John Mackay Award! Syracuse has well over 100 years of great football history!
I was also stationed at The Brooklyn Receiving Station for about a year. New York City is Syracuse territory! Rutgers, was always a last place team in those days, if anyone did recognize the name! As for name popularity, Jim Brown, played in several movies and a movie was made about Davis who played in The Cotton Bowl with a pulled hamstring!
Before TV, Notre Dame was the only college football game you could get on the radio. That made them popular. Today’s TV has Notre Dame fading in popularity every year! Urban Meyer, will also have less success as folks begin to realize Dan Mullen was the brains behind Meyer everywhere he had a winning program! OK, I rest my case!
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I hope the Big 10 doesn’t make the mistake of taking all schools from the same conference as that will severely increase the likelyhood of an us vs. them mentality.
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Absolutely–looks more like a merger than an expansion….
I really believe Missouri will be added in either the 3 or 5 team scenerio…although I really like Neb., no columnist covering the Big 10 has reported any buzz about them…
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Cleveland big 10 columnist covering expansion dropped Nebraska as a front-runner early on in December, and then has been hush about it ever since.
Stewart Mandel put out back in December 2009 that the primary target of Big 10 expansion would be Notre Dame, then Nebraska. He has an article today that reiterates that stance, and the data Frank, et al has amassed here supports that thought.
Plus, remember that AD Tom Osborne (who is as exciting as dry toast and as verbal as a monk) went from saying ‘we’ll stand with our Big 8 friends’ to ‘if the Big 10 wants to talk, we’ll listen’ in less than a month. That’s a huge 180 on the subject, considering the source.
Nebraska is a front runner in this race (since ND bowed out). But of all the football schools listed, and since expansion is being driven by football, which candidate excites you the most when added? Nebraska vs. Michigan/Wisconsin/Iowa/Penn State is a hell of a lot more interesting than anyone else mentioned.
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Stewart Mandel is not a good source for expansion news (or anything really, but especially expansion news).
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NDRox,
Those numbers are the added value to the Big Ten Network, not to the individual school. With those numbers it would increase ND from collecting around $15 mil to around $25 mil.
@Justin,
I would bet that Mr. Greenstien is speculating. The people involved with this kind of deal understand the legalities and do not want to cause any issues with any potential deal. Interviewing businessmen at this level is like interviewing a lawyer, they are very calculated with what they say.
@Frank,
That 3.57 NATIONAL rating for Nebraska football averaged over 9 games is huge. The 3.31 number for Pitt is also impressive. I hadn’t seen that before, and that would further convince me that Pitt & Nebraska will be included. Those ratings for SU & RU are not very good, that’s only a slight bump up from regular BTN programing.
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A 3.57 national rating over 9 games equates to a reach of around 50,000,000 households.
Around $50,000 per 30 second commercial. That’s VERY attractive to the Big Ten Network!
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Great stuff, Patrick. With those numbers, I don’t know how they Nebraska and Pitt could be ignored. There’s just too much money to be made. A move including like you and Frank are indicating would solidify the Big Ten as the financial powerhouse of college football.
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Thanks Scott, This should secure the Big Ten for a long, long time. DOn’t be suprised to see this shake-up realign many conferences and the PAC 10 to expand to 14 or 16 and add it’s own network as fast as they can.
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Concerning the Pitt and RU TV ratings, I would like to see an examination of the ratings that covered more than one year, especially when that one year had Pitt in the title hunt until the end and RU had the air taking out of its season in game 1.
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Those are great ratings for Pitt. They had a great year and people watched. It also matters for any team if you are in the conference title race and ranked late in the year, and play significant late season games that have implications. The last 4 games Pitt played in 2009 were Notre Dame, West Virginia, Cincy, and their Bowl game v. UNC. The Notre Dame game they were ranked #8 and covered by 83% of the TV homes. It got very good ratings. I am sure those 4 games all got good ratings and hence their average was great overall for the season. It was a perfect storm for great ratings and Pitt capitalized. I wouldn’t be surprised if in the past few years they may have been around 1.5 to 2.5 avg like the rest of the Big East teams but last year they were fantastic.
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@ Patrick
I was assuming your numbers were very conservative and a full 5 team expansion. I was also thinking best case scenario in approx 5yrs.
Am I wrong? Will the addition of say ND, Texas, Neb., Rutgers, and Pitt not potentially double the per team take in a decade?
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Even though A&M wasn´t included in these numbers, I think they´d have to be included with Texas. And if you can pull off A&M and Texas, you can probably only doing by an aggressive Big 12 raid. Furthermore, with A&M and Texas, you don´t need NYC or have the space to try.
I would imagine a scenario that includes Notre Dame, Texas and A&M would probably also include Nebraska and Mizzou/Kansas – and then you call it a day.
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@NDRox,
Potentially YES, but I was just trying to get an idea of how the BTN and current Big Ten members would do once any expansion was completed. I was honestly trying to look at worst case senarios for the next 2 or 3 years. Best case senario money is too big for my calculator. Maybe for a 16 team league around 1.25 Billion per year. Say around $46,000,000 per school per year from all the contracts.
Interesting to note that the BTN deal with FOX is for 20 years. What happens in 2027 when that ends, does the BTN and the conference keep ALL the loot? Cause even without interest in today’s dollars you’d be talking around $80,000,000 per school per year.
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http://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/article/58254
If I’m reading this article accurately,
I don’t think that Fox loses it’s ownership share of the BTN after 25 years (it’s 20y + option for 5 more).
The B10 makes their cash from the BTN in 2 ways, first a broadcast rights contract between the B10 and the BTN. Second is their 51% share of the profit from the network operations (advertising & carriage fees). After 25 years the rights fee would be up for renewal.
The Sports Business Journal article above indicated that the rights fee in 2008 was paying 66m, after starting at 50m. The estimate for total value to the B10 over the life of the contract was $2.8b but I think that figure includes estimated advertising revenue. Since the average was indicated to be $112m/yr over the life of the 25y contract and the 2009 payout to the B10 seems to be $140m, it would appear that the estimate of $2.8b is going to be on the low side.
I don’t think that you’ve accounted for the guaranteed rights fee in your calculations. I think it makes a difference that the B10 share of revenue is likely north of 60% as opposed to 51%. As far as the BTN is concerned, the rights contract is an expense. But clearly the B10 is collecting more than 51% of the revenue of the BTN. They’re collecting $66m+ for broadcast rights and then 51% of the remaining profit.
If their total take was $140m and Outside the Lines clearly indicated that the B10 revenue from broadcasting was $242m with $20m for 10y from CBS for Basketball and $1b for 10y from ABC/ESPN (which coincidentally isn’t flat either as it started at 88m and graduates over the life of the 10y contract), that leaves $140m from the BTN. If 70m of the payout is from rights fees that leaves 70m for 51% of profit sharing. Assuming that the expenses beyond the rights contract are relatively minimal (I have no idea but lets estimate $10m/yr for salaries & whatever physical plant expenses there are), that would put the total revenue of the network somewhere north of $220m which is a bit less than your estimate of ~$270m.
Does the BTN or the B10 own the studio building (the old Montgomery Ward warehouse in River North)? Who owns the equipment at each school? There would be debt service on those physical equipment if owned by the network, rental costs if owned by the conference or the schools. I wouldn’t be surprised if the conference owns the building and all of the cameras/equipment and they rent them back to the network.
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You are 100% correct. I didn’t account for rights fees, I had thought that they were part of the 49% / 51% deal. You also hit on another important point, it is profitable…. we are just not sure exactly how profitable. I had read something in one of the trades about FOX and their financial backing making sure that the conference is guaranteed its cut during the first few years of launching the network…. then when the network becomes profitable they will recoup their investment with interest until it is paid off. Then, and only then, would the conference payouts increase. While my stuff was an estimate, and ignorantly I left the rights fees out. I still feel that the network is doing way better than anticipated and that’s why we have all this expansion talk.
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Good points by Rick. A few follow ups:
Rights Fees. This dominates advertising revenue. It’s not even close for the BTN. I’ve seen figures that indicate 85-90% of revenue comes from rights fees. The remainder is ads and new media (online games,etc). Estimated BTN revenue going forward is probably something like $210 mln [(~42 mln subscribers x .36 cents ave rate x 12 months) + (advertising + new media sales)] Programming costs (including rights fees) are at least 100 mln annually. Plus you have other normal operating costs. So maybe 50 mln in profits in a year.
This $50 mln in profits (assuming it is all distributed, a big if) will translate into a per school payout number that is smaller than some expect. Yes, the Big Ten is entitled to 51% of the profits but I believe that number is divided by 12 (11 schools + conference itself). So that’s 4.25% of distributions per school. $50 mln of profits (if fully distributed) is $2.125 mln in additional revenue per school.
Rights fees are a cost to the BTN. They started low ($50 mln in year 1) and have an escalation clause (just like the the ESPN/ABC and CBS deals). That’s why we saw $66 mln the following year and reportedly more than $70 mln this year. That number will keep going up.
As far as Big Ten distributions go, I believe you have to include the BCS and Capitol One Bowl payouts (less budgeted amounts for the teams playing). This is another $20 mln+ that gets distributed to the schools every year. The only variable is whether there are 1 or 2 teams playing in BCS bowls. Most times its been two teams. The additional team is worth $4.25 mln in revenue.
I, too, have my doubts about the $242 mln figure being used for conference distributions. Last year it was $207 mln. It will be higher this year but my guess is somewhere between $207 and $242, thanks mainly to a higher contractual BTN rights fees and some small profit payout.
Also, though it’s not clear to me without actually seeing the contract, the BTN – Fox deal may be capped at $2.8 bln. The articles referred to things like ‘if all sales milestones are met, the deal could be worth as much as $2.8 bln over the life of the contract.’
So I believe we’re back to looking at subscribers, not ads, a new school could bring. One thing to remember here is that the BTN has some long term contracts with DIRECTV, etc. Those won’t necessarily change just because a new school is brought in.
Look at the NYC DMA as an example. DIRECTV, FIOS and U-Verse all carry the BTN on standard programming. These 3 have over 20% of the market. Add in DISH and others and you probably have 25% of the market already. The revenue for these subscribers won’t change immediately if say Rutgers joins. The revenue numbers will still be higher if Cablevision gets on board but not as high as looking simply at the number of subscribers. Something many analysts do.
In some ways the ideal state is one with a high number of tvs and where there is low penetration by DIRECTV, FIOS and U-Verse and the entire state rallies around the school. This would put strong pressure on the dominant cable providers to pay a Big Ten footprint rate.
So it’s the quantity and quality of the subscribers that are important.
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One other thing, I wouldn’t be surprised if the true figures were different from the Outside the Lines program that we’ve all come to treat as gospel. Do you find it coincidental that the $242m/yr figure happens to match up with $102m from ABC/CBS and $2.8b/20 year contract? Other articles have referenced $212m/yr for the B10 which is $100m/yr from ABC/ESPN and $112m/yr from BTN which is $2.8b/25y.
I’m not sure that we’ve seen the true BTN figures.
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Congratulatons, this is one of most astute comments posted on this blog. With the cross-subsidies that occurs within any university, a college president has enormous discretion to make any project far better or worse depending on the politics. The politics of the BTN is to make it look as profitable as possible — and this while this effort cannot be sustained indefinitely, it takes years for the truth to emerge.
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Yeah, but I assume the Big10 presidents are rational people, so if they are window-dressing, they are not going to make the decision to expand based on the window-dressing. Considering how conservative that lot is, expansion will have to bring a lot of real value that they expect _will_ be sustained indefinitely for them to be so gung-ho about it.
BTW, what do you teach? I ask because you seem very inclined to believe what you want to believe rather than the reality that other people’s actions suggest. It can’t be a science or social science; at least, you wouldn’t be able to get away with such reasoning in those fields.
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IIRC the Nebraska ratings for the past year include the second highest rated non-bowl, the Big 12 Championship (10 point something) and the lowest rated broadcast national game, vs Colorado for a day game the Friday after Thanksgiving (2.7 I think).
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I can’t open the Word file but the breakdown between the advertising revenue and subscription revenue may be off as I believe the BTN has over 35 million subscribers, not 26 million. If true, this could change the revenue mix more heavily towards new subscribers (e.g. Rutgers) and away from advertising (e.g. Nebraska). Any corrections (or a way to open the file or an Excel file) would be appreciated.
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added
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First, I wonder if the announcement the Michigan will play Notre Dame at night next year is a foreshadowing that Big Ten tripleheaders will be a certainty.
Second, since advertising and ratings, rather than market size appear to be the money makers, I have become convinced that Kansas, rather than Missouri would be the more likely choice. The Jayhawks are a wonderful basketball draw, and while a step below the Tigers in football, the distance is not huge. Furthermore, it has been proven that the BigTen network is already in much of STL because of the Illinois alumni who are in the area, and Kansas, not Missouri is the top team in the Kansas City area.
It is hard for me to believe that Texas and Texas A&M would not bolt if Nebraska or Kansas were to be leaving the Big Twelve. I would bet that the two Texas schools, Nebraska or Kansas, Rutgers and Pittsburgh will be invited.
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The issue is if the Big 10 adds five schools, including Nebraska and Missouri from the Big 12, they will have effectively ceded Texas to the PAC 10.
Now, this could arise from Texas informing the Big 10 that it prefers to cut a deal with the PAC 10 for whatever reason (can bring more travel partners, easier to convince alumni and politicians, etc.), and in fact, if the Big 10 adds five schools and none are Texas, I’d be pretty convinced that Texas already made its decision to join the PAC 10 or form some Western Alliance as has been rumored.
BTW, the SEC commissioner is going to have some explaining to do if two 16 team superconferences are launched with TV networks that greatly surpass the deal that the SEC cut with ESPN.
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I think that this will probably happen, that way Texas can take A&M, Oklahoma, Ok State, and Colorado with them. Texas could also set up the direction and planning of the new tv network and be “in control” of the process to an extent.
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I cannot imagine any scenario in which Oklahoma and OSU head get accepted by the Pac 10. The Pac 10 requires a unanimous vote for expansion – and neither of those schools can hold its own academically.
I would think it´s much more likely that Texas, A&M, Colorado and maybe Kansas head west.
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Justin’s post + Michael’s post = OU moves to the SEC and takes OSU along for the ride.
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Yeah, if Texas, Texas A&M, and Nebraska left, Oklahoma would be a victim. I think their only shot would be joining a 16-team SEC. I could see Oklahoma, Ok-State, and TTech joining the SEC, but that won’t happen for many years unless the SEC can convince ESPN to renegotiate their contract.
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@Scott C: I could foresee, in a scenario in which the Big XII completely implodes, that A&M, and not Tech, would be the school to join OU and OSU in a move to the SEC. Texas and A&M aren’t so tied to the hip that they can’t be broken up, so long as both schools are taken care of.
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The Pac10 will do what USC wants, because if Texas wants a network & USC wants a network, they’ll get to gether in a brand new conference and start a network (inviting those Pac10 and Big12 schools they want to join them). Stanford’s not stupid enough to sacrifice self-preservation for the sake of “purity”. BTW, that’s how USC got Arizona & ASU in to the Pac10 last time (by threatening to leave if the Arizona schools didn’t join). Evidently, USC didn’t care enough about Texas when the SWC collapsed. This time, however, the Pac10 presidents are desperate to increase their TV money (even Stanford had to lay off athletic staff and cut programs recently), so if taking in Texas and its extended family means more money, they’ll take in the Clampetts.
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On the other hand, OU & OSU may very well head to the SEC, in which case I reckon Texas would just go independent and start their own network.
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I really don’t know much about the politics of the Big XII south, but Oklahoma is too much of a name and makes to much $$$ to be left on the sidelines. Baylor, Kansas State, Iowa State are going to be in trouble if this goes down like I think it will.
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michael,
two things put OU and OSU in the Pac 16
a) football = $$
b) energy = $$
now a) is easy, but remember california, texas, colorado, and oklahoma share energy money (and have for almost 100 years). so it would not “shock” me at all to see the OK twins in the Pac 16….
oil, nat gas, and coal = energy $$
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Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Utah, Colorado and Kansas to the PAC 10.
If the Big 10 just ran its models and found that a sixteen team model generates the most revenue for a TV network, the PAC 10 will do the same thing.
The PAC 10 and Big 10 have always moved in tandem.
Oklahoma and Oklahoma State to the SEC?
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The SEC would also probably either raid the ACC for two more teams, or if they had no other options, the could go after USF & West Virginia.
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WVU, VTech, FSU, and Miami is my guess, though they could steal OU&OSU from the Western Alliance and/or take NCSU if the AAU members in the ACC decide to join up with the Big10/16 to form the Big20.
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Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Utah, Colorado and Kansas to the PAC 10.
If the Big 10 just ran its models and found that a sixteen team model generates the most revenue for a TV network, the PAC 10 will do the same thing.
The PAC 10 and Big 10 have always moved in tandem.
Oklahoma and Oklahoma State to the SEC?
I agree with those being realistic options, but not so fast on the revenue. Different markets, total pops, and levels of fan interest. Look at how the more populous P10 trails the B12 in revenue and average attendance. The B10+ schools on average have a more loyal and rabid fan base than that on the west coast, the kind of thing that translates into more $’s and higher viewership. I don’t think it is a given that the BTN can be duplicated in the P10/16/20, or at least not at the same level of success. Might, but for now is a big question mark.
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I don’t think the SEC would take two schools from Oklahoma. If they needed a 2nd school from the west to go with Oklahoma and UT and A&M were unavailable, I think they’d try Missouri, Houston, Texas Tech, or maybe even a private school like TCU rather than a 2nd school in a relatively small state.
Yes, the SEC has 2 schools in Mississippi and Alabama, but those are grandfathered in.
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I still say OK and OSU to PAC 16 as more valuable franchise than Utah and T Tech..
If the SEC expands, it will be 4 ACC State schools is my bet.. and you can say there is academic issues.. i would argue that 4 ACC PUBLIC schools would fit very well in the SEC East with Vandy, Florida, UGA, and UK.
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If anyone thinks that, if the Big 10 starts reeling in the type of money that Patrick is predicting and the Pac 10 expands to 16 teams can creates their own network, that the SEC would not be able to come to an agreement with ESPN to create their own network (possibly with a partnership with ESPN), then they are sadly mistaken. I’m sure that the SEC wasn’t dumb enough to not add an escape clause somewhere in their contract. Contracts are made to be renegotiated, especially when you are talking about the type of money that is being discussed here.
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I think an SEC channel is inevitable. Just a question of when the SEC will bite the bullet and start it up (because the first 2-3 years will require both hard work and a decrease in money from what the SEC is seeing now).
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I’m not sure on that Bama.
The prevailing sentiment when the SEC landed that contract was that ESPN completely overpaid, and that it was a financial windfall for the SEC in order to prevent the SEC from starting its own network.
Why would ESPN toss that kind of dough at the SEC without any assurances of cost control?
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Justin, I doubt that ESPN would want to have a conference on the majority of their channels that is at a financial disadvantage (and thus a competitive disadvantage) from other conferences (this is if the Pac-10/Western alliance creates their own network as well). And with the money that is being discussed here, the SEC would be at a major disadvantage. And if you think the SEC wouldn’t do whatever it takes to not be at a financial and competitive disadvantge from other conferences, then you just don’t understand the SEC’s mentality when it comes to football. I know that I am bias when it comes to SEC football, but to people in the south, college football isn’t just a game, its an identity and a huge part of their lifestyle that has been cultivated that way for decades upon decades. Contract or not, The SEC would find a solution to getting the type of revenue it needs to compete with the Big 10. Plus, I think that ESPN understands this and would probably figure out a way to get the SEC and themselves the money (maybe by building a more indepth partnership a little more along the lines of what the Big 10 & fox is doing now, who knows). JMHO
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The SEC will still have deep & fertile recruiting grounds in its backyard. ESPN would be perfectly happy to have a competitive SEC, especially if they don’t have to pay them to keep the competitive. Also keep in mind that ESPN isn’t tied to the success of the SEC; they also have a contract with the Big10 (which the Big10 likely will extend with them just to keep ESPN from being a solely SEC-focused network), so ESPN wouldn’t care too much who’s on top so long as they get the best games from both conference.
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It’s worth noting that the SEC covers a relatively small population base. An SEC network would most likely reel in less money than the ESPN/CBS contract. The SEC may draw in the most viewers nationwide, but it’s home terrotity is just too small to make B10 money with a network. That is the issue the Big 12 faces currently. I honestly think that the only other conference that coudl go regional and make money is, suprisingly, the Big East, simply due to population base, it has a better chance of success.
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“It’s worth noting that the SEC covers a relatively small population base.”
No.
Using numbers from wikipedia-
Florida 18.5 million (18.5 per school)
Georgia 9.8 million (9.8 per school)
Tennessee 6.3 million (3.2 per school)
Alabama 4.7 million (2.4 per school)
S. Carolina 4.6 million (4.6 per school)
Louisiana 4.5 million (4.5 per school)
Kentucky 4.3 million (4.3 per school)
Mississippi 3.0 million (1.5 per school)
Arkansas 2.9 million (2.9 per school)
total 58.6 million people. 4.9 million per school.
Texas 24.8 million (6.2 per school)
Missouri 6.0 million (6.0 per school)
Colorado 5.0 million (5.0 per school)
Oklahoma 3.7 million (1.9 per school)
Iowa 3.0 million (3.0 per school)
Kansas 2.8 million (1.4 per school)
Nebraska 1.8 million (1.8 per school)
total 47.1 million people. 3.9 million per school.
The Big 12 number is 80% of the SEC number. The SEC could lose any school but Florida and still have more people than the Big 12 even if they didn’t add anyone. You can also see how losing some key teams would devastate the Big 12, especially when you consider Baylor and Texas Tech don’t have huge fanbases.
Now, NY, Pennsylvania, NJ, and Connecticut total 44.3 million people. So you’re correct; there is some value in the Big East schools of Rutgers, Syracuse, Pitt, and UConn. West Virginia brings the total to 46.1 million people; still less than the Big 12. The other football schools in the Big East are clearly not the main attractions in their own state. Given the differences in passion that the SEC teams have in their teams, they would have a more successful network than the Big East, even if they didn’t expand.
If the SEC were to add Texas, A&M, TTech, & OU, they would gain 28.5 million people for a total of 87.1 million people. That would be 5.4 million people per school in a 16 team league. That would be a big boost over the current number.
If the SEC were to add Oklahoma, Missouri, Virginia Tech, and Florida State, they would gain 17.5 million people for a total of 76.1 million. That would be 4.8 million per school, slightly less than their current average (though it would be more balanced with Florida State adding attention in Florida).
The SEC already has a sizable population; it will get some schools to join it if need be to add to that. Even the University of Houston could be a plus if they don’t get the big Texas schools; with fans of SEC teams (particularly LSU) already living in the area, the addition of UH would get the cable system to add a new SEC network to the 5.7-million person region.
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ESPN has history with the ACC..
ESPN make money with the SEC..
It is at the root of why the SEC and ACC will merge if the Big 10 goes to 16..
in a perfect world, the SEC jettisons the Mississippi schools and takes 6 PUBLIC ACC schools
in reality they take at least 4 PUBLIC ACC schools
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@Duffman:
In a perfect world the SEC jettisons two founding members, both public schools, to pick up two public ACC schools? That makes no sense.
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manifesto,
if the SEC was reforming today (no past history) which is why I said adding 4 not 6 was the reality..
ie if the SEC picked up Clemson and FSU for the 2 Mississippi schools (ie if the Big 10 were forming today – no previous history – IU and Northwestern might not make the cut).
as stated before, most of the SEC and ACC were in the SAME conference at one time, and Texas was in there at one time too..
of course if you were looking at a FOOTBALL only deal. The SEC would pick up TEXAS, TEXAS A&M, OKLAHOMA, and OSU as that combo would dwarf 4 ACC schools. My argument is that these 4 are part of the new PAC 16..
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@Jonathon B. You hit the nail on the head. Let’s take a look at Missouri vs. Kansas:
You’re looking at two nearly identical academic institutions, with Mizzou having a higher enrollment and Kansas having a slightly higher endowment. Both are AAU institutions.
On paper, Missouri’s population dwarf’s Kansas’. Take a closer look, though. Discount the St. Louis market, which already offers the Big Ten network. Add the Kansas City metro area to KU’s tally (KU alumni in the KC Metro area outnumber MU 71k to 23k). The cable fees then even out or favor KU.
Both teams have excellent athletic directors. Mike Alden has done a great job to improve Mizzou’s standing in the Big 12 in men’s sports. Despite this, MU still ranks dead last in all-time Big 12 titles, with six (one being in a revenue sport). Lew Perkins has made KU one of the most profitable AD’s in the country and has had top 25 revenues over the last two years.
Let’s take a look at football fan bases. Mizzou has a larger stadium than KU by about 14,000. Both teams have had solid attendance numbers over the last several years. KU has a much better traveling fan base. There’s a reason why the Orange Bowl committee snubbed Mizzou– KU filled up a stadium in Florida. The last three years, bowl committees have selected other Big 12 teams with lessor conference records over Mizzou (including a 6-6 Iowa State team over an 8-4 Mizzou team). There’s no doubt that MU is the better program right now, but KU has more potential.
Basketball isn’t close. KU sells out each game and is a top 5 all-time program. MU can only claim one Big 12 tourney championship (they didn’t win the regular season) and struggles with attendance during non-conference games. Jayhawk fans are dotted around the Midwest and travel to out of state games– they sold out Rosemount when they played DePaul in Chicago and they sold out Las Vegas when they played Florida a few years back.
The simple fact is, if you’re going to pick from the Big 12 North, the only two nationally recognizable brands are Nebraska football and Kansas basketball. If you’re going to look at expansion candidates from the Big 12, you’d have to rank them as follows:
1. Texas
2. Nebraska
3. Texas A&M
4. Kansas
5. Missouri
6. Colorado
7. Baylor
8. Oklahoma
9. Oklahoma State
10. Texas Tech
11. Kansas State
12. Iowa State
1-3 are can’t miss prospects. 4-6 are good prospects. 7-12 aren’t really viable candidates due to academics or athletics.
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Why is Missouri a better candidate than Colorado? I’m wondering why Colorado doesn’t get more consideration for the Big Ten. It’s a better school than Missouri – both in US News rankings and in other research rankings, it’s got a better football name, and adds the Denver-Metro viewing area, isn’t that much less populated than Missouri, and gets total viewership of the entire state, as opposed to Missouri which shares St. Louis with Illinois and Kansas City with Kansas. The only thing Missouri has on Colorado is proximity, but if Texas schools are being considered for the Big Ten and Colorado is being considered for the Pac 10 (not much closer), why isn’t Colorado also being looked at?
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I will give you my perspective as a Big 12 fan:
That fan support isn’t there and the athletic department has shown it won’t participate in the arms race.
Denver is a huge market, but Colorado fans are pretty apathetic. When KU is in town, there’s usually more Jayhawk fans in their arena than CU fans. I’m fairly sure that Nebraska does the same in football. The way both of their revenue sports have fallen off the table gives them little to cheer about.
Part of this is because CU has made it clear that they won’t go out and spend money on their programs.
Dan Hawkins would have been fired from any other Big 12 school (outside of ISU, maybe), but the CU AD wouldn’t spend the cash on his buy-out. So they decided to go through another terrible year and decline further as a program over a million or two, which is almost unheard of nowadays.
Their basketball program hasn’t been good since the Chauncey Billups days. After trolling around in the basement of the Big 12 for over a decade, the AD continues to take half-measures towards success. Their latest hire is out of Northern Colorado(a Big Sky school), who had zero NCAA tourney bids. I love Tad Boyle, but most schools require at least some mid-major experience or NCAA bids before offering a coaching job in the Big 12.
You could very well be right about CU’s value, but from my point of view, it’d take years for them to build up either program. After that, you have to get the fans interested again. MU’s just in a better spot right now, but that very well could change.
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I don’t think its Colorado won’t spend the money; its Colorado can’t spend the money because their Athletic Dept. is so heavily in debt. That is why Colorado wants so bad to go to the PAC 10. They hope it will energize the fan base and alums (a lot of CU alums in CA) and get them to start donating again.
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@Mike: I agree. I’m just wondering how they’re going to pay the Big 12’s penalty fee for leaving.
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It’s not a fee for leaving so much as it’s a reduction in TV money. They would make up the shortfall in their budget with booster money (they hope the newly excited CU alums in CA will donate early and often) or by taking another loan from the University proper. They will be willing to take a two year hit if the money from the new PAC 10 is significantly better than the Big 12. That won’t be hard if the PAC 10 starts a network, as expected. They have to be hoping the Big Ten will take Nebraska and send the Big 12 the way of the SWC. If the league dissolves, I doubt there will be penalties.
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Gopher, you cannot simply discount the St Louis makret. Yes, they “get” the Big Ten Netowrk, but at an “out of market rate.” There is a gigantic difference in carriage rate for the B10 Network out of market, and in market, close to a 700% – 1000% difference. This cannot be discounted. The Big Ten Network is “available” in NYC, but at an out of market rate, on a sport tier. Their gola is to get it to be an “in market” rate on basic cable. That is what this whole fuss is about.
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I’m surprised there isn’t more talk about Maryland. First tier research, excellent TV market in a wealthy and growing area. Is it that people here believe they wouldn’t leave the ACC? They will make money (per Patrick’s analysis) and they are a great fit with the Big Ten culture and research commitment. I’d not bet against them turning down an invite.
I am also a bit surprised by the continuing support for Norte Dame. Sure they make money, but it is not the slam dunk we have supposed to this point in the discussion. Put more directly, they don’t fit — are they really worth the hassle?
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doh.
“I’d not bet against them turning down an invite.”
->
I’d not bet against them accepting an invite.
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I don’t think ND’s worth the hassle, but the Big10 presidents, being traditionalists, may want them.
I’d definitely go after Maryland, but it’s not certain they’d be so willing to leave, even if the dollars make sense.
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MC.. I have argued Maryland from the beginning instead of ND
a) people keep shooting me down saying it will be ND
b) people think the ACC will grow, I have been a proponent of implosion
if the BIG 16 / SEC 16 take the 6 top ACC PUBLIC schools, what is left of the ACC? My whole argument has been the BIG 3 predators growing at the expense of the little 3 prey..
so far no one seems to have accepted my premise, but they also have not been able to show why this would not occur…. To me this is a no brainer, as I can find no compelling combination of 16 ACC teams that could hold a candle to the BIG 3.
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@duffman – Oh, I’d love Maryland to be in the Big Ten. They’d be a great fit. However, it goes back to what I said a couple of months ago – the Big XII and Big East are very “breakable” while the ACC isn’t as much. I’m just basing this on the fact that there are schools that would likely provide similar or greater financial value (i.e. Nebraska and Missouri) could be obtained with a lot less hassle. It woudn’t shock me to see Maryland in the Big Ten, but one thing stuck with me was a comment that essentially said this – Maryland fans (other than Vincent that posts here frequently) would complain about the move as much as ND fans without the commensurate upside. Schools like Texas and ND are clearly worth a ton of effort to lure. How much would the Big Ten really be willing to dance around with Maryland? If Maryland was as ready and willing to jump to the Big Ten as Missouri or Rutgers, then I’d say that’s a no-brainer for the Big Ten. However, I don’t think the Big Ten is going to tolerate much hemming-and-hawing from that school.
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Frank,
again.. why do people think the ACC is less breakable than the Big 12 or BE?? everybody seems to feel this is not possible, but can not seem to offer more concrete reasons as to why? I am not saying I am right, I guess I am looking for concrete reasons for why not.. as the only 2 possible seem weak..
a) UNC vs duke in basketball – thumped many times in past several posts as UNC becomes much more valuable in a BIG 3 without duke
b) academics – the SEC east has Vandy, UF, and UGA which would fit much better with UNC, UVA, and NC State than schools in the SEC west – the less academically gifted part of the SEC (I am viewing the SEC east as forming and academic component that the west might not share).
this also makes Maryland (as a no twin school) a VERY easy pick off for the Big 16. I originally offered the Virginia twins to the Big 10 but that kept getting shot down as nobody seemed to think the Big 16 would accept Va Tech, so I have since dropped UVA to the Big 16.
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1. The core ACC schools have more history together. Few people are still alive who can remember seeing the Carolina schools, Virginia, and Maryland playing while not a part of the ACC. That’s not true of the Big12 or Big East. Nebraska won’t be sad if they’re not in the same conference as TAMU or TTech any more, and Rutgers won’t miss UConn or Cincy that much either. There’d be much more fan backlash if the core ACC schools broke apart (especially if Duke & UNC break up).
2. The SEC isn’t ready to expand yet. The Big12 is under siege from both the Pac10 and Big10 (with certain schools open to leaving), but the SEC isn’t ready to raid the ACC yet (they’d have to start their own cable channel first for expansion to make sense financially). Maybe once the SEC starts making overtures to VTech, FSU, and Miami, the core ACC schools will start considering their options.
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richard…
a) usc was a charter member of the ACC, and is now in the SEC
b) ga tech went to the ACC in 1978
c) the ACC founded in the mid 50’s so the older folks (see directors and big donors) are still alive to remember. I am guessing the guys in the “expensive” seats remember (folks in their 60’s and 70’s and beyond) and have more money and power than recent graduates.
d) saying they are not ready to expand is wishful thinking, I have a VERY strong feeling they are just waiting for the Big 10 to make the first move. I would be willing to bet they already have several plans in place once “pandoras” box gets opened by delaney. If fact the “silence” from the SEC right now is very telling in its own way.
e) by not forcing anything they can be the white knight to either the Big 12 (via texas, a&m, OK, and OSU) or the ACC (via FSU, Clemson, UNC, and NC State – the last 3 being ACC charter members)
consider.. clemson already plays..
auburn and south carolina
FSU already plays florida..
UNC already plays LSU..
if you substituted Ga Tech for NC State
UGA plays Ga Tech
f) the duke – unc rivalry..
#1) it is basketball not football
UNC holds a 19 – 1 edge in football, and does not translate to TV money.. I love IU, but I would not call the IU vs tOSU football game a rivalry.. would you??
#2) the basketball rivalry is modern – ask any UNC fan over 45 / 50 if they considered duke a rival when they were growing up..
#3) the rivalry coincides with the ESPN / ACC contract that started in the late 70’s and early 80’s. If UNC thought there was more gravy in the SEC, they would not bring duke.
#4) duke is the little brother in competition.. like people saying that UK views UL as a more serious rival than IU. In the old days UNC’s rival was NC State and could easily become again, if cut loose from duke.
I am willing to bet if UNC was able to cut away from duke in a poll they would do so, especially if they felt they could seriously grow their football revenue (they could always schedule duke in basketball to keep that specific rivalry going) but if you want to fill the dean dome in basketball, SEC fans (especially UK) will travel.
Just imagine a BIG 4 renewal (IU, UK, UL, ND) but revamp it as (IU, UK, MSU, UNC) and play it in Lucas Oil / Georgia Dome in alternating years. UNC could excel without having duke tag along on its coat tails..
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Maryland may be harder, but it is much more strategical valuable. With Maryland, PSU and possibly Rutgers, you have the best teams in the mid atlantic region. Later down the road, that allows the Big Ten to focus on the NE for expansion as the mid atlantic schools outflank the NE schools.
If Maryland would be the first offered and accept, could you imagine the shock relative to if the Big 10 took Rutgers or Missouri?
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If rumors persist about the SEC picking off the ACC’s southern flank (the schools who likely would have fled to an expanded Big East had the ACC not been proactive in 2003), it would give Maryland officials the public leverage they need to join the Big Ten, basketball games with Duke be damned. Maryland can’t afford further ACC erosion in football. (And I’m certain the Big Ten would rather have Maryland than Pittsburgh, as it would get two new markets rather than none.
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You need 61 teams to control the BCS. 3 conferences of 16 teams leaves you a minority to the non-AQ schools…who would predictably vote you out of AQ status and themselves into AQ status. Any combo of big conferences that doesn’t have at least 61 teams is not BCS politically workable.
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Let me expand on this a bit. Currently there are 65 teams in the BCS conferences plus ND who vote themselves into the Haves in the BCS equation. There are 120 BCS Football schools, 66 Haves, 54 Have Nots. There are probably 4 teams in the Have Nots who would be good candidates to bump up into the Haves (Boise, Utah, TCU, BYU) and another 5 teams who might have potential (Nevada, East Carolina, UCF, SMU, Houston).
You could lose 5 teams from AQ conferences into non-AQ status and still maintain a sufficient voting block, but cannibalizing 3 conferences, you’d just lose too many voters. The P10 adds 6, the B10 5, the SEC 4, that’s 15 teams that can be absorbed into your big 3. However there are 32 teams in the other 3 conferences plus ND. You need that 4th conference and a 5th conference if your 4th isn’t at least 14 teams to maintain majority rule.
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Dcphx..
i see what you are saying..
i was just interpreting what arkstfan said and taking it to the next logical step.. The BIG 3 reform and leave the BCS behind. In this scenario the newly formed BMF (think of Jules wallet in Pulp Fiction) has an 80% demand footprint, and everybody else is along for the ride. I have read in the past where this was desired so the top schools and conferences could dominate the market..
Instead 120 BCS schools, you might be dealing with 64 BMF schools, and 48 is 75% 64. In my predator vs prey argument, the lions pick which gazelles they want to schedule for dinner, but the gazelles do not get to pick the lions. Sure the remaining schools would still play games, but not in front of the nationwide tv audiences who will be watching bama vs michigan in a BMF bowl will outdraw USF vs ECU in the Pappa Johns bowl.
It will clearly define a first and second tier in college football. The first tier will protect 20 or so “historical” BIG time college football programs. the second tier will encompass the rest, but somewhat limit their ability to break into the first tier. It would insure say, that a Central Michigan could never challenge a Michigan for dominance in college football.
I am not knocking Central Michigan, i am just saying that Michigan (and large media companies) have a great deal to lose if the power structure is upset over the long term. If I am looking to expand to the BIG 16, I want Maryland with 26,000 undergrads over duke with 6,000 over the long haul because it means more TV sets over a multi decade horizon. This has been pointed out in previous posts, but seems to get lost on some people posting just how valuable this part of the expansion equation it is..
If it goes to the BIG 3, you can not look at the BCS or the 120 team matrix because it will no longer apply. As it has been noted before, delaney wants to create a legacy. The BIG 3 and the BMF would fit this bill quite nicely. I am will to admit error here, but from what I am reading this fits delaney. If I am not reading delaney correctly this this is moot.
Am I reading delaney correctly? If so you have your future, if he can accomplish his goal.
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I don’t think you’re reading Delaney correctly.
He has said time and again, that he doesn’t work for the good of the NCAA but the presidents of the B10. He carries their water and while he might be the agent of change, ultimately they are the arbiters. The presidents of the B10 have many more concerns than getting 48 football teams their own feifdom. I think they know that there is a grey area of greed and monopoly that they can dance around, but breaking off into a 48 unit exclusive club (where the members are the vast majority state sponsored), is far enough over the line that it will draw attention in an unfavorable way.
Ever hear the saying, pigs get fat – hogs get slaughtered?
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DCPHX..
I agree.. but the “actions speak louder that words” comes to mind. If Delaney was just adding one team to get to 12, my feeling is it would fit in the Big 10 presidents “comfort zone”. I agree with you 100% at this point.
As I have said before, the day the Big 10 hits 13 we have all gone down the rabbit hole. I note the following..
a) Delaney is not a “lone gunman” from what I can tell. Somebody, somewhere is giving him marching orders. He is already carrying the presidents water so to speak.
b) Somebody, somewhere has given him the order to change the playing field. I say this as by going to 16, he is changing the current status quo.
c) What has been lost on the SEC to 12 was not that they did it.. but that they almost assured a SEC team would be in the NC game every year! They changed the status quo, and now if the B 10 goes to 12 they just “catch up”.
d) going to 16 puts Delaney (vis a vi the Big 10 as a collective) ahead of the curve. If the Big 10 is smart, they must have already thought of this. It is why I would argue Delaney is doing what he is at this time because he has already been given his marching orders.
e) my proof is that it appears as though the Big 10 will not stop at 12. There is no need for the Big 10 to 16, but the fact that it is on the table tells me by simple logic that the presidents have already approved such a move ALREADY!
Delaney may be the dog on a leash, but the Big 10 presidents have already taken him outside for a walk in the first place..
something to think about..
BTW: In the plan I am working on it is the BIG 3 80% + some second tier “filter” conferences / alliances that doles out the remaining 20%.
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Frank,
I am afraid all you are seeing is dollar signs and have forgotten that the Big Ten (particularly through the university presidents) thinks of itself foremost as an academic unit.
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Well, this is one reason why noone has ever mentioned Oklahoma as a possible candidate for the Big 10.
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Everyone discussed by Frank more or less meets the minimum academic standards of the Big 10. This has been discussed ad nauseam.
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Mostly adding, but a few comments:
Greenstein seems to have a direct line to Big Ten HQ (which I envision as a grainy blue hologram of Jim Delaney). I would take his comments as gospel which means the original 5 (ND, Pitt, Rutgers, Syracuse, Missouri) are most likely. Like many observers I would substitute Nebraska for almost anyone else on the list. I wonder if there are long-term doubts about Nebraska’s viability due to their population size/growth. One of the Greenstein quotes was “They’re looking long-term, across the horizon. What gives them the best shot at keeping value at a high level?”. Another possibility is concerns about the “partial-qualifier” issue.
I was very surprised at how low Pittsburgh was on the list, especially compared to Iowa State.
I’m still amazed by the advertising money revelation. Someone must be buying enough Rotel to fill swimming pools.
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I’m still amazed by the advertising money revelation. Someone must be buying enough Rotel to fill swimming pools.
<- best comment yet
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@M – re: “I’m still amazed by the advertising money revelation. Someone must be buying enough Rotel to fill swimming pools.”
Little known fact is that all of that Rotel was hauled across America in a Barbasol truck.
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Hmmm… A close shave and Rotel… Two things that should never mix.
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now if you mix Ro*tel with Velveta..
put it in a swimming pool..
bring in a multitude of 18 wheelers filled with corn chips..
I think you become a GOD in the history of Super Bowl parties!!
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@HoosierMike – Speaking of sponsors, I really hope that people start calling this the “Kentaco Hut Center”:
http://tinyurl.com/y273ejh
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Kentucky Fried Cardinal Yum!
I’m not sure they thought the new name through.
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Wow. Just… Wow. I got about halfway through the first paragraph of that article and scrolled to the top to make sure the dateline wasn’t April Fools. Unsurprisingly, it was not. I, as my handle implies, am a lifelong Hoosier native (IU grad), and a lifelong Michigan Football fan. This unique combination provides me the just the right amount of arrogance AND genetic diversity to have spent the better part of my 28 years trashing, belittling, and generally making fun of all things Kentucky. This news represents an opened floodgate with a force of farcicality possibly too great for even my formidable experience…
That said, I find this agreement slightly more inspired than most (Lucas Oil Stadium, anyone? “Come to Indiana, and getch yer… Oil? really?), but more hilarious than all of them.
I think this shark was jumped when the Double Down was released. At that point, any self respecting city (or Commonwealth) needs to declare: no mas. This is a extinction level event, people, worthy of a John Boehner-esque “HELL NO, YOU CAN’T!” from the legislature, demanding the drop of the “K” from KFC. More worthy, perhaps, than the first iteration as this monstrosity is inherently designed to kill people! It’s a 540 calorie one-sandwich death panel!
This is a dark day for my countrymen to the south. The thought of Kentucky once conjured great things in the minds of Americans, and in many respects was quintessential Americana: bluegrass on a fiddle, horse farms, Daniel Boone, log cabins with quilts on the walls, and warmish southernish hospitality.
Now? Clogged arteries, The Colonel, Calipari, missing teeth and rusted out pickups.
We’ve come a long way, baby. God Bless America. Peyton Manning.
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Frank,
My understanding was that it was a push on Pappa John’s. When UL built the football stadium they were having a hard time finding a sponsor. Pappa Johns swooped in at the last min and got a discounted price. Word on the street in the KY, IN, OH triangle was Pappa Johns has been waiting to do the same thing for the new basketball arena (get in at last second for a discounted price).
keep the following in the back of your mind….
a) Pappa John’s is headquartered in Louisville..
b) Yum is headquartered in Louisville..
c) Yum owns Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut, etc..
d) egos = crazy decisions..
My guess is Yum did not want to see both new venues go to a rival. They stepped up to stop such a thing from happening. Of the many food company that Yum owns, Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) has the most ties to the state of Kentucky. Hopefully some PR group will arrive at a better name before the venue actually opens.
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The numbers for Texas are impressive, to say the least. No wonder they are pursuing the “Longhorn Cable Network”. I wonder if that thing will get off the ground?
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How does the BTN get a football triple header given that the current ABC/ESPN deal has exclusive Big Ten rights during the 3:30 and 8pm timeslots? No game can be on the BTN in those timeslots if ABC/ESPN has a Big Ten game.
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@MStreet
The BTN night games generally start at 6pm CST, so that may be one way they avoid the same time slots as their ABC/ESPN contract. They have later games in the afternoon, but I don’t know what the exact time is.
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@MStreet:
The ABC/ESPN agreement would need to be renegotiated as part of Big Ten expansion as that agreement suddenly became more valuable. I am not sure how much (if any) additional revenue ABC/ESPN would give up but the Big Ten would be pushing for the loss of ABC’s exclusivity.
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The exclusive ABC window’s only for the 3:30 time slot (right now)
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Eggs.
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bacon
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Big 10 will have an amasing Rosebowl rep for the future years.
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So I guess the Longhorns’ mastery of the Cornhuskers will have to take place in Pasadena a couple of times a decade?
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Not in 2010 my friend. Go Big Red!!!
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If the Big Ten wants to increase its revenue, it should definitely and totally agree in that statement that they should start a hockey conference and especially a lacrosse since it’s one of the fastest growing sports, if not, the fastest growing sport in the country if it does indeed invite Syracuse. I’ve made an article about a potential Big Ten Lacrosse Conference last Thursday.
http://www.jasonnessa.com/blog/2010/04/could-big-ten-lacrosse-league-become-reality-w-inclusion-of-syracuse/
Even though that much of the major schools lacrosse teams are in the MCLA, including 5-of-10 current Big Ten members (Northwestern doesn not have a Men’s Lacrosse team), the Big Ten can just easily move them from the MCLA to the NCAA. However, that could also cause a chain reaction in college lacrosse, to where the MCLA will fold or just simply merge with the NCAA.
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Ooh, I love threads where I can chime in on both half of my user name!
It’s hard to see, in an era of Title IX and tight budgets, that any of those schools competing in lacrosse at a non-varsity, club level would want to take on the expense of competing at a varsity level and add a corresponding number of opportunities for female student athletes as well.
It is possible that there could be a Big 10 lacrosse league if Rutgers, SU and ND join the Big 10. Just as the ACC competes with just a four-team conference, the Big 10 could do the same, with those three schools joining Ohio State with varsity programs.
(Oh, and after reading your blog post, it’s “Johns” Hopkins. With an S. It’s very hard to convey how annoying that dropped “S” is to those who didn’t go to school there! And it’s also very hard to write about that annoyance without sounding very annoying and petty in the process of doing so. It’s a burden Hopkins grads bear.)
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Yea it is kind of annoying when there’s another “s” after “John” cause it’s like that double standard thing or whatever it’s called that your English teacher tells you not to do/use. But thanks for pointing that out.
Also, besides Ohio State being in the current NCAA lacrosse program, Penn State has a lacrosse program in the NCAA.
With Syracuse, Rutgers, and possibly ND lacrosse joins with a newly formed Big Ten lacrosse with OSU and Penn State, the conference could become a becoming, dominate powerhouse in college lacrosse. Too, if they can bring the rest of the schools from the MCLA over to the NCAA, where Michigan has been dominating the MCLA for about a decade, just think of an awesome conference rivalry for Syracuse.
I believe that the Big Ten should definitely look into this and possibly take advantage of it as well.
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As a Michigan fan and lacrosse fan, I have long dreamed of a day when the Wolverines actually fielded a legit division 1 team. However, as it stands now, all those schools in the MCLA are non scholarship club teams. As good as Michigan’s club team is, the level of play in the MCLA is basically the equivalent of the NCAA’s division 3, (and it probably is worse, as Michigan has lost to mid level D3 teams in scrimmages over the years.) It would take years before they could even dream of hanging with Syracuse were they to move to division 1, although with the allure that U of M has on the east coast, a Michigan lacrosse program has tremendous potential. More so than any athletic program, Michigan could probably afford to add a men’s and women’s team, but in this economic climate, its hard to see it happening.
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I have noticed the area that the college teams in the MCLA rarely get the money from the school. I’ve found out about that when I was going through the Iowa Lacrosse website (BTW, I’m a Hawk fan, even though living here in Minnesota), when people fill out a form to participate in the team, that they’ll have to pay at a range of $400-$600, as well as seeing fine print saying that they don’t get hardly any money.
So yes it would be tough for those teams in the MCLA, but once they could get some of that money from Big Ten’s TV contracts, including from BTN, the players won’t be paying for the equipment and travel costs anymore.
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If Fox New Corp is controlling the puppets, could they be pushing the Big 10 east in order to steer 4-6 Big 12 teams to merge with the Pac 10? Thus setting up themselves to be the TV partner of a 2nd conference network 50% owned by Fox?
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If Fox New Corp is controlling the puppets, could they be pushing the Big 10 east in order to steer 4-6 Big 12 teams to merge with the Pac 10? Thus setting up themselves to be the TV partner of a 2nd conference network 50% owned by Fox?
Could? Yes.
A P16/20 is also in the B16’s interest, because it gives these conferences that often vote together more power in matters such as the BCS.
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Are you suggesting that Rupert Murdoch might be playing with these academic institutions like so many pieces on a Risk board? Because that would be awesome.
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exactly..
no matter what happens, the media groups are the winners!
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It would also create additional market power for getting both of those stations onto Tier 1 across the country. You want the new P10 channel on Tier 1 in Texas and California, then you add the BTN as well. You get them both or you get neither. Same for the B10 footprint.
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Now your thinking less like a Big Ten President and more like a tv executive.
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I negotiate for a living, seeing how to create leverage to benefit your position is somewhat second nature. Sometimes creating benefit to your position comes from creating benefit for your nominal allies so you can join together for mutual benefit. A strong P10 doesn’t harm the B10. A stronger SEC does. Because if the B12 is harmed and UT looks for a landing spot, the other obvious alternative is UT into the SEC and ESPN’s SEC network which wouldn’t benefit the B10. You need to look several steps down the road. If UT isn’t coming to the B10, we want them in the P10 where the B10 can leverage our P10 relationship to our ultimate benefit (and theirs).
People have previously asked how the B10 would benefit from Texas/aTm in the P10. I always thought that the B10 could benefit from helping the P10 with a viable conference network. If that means Texas/aTm into the P10, then so be it as long as UT has said no to B10.
Once the BTN isn’t the sole conference network selling itself to the cable operators, it becomes much easier to market. I think 5-10 years from now there will be a cable network for every major conference on basic cable and no one will blink an eye any more than getting ESPN Ocho with basic cable.
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@Dcphx – I agree with this. I don’t believe the Big Ten would just pass on Texas to allow the Pac-10 to take them. However, I definitely think that if Texas is deciding between the Pac-10 and SEC, then the Big Ten 110% wants them to end up in the Pac-10. Placing Texas in the SEC would be a ridiculous juggeraut that could be a direct threat to the Big Ten, whereas Texas in the Pac-10 is more like creating a West Coast peer that could co-exist peacefully.
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Very shocked to see Dennis Dodd’s focus on “Texas to the SEC” in his latest article. Maybe I relied too heavily on the many old articles and stories I read around here about Texas’s aversion to the SEC, but I thought that was a non-issue. I know CBS (his employer) has SEC’s glory in mind, so maybe he’s creating a non-story here. Or maybe he’s simply failed to do ANY research about the issue. (Seems unlikely) None of his source’s quotes (DeLoss Dodds) directly mentioned the SEC though, which makes me think that Dennis is just trying to get the SEC’s name out there in all this.
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allyou…
as i pointed out in a previous post.. Texas and the SEC west teams were once all in the same conference, and they share southern values and thinking. I do not think the deal breaker is the SEC or academics.
I think the deal breaker is “sharing”, which is why I have felt the Big 16 will not include Texas as well. That said business make strange bedfellows.
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Maybe the Big Ten and Pac-10 could schedule some non-conf. games in various sports to get their fans watching each others channels.
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Very much down the road, but yearly 1-1 series between the two 16-team conferences would be awesome.
However, in light of the new size of these 16 team conferences, teams schedules will be so varied every single year as it is, the need/desire for OOC should be much less. Playing teams from St. Louis to Minneapolis to New Jersey (to Texas I hope!) is broad enough. Throwing in a random West Coast or Southern team isn’t necessary.
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If the NYC numbers are true, invite Rutgers, Syracuse, Nebraska, Maryland and Notre Dame (substituting Missouri if ND declines). You get the entire NY-to-DC corridor in SU, RU, PSU and UMd and two football “brand names” in Nebraska and Notre Dame.
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According to a March 2 story from the Chiago Tribune, the “consensus” of Big 10 sources, officials from other conferences, and TV execs rated RU, Mo., Pitt, and Syracuse in that order….Ilooking back, I think this is an under-reported analysis….
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That jibes with the report on the VTech board. That means RU & Mizzou are in (along with Nebraska & maybe ND), Pitt is borderline, and SU is a weaker candidate than Pitt.
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Excellent job Patrick, Frank. Very, very interesting numbers. It’s interesting that an expansion could include any of a number of schools. I’m pleased that expansion invitations don’t have to be about population, but can be made with regards to academics and athletics.
From a football perspective, I couldn’t be happier to see Nebraska viable. Fantastic fans. I’d love to see their football team in Wisconsin’s division. In my opinion, we need a high-profile team like the Huskers in any expansion.
I certainly hope Texas would consider joining too.
Academically, I’d like to see Pitt and Maryland. Beyond these, I’m not sure I care too much.
I’m glad to see that the numbers showing Notre Dame isn’t necessary. (Why would it be, really, given what the Big Ten has already built without them?) It’s interesting that any of a number of teams could be inserted for about the same value to the league. How many domers would believe the likes of Boston College or Nebraska would be worth more to the Big Ten than Notre Dame?
Personally, I’d rather see invitees that don’t have to be wooed or cajoled. While it would be fun to see Wisconsin play Notre Dame now and again–as they do have a good football team even now–I just can’t see it being worth all the holier-than-thou drama.
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If you take away the tv contracts, Nebraska’s athletic department already makes more than Notre Dame. Boston College brings the added value of millions of tv sets in the Boston area. One interesting note is the national tv ratings, Nebraska pulling a 3.57 over 9 games and Notre Dame averaging a 2.4 over 7 games. I would not have expected that.
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To be sure, they were down, and their home games weren’t that appealing (they played USC as well as MSU & BC, but their other home games were against Nevada, Washington, Navy, & UConn, and their neutral site game was against WSU). Still, I think it’s safe to say ND doesn’t have more TV appeal than Nebraska, which means about 10 other schools (the big 3 in the Big10, several SEC schools, Texas, OU, and USC) had as much TV appeal or more than ND these days.
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I posted this link in the previous thread:
http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/article/135294
I’m unsure how accurate those numbers are (NYTimes has ’05 listed at a 3.6 rating – http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/20/sports/ncaafootball/20sandomir.html), but some of them are probably at or near the right answer (06 and 07 are the same for example). ND’s records, number of home games, and ratings from 2002-2009 were:
2002, 6, 10-3: 3.2
2003, 7, 5-7: 2.4*
2004, 6, 6-6: 2.5
2005, 6, 9-3: 2.7/3.6*^
2006, 7, 10-3: 3.0
2007, 7, 3-9: 1.8*
2008, 6, 7-6: 2.2
2009, 7, 6-6: 2.4*
(*USC@ND, ^Article above or NYTimes)
Point is, even when they’re great (02, 05, 06) ND still seems to average about the same as Nebraska. Which is great for the Big Ten and BTN specifically, don’t get me wrong, but there’s some perspective to be had here I think.
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First off, I appreciate your efforts, background, insight, and enthusiasm. However, I’m having a hard time buying into numbers that place ND at about the same financial attractiveness as KS, MO, BC, and MD (and yes, I’ve followed the discussion and understand the market size and cable issues.) Given the potential hassles ND would bring, the relative lack of research, and non-AAU status, why would Delany and others in the know pursue them so hard if they already had more than 5 qualified schools available? Rut, Pitt, Mo, KS, and NE are big state schools that fit basically all the criteria, as does MD, so the only reason to try to put square peg ND in the round hole B16 is that they would bring a very large financial boost.
So it seems like perhaps the model is missing or undervaluing one or more elements. Thus I’m not sure one can use the numbers and argue that schools, X, Y, Z, C, and G are likely to be added. Though it has certainly added a squinty-level layer of understanding from which to analyze.
IMHO, Syr, Rut, CT, Pitt, ND, MO, and NE are all still in the running. Perhaps MD isn’t being pursued, since if the ACC is likely to survive then why piss off a conference you may be negotiating with over matters like the BCS down the road? With apparently enough qualified candidates, better to stick it to the conferences most likely to disappear, the BEast and B12. Plus there’s always the possibility that in the back of Delany’s mind he thinks the SEC could raid and gut the ACC, and thus the B16 might want to woo some of those schools into a B20. Easier to do that if they can’t directly blame you for their demise.
My guess is the rushed timetable is because of evident financial feasibility, and perhaps to pressure and prevent ND from dragging things out.
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And to those who say the B10+ is too tradition tied to go from 16 to 20, well apparently the presidents aren’t too tradition minded. One of the weekend reports said they were looking into changing the conference name, which many had claimed was so valuable that it would never be changed.
OTOH, MO may be attractive because its unexciting but qualified nature mirrors many of the current members, such as MN, IA, IL, MSU, PU, and IU. Sorta like how the dorks/uglies sometimes look out for each other in John Hughes movies.
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A Big20 would be intriguing. Say Nebraska, Mizzou, ND, Rutgers, & Pitt in the first wave (the rest of the Big12 merge with the Pac10 to form the Pac/Western 20). Then the SEC raids the ACC, taking VTech, NCSU,FSU, and Miami. Maybe WVU instead of Miami. Then the AAU schools in the ACC (Maryland, Virginia, UNC, Duke) very well could join the Big20. Miami instead of one of those 4? Probably not, since Miami may be underwater by then.
How to divide in to 5-team pods would be a tough decision, though.
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OK, I got it:
Pod A:
Nebraska
Mizzou
Iowa
Minnesota
Wisconsin
Pod B:
Northwestern
Illinois
ND
IU
PU
Pod C:
MSU
OSU
PSU
Pitt
Michigan
Pod D:
RU
Maryland
UVa
UNC
Duke
East (C+D) vs. West (A+B)
North (A+C) vs. South (B+D)
The biggest rivalries broken up would be the ones between the pod B schools and Michigan/OSU/MSU, but I see no good way around that.
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OK, second try:
Pod A:
Nebraska
Mizzou
Iowa
Minn
Wisconsin
Pod B:
Illinois
Northwestern
Michigan
MSU
OSU
Pod C:
ND
IU
PU
PSU
Pitt
Pod D:
Rutgers
Maryland
Virginia
UNC Duke.
A+B vs. C+D
&
B+C vs. A+D
Everyone in the old Big10 gets to play OSU and Michigan. ND gets to play eastern/southern teams.
Only traditional Big10 matchups gone for good are IU/PU(/PSU) vs. Iowa/Minn/Wisconsin. I don’t think anybody would care that much.
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I love Richard’s pods as they preserve the traditional rivalries.
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Well, Patrick did say he was being conservative. Maybe ND locks up NYC, in which case the credit for NYC goes (largely) to ND instead of Rutgers. Maybe ND even allows the BTN to make inroads in to New England (without any New England school or SU!). If so, ND jumps to the front of the line in desirability again.
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You are correct that the table is missing something. I obviously am not quite getting some piece of the puzzle but I really can’t figure out what that is. If ND is more valuable (and it probably is) then I have underestimated the impact of adding LIVE programing to the beast. But that also increases the value of Pitt and Nebraska. Maybe this is where I have an error. Also, maybe the BTN sees themselves as national like ESPN instead of regional like FOX Sports Midwest. They already have an impressive reach, adding Notre Dame increases that value…. so does Nebraska.
If the bbs post of $44 million per school is anywhere close to accurate I am WAY TOO LOW on the value of increased programing and the value of advertising. If that is the case, add Rutgers as a token effort to get NYC and NJ then take all the national brands you can get!
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Yes, perhaps part of it is the focus on nat’l rating numbers vs. the local ratings for a school in markets the BTN is in or targets. So NE might be a better draw than ND nationwide, but ND surely rates better in NYC, the northeast, and the midwest east of the Mississippi.
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Seems apparent down here that behind the scenes (off the record) UT has been throwing cold water on any B10+ talk for them, based on how local sports reporters have consistently reacted as this has unfolded. So basically they’re looking at a P16/Western Alliance, the SEC, or a B12 rebuild. I could easily see each happening, but am surprised at how the SEC option seems to have an equal shot. Also interesting that UT’s decision may basically be decided by aTm and OU.
Some argue that the SEC won’t expand because of their long-term TV contract. I don’t know if they have an escape clause like the B12 does (if the B12 starts a cable channel.) Regardless, ESPN has an incentive to reopen the SEC contract if that allows them to take TX, aTm, OU, and a 4th team. Why? Because if ESPN keeps that block of schools from going to the P10, it gets much harder for the P10 to pull off a BTN-esque channel that could be a competitive threat to ESPN’s and their ratings. For now ABC/ESPN is the national showcase for college football, but they are also the primary SEC network (CBS gets a marquee game each week, sometime two, but ESPN gets the bulk and not just table scraps.) A strong P16 with TX, aTm, OU, KS, maybe Utah or NE is solid competition for eyeballs and ads, while a weak P10/12 is far less so. Plus ESPN’s SEC inventory and potential reach would be more attractive when they have games featuring TX, OU, versus even the alternative of FSU, Mia, and VT.
TX seems to wants to join as a block of schools. Less travel, a more solid voting block that gives them better control of the future in conference matters, preventing OU and/or aTm from getting a recruiting advantage, scheduling advantages (keeping rivals in conf to maintain non-conf scheduling flexibility,) potentially easier state politics long-term, and perhaps even the factor that the UT president has for years now been pushing hard for the state to support and fund TTech and UHou attaining Tier One status and AAU membership. Membership in the surviving BCS conferences is a big revenue enhancer that aids that development and potentially reduces the chances funds UT might tap will be redirected towards TT and/or UH.
So would P10 take OU? Probably, the P10 already has non-AAU members and OU’s research numbers are similar to those of KS, above OR St’s, and well above OR’s. Their level in various rankings is similar. Would they also take TTech? The state is upping their funding with a goal of reaching Tier One by 2015 and more than any other state has the resources and economy to get it done. I could see the P10 insisting on leaving out TT and UT settling for bringing aTm, OU, KS, CO, and Utah (or NE instead if available.) I could also see UT insisting on a compromise where the P10 stays the P10 and UT brings a modified B12-X+Y=10 into an alliance. The 10-team eastern conference could then set their own standards, but have an alliance where each conf is classed as a division with the division winners playing a conf champ game. May not be as financially lucrative, but would be a compromise that overcomes the P10’s issues while allowing UT to bring TT and perhaps UH.
OTOH, I can picture UT insisting on bringing a minimum of aTm, OU, and TT. If they can renegotiate with ESPN, the SEC would probably take that block. Of course TX doesn’t have to go with aTm, but if both aTm and OU insisted on going to the SEC, then UT would probably follow (2 annual out of conference rivalries locks up too much of the schedule, plus it makes for a daunting slate when competing in the tougher, bulked up divisions 16-team conference would bring.) So can UT convince aTm and/or OU to join the academically superior P10, or will the Ags and thieves insist on heading for the SEC, luring the Horns? A west division of TT, OU, UT, aTm, LSU, AR, Ole MS, and MS St is tough but winnable. Good matchups and fairly compact, the MS schools are about as close to Austin as Stillwater, OK. For those saying UT would never sully itself in the academically inferior SEC, take another comparison of the SEC and B12. In both rankings and research they somewhat mirror each other from top to bottom. There are other issues in play, but they aren’t necessarily deal-breakers. It isn’t as if the P10 has been squeaky clean.
Then again, there’s no guarantee any conferences will follow the B16’s lead and expand beyond 12 schools. The P10 might grab CO, Utah, or NE, but the B12 could reload by adding BYU, pushing OU and OK St into the north, instituting an annual cross-conf game, and adding UH and SMU or TCU. The latter has been discussed off and on for a few years. As long as there is uneven revenue sharing you can make a case for how that works out for UT, which has the negotiating leverage of always being able to leave for a new P14/16 or SEC if the small schools vote themselves too big a share of the pie. Plus UT (and aTm) can bank some goodwill in the legislature for future use if they get one or more in-state schools into a BCS conference. UT operates in its own self-interest, but sometimes that benefits their brothers.
Right now the sense I get is that UT is looking towards the P14/16/20, but the more I look at it, the more the SEC option seems not only feasible but almost an equal shot. Still, I’d rather go to the Rose Bowl than the Sugar or Fiesta.
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Ironic that Texas, which has always looked down on the SEC’s academic standards, may be forced to join that conference by its rivals.
In any case, the Pac10 is desperate for more TV money these days, so I don’t think they’ll object to Texas bringing its cousins. The bigger issue is that OU isn’t beholden to Texas, and could just decide to join the SEC with OSU by themselves. However, UT probably has enough pull in the Texas legislature to force TAMU to go along with them to the Pac16, even if OU & OSU bolt.
So in the end, I believe Texas (and the other Texas schools UT wants) will join some Western conference regardless of what OU does.
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I don’t think there’s any chance in hell that Texas will go to the SEC. And I don’t get why Texas would have any incentive to insist that OU gets to tag along.
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Geographically the SEC makes perfect sense for the Texas schools. I’d rather be there than the Big 12 right now.
However, I do think moving to the Big 10 or Pac 10 could help the academics more for the schools, so that would be my preference.
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I just don’t see Texas giving the SEC the time of day. They have been looking to improve the perception of their academics, thus the reason for contacting the Big 10 and Pac 10 after the SWC fell apart. Maybe Texas AM to the SEC without Texas.
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back to a point on texas to the SEC..
I raised a point about IMG..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMG_(business)#IMG_College
they have the rights to Texas..
they also have UF, UK, and UT in the SEC..
the ONLY Big 10 team is Michigan..
and the only conference they seem to have locked down is the SEC, so they would have a vested interest in the SEC as Fox has a vested interest in the BTN..
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Frank,
Let me ask you a question based on my Texas-centric world view (and meant to bring this discussion towards the affect of Big 10 expansion on the rest of the college universe).
Here is a link to the Longhorns’ future schedules:
http://www.mackbrown-texasfootball.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/fb-future-schedules.html
Texas is scheduled to play a conference game at Iowa State on October 24, 2015. What do you believe are the chances that that game will actually be played?
I’d say less than one-in-five.
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“Effect,” not “affect.” Argh.
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Affect works as well in that sentence — of course the sentence has a different, and not altogether uninteresting, meaning.
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FTT:
TX and ND are givens, that said there is one intangible and one money factor you are leaving out that help Pitt out.
Intangible: Durability. Of the candidates, Pitt and Nebraska have been the most competitive over the years. Pitt has survived droughts of competitiveness. The same cannot be said for Rutgers or UConn (if they are in the mix). If those programs take a turn for the worse, will anyone in NYC want to watch? And Syracuse doesn’t look like it’s getting any better soon.
Money: Unlike any of the other teams, Pitt brings an instant national rivalry back with Penn St. OK, so IL and MO play, but when is the last time anyone cared about that game? Is it even televised nationally? Consider the $$ to be raked in if the B10 opens its season with Pitt-Penn State. That’s an instant big moneymaker game that no other candidate school can produce.
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Does anyone outside of Pennsylvanianians care about PSU-Pitt? Didn’t JoePa kill the rivalry after joining the Big Ten? If it wasn’t worth protecting then…
I’ve seen UI-Mizzou on ESPN or ESPN2. At least two states are involved. From a national standpoint, I am not wowwed by any of the potential new rivalries like I was about PSU-OSU when PSU first entered.
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Nebraska-Iowa should be good one. The fans on both sides have been wanting that game setup for some time now.
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@flp_ndrox:
I dunno… I think the new OSU-ND rivalry should be a good one. 😉
(I kid, I kid)
Iowa-Nebraska, Wisconsin-Nebraska could be good. Actually I’m just kind of excited to see Nebraska in the Big Ten regardless. I think they’d bring a consistent national player in the west.
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Agree that Pitt has had a long, solid, successful run over many coaching regimes in both football and basketball, and has the best likelihood of long term success vs other Big East schools.
Food for thought regarding Syracuse and UConn– Boeheim and Calhoun are legends. But will they turn into an Indiana post-Knight, or a St John’s post-Carnesecca? Where will that leave the Big 10 if either Syracuse or UConn gets invited, then tanks after Boeheim and Calhoun leave?
Regarding long-term viability, what would be the draw for a blue-chip recruit to the city of Syracuse in an outdated Carrier Dome for hoops, and an awful football program? Or, without Boeheim’s legend, wouldn’t a basketball recruit rather stay at St John’s and play in Madison Sq Garden?
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A. You know nothing about the Big East, Syracuse and the Carrier Dome.
B. No one with any skill wants to play for St. John’s. They haven’t had a good program for years.
I love how some people on this board claim to know anything about Syracuse and the Carrier Dome when it’s evident that they’ve never been there. I don’t care if you don’t want SU to join the Big Ten, at least know what the heck you’re talking about before writing them off.
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Patrick, I want to thank you for your efforts in this endeavor. I think the points you bring to the discussion are valid parts of the equation.
However, I’m not sure the data being used is correct.
“By the Big Ten’s own admission they are clearing about $0.36 per subscriber per month for the states inside it’s footprint.”
I believe this 36 cents per subscriber per month is the Big Ten’s 51% of the actual 70 cents per month per subscriber the BTN is getting for in-state subscribers which is probably why the terminology “Big Ten is clearing” instead of the BTN is receiving.
http://www.wiseye.org/wisEye_about/NEWS-Time-Warner-Termination.html
http://blog.pennlive.com/davidjones/2010/03/how_the_big_ten_network_makes.html
This would mean that the subscribers’ fees for 26 million would produce approximately $218.5 million.
So if we use your $272 million profit, this would mean ad revenue generated $53.5 million for a 20/80 split between ad revenue and subscribers fees. This is probably too low, just as I believe your 60/40 is way too high.
My understanding of this is that it is usually a 25-30 ad revenue / 75-70 affiliate (subscribers fees) ratio.
Also these figures don’t seem to take into account the 49-50 million subscribers outside the Big Ten region that are either receiving it on a digital tier at 10 cents a month or who are paying for it through a sports package.
Any ideas as to how we might be able to close the data gap?
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@omnicarrier,
There are markets where the BTN gets $0.70 per suhatbscriber and markets where they get $0.10 per subscriber. Most of the $0.70 markets are in Big Ten home states & Big Ten Universities home cities. Unfortunately, I will never be able to get my hands on that data. Even guessing which cities are 70 cents and which are 10 cents is a difficult excercise. Also trying to determine if the new markets would add 10 cents per or 1.10 per (as the BTN has asked multiple times) is difficult because I don’t have that kind of access. That is why I used the average claimed by the Big Ten.
Say in NYC the 5,000,000 cable HH only want to pay $0.20 for BTN and in Nebraska you get 800,000 HH that will pay $1.10. It’s just impossible to predict individual market negotiations between the BTN and local cable outlets.
Advertising vs. Cable Carry rates is usually very close to 50/50.
For closing the data gap… I wish I knew how to fill in those holes. I can promise you that the BTN execs have filled in those gaps and have giant dollar signs for pupils.
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“There are markets where the BTN gets $0.70 per subscriber and markets where they get $0.10 per subscriber.”
True. As the Big Ten’s business model clearly shows. They went hard and fast to get the channel on basic cable in the 60s/70s range and at a higher price – the initial asking price was $1.10 but they said right from the beginning that was negotiable. Which it proved to be that first year when none of the major cable companies were signing up. They had to come down in that price and since then the average “in-state” subscriber fee is at the $.70+ a month fee.
The out of state fee was supposed to be $.10 a month if it wound up on a digital HD tier alone. If it wound up as a sports package, that price would need to be negotiated.
“Most of the $0.70 markets are in Big Ten home states & Big Ten Universities home cities. Unfortunately, I will never be able to get my hands on that data. Even guessing which cities are 70 cents and which are 10 cents is a difficult excercise. Also trying to determine if the new markets would add 10 cents per or 1.10 per (as the BTN has asked multiple times) is difficult because I don’t have that kind of access. That is why I used the average claimed by the Big Ten.”
As the links I provided in my previous post show the Big Ten has been telling people for the past couple of years that they are getting .70 cents plus for in-state DMAs where the cable company has signed on and that they are now in excess of 85% penetration in those markets with all of the major cable companies on board and with national contracts with DirecTV and DISH.
The lone exception we know about is Comcast Philly, which got it at a reduced price because Comcast argued that Philly was a pro-sports/Big East city and that the DMA wasn’t truly Philly, but Camden and Wilmington as well and they weren’t going to be bothered separating out the PA residents from the NJ and DE residents. So they all get in on the digital tier for whatever “bargain” price Comcast negotiated.
“Say in NYC the 5,000,000 cable HH only want to pay $0.20 for BTN and in Nebraska you get 800,000 HH that will pay $1.10. It’s just impossible to predict individual market negotiations between the BTN and local cable outlets.”
We have 3 years of history to go on and the Big Ten has told us the average in-state price is .70 cents a month per subscriber. The Pennsylvania link I provided showed this as well as the Wisconsin link I provided.
“Advertising vs. Cable Carry rates is usually very close to 50/50.”
This is the statement I am questioning the most. As I understand it, the Cable companies overall annual take is indeed basically 50/50 with ad revenue of $24 Billion.
However, again, as I understand it, 60% of that ad revenue goes to the over the air networks, leaving the many cable networks divvying up 40%. So the true ratio is $10.5 Billion in ad revenue and $24 Billion in subscribers fees for the ratio falling between the figures I gave in my post.
With ad revenue taking a hit by 2013, the over the air networks want in now on the subscribers fees as we’ve seen with both Fox and ABC.
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Post above edited, this paragraph should read:
This is the statement I am questioning the most. As I understand it, the Cable companies overall annual take is indeed basically 50/50 with ad revenue of $26 Billion and Carriage Rate fees $24 Billion.
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Patrick and omnicarrier:
Thanks for this interesting discussion.
Patrick: can you provide more detail about your methodology and sources and assumptions that allowed you to derive your numbers; including a better sense of knowns and unknowns so hopefully you and omnicarrier and anyone else able to contribute can further clarify and correct, if appropriate, the numbers presented?
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I think this is an excellent analysis of the TV side of things, but the academic/research aspect sticks in my craw as something the university presidents are going to look at very hard. Certainly television, especially the BTN, has the potential to benefit the universities beyond adding to the AD coffers, but research is a huge source of revenue as well. For many research grants, the university skims ~45% off the top for overhead, and that’s no chump change. Engineering and biomedical programs especially bring in tons of research dollars. So, adding the right mix of schools from the standpoint of benefiting the CIC is as important from a revenue standpoint as is TV money. Many of the biggest research grants are steered to the CIC by senators, and right now the CIC has 16 working on their behalf. Adding schools like Pitt and Notre Dame does nothing to increase the number of senators that can steer grants in the direction of CIC schools. Same with adding both A&M and UT, although that situation is more complex than simply looking at it in terms of senators/research dollars (as Patrick pointed out). Expanding to 16 schools could– with the right choices– expand the number of senators fighting for research dollars up to 26. That’s over a quarter of the U.S. senator pool and a damned powerful force. I’m positive each university prez knows this full well and I suspect finds it to be at least as important as TV dollars. Remember, these are university presidents making the decisions (with pressure from trustees, regents, politicians, etc., of course) so I suspect the academic side of things will play a bigger role than many suspect.
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Hodgepodge:
Actually, I don’t think Senators get involved that much in research funding decisions. I mean, yes, there are pork-barrel earmarks, but most research proposals get decided by the scientists and bureaucrats at the NIH & DoD.
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Yes, but the Congress sets the budget and it is easier to push for increases in research funding when you know your state has a good chance of landing the money. Of course this depends on the idea the CIC promotes a synergy that leads to more competitive research by its members than would otherwise be the case. I’ll note that one secular trend in science research funding is supporting multi-university and multi-discipline projects. It is more than plausible the type of cooperation and coordination available through CIC connections may have a material impact on funding success.
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Yes, coordination between CIC members will become more important, but that means you would want to add schools to get strong research departments, not Senators (who really don’t have much impact on where most research money goes).
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As a person who really likes to see the numbers and data while working through all of the possibilities that have been presented so well by Frank and posters, I have created a Google Maps map that I have been copying everyone else’s great information to so I have it all in one place. I take zero credit in the the information, but present it for those who like me need to keep referring to the underlying data.
To find it, go to Google maps, search for ‘Big Ten Network – Cable Providers, University and State Census Data’ and select ‘Show Search Options’ and choose ‘User-defined maps’, you should then see it listed. It still needs cable rates data wink wink Patrick! If anyone wants to be added as a collaborator let me know.
Frank, hope this isn’t a problem.
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Interesting to look at.
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Sweet. Thanks Shawn.
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Patrick: If Texas started a Longhorn Network within Texas along the same formula as the BTN, any notion as to what they might make (in comparison to joining the Big Ten)? I’d imagine they might consider doing it without Fox, given what the Big Ten has shown they could make.
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Well they would have to share the money somewhere, so I really don’t know. Ideally you would want to increase the footprint and get big schools with a strong fan base. I really could see them doing this with the Pac 10 and the remaining viable members from the Big 12.
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adding
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Since Frank allowed us to “think like a fan” for a minute, I’m going to speak as a Penn State fan.
From a football standpoint, I’m very interested in Nebraska and Notre Dame. I’m not very interested in Rutgers (one top 25 finish in the past 30 years), Pitt (4 top 25 finishes in the last decade DESPITE playing in the Big Weak), Missouri (3 top 25 finishes in this decade), or Syracuse (1 top 25 finish this decade). I know they all have solid names nationally, but I don’t want 2 of them in the Big 10, let alone 3 or 4 (if Nebraska isn’t included).
I realized today…this expansion stuff is a ton of fun to speculate about…but when it actually comes down, will it still be fun? Yearly games with Syracuse and Rutgers (PSU’s likely regional rivals with expansion)? Pitt too? Yuck.
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Basketball would be fun. Well, maybe not if you’re a PSU fan, but you’d get to see (more) future NBA stars pass through.
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@allthatyoucantleavebehind:
As an Ohio State fan, I agree that the gems in the names mentioned are Nebraska and ND (I just don’t see Texas as a possibility) for football. Syracuse and Rutgers do nothing for me. Neither does Missouri, UConn, or BC. Pitt is kind of so-so.
One thing to keep in mind is that Pitt’s been kind of between a rock and a hard place in the last couple decades. Particularly this decade, given how many top recruits from Pennsylvania have gone to either PSU or OSU. It’s a tough recruiting sell for Pitt to say, “Hey come play in the Big East!” when you have two neighbors saying, “Hey come play in the Big Ten!” Would that change if they joined the Big Ten? Largely, probably not. But I could certainly see them grabbing some recruits here and there from OSU/PSU, not unlike how Wisconsin, Iowa, MSU, etc. occasionally do now.
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@allthatyoucantleavebehind:
(Accidentally hit Submit.)
Additionally, for basketball I would say those other names do bring some excitement. Pitt, ND, Syracuse, UConn? Good matchups.
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You don’t want to have 7 of the top 15 programs playing in one conference.
Nebraska or ND gives you five of the top 10 college football programs of all time with UM, OSU and PSU.
If you add any more than that, its overkill. You’re going to get a lot of coaches fired at UM, OSU, PSU, Nebraska if they are losing 3-4 games most season which would be the case if you add any more top programs to the conference.
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Well, they won’t play each other, since no school can play more than 9 of their 15 opponents in a 16-team conference. In any case, unless Texas changes their mind, no other top 10 or even top 15 school is a possibility.
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syracuse fan here. have been trying to read up on all this stuff and figure out where the orange are going.
you do realize that SU is #15 in all-time wins in football right? yes, we have sucked the past decade (don’t remind me) but HCDM looks to have things turned around and running the right way (unlike at UM where they took our old coach. hahaha) we do have a national championship, a heisman winner and oh yah, jim brown.
trust me, pretty sure none of us want to join the B10+. just take ND and be done with it.
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Who knows what scheduling COULD look like, but if we had a homerun conference–let’s say the Texas schools, Nebraska, ND, plus the current “big 3”–it’s unlikely that those 7 schools would see more than 4 of the others each season.
You also have to consider that the Big 10 (16?) would get the same benefit of the doubt that the SEC currently gets. In the same way that 10-2 SEC schools are far more respected than 10-2 schools from any other conference…a 9-3 team from the Big 10 (16?) would be probably be a top 10 team in the nation…and a 10-2 school definitely would be. Adding home run schools MIGHT get some coaches fired due to the competition level but it would DEFINITELY change the perception of the strength of the Big 10.
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As a PSU fan, I would love an expansion that included Pitt. I loathed them during the Majors-Sherill era, but those games at 3 Rivers were great theater. A trip to Heinz Field every other year would be terrific. Rutgers is a speculative add. Even with some recent success, RU is till, as Paterno has been saying for 30 years now, a “sleeping giant.” Also love the idea of adding Nebraska, which would create several marquee matchups in football.
Here’s how I would rate the candidates (I’m only considering AAU members, so no ND here. As I’ve stated I don’t think they’re a good institutional fit):
1) Nebraska (the fourth most valuable college football brand can’t be overlooked. If Texas isn’t coming, and I don’t think they are, this is the marquee add)
I would actually stop with one, but if 14 are needed, then these:
2) Pitt (supersolid in the two major revenue-producing sports and the only partner for PSU that would create an instant major rivalry)
3) Kansas (one of the top four basketball programs of all time, would immediately require Big 10 teams to ramp up their games)
If 16-team superconferences are the future, then:
4) Rutgers
5) Missouri
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@MikeR – I´m on board with you here. Obviously if the Texas schools want in, that changes things. The same can also be said about the ACC powerhouses. Barring either of those scenarios though, I would love the 5 team combination of NU, KU, MU, RU and Pitt.
I know the prevailing winds kind of point to a more eastern-oriented expansion, but too many of those schools are fatally flawed in one way or the other. Even Pitt and Rutgers have their downsides, but they are smaller than those of the other Big East names being bounced around.
Also, I don´t think we should overlook the revenue and excitement that come from rivalries. When we´re talking about the three Big 12 North schools, you have a handful of already existing rivalries between themselves and other Big 10 schools. Of the Eastern candidates, I would imagine only Pitt-PSU would come close to the rivalries that the Big 12 North carries. I don´t know what this means as far as added revenue for the conference (maybe Patrick could chime in here) but it has to tilt the scale in their favor.
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BTW, this was posted by Mike in the other thread:
http://www.techsideline.com/message_board/football/2010/April/17/3523596.php?PHPSESSID=db04e7ee1378a6804c569389f3eab72b
“Went to a cocktail party with a friend yesterday when I was in Chicago.
Met a guy who is a producer for the Big 10 Network. He says the
prevailing plan is to go to 16 teams with the addition of ND, Missouri,
Nebraska, Rutgers, and Pitt. The revenue is projected to be $44 mil per
school. ND is unofficially “negotiating” with the conference, but it is
clear that they will make more as part of this than their own TV deal.
Pitt is not a lock, because it doesn’t really add any new media markets,
but this guy did say there were no plans to approach any ACC
schools.”
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Seems like Nebraska, Mizzou, and Rutgers are locks. I’d personally stop there for now and wait to see if Texas would be interested at that point. If that still isn’t enough, some combination of SU/KU/maybe-one-of-Pitt/UConn may still be more appealing to me than ND + someone.
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Don’t understand why you think Neb. is a lock when it wasn’t one of the 5 schools intently studied by the Big 10, and has not been featured in stories by sports reporters with Big 10 connections….
I’m not disagreeing that Neb. should be a lock, just that it is…..
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That report just studied the 5 most “obvious” candidates. If they expanded the net just a bit further, Nebraska would show up as a screaming thumbs-up. Remember that the Big10 isn’t going to leak all the studies they made, so I wouldn’t rely on how much “buzz” there is on certain names.
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The report sounds like it was focusing on how many schools to add, not on which specific schools to add. They picked five schools that may or may not be interested, but, nevertheless, kind of ran the gamut from western to eastern expansion.
Once they decide on a number, then I´m sure they go through the same process that we´re going through on here – and that leads to a few differences from that list that was leaked.
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mushroomgod,
Do you have a link to that?
I have not seen anything like that. I did see Bielima send a message a few weeks ago that he was working on scheduling Nebraska and Notre Dame for upcoming seasons. If the Big Ten was ignoring Nebraska if favor of UConn or Syracuse they would be doing themselves a big disservice.
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Patrick,
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-03-01/sports/ct-spt-0302-big-ten-foot–20100301_1_expand-commissioner-jim-delany-penn-state
“A source inside the league told the Tribune that the report, prepared by the Chicago-based investment firm William Blair & Company, analyzed whether five different schools would add enough revenue to justify expanding the league beyond 11 teams.
“The point was: We can all get richer if we bring in the right team or teams,” the source said.
The five analyzed were Missouri, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh, Syracuse and Rutgers. The source, though, called those five “the obvious suspects” and cautioned that other universities could earn consideration.
It’s also widely assumed that Notre Dame, which came within a whisker of joining the league in 2003, is not ready to give up its football independence, with Irish athletic director Jack Swarbrick saying in December: “Our strong preference is to remain the way we are.””
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I replied in the other thread, but basically I could easily see those numbers being accurate. For my calculations I used the the 19.545 million per school and was very conservative (and conservative using 2 year old data). If those types of numbers are accurate, and it wouldn’t really suprise me, then that is exactly why the Big Ten will expand, will go to 16, and it will happen soon. At those types of rates the BTN and FOX are losing around $700,000,000 for each year they delay expansion.
Like I had suggested, the BTN and FOX have opened up a gold mine, and they will ramp up to maximum production ASAP.
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I’m usually the first to cast doubts on posts like this, but this sound legitimate for the simple fact it falls into line with Patrick and Frank’s analysis and was posted on Saturday. Patrick stated that he was conservative in his numbers. It could be that the BTN was not and are actually projecting this high of per school revenue. The benefit to all the schools involved would be incredible.
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Well, the $44M could be what all schools will get, or it could be what the new schools would bring in on average, depending on how that’s read. Still makes expansion worthwhile, in any case.
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Only conjecture I can think of for why Maryland isn’t considered is that the Big10 does care a bit about the pissing-off-other-conferences thing. They don’t care too much about hurting the Big East’s or Big12’s feelings, because those conferences may not be around much longer, and multiple schools in those conferences are looking to leave anyway, but the ACC will be around, and the Big10 may want those schools as allies.
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Then, do the ACC a favor and take BC!
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adding
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richard,
if arkstfan is correct. I am not sold that that the ACC as we know it will survive in a BIG 3 world!
if this forces the PAC 16 and SEC 16.. i think maryland is a Big 16 possibility (in place of ND)
and many of the big state schools in the ACC wind up in the SEC 16.
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It still may make sense not to antagonize the ACC schools. Then if the SEC raids the ACC, the Big16 could expand to the Big20 by taking the 4 AAU schools in the ACC.
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richard..
expanding past 12 antagonizes all parties (Big 12, ACC, and BE) wether it is intended or not. It means a new “playing field” is being created. Creation means change. People fear what they can not control, and change fuels fear.
You can take from this what you will, but when there is uncertainty people get rich for a reason. Be it poker, finance, or basketball tickets (one reason I am happy that duke fans do not travel – means heavily “discounted” tickets) as their is an economic reward.
There is a reason serious poker players are at the table year after year.
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Rutgers brings nothing to the Big Ten. Just because they’re in the NYC market doesn’t mean they actually have a lot of people watching them there — Pitt’s national TV ratings were far higher than RU’s these past few years. Sorry, but one big game back in 2006 is not going to get the Scarlet Knights a bid they don’t deserve.
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You also need BTN subscribers, and Rutgers raises the BTN subscription rate in Jersey.
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Yes those ratings for Pitt games losing to Rutgers 4 out of the last 5 years were were probably pretty good. Do you actually know what those ratings were for Pitt the last 4-5 years?
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I noticed you only talked about 36 cents/subscriber IN the BTN footprint. I am willing to bet there is a significant and large subscriber base outside of the Big Ten states. I, for one, am one of many many OSU transplants that now resides in California. I pay $5/month which I’m willing to bet a minimum of $1 goes to the BTN a month. I believe you are vastly undercalling the subscriber revenue from this population. There are tons of midwest transplants in all regions of the country (outside the BTN footprint) in which the BTN is getting $1/month from.
Remember my subscriber revenue is equal to 3 people inside the BTN footprint. As someone mentioned above…there might be 9 million of us non-footprint people if there are 35 million subscribers and only 26 million in the footprint. Meaning the footprint accounts for half the subscriber revenue with us non-footprint people accounting for the other half. So the BTN needs to be careful of not including cannibalizing these non-footprint subscribers. I’m sure there is a large portion already in NYC.
These people would severely alter your ad revenue numbers.
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UPDATE, sort of:
Big Ten’s last commish Wayne Duke:
Duke said he was aware of several schools, including Pittsburgh and Nebraska, that were under recommendation to join the Big Ten as far back as 1946. And the addition of Penn State to the conference in 1990 first was pondered in 1981 under his watch.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/ct-spt-0420-around-town–20100419,0,2494876.column
So now it is a financial positive to bring on the desired schools. I think Nebraska, Pitt, Missouri, Rutgers and one of these (ND / Syracuse / Maryland / Kansas).
I’m not sure ND wants to go and I’m not sure that the Big 10 wants them…. maybe it is all posturing. I think Maryland is a good fit but if you are wrecking up the Big 12 why not take Kansas also and retain the rivalries. I’m not sure about Syracuse but maybe they help deliver NYC or maybe Penn State really wants them… but there is a lot of noise around them for a team/school that doesn’t seem to fit as well as the others.
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Well, it’s not quite a financial positive for Pitt (or, even if it is, there are schools out there who will bring in more revenue than them), so they’re borderline. I’ve got to think Nebraska, Mizzou, and Rutgers are in, though.
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Were I a betting man, I’d place a large sum on Pitt getting in. If 16 is anywhere close to being the financial windfall being suggested, Pitt is too good an academic fit to pass up. Heck, their research expenditures are higher than Cal’s (would be 6th in any B16, 4th in the P10, 2nd in the ACC, and first in every other conference.) Even if they are a bit of a loss leader, their academic heft helps balance out the ‘compromises’ of taking a Syr or ND.
Not a guarantee, some of the B10+ source comments about each needing to financially contribute to the conference seem directed as cover if they are excluded. But as the Presidents gather around the table and weigh various arrangements, I think Pitt emerges as a consensus pick.
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Based only on rival and scout forum comments, the average Neb fan is very ready to go to the Big 10, esp. if Missouri also comes. They don’t like Texas’ domination of the league, and think the league is going to fall apart. They would also have a rivalry with Iowa, and could get back to playing Ok. every year.
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I have been advocating for a 16 team model for some time now based on what Kevin White calls compression state economics. Consolidating resources has lead to larger profits in just about every industry. One part of the equation that I think many are leaving out is that TV revenue, while important, is just one part of the revenue formula. I believe the revenue generated by increasing the number of partners in the CIC, who pool their resources, would increase big time if the right 5 teams were brought in. Under this model, Texas is ideal, where as ND is a non player. For a sixteen team Big 10 model featuring Texas that considers the additional revenue that would be generated by expansion, check my article at: http://thepolesposition.com/2010/02/18/2018-big-16-championship-ohio-state-28-texas-24/.
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Nice article, in line with what Frank´s been saying on here.
And, I agree, taking the 5 Big 12 schools (UT, AM, KU, MU, and NU) is the ideal scenario. At this point though, the Texas schools are starting to sound like long shots (although I don´t understand why) and there may be some interest in adding at least a couple Eastern schools.
As for your divisions, you point out that the time zones naturally divide the two sides of the conference. That´s a kind of neat outcome and I´d think you´d name the divisions accordingly: the Central and Eastern divisions.
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If Nebraska goes to Big 10, then the Big 12’s lower class has the votes to change from unequal to equal revenue sharing….would Texas and A&M be willing to take a pay cut instead of jumping ship to the Big 10 for a giant pay raise??
That is my big issue with the idea that the Big 10 will take a Big 12 school that is not located in the state of TX…it doesn’t make sense.
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Unless Texas has already decided to either
1. start its own cable channel
2. cast it’s lot with the Pac10 (probably negotiating unequal revenue distribution and other goodies, so even if the new Pac/Western cable network doesn’t pull in as much as the BTN, Texas would still be in the competitive range).
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Greenstein interview on a Syracuse affiliate…
http://www.cnycentral.com/sports/video.aspx?id=445814
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Very interesting.
Says 5 team expansion more likely than 3; looking West, mentioned Missouri and Nebraska; and looking East (mentioned RU, SU, UConn and Pitt), where UConn with RU and SU could put “strangleghold” on NY metro region.
He believes RU has best potential, and “more and more” thinks SU is invited in a 5 school expansion.
He covered the Northwestern vs Syracuse game last year (SU won) and said “obviously (SU) football facilities are very good”. (Obviously he hasn’t spoken to “Mushroom”.
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If those numbers are even close to right the Big Ten should take Nebraska, KU, Mizzou, Pitt, and RU. You could sub in MD for KU but I don’t think they would join. Syracuse is small and private, lacking research money. ND could be a pain in the butt to deal with as they are used to calling the shots. Plus they aren’t big into research. BC is too far away and private. UConn too far away and not AAU.
You can easily split the league into pods
Michigan
Ohio St
Purdue
Indiana
Penn St
Mich St
Pitt
RU
Nebraska
Illinois
Mizzou
KU
Iowa
Wisconsin
Minn
NW
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OK, maybe separating Northwestern and Illinois isn’t a dealbreaker, but separating MSU & PSU would be.
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MSU & Michigan, not PSU, sorry.
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What? Are you saying they wouldn’t play for the Land Grant Trophy every year? Unacceptable!
Seriously, you’re right. MSU would have to be in with Michigan. MSU already gets the short end of the stick a lot in football–they couldn’t break them up from Michigan.
I think you’d have to put Nebraska in with Iowa. One of the big attractions for Nebraska to join would be an annual rivalry game with Iowa. They’d certainly give up annual Mizzou games for annual Iowa and Wisconsin games. That way you don’t have to split up NW and Illini either.
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it does bring up a point.. to balance power in a 4 pod system (with Nebraska, Missouri, Maryland, Rutger, and Uconn to the BIG 16. You would assume the haves of BIG 16 football would be PSU,tOSU,UM, and NU. in a 4 pod system each would have to be in a pod to preserve balance..
so..
POD #1 = PSU + 3 teams
POD #2 = tOSU + 3 teams
POD #3 = UM + 3 teams
POD #4 = NU + 3 teams
because based on past football success, putting any 2 of the 4 in the same pod creates means imbalance. Another reason ND might not want to be in the Big 16, as if they were in a POD with UM & tOSU there would be 66.66% chance of failure EVERY year assuming the three teams are about equal every year (ie all 3 have a shot at a conference championship or a NC).
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@KingOtto –
With ND on board, the BTN could very well change it’s model. But up to this point, it has been an in-state and out-of-state pricing guide.
I don’t see either Cablevision or Time Warner just handing NYC over to the Big Ten for the in-state $.70 rate without both Rutgers and Syracuse.
Take Rutgers without Syracuse and they will likely argue that Rutgers is not in the state of New York. Take Syracuse without Rutgers and they will likely argue for the Comcast Philly exemption because the NYC DMA includes basically all of northern New Jersey.
And even with both RU and SU there are no guarantees when it comes to NYC. Look at the problems YES had getting on and that was the Yankees!
If the Big Ten wants to play it safe they focus on the midwestern teams. If they want NYC, they will need to gamble on ND, RU, and SU and hold their noses.
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I say the expansion has to be done in 2 phases. Start with Nebraska and Rutgers (or) Syracuse. This gets ND off their arse or if not then nothing will. Then go from there based on ND’s ultimatum decision.
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I think you forget ND at this point.
But you could still do some damage with the 2 phase expansion. What happens if you start with Nebraska and Missouri? Or those two plus Kansas? In that scenario, you are obviously stalking the two Texas schools. Is it only politics holding Texas back or do they, for whatever reason, not want to join the Big 10?
If you add those first two or three schools and then strike out on the Texas two, you look East and try to wrap up NY-Boston-DC.
There are some question though with two part expansion. First, is there time? Would a two part expansion at this point mean the second part trails a year later? And is that possible with all the TV deal complications? Or is it even necessary? (once the writing´s on the wall, will the Texas schools step up to the plate?)
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I think a multi-phase expansion could be a possibility, particularly if the Big Ten wants to land UT and/or A&M. You invite Nebraska and a Big East school now, then see if that lets UT make their getaway from their Texas brethren. But it will only work if everyone promises not to call it the “Texas Two-Step,” because that would be lame.
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I’ve been thinking the most likely scenario is Missouri, Nebraska and Rutgers. That leaves things open for UT and TAM to join if Colorado jumps to the Pac 10 and the BXII collapses. Or it would leave things open for Texas and Notre Dame in a final expansion if the Big XII collapses and Notre Dame no longer sees independence as viable.
Finally, if none of these things come to pass and Texas and Notre Dame stay put, well, Mizzou, Rutgers and Nebraska are good additions on their own and they could stand pat. Or add Syracuse and UConn to seal up NYC.
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@ Pennstgrad
Taking one Big East team is nowhere near enough of a threat to get ND to move. The Big East merely reloads with say Memphis, and rolls on. The only way to force ND’s hand is to kill the Big East.
No, with Patrick’s numbers, I no longer think ND will have to be forced. I think the ND beancounters will have a pretty dang good idea of the financial upgrade, and will get the info on the damage to contributions.
Reading the Tea leaves in Domerland, either the financials come out in the Big Ten’s favor, or TPTB have already decided that CIC membership is in the long-term best interest of the USNWR rankings chase. Or more likely both. The more I hear on NDNation, the more I think the NYC leaks were a trial balloon that went much worse than expected. Knowing how ND handles dissent, I doubt there’ll be debate.
I think the Big Ten takes ND for ad purposes, the ability to jack carrier rates outside the footprint, the pressure of Fox to stick it to NBC/Comcast, and to assist Nationalizing the brand, esp. since I too don’t think that Texas is that interested. If they think they can split the network money in much fewer ways and potentially at their advantage in the former BXII or the Pac-1x, they’d probably prefer to go that way.
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I hope you are right. I understand a lot of ND fans despise the thought of conference membership, but if four conferences are going to break away at the end of the day, ND would be foolish to pass on the Big 10 and end up in the ACC, and hope to close the financial gap with the Big 10 (and as strong a brand as ND is, the ACC is so far behind in $$, that there will still be a gap).
They would still be regionalized in a much less lucrative conference, and they’d lose a lot of schools which they’ve had rivalries with over the years — UM, MSU, PSU, etc.
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Add
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http://www.omaha.com/article/20100419/BIGRED/704199797
Jim Tressel was in Lincoln today speaking at the Nebraska’s Sports Celebration Banquet. The following is the section that pertains to expansion:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Expansion in the Big Ten is inevitable, according to Tressel.
He doesn’t want to appear that he has any inside knowledge on the topic, but he doesn’t seem to see a scenario in which his conference doesn’t add another team soon.
“I’m not much different than the people on the talk shows or anything else,” he said. “I just think it might happen.”
And what about Nebraska? Could the Huskers be a possible candidate to join?
Some reports suggest that the Big Ten is considering the addition of as many as five schools.
All Tressel could say is this: “Nebraska’s very highly thought of.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Not really giving any new information, but still interesting.
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Wow… I know that the coaches aren’t the ones with the best information, but that’s actually pretty informative coming from “The Senator”. Tressel’s not one to say anything without a reason, and for him to give that answer (and not something like, “Well, we coaches aren’t really involved in the process,”) when directly asked about Nebraska’s candidacy is about as clear an indication as I’ve seen that Nebraska is actually being seriously considered by the Big 10. Remember, they weren’t on the initial list of 5 that we saw, and I don’t remember hearing much about them from the actual decision makers. With all the rumors swirling, I may have missed something, of course.
It’s just another indication that Nebraska is being considered, which I’m very glad to see.
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Goes along with Bret Beilima’s statement a few weeks ago that he is trying to schedule ND and Nebraska for upcoming seasons.
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Bo Pelini is in Columbus today speaking at an Ohio State function, FWIW.
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@Mike:
Pelini played for OSU and is from Youngstown, Ohio, so that’s not a shock. OSU fans have often speculated that the AD would go after Pelini hard should Tressel retire anytime soon.
@Brice:
Tressel is called The Senator for a reason. I’m sure he *does* think highly of Nebraska, as do I, but even if someone asked him about DeVry he’d probably say the same thing.
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Pingback: The Big Ten Expansion Index: A Different Shade of Orange « FRANK THE TANK’S SLANT
Mizzou goes nowhere without kansas. Fans hate each other, reams don’t like each other, universities do everything in tandom.
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@Nick – No school has openly begged to get into the Big Ten more than Mizzou and even Missouri’s governor talked about the academic upgrade. The people that matter (Mizzou’s administration) will not care what Kansas does.
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I think the Big 10 will avoid Kansas for political reasons.
An understated advantage to schools such as Connecticut, Missouri and Nebraska is these are the only flagship schools of their respective states. Kansas bolting would result in some type of backlash from the legislature if K-State was going to be left out.
Its also imperative that if the Big 10 goes to 16 it avoids an 8-3 vote. Unanamity is critical to integrate these schools into the conference, but also if three schools are dead set against expansion, then you run the risk of a school like Iowa State making a power play by forcing Iowa to take them as part of expansion.
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justin,
i agree.. it is why i put kansas in the new PAC 16 instead of the new BIG 16.
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@Nick: Mizzou and Kansas can be split as long as an out of conference football and basketball series can be maintained. Both are the main money generators for Mizzou’s men’s sports. The game at Arrowhead is very lucrative and when KU travels to Columbia, it’s their only guaranteed basketball sell out.
@Frank: Agreed.
@Justin: I disagree. Kansas’ State government is pretty cheap. More and more, they are asking the Universities to subsidize themselves via research dollars and to pay for facility upgrades out of pocket. Any meal ticket from the Big 10 would raise a stink in Manhattan, but the research and athletic dollars would make it well received in Topeka.
As a former Kansas resident, I really see this as a non-issue– especially if the Sunflower Showdown is kept intact.
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I saw this on a TexAgs forum that linked to this blog and got a huge chuckle on a number of levels (starting with the fact that the poster’s name is Jeff George):
Welcome back my friends
To the thread that never ends
We’re so glad you could arrive
Step inside, step inside
Let’s catch you up to date
On that con-fer-ence’s fate
Are they going to expand
‘Cross the land, ‘cross the land
First of all you’ll note
Big Ten schools would never vote
For a Tier-3 school like Tech
What a wreck, what a wreck
It’s because the Big Ten schools
Are no academic fools
Members of the CIC
Don’t you see, don’t you see
Next of all you’ll find
Pockets certainly aren’t lined
By adding schools out in the sticks
Sorry, hicks… sorry, hicks
They want a lot of Joes
Watching Big Ten Network shows
Advertising revenue
What a coup, what a coup
Now you’re up to date
So you can wildly speculate
On who will move to the Big Ten
Er… eleven, eleven
Come and see the show!
http://texags.com/main/forum.reply.asp?topic_id=1613563&forum_id=5
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Now, THIS IS AWESOME!
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Re calculations and markets
First Patrick: thanks for putting in the time to come up with these estimates; as a professional this had to be an interesting challenge.
The good news is the Big 10 will not be playing a guessing game with respect to the numbers and will without doubt have a nuanced perspective of how the numbers are best understood (present tense and future); will be evaluating the numbers based on a strategy; and will be evaluating the numbers and strategy based on affinity or values; who the schools want as long term partners based on their understanding of who may or may not want to be partners with the Big 10 (including Texas and ND).
Perhaps the most interesting part of reading these posts is the diversity of opinion and some of the confident predictions. (Come to think of it I’ve made my own guesses).
Questions and thoughts:
What are RU’s numbers without NYC households?
Doubt Texas is joining at this point but still not sure what “estimated added revenue” Texas brings when Texas A&M is added as a package? Texas almost certainly can’t be analysed as a single add.
With respect to “total added revenue estimates”, my first reaction is how relatively close the numbers are for Nebraska, down to Syracuse: $54.5 million to $43.5 million.
Note the Syracuse estimate above totally excludes any impact on NYC. UConn at $38 and Pitt at $34.4 million follow.
The RU estimate includes NYC at $68 million, without a lower estimate for RU without NYC. The Syracuse estimate on the other hand with NYC balloons to $66 million. My guess is alone neither school “delivers” the NYC market but each or better both might be instrumental in helping to deliver that market along with other teams in the Big 10.
Strategy:
Is the goal to maximize an existing relatively small yet devoted fanbase or target a potentially much larger, affluent market with a less single minded fanbase? More specifically, Nebraska has to be evaluated as a school with national interest for its outsiding football. Yet even Nebraska is only rated as adding 11 million dollars more than Syracuse presumably absent any impact on a potential NYC market.
Excluding BC and Maryland as seemingly unlikely adds for the moment, Kansas and Missouri, 2 midwestern schools are ranked less than $3 million above Syracuse presumably absent any impact on a potential NYC market.
More to the point this estimate (and the TV viewership chart) of Syracuse is based on at least 7-8 years of its nadir as a football team: in the last few years modern field turf has been put into the carrier dome, significantly more money have been allocated for coaches, new practice facilities and equally important hiring a new coach Doug Marrone, now beginning his second year, who is rapidly turning the program around.
The same could be said for RU, historically a doormat, now at the beginning of showing results based on relatively recent administrative support to be competitive.
Additionally it is unclear to what extant if any the “estimates” reflect the contribution a major basketball program like Syracuse might provide in bringing the Big 10 banner into the NY metro market as well as promoting interest in Big 10 basketball across the network.
To get to the point: SU and RU in combination with PSU and other Big 10 teams would likely turn the Big 10 into the conference of the northeast as well as the midwest.
Pitt is further from NYC than PSU. BC as an isolated team in New England is a nonfactor.
As the 2 major schools in NY and NJ, it is not simply a question of miles to the NYC metro region but where the schools draw their students and where their graduates live and work.
From a strategy perspective, whyich is more valuable: a “safe” school like Missouri or Kansas whose fans will certainly follow their teams or a very large, affluent, contiguous and largely untapped market that will not simply be increasingly likely to follow the local teams but increasingly be likely to follow prominant Big 10 teams such as OSU, Michigan, PSU as they compete for the conference title.
Ultimately the Big 10 Presidents will decide based on who do they want as partners and where does the long term stategy of the conference lie: east or midwest or both?
My belief is the Big 10 if they can not get Texas will consider an eastern stratey that initially targets ND, RU, SU as well as Nebraska.
Should be interesting.
Strategy:
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Another issue is that in research, SU is weaker than MU or KU.
If the TV money’s about the same, in order of preference, the Big10 presidents would rather add
RU
MU
KU
SU
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richard,
SU is also a PRIVATE school..
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So’s Northwestern. I don’t think the Big10 presidents are as hung up on private vs. public as you are.
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Richard,
Northwestern was in early on (like Vandy in the SEC). If it is about research, my guess is BIG PUBLIC STATE schools will have more political clout in the state houses. Vandy is a great school, but I am guessing U Tenn has the most sway in Tennessee politics.
It is a numbers game. UNC and NC State are passing a significant number of bodies through their academic and athletic “turnstiles” than Duke or Wake Forrest. In volume this translates to larger voting blocks which politicians need to get elected.
Presidents of STATE schools are directed by board members who are appointed by politicians who are elected by masses of their citizens. Presidents of PRIVATE schools have a different food chain. I am not saying PUBLIC vs PRIVATE is the only reason, I am saying it will affect a part of the decision. As such it should be factored in as much as tv revenue, football status, or any other factors used in consideration. It is why I advocated Flagship or sole state schools (like Maryland) have greater value.
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A bit of a disclaimer: This turned out to be a hell of a lot longer than I had anticipated. And I’ve been reading this blog since the expansion was announced but haven’t posted. Sorry if I am reiterating other posts.
Of the expansion candidates, I think the only real “home runs” are Texas and Nebraska. They are a proven commodity that can sell pretty much anywhere. ND has an aging fanbase and too much of a “diva” attitude to be a true home run.
I don’t think that Rutgers and Syracuse together would be able to pull in that kind of coin from NYC but let’s assume that they can and be worthwhile (without ND). I also don’t see BC or UConn adding much in New England to be worthwile.
Maryland would be a great add due to it’s academic/research profile, proximity to current footprint, and the potential DC/Baltimore markets (assuming they have enough pull in that market). It’s all a matter of being able to lure a founding member away from the ACC.
I know this may be beating a dead horse considering how many times it’s been discussed, but I think the only way an expansion to 16 teams will work would be breaking the conference apart into pods/quadrants (quads). Concerning these quads, I also think you’d have to expand to a 9 game regular season where you play one entire quad (essentially creating a division) and one team from each of the other 2 quads. Then, each team would play every team in the conference 6 times over a 12 year period (or 12 all 12 years for the teams within their respective quads). This way, no matter which quad they’re in, the “traditional” Big Ten schools will still play Ohio State, Michigan, or Penn State in 10 of the 12 years in the cycle (and play all three in 4 of the 12 years).
Also, to keep the existing members happy, you’d almost have to put the “unbreakable” rivalries in the same quads, regardless of who’s added. One quad will almost have to consist of tOSU, PSU, UM, and MSU and another would almost have to include of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and a fourth team.
Honestly, with all the teams/options that are out there, it’s just an all around win for the Big Ten. But some scenarios are obviously bigger “wins” than others. I obviously think the Texas schools with ND, Nebraska, and Maryland/Syracuse/Rutgers would be the ultimate win. I however do not see it happening. I see the Texas schools heading west and ND declining for the last time (which I honestly hope happens).
The following would be my ideal scenario by adding schools that not only fit academically and culturally, but also expand the footprint and add value based on Patrick’s chart (assuming Syracuse and Rutgers can carry even that portion of NYC). Also, the rivalries would maintain in tact and the quads would be organized geographically:
East:
Syracuse
Rutgers
Pitt
Maryland
North:
Penn State
Ohio State
Michigan
Michigan State
Central:
Purdue
Indiana
Northwestern
Illinois
West:
Wisconsin
Minnesota
Iowa
Nebraska
This is assuming Syracuse and Rutgers can pull in the numbers from Patrick’s chart. This conference make-up might become unbalanced whenever E/C and N/W are paired up, but it’s still doable.
The only other thing I can think of would be instead of creating quad-divisions (playing an entire other quad to create a division), you’d play your quad and then 2 teams from each of the other quads to create more balance. Then the top two teams would play for the title (assuming there will still be a title game). Then you’d still play each team in the conference 6 of the 12 years in the cycle.
I guess no matter what happens, it’s still going to be a bit of a nightmare for Delany and Co. to have to figure out. I’m sure he’s already ripping out what hair he has left. 🙂
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CB..
if i go with you 16, maybe it looks like this as your NORTH has too many big teams..
E: syracuse, rutgers, pitt, and PSU
N: maryland, indiana, purdue, and tOSU
C: northwestern, illinois, mich state, and UM
W: wisconsion, minnesota, iowa, and NU
with my 5 i was thinking
E uconn, rutgers, maryland, PSU
N missouri, indiana, purdue, tOSU
C northwestern, illinois, mich state, UM
W: wisconsion, minnesota, iowa, NU
not perfect but a start.. but could be some interesting long term TV rivals in MD vs PSU, UM vs tOSU, MSU vs M, and UW vs NU for regular season games.. but keep M vs tOSU on one side but maybe add NU vs PSU on the other side..
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Thank you Patrick,
I think many of the long time points are:
1) Does RU bring NYC?
2) Many overlook Maryland, but don’t they bring DC? Which is a growing area and a good demo.
3) Texas and TAMU need a 2-way number.
Add in the new points:
4) Nebraska is higher than I expected.
5) Why would you consider schools at Break-even? Since this is being done for revenue?
6) BC > ND. interesting….
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@Terry,
Truth is I was attempting to gauge the potential schools using the last reported numbers that I could and extrapolating. I would guess that the BTN and the conference know EXACTLY what kind of numbers they have and how rapidly they are growing, and they know how much money they could make on added Live Games to the BTN.
I think my numbers were conservative, and maybe too low by anywhere from $10 – $25 million for each school. I was initially interested in worst case senarios or could this fail. I was suprised when even under that type of scrutiny… almost everyone was a winner. Kinda scary what they will be earning soon.
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Remember that the INCREMENTAL revenue to an existing school is
(Patrick’s number – $38M)*.51/(total num of BTN members)
So for a $45M school thats an increment of like $300,000 which isn’t much, like about 1.5% of current Revenue.
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I have no clue what Notre Dame is going to do. As a Michigan State fan, I would love to see them in the BigTen. But the rivalry has lost it’s luster for me. If they chose to remain independent, that would be OK as well. Notre Dame football will never be the same after the expansion. If they choose to remain independent, they will be on a slow downward spiral because they won’t be able to compete with the schools in a conference.
What this post has shown is that ND is not required for BigTen expansion to be successful. As a football and a BigTen fan, I would love to see Nebraska and Pitt in the conference.
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FWIW:
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/sports/stories.nsf/mizzou/story/F2E29C6C0D4A78008625770B000C33FA?OpenDocument
Missouri chancellor Brady Deaton was believed to be in Washington on Monday, but it was unknown whether he had met with the Big Ten. Deaton said two weeks ago that Missouri had not been contacted by the conference…
…Regardless of what happens, (MO football coach)Pinkel foresees a scenario where super-sized conferences will form the basis of a playoff scenario through four or five major bowls, perhaps with other games following those meetings.
“To me, that’s eventually what the national championship will be,” he said…
…Pinkel speculated that Notre Dame will enter the Big Ten before the game of conference musical chairs unfolds.
“I’d be very surprised if Notre Dame is not in the Big Ten,” he said. “They see what’s happening.”
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Key dates from within a long article:
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2010-04-19/sports/os-college-changes-coming-0420-20100419_1_16-team-conferences-conference-expansion-and-realignment-jim-delany/3
Here is the schedule of spring meetings for the six BCS conferences, and a key point to remember. News of conference realignments in 2003, when the ACC raided the Big East, broke during the spring meetings:
May 9-12: ACC spring meetings, Amelia Island
May 17-19: Big Ten meetings, Chicago
May 22-26: Big East meetings, Ponte Vedra Beach
June 1-4: SEC spring meetings, Sandestin Beach
June 1-4: Big 12 spring meetings, Kansas City
June 3-6: Pac-10 meetings, San Francisco
Also, the AAU conference wrap up today and while the BCS meeting runs today through Thursday. At the latter Delany will notify the conferences of the schools the B10+ wants to negotiate with, so we should have good leaks within the next 72 hours.
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Pingback: The Value of Expansion Candidates to Big 10 - CycloneFanatic
BTW, remember the comments that new teams would have to in effect buy there way into the B10+? Perhaps that is why MO is so prominent on the expansion list, because in the informal discussions what they are willing to pay for inclusion is higher than most of the other candidates?
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Neb and MU leaving Big 12 makes sense, CO to PAC 10. Look for old Southwest conference to re-emerge. SMU, Houston, TCU back with other Texas schools. Big 12 will do just fine – maybe add BYU, New Mexico to get to 14.
WAC is whacked!
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The Southwest Conference died for a reason–an all-Texas conference just isn’t financially competitive. UT and TAM really don’t want to be in a conference with SMU, TCU and Houston anyway. (Heck, they don’t want to be in a conference with Baylor, but that got forced on them.) Adding BYU might help since they’re the Mormon Notre Dame, but New Mexico is too small a market and too small a program to help.
If Nebraska and Mizzou go to the Big 10 and Colorado goes to the Pac 10, look for UT and TAM to put themselves up for auction to the highest bidding conference.
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Kudos to Patrick/Frank and others with the financial and legal insight.
Mulling this information over, the things that stuck out to me are:
1) Rutgers will surely get an invite. They have academic appeal, TV viewership/ad appeal, historical appeal (birthplace of FB), and a commitment to expanding the sports (bigger stadium). I think they can also do well as they will be able to recruit more effectively in the Big East. Leaving Rutgers on the table would be counterproductive if the B10 wants the NE corridor (even if ND comes).
2) The first 3 teams should have broad based appeal (diversity) since all teams look capable of being financially reasonable. For example Nebraska’s strengths (athletics) are complementary to Rutgers strengths (academics). Likewise Nebraska’s weakness (location) is balanced by Rutgers and Rutgers weakness (athletics) is balance by Nebraska.
3) Maryland should be a prime target probably #1 (assuming that the B10 has already gauged Texas’ possibility as very low). Maryland combines location (DC/Maryland), academics, athletics, research and is a state school to expand to the east. Essentially Maryland is Pitt in a new market.
4) ND isn’t really in a position to play hardball any longer.
My selections would be 1) Maryland, 2) Rutgers, 3) Nebraska, 4) ND, 5) UConn. I pick ND only on sentiment and media attention otherwise I’m fine with Missouri to balance the invitees into 3 east and 2 west. I picked UConn over Pitt to diversify into the NE states further while supporting NYC with Rutgers and preventing the ACC from matching BC, Syracuse UConn, Pitt to get Connect Four up the east coast.
Rutger’s academic research will appeal to the B10 pres/deans. While not an athletic powerhouse in FB or BB, Rutgers offsets this by their location. Getting a Mich/OSU/PSU/Iowa/Wisconson or potentially Nebraska/ND in the NY viewing region will combine the FB powerhouse with the viewing powerhouse (ads go up). Rutgers also has made a commitment to athletics with a new stadium and retaining Schiano, but the big factor is that Rutgers will now be able to dominate NJ recruiting. They won’t have to turn to Florida or other areas because teams like PSU, ND, USC, etc are poaching the biggest recruits from NJ. Although Rutgers is coming to a tougher conference, I see that they have the potential to match. Additionally, they claim the birthplace to FB, so historically this is a fit.
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nittany..
haha i was less sentimental.. so my 5 is Missouri instead of ND!!
but i think you see many things i have voiced in past posts..
I think Maryland might be the gem, and could shine in basketball without being in UNC/duke shadow.. plus you really could get a double in markets (Baltimore + Washington) and not have to take a second school (Like UVA + Va Tech). I also think Maryland could wind up as a solid mid level football school in the Big 16 (with a NC run maybe every 8 – 10 years).
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The problem with the Big 10 taking Maryland is that it FORCES the ACC to do something. Alternatively, it gives the SEC an opening to move in on the ACC.
I tend to think that the best case scenario for the Big 10 is Missouri, Pitt, Syracuse, Rutgers, and UConn.
You get the entire region from Missouri to the Northeast. Pitt and Syracuse are name schools for football, while Rutgers and UConn have the facilities to become great. Pitt, Syracuse, and UConn upgrade basketball. UConn and Rutgers upgrade womens basketball. You add a private school to keep Northwestern feeling like it is not a complete odd duck. You get an iron clasp grasp on the NY market.
If you take Nebraska, Missouri, and Kansas, and say Pitt/Rutgers… now the ACC could take Syracuse and UConn–and associate with Notre Dame somehow (say, all sports except football) and have a 4-2 edge for the NY/Northeast market for both cable rates and advertising.
Maybe you can shave UConn off and add Missouri. If UConn goes to the ACC, it would give the ACC the Northeast, but not NY.
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Uh, Pitt & Syracuse aren’t exactly name schools. Syracuse’s TV ratings are poor, and in merchandise sales, all of the Northeastern schools (SU, RU, Pitt, UConn, & BC) rank behind the regular Big12 North schools (Mizzou, KU, Colorado), not to mention Nebraska, which is top 10 any way you measure brand (merchandise sales, athletic
revenue, Forbes brand rankings, TV ratings).
There’s a reason why the ACC has been reluctant to take the Big East schools, even though they’ve been available up there since forever.
I use to be a fan of the Northeastern strategy, but I was somewhat shocked at how poor the brands of the Big East schools are. Thus, I think you have to take Nebraska & Mizzou, then if no ND, decide whether you can still take NYC with 3 BE schools or maybe add Kansas/Colorado as well.
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Ratings for what? 2009 football? When you are on the SNY channel, what kind of ratings do you expect?
Regardless, if you think that taking two Big East teams is going to generate ratings, I think that is a flawed theory. If Syracuse-Rutgers does not generate interest, why would Syracuse-Iowa, UConn-Iowa, or Rutgers-Iowa?
Better off taking 3 Big 12 teams (Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri), than trying to get ratings by picking off one or two Big East teams.
I suspect that this is where the 5-team addition gathers steam. You need to bring in some rivalries to get the early momentum.
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Guess you changed your mind (you went from 4 Eatern schools and 1 Western to 2 Eastern and 3 Western. BTW, the ratings in question were for games that purportedly were broadcast nationally (on ABC, NBC, or an ESPN network).
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I don’t want to add 5 times unless one of them is Neb or ND….that’s too many mediocre football teams to add……
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Patrick – Completely Awesome analysis.
Frank – Superb follow-ups
Commentors – As Always, thought provoking without any BS you normally see on other blogs.
My Question is: When do we start selling this information to the Big 10 for doing all their research for them?
Seriously, and if I missed this, I apologize: How did the Domers fall off on the revenue so quickly? Are we missing something simple? If I read this correctly, not only does the Big 10 not need Notre Dame, they may not actually want them…Does that make sense to anyone else? Or like I say, are we completely missing something?
I agree with Patrick in that Notre Dame will probably not be part of this equation moving forward – I stated this yesterday when the article came out with respect to the discussion at the AAU. So, if it’s not The Domers, who is the 5th team? My guess is UConn or Syracuse, further decimating the BEast.
What is important is that Nebraska will create product that people will want to tune in for regardless of who they are playing. I think Pitt and Missouri are also “must see games”. We’ve had Rutgers in the Big House and frankly, it wasn’t all that exciting. Maybe a rivalry develops with certain schools? And I can’t wait to see Basketball, Baseball, and even Hockey improve.
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@MIRuss
If anything, Patrick’s analysis shows that the BigTen should drop the focus on ND and go after Texas. Pursue the strategy to get the dominos to fall in the Big12 first, then put the press on UT.
ND may shake out as a result of these moves, but it doesn’t matter in the end.
Hook’em Horns!
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This is the part that I don´t understand.
What is holding Texas back from the Big 10 or the Big 10 back from Texas?
Since any scenario involving Texas is the top priority, I think this needs to be the first issue resolved.
If the Big 10 raids the Big 12 North, where does that leave Texas? With the Big 12 crumbling, would they really choose the SEC or the Pac 10 over the Big 10 – even though the academics, the distance, and the money would all strongly favor the Big 10?
Again, Frank, as you said in regards to Notre Dame, how can any business exec turn down an offer for higher revenue, lower costs and lower risk?
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2 reasons I can think of:
1. They want to start the Longhorn Network.
2. They want to be top dog in their conference (or at least their division). They’d probably maximize their TV money by joining the Big10, but wouldn’t be able to bring any of their cousins along (except TAMU). Plus, in the Big10, all the other big dogs like OSU, PSU and Michigan (as well as TAMU) would get the same amount of conference money, and they wouldn’t be able to police TTech, OU, and OSU. I think the Pac10 is so desperate for TV money now that they’d be OK with unequal revenue sharing as well as Texas bringing along TAMU, TTech, OU, and OSU. That way, they’d still get the most revenue of the schools in their neighborhood, play many games close to home, and also be able to police their local rivals.
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Texas may want an unequal revenue sharing model.
The PAC 10 already has this with SC and UCLA getting a disproportionate share.
Its very possible that the Big 10 approached Texas, and was told that the conference had to be flexible on unequal revenue sharing, as well as taking a couple Texas schools, and the Big 10 balked.
Texas may feel its able to cut a better deal on its terms with the PAC 10 — which would need Texas very badly if it hopes to get close to the Big 10 revenues after this expansion.
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I think Texas would be OK with equal revenues as long as they were getting more than they got in the B12. I mean, is Texas, with all the money they pull in, really going to cost themselves $10 million over a principle that they should make $3 million more than Northwestern?
I think the Texas issue is more of a political and cultural one. They like that all the decisions about their fate are made in Dallas and not Chicago. They don’t want to explain to the legislature why TTU is getting screwed. And they don’t want to tell their alums that the nearest away game is Iowa City.
Right now, I think TPTB in Austin are pulling their hair out not knowing what to do. They don’t want to join the B10, but they’re worried they may be stuck in a worse situation if they don’t.
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MIRuss: Not quite sure what “Big House” you are referring to but since Greg Schiano took over for the 2001 season, Rutgers played Michigan State 2x and Illinois 2x (2003-2006). They were 2-2. Since 1980 they are 6-6 (MSU 3-2, Illinois 1-1, NW 2-0, PSU 0-3). Forgive me if you are referring to prior to 1980.
OT note: Rutgers basketball is awful, new coach search underway. I posted some short list candidates recently, according to NY Metro College hoops guru and NY sportswriter Dick “Hoops” Weiss he is hearing Jim O’Brien (OSU, BC) is now the favorite and the frontrunner.
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/college/2010/04/20/2010-04-20_rutgers_targets_obrien.html
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With all the Big 10 talk, Rutgers could certainly make a splash and make things more interesting if they went after Bobby Knight.
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His name is popping up and his son very recently said he wants to coach again. Even referred to RU. We’ll see.
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Football is pretty cyclical. One bad coach can cause a significant problem.
Pitt’s football records:
1990: 3-7-1
1991: 6-5
1992: 3-9
1993: 3-8
1994: 3-8
1995: 2-9
1996: 4-7
1997: 6-6
1998: 2-9
1999: 5-6
It took quite a while to right the ship… and then it only really solidified under Wanny in the past few years.
Syracuse went through a tough period in the 2000’s with the end of the Paul Pasqualoni period and the disaster that was/is Greg Robinson. Things are turning around. Still over scheduling.
Rutgers was absent from the football landscape until 2005. Schiano was given the time to turn it around and has done so. Still underscheduling.
I think these are three great additions to the Big 10, with Rutgers’ NJ talent pipeline outweighing their inferior basketball program.
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Those bad seasons make Pitt’s TV ratings more impressive. Note also, they only won the BE once since ’91 and that was a with a tiebreaker (and got pasted by Utah). Pitt has shown it has a resilient program. Syracuse could probably make the same case. Rutgers? We’ll see.
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Those tv ratings were for one year only, Pitt’s best year in the past 25+. I guarantee you that you wouldn’t see the same picture if the ratings for the past five years were averaged.
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According to my daughter who does this for a living, her college football ad sales are very much a now sell. She cannot use previous year’s trends very effectively, to the buyers it is who are they playing and how well are they doing this season. For 2009 Pitt was a hot sell with very good ratings. Previous year’s trends are supplemental info. Nice to know. Good leading indicator. If Pitt continues to do well (and they should) and play meaningful games in November, they will continue to draw good ratings. That is true for most of the expansion candidates as well. Win and they will watch.
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Rick… that’s the whole point. If Rutgers loses Schiano or UConn loses Edsall… and both teams plummet due to hires that do not pan out… what happens to your ratings then? If Pitt can go from Dan Marino to a decade of futility… how are Rutgers and UConn assured of perennial football success? And if both teams become Big 10 doormats, what have you added?
Again, this is probably what is causing the Big 10 Presidents pause. The Big East does not present any sure things individually.
And, if that’s the case, why bother at all?
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EZ: Schiano makes 2.0 million a year. Nice coin. If in the Big Ten, they would continue to pay him top dollar. I don’t see him leaving if they continue to win, he’s in a power conference, and Rutgers AD continues to pay him top market value with additional BT money. He loves it there and if he continues to be paid fair market price like his peers he will stay. Much less risk than Edsell. He will go somewhere unless UConn really steps up and pays big time. He is prime to move. He makes 1.45 million. Risk here. Will UConn pay him over 2 million with BT money, probably if he doesn’t leave before the Big Ten decides. We’ll see
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I can’t believe anyone leaves anywhere, but they seem to do so. Regardless, if the Miami Dolphins offer Schiano 5 years, $25M, are you telling me he says no to that?
If Paterno retires and they throw big money at Schiano or Edsall.. do either say no?
Meanwhile, Florida, Florida St. and Miami all have potential openings someday. If Schiano is still doing well, why not target him?
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So true EZ. The Terry Shea era wrecked the RU program in the mid to late 90’s. The Doug Graber era before that was average but the Shea era was God awful. Devastating. Wanny saved the Pitt program and hopefully Doug Marrone will at Syracuse as well. Rutgers has a chance to rebuild Basketball with the right new hire now. The search is on. Now Eddie Jordan’s name is moving up the short list. This is a critical hire. A real resurrection project for the right guy.
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MI RUSS..
I would argue that the least the Big 16 could do was to give the post here that came to fruition some perk for life. frank would be first in line, but i want some sort of dibs on future basketball (men’s & women’s) tickets..
*smile*
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Pingback: Frank the Tank - The Value of Expansion Candidates to the Big Ten Network
Big East loyalty clause to leave is 27 months so this and the end of year being 6/30/2010 might explain the acceleration of the B10 expansion talks. So we’re talking 2012-13 year for any Big East additions.
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I have not seen this posted yet. According to Dodd Texas is working on their own channel. I have only heard speculation that Texas wanted to, or could.
http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/story/13251288/texas-expansion-decision-will-set-off-big-domino-effect?tag=globalNav.collegefootball;cover
>>
The UT-centric channel would be available in-state to televise minor sports, campus activities, basketball and possibly some football games. IMG College, which oversees the school’s trademark licensing, marketing and multimedia rights, thought enough of the idea to enter into distribution negotiations with major cable carriers.
“We’re working on a channel, ‘network’ is not a good word,” Dodds said. “Texas ought to have our top games on a bigger entity [but] we need to keep some football and basketball and baseball and women’s basketball and have our own state-of-Texas deal.”
<<
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wow…welcome Nebraska….
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MIKE,
you made me think of the elephant in the room.. which schools are IMG schools?
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I know Nebraska is and Kansas maybe.
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One fact that was brought up in the latest Chicago Tribune article on expansion was very interesting – ND would supposedly save MILLIONS of dollars in travel costs by joining the Big Ten (which makes sense because so many Big Ten schools are within driving distance of South Bend and that’s where real cost savings are achieved).
So, let’s think about this for a second – ND would make substantially more TV revenue in the Big Ten AND cut down expenses for Olympics sports drastically, which means that the net gain for ND’s athletic department is incredible. This doesn’t even account for the fact that research funding, which is how universities really bring in money, would likely rise over time by ND’s inclusion in the Big Ten as a CIC member. Once again, the ND alums won’t care, but the administration is going to realize (if it hasn’t already) that it is truly a financial disadvantage for ND to be an independent from this point forward than the to join the Big Ten. In almost any line of business (and believe me, ND is BIG business), you’d be fired on the spot if you blindly turned down a virtually guaranteed simultaneous increase in revenue AND decrease in expenses AND decrease in risk in the future (since a 16-school Big Ten means that ND truly doesn’t have a conference “safety net” any longer). ND can talk about joining the ACC and Pac-10 in theory, yet those would both be situations where the Irish would take a pay cut AND increase expenses. The Big Ten really may have boxed ND in here.
Once again, I completely understand the emotional sentiment of ND alums (and I know a lot of them), but this is looking less like giving up few million dollars (which may be worth giving up as the “price” of independence) and more like giving up a net of tens of millions of dollars per year (which almost anyone would be foolish to turn down no matter what else is going on).
Here’s the article again if you haven’t seen it.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/college/ct-spt-0420-big-ten-chicago–20100419,0,3111131.story
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@FrankTheTank
One concern you hear from ND fans is that if they join the BigTen (or BigInteger), it will change the undergraduate experiece from something that is unique to something that is more like a big state school.
How would this happen? Did Northwestern lose their identity and get transformed into a copy of a state school? Is Evanston now equivalent to Champagne-Urbana? I don’t get how ND would be compelled to focus on graduate students at the expense of the undergrads.
PS – thank you for this blog. Very interesting and informative.
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Yes, that’s a pretty silly argument. Actually, the only argument that makes much sense, and it makes a LOT of sense, imo, is that ND would have less scheduling flexibility to play a national schedule. With 12 games, three would be against MSU, UM, Pur–no change. 4 others would be OOC-no change. However, that leaves 5 games to be played against Big 10ers that could be played against coast teams or TX teams…or even SEC teams.
“Twer me, I’d ensure ND that it will always also play PSU and Pitt each year…I think most Domers would be interested in those games…but that leaves 3 others against other Big 10 teams…
In any event, I am sure warming up to the Neb for ND swap….Neb. fans are like Iowa fans–very friendly, yet passionate. Think of how much less crap we have to listen to for the next 10 years…..
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Frank,
We’ve seen SO MANY logical arguments based on revenue impacts that I think we can all conclude – regardless of your bent – that Notre Dame joining the Big 10 is good for Notre Dame (and the Big 10).
What we haven’t evaluated, and someone needs to look at this, is the pure vitriol and hatred of the uneducated Domer fan and how they will reject the decision. And they will. Lord knows they will. They haven’t been following your blog…
If that’s the case, then Heads At Notre Dame must ROLL! Those heads would include the President (Jenkins) and the AD($warbuck$). And I’m not entirely sure either one of those guys is old enough at this point to commit political suicide. It doesn’t matter to these fans that in 10 or 15 years it will be the best decision ever made; on the contrary, they will probably be branded in Notre Dame’s history as “those that gave up our independence” and get a special seat right there along side Losingham, the Weasel (Weiss), and former AD Kevin White…..
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Not just “uneducated Domer fan[s]”. I’ve been following along, and I still think it’s a bad idea long-term for ND. I think ND will join for CIC and scheduling purposes, and BTN revenues will offset the major donor and fan revolt.
If ND goes to the Big 10 or ACC, it will be done with the permission of TPTB. Jenkins and Swarbrick will likely keep their jobs until the day ND needs a scapegoat…and that’ll be years out. Sure, the rank-and-file will considered them apostates who lost their faith in “the Spirit of Notre Dame” and despise them as traitors to the ideal and curse their names above all others. But that won’t matter to the ones calling the shots as long as the ND brand grows.
P.S. Weis isn’t disliked. We wish he did better, but we harbor no animosity and wish him well. It’s the folks who lack the love like Davie and Willingham who villify.
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NDRox:
Thank you for making my point. Weiss wasn’t hated? Seriously? Is that what you meant to type here, forever captured on the internet?
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MIRuss, I assume you mean Weis. He was not hated by the alums. I am sure that non-ND fans did not like him and came up with many brilliant criticisms about him (e.g., he is arrogant or he is fat). The alums simply wanted him to win more in the last three years (that is, they wanted him to take the squad to a BCS game every year).
He still has close ties to the school. When the ND girls BB team played in KC in March, he hosted the squad. CW worked very hard, turned recruiting around after TW, and was an alum. He simply didn’t win enough. Ineffective — not hated.
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Yeah, I stand by that.
WEIS WASN’T HATED BY THE ND FAITHFUL. More than anything he was a disappointment.
He wasn’t the answer for ND as a head coach. He had his chance and had to be let go for the good of the program. But it wasn’t personal, it was business. He’s a Domer, and he has shown he loves ND. He cannot be hated for failure. We reserve our hate for those like Davie and Willingham who had neither skill nor love and tried to blame ND for their personal failure.
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Kelly should do very well. I expect ND to really get better with him. They should be real good real soon. He is a very good coach.
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Okay, NDRox and Rick,
Explain this, if Charlie was so loved:
http://blogs.suntimes.com/sportsprose/2009/09/charlie_weis_billboard_suggest.html
Yeah, there’s a lot of love out in Domer land for Charlie.
I know several Domers – I’m talking Blue (or Green) and Gold Blood, dedicated basements, etc. Let’s just say any discussions did not have the words “Weis” and “Love” in the same sentence…
Sorry, Frank. I know that’s NOT what this site is for.
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toughlove
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Re ND’s decision
Frank, the decision makers at ND need to step up; if they pass on this opportunity for stability in conference membership, financial benefits, plus association with quality academic and research schools, they seriously could look back on a decision to say no as a major and historic mistake.
The only possible explanation might be they have spoken to the ACC and are confident the ACC has reserved a place for them in the future should they want to join that conference. And that regardless, they prefer the ACC schools to those of the Big 10.
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Except, other than for emotional value, there’s no reason to prefer joining the ACC to joining the Big10 . . .
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Frankly, if ND intentionally joins the ACC rather than the Big 10 I’d have to conclude that all Domers are a word that rhymes with wussies……seriously….
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Actually, the ACC does offer ND something the Big Ten doesn’t.
First, a better chance to dominate at football. Playing OSU, Michigan, Penn State, Nebraska, Wisconsin and Iowa is likely more daunting than playing Duke, Wake Forest, Clemson, Boston College, Virginia and Virginia Tech. FSU and Miami are the only football powers, and both programs have seen brighter days.
The second advantage of choosing the ACC is that Notre Dame can feel in control of making their own choice. I think ND resents the fact that they’re not really in control of their own football landscape any longer–it’s being dictated to them by a rapidly changing environment.
And I know that they can’t stomach the fact that the Big Ten, (which ND has always felt superior to in every possible way) is largely responsible for that changing environment and has already pulled ahead of Notre Dame and is about to step on the gas to leave them even further behind.
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OK, that’s another reason. Still, it’s rather shortsighted (IMHO). For better recruiting grounds and a chance at more conference titles in the short-run (as well as emotional value), they’d be joining what will definitely be the weakest and most unstable of the power conferences left. In the long-term, there may not be an ACC left, and then what does ND do? Would ND still be relevent enough for the Big20, Pac20, and SEC to care about it decades from now when they break off from the NCAA?
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No, but it’s the only non-BE BCS conference this side of the Mississippi with more than a token private football school. Heck, they’re the only BCS conference outside of the BXII that even have sectarian Football schools. That’s why some ND folks consider them as a better option in a worst case scenario situation than the Big Ten.
If the Power schools break off from the NCAA, I doubt they’ll bring any private schools with them. The money in that future appears to be with schools that have government subsidies in better populated states. Any way you wanna slice it, ND will probably be on the outside looking in regardless. I can’t see the CSC allowing ND to go down that path.
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Richard..
i can think of at least 3 that are not emotional..
1) public vs private
2) research vs education
3) predator vs prey
i can think of several more, but these are easy to see by all
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Ultimately, that’s all emotional, since all those distinctions do is create warm fuzzy feelings about “we’re special”. Now, TV money, travel costs, research funds, donations; that’s not emotional, that’s money.
Oh wait, recruiting grounds. I guess that’s another reason in favor of the ACC. Still ND would have to give up a lot financially and join a weaker conference (that’s more in danger of being raided by the SEC) for the emotional satisfaction and recruiting exposure (at least, before the SEC takes those away).
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Why do you think you have an insight into the culture at ND? Donations? You mistyped or you are so completely off base it reduces your overall credibility. In one generation ND has become a top 15 school in endowment per student. Why would ND risk a 97% alumni participation rate (behind Princeton and Yale) to gain 10m per year from extra tv revenues? You have never answered this question. The reason is: there is no answer that you can provide. It is not emotionalism — it is brand management.
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That’s the main financial reason for ND to remain independent. I’m sceptical that donations would be affected that much between whether ND goes to the Big10 or ACC, if they do decide to join a conference. Maybe I’m wrong. Ultimately, ND would still not maximize their finances by shunning the Big10 (in a perfect world for them, they’d be able to hang on to alumni donations while still reaping the financial gains from joining the Big10). Perhaps their alumni base will always keep them from ever reaching that maximum. That’s why I think it’s perfectly possible that ND may join the ACC. Long-term, I don’t think it would be the best move for them. We’ll see how it plays out.
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BTW, I don’t claim any insight in to ND’s culture (unlike you, who seems to think you know how the Big10 works even though you tend to be way off base); I am pointing out that the alumni base seems to be basing their viewpoints mostly on emotional reasons (only argument that isn’t emotionally-based is that the ACC has more fertile football recruiting grounds). I don’t deny that these emotions have dollar values attached to them, since alums can choose whether to donate or not, but ultimately, they’re still emotions-based. Liking the ACC because it gives you a warm fuzzy feeling to be associated with Wake Forest and BC (and Clemson & NCSU) is emotions-based reasoning. Liking the Big10 because your school would get more money from the conference isn’t emotions-based reasoning.
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I think the 16 team expansion is going to happen. I think we get Texas to come by threatening to take Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska. If we can get Texas then I think we can get Notre Dame to follow. I think this breakdown would be the best for a future 16 team conference. With this breakdown you would leave most of the rivalries intact. (Mich/Ohio State, Texas/A&M, Iowa/Wisc) and you would renew the PSU/Pitt and create new ones in (Iowa/Nebraska, Wisc/Nebraska).
East
Penn State
Pitt
Michigan
Michigan State
Ohio State
Northwestern
Purdue
Notre Dame
West
Texas
Tex A&M
Nebraska
Iowa
Minnesota
Wisconsin
Indiana
Illinois
East
Top Tier
Penn State
Michigan
Ohio State
Middle Tier
Pitt
Michigan State
Bottom Tier
Purdue
Northwestern
Indiana
West
Top Tier
Texas
Nebraska
Notre Dame
Middle Tier
Iowa
Wisconsin
Bottom Tier
Minnesota
Illinois
Texas A&M
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Leave it to a Nitt to put Nebraska and Notre Dame in the “Top Tier” and intentially snub the one school that’s owned his alma mater 8 of the last 10 years. I’ll chalk it up to the bitternes of the past two years.
Iowa is without a doubt a TOP TIER player in that divisional alignment Kevin. :p
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I’ll give Nitt the benefit of the doubt and assume he is going by a historic view of tier strength, since we know ND is currently bottom tier!
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Putting aTm in the bottom tier is a bit of a stretch. Historically, it is a great program. It wasn’t too long ago that they dominated the Texas rivalry and were a national powerhouse.
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Any “analysis” that purports to quantitatively value Rutgers, Maryland, and BC football over ND is immediately discreditable. Period.
ND just slipped to second place behind Texas in the Forbes football franchise ranking in the last year or two, so there’s a serious, serious flaw in the purported “analysis” by someone who concededly doesn’t have all the figures and is doing a whole lot of extrapolating. This isn’t to knock “Patrick,” but let’s apply some common sense here, folks.
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@NDx2
If you have an analysis which would show that ND would bring in more revenue to the BigTen than Rutgers, Maryland, Boston College, please share it.
Keep in mind that Patrick’s work is an analysis of how valuable ND is to the BigTen, and the BigTen Network. I’m sure that by itself ND is worth more than those other programs, but that is not relevant to this discussion.
Patrick’s analysis shows that Big Ten expansion won’t necessarily be negatively affected on what ND decides to do. However ND probably will be negatively impacted if the BigTen expands without them.
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@ NDXx2
The Sniff Test was difficult for me as well as I have seen so much on the relative value of Notre Dame. However, I will give Patrick this: Notre Dame is already in the footprint and adding it to what is already BTN households doesn’t have as big of an impact as adding new areas and new footprints, so that part is logical.
What can’t be gauged, and Patrick admits this, is what market share could be increased at a national level by adding Notre Dame? There’s a number there that he’s missing…and I’m not sure how you value it.
Patrick, do you add the “NY Market” and give the Domers a litte extra to keep them ahead of the pack?
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Unless you can show Notre Dame captures the NY market, you can’t just fudge your numbers so your favorites come out on top.
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Scott,
I wasn’t suggesting fudging it. I have seen reported elsewhere that some of NBC’s biggest numbers from Domer Games come from the NY market – that’s all.
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IIRC, the Forbes list factors in a whole range of revenue sources, including donations and university-centric ad money. This revenue is not the type that would be shared within a conference. Patrick was– correct me if I’m wrong– focusing purely on television revenue, in terms of BTN subscribers and ad revenue. I too am surprised to see ND so low on his list, but it is certainly a more accurate portrayal of the situation than is the Forbes list.
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@NDx2: Remember, however, that we aren’t talking about the overall worth of the brand. This is in regards to value for BTN, and I think you can make a case that says ND is undervalued in these evaluations. But, let’s also be honest and not overvalue ND’s ratings push, because this is the only team in America where we can look at specific ratings (NBC) to see how they perform. And the results are sometimes good and sometimes not so good, as has been talked about in this thread and previous threads.
Moreover, Forbes’ list I assume would be overall worth of the athletic program, including things like sponsorships, trademarking, apparel sales, etc. These don’t affect these numbers because the Big Ten isn’t sharing that pot. Indiana doesn’t see a nickle from any Ohio State gear sold for example. My understanding is that revenue is shared only from bowls, television stuff, and sponsorships that are conference-wide.
So ND being in the Big Ten footprint can be considered somewhat of a negative, but that’s offset by the fact that it’s a strong brand (which would for sure raise advertising revenue despite not necessarily adding any new markets). Conversely, Rutgers is in a large, “new” market which (ideally) offsets the fact that they’re mostly a turd burger athletically speaking. Patrick’s analysis probably isn’t perfect — he has stated so himself. But I wouldn’t just flippantly disregard it because your favorite team didn’t rank as high as you’d think/prefer.
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My analysis was purely from a television standpoint, and there are issues with estimating the revenue for Notre Dame when they do not bring any additional TV sets. But, as I mentioned, I am being way conservative and I have probably seriously underestimated the impact of additional games on the BTN. The BTN doesn’t care about how great you think you are, or how special you seem to believe your football team is. They care about numbers and dollars. ND doesn’t add new television markets, they don’t add anything on the research side, their tv ratings are lower than Nebraska or Pitt, and they are not AAU members. What “NDx2” does seem to bring is an obnoxius and entitled attitude which seems outdated and myopic. They don’t seem to have the same educational philosophy as the rest of the Big 10, and I could see that killing ND more than any tv analysis.
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You will never convince a Notre Dame alum that their school isn’t the best, that their football team isn’t the best, that they’re not the most valuable, most revered and most desirable program in the land, and that they always will be. If they’re not so good at something (research level, graduate studies, basketball, etc.), it wasn’t important anyway.
Notre Dame is a religious school, and it appears that domers have applied a similar faith in the superiority of their school. No statistics or logical argument will ever change that faith.
As Mark Twain once wrote, “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.”
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Pingback: A blog on why 16 teams for Big 10 makes sense - HawkeyeNation Forum
From the NY Times article:
The best chance for the Big East to survive, he said, would be if the Big Ten, with 11 teams, adds only Notre Dame.
Two questions.
1) Would the B10 be satiated by just adding ND at this point? Or does 3 or 5 teams pretty much have to happen?
2) Any chance other conferences (Big 12 and Big East specifically) attempt to lobby/blackball/plead with ND to join the Big 10 to attempt to preserve some semblance of the status quo?
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I can’t see the Big East threatening Notre Dame since half of the conference is made up of Catholic schools.
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1. If the big revenue generator is advertising, them you want as many conference games as possible (so long as the new schools are at least passable). The Big10 will go to 16 with or without ND.
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Interesting question…if only ND were invited the Big 10 would have pissed off a LOT of people…that can’t be good….
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Frank and Patrick: Please explain why Texas (and possibly TAM) were NOT in your projections for the five schools to join???
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@Tom Smith: A lot of people have speculated why. They’re the awesome girl you want that unfortunately lives across the country. Lots of reasons, but I think the main one is that they’re big enough and far enough away that their interest is lukewarm at best.
Personally, I think if you’re going to 16 teams, you need to pick an expansion direction and go that way. If you want Texas, expanding east isn’t in the best interests of the conference because you become spread too thin. It’s going to be hard enough to manage 16 teams and form cohesion as is. Adding schools that far away, again IMO, is mercenary. You don’t want schools to feel mercenary, even if they are, because a mercenary ultimately has zero loyalty. While you can’t put a price on it, I do think the Big Ten is strong precisely because it’s largely been a loyal, cohesive conference. Ultimately the same reason I never gave much thought when people joked about USC or Miami or any other school some people mentioned between scoffs.
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Tom,
I honestly think if Texas & Texas A&M want in, it is a done deal. They would be the best financial choices…. no doubt. I think that Texas has other plans, they are fully aware of what is happening and are dreaming of something different long term. My hunch is they merge with the Pac 10 and create their own network. Ground floor development, work the process in their favor. That’s why I didn’t include Texas in my prediction….. I think they have other plans.
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I don’t think any conference is going to be raided of more than two teams. Delany has said on multiple occasions that the Big 10 will not be the death blow to any conference.
With this in mind, a likely five could be Rutgers and Syracuse/Pitt, Nebraska and Missouri/Kansas, and Maryland. No conference gets hammered, although Big East is bleeding profusely.
The exception to the rule may be if Texas/A&M are in the picture then the Big 12 could take three hits (w/Nebraska). This might eliminate Maryland and save any hard feelings with the ACC, whom Delany has sentimental ties to UNC.
I was really surprised the numbers showing how important ad revenues really are. This obviously makes TV rating a key factor. I have always thought Nebraska was a prime candidate but never thought Pitt was viable until reading this article.
The next sixty days should be extremely intriguing for all college sports fans.
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Where did Delany say that?
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I recall this from his multiple appearances on ESPN a month or so ago.
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@Jeff Quimby: I thought Delany said it wasn’t the Big Ten’s “intention”, not necessarily that they would actively try not to do it. There’s an important distinction I suppose.
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you guys need to look at what is said.. and what it can imply..
delaney takes no more than two from ANY conference.. easy enough.. but it implies that no one else will.. say..
big 10 gets missouri and nebraska!! that means the big 12 is now ten.. which means the pac ten can now take 4 -6 more teams.. yes the big ten only took two, but by taking two it began the big 12 implosion..
big 10 gets maryland and UVA!! same thing, they only took two.. but now the ACC is crippled.. so the SEC intervenes and picks up 4 more.. and the implosion begins..
big 10 gets Uconn / Rutgers.. and the impolsion begins..
the point being .. the big 10 only took a school or two, but forced implosions and forced the little 3 (ACC,B 12, and BE) to seek shelter..
if you are FSU, UNC, Clemson, and NC State or Ga Tech.. you can find a nice warm (and VERY profitable) home in the SEC, where you can align with the predators, rather than trying to limp along as prey.
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Don’t think the ACC is going to be picked on this round. It’ll be extremely hard for Maryland and Virginia to separate from the NC schools. The Big10 will start going after ACC schools only if the SEC announces it’s looking to expand as well.
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I am one of the Big Ten fans who are really fascinated about the expansion talks and I will like to throw in my two cents here. First and foremost I like that the discussions on this blog are civilized and you can actually learn a lot of inside stuff from fans of other schools. A lot of really good points and a lot of great ideas had been brought up here which makes this blog one of the best when it comes to Big Ten expansions talk. Now, please allow me to state my thoughts on this.
The athletics world is changing and is changing fast. I believe that ten years from now the landscape of college sports will be totally different. Even if Big Ten adds only one team for now, those new financial possibilities that we as outsiders have identified, and I believe they are many more that we cannot see at this time, in the future will be too big to ignore and more and more university presidents will come along (even ND’s). So why wait until the last minute when you can join now and actually have a say in the matter?
When we are talking about the candidates for expansion, I think we are forgetting something. The first negotiations have been taken place inside of Big Ten and athletics (football + basketball), academics, TV and research people were represented, which makes me believe some kind of give and take to satisfy everyone was proposed. You can’t find 5 schools that will be perfect candidates like Texas (which I don’t think is coming) and you also can’t just add the top 5 athletic or top 5 revenue schools. You have to find some kind of balance to make everybody happy. This will be like a family with four kids buying Christmas presents just for two of them. Remember CIC is a big player at that table and is coming home empty in most scenarios. This is way I think Pitt has a very good chance of getting an invite.
Now, this is who I think the candidates will be:
1. Nebraska (football, TV)
2. Notre Dame (football, TV, academics)
3. Syracuse (TV, basketball)
4. Rutgers (TV)
5. Pitt (research, academics, basketball)
I think in this case everybody is getting at least one present. A lot of people were talking about how senators from new states added will help getting more research money for CIC, now I ask you this: In that case, why Syracuse or Rutgers or any NE universities in general don’t have more research money? Maybe because of the Ivy League universities! That’s possible. Anyway, my point here is chasing senators is not a good idea, after all they are politicians.
A lot of people are having different opinions on how the scheduling should be, so I try one scenario myself. Here it is (for football only):
1. Create 4 pods (2 fixed and 2 rotating). The 2 fixed pods will never be in the some division nor the 2 rotating ones.
Fixed Pod A – OSU, MI, MSU, ND
Fixed Pod B – WISC, IOWA, NEB, MINN
Rotating Pod C – PSU, RUTG, SYR, PITT
Rotating Pod D – PUR, IND, ILL, NW
2. You use the fixed pods as bases for your divisions to keep them balanced and rotate the other two pods.
3. Go to 9 conference games. Play 3 games inside your pod + 6 more games against the other 12 teams. This means you play everybody outside your pod every other year.
4. You play everybody inside your division + 2 from the opposite pod (Fixed Pod A – Fixed Pod B) (Rotating Pod C – Rotating Pod D)
5. One problem with the 9 conference games is that you play a 5-4 or 4-5 schedule (home-away). You can fix that by having one division playing 5 home games and the other one just 4. This will make it fair inside the divisions. To keep thinks easier you can rotate after two years so the second year the division that had 5 home games will have 4 now. That way you basically have a home and away series every 4 years with the teams outside your pod.
6. This scenario keeps most rivalries intact inside the pods, creates new ones and guaranties balances divisions.
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I think most Big10 people would prefer Mizzou to Syracuse:
1. More research
2. Better football
3. Better brand/Better TV money (unless Syracuse helps in delivering NYC, but their football TV ratings have been poor).
What’s clear is that the Big10 can’t take all 4 of Syracuse/Pitt/ND/Mizzou. Even if ND backs out, they’d choose 2 from SU/Pitt/KU.
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The is no debate with #1 where Syracuse gets crushed. But #2 and #3 I think you are completely wrong.
Syracuse the last 5 years has had its worst stretch ever. Mizzou its best since the 60s. Do you think that Syracuse is totally done? The current 5 years is more important that the history of the program?
Upstate NY has about 6 million people. Syracuse would carry that. Mizzou has about 6 million people but has little influence over Kansas City. On top of that Syracuse has a better national brand.
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Demographics aren’t helping ‘Cuse. Granted, Missouri isn’t exactly a growing region either, but upstate NY is now a rather poor football recruiting ground. I’m not sure they’ll ever recover their past football glories. In fact, I’d say they have a better chance of going the ruote of their fellow private Northeastern schools in the Ivy League and the military academies . . .
Firing Pasqualoni has got to be one of the dumbest decisions I’ve seen in college sports in my lifetime, and I thought so at the time as well (same as firing Solich, but Nebraska at least has their insanely fervent fanbase to keep them relevent).
Oh, and as for brand, Mizzou moves more merchandise these days than Syracuse. I was shocked as well.
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As one of the few Syracuse fans who loudly and consistently objected to the idea of firing Pasqualoni, I would find it quite ironic if the Big 10 took Pitt and Rutgers over Syracuse based on the relative strengths of their football programs. Pasqualoni dominated those two schools over his career, and beat them both in his last season as coach.
That said, I think it would be a mistake to assume that Syracuse football is never going to regain its footing as a solid but not great program. Over the 20-year period ending with the firing of Pasqualoni in 2004, Syracuse had the 18th best winning percentage in college football, ahead of Texas, Alabama and USC. Fortunes do change in this sport.
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Agree.
Syracuse has played a lot of Big 10 schools recently, and this idea they are out of their league geographically is crazy.
Big East teams already play in Tampa (USF), Milwaukee (Marquette) and Cincinnati (UC), so I don’t see trips to Iowa, Minnesota or Wisconsin as some ridiculous development.
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I like it. The fixed pods are the stronger in fb, the rotating are stronger in bb (overall-I don’t mean a particular school as there are some exceptions). This is good because it helps maintain balance. I even thought rule #4 would imbalance it at first glance, but on further examination, it works perfectly.
In football, each “fixed” school has five “fixed/tougher” members, and four “rotating/weaker;” and each “rotator” has five “rotating/weaker” members, and four “fixed/tougher” Except that each rotating pod has at least one school that is generally the equal or better of the fixed in any given year (i.e. PSU for C and rotating between Purdue, Ill, NW recently for D), which gives the rotator anther “tough.”
Similarly for bball, where the relationship is reversed.
Again, I don’t mean to imply that, say that individually this “tougher/weaker” relationship is accurate, but overall, they imply that relationship.
Beyond that, I can’t see a major rivalry split up (except maybe the little brown jug). Nice Work!
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To everyone using DC/Northern Virginia for reasoning to include Maryland, consider that many local TV providers (i.e. Comcast, Verizon) include the Big Ten Network as, at the least, an optional channel. So many homes in the area are already part of the “AVAILABLE” number. The value of Maryland should be not the addition to “AVAILABLE” but to actual subscribers.
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Laughable link of the day:
http://www.myfoxhouston.com/dpp/sports/local/100419-report-says-university-of-houston-a-viable-bcs-candidate
Super secret ‘college football sources’ we’ll call U and H reveal that an unrevealed entity, we’ll call Cougar, paid for a study that shows UHou would make a great mail order bride. Especially if glorious conference of BCS expands.
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Someone should tell him April 1 has passed. I mean, Hawaii?!?
Still, I wonder if UT would decide to take UH along instead of Baylor to merge with the Pac10. Say the Big10 takes Mizzou, KU, and Nebraska. OU and OSU bolt to the SEC. Texas would have a hard time scrouging up 6 teams to join the Pac10 with. BYU and/or Utah would be available, but UT may prefer more Texas teams. Think an Eastern division of the Pac16 that includes 5 Texas schools (UT, TAMU, TTU, Baylor,UH) Colorado + the 2 Arizona schools would fly?
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Yes, I could see TX’s first offer including TX, TT, OU, Baylor, aTm, and UHou, with perhaps Baylor being their first drop, then UHou. But UHou is still Tier Four on USNews’ rankings, so perhaps even too much for a desperate P10 to accept. OTOH, UHou is actually ahead of TT in research funding (partly because TT spun off its med side a few years ago) and has the same goal of reaching Tier One by 2015. UH is well behind TT in sports attendance, TV draw, and merchandising. They may need a perfect storm to end up with TX, though their prospects for ending up in a BCS conference are better. A few months ago UH was being discussed for MWC expansion. Probably not until next year, so as not to risk the MWC’s AQ bid if UH came in and had a down year before the evaluation period was through.
I could see Utah, CO, TT, TX, aTm, and UH if OU and/or KS weren’t available. Could also see TT, TX, aTm, and UH to the SEC. That could make for a relatively low revenue P16 (if all the other majors go to 16 or 20) alliance of the P10 + Utah, CO, OU, OSU, KS (I can’t see them making the cut for the B16) and ISU, no equal revenue sharing in that combo!
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U Houston + TCU would make a good combo for the Big 12 if the 2 big Texas schools leave. They might be a decent combo for the Big East right now.
If a Pac 16 is formed with Texas involved, I think 5 Texas schools would be too much, and 3 (UT, A&M, & Tech) work just fine. If a 4th school is desired, either Houston or Rice would likely be the candidate. Houston may be more politically advantageous, as it is the other big state school. Rice would bring academic prestige, and it has been playing Texas regularly (albeit in a contract that favors UT). Rice could be a compromise candidate that Stanford and Texas could agree on.
Other schools outside of the current Big 12 that might be considered for a Pac 16 would include Utah and New Mexico. They bring decent academics and close most of the geographic gaps in the conference. They don’t bring huge populations, though, so they’d be the last ones chosen.
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Remember that, when the SWC broke apart, not even the expansionist WAC wanted Houston. SMU, TCU and Rice were all acceptable, but not “Cougar High,” as UH is affectionately referred to in Texas.
When UH made the Cotton Bowl for the last time in the mid-1980s, the president of the Cotton Bowl got into a bit of hot water for saying that all of the 7-11s of Dallas would be thrilled at the arrival of tens upon tens of UH fans.
And the idea that Texas would be the driving force behind pushing UH into a BCS conference is pretty laughable, given the grudge presumably still felt after the last time Texas visited UH, and the temporary bleachers built to hold Texas fans were mysteriously deemed “structurally unsound” two days before the game, preventing most Texas fans traveling to Houston from being able to attend the game. UH still hasn’t popped back up on Texas’ schedule since, despite a desire to play regularly in the city of Houston. Rice serves that purpose well enough.
So, no, do not take any reports of UH being a viable, Texas-backed candidate seriously.
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@Frank – You’re famous. You made the Daily Herald (blog)
http://blogs.dailyherald.com/node/3857
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FRANK:
I am still not sold on ND to the Big 16
My 5 are Nebraska, Missouri, Uconn, Rutgers, and Maryland..
that said.. in most of my previous post I have argued to look at the big picture, and not with a Big 10 bias.. living at the center of 4 different conferences keeps me more fluid..
I still can not remember reading on post on this series of blogs on the composition of the boards of the Big 10 (vis a vi) their composite breakdown based on faith (one MAIN reason I have given, as why ND will not join.. my argument is that LIKE follows LIKE going forward (as Northwestern, Vandy, and Stanford would not fit their conferences today). with this in mind can you or someone address board composition of each Big 10 school?
I have met and heard Bobby Knight many times.. and he has made many references to being a Methodist. I am struck by the fact that while we now know the faith of the board of ND, but not of the current Big 10 schools as a whole.. If i have missed this in a previous post, please link me back. If not this should be discussed if the folks in the Big 10 feel that ND will join (at this point I am still 100% unconvinced they will). My base argument has been like follows like..
such as..
PUBLIC vs PRIVATE
CHURCH vs STATE
RESEARCH vs EDUCATION
CITY/STATE vs COLLECTIVE
OLD vs NEW
PREDATOR vs PREY
using these metrics.. plus the revenue.. is why I have the five listed about as the new BIG 16. and why ND and BC are NO, and Syracuse is on the fence..
MY POINT IS.. can we get a faith background for the boards and presidents of the BIG 10 schools?
thanks..
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I don’t think the religious backgrounds of the boards and presidents matter; they head large, secular universities (even if Northwestern was founded by Methodists and is still affiliated with Garrett-Evangelical, they’ve been non-sectarian since the beginning). _Maybe_ if there are a preponderance of Catholics, they may feel some sentimental attachment to ND, and choose them over KU or SU if the money’s the same, but otherwise, I don’t think religion will factor in the decision-making.
BTW, it seems that the Big10 doesn’t want to antagonize the ACC, and UConn is both small and non-AAU, so if no ND and SU isn’t up to snuff, KU and Pitt are likely in.
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If no ND, maybe Neb, Mo, RU in and final 2 out of Syr/U Conn/KU. This is how the final 3 stack up:
Syr:
#58 US News aca. rating
$25M fed research $s,AAU
private
19000+ enrolled
#63 2009 Director’s Cup
KU:
#96 US News
$74M fed Res. $,AAU
public
29000 enrolled
#72 DC
U Conn:
#66
$67M, not AAU
public
24000
#52
I would stop at 3. If pressed, I’d take KU and U Conn as the last 2.
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Don’t forget Pitt. Personally, I’d consider Colorado as well.
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yikes, I did forget pitt….so it might be 2 out of these 4: Pitt;Syr; U Conn, KU Of those 4 I’d take Pitt and be indifferent as to U Conn or KU.
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richard,
it may not matter to you.. but it may matter to the ND board / president / donors / alumni
I argued pitt early on and kept getting shot down, based on overlapping markets. if overlapping markets matter, then you take uconn instead. Frank actually got me off Pitt and on Uconn / Maryland in the expanded footprint argument.
wether the Big 10 wants to antagonize the ACC , they will by going to 16 (as it forces the hand of the Pac 10 and SEC). Going forward the ACC knows that NO combination they can set up will put them in the BIG 3 (B 16, P 16, and SEC 16). If arkstfan is correct the BIG 3 can leave the NCAA/BCS and have 60 – 80 % of the USA media footprint and form their own “cartel” – a BIG 48 would allow the BIG 3 to control post season bowls with utter DOMINANCE from a revenue standpoint. The small 3 (B 12, ACC, BE) will become smaller and insignificant. if what I am reading from arkstfan and patrick is correct.. the little 3 will be more like the wac, mac, etc of today.. If you feel I am wrong show me any combination of “scraps” not in the BIG 3 will be able to bring enough added value to be able to sit at the table..
the only way this does not happen is if the Big 10 adds only one school and it is a Big East team. As the majority of these posts seem to argue more than 1 team added. the genie is out of the bottle, and the Big 10 will be the instigator for better or worse. no matter where this all falls out, once the big 10 goes past 12, they will be the “evil” empire.
From a personal standpoint, I think the Big 10 to 16, without having to take “pairs” is a cool move. It shows “huge” stones, but that being said.. to think everybody else is just going to sit around an do nothing is naive at best. Maybe I am wrong, but I am willing to bet my bottom dollar that I am not. Things change to account for changing demographics (see also the fall of the Harvard and Yale as football titans). My argument from day one has been a dynamic model vs a static one. if B 10 goes to 16, it will force the hand of the other 2 possible “mega” conferences (and why i have argued the texas twins will call the PAC 16 their new home).
As an individual I would not like to see this happen, I am pointing out that an action that shifts the landscapes will be met by other “predators” not to fall behind in the food chain. It is why I feel that what we as individuals want is not what we will get, but by opening up pandoras box we are forcing actions.
case in point is a SEC / ACC merger of sorts. While folks have said it would not happen because of academics, I would argue that BIG ACC STATE schools to the SEC is quite possible (as the academics in the SEC EAST are Vandy, Florida, and UGA – with UK gaining ground rapidly). Am I in favor of this.. NO.. but I can see it being a very real possibility.. (it would also allow Maryland to go to the BIG 10 – which I would favor).
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Big10/16/20 and the SEC could very well split up the ACC between them. Then they and the Pac/Western 16/18/20 could split away from the NCAA and have their own basketball and football championships.
Big20 champ still meets Pac20 champ inthe Rose Bowl. SEC champ meets the second-best of the 3 conferences (or, if they throw the rest of the NCAA a bone, the NCAA championship winner). Plus-one to settle it all.
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richard,
i think arkstfan is correct.. 16 + 16 + 16 as going to 20 only weakens the value. if 48 schools can dominate 80% of the market EVERYTHING else becomes scraps..
so Big 16 meets Pac 16 in rose bowl
and SEC 16 meets “best of rest” in sugar
winners meet each other for NC!!
but the real winners are the BIG 3 because they could “force” 3 + teams into remaining bowls as a “cartel” that no combination the “scraps” could muster to oppose them..
in the Mu Ha Ha world delaney wins the battle, but loses the war! as in trying to dominate, he forces a draw between the big 3. as stated before the big winner out of all this will be the media companies and their shareholders….
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Eh, I think the Big10(/16/20) would be happy in a Big 3 world, since each conference would dominate their geographic area, with no room to expand.
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richard..
ie.. that was arkstfan point ..
BIG 16 + SEC 16 + PAC 16 covers the east / midwest upper + east / south + lower midwest / west respectively..
the point was once each conference hit 16, there would be no need to go to 18 or 20, as the incremental value would go down. the rest of the country would have to fight for the “scraps”.
sorry, if i did not make that clearer..
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@duffman:
“If you feel I am wrong show me any combination of “scraps” not in the BIG 3 will be able to bring enough added value to be able to sit at the table”
Sure.
Assume the Big 10 takes two of the following four teams: RU, Pitt, UConn, SU.
ACC gets the other two and WVU and either Louisville or Cincy. All three of those schools have been in the BCS over the past four years.
The pair of schools from the WVU/UL/UC trio might be seen as academic drags, but if it’s conference survival we’re talking about, standards can be lowered.
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Hop Horn,
the BIG 3 means BIG 16, PAC 16, and SEC 16.. which means 4 – 6 of the current BIG PUBLIC ACC schools wind up in the BIG 16 or SEC 16 (an ACC that would no longer contain Maryland, UVA, UNC, Clemson, Ga Tech, and FSU).
I pegged a Big East / Catholic conference and a ACC / Private conference, but it would not include at least 8 BIG schools that are in the BE and ACC now. I have drafted on legal pads how the BIG 3 + the scraps based on arkstfans premise, and it really becomes the “haves” and the “have nots”. WVU = 60,000 + UL = 56,000 + UC = 35,000 stadiums (consider the size of Big 10 and SEC stadiums and you begin to see what I mean). Clemson has 82,000 seats and FSU has 84,000 – if they jump to an expanded SEC, you can see how quickly this creates wider gulfs. If the “re formed” ACC “averages” 45,000 seats and the SEC “averages” 90,000 you can see how big the gulf becomes.
In my notes a “private” conference would include Syracuse, Miami, Duke, Wake.. etc.. but it would not have the brute force a Trio of 16 team STATE school conferences (BIG 16, PAC 16, and SEC 16) would in terms of TV contracts.
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@duffman
The B10 are pointedly secular schools. Catholics on the boards don’t matter to the Alums and I doubt they would to TPTB. Mostly because they didn’t in 1999 or 2003 and they don’t seem to affect life in the B10.
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People keep throwing around 16 and 20 team super conferences as though they “have” to happen. Fact is they haven’t worked for quite some time and the barriers to their “being born” are quite significant.
You really see the SEC adding 4-8 members to split the huge ABC/ESPN contract they just signed (and probably get much resistance to changing, especially in this economic climate), diluting the payout per school? Sure adding Texas/TAMU to the Pac10 and filling in some extras will bump up the total Pac10 contract, but if previous history is anything its going to drop the per school payout, and how does that help the conference (there’s a reason why Texas insists on un-equal revenue sharing with schools it deems “inferior” to its market draw)? Even if the ACC adds all of Pitt/Cuse/UConn/Rutgers what’s that “really” going to do for their negotitaions on the upcoming contract (I’d probably say it’ll have about as much impact as its had for the BigEast).
As Frank/Patrick have stated so many times on this blog the only way a “Super Conference” works is with a dedicated television channel where it can showcase (and collect the ad revenue/cable carry rates from) live sports events that the ABC/ESPNs of the world are simply not interested in airing (tier 2/3/4 football/bball games, hockey, lacrosse, soccer, volleyball, wrestling, etc). Its for this reason a smaller private school in a secondary market (Syracuse) can actually provide tens of millions of dollars to a conference via a dedicated conference channel while it would draw nary a glance from the big networks.
Facts are with the way the economy is right now I only see two possible conference television channels being able to be started (SEC & a PAC10/Big12 merger) and both would have serious challenges to raising the money (folks just aren’t in the risk taking mood these days). Even when they could (and I’m sure they could eventually), I’m not expecting them to get up and running for years (closer maybe to 2020?). By that time the Big10 will have already expanded to 16, raked in the cash, and maybe even starts looking for a second round of expansion (and why would a school want to join a start up television channel when they could potentially join one that’s been profitable for a decade by that point?).
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Well yeah, these 16/20 team superconferences are likely decades down the road. We’re just trying to speculate what the final endgame would look like.
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Fair enough. Though there is another thing I just thought of…would it actually be worth it?
I mean don’t get me wrong, I’m sure it’ll be profitable at some point to some extent, but as we’ve seen tv channel profitability comes down to advertising. Advertising comes down to tv sets and what you put on them.
Now ABC/ESPN is going to take the “marquee games” so that means (by definition) you’re going to have “secondary events” that are going to have limited to no national appeal. If that’s the case, your conference channel is going to draw on the aforementioned advertising from the local demographics.
But here’s the thing that Patrick could perhaps shed some more light on, but I think I’m on fairly solid ground on…if there’s an “average” program that only reaches a limited number of sets and an average program that reaches a large number of sets who gets more $$$/ad? I’d bank on the larger market (duh).
The reason why this application of “no duh” is important is any additions to the SEC/Big12 are likely to be average programs in smaller markets. Maybe the SEC picks up WVU (which I’d actually argue isn’t average), but its value to a conference outside of its marquee games is marginal due to its small home footprint and likely alumni base (which probably largely reside in Big10/ACC states anyway). I guess I’m saying in a very long winded way, while another conference(s) may very well start their own channels, their own demographics, and those of the schools likely to join, are such that I can’t imagine them having the same “gold mine” that the Big10 has.
I guess yet another reason why the Big10 is most likely to push eastward and ensure it encompasses the largest population center in the US…
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PSU guy..
I do not think we are looking at 20 team conferences, I do think we are looking at 16. as it has been pointed out, you have 3 16 team “footprint” conferences” that can reform their own NCAA / BCS. Once you have gotten to 16, there is very little reason to go to 18 or 20..
for some of these reasons….
a) 2×2 = 4, 2×4 = 8, 2×8 = 16.. so the next progression would be 24 ( a hard thing to accomplish)
b) 16 + 16 + 16 = 48, which translates to the BIG 3 (B16,P16,S16).. after 48 you are dealing with the laws of diminishing returns.. after you get past the perennial top 10 (ohio state, michigan, usc, texas, oklahoma, nebraska, alabama, and a few other teams) plus value added teams in their respective conferences. You have probably 80% of TV football demand.
c) small markets (see WVU) and small undergrads (see Wake Forrest) do not translate to big $$ via fan demand.
d) delaney wants to go out with a bang, so adding 1 school just gets him to where the BIG 12 and SEC are now. He seems to want his place in history, so 16 gets him there (if anybody thinks I am reading delaney incorrectly please tell me).
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PSUGuy:
The Big12 won’t be able to add anything worthwhile; most likely, the most powerful schools (that aren’t taken by the Big10) merge with the Pac10. As for the SEC, they don’t have to settle for small markets. Virginia’s not small. NC isn’t small. South Florida (assuming it doesn’t get flooded) isn’t small either. There’s plenty of virgin ACC territory for the SEC to encroach upon.
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richard,
in a flooding of south florida, all the more reason to avoid miami and USF.. and go for FSU!!
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duff…don’t get me wrong, I don’t think we’re going to see 20 team conferences either (though I do admit to “evil genius” thoughts of inviting Cuse, UConn, Rutgers, Pitt, MD, Mizz, Nebraska, Texas & TAMU and locking up the US from New England down through the mid-west). However, the point brought up by Frank/Patrick is that so long as a conference has its own television channel, the old adage about “conferences with too many members reach a point of diminishing marginal returns” no longer holds true. Fact is when the only person buying was ABC/ESPN, and there was only so much $$$ you could get out of them, there did come a point when adding school X actually reduced the per school payout. However, with a conference tv channel its been proven that even if a team does not raise the “ABC/ESPN contract” payout enough to offset its inclusion to the conference, it COULD provide enough $$$ by incorporating markets previous untapped by the conference channel.
Personally, if they think that 16+ bring even more money (and they fit), and I have yet to see why this wouldn’t be the case based on the numbers shown by Patrick’s spreadsheet, why stop at 16 just so the rest of the NCAA can play catch up?
@Richard, while I agree about the North Carolina comment (who knew they had so many people?!) I think my overall point stands.
Don’t know accuracy, but found it on this site so its good enough to talk to…VA, while populated, tends to be skewed toward the DC metro area. Which tends to be inhabited by transplants and MD grads. While it would be an increase in “tv sets” I have to admit (based on my own experiences of living in the southern MD area for the past 6 years) I would not see it as a “complete” ownership of the market if the SEC took either (or even both) of VA or VaTech. OK and Kansas are low pop states and if a SEC conference tv channel started, teams like GaTech, Miami, FSU, etc would already find themselves smack dab in the market of the biggest members already in the SEC. If Pitt is borderline on the amount of money it can add to the Big10 because of PSU/OSU are other schools going to be any different against GA and FL?
Again, not saying that conference wouldn’t make money …it would. Just that with a conference tv channel you actually want to branch out to encompass as much area and include the highest population centers as possible (as opposed to getting the biggest programs with the largest national appeal). While the SEC could in fact get some very nice schools, in areas of decent population, I don’t think anyone is going to say they’d be to the level of NJ/NY up through New England (at least I wouldn’t).
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@duffman – I see what you’re getting at, but I really don’t think that this is what it’s about for ND anymore. Otherwise, why did it join a conference for all of its other sports with schools that are secular public research institutions (and in most cases, not as prestigious as the Big Ten’s members)? The ACC has a research consortium like the Big Ten (albeit not as strongly developed), so that obviously wasn’t a hinderance to BC joining that conference. The faith argument will likely be used as an excuse by Domers (that these big, bad secular universities will suck the religious life out of the school), yet the ONLY thing that ND has been independent in is football. So, if ND is solely defined by football (because for some reason, according to Domers, its identity hasn’t already been compromised by being in the same conference as USF and Cincinnati for other sports), then what they’re saying that they’re the Catholic version of the University of Alabama. As one of the top 20 undergrad schools in the country, maybe ND’s administrators actually want to break the “ND’s identity = independence in football” image and re-focus its identity on greater academic endeavors. Oh, and it’s not as if though ND would still make a crapload of more money in the Big Ten for football itself, so football will actually be funded better than ever. If ND wants to stay independent, it’s because they want to stay independent for the sake of being independent. All of the other arguments set forth are, as Adam has described before, post-rationalizations to justify a pre-determined conclusion.
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frank..
sort of my point.. as why ND went to the Big East in the first place (a collection of catholic schools and urban state schools with catholic footprints). maybe i am wrong here, and willing to admit it.. but they did not join the B 10 the first time.. and I still view them as an education school vs research school.
I do not view ND as a football school. I view ND as a religious school with a mission that is beyond research or athletic metrics. I feel sure I am not alone. As I said early on ND makes sense in the Big 10 from my point of view, I do not have the power to make it so. I do not think it is an excuse, I think ND just thinks from a different point of view. It may not be what I think, and it may not be what you, richard, mushroom, and others think. We do not sit on the ND board so what we think does not really matter in what ND will ACTUALLY do.
I think the only difference between you and I is that I feel that no matter what data I could come up with to win the argument is moot. I am not a Domer, and will never be a Domer in my lifetime. No matter what I could say or do, it will have NO EFFECT on how ND makes its decision..
HAHAHA – as I am typing this ESPN is interviewing ND Head Coach Brian Kelly.. His comments based on his personal choice is to stay independent..
Also, from ESPN broadcast Big East and BIg 12 are listed as conferences Delaney will approach at Arizona meeting.. TV money is issue for a “raid” of BE and Big 12. Which means arkstfan thinking of a BIG 3 is VERY REAL. which means my predator vs prey argument become VALID. Once this happens I think Maryland is on the table to go to the Big 10, as the ACC will not have the power to stop it.. just saying..
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Frank, this post got me wondering – under a new 3 or 4 super-conference landscape could a handful of schools (ND, UT, KU, ISU, etc) be viable under the independent route? Could be something some of these more go-it-alone type schools at least consider. With big names like these maybe they could have success with the tv deal route on their own . . . just not sure.
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I can see Texas do it. After that . . . . not really. Independence already ensures that ND makes less money than if they joined the Big10. No one cares enough about ISU for them to do well as an independent, and even Kansas would need a conference as well.
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There are a handful of Texas fans who think we could go independent, but most don’t think it’s a viable route, regardless of whether or not a Longhorn Network could be successfully launched.
Who would Texas play in early November in football? Or on a weeknight in February in basketball?
And how would Texas qualify for a BCS game? Sure, the Horns could get championship game bids by finishing in the top two, but it seems doubtful for me that Texas, a school which would be abandoning the conference system, would receive anywhere close to the concession Notre Dame, a historical independent, received in terms of what it would take to qualify for one of the “lesser” four BCS games.
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@ Frank
“Catholic version of the University of Alabama”?
What does mean? Should I be insulted?
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Nah, ‘Bama’s won a few championships in the last 2 decades.
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Whoops, forgot the smily. 🙂
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Pingback: Better Off Red — Blog — Big 10 Expansion Talk heating up again
My goodness, NDNation is something else (except for the handful of readers that link to my blog posts there – I like you guys). Take a look at this argument about how much the Big Ten’s TV deals are compared to ND (and insinuating that the media out there isn’t vetting the numbers correctly):
http://ndnation.com/boards/showpost.php?b=football;pid=70085;d=all
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@Frank:
Ultimately, NDNation is the same as Bucknuts, WeAreSC, MGoBlue, etc. Rationality is a distant second to unwavering, fervent fanaticism. I wouldn’t put too much stock in it. Ultimately, even if every ND fan believes they (a) have a realistic say in affairs and (b) think there’s some kind of media conspiracy to sway ND towards a heathen “religion” (aka conference affiliation in football), the truth is the ND bigwigs will get all the necessary information, probably from Delany himself, so they can make an educated decision that isn’t going to involve any but select alumni at best.
In the end, you could prove to NDNation that they’ll stand to gain a billion dollars yearly from joining the Big Ten and most will still look the other way. They’ve got their opinions and no amount of facts are going to stand in the way. Even if ND joins, makes a ton of money, and wins NC and NC playing against the best of the best across the nation, odds are a good amount of fans will still burn effigies of the AD/President because they’re no longer independent.
Did have to laugh at this comment though:
“Word to Jim [Delany]: In terms of actual on-field performance in the major sports of football and basketball, your conference is regressing.”
Is a Notre Dame fan actually in a position to throw stones at the moment (sorry FLP)?
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Edit: “wins NC and NC” should’ve read “wins NC after NC”
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Manifesto..
Ha Ha.. “will burn effigies”
sad but true, they did it before but called it “inquisition”
and reinforces my position on if the majority of the presidents / directors for the big 10 are not catholic, ND stays put.
those darn catholics are just silly that way *smile*
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@Duffman:
I’m totally going to make a Photoshop image for Frank when/if ND joins. I think taking the usual Iranian anti-US rally image should work, with ND fans burning BigTen conference/team flags.
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Manifesto,
i would go a step further.. if ND goes to the Big 16 Salman Rusdie and Osama Bin Laden combined will feel safer than Frank!
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I don’t know if you’ll need to Photoshop that if it happens.
=)
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@FLP:
LOL. Good… it was gonna be a bitch trying to make all those Iranians look like pale, Conan O’Brien-esqe Midwest/Northeasterners. ;D
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Not to mention he’s actually wrong. The Big10 has more BCS bowl appearances than any other conference and more Final 4 appearances in the last 10 years than any conference other than the ACC. Granted, there’s been fewer national titles, though a Domer probably isn’t in a position to say anything.
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@Richard: Well, yeah, he’s totally wrong. Bad couple year stretch, but during the BCS era the BigTen has been one of the strongest conferences consistently.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowl_Championship_Series#History_and_schedule
Not sure how much ND can talk, considering they’ve lost their only three BCS appearances by an average of 38-14 (38.66 – 14.33, including 34-20 against Ohio State in 2005).
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No kidding. I delved into the site and read down a few dozen comments. Funny they’re arguing over it being reported that ND pulls $9MM/yr, but everyone over there thinks it *might* be closer to $12-15MM. All the while ignoring the rate of growth the BTN is enjoying WITHOUT expansion, AND the fact that once this thing breaks open, per Patrick’s conservative estimates, that mythical $15MM will go from about 70% of what a B10+ team pulls in annually to easily south of 50%.
Forget “Wake up the echoes”, simply WakeTFU.
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The MAN is STRIVING to keep ND DOWN.
We must RISE, RIIIIIISE, against this Oppression.
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I actually found something interesting on NDNation- a link to an old SI article about the last time the conference shuffle took place (1991):
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1140740/1/index.htm
It’s good reading, if mostly for the laughs. My favorites:
“The game’s hottest new player is the Big East Conference”
Basically, the big story last time was the birth of the Big East. The story this time is its death.
“They (Penn State) must be having some second thoughts in State College about the wisdom of joining the Big Ten instead of waiting for the Big East.”
I do not think there is any PSU fan who seriously thinks they would have been better off in the Big East.
“Of these, the most vulnerable is the developing partnership between the Big Eight and the SWC, which are exploring what SWC commissioner Fred Jacoby calls “more of an alliance than a merger.””
An alliance that kicks out half of one league.
“Indeed, the SWC and the Big Eight fear that the Big Ten, which will have an unwieldy 11 teams with the addition of Penn State, might look to expand by adding one or more teams from their leagues.”
The more things change…
“(T)he Big East, centered in the heavily populated East, may become as strong and independent as the SEC.”
or not.
I’m not really sure what moral can be reached out of the last time, but I think I can safely say that the only groups that are completely happy with last round are the Big Ten/PSU and ACC/FSU. The Texas-Big Eight has been iffy at best. The Big East is in shambles. The SEC has had its lucrative title game, but I can’t imagine they wouldn’t trade Arkansas and South Carolina for Miami and Clemson in a heartbeat.
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I found this old SI article even more entertaining:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1005547/index.htm
It’s a comedy piece, but I can see a new “Big Gulp” with the old Big 8 – Colorado + the Big Ten. I wonder if in 30 years a “Big Ugly” conference where the top teams play. Maybe with promotion/demotion like in the EPL.
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This has been my point as well. No one on this board is in a position to forecast five years into the future. Yet you are willing to make a fifty commitment to five new members — based on what? How well will an article “Big Ten adds five to reap cable revenue fees” read in 2029?
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Dude, your school’s not adding anybody (and if I had my druthers, ND wouldn’t be 1 of the 5), so you don’t have to worry about that.
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This is a silly response. I notice you post all the time — maybe you need a rest.
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This is now officially the silliest expansion idea yet. Sillier than the suggestions that the B10 take Iowa State, Louisville or Boise State. This one has them all beat. http://www.hammerandrails.com/2010/4/19/1431777/on-the-topic-of-big-ten-expansion
If Notre Dame says no, the Big 10 should pay the University of Chicago “a heaping crapload of money” to restart their athletic programs. Apparently, he’s serious. His “three school solution” is to add Iowa State, Mizzou and Pitt, since it would give Iowa, Illinois and PSU rivals.
Any more suggestions like this one and we may have to consider Purdue’s academic fit in the Big 10. (I’m kidding on that last point, before a flamewar starts.)
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Are you serious! Break up the “Nerdy Nine” just to help out the Big 10, there would be a serious outcry at Carnegie Mellon! If NYU lost that Chicago TV market, just think of how many “techs” would have to start hacking the Big 10 party schools to make up for the lost revenue..
actually it does show out of the box thinking, but it would be cheaper and easier to just merge them with Nortwestern as a PUBLIC STATE institution.
a) what would a merged research number look like?
b) what would a merged endowment look like?
c) at that point they could just buy the Bears franchise and become a non profit..
and yes c) is jest, lest the northwestern folks get uptight..
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Not to be forgotten, Tom Osborne at Nebraska has close ties to Wisconsin AD Barry Alvarez (Barry played for Nebraska), and Head Coach Bo Pelini has close ties to Big Ten football (grew up in Ohio and played for OSU).
If Nebraska wants in, those links could prove helpful.
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Don’t forget Penn State’s president Graham Spanier came to PSU from Nebraska. That’s another vote for the Huskers.
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NDNation just gives me fits of giggles every time I try to read some of the threads.
“Given that Teddy Greenstein is a typical Northwestern asshole”
Seriously? I haven’t seen that type of anti-NU vitriol outside of Hawkeye message boards. Are they still upset about ’95?
“PS I am not a nutjob.”
Of course you’re not. Now you and your invisible friend just go play nice now.
“By the way, everytime I see a picture of Jim Delaney, I want to slug him. What a smug, fat, fucking asshole.”
This is especially rich from the fans of a school that had Weiss as their coach. Smug and fat don’t even begin to describe him.
“If you told me I would lose both pinkies if ND didn’t join that wouldn’t change my opinion. I don’t think I’m in anyone’s target audience.”
Well he might not be in the target audience, but it does appear that ND lets people like this make their decisions.
“Just so I can state my point clearly, I have very little desire to see Northwestern’s, Duke’s, Syracuse’s, etc. football status, revenue, or access increase because they’re now suddenly in the same conference as ND.”
This one just sums it up for me. ND fans love the idea of the student-athlete, they just don’t want any of them in their conference where their schools might benefit. No small, academically prestigious privates need apply, because they just can’t compete in football.
(As an aside, since I started following college football in ’04, ND has 40 regular season wins. Coincidentally, this is the exact same number as Northwestern. So yeah…)
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Nice synopsis of Big Ten expansion issues by Stewart Mandel:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/stewart_mandel/04/20/expansion-faqs/
He’s also one of the few national writers that has consistently noted the logic of the Big Ten adding Nebraska.
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I like Mandel’s Nebraska/Missouri/NYC market school suggestion for 14. For 16, I’d add Kansas and another east coast school. Personally, I think Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas, Rutgers and Maryland/Syracuse offers an ideal mix of nationally respected brands and new cable markets.
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From ESPN:
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SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe says he is not expecting the Big Ten to notify him this week that it will be pursuing his members as part of a plan to expand.
Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany said in December the league will explore options for expansion in the next 12 to 18 months. Several Big 12 schools have been speculated to be targets, including Missouri and Texas.
The commissioners of all 11 major college football conferences are gathered at the Royal Palms Hotel this week for BCS meetings.
Beebe said Tuesday he expects to be the first to know if the Big Ten decides to make a bid for one of his member schools. He also said he believes the Big Ten’s timetable to decide on whether to expand has not changed.
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Ol’ Danny boy could be in for a bit of a surprise soon.
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B12 alleged commissioner Dan Beebe is the moronic shill who in the 3rd qtr of Texas-Baylor babbled at length on why playoffs make the NFL inferior to college football.
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Well, he’s right about that.
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BTN or not, would Nebraska be willing to give up recruiting exposure in Texas?