Your last answer reflects what is making me *really* reconsider my Saturday viewing habits going forward. The SEC is good football but it’s jingoistic, bandwagon-inducing brands are kind of nauseating. They’re mostly football teams that happen to have a college on campus. It’s...not what college football feels like to me. As for the Big Ten, their football isn’t even all that good overall. OSU and Michigan are nearly always at the top and it gets old, as the rest of the teams are pretty meh. Just feels like they’re flexing their viewership. The whole SEC-Big Ten power play feels dirty to me when we’re, in the end, talking about NCAA sports.
Oh, and this all ends badly for the athletes, in general, and those in non-football sports, in particular.
As I’ve often mentioned, if I want to watch football or basketball where it’s all about the money, I’ll watch the NFL and NBA. The quality is orders of magnitude higher, and I don’t have to watch Herbstreit and Corso yak on about Alabama or whatever their SEC Flavor of the Week is.
John, you're hitting a bullseye here for us locals leaning into every angle on this Pac-12 story. You're well positioned to offer currency and interesting back-line conversations that give us context. I'm even seeing your newsletter getting national posting and attention. If you're not careful, you're going to end up working for the Pac-Whatever!
Until the money is controlled college football will be an unbalanced monster. At some point HS kids will have to declare for college football so all the blue chips don’t end up at Alabama. Or some other craziness because you could put together a booster package and dump a huge amount of money in a HS kid or portal transfer kid. It’s gonna get real messy soon. 19 year old kid getting $5 million in booster funds to go to Alabama or some other monster. We are already seeing private HS offer kids free room and board with boosters paying school fees.
Some sort of knee jerk reaction will happen at some point and over correct.
Many media types are obviously running out of material, I read the same over and over. Why do reporters keep noting number of TV households Obviously population matters. But I NEVER see any meat/details concerning market demographics. Example, Orlando showsas #17 or so market vs Portland as 21. I am a Husky fan but that is comically incomplete info. If you consider median income, age, education etc. the picture becomes VERY different. Why does WSU have MANY more viewers for its games (on a per game basis) than the Arizona schools? There are good reasons for this but just because media seems to ignore those factors doesn't mean they are not a big deal to networks.
I think nothing is more over rated that the size of conferences. A rvised PAC with Washington, Oregon, Bay area Utah and even one other would provide an eight team slate three top 20 markets and a demographic vastly better than a lot of the Big 12. And an eight team slate could easily enter into firm contract with ACC for 8-12 games per year without screwing around with merging (at hugely added cost). Also ESPN would have a manageable small sized package to fill its needs. A 4450 million per year deal for 8-10 teams would provide manageable revenue with a little programming left over for added streaming etc.
PS I kow Phil Knight is the best owner in CFB but a lot of his influence epitomizes what is wrong with CFB now.
Newsome’s petulance probably stems more from being left out of an opportunity to get his name in the headlines and milk the decision for political gain than anything else. Notice that he wasn’t saying anybody at UCLA broke any rules or laws, and that he didn’t step in moments after it was announced and put it on hold. Also nobody at UCLA has been fired or suspended. Therefore it’s pretty obvious they acted within their authority, and that there will be no reversing course. No good ever comes from politicians being involved in collegiate sports.
Pigs is kind of a strong word, but I get where you're going. We're seeing something similar to what happened to Major League Baseball in the fifties. Up to that point, the PCL was considered the third major league. Baseball knew California was the future, poached LA and San Francisco, and a decade later we saw the result.
Same thing seems to be happening here. It took fifteen years for the Pilots to arrive in Seattle. Might take that long for Big Ten expansion here.
In the meantime, the Pac-10 has a tremendous opportunity to build an alternative.
The ACC's TV markets are waaaaay over-rated. Syracuse does NOT capture NY City. UVA and VT do NOT capture Wash DC. And GT is in Atlanta but it is overwhelmingly a UGA Bulldog town.
Oregon is not in good position to join the Big Ten. They will only join if the Big Ten expands to 24 teams. Also, there’s no way the UC regents would stop UCLA so that both of their schools would be left out of the Big Ten. It doesn’t make sense. The Big Ten specifically wanted UCLA and USC because they are global household brands with billions of dollars in research funding. The best way for the UC regents to please Berkeley would be for UCLA to use their position in the Big Ten to admit Berkeley. Berkeley, Stanford, and Washington fit the Big Ten profile just fine but the same cannot be said for Oregon. Oregon has traditionally been grouped alongside Oregon State and Washington State as lower tiered schools in the Pac-12 from small rural markets.
John, regarding Hawaii, what about if the Pac 12 added them for Football only? The PAC 12 wouldn't have to dish them out a full share, plus each pac 12 team that travels to Hawaii would be allowed to add an extra game to their schedule thanks to the NCAA rule. Also, Hawaii just got approval from the Governor for $400 million for the new Aloha stadium? Would that make them more enticing considering the PAC 12 as a whole are themselves a geographically isolated conference?
Thanks, John for another great read. Going forward, anything can happen and probably will. I'm looking forward to reading that the Pac 12 is in good shape.
Your last answer reflects what is making me *really* reconsider my Saturday viewing habits going forward. The SEC is good football but it’s jingoistic, bandwagon-inducing brands are kind of nauseating. They’re mostly football teams that happen to have a college on campus. It’s...not what college football feels like to me. As for the Big Ten, their football isn’t even all that good overall. OSU and Michigan are nearly always at the top and it gets old, as the rest of the teams are pretty meh. Just feels like they’re flexing their viewership. The whole SEC-Big Ten power play feels dirty to me when we’re, in the end, talking about NCAA sports.
Oh, and this all ends badly for the athletes, in general, and those in non-football sports, in particular.
As I’ve often mentioned, if I want to watch football or basketball where it’s all about the money, I’ll watch the NFL and NBA. The quality is orders of magnitude higher, and I don’t have to watch Herbstreit and Corso yak on about Alabama or whatever their SEC Flavor of the Week is.
John, you're hitting a bullseye here for us locals leaning into every angle on this Pac-12 story. You're well positioned to offer currency and interesting back-line conversations that give us context. I'm even seeing your newsletter getting national posting and attention. If you're not careful, you're going to end up working for the Pac-Whatever!
Until the money is controlled college football will be an unbalanced monster. At some point HS kids will have to declare for college football so all the blue chips don’t end up at Alabama. Or some other craziness because you could put together a booster package and dump a huge amount of money in a HS kid or portal transfer kid. It’s gonna get real messy soon. 19 year old kid getting $5 million in booster funds to go to Alabama or some other monster. We are already seeing private HS offer kids free room and board with boosters paying school fees.
Some sort of knee jerk reaction will happen at some point and over correct.
Those two pigs!!!! Hahahahahaha!
Spot on!!! Love the crab boil story.
Their is joy on your writing. Did you Stewart Mandel’s piece in the Athletic regarding a PAC 12/ Big 12 merger ?
Many media types are obviously running out of material, I read the same over and over. Why do reporters keep noting number of TV households Obviously population matters. But I NEVER see any meat/details concerning market demographics. Example, Orlando showsas #17 or so market vs Portland as 21. I am a Husky fan but that is comically incomplete info. If you consider median income, age, education etc. the picture becomes VERY different. Why does WSU have MANY more viewers for its games (on a per game basis) than the Arizona schools? There are good reasons for this but just because media seems to ignore those factors doesn't mean they are not a big deal to networks.
I think nothing is more over rated that the size of conferences. A rvised PAC with Washington, Oregon, Bay area Utah and even one other would provide an eight team slate three top 20 markets and a demographic vastly better than a lot of the Big 12. And an eight team slate could easily enter into firm contract with ACC for 8-12 games per year without screwing around with merging (at hugely added cost). Also ESPN would have a manageable small sized package to fill its needs. A 4450 million per year deal for 8-10 teams would provide manageable revenue with a little programming left over for added streaming etc.
PS I kow Phil Knight is the best owner in CFB but a lot of his influence epitomizes what is wrong with CFB now.
Bring in Boise, BYU and Fresno and destroy the other sold out leagues with toughness and respect
Newsome’s petulance probably stems more from being left out of an opportunity to get his name in the headlines and milk the decision for political gain than anything else. Notice that he wasn’t saying anybody at UCLA broke any rules or laws, and that he didn’t step in moments after it was announced and put it on hold. Also nobody at UCLA has been fired or suspended. Therefore it’s pretty obvious they acted within their authority, and that there will be no reversing course. No good ever comes from politicians being involved in collegiate sports.
Pigs is kind of a strong word, but I get where you're going. We're seeing something similar to what happened to Major League Baseball in the fifties. Up to that point, the PCL was considered the third major league. Baseball knew California was the future, poached LA and San Francisco, and a decade later we saw the result.
Same thing seems to be happening here. It took fifteen years for the Pilots to arrive in Seattle. Might take that long for Big Ten expansion here.
In the meantime, the Pac-10 has a tremendous opportunity to build an alternative.
The ACC's TV markets are waaaaay over-rated. Syracuse does NOT capture NY City. UVA and VT do NOT capture Wash DC. And GT is in Atlanta but it is overwhelmingly a UGA Bulldog town.
Oregon is not in good position to join the Big Ten. They will only join if the Big Ten expands to 24 teams. Also, there’s no way the UC regents would stop UCLA so that both of their schools would be left out of the Big Ten. It doesn’t make sense. The Big Ten specifically wanted UCLA and USC because they are global household brands with billions of dollars in research funding. The best way for the UC regents to please Berkeley would be for UCLA to use their position in the Big Ten to admit Berkeley. Berkeley, Stanford, and Washington fit the Big Ten profile just fine but the same cannot be said for Oregon. Oregon has traditionally been grouped alongside Oregon State and Washington State as lower tiered schools in the Pac-12 from small rural markets.
John, regarding Hawaii, what about if the Pac 12 added them for Football only? The PAC 12 wouldn't have to dish them out a full share, plus each pac 12 team that travels to Hawaii would be allowed to add an extra game to their schedule thanks to the NCAA rule. Also, Hawaii just got approval from the Governor for $400 million for the new Aloha stadium? Would that make them more enticing considering the PAC 12 as a whole are themselves a geographically isolated conference?
Thanks, John for another great read. Going forward, anything can happen and probably will. I'm looking forward to reading that the Pac 12 is in good shape.
Love “The Relationship Building” ❤️😎
Great stuff as usual, John.
Please look into the latest on possible Autzen Stadium expansion. Things like capacity, cost and who pays for it. TY!
My question is. Wouldn’t be easier to try and keep USC and UCLA in conference. By making a counter offer?
Thanks again for your insight into college athletics while reminding us all of the importance of family!