****The Official NEW (new)^3 conference realignment & shit talk thread****

[Pitt Gorilla]

in memory of Saul Good. He will be missed.

[Sassy Squatch]

Bambi taps out.

[Bambi]

Originally Posted by TribalElder

College football is more entertaining than nfl

[Bambi]

Originally Posted by WhawhaWhat

or Big 12 football apparently.

uhhhh, whoops

Gonna play in the big leagues at least come correct

http://online.wsj.com/articles/at-co...ats-1409188244

[TribalElder]

Originally Posted by Bambi

My statement is completely true. Just because your team sucks does not make the statement inaccurate

[WhawhaWhat]

Originally Posted by Bambi

uhhhh, whoops

Gonna play in the big leagues at least come correct

http://online.wsj.com/articles/at-co...ats-1409188244

Are we moving the goal posts from TV viewers to student attendance now? I did find some good bits in your link though.

Schools can't even rely on students who buy tickets to show up at games—or they trickle into their seats late and leave early. At the University of Kansas, which had a 3-9 record last season, 74% of student tickets went unused.

In response, the Southeastern Conference, home to seven of college football's last eight champions and some of the sport's most passionate fans, formed a committee in 2012 to study fans' experiences. All 14 schools in the conference made improvements this season, the SEC said last week.

[Bambi]

Originally Posted by WhawhaWhat

Are we moving the goal posts from TV viewers to student attendance now? I did find some good bits in your link though.

Looks like Kansas should do some studies to get the kids to go to the games like the SEC has.

[Eleazar]

Originally Posted by WhawhaWhat

Are we moving the goal posts from TV viewers to student attendance now? I did find some good bits in your link though.

Well, would you leave a tailgate to go watch KU football?

[WhawhaWhat]

Originally Posted by Bambi

Looks like Kansas should do some studies to get the kids to go to the games like the SEC has.

You would probably have to have fans that actually attended games in order to do those studies.

[Bambi]

Originally Posted by TribalElder

My statement is completely true. Just because your team sucks does not make the statement inaccurate

Start a poll. Lets find out

[Bambi]

Originally Posted by WhawhaWhat

You would probably have to have fans that actually attended games in order to do those studies.

So how did the SEC do it?

[WhawhaWhat]

Originally Posted by Bambi

So how did the SEC do it?

That question gets asked by a lot of conferences.

[Bambi]

Originally Posted by WhawhaWhat

That question gets asked by a lot of conferences.

Well if kids weren't going to the games how did they do the survey?

[ChiefsCountry]

Originally Posted by Saul Good

I hate to tear everyone away from softball and basketball talk, but some college football history was made recently.


By Tim Griffin

SAN ANTONIO — The Big 12's struggles at finding a national TV audience were underscored with some troubling information last week.

Big 12 schools in the flyover states continually have exposure issues compared with other conferences closer to the population centers on the coasts.

Considering the Big 12 is the only conference without a league-run TV network (or even plans for one), you can see how it drags behind the other four major conferences in the broadcasting department.

That was evidenced when last week's featured game between No. 7 Baylor and Iowa State on Fox tied for the smallest overnight rating (0.9) of any game in the network's history for college football, according to SportsMediaWatch.com. It is presumed to be the lowest prime-time audience for any college game in history on a major network.

The rating generated by the Bears and Cyclones was the result of several factors. Baylor is an emerging program that is still building its following. Iowa State has produced its share of upsets over the years but still struggles to attract viewers.

Add the fact that Baylor jumped to a four-touchdown halftime lead en route to an eventual 49-28 rout and you have perhaps the major reason for the anemic viewership.

That matchup was swamped when considering the rest of the country. Notre Dame's victory over Syracuse on ABC attracted a 2.8 overnight rating. Missouri's upset of South Carolina on ESPN drew a 1.9. And the late Oregon State-USC game garnered a 1.8.

Saturday night is a graveyard for over-the-air television viewing, which is why we see so many games stacked on networks earlier in the day. Even if the numbers aren't strong, they still deliver the desired demographics that advertisers crave.

Fox's numbers were never that great Saturday, anyway.

But still, the Big 12's inability to drive an audience on Fox doesn't bode well for the conference. It marked the third consecutive week in which Big 12 games on Fox were drubbed by competing ABC games.

There will be more puzzling TV scheduling this week as the two best Big 12 games of the day — No. 4 Oklahoma at No. 25 TCU and Baylor at Texas — both will be played with 2:30 p.m. kickoffs. It will cannibalize the potential audience for both games, making viewers switch from one to the other or make a decision about which to primarily follow. The audience for both Big 12 games already will be hurt because of the highly anticipated Alabama-Mississippi and Stanford-Notre Dame games taking place at the same time on CBS and NBC, respectively.

It's a little surprising the Big 12 or its TV partners didn't choose to have one of those featured games Saturday night, rather than the Kansas State-Texas Tech game that will be played in the 6 p.m. window on ESPNU.

A bigger potential problem could be looming: Industry sources indicate Fox is extremely intrigued with the idea of luring the Big Ten for its first-tier rights for football and basketball when the conference's deal with ESPN expires in two years.

The Big Ten is packed with multiple teams in huge Midwest markets. It recently expanded into the New York market when Rutgers was added, not to mention the Washington-Baltimore market with Maryland. Fox already owns a 51 percent stake in the Big Ten Network (with the conference owning the other 49 percent), so they have worked well together in the past.

Most expect that attracting the Big Ten's major games will become Fox's major priority. If those games are added at the expense of the network's current major partners — the Big 12 and Pac-12 — it wouldn't be a shock.

The Big 12 already sits at a tenuous position in the television marketplace. The Big Ten gobbling more prime-time spots windows on Fox would only make it worse.

Big Ten wants a exclusive window similar to the SEC on CBS. FOX will probably pay what the Big Ten wants, the Big Ten is the last major sports tv deal on the market. It would be a nice boom for FOX and FS1.

[Saul Good]

The Big 12 needs to figure something out, or its going to die. The product is actually really good, but nobody seems to know/care.

This should be the biggest weekend of the year for the conference with the one marquee game of the year (Oklahoma vs Texas) and the first conference game between two top ten teams since realignment hit. (Oklahoma State played aTm in September of 2011.)

The problem is that Texas is awful, and the top 10 teams are tiny, private, parochial schools with few alumni and virtually no "t-shirt fans". That could potentially be overcome, but the conference doesn't have a network deal to use as a hype machine. Mississippi State v Auburn, Ole Miss v aTm, Oregon v UCLA, Georgia v Mizzou, and USC v Arizona are all getting more publicity than Texas v Oklahoma or TCU v Baylor.

There are simply too many factors going against the league for it to survive long term.

Zero big markets outside of Texas (and the public Texas schools stink)
No conference network
No conference championship game
Teams leaving via realignment hurts perception

Texas will get better, but it's going to take a few years. The conference network situation isn't going to change as long as TLN exists. What the league can control is the number of members. If they were to add (for example) Cincinnati and Memphis, they would gain new markets in metro areas and states currently larger than anything outside of Texas, solid recruiting grounds, and the perception of a growing conference rather than a shrinking one. It would also strengthen the basketball side and give WVU a couple of travel partners.

The only reason not to do it would be money, but maximizing revenue at the expense of long-term sustainability is looking at things backwards.

[Prison Bitch]

Saul I don't have any interest reading your treatise there but all we know is this: Fox has industry execs and financial analysts who already determined the value of the Big 12. We don't need to rely on Internet boards to tell us they were all wrong