okeefe4prez
Well-Known Member
Okay, let's just say that OSU beats PSU and we lose at Columbus, and lock up a 7-1/11-1 season. Because of all the "love" ESPN has been giving us, I suspect we will drop like a lead balloon in the polls and end up in the Cap One bowl (because we will likely fall outside of the BCS berth range with a late loss), where we will systematically make some poor SEC team look like the little sisters of the blind, despite being 41 point underdogs. Some unlucky BCS host town will get to see 3,000 TCU fans roll in and another town will see 5,000 Boise State fans roll in, while the Hawks send 25,000+ down to Orlando, right into Disney World's backyard.
If we go down there, we need an organized and systematic boycott of Disney World. Why? Because Disney's subsidiary, ESPN, thinks the way to get viewers, page views, etc. and to bolster its bottom line is to trash Iowa. Their "experts" are idiots who know very little about the team, but it is clear that an edict has come from the top to ensure that the SEC, a conference that ESPN has teamed up with to develop a competitor to the BTN, has to be hyped at all costs. ESPN sees the writing on the wall, to the extent the BTN continues to get market share and creates an alternative to the ABC/ESPN near monopoly in college football broadcasting, ESPN's livelihood is threatened. Cable companies are getting absolutely gouged by ESPN, but that gouging can only continue if ESPN has access to top quality content, which they are losing or are about to lose with the advent of the BTN, the NFL Network, the MLB Network, etc. The content producers understand the value of the games and are cutting out the middleman, ESPN.
ESPN has ensured some premium content with the recent SEC deal, but some of the best Big Ten games are now on BTN, the NFL Network is keeping some of the NFL's best games that would have been on ESPN 5 years ago, and ESPN's stranglehold on content distribution is threatened. And, to top it off, BTN is developing ways to stream games so people without cable or BTN can watch Big Ten games anywhere in the country over the internets. This business model, if adopted widely in the next decade, will completely destroy ESPN's pricing power with respect to cable companies.
Of course, ESPN/Disney's only way to fight back is to trash the institution that is refusing to play by its monopolistic rules. There is also likely some sort of feedback loop, where if ESPN trashes some schools and hypes others enough, the trashed schools suffer in recruiting and the beloved schools improve recruiting, not to mention what it does to the voters who can determine a school's BCS fate. Iowa is going to be really good next year, too, since most of our starters are juniors right now. Of course, we'll still hear about how bad Iowa is, and how bad the Big Ten is, and how Ohio State lost a game once in 2006 and that the loss demonstrates the awful nature of the Big Ten.
Here is the list of Disney's subsidiaries. http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1001039/000119312508240242/dex21.htm If Disney had any journalistic integrity, I would gladly do business with them. Of course, I'll still watch ESPN/ABC when I have to see the Hawks, but that's it. If we go to Orlando, stay out of the Disney parks, let them hype Boise and TCU and let their fans be the suckers who pay hundreds of dollars to the company that has decided it doesn't need Iowans' money. I'm not saying they need to put us in the top 2 or 3, but the crap they are talking about a 9-0 team that has won at Happy Valley, Camp Randall and Spartan Stadium is an absolute joke and demonstrates that they have enough customers such that they don't need our money. Don't give them your money.
GO HAWKS.
If we go down there, we need an organized and systematic boycott of Disney World. Why? Because Disney's subsidiary, ESPN, thinks the way to get viewers, page views, etc. and to bolster its bottom line is to trash Iowa. Their "experts" are idiots who know very little about the team, but it is clear that an edict has come from the top to ensure that the SEC, a conference that ESPN has teamed up with to develop a competitor to the BTN, has to be hyped at all costs. ESPN sees the writing on the wall, to the extent the BTN continues to get market share and creates an alternative to the ABC/ESPN near monopoly in college football broadcasting, ESPN's livelihood is threatened. Cable companies are getting absolutely gouged by ESPN, but that gouging can only continue if ESPN has access to top quality content, which they are losing or are about to lose with the advent of the BTN, the NFL Network, the MLB Network, etc. The content producers understand the value of the games and are cutting out the middleman, ESPN.
ESPN has ensured some premium content with the recent SEC deal, but some of the best Big Ten games are now on BTN, the NFL Network is keeping some of the NFL's best games that would have been on ESPN 5 years ago, and ESPN's stranglehold on content distribution is threatened. And, to top it off, BTN is developing ways to stream games so people without cable or BTN can watch Big Ten games anywhere in the country over the internets. This business model, if adopted widely in the next decade, will completely destroy ESPN's pricing power with respect to cable companies.
Of course, ESPN/Disney's only way to fight back is to trash the institution that is refusing to play by its monopolistic rules. There is also likely some sort of feedback loop, where if ESPN trashes some schools and hypes others enough, the trashed schools suffer in recruiting and the beloved schools improve recruiting, not to mention what it does to the voters who can determine a school's BCS fate. Iowa is going to be really good next year, too, since most of our starters are juniors right now. Of course, we'll still hear about how bad Iowa is, and how bad the Big Ten is, and how Ohio State lost a game once in 2006 and that the loss demonstrates the awful nature of the Big Ten.
Here is the list of Disney's subsidiaries. http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1001039/000119312508240242/dex21.htm If Disney had any journalistic integrity, I would gladly do business with them. Of course, I'll still watch ESPN/ABC when I have to see the Hawks, but that's it. If we go to Orlando, stay out of the Disney parks, let them hype Boise and TCU and let their fans be the suckers who pay hundreds of dollars to the company that has decided it doesn't need Iowans' money. I'm not saying they need to put us in the top 2 or 3, but the crap they are talking about a 9-0 team that has won at Happy Valley, Camp Randall and Spartan Stadium is an absolute joke and demonstrates that they have enough customers such that they don't need our money. Don't give them your money.
GO HAWKS.
