Merged - Big 12 Aftermath Thread

If ISU gets to a good place, ISU football will matter to more people in 5 years than will UCLA football.

Another big flip is who is going to college. Women no make up more of enrollment than me. 60 percent of undergrads at UCLA are now female. Chew that number for awhile.

Ok, I chewed but I'm not seeing the importance of that at all.
 
Ok, I chewed but I'm not seeing the importance of that at all.
Who makes up the larger number of fans? Men or women? Men aren't going to college as much. More downward pressure on the numbers game. UCLA is one of the more skewed universities. College football means little to very many in CA and most of those are men born pre 1965 with a bunch from early 50s and before.
 
Any programs in any of those conferences. If the clowns brought literally anything to the table why hasn't there been interest in joining somewhere?

ISU as it's own entity doesn't bring enough to the table to justify a larger portion of the TV revenue pie in a major conference.

But the # of schools who do is pretty small.

I honestly don't even know what we're debating at this point. ISU isn't as valuable as the few schools who grow the pie for most conferences. They aren't worthless as many people believe. They're a truly middling team as far as most things go to rate how valuable a team is which is a tremendous improvement in the last 20 years.
 
ISU as it's own entity doesn't bring enough to the table to justify a larger portion of the TV revenue pie in a major conference.

But the # of schools who do is pretty small.

I honestly don't even know what we're debating at this point. ISU isn't as valuable as the few schools who grow the pie for most conferences. They aren't worthless as many people believe. They're a truly middling team as far as most things go to rate how valuable a team is which is a tremendous improvement in the last 20 years.

There are the blue bloods, college football royalty that drive a lot of eyes and money. Then there is the landed gentry, a group of teams with decent fan bases that provide reasonable fodder for the royalty and not too much ridicule should the royalty lose to them. Then there is a group of peasants, the underclass, the group that encompasses programs like Wake Forest, Kansas, Washington State, etc. Assume an even distribution, there are about 22 members of the royal family, 22 landed gentry, 22 peasants. The Big 12 was robbed of 100% of its royalty. That just happened. In the years leading up to that, it was also robbed of 4 members of the landed gentry. All that is left is peasants. Maybe OSU is borderline landed gentry, but the rest of that league is peasants.

The peasants aren't completely worthless, but when you back out games against royalty and even games against the landed gentry, their value drops quickly.
 
Who makes up the larger number of fans? Men or women? Men aren't going to college as much. More downward pressure on the numbers game. UCLA is one of the more skewed universities. College football means little to very many in CA and most of those are men born pre 1965 with a bunch from early 50s and before.

It's not just that, but the CA schools have a ton of kids from Asia at them now. 98% of those kids don't give two shits about football. Northwestern is the same. So is Illinois. The school will try to force the kids to go to stuff the first week, but they have very little interest in social interaction the way we grew up.
 
It's not just that, but the CA schools have a ton of kids from Asia at them now. 98% of those kids don't give two shits about football. Northwestern is the same. So is Illinois. The school will try to force the kids to go to stuff the first week, but they have very little interest in social interaction the way we grew up.
Was thinking that but didn't say it. Illinois due to the state budget is a junkie on International student tuition. Makes up about 1 in 4. It's down right hard/impossible. for a less than an A IL resident student with a plus 32 ACT to get in. That's why so many IL students at Iowa. We discussed the dying of SIU before.

Two of my sons graduated from IL engineering and they were for sure minorities. I believe he was only 1 of 2 Caucasians to graduate with honors in Mech Engineering (which is the top Mech program) Several years ago, a Chinese grad student graduated with a PHD in engineering and the speaker was Lanie Guanier speaking on Brown v Board of Education about the need for diversity. You had to be there, but it was so ironic as there were very few Caucasians and few males graduating. It was sureal.
 
Was thinking that but didn't say it. Illinois due to the state budget is a junkie on International student tuition. Makes up about 1 in 4. It's down right hard/impossible. for a less than an A IL resident student with a plus 32 ACT to get in. That's why so many IL students at Iowa. We discussed the dying of SIU before.

Two of my sons graduated from IL engineering and they were for sure minorities. I believe he was only 1 of 2 Caucasians to graduate with honors in Mech Engineering (which is the top Mech program) Several years ago, a Chinese grad student graduated with a PHD in engineering and the speaker was Lanie Guanier speaking on Brown v Board of Education about the need for diversity. You had to be there, but it was so ironic as there were very few Caucasians and few males graduating. It was sureal.

Um, I graduated over 20 years ago with a degree in Econ and I was the only white guy in the major that year. I believe it.
 
There are the blue bloods, college football royalty that drive a lot of eyes and money. Then there is the landed gentry, a group of teams with decent fan bases that provide reasonable fodder for the royalty and not too much ridicule should the royalty lose to them. Then there is a group of peasants, the underclass, the group that encompasses programs like Wake Forest, Kansas, Washington State, etc. Assume an even distribution, there are about 22 members of the royal family, 22 landed gentry, 22 peasants. The Big 12 was robbed of 100% of its royalty. That just happened. In the years leading up to that, it was also robbed of 4 members of the landed gentry. All that is left is peasants. Maybe OSU is borderline landed gentry, but the rest of that league is peasants.

The peasants aren't completely worthless, but when you back out games against royalty and even games against the landed gentry, their value drops quickly.

Seems reasonable. I guess I'd characterize it like this - there are probably about 15 programs that actually increase the slice of the TV revenue pie (because ultimately that's what we're talking about). Everybody else doesn't.

Again, my point isn't that ISU should be in the Big 10 or something. It's that I think ISU is realistically probably the 35-40th most valuable program. That isn't bad at all. In the TV environment of college football that makes them a taker to a major conference, that's just a fact. There is still just so much we don't know about how this all is going to play out. It'll be interesting for sure.
 
Seems reasonable. I guess I'd characterize it like this - there are probably about 15 programs that actually increase the slice of the TV revenue pie (because ultimately that's what we're talking about). Everybody else doesn't.

Again, my point isn't that ISU should be in the Big 10 or something. It's that I think ISU is realistically probably the 35-40th most valuable program. That isn't bad at all. In the TV environment of college football that makes them a taker to a major conference, that's just a fact. There is still just so much we don't know about how this all is going to play out. It'll be interesting for sure.

Based on revenue you are the 43rd top ranked football program according to the Wall Street Journal, UCLA 24th (Iowa is 18th). Which isn't bad, it's higher than I thought it would be. But I believe that's mostly based on revenues, not necessarily value to TV ratings. It's older data but any data from last year is worthless.

 
After I posted that I googled top football TV ratings and found this interesting article that had some data. Iowa State was ranked 46th based on average TV viewers which, again, higher than what I expected. But that data is skewed by the opponents it plays. I wonder how well ISU will rank once Iowa (21st), Oklahoma (8th), and Texas (13th) fall off the schedule. They will be replacing those games with the likes of BYU (48th), Houston (52nd), UCF (60th), and Cincinnati (66th). My guess is those games will not be shown in prime TV slots or networks, which also contributes to the data.

Edit - BTW, UCLA is 32nd on that list.

 
Last edited:
My gawd, after reviewing that article the next TV deal is going to be HORRIBLE for the Big 12. The highest rated school remaining is TCU ranked 24th and, again, they are losing highly watched games against Texas and Oklahoma.

I think Fry is right, ISU is gonna have to tighten their belts when the B12 negotiates their next TV contract.
 
After I posted that I googled top football TV ratings and found this interesting article that had some data. Iowa State was ranked 46th based on average TV viewers which, again, higher than what I expected. But that data is skewed by the opponents it plays. I wonder how well ISU will rank once Iowa (21st), Oklahoma (8th), and Texas (13th) fall off the schedule. They will be replacing those games with the likes of BYU (48th), Houston (52nd), UCF (60th), and Cincinnati (66th). My guess is those games will not be shown in prime TV slots or networks, which also contributes to the data.

Edit - BTW, UCLA is 32nd on that list.


You have to remember UCLA has been about a 4-8 level program for damned near a decade. If UCLA rolls into a few back to back 9 or 10 win seasons, that program is instantly borderline top 15, maybe top 10. Whereas Iowa State could go 10-2 for five straight years after UT and OU leave and they'd never crack the top 40 in viewership.
 
My gawd, after reviewing that article the next TV deal is going to be HORRIBLE for the Big 12. The highest rated school remaining is TCU ranked 24th and, again, they are losing highly watched games against Texas and Oklahoma.

I think Fry is right, ISU is gonna have to tighten their belts when the B12 negotiates their next TV contract.
Yeah, once you pull out UT and OU, who buttress the ratings for everyone, I think BYU and UCF will be the top ratings draws in the Big 12. You have to throw out the current ratings because OU and even UT fans will watch some random OSU versus West Virginia game or TT versus Iowa State game because it might have implications for the title game or whatever, but once you take out those rooting concerns and shift them to the LSU-Florida game, it will drop the Big 12 even further.
 
Was thinking that but didn't say it. Illinois due to the state budget is a junkie on International student tuition. Makes up about 1 in 4. It's down right hard/impossible. for a less than an A IL resident student with a plus 32 ACT to get in. That's why so many IL students at Iowa. We discussed the dying of SIU before.

Two of my sons graduated from IL engineering and they were for sure minorities. I believe he was only 1 of 2 Caucasians to graduate with honors in Mech Engineering (which is the top Mech program) Several years ago, a Chinese grad student graduated with a PHD in engineering and the speaker was Lanie Guanier speaking on Brown v Board of Education about the need for diversity. You had to be there, but it was so ironic as there were very few Caucasians and few males graduating. It was sureal.
Sounds like the Bradley/Caterpillar School of Engineering in Peoria. Very few Caucasians outta that program. The dean of the school is from India.
 
Yeah, once you pull out UT and OU, who buttress the ratings for everyone, I think BYU and UCF will be the top ratings draws in the Big 12. You have to throw out the current ratings because OU and even UT fans will watch some random OSU versus West Virginia game or TT versus Iowa State game because it might have implications for the title game or whatever, but once you take out those rooting concerns and shift them to the LSU-Florida game, it will drop the Big 12 even further.

For a minute I thought Bryce‘s argument that the B12 will be on par with the Pac12 had some teeth to it. I know the the Pac12 lags behind the other P5 conferences being on the west coast and getting late time slots but after reviewing that list USC, Oregon, Stanford, Washington, and UCLA still blow away the remnants of the B12. Any new TV deal may only be marginally better than the current AAC deal and that‘s only because the B12 has gutted them.
 
For a minute I thought Bryce‘s argument that the B12 will be on par with the Pac12 had some teeth to it. I know the the Pac12 lags behind the other P5 conferences being on the west coast and getting late time slots but after reviewing that list USC, Oregon, Stanford, Washington, and UCLA still blow away the remnants of the B12. Any new TV deal may only be marginally better than the current AAC deal and that‘s only because the B12 has gutted them.

No, it's just pure delusion. A coping mechanism. The pulling power of the Pac 12 is pretty high despite their bad time slots. USC, UCLA, Standford, Oregon, Washington and the Arizona schools are good draws. The only schools on par with the remnants of the Big 12 are Oregon State and Washington State. It really is going to come down to the appetite of Fox to overpay for content and as they look down the list and think about what they can position in there for "BIG NOON" content I just don't think they are going to find much they want. Losing Texas and Oklahoma is huge. 7-2 Texas versus 6-3 WVU is suitable content for that slot. 7-2 UCF versus 6-3 Iowa State, on the other hand, is not very good content for that supposed premier game. But Fox really needs content for that noon slot to make it viable. So they could overpay.
 
For a minute I thought Bryce‘s argument that the B12 will be on par with the Pac12 had some teeth to it. I know the the Pac12 lags behind the other P5 conferences being on the west coast and getting late time slots but after reviewing that list USC, Oregon, Stanford, Washington, and UCLA still blow away the remnants of the B12. Any new TV deal may only be marginally better than the current AAC deal and that‘s only because the B12 has gutted them.
Bob Bowlsy has openly admitted that the Big 12 schools are going to face a 50% haircut. That was before they added the latest four. But that won't change a lot because they will have four more schools to divide the pie with.
 
Anyone thinking of Iowa State to the Big Ten needs to understand basic division. Let us assume just for round number purposes that we add a 15th team other than ISU and that team is revenue neutral. Let us assume that after adding that 15th team, and just using round numbers that the total media revenue is $450 million.

Take 450/15. The result is 30 (the real number is higher, but I'm using 30 for ease).

You add Iowa State. The numerator in the equation has to get to at least 480 because 480/16=30. Iowa State adds 0 to BTN revenues. They don't afford any further negotiating leverage. You're basically left with 450/16, which is $28.125 million. It would cost every member school close to $2 million to add Iowa State. That is why it ain't freaking happening.

The more I think about this, the more I think that unless the B1G can land UCLA and USC, there's not a compelling reason to go to 16. Maybe a case can be made for KU and Colorado or Arizona and Arizona State. But those are it and the latter two pairings are scraping the bottom of what the B1G should ever consider. Outside of those, nothing is going to happen to the Big Ten.

The move for the B1G was to get Texas and Oklahoma. We got scooped. Unless USC and UCLA join, there's nothing that makes sense from a football perspective.

Bump.
 

Latest posts

Top