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Left Behind: A Quick Dose Of Post Big 12 Reality


LTtxfan

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The final weekend TV ratings:

https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/college-football-tv-ratings/
 
Honestly- the B12 has properties, and is figuring out how to leverage them. OSU@CU: not bad at all. BYU game? They are like a Mormon Notre Dame and always have solid ratings. 
 
The one that jumps out at me- KSU at ISU (Farmageddon) for 2 M viewers. Wow. If you are old enough to remember 30 years ago, that would have seemed incredible. Yormark, job number one is figuring out how to make that game happen every year. 
 
The drag on the B12, frankly, is the Texas schools. Baylor hosting KU for the Bears’ 8th win? 412K. Eight win TT hosting WVU? 294K. Eight win TCU at Cincy? Streaming
 
It’s not just the B12 Texas schools. Cal at SMU, with the Ponies driving for the CFP: 228K (actually, this was how it was in the early 80s, with the Pony Express. No one watched). 
 
The landscape is shaking out to be this: the Texas FBS programs left behind can help with recruiting. They’re not really moving the needle with viewers. 

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16 hours ago, Drew said:

They're either gonna have to do away with conference title games(doubtful) 

OR

Make them Home games for the highest ranked or first placed team.

I think this would be a great move also in terms of making teams excited to play them.  That extra game in town is a huge deal to the economies of college towns, and a cool reward for first place.  Atmosphere would be better nearly without exception too.

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1 hour ago, statsman said:

The final weekend TV ratings:

https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/college-football-tv-ratings/
 
Honestly- the B12 has properties, and is figuring out how to leverage them. OSU@CU: not bad at all. BYU game? They are like a Mormon Notre Dame and always have solid ratings. 
 
The one that jumps out at me- KSU at ISU (Farmageddon) for 2 M viewers. Wow. If you are old enough to remember 30 years ago, that would have seemed incredible. Yormark, job number one is figuring out how to make that game happen every year. 
 
The drag on the B12, frankly, is the Texas schools. Baylor hosting KU for the Bears’ 8th win? 412K. Eight win TT hosting WVU? 294K. Eight win TCU at Cincy? Streaming
 
It’s not just the B12 Texas schools. Cal at SMU, with the Ponies driving for the CFP: 228K (actually, this was how it was in the early 80s, with the Pony Express. No one watched). 
 
The landscape is shaking out to be this: the Texas FBS programs left behind can help with recruiting. They’re not really moving the needle with viewers. 

Yormark and the member schools know what they are, what they have to offer, and have positioned themselves accordingly.  It's an entertaining league that lacks high end brand power but has about 12-14 fairly invested decent sized fanbases that will tune in to most games.  It also has very few truly awful teams, so the average league game is more competitive than the average SEC, Big 10, or ACC game which all have some blue blood vs some cream puff every weekend.

With the Big 10 heavily partnering with NBC and CBS in addition to Fox, it opened a lot of windows in the Fox family, and the two parties have found what seems to be a sustainable price for those slots.  I'm hoping the Turner collab works well and the Big 12 can transition away from ESPN entirely eventually (assuming other entities get in on the playoffs).  They're openly at war with the league at this point.

Edited by Al_4_ISU
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6 minutes ago, Al_4_ISU said:

Big 12 can transition away from ESPN entirely eventually

I doubt that would ever happen.  ESPN needs Big 12 basketball.  The exposure the Big 12 gets from Big Monday for their highly ranked programs is huge. 

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8 minutes ago, Js1 said:

I doubt that would ever happen.  ESPN needs Big 12 basketball.  The exposure the Big 12 gets from Big Monday for their highly ranked programs is huge. 

You're probably right.  This should be a mutually beneficial thing, but ESPN is almost gleeful in their attempts to sabotage Big 12 football, and they've been doing it for decades.  I realize that if ESPN has all the playoff windows, it would be a huge risk for the Big 12 as well.  I'm just really baffled at ESPN's coverage at this point.  I don't expect SEC treatment, but shit, ACC treatment would work.

If Turner really wants to plant their flag in college hoops, taking Big Monday to TBS might be a legitimate option.

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11 minutes ago, Js1 said:

I doubt that would ever happen.  ESPN needs Big 12 basketball.  The exposure the Big 12 gets from Big Monday for their highly ranked programs is huge. 

I’d say yes to this but them putting a top 10 matchup featuring a big 12 team on ESPN+ last night and instead choosing to air an unranked Florida/UVA game instead that was a 20 point blowout says if you aren’t Kansas or Arizona, we don’t care.

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Just now, Pancho said:

I’d say yes to this but them putting a top 10 matchup featuring a big 12 team on ESPN+ last night and instead choosing to air an unranked Florida/UVA game instead that was a 20 point blowout says if you aren’t Kansas or Arizona, we don’t care.

I don't understand why the Big 12/Big East challenge isn't exclusively in Fox windows, as Fox has a partnership with both leagues.  ESPN doesn't have any Big East deal, so of course they're going to push it behind an SEC/ACC game where both leagues involved are partners.

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1 minute ago, Al_4_ISU said:

I don't understand why the Big 12/Big East challenge isn't exclusively in Fox windows, as Fox has a partnership with both leagues.  ESPN doesn't have any Big East deal, so of course they're going to push it behind an SEC/ACC game where both leagues involved are partners.

Yep. Big 12 home games get pushed to ESPN and affiliates and Big East goes to Fox and affiliates. It was weird putting them H2H like that 

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1 minute ago, Js1 said:

Yep. Big 12 home games get pushed to ESPN and affiliates and Big East goes to Fox and affiliates. It was weird putting them H2H like that 

Fox is taking a fair amount of Big 12 hoops inventory next year.  I think they're planning on Saturday big Fox games too.

I would expect to see the Big 12/Big East challenge be much more Fox forward next year.  This year was an awkward spot.

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2 minutes ago, Al_4_ISU said:

Fox is taking a fair amount of Big 12 hoops inventory next year.  I think they're planning on Saturday big Fox games too.

I would expect to see the Big 12/Big East challenge be much more Fox forward next year.  This year was an awkward spot.

That’s good for y’all. I just wonder why they had to put the Big12/East battle up against the SEC/Acc one and not just pushed one to next week and have 2 weeks of the conference challenges. 

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2 hours ago, Al_4_ISU said:

I think this would be a great move also in terms of making teams excited to play them.  That extra game in town is a huge deal to the economies of college towns, and a cool reward for first place.  Atmosphere would be better nearly without exception too.

yeah and when these conference title games are very low attended and the fans are very luke warm to it at that, it'll only make sense to change course IF you're going to keep that game.  I think it'll be dumb to keep it and not move it.

You simply can't expect fans of a team to get tickets and accommodations for a Conference Title game, a Bowl/road game(if you get the bye or have to travel the first round), the quarterfinals, the semi finals, and the Title  Game. 

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52 minutes ago, Js1 said:

Mike Gundy - THAT’S GARBAGE

 

If we lose on Saturday I would MUCH rather play CU in the Alamo Bowl then have another fucking G5 road game for a bowl.  It's an opponent I give a shit about, and frankly, ISU's secondary vs Sanders/Hunter has the potential to be an epic match up.

It's actually far more in the spirit of what a bowl game should be (and why I believe there's still value in keeping some of them) than any other match up we'd get.

Edited by Al_4_ISU
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1 hour ago, Al_4_ISU said:

If we lose on Saturday I would MUCH rather play CU in the Alamo Bowl then have another fucking G5 road game for a bowl.  It's an opponent I give a shit about, and frankly, ISU's secondary vs Sanders/Hunter has the potential to be an epic match up.

It's actually far more in the spirit of what a bowl game should be (and why I believe there's still value in keeping some of them) than any other match up we'd get.

I don’t think Sanders and Hunter will be playing

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On 12/3/2024 at 12:01 PM, royiv said:

The expanded playoffs are going to ultimately kill demand for the conference championship games. People only have so much money that they can drop on last minute travel during the holidays if they think their team is a contender to make a deep run.

From what I understand, it's the opposite.

The television networks don't give a shit about how many people are in the stands.  We have a couple of decades' worth of evidence with various bowl games to demonstrate that.  If "butts in seats" were a metric of the financial viability of a college-football game, then things like the Hawai'i Bowl and the Bermuda Bowl would've been out the window a long time ago.  Shit--the Hawai'i Bowl is being played this year in a stadium with a 17,000-seat capacity, and it'd be a miracle if that game sold out.

The ratings on conference championship games indicates that, if anything, they'll expand.  The Big 12 instituted a superfluous championship game back when it was a 10-team league precisely because its television partner demanded it.  Has anything changed?

Someone--maybe Joel Klatt, but I can't remember--laid down a purportedly highly informed opinion that Championship Saturday was going to expand in the next two years alongside an expansion in the CFP.  According to whoever, the CFP is going to expand to 14 teams with the SEC and B1G being guaranteed four spots and their champions guaranteed the two byes.  Those four spots will be allocated to the winner and loser of the conference championship game and then to the winners of two play-in games.  

So if that were the deal this year, you'd have a Saturday football schedule for the SEC that looked like this:

11:00 AM: Play-In Game (6) Alabama @ (3) Tennessee

3:00 PM: Play-In Game (5) Ole Miss @ (4) South Carolina

7:00 PM: Championship Game (2) Georgia @ (1) Texas (in Atlanta)

I don't know how likely that is to happen.  But understanding the networks' insatiable appetite for college-football content, I'd say it's significantly more likely to happen than getting rid of conference championship games altogether.

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Not gonna lie, I hate the idea of a number of bids for each conference being decided before the season but it might be worth it for championship weekends like that. Only immediately obvious downside is that then there's almost no way the SEC goes to 9 conference games. 

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31 minutes ago, Ghost of LL said:

From what I understand, it's the opposite.

The television networks don't give a shit about how many people are in the stands.  We have a couple of decades' worth of evidence with various bowl games to demonstrate that.  If "butts in seats" were a metric of the financial viability of a college-football game, then things like the Hawai'i Bowl and the Bermuda Bowl would've been out the window a long time ago.  Shit--the Hawai'i Bowl is being played this year in a stadium with a 17,000-seat capacity, and it'd be a miracle if that game sold out.

The ratings on conference championship games indicates that, if anything, they'll expand.  The Big 12 instituted a superfluous championship game back when it was a 10-team league precisely because its television partner demanded it.  Has anything changed?

Someone--maybe Joel Klatt, but I can't remember--laid down a purportedly highly informed opinion that Championship Saturday was going to expand in the next two years alongside an expansion in the CFP.  According to whoever, the CFP is going to expand to 14 teams with the SEC and B1G being guaranteed four spots and their champions guaranteed the two byes.  Those four spots will be allocated to the winner and loser of the conference championship game and then to the winners of two play-in games.  

So if that were the deal this year, you'd have a Saturday football schedule for the SEC that looked like this:

11:00 AM: Play-In Game (6) Alabama @ (3) Tennessee

3:00 PM: Play-In Game (5) Ole Miss @ (4) South Carolina

7:00 PM: Championship Game (2) Georgia @ (1) Texas (in Atlanta)

I don't know how likely that is to happen.  But understanding the networks' insatiable appetite for college-football content, I'd say it's significantly more likely to happen than getting rid of conference championship games altogether.

I wasn’t saying that it would kill the actual games. I’m saying it’s going to kill demand for tickets as demonstrated by lack of ticket demand for all of the major conference championship games this season. 

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52 minutes ago, Ghost of LL said:

From what I understand, it's the opposite.

The television networks don't give a shit about how many people are in the stands.  We have a couple of decades' worth of evidence with various bowl games to demonstrate that.  If "butts in seats" were a metric of the financial viability of a college-football game, then things like the Hawai'i Bowl and the Bermuda Bowl would've been out the window a long time ago.  Shit--the Hawai'i Bowl is being played this year in a stadium with a 17,000-seat capacity, and it'd be a miracle if that game sold out.

The ratings on conference championship games indicates that, if anything, they'll expand.  The Big 12 instituted a superfluous championship game back when it was a 10-team league precisely because its television partner demanded it.  Has anything changed?

Someone--maybe Joel Klatt, but I can't remember--laid down a purportedly highly informed opinion that Championship Saturday was going to expand in the next two years alongside an expansion in the CFP.  According to whoever, the CFP is going to expand to 14 teams with the SEC and B1G being guaranteed four spots and their champions guaranteed the two byes.  Those four spots will be allocated to the winner and loser of the conference championship game and then to the winners of two play-in games.  

So if that were the deal this year, you'd have a Saturday football schedule for the SEC that looked like this:

11:00 AM: Play-In Game (6) Alabama @ (3) Tennessee

3:00 PM: Play-In Game (5) Ole Miss @ (4) South Carolina

7:00 PM: Championship Game (2) Georgia @ (1) Texas (in Atlanta)

I don't know how likely that is to happen.  But understanding the networks' insatiable appetite for college-football content, I'd say it's significantly more likely to happen than getting rid of conference championship games altogether.

I think this is spot on.  The ACC and Big 12 will likely get 2 bids, and have a scaled back version of what the SEC and Big 10 do in terms of playing into those bids as well.  Mini-playoffs inside of conferences.

It's probably going to make for a pretty compelling product.

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an intra-conference playoff will actually make a ton of sense when the ACC finally implodes and the Big 12 adds the Louisville, VT, GT and Pitt type programs that are left behind.  Adding east coast schools would enable regional scheduling but keep a few weeks for NFL style cross country match ups to please the networks and maximize revenue.

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1 hour ago, Huckleberry said:

Not gonna lie, I hate the idea of a number of bids for each conference being decided before the season but it might be worth it for championship weekends like that. 

I mean, the idea of a fixed number of bids for each league seems to work ok for the UEFA Champions League.

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