Are you going to try to flip it again now that we know the game was actually on ESPN?

(02-24-2017 05:56 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  Let me flip it.

Who is paying the media rights for this CSU-Colorado game? This is critical. Home games are in P12N for Colorado and they get a distribution based on it. Anemic at the moment for sure. Also home games they get gate, which is considerable, runs in the millions, like all P5. There is no pay for them in a road game.

The neutral site games you see P5 schools play, have big media contracts. When Houston played Oklahoma in Arlington that was on ABC. The Kickoff classics (two ACC vs SEC match-ups this year) they are carried on ESPN or ABC. When Navy plays Notre Dame in neutral site years (I believe "even" years) CBS pays, and when ND host NBC pays. These payouts run into the millions for each school.

The Mile High game doesn't fall into that category. It's not one of the dozen national TV neutral site games. This is what teh compensation and lack of National TV tie-in for CSU play a huge role in this series coming to an end. What they have is the CBSSN deal the MWC has, and it can be picked up or not for that 3rd tier cable network (it's not on the majority of people's packages). The Army-Navy game alone is worth half the annual MWC payout. Those Kickoff games and the other big name places (e.g., Landover, P12 in Australia/China), include extra paychecks. Mile Hgh is simply a legislature mandate game, none of the network money invested, or paid to the schools.

The reality is CSU doesn't have the network sponsorship to pay Colorado. And they don't carry enough national interest for that game to be sold to ABC or NBC or CBS or ESPN to prime time air. This makes no sense for Colorado. They need to clear $2-3m more per game than this one does. (The game works for CSU, who don;t have that requirement)

Colorado has the P12 contracts (ABC, CBS, P12N). Colorado State lacks those. This is why the game is doomed.

I call BS on you here. Before the MWC started wth the cbs-sn contract all the CSU "home" games in the Rocky Mountain Showdown were on ESPN. The "home" games from Colorado were often shown on Fox Sports. If the MWC has ESPN as their media partner when the CBS-SN contract runs out, the CSU home games would go back to ESPN. The Rocky Mountain Showdown isn't coming to an end because of CSU's "media contract".
I call BS
Cheers!