quo vadis
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RE: Killing the BIG XII
(01-17-2018 10:50 AM)bullet Wrote: (01-17-2018 07:48 AM)quo vadis Wrote: (01-16-2018 05:21 PM)JRsec Wrote: (01-16-2018 04:07 PM)quo vadis Wrote: (01-16-2018 12:24 PM)SMUmustangs Wrote: WOULD EVERY POSTER ON THIS BOARD PLEASE READ THESE TWO POSTS BY JRsec.
They explain the realignment situation EXACTLY as it is.
I disagree somewhat with JR's characterization of the market. Thirty-five years ago, college football was not a "quaint sleepy regional thing" that only people on the campuses cared about, and which the 1984 supreme court case changed. I remember, and in 1983, Nebraska vs Miami was every bit as "big" in a cultural-sports impact sense as was Georgia vs Alabama this year, and in 1973, Ohio State vs Michigan was as well. I was living in Washington DC then, and believe me, those games were huge where i was back then, even though I was watching from far, far away from those schools.
IOW's, for the entirety of my life, major college football has been a MAJOR sport, up there with the other major sports. The 1984 court cases changed how college football was televised and who would benefit from it, but it did not change the fundamental popularity of the sport.
Another problem with the "1984 court genie" argument is that the same thing has happened in all major sports. E.g., in 1985, the average NFL franchise was worth $75 million. Today, it is $2.34 Billion, even though the NFL was every bit as important and "big" in a cultural landscape sense in 1985 as it is today. And no, inflation isn't a big factor here - that 1985 figure is $175m in today's dollars, still way, way less than today.
Even in so called "dying" sports, money is far bigger. E.g., in the USA, tennis is arguably not as popular in 2017, and it doesn't have the same cultural profile as it did in 1979, when Johnny Mac and Bjorn Borg and Jimmy Connors ruled the roost. But in 1979, the US Open champion got a check for $39,000 ($120,000 in today's dollars). Last year, the champ got $3.7 million. MLB franchise average worth was $100m in 1992, $1.6 Billion last year.
So obviously, other factors than just the 1984 supreme court case are driving the big money trains in college football.
That's okay Quo. I don't disagree that there was big time football being played in 1983. But the way championships were decided through the polls, the way the Heisman was not yet a TV event for ESPN to twist into some grotesque weekly evaluation of did so and so's team win the big game, the way ticket prices and donations were compared to today, when whole families could afford a game. Back then it was a sleepy little conference controlled and run event with each conference having their own unique events and pageantry. So by comparison to today when IMG has taken over the sound system in your stadium and your fans are given the exact same bumper music and stadium anthems as every other venue in America, it was quaint, sleepy, and quite beautiful.
What ESPN has done was not possible without OU/UGA vs the NCAA. It was the pivotal moment that changed our world, even though at the time how much change was to come was not evident.
So take my descriptors with the overstatement I intended. I wanted to draw a stark comparison between what college football was then, and what it has become today. You know in the days before any of us ever heard about market footprints. And I might add in the days when a conference might have added a neighbor without relying solely on a financial evaluation. You know in the days "before the dark times, before the Empire".
IMO, technological change has to be factored in here. Yes, the 1984 court case was definitely pivotal in how we receive college games and in terms of eventually greatly empowering the conference offices as engines of wealth creation for their members. But, the NCAA restriction of output was at least partially do-able because of the limited viewing options people had back then in terms of technology. Circa 1982, most middle-class families had one big clunky TV sitting in the living room, like a piece of furniture, and it was expensive - in 1982, a typical 19" (large for the time) color TV cost about the equivalent of $1200 today. And, they didn't have cable TV yet. So effectively, there were about 5-6 channels you could get on one device, for the whole family. Maybe the parents had a small B/W TV back in the bedroom as well.
I wonder if the NCAA stranglehold, particularly as it restricted the number of games on TV, could have survived these technological changes for much longer even if the court had ruled in their favor? In 1980, the end-user was used to being spoon-fed the limited offerings because their home technology couldn't handle much more than that anyway. But as time went by and TV prices fell dramatically and TVs themselves became much more efficient in terms of space consumption, and cable channels proliferated, consumers would start questioning why they have all this home sports capacity now but are still getting basically a "game of the week". Wouldn't be the first time market forces overwhelmed a cartel/monopoly agreement.
Personally, I love the way things are now in terms of TV and am a big fan of ESPN. Thanks to ESPN, on fall Saturdays I can get up at 8 AM, put "game day" on as i get work done, then plop down and watch good college football from 11 AM to midnight, 13 straight hours of it, often with multiple games on at the same time. Then during the holidays, there are almost 3 weeks of continuous bowl games on.
I'd never want to go back to the way it was 30 - 40 years ago.
By 1980, the number of independent channels was proliferating. Even without cable, there was a lot of space for more than one game a week. I remember a new channel being added in Houston. It was a big deal even there. For years it had been 2, 11 and 13, the 3 network channels, 8 PBS and 2 indies 26 and 39. But then 20 was added (and their antenna collapsed, killing a couple people and knocking them off the air shortly after they started). And then it proliferated, a low power channel 5 and a whole slew of others now, not even counting the multi-channels allowed by digital. Not sure how many Houston has now, but Atlanta has at least 28, 107 with sub-channels. And with an indoor antenna, I can get 19 of those and 73 with sub-channels.
Of course cable and the internet gives you an almost infinite amount. But over the air was already proliferating.
The early 1980s were definitely a time of new TV technologies. I recall in Washington DC, in 1981 a nascent satellite service, i think it was called Super Television started broadcasting just locally, in the eastern DC area. You could get about 40 channels for $20 a month OTA, on UHF (you had to have their box to unscramble the signal), and in areas that weren't yet wired for cable.
And, around that time, Ted Turner was making a big name for himself with his TBS "Superstation", and people in sports were noticing that the Atlanta Braves were gaining a kind of national following thanks to game distribution nationwide on his channels.
All of this (including the other stuff we've mentioned) was happening as a run-up to the 1982 decisions by Oklahoma and Georgia to buck the NCAA's monopoly. I don't doubt that the growing satellite and cable technologies were an impetus for these schools to do so, they realized that new tech could open up doors to more TV broadcasts and exposure, if the NCAA lock could be broken.
(This post was last modified: 01-17-2018 11:01 AM by quo vadis.)
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