(05-24-2010 11:04 AM)KAjunRaider Wrote:  They feel very threatened, both athletically and academically.

As they should.

(05-24-2010 10:56 AM)dchi72 Wrote:  There is a huge difference in being located in a TV market and actually having market share.

SMU, TCU and UNT may be in the DFW area, but Texas, Texas A&M, OU, etc command the market share.

A UNT fan has a better chance to see or hear a game in the DFW market. 100.7 FM covers a much larger broadcast area than 1310 am.

Of course...if you're competing head-to-head. But if it's a Thursday night (or Tues. or whatever) and SMU is playing UNT, I think DFW will be tuned in. If it's a Thursday and UCF is playing USF, the state of Florida would be interested.

So you don't have to own a market, you just can't compete heads-up against the marquee programs.

(05-24-2010 10:34 AM)Tallgrass Wrote:  If I had to guess today, my guess is that the only way CUSA and SBC are going to gain additional tv exposure is to play more Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday nite games. The easiest way for CUSA to do this...is to cooperate with SBC in an affilation like PAC/Big-12. Cooperation cuts down the travel time.

Some examples and I am going to start with CUSA:
SMU/UNT
Tulsa/UNT
Tulsa/ASU
Tulane/ULM/ULL
UAB/USA/Troy/MTU
Memphis/MTU/ASU

I could list many other examples, including within conference for both SBC and CUSA but the point is made.

The BCS conferences are moving into that Thursday nite slot. Last year, Okla State played Colorado on Thursday and this season TAMU @OSU is Thursday nite too. OSU plays ULL Thursday nite in addition.

A few seasons ago, I took the missus to NYC midweek where we stayed and then drove up to West Point to watch Tulsa play Army. While we were walking around Manhattan in the evening, all these restaurants now have sports bars. But, we walked by one restaurant and they put a tv in the front window inviting persons to come in.....and I think it was ULL vs UNT that was on. Here I was in the middle of Manhattan and I thought what superb publicity. I know everyone likes Saturday but we (CUSA &SBC) are just not going to get them. Playing Tues, Wed, & Sun comes at a price....but it also comes at superb exposure. Boise State has built its reputation because of all the off Saturday games it plays. It seems if SBC and CUSA cooperated and get some teams to agree to play off Saturday, something attractive could be put together.

My guess is some teams can play off Saturday games. Some schools cannot. Not every SBC or CUSA school should be forced to do this. But I think there would be enough SBC and CUSA schools willing to play a couple season games off saturday to put a viable tv Tues/Wed package together. FWIW, Tulsa will play ECU and USM off Saturday and gets a tv spot in return.

Here's the bigger thing. It wouldn't be popular, but geographic pairings for mid-week games could be very big.

ESPN pays an added fee for the home team in mid-week games to help offset lost ticket sales.

Now, mid-week is awful for ticket sales, but some match-ups can work.
Rice-Houston
SMU-UNT
ASU-Memphis
Troy-UAB
FIU-FAU
USM-USA
UL-Tulane
USM-Tulane
UL-Rice/Houston

All pairings close enough that visiting fans can make it in some numbers and offset some of the mid-week ticket loss (though still smaller than a Saturday game).

Just having a two-tier fee for midweek would help. Low fee for games on the list, higher fee for other games to encourage televising games that will do less damage to ticket sales.

(05-24-2010 11:02 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  I'm not sure the success of the Big East is good for us. A Big East that adds a couple C-USA teams probably hurts if C-USA chooses to backfill. A devasted Big East that guts C-USA probably good because the survivors need to affiliate elsewhere (and we pay some consultant big bucks to rename the Sun Belt). Likewise a gutted Big East that can no longer function is probably good for C-USA who could pick up a couple teams all sports or football only and carry on and not look our way.

This is where I get confused. For example, if the BEast loses 3 programs dropping them to 5 football members. Can they add 3 C-USA members (or MAC or whomever) and keep going without missing a beat? Is their AQ status automatically re-calculated upon the addition of the new programs? or do the new programs need to be in their new conference (the BEast) for a couple of year's for a new AQ number to be calculated?

Either way, if the BEast loses 2 or 3 top members, their AQ status is basically done as they are on the cusp as it is. Would the BEast continue as a non-AQ? That would be interesting to see.

(05-24-2010 11:12 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  

(05-24-2010 10:34 AM)Tallgrass Wrote:  If I had to guess today, my guess is that the only way CUSA and SBC are going to gain additional tv exposure is to play more Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday nite games. The easiest way for CUSA to do this...is to cooperate with SBC in an affilation like PAC/Big-12. Cooperation cuts down the travel time.

Some examples and I am going to start with CUSA:
SMU/UNT
Tulsa/UNT
Tulsa/ASU
Tulane/ULM/ULL
UAB/USA/Troy/MTU
Memphis/MTU/ASU

I could list many other examples, including within conference for both SBC and CUSA but the point is made.

The BCS conferences are moving into that Thursday nite slot. Last year, Okla State played Colorado on Thursday and this season TAMU @OSU is Thursday nite too. OSU plays ULL Thursday nite in addition.

A few seasons ago, I took the missus to NYC midweek where we stayed and then drove up to West Point to watch Tulsa play Army. While we were walking around Manhattan in the evening, all these restaurants now have sports bars. But, we walked by one restaurant and they put a tv in the front window inviting persons to come in.....and I think it was ULL vs UNT that was on. Here I was in the middle of Manhattan and I thought what superb publicity. I know everyone likes Saturday but we (CUSA &SBC) are just not going to get them. Playing Tues, Wed, & Sun comes at a price....but it also comes at superb exposure. Boise State has built its reputation because of all the off Saturday games it plays. It seems if SBC and CUSA cooperated and get some teams to agree to play off Saturday, something attractive could be put together.

My guess is some teams can play off Saturday games. Some schools cannot. Not every SBC or CUSA school should be forced to do this. But I think there would be enough SBC and CUSA schools willing to play a couple season games off saturday to put a viable tv Tues/Wed package together. FWIW, Tulsa will play ECU and USM off Saturday and gets a tv spot in return.

Here's the bigger thing. It wouldn't be popular, but geographic pairings for mid-week games could be very big.

ESPN pays an added fee for the home team in mid-week games to help offset lost ticket sales.

Now, mid-week is awful for ticket sales, but some match-ups can work.
Rice-Houston
SMU-UNT
ASU-Memphis
Troy-UAB
FIU-FAU
USM-USA
UL-Tulane
USM-Tulane
UL-Rice/Houston

All pairings close enough that visiting fans can make it in some numbers and offset some of the mid-week ticket loss (though still smaller than a Saturday game).

Just having a two-tier fee for midweek would help. Low fee for games on the list, higher fee for other games to encourage televising games that will do less damage to ticket sales.

Some schools can play a weeknite game and be okay. Others cannot. For exmaple, Tulsa hosted USM on a Tuesday nite for ESPN and attendance dropped only 1,000 from the season's average. My guess is many TU fans chose not to attend and some of this loss was made up by OU and OSU fans coming to the game whereas they wouldn't if USM/TU was on Saturday because they would have attended OU or OSU football game.

Marshall draws a lot of fans from long distances and so Marshall must play on Saturday.

Going back to Tulsa, if it is a late season game on week nite and it is cold and/or rainy, attendance will take a big big hit. There were almost no fans in the stadium for a ECU @TU weeknite game because it was late in the season, it was cold, and it rained all day long....it stopped for the game but the damage was done. So there was TU playing on a weeknite game in front of an totally empty stadium.

When I say I want to BE to succeed, by that I mean I don't want them to get raided and lose a team or teams. I don't mean I want BE to succeed by raiding CUSA.

(05-24-2010 08:36 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  Everyone ranked 65 or better in market except for ECU, USM, and UTEP.

UTEP is a unique case because of El Paso's geographic location on the Mexican border, across the river from Juarez.

If El Paso got credit for as much southern geography as most DMAs, they'd be a top 30 market. But Juarez doesn't count, because it's in another country.