(03-13-2021 03:46 AM)arkstfan Wrote: The “problem” CUSA had was two-fold.
One was chasing a dead television model. The relevance of markets was going away and with the rapid rise of cord cutting it is no longer how many will tune to channel on their cable lineup and even the great carriage fee drive of how many can you force to pay higher in-state rates for a cable channel.
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The bigger problem that hit CUSA was internal strife. They went into their expansion discussion with UNT considered a lock and FIU might get invited. ECU frustrated with the lack of regional members led the fight for more eastern members then of course they were soon gone. Moves were made to address needs of departing members
Eh, I'm not totally disagreeing with you, but would add some caveats:
1) TV deals were always about eyeballs, not markets. Just a look at the SEC, which has huge eyeball-drawing brand names located in small cities, would tell us that, not only now but in 2012 as well.
2) That said, the "market model" that was the fad in the early 2010s didn't fail for everyone. The B1G added Rutgers and Maryland almost entirely for their cable markets, and their revenues have skyrocketed since even above the very high level they were at when they joined. It may be coincidence, but even if we don't credit Maryland Rutgers for those erupting revenues, they certainly haven't been a roadblock to them either.
Also, the AAC was reconstituted along a "market model" at basically the same time that CUSA was doing the same, and the AAC has done about as well revenue-wise as we could expect it do and just signed a deal that tripled its media money.
3) As for new members skewing east to satisfy a departing ECU, let's look at who CUSA added after the AAC raids in 2012-2013:
FAU
UNCC
LA-Tech
MTSU
UNT
Old Dominion
UTSA
WKU
It's such a mess that I probably missed someone, but still, looking at that roster, I see only Old Dominion and UNCC as fitting that description. Arguably MTSU as well. Have they been good additions to the conference? No, not really.
But then again, have the other additions been that much better? Did UNT and LA-Tech and UTSA and WKU move the needle in terms of market value?
I don't think so. The raw reality is that CUSA was a third-order conference raiding fourth-order conferences as backfill. The P5 (order 1) raided the Big East/AAC (order 2) which raided CUSA (order 3) which then plucked schools from the Sun Belt and others (order 4). You're scraping the bottom of the value-barrel there so it was unrealistic to expect media value to do anything but sink or stagnate. Any school that could attract any "eyeballs" worth mentioning wasn't going to be joining a rebuilding CUSA.
There just weren't any good options, IMO. So in fairness to the current CUSA commissioner, I don't think anything short of divine intervention could have gotten them a better media deal. Now, performance on the field, which has also sucked, is another matter. That is the domain of the schools.