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Pelado

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Everything posted by Pelado

  1. The timing doesn't seem suspicious to me at all. The discussions between the B1G and USC/UCLA probably went months if not years before settling on an agreement. And - if I remember correctly - the timing of the announcement was just about the last day they could give notice to the PAC and still leave when they wanted. Washington, Oregon, et. al. were presumably not privy to any of those discussions between the B1G and USC/UCLA and were thus very surprised when everything went down. Assuming the B1G is interested, it could still take several months for the parties to negotiate a deal - especially if there aren't any hard deadlines before which an announcement has to be made. The longer the PAC goes without an updated media deal (and, more importantly, grant of rights), the more likely I think it is that one or more of the remaining members is engaging in negotiations to switch to a different conference.
  2. I don't doubt that Neuheisel has good sources within the Washington athletic administration. So it's certainly plausible that what he's saying - Washington and Oregon to the B1G as an almost-done deal - is legit. That said, there are at least a few other possibilities: Rick's sources are not really in-the-know Rick's sources know what they're talking about but Rick is exaggerating what he's heard Rick's sources are feeding him not-fully-accurate information in an attempt at using him to try to further negotiations in some way (maybe to convince fellow PAC members to succumb to unequal revenue sharing)
  3. I think the Big 10's recent media deal and how they're approaching the CFP show a strong path - involve multiple broadcast partners in both the regular season and the playoffs. You want as many partners as possible promoting your games. When ESPN has exclusive broadcast rights, there's little incentive for FOX, CBS, NBC, etc. to care. ESPN has to care because their whole business model is around sports.
  4. If BYU hadn't already signed on the dotted line to join the Big 12, then I'm sure they would carefully consider an offer to join the PAC (which would still be somewhat unlikely to ever be extended). But BYU's not about to spurn the Big 12 for a PAC that might continue to lose schools to the B1G.
  5. Please note that my post stated "in the long term". Each of those teams has had some pretty high highs, but it's tough to sustain year after year. The lower-compensated teams that have success often have coaches depart for bigger contracts at P5 schools. Also, the more a team earns from its media contracts, the easier it is to build new facilities or renovate older facilities. And new, shiny stuff tends to attract the better talent out of high school.
  6. From a perspective of getting into the expanded playoff, that may be true. But the teams in the PAC are still likely to make a lot more money than the teams in the MW, so any MW team who gets an invite should accept it. It's tough to compete in the long term with a systemic disadvantage in revenue.
  7. Correct, the B1G and the SEC can take pretty much whoever they want (except maybe Notre Dame). To your other point, I never claimed to be privy to discussions among the conference decision makers. Apparently, I'm a lot more interested than you are in the intricacies of TV ratings and how they are evaluated by the TV networks offering the contracts. Speaking of which, a really good follow on Twitter is Bob Thompson, the retired former president of Fox Sports Networks and Fox Sports International. And potentially of interest to the MW posters here:
  8. You're right that the B1G or SEC could take anyone they want from the B12 (or PAC). The B12's stability is somewhat counterintuitive. It's stable because it's unlikely that the B1G or SEC are going to try to take anyone else. The threat of the B1G taking the most attractive PAC teams is why that league is threatened right now. Of course you post that we need to close it up here just before I post a long response to @utenation
  9. I haven't verified his data (and don't plan to) because that would be a shit-ton of work with little to no benefit. So I'm not vouching for his data, but he's not exactly making huge claims. He doesn't claim much if any disagreement with the data that Wilner is using, he just doesn't think it includes all the appropriate context: As far as why he went back to 2012 instead of just the last five years, I think that's just how far he's gone back with the database he's compiled of ratings by network and broadcast window. This graphic from his response to Wilner shows the average rating for games in each broadcast window, how many games were played, and how many games were on competing networks simultaneously: These numbers make sense. The network and broadcast window play a big part in what the ratings will be. Generally speaking, games on ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC garner better ratings than games on ESPN. Games on ESPN tend to perform better than games on ESPN2 and FS1. Games on ESPN2 and FS1 tend to perform better than games on ESPNU. Games on ESPNU perform better than games on CBS Sports, Pac-12 Networks, etc. As such, the more games a team or conference has on broadcast networks and ESPN, the more likely they are to get ratings over 1.0 or 2.0. Bradshaw suggests in his response to Wilner that the new Big 12 contract will still have broadcast windows on higher rated networks (though likely fewer than if they still had Oklahoma/Texas in conference). Let's say they make another deal with ESPN and FOX. All of those ABC, FOX, and ESPN spots will go to new Big 12 teams (unlike the last decade in which Oklahoma and Texas played in the majority of those games). As such, the average rating for the remaining Big 12 teams is likely to increase over what they have been in the past for those teams. In a different post/article, he shows the ratings for regular season conference games for each conference from 2014-2021 (sans 2020). He said he picked that time frame because there weren't many conference membership changes during that time (just Navy joining the AAC and UConn leaving the AAC). These numbers include USC/UCLA for the Pac 12 and also include Oklahoma/Texas for the Big 12. And here's for Thursday and Friday games: He also includes a chart that excludes USC/UCLA from the PAC and Oklahoma/Texas from the Big 12. It also, curiously, excludes Florida State and Clemson from the ACC. He says that's because there's been talk of the ACC being raided, but it's probably just to make the Big 12 look better compared to the ACC. The AAC numbers have not been adjusted to reflect the loss of Cincinnati, Houston, and UCF. And here's for Thursday and Friday games: In broadcast windows they have in common, the remaining PAC and remaining Big 12 teams get very comparable ratings. The PAC has advantages in the late games (as one might expect) that haven't typically faced much competition, but will likely face more competition going forward with B1G games and BYU conference games against the Big 12. I still expect the PAC to continue to have the ratings advantage in the late games, just not as pronounced. Like the PAC's late night advantage when the Big 12 hasn't typically been playing, the Big 12 has a big ratings advantage in the noon ET window when the PAC isn't playing any conference games (and probably still won't). So, to reiterate, his beef with Wilner is: In the end, he comes down to this as the differentiation between the Big 12 and PAC ratings:
  10. Here's a link to Sports Media Watch: https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/college-football-tv-ratings/ It's not exactly difficult to track down the raw data.
  11. I think he claims to have aggregated the numbers from SMW over the last several years, categorized with the broadcast window, network, etc. He's claiming to have done the legwork you were saying we needed. If somebody cared enough (I don't) they could double-check his numbers. He could be bitter, but I think it's more annoyed with Mandel using simple averages and Wilner ignoring the impact of network, broadcast window, and competition in time spots. Here's his takeaway as it relates to Big 12 vs PAC (which I also quoted in my last post):
  12. Don't know how accurate his numbers are. He says he's pulling the data from Sports Media Watch. I'm not going to double-check his work. He is writing for a Baylor fan site, so take that for what it's worth. And sorry, the link above was that guy's response to an article in The Athletic by Stewart Mandel. Here's his response to Wilner's article: https://sicem365.com/s/12830/the-value-of-tv-windows-responding-to-another-big-12-pac-12-comparison
  13. As for looking at data in the same time window for both conferences, that's what this guy tried to do in response to Wilner's (and Mandel's) article: https://sicem365.com/s/12788/stop-the-propaganda-the-truth-about-big-12-vs-pac-12-tv-numbers And if you thought my post was a book, get ready for the encyclopedia linked above. Here's one of the graphics he includes: Here's how BYU performed "after dark" compared to the PAC:
  14. I think he had several points, some of which have more support than others. His main theme seemed to be that the PAC is likely to get a more valuable contract than the Big 12. That may prove true, but even if it does, I think it will still be pretty comparable on a per-team basis.
  15. There are several ways, but I'll only address a few. The PAC ratings advantage comes largely from their games being unopposed on better-rated networks during the late broadcast window. Going forward, though, the PAC will not have exclusive access to the late broadcast window. The Big 10 will be able to put matchups there when USC and/or UCLA host home games. The Big 12 can also place games in the 10 or 10:30 ET window with BYU home games which are likely to be of greater interest than the games BYU was hosting during independence. So their exclusivity on that broadcast window will likely be lessened. Wilner makes a good point that Oklahoma and Texas have been bigger for ratings than USC and UCLA have been. Oklahoma has been in the mix for conference championships every year for...a really long time. Texas hasn't but still draws eyeballs. They're a big loss for the Big 12. USC has been a quiet giant for the last several years. They are a big ratings draw when they're great, but they haven't been that great for a while. UCLA is not that big of a deal in football. Since neither UCLA nor USC have been fixtures in the conference title race (nor the national conversation), their ratings haven't been that great the last few years relative to Oklahoma/Texas. But one of the things that drives ratings (not necessarily the most important) is how well a team is doing in the current season. An undefeated Utah is likely to garner more viewership than a .500 Utah. A Utah that is in play for a conference title will get better viewership than one that has been statistically eliminated from the conference title conversation. That has been the reality in the PAC the last several years since USC/UCLA have been mediocre. Meanwhile, in the Big 12, Oklahoma has been conference champs 6 of the last 7 seasons. Once they're gone, somebody else will be in the mix for the conference championship, which will provide a boost to their ratings (though certainly not to Oklahoma-rating levels). It's funny to me that Wilner fixates on the time zones as an advantage to the PAC: In recent years, the PAC has been considering early morning kickoffs (9 am?) so that they can compete in those broadcast windows that Wilner claims are a problem for the Big 12. The Big 12 has been achieving ratings similar to the PAC while competing head-to-head with the SEC and the Big Ten. The problem with the PAC being the only game on TV in the late-night broadcast window (which they won't anymore) for those 75 million people in the Mountain and Pacific time zones is that those 75 million don't care about football nearly as much as the 250+ million people in the country who live to the east. The PAC has schools in DMAs that are much bigger than the Big 12 schools, but the percentage of people who care about college football in those DMAs is much smaller than the percentage of people who care about college football in most Big 12 markets. I'm sure I'm forgetting other ways in which Wilner's analysis is incomplete, but that's probably good enough for now.
  16. Wilner raises some good points, but his analysis is, at best, incomplete. I don't expect any more movement from the PAC except for possibly adding SDSU and maybe one other team. That leads to them getting a contract renewal that is at least comparable to what the New Big12 gets on a per-team basis.
  17. Surprising that the Jets haven't traded Wilson for Huntley yet.
  18. You don't remember 2020? I guess your age is catching up to you moreso than I thought. 2020 was the season that Utah was so scared to play BYU that they lobbied the Pac12 to cancel the season. As to Wilson's NFL career, it's going alright in spite of a recent injury.
  19. And still, BYU football is undefeated against Utah for the last 3 years.
  20. Stop living in the past, @utenation - it's been over 3 years since Utah's last football win against BYU.
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