Bruininthebay

Stanford in particular doesn't have much of a fan base. The undergraduate enrollment is small and the school is elite so it doesn't elicit much casual fan support in the Bay area. Stanford is pursuing the same casual fans that SJSU is in the Bay area : fans who don't want to root for one of two NFL teams or the Cal Bears - though the Cardinal are often nationally ranked. Historically Stanford could fill a 89,000 seat stadium but even after renovation to the present 50,424 capacity it's rare for Stanford Stadium to be packed without a large number of visiting fans. The Big Game is always heavily weighted to Cal fans because the enrollment at UC Berkeley is so much larger. USC, Cal and probably UCLA have as many fans as Stanford in the Bay area. SJSU once was better than Cal on the field but had fewer fans - Stanford was definitely the worst football team. Ever since Bill Walsh went to Stanford after coaching the 49ers, SJSU became the fifth most important football team in the Bay area and nothing has really changed since. I'd like to think that a good UCLA football team would be a huge deal but the fact is that when USC football is really good, the level of casual fan support in LA is on another level. UCLA basketball is a big deal but its not same as football from a casual fan perspective. The Pete Carroll era USC sideline was a thing to behold.

The question is what happens if another developer is willing to pay a lot more money for the Coliseum site? The outstanding debt (mostly due to the Raiders 'mount Davis' renovation that ruined the Coliseum for baseball) is the issue causing a lawsuit to be filed by the City of Oakland filed against the Raiders. The debt is attached to the Coliseum property and the A's have no control over what happens in that litigation. It's a mess.

The specific place is the Howard Terminal which is currently part of the working port. I'd say it's about five to six blocks northwest of Broadway, near the intersection of Market Street and Embarcadero West in Oakland.

I don't know if what the Oakland A's are trying to do is actually build a ballpark in Oakland or just ask for the moon. Their current plan is for the A's to buy the current Coliseum site and develop it as housing AND build their new ballpark to the Northwest of Jack London Square waterfront district. Everyone presumed the Athletics would pick one location or the other, but instead the A's decided they want BOTH locations. The sheer number of moving parts in acquiring and developing two separate properties creates many, many ways for the entire deal to fall apart.

I agree @Del Scorcho in terms of on the field performance. However, I think that geography and time slots have a lot more to do with why certain college football teams get compensated more than others do. The Big Ten and SEC Networks are on steady growth curves while the Pac 12 is certainly not, and the Big 12 never had enough inherent value for an entire conference network but rather the Longhorn Network instead. I believe the entire Pac 12 Network and the Longhorn Network have about the same number of subscribers and revenue overall, but dividing by 12 makes the shares a lot smaller than not having to divide AT ALL. Obviously the Big 12 Championship game being partially renounced by Fox demonstrates that the Big 12 media rights were overvalued somewhat. The ACC Network is going to role out in 2019 and ESPN believes it will be as big or bigger than the SEC Network due to the better demographics of ACC fans as compared to SEC fans. For a very long time, Ray-com Sports had the media rights of the ACC and Raycom earned a lot of extra revenue by simply acting as a middle man for ESPN broadcasts. The ACC Network is much more likely to follow the trajectory of the SEC Network than the Pac 12 Network imho.. Both the decision by Fox to renounce their Big 12 CFP rights and the role out of the ACC network affects the American and Mountain West media rights negotiations, but exactly how is unclear. It could be that Fox is MORE interested in the American because they already have enough central time zone college football content and need more eastern time zone content, especially in Florida and the Northeast, but it could also mean that Fox is going to focus on the NFL and professional sports leagues because they can't get even close to comparable viewership to ESPN for their broadcasts of college football. Personally I think Fox Sports would benefit from acquiring both the American and the Mountain West media rights, given they have all that money from selling 20th Century Fox to Disney, while ESPN benefits from acquiring the Mountain West but not the American. The Pac 12 Network may not be much, but it's a competitor to ESPN on the West Coast and in Window 4 so ESPN/Disney has a need for the MW while the American is unnecessary because ESPN already acquired media properties that will get better ratings in the timeslots that the American can provide.

https://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2019/01/14/Media/Big-12.aspx Per the above linked article, Fox has relinquished its broadcast rights to the Big 12 championship game in odd number years - including 2019. This is an interesting move. Some commentators are speculating that Fox is doing this to create a spot for WWE Smackdown on Friday nights, which has nothing to do with college football, while others believe that this demonstrates that the media rights for the Pac 12 and Big 12 are over-valued. Personally, I think this will allow the SEC, the ACC and the Big Ten to further distance themselves as the conference of the biggest of the big time conferences, while the Pac 12, Big 12, Mountain West and American form a middle tier of FBS football which is clearly better than the MAC, CUSA and the Sun Belt but definitely a rung below the top three conferences. Alternately, it could mean that Fox is looking to purchase American rights because they get the same ratings as the Big 12 but won't cost nearly as much.

I perused their board and no one is spinning this at all because they only care about TV ratings; both on the field performance (of teams not located in Orlando, FL) and bowl game revenue are not considered in the discussion about the huge sums of $$$ they expect to get from ESPN next month during their exclusive negotiating period. Gob Bless 'em and hopefully they get more money because it will probably increase the value of the MW's TV rights too. In this thread https://www.csnbbs.com/thread-867843.html an AAC fan did the math to demonstrate that the AAC gets 20 to 25% of the ratings of comparable ACC, SEC and Big Ten games in the same time slot so the conference deserves $8 to $12 million per school per year in their new contract. The thread doesn't really consider how the AAC's ratings compare to conferences that play at the same time in the same geographic region but instead focus on the AAC's ratings versus the MW's ratings (despite almost none of the games being played in the same broadcast window) because none of the team's in the conference either host or win bowl games.

The WAC gets wacker

Although very close, I think the 'sugar daddy' phenomenon is what you are talking about with respect to students putting themselves through school. Most UCLA undergrads aren't dumb and our girls ain't cheap. Although it's been two decades, SFV or north Orange County was where UCLA undergrads would go to find strippers/call girls who would party for money, etc. The 'sugar daddy' situation is WAY more money than a stripper/escort who really wants to earn good tips imho. Traditional Korean bars where you pay huge amounts just to sit at a table with pretty girls were/are way more expensive than strip clubs/ escorts so the best option was to befriend Korea guys and tag along when they decide to 'save money' on a strip club visit. Koreatown is closer to USC than Westwood, btw.

Isn’t it basketball season? I’m looking forward to conference play - although I doubt we get more than two teams in the tournament outside the ‘First Four’. What is bad for the PAC 12 appears to be good for west coast basketball so I’ll take Alford finally being gone and too competitive conferences other than the PAC 12 for my basketball Jones. The WCC appears to be taking advantage of the void created without Arizona and UCLA being worthy of tournament invitation. The MW also has a good opportunity for three teams in the tournament at least. it will be very interesting to see what happens to the current Larry Scott era that prolongs into 2024 at least unless cord cutting really hurts them (I’ve found it’s easy to get PAC 12 Net OTT during from January to March so I doubt it). hey, anyone hear if the AAC signed a grant of rights? SQUIRREL

Holgerson has a good agent. how did Houston win in a bidding war with a Big 12 school?

I think they will wait until the last minute before putting anything in writing to a public institution because in most states eventually that kind of document would have to be provided when a reporter/news organization makes a proper request in that jurisdiction. Stanford and USC can keep a lid on this if they only discuss the idea between themselves at the admin to admin level. i would guess U of O is the party who leaked the plan to the press. It’s just so ridiculous and an embarrassment that the presidents of these universities spent actual time considering this cockamamie plan - if the actual document is what the report says it is. I don’t doubt the source but it is a very surprising development.

If the conference office is pitching this, dissolution is clearly more of an option before they spent a bunch of time coming up with this idea. i guess it would make sense to offer a media partner some ownership percentage of the network. However, acquiring an interest in the conference rather than network is ridiculous and probable an error in the report. I would imagine it got very quiet when Larry Scott presented this and then the OregonState and Washington State president applauded the idea enthusiastically.

I’m saying dealing with Shaq the helicopter parent is a THING.

Reggie doesn’t want to work that hard. Earl Watson is a coach’s son and a devout Christian who works super hard. Reggie’s a talking head and a good one but that isn’t the same as coaching.