Bruininthebay

Quote me if you think I’m proven wrong about something. I speculated that if the American was on the open market Fox would pay the most. However, Aresco et al did not go to the open market so no one will ever know. I still hope ESPN pays for exclusive MW rights but reports are that ESPN has yet to put something out there that is better than including CBSSports and probably FS1 too. Rice, Tulane, Vanderbilt and Duke are all Ivy League equivalents in the southeast. If Houston wasn’t already in the AAC the Owls would join Tulsa, SMU and Tulane because Rice > Tulane personally I think the MW has an overall depth that makes more games of interest week to week. On that basis, ESPN should pay significant percent of what the PAC 12 gets for their rights if MW is an exclusive ESPN property because that is who the provides comparable programming at that time. If that isn’t what ESPN thinks now, then waiting until 2025-6 after new Big ten/16, PAC 12 and Big 12/10 deals isn’t that long. Hawaii would jeopardize their bowl game agreement if they left the MW and it also would affect attendance in a soon to be rebuilt Aloha stadium so speculating they would leave is pretty out there imho. finally, the MW by laws are published ever year and, like every FBS conference, the bylaws only provide for a full members involuntary removal for misconduct. Associate membership is different; Temple was removed from the Big east when they were an associate member of that conference just like Idaho and New Mexico State in the Sun Belt

Navy leaving in two years with a scheduling agreement is probably more likely than Houston allowing Rice to join the AAC (AAU like Tulane and we know that impresses AAC administrators) so I think the AAC goes to ten with a Navy scheduling agreement. Please note Navy already has a separate television agreement with CBS that expires before the AAC conference deal expires.

Why would a Mountain West school schedule a WCC school when they can schedule a Pac 12 school? WCC schools don't pay as much for 'buy' games as the Pac 12 so Mountain West schools schedule the person paying the most for a game. The loser is the conference who plays more Big Sky and Big West opponents and that is what the WCC is going to have to do because the price of out of conference home games is going up. A schedule with lots of high NET ratings teams makes it harder to get below the 175 threshold to schedule future Pac 12 opponents - it's a vicious spiral exacerbated by the 16 game schedule

WCC schools not named Gonzaga will still need a lot of out of conference games. The WCC conference generally is going to be the most negatively impacted due to the terms Gonzaga dictated in order to remain in that conference.

Why would SDSU play UCSD over a Pac 12 school? About half the conference needs to seriously upgrade the out of conference schedule so there will be ample opportunities. I expect the Big West to go to a 20 game conference schedule too when Bako and UCSD join the conference

I can understand how this season is a pain in terms of out of conference scheduling but when the Pac 12 implements out of conference scheduling standards in 2020-21 (same year as we increase to a 20 game conference schedule) Mountain West (and WCC) teams likely get more Pac 12 games. In May of this year, the Pac 12 administrators voted to adopt more restrictive scheduling practices that make it harder for Pac 12 schools to schedule Big West/Big Sky etc. type teams. https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/05/20/pac-12-implements-standards-for-non-conference-basketball-schedules-removes-residency-year-for-intra-conference-transfers/ Here are the criteria the Pac 12 will use beginning in 2020 for out of conference scheduling: “The approved new non-conference scheduling standards include the following elements: (i) a non-Conference five-year trailing average of opponents’ NET ranking must be 175 or less, (ii) no participation in road buy games, (iii) no regular season games against non-Division I opponents and (iv) no road games versus a non-conference opponent with a five-year trailing average of 200 NET. Every MW team meets the NET criteria except SJSU and Air Force so SDSU and UNLV should get just as many, if not more, games against Pac 12 schools beginning next year.

Lots of great info from this interview @ 2:20 Thompson gives his most direct answer about media rights 'I think we are getting close to resolution. There are some compromises that have to be made IF we go with more than one network.' 'We are getting into the fourth quarter now'. 'I think we'll have more than one broadcast partner' Only ESPN could really offer exclusivity so it appears whether to go exclusive with ESPN+ or include CBS and/or Fox Sports is the choice. CT is playing 'hard to get' because ESPN hasn't made an offer high enough. Personally I think it would benefit Disney to have the Mountain West as an exclusive ESPN/Disney broadcast property because the Pac 12 has a competing network. I'd prefer that the Pac 12 and Mountain West got together and formed a west coast competitor to ESPN but I don't think the pac 12 is going to do that.

This league has 11 members so round robin = 20 game schedule

Sports bar license fees in the Central and Eastern time zones should be included when considering whether a kick off time frame has value. A game that ends after 11 PM is after last call in EST states and those bars pay for the privilege of having football until closing time if they have more than three screens or one screen that is especially big More immediately relevant to this topic is that the review journal printed unsourced speculation about the Mountain West's negotiations in an earlier article and this article has no underlying facts which should have multiple anonymous sources to back up a wld claim like this. Unless Tom Bowen is involved, the details of conference negotiations haven't leaked to press. His abrupt departure underscores why competent administrators don't leak to the press The Coloradoan and the Idaho press haven't followed it, nor has the reno gazette journal so until other outlets follow it I won't give it that much credibility. Las Vegas isn't the only market where the Mountain West plays with papers that still have journalistic standards

Recently a Portland weekly newspaper wrote a fairly exhaustive breakdown of the current efforts by Portland folks to lure an MLB team to their city https://www.portlandmercury.com/sports/2019/09/26/27204523/can-the-people-wanting-to-bring-major-league-baseball-to-portland-succeed-where-others-have-failed The article is dated September 26, 2019

The situation with the Oakland coliseum is mostly due to a fight between the city of Oakland and the county of Alameda. The county supervisors have, more or less, jumped whenever the A's say jump but that hasn't gotten anything done while the City Council wants a community benefit agreement in exchange for bypassing a sale of the Coliseum land on the open market. The A's, particularly 'boy wonder' team president Dave Kaval and silent majority owner Steve Fisher, decided to leverage the A's into a real estate business play. They tried to power play the City Council and local politicians aren't having it. I think most Northern Californians want the A's to stay local, but everyone also wants a reasonably affordable place to live as well and that is more important than a second baseball team. The price of land and housing is so high, and more important than baseball, so I anticipate the A's moving because they just aren't going to get a lot of sympathy from the public for paying pennies on the dollar for prime real estate. Personally I would be happy if the A's built a new ballpark in Oakland or moved to Sacramento because lots of Bay Area folks have migrated to the Central Valley. It is just as easy for most A's fans to get to a game in downtown Sac as it is to get to a game in East Oakland (especially from Vallejo/Fairfield/Vacaville and Concord/Antioch). If the A's move out of state I presume that Portland probably is the team's top choice and Las Vegas would be second (especially because the Diamondbacks want the option to move to Las Vegas so they can try to get a new stadium too).

Willie Brown was first.. EDIT and his Alma Mater is San Francisco State

It's a video in the lower right hand that is muted.

@mugtang has you covered with the direct Stadium live feed

2 point game at the half! paging @sactowndog