bear2be2 said:
DST said:
bear2be2 said:
DST said:
Literally, what's the rush? It isn't as though any of the other P5 conferences are going to recruit these schools, and we aren't hurting for members anymore.
See where coming TV negotiations are headed and keep ears to the ground on any possibly unhappy members of the PAC 12. I wish the ACC were a little unstable, too, but their GOR are tight. Schools like Clemson and Florida State are going to be rue being a part of that conference as it falls further behind the SEC and Big Ten in the coming decade and the Big 12 pulls even with it. Almost like a football conference with four members from North Carolina is dumb or something. A shame, because I think schools like Louisville and Pitt would be a good fit for the new Big 12.
TV negotiations are the rush. You can't wait to act after your next TV contract is negotiated. You need to have a plan in place to sell to your media partners. This conference as is won't have the names or ratings numbers to come anywhere close to its current TV deal. They'll need to get creative and in a hurry to create added value for their next media rights deal.
No, that's stupid. A well-negotiated contract will have clauses for additional members during it's lifetime and the ability to renegotiate based on the value they bring. Elevators.
The only of the above four schools that brings eyeballs is maaaybe Boise State, and their position is tenuous compared to a few years ago. SMU, Memphis, and USF have no brand. They don't add value to offset the money lost relative to the mouths the conference would have to feed.
If we were to add two more, it should be Boise and, honestly, San Diego State. They have better a better football brand than any of those other three, and a better basketball brand than any of them save for Memphis (though better on court results lately). And before anyone complains about geography, it's literally no different than adding Boise and the problem is lessed if you divide the conference into the West+Texas (BSU, SDSU, BYU, BU, TTU, TCU, UH) and East+Old Big 8 (OSU, ISU, KU, KSU, UC, UCF, WVU).
What incentive would a media rights partner have to include such clauses for a conference with no substantial expansion prospects? The Big 12 is negotiating from a position of weakness any way you slice it. The goal has to be mitigating that weakness as best we can before we sit down at the negotiating table.
And the value added isn't in individual schools. It's as a collective. With 16 schools, you have eight games in a given week. Your best four matchups are likely to be more attractive and draw better ratings in that scenario than they would in a 12-team conference where one of your games every week includes Kansas.
And in addition to that, you'll have an additional three or four games every week to pool and sell as a block to a streaming service, be that Amazon, ESPN+ or whoever.
When you're in the position our league is in, you have to accentuate your strengths and mask your weaknesses. That's easier done in a larger league with more game inventory.
The conference isn't going to command SEC money, but it's not like it's fighting to not be on Facebook Live, either. The Big 12 will be "fine" in TV negotiations relative to the national landscape. It's not going to get walked over in negotiations. What people don't realize is that the shrinking cable subscriptions results in a seller's market for TV rights. There's very little content that results in appointment television, and sports is one of them. Look at a company like WWE, which has had declining viewership for 20 years, landing a massive deal to put a show primetime on FOX. Their product might suck compared to history, but more people regularly watch their show on a weekly basis than most other programs, so it's a safe bet.
College football isn't any different. Networks need games to put on during the fall. And with the conferences consolidating, it drives up the demand. You think FOX is happy they're about to lose Texas and OU games soon? Of course not. Glass half empty says that robs the Big 12 of selling power. Glass half full says that puts more pressure to pay to get games on the network to fill the void. Look at CBS losing the SEC contract, as well. Are they going to pull out and have nothing to show on Saturday afternoons in the fall, or are they going to get a new partner?
The fact of the matter is that every network that isn't ESPN is going to be looking for content because ESPN is the exclusive home of the SEC soon. I think the Big 12 has the most to sell behind the Big Ten. A lot of hungry brands that are football schools first and foremost and tend to put on good products. That's something that (most) of the ACC and Pac 12 can't claim.
So back to your collective argument. It's ultimately still a numbers game. Yes, the common logic is that more members = more games = more to sell, but it's all still relative. It also means whatever the contract is gets divided between more members. So the question is, will the Big 12 learn definitively from prospective networks that it would earn more per school with these four members than without? They would have to be going all-in on the FOX route, because I seriously doubt ESPN will care about the Big 12 getting Memphis, USF, and SMU seeing as they already have those schools' games under the AAC's contract.
Last: Look at what happened to CUSA. Having numbers and markets doesn't make your conference valuable by default, even relative to your playing level. CUSA had been dragging behind the AAC, MWC, and SBC for years. The best thing for your conference is adding members that have football brands and can attract viewers based on how good the program is and not necessarily where it's located. The only one of these four schools I think fits that bill is Boise State, and again, they're teetering right now.