The Reason Why Expansion Makes Sense
by BruinJD on Jun 4, 2010 2:16 PM PDT
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PrintSaw this today on Jon Wilner's blog today about the SEC's revenue from this past year:
Total: $209 million.
According to the league, that’s the highest total in SEC history and represents a 57.7 percent increase from the $132.5 million distributed in 2008-2009.
Average per school: $17.3 million.
That’s about double (maybe a bit more than double) what the Pac-10 distributes to its schools and does not include what the schools generate from their local media deals.
At the end of the day, this is why the Pac-10 needs to expand. If Pac-10 schools want to stay relevant (a/k/a competitive) on the national scene, they have to find a lot more revenue to keep up with the SEC and the Big 10. Let's face it, at the end of the day running a successful athletics department costs money. Coaches' salaries and athletic facilities don't come cheaply. Outside of that other school across town, none of the Pac-10 has private revenue streams that can keep enough money coming into our programs to stay competitive. That is why I'm excited about the talk coming out of the Pac-10 about their aggressive proposal to bring in 6 high quality programs from the Big 12. That is the type of thinking that will keep our schools competitive with the big boys back east.
This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of BruinsNation's (BN) editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan though, which is as important as the views of BN's editors.
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But money only is so much...
As much as schools would love to make more money in football, it can only do so much, and the price to get there is too high. Personally, I think football is just followed on a different level in the South, like the SEC schools, than places like UCLA. It sounds cliche’ perhaps, but our fans just don’t care as much cause there’s so much else to do, as well as follow, like our other sports that constantly win national titles.
Geographically speaking also, the SEC has its schools much more compacted than what is currently proposed..it’s ridiculous to imagine having “conference games” 1,000 miles away…
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both. " - Benjamin Franklin
Agree, and disagree
Football is definitely followed on a different level in the South. But at the same time, the population levels are very different. Los Angeles County (not to even mention the rest of the metro area) has more people than any state in the SEC’s footprint, save Florida. 20% of LA county following college football is akin to 100% of the state of Arkansas.
But as you suggest, if its harder to attract fans in places like California to the sport, the easiest way to expand revenue will probably be to increase the footprint of the conference to bring in fans from other locales.
The geography argument I find more compelling, but splitting the conference into two divisions helps solve a lot of those problems. By going a west/east split, you would only have teams traveling further for away games a couple of more times per year at most, especially since the Pac-10 is already spread out. As I noted in another thread, the travel time to places like Oklahoma City and Austin would only be negligibly different for us than Seattle or Pullman. And the distance from LA to Seattle is about 1,100 miles, so we already have “conference games” 1,000 miles away.
In great part, the profit differential
exists because the Pac 10, under its previous administrative regime, negotiated very poor TV deals.
I expect the new regime to do better.
sjh
This is the answer
There is nothing about an OSU vs. Texas A&M game that is going to produce TV revenue in LA.
I wish I could see more Pac-10 games on TV, I hardly get to see any that do not involve local teams. Sometimes I have to search for UCLA games because I live in Silicon valley. There are a lot of USC games broadcast but I could care less about most of them.
That's another reason this makes sense
With a dedicated conference network, it could actually be easier to see games in non-local regions. Marquee games will probably get picked up for national feeds, but it’s the non-marquee games that are hard to watch if you aren’t local with the current TV deals that the Pac-10 has. If you get a conference that spans Washington to Texas, and includes the Bay Area, LA, Denver, and OU it will attract a lot of attention and a lot of cable companies.
The Reason Why Expansion Doesn't Make Sense...
When you opt for expansion primarily for money, in the face of the many good reasons for not expanding, you lower yourself into the pool of souls who do things primarily for money.
In this case, “PAC” may as well stand for “Priority A: Cash.”
If it's just about the money, then we're going about it the wrong way
Every ten yards there’s a new stripe. That’s ten divisions – “And now here’s a first and ten on the Tostitos 18 yard line, and oh, boy, a pass to the tight end up to the Campbell’s Um-um good Soup 27.”
And penalties. “Uh, oh, Jim, movement on the line. It looks like a Macy’s false start penalty.”
Eighty guys on the team? More opportunities to increase revenue. “Hey, Jim, it looks like Quaker Oats Kevin Prince is shaken up. Into the game is Brehaut, brought to you by McDonalds.”
Isn’t it all about raising revenue? Why should we stop with only 16 teams? If we would raise our revenue with 16, we should double it if we had 32 teams in the league. We could play every team every three or four years. And what a championship playoff – more TV revenue. I’m sure a game between Texas A&M and Utah State, with all the playoff implications that holds, would glue people to the TV set in New York City.
Let’s get creative here, Bruins. Since the sole motivating factor for this very large aspect of the university experience is to increase TV revenue, we could add do a spinoff of “Bridezilla,” and have our linemen act like jerks and refuse to go into games, maybe. Think of the drama. And the revenue.
Or ask Donald Trump to be the OC, and his decisions on who comes out of the game will make for gripping TV. “Hey, you, with the helmet — you’re fired!”
The list could keep going. But maybe it’s enough now.
With the shoulder pads
and extra large players, there is, on average, 175% more billboard surface area on football players than on NASCAR drivers. Think of the revenue.
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