BerkeleyBuff
Well-Known Member
It wouldn't hurt but in reality it almost certainly wouldn't matter at all.
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CU has rejoined the Big 12 and broken college football - talking out asses continues
- Thread starter InTheBuff
- Start date
There are differences for sure. I think the most important is recent success. Success brings fans outside of an alumni base and brings money into the administration. If you look at 2000 CU vs Washington today, do you think they are similar programs?
While I agree with most of this, Seattle is becoming just as much of a transplant city as Denver. I had an office up there and most people I met were from California or somewhere else not Washington.
Yes, of course. CU's divulsion into apathy toward football, causing its poor performance on the field, is certainly the primary issue. It's led to 20 years of kids being born in Colorado not caring about CU football, or only knowing CU football as a national bottom feeder, alienated donors and created indifference among even many die hard fans (see AllBuffs for prime example).
I was coaching in high school during the 2016 season, and the hype around CU among the players was real, though. CU had become cool again all because they were winning games. Not only that, but attendance that season and the 2017 season were best in years, TV ratings were really good, CU was playing on national TV, etc. If the administration decides they want a good football program, CU can be a great program again, and would certainly be attractive to the B1G.
What a great time CU has chosen to suck. I feel the less excited for a CU season this year than any other that I can remember.
So, according to a report from Outkick this morning (Aug 22), Oregon is in preliminary discussions with the B1G to see what joining the conference would look like, although the article indicated that the top brass from UO and the B1G are not the ones at the meeting in Chicago.
From the article:
Anyway, this is not surprising or unexpected, but only serves to reinforce that in no way, shape, or form can they be trusted to act in anything other than their best interest. But actively looking, and leaking it to the press, shows that staying in a conference with them would be like staying with a spouse with an active Tinder profile who keeps checking it and swiping every two hours, and does so in front of you.
From the article:
Anyway, this is not surprising or unexpected, but only serves to reinforce that in no way, shape, or form can they be trusted to act in anything other than their best interest. But actively looking, and leaking it to the press, shows that staying in a conference with them would be like staying with a spouse with an active Tinder profile who keeps checking it and swiping every two hours, and does so in front of you.
What I would point out is that everyone here seems to agree that Oregon is a slam-dunk decision for the B1G, but also that Cal is too. The reason this strikes me is that the programs are not exactly opposites, but quite different:
- Oregon has a huge brand presence, and a large fanbase. Cal has a smaller presence and a fairly apathetic fanbase (see here; 5th lowest attendance in the Pac by raw numbers, 2nd lowest by percentage of seats sold)
- Oregon is a fairly poor academic school (although they are an R1 AAU school), Cal is world-class.
- Oregon's AD is in very good financial position; Cal's is in deep ****.
- Oregon is in a much smaller media market than Cal, although Oregon's is growing and Cal's is holding steady/shrinking.
LOL at this 'compatible" comment. It's a no brainer for Oregon. I'd argue that going and taking a smaller piece of the pie for a few years if asked to do so would be the move to make.
Guess they don't want to be in MWC 2.0.
I think there are some people who think Cal is a no brainer or makes sense, but not everyone. Outside of good academics and a travel partner for Stanford, I don't see anything that makes Cal attractive for an athletic conference, unless their presence brings the bay area TV market and Stanford doesn't or something.
IMO, if the Bay Area TV market was so attractive that made Cal and/or Stanford an auto take for the B1G, they would have been gone with SC and UCLA already, as the B1G would have loved to negotiate their TV contract with that market involved.
I think on tv market & overall media value of any additions, the B1G went with the single biggest potential increase to what they'd get in negotiations by adding the LA market with a couple national brands.
With that, as I understand it, they have escalator clauses to make further additions but those additions will not necessarily be valuable enough to immediately get full shares and things would have to be worked out with media partners on what respective values would be.
To be clear, I don’t think Cal is a no-brainer at all (LiverFlukes aside). I think they make sense as a 4th team, with Stanford.
Another potential factor, though not a primary one, is that the Seattle area has a very strong presence of a number of major corporations which are massive research funders. Having regular interactions with people who can write checks for tens of millions of dollars is not something easy to ignore for universities.
There was a long presentation on the B1G factors which I linked pages upon pages ago.
One of the big things the universities care about is home market. Athletics media revenue is barely significant to them. What they're focused on is exposure in places where they have alumni and where they believe they can draw more out-of-state tuition students. Those things tend to dovetail, but it's a different perspective which can yield different conclusions on the relative value of adding different universities.
I think this is a factor which helps CU due to the population makeup of the greater Denver metro - transplants and percentage of kids with strong academic records who go OOS for college.
One of the big things the universities care about is home market. Athletics media revenue is barely significant to them. What they're focused on is exposure in places where they have alumni and where they believe they can draw more out-of-state tuition students. Those things tend to dovetail, but it's a different perspective which can yield different conclusions on the relative value of adding different universities.
I think this is a factor which helps CU due to the population makeup of the greater Denver metro - transplants and percentage of kids with strong academic records who go OOS for college.
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this is really unbelievable. I mean, we're talking projected 9 figure annual revenue. Wisconsin, for example, brought in $3b in 2020-21.
Revenue is not doing anything to pay for things outside of the athletic departments. It's all about the reach to alumni donors and prospective students gained by these media deals. It's the front porch of the university to show great curb appeal in order to serve the actual university mission. It's a huge advertising, PR and emotional connection campaign which is self-liquidating rather than costing money.
ok, all that is likely true.
and....
without that media revenue, there is no curb appeal as the front porch quickly falls into disrepair.
Exactly.
And I guarantee it's a question of how much they'd be willing to take in the short-term to be in the B1G in order to be there at a full share in the long-term.
Hell, I'd support CU taking a zero share and taking out a loan for AD budget to cover the next few years if that's what it took.
or these preliminary talks are just exploring if there's anything OU could do to get the B1G to accept them. I'm not convinced they're at the point of "the B1G will take them, we're just exploring terms".
Yeah - the academic elitism runs deep on some of the B1G campuses, *and* they're probably still annoyed that they are affiliated with the non-AAU sheep herders at NU.
UW I completely buy as a no brainer. UO will probably go with them, but there's going to be some uncomfortable comparisons to NU in the process.
That's a no brainer. That $100 million per year down the road catches you up quickly for a few years of $25-30 million (or less) you would get staying in the PAC.
Whatever the Big does, they need to look outside the current window when evaluating athletic programs and look at a bigger picture. Expansion can’t be only about the current state of the schools’ athletic programs.
(Okay. I admit I’m in the bargaining phase of grief.)
(Okay. I admit I’m in the bargaining phase of grief.)
It will be interesting to see what happens next. I think Oregon is pick 1 of those left by a large margin. And I don’t think they give much **** about whether uw goes with them. And this increases uo leverage with the leftover pac a lot.
there are many possible outcomes once uo decides.
there are many possible outcomes once uo decides.
I definitely think that the UO/UW pairing is significantly above the Cal/Furd pairing in consideration of which 2 went to the Pac meetings demanding unequal revenue sharing.