ScottyBuff
Well-Known Member
Gotcha. I'd be curious as to your thoughts on whether the Pac-12 has too much "overlap" in the metro markets compared to other conferences, and therefore cannot monetize their media rights to the same extent as the Big Ten, SEC, ACC, and even Big 12 do?I got no real major areas of disagreement with your post Scotty. Quite the opposite really. It was a pleasant read and logical.
About the only quibble I'd offer is that Boise State is also on a very solid growth track and has a lot more proven track record than UNLV or Nevada-Reno does.
I'd add that the financial considerations aren't necessarily always considered correctly. Typically when I read threads of this sort they generally boil down to "does (fill in the blank) school add 'X' and/or $35M value by itself". I think this is an imperfect look at the math. Very few schools by themselves add that sort of value by themselves to a TV contract. Wazzu I am fairly certain doesn't add that sort of value by itself, but it's value is multiplied by pairing it with Washington and thereby capturing the whole state and the rivalry.
It's admittedly a bit of a "Moneyball" viewpoint...but I don't think expansion threads are always really asking the right questions when they analyze the metrics.
(Okay, it's botha Moneyball viewpoint and a biased homer viewpoint. Mea Culpa buff bros.)
Alone amongst the conferences, the Pac-12 truly has the "travel partner" pairings that work great in logistics and rivalry building but also cannibalize the media markets:
USC/UCLA in LA
Stanford/Cal in Bay Area
Oregon/Oregon State in Portland
Wahington/Wazzou in Seattle
Arizona/Arizona State in Phoenix/Tucson
The ACC has this in the North Carolina Tri-Cities market with Duke, UNC, and N.C. State, the Big Ten with Michigan/Michigan State in Detroit and possibly with Illinois/Northwestern in Chicago, the Big 12 has it with Kansas/Kansas State in the KC market, and the hodgepodge allegiances in the DFW market. However, none of them have it to the extent that the Pac-12 does.
While the rivalry angle is a good one for an in-person fan viewing perspective it is hard to ignore that this could also be a contributing factor in the Pac-12's lower media rights revenue.
While I agree that we are painting with large brush strokes here (I'd love to get ahold of the details, but they aren't published freely); the main question was the candidates for expansion criteria for a conference that is losing ground financially to its peers. Certainly Boise, Nevada, and UNLV are on good growth trajectories however they simply don't command enough media market share (either through actual ratings or access to a large untapped DMA) currently, to allow the Pac-12 to increase their revenue per school via expansion.