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Sir Larry Scott.. (P12 considering buying out Larry Scott)
- Thread starter Manti's woman
- Start date
Serious question: How much has CU joining the Pac 12 increased fundraising, reconnected alumni, helped with CA recruiting, etc?
SuperiorBuff
Well-Known Member
Larry has ****ed a lot of things up, however, that room was comped.
BerkeleyBuff
Well-Known Member
Would love to see numbers on this.
My point in asking is I would love to know just how beneficial the move to the Pac 12 has been for CU. Recruiting doesn't seem to have taken a tangible turn for the better, I assume fundraising is up but I'm confident it has more to do with RG and a focused effort there, rather than being in the Pac 12, and does reconnecting alumni even matter outside of the few who may donate a little bit or show up to a few away games each year?
BerkeleyBuff
Well-Known Member
Recruiting needs the right recruiter. I believe connecting to alumni is important, both for the increased donations and for the initrinsic value of better serving your alumni.
Right, but the question is how beneficial is being in the Pac 12 to these things? What is the tangible benefit that CU has seen since joining the Pac 12?
This. Combining the conference expenses with the conference television network makes it hard to tell where are the expenses increase is and why it’s happening. I doubt we on our own TV production trucks. It’s likely that we rent them on an as needed basis. An increase in pricing for those could be part of the cost
IMO this is really difficult to evaluate because the P12 athletic conference has been severely mismanaged by Larry Scott. If Jim Delaney were running the P12 and Larry Scott were (somehow) running the B1G, we’d be seeing more tangible benefits.
BerkeleyBuff
Well-Known Member
Yes, agreed. But the benefit to the alumni will be hard to measure, even though I think it's the most important thing, and of course we must also consider how increased ties to alumni will continue to benefit us over the long term.
But I think if the PAC could get its finances in order such that we were within range of the other P5, there would be no question (in my mind) that this is where we need to be long term.
It's possible, but I have my doubts. As bad as Larry Scott has been, I think the main driver of the disparity is the apathy toward college football (sports in general) people in Mountain and Pacific Time Zones have compared to CT/ET.
I'm just skeptical that the Pac 12 is ever going to be attractive to big money media deals, which is the main driver of revenue, and CU is never going to be a place with mega-boosters. If USC could get it's **** together in football and UA and UCLA in basketball, there's reason for optimism, but there isn't one contending program in either sport at the moment. That is absolutely killing the conference.
BerkeleyBuff
Well-Known Member
Fair. The PAC is never going to command B1G or SEC money, for sure, and I wasn't intending to say we need to get there. We need to be within some certain range of them, long-term, but I don't know what exactly that range is. I think the benefits are still worth being here so long as finances are manageable. I think there's more reason for optimism though - yes we need USC to pick it up, but UW and UO (slipped off for a while but their current recruiting is outstanding) help. Not sure if Stanford is past their peak or not. Utah is trending up. WSU is always going to be solid enough to be ranked so long as Leach is there. I can't help but think UCLA with Kelly will eventually be solid as well. Time for CU to step up.
If Oregon can't win big with the staff they've bought, I'm not sure if they'll ever be a consistent national threat. UW is the only one the conference has at the moment and they seem to always **** the bed against a lesser Pac 12 team that keeps them out of the CFP conversation, and they get blown out when they do make it. Utah is not a national threat to anybody of consequence. I have serious doubts about UCLA with Kelly's bizarre recruiting strategies. USC needs to make a Home Run hire after they fire Helton this season. Urban. Meyer.
BerkeleyBuff
Well-Known Member
Oregon may well be back to where they once were in another year or two. The knock on UW is the same that can be said for every upper-tier team in the country outside of Bama or Clemson (and was, for a long time, used against Clemson - aka "Clemsoning" - and UW may, like those others, get past that hump). I think Urban has finally called it quits for good.
At the time Colorado joined the now P12, the conference was flying high with interest at a peak because teams were competing regularly for men’s basketball and football championships leading to that point. Unfortunately, LS negotiated a TV rights deal that didn’t allow schools to get expanded revenues for quite some time. Other leagues like the SEC and B1G negotiated different deals that enabled them to get much more money on a quicker timeframe. Remember, the B1G was not thought of as a conference at the time that would regularly compete with the SEC. Jim Delaney negotiated a better deal than Larry Scott did. This enabled the likes of Purdue, Wisconsin, and Northwestern to become more competitive than they’ve been in years. Teams like Ohio State, Michigan, and Michigan State to a lesser extent were able to leverage those financial gains to bring their current successes.
People in the west care when teams win. The TV deal then made it extremely difficult for P12 teams to win now.
I dunno. The B1G footprint has its larger population spread more evenly across its geography instead of concentrated in a couple of states. There are also likely far more blue collar families (more enthusiastic sports supporters) in the Big10 than there are in the Pac. Lastly, people in the B1G footprint have a higher tendency to leave (****ty winters) but continue their support from their new home states while Pac residents live in a destination (lots more to do) and tend to stay rather than move. So It's kind of an apple and orange to say Larry's or Delaney's this or that would or wouldnt work.
Its also worth pointing out that Larry Scott's wholly owned network model could likely have gotten better traction with DTV because DTV is Sunday Ticket based and has more subscribers there than they do West of the Mississippi. There are a dozen NFL teams in the upper midewest and only 6 in the Pac12 footprint. The college stadiums are larger too and the attendance is better.
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Not being in the same conference as UT.
The B1G were on the ropes, but Larry couldn’t execute the knockout blow to make the P12 #2. I agree with you that the directv debacle was a huge component.
ScottyBuff
Well-Known Member
ScottyBuff
Well-Known Member
This. Always has been and always will be. At least until there is another college revenue sport that becomes relevant and features a West Coast bias (x-games, eSports).
The Pac-10 was at least just as far behind, and quite possibly even more so, than the SEC and Big Ten before Larry Scott arrived. We got a bump with the expansion/new contract and then the SEC/B1G leapfrogged us again to "restore the world order".
ScottyBuff
Well-Known Member
TV Network revenue is based on demand (ratings), the Pac-12 fanbase has proven (attendance, TV ratings) that it is not in the ballpark of the SEC, B1G, or even the Big 12 across the board on those fronts. Historically it is on par with the ACC; and we stack up favorably against them to this point. The ACC is moving in front of us this year with their ACCNetwork; so we need to leapfrog them in 4 years when our new TV contracts come up for negotiation. If we don't have the demand (attendance, ratings, etc) between now and then it will be a tough sell to any potential bidders.
The circular logic that requires us to get more money so we can have more recruits/coaches/facilites/etc so that we can get more fans just doesn't hold water. Interest has to be there first to create the leverage to get more money from TV.
TV money is tied to popularity. Michigan will draw 110k every year no matter what their record is; in Pac-12 country a couple bad weeks and fan interest plummets. Now sure, prolonged periods of success and failure will have an impact but the root is still there.
People can complain about Purdue getting a much bigger distribution check than us but they drew more fans than us last year. Iowa State, Texas Tech, Kansas State, and West Viriginia all did too. Now the first post will be: "but there is nothing else to do in b--f--ck city" well exactly; their team is more popular and in demand than ours; therefore they will get paid more over time.
This isn't to defend Larry Scott; he and his staff have done enough bonehead things to get fired in my book; but the fundamentals just aren't there for the Pac-12 to stack up against those conferences when it comes to TV revenues; unless of course there is a major industry disruption that favors 100% ownership of content; which will see us leapfrog everyone again; only to see them leapfrog us back when their current partnerships run their course and they get to hit the reset button.
The circular logic that requires us to get more money so we can have more recruits/coaches/facilites/etc so that we can get more fans just doesn't hold water. Interest has to be there first to create the leverage to get more money from TV.
TV money is tied to popularity. Michigan will draw 110k every year no matter what their record is; in Pac-12 country a couple bad weeks and fan interest plummets. Now sure, prolonged periods of success and failure will have an impact but the root is still there.
People can complain about Purdue getting a much bigger distribution check than us but they drew more fans than us last year. Iowa State, Texas Tech, Kansas State, and West Viriginia all did too. Now the first post will be: "but there is nothing else to do in b--f--ck city" well exactly; their team is more popular and in demand than ours; therefore they will get paid more over time.
This isn't to defend Larry Scott; he and his staff have done enough bonehead things to get fired in my book; but the fundamentals just aren't there for the Pac-12 to stack up against those conferences when it comes to TV revenues; unless of course there is a major industry disruption that favors 100% ownership of content; which will see us leapfrog everyone again; only to see them leapfrog us back when their current partnerships run their course and they get to hit the reset button.
I'm not sure I buy everything in your 3(!) consecutive posts, but I think you raise some good points.
One thing that I would also add is that I fully understand now how much the P12's willingness to put their prime games on in the late evening timeslot (7:00 PT or later) kills exposure and ratings on the East Coast. It takes a lot of effort to stay up for those games. If I were Larry Scott, I would try to get one premier P12 game per week in east coast prime time, and play a secondary one right behind it.
His point is correct. Two Pac12 school made the NCAA attendance list in 2017.
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During our epic 2016 season we didnt crack the top 30 that year either.
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When was the B1G on the ropes? When I lived there in the 90s UM drew 100,000 every game. Its not really an accident that they were the first conference with a network.
Yeah, but most Pac 12 stadiums just aren't that big. Even if every program sold out every game, most wouldn't crack the top 30 on this list
I just realized Clemson failed to sell out three of their home games last year. wow.