Some interesting notes from Wilner's blog (which is a must read):
* Voting on expansion will have to be unanimous. All of the schools are going to have to agree to this or it's not going to work.
* Like most things in sports, this all comes down to money. The Pac-10 wants to increase their revenues, since they are outpaced significantly by the Big Ten and the SEC. They don't need to match those two conferences, but they need to get closer.
* An interesting point that Wilner highlights is that one of the ways to get more money is to, for lack of a better term, expose the conference more. That would mean playing games on off days and nights. More football games on Thursdays, for example, or basketball games on Monday.
* A television network could be formed, perhaps by partnering with the Big 12 or the ACC.
Of course, if the conference were to expand by potentially poaching Colorado (considered the best fit among western schools), I don't know how excited the Big 12 would be about partnering with the Pac-10.
However, we all know that expansion is the way to get new markets and new exposure. I'll let Wilner explain the field:
San Diego State, Fresno State, UNLV, Nevada and Boise State are not part of the equation, multiple sources told me. No way, no how. They don’t work academically and they don’t work in the TV homes/revenue equation.
Unless Missouri or Texas (presumably with Texas A&M) are available — and at this point there’s no substantive reason to believe they are — then only three options exist for the conference: Utah, BYU and Colorado.
And for all practical purposes, there are only two options: Colorado and BYU, or Colorado and Utah.
Utah and BYU together simply will not work.
As I speculated a few weeks ago (and have since gotten confirmation on), you cannot add two mouths and only one trough, especially when that trough is the Salt Lake City market, which is not exactly Dallas-Ft. Worth.
Well, Missouri would be available, but not for the Pac-10. Mizzou would rather join the Big Ten if they're going to jump ship.
And while BYU/Utah makes sense if you look at the rest of the Pac-10 and the natural pairings that occur because of geography, if your goal is to make more money, you need two distinct television markets to maximize eyeballs.
And in this scenario, with the finalists being BYU, Utah and Colorado, I would take Colorado and Utah as being the newest members of the Pac-10 (Pac-12? Pacific Coast Conference?).
Why not BYU? Well, that's another post.
1 comment:
BYU also doesn't play games on Sundays or other religious holidays. They're not a research university and they are uberconservative. Can you imagine Eugene, Berkley and Tempe through the eyes of BYU?
I like the notion of a conference alliance between my ACC and the Pac10. Coast to Coast sports with their own network. Instead of having to show crappy recap shows they could literally go wall to wall sports through primetime until evening. They could literally play a basketball/baseball game every night at 7 and another at 9. Alternating leagues but always in primetime.
Football would start at noon, go until 2 am EST. Plus you're talking about an alliance between schools where it is in the leagues best interest for UNC to play Cal, NC State to play Oregon State, USC to play VT etc.
Yeah I just hit on a winner there, you can use that but give me credit for expounding on how totally legit that idea can be haha
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