It's dumb but not as bad as the complaining made it out to be.

I already torture myself with this dumber and more depressing clip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyrRC...os=cNGUUmd40Jg

Any of the ND fans here worried that the conference realignment dominoes are about to fall into 4 Mega Conferences or whatever the ****, and ND will have to either: 1) relinquish it's cherished independence and join the conference dark side or 2) be left out of the whole mix altogether, which might be worse? I mean without being too cynical, it probably means saying goodbye to any National Championship aspirations if ND is stuck without a conference schedule + without a conference title playoff scenario to showcase the team late in the season.

Yes.

ND Admin will cave before 2) happens.

I'll believe it when I see it. Going to a 4 Mega Conference model will be incredibly hard to do, just imagine the ensuing court battles and state legislation from the schools that are left behind. Maybe the Big 10 adds someone like Nebraska or Missouri, but a complete seismic shift is just sportswriters taking some remote possibility and running with it, imo.

Big 12 and Big East are as good as dead.

I'm sort of in your camp, but people who cover college football seriously who I don't consider idiot hysterical writers like Dr Saturday sound a lot like Heater's post below yours: that the seismic shift is more likely to happen than not at this point.

I really can't believe how much the Big Ten Network changed the landscape of college football in like, what, 2 years? I remember when it came out I thought it would be a huge jopke that like 150 people in the country like us (hardcore college sports fans) would fap to and no one else would watch. Like terrible poor man's versions of CSTV and ESPNU since the coverage would be regional. Instead it's such a cash cow the Big Ten is pretty much is destroying the status quo by trying to increase the footprint of the network AND they have plenty of willing schools looking to take the bait. And all the other conferences are forming TV networks and looking for schools to become partners (ie, the pac10 and their attempts to wrangle Texas and the rest of the Plains states/mountain west schools)

The BTN was a marketing genious. People aren't tuning in in droves for Minnesota vs Purdue. Whoever negotiated it onto the higher cable tier so everyone paying for it is one of the best negotiators there is.

It's not there for most people.

The funny thing about this whole expansion thing is that I believe it was all just a ploy to get ND to join the Big10. It could have happened the easy way (saying yes and stopping at 12 teams) or the hard way (saying no and completely destroying 2 conferences and revamping the whole landscape of college football).

It must suck to be the Big East or Big12. Delaney is ruthless. But this is awesome if you are a proponent of the playoff system. It seems inevitable. This is why ND must join a conference now. It appears Delaney was 3 steps ahead of all his competition the whole time.

What about in the midwest region?

mgoblog has a post up today about how much the BTN is worth to the teams in the Big Ten: almost $20 mil per team per year. Link here.

This does not count the money the Big Ten gets from it's separate deal with ABC/ESPN, which is supposed to be in line with what the SEC gets.

By way of comparison, the SEC is locked into an ESPN contract worth 12.5 million per team per year for 15 years.

Big Ten Network revenues will grow yearly.

Also by way of comparison and per this, NBC will pay ND $9 mil this year:

Delaney is a brilliant imo.

Also if these numbers are true, you can see why realignment is inevitable. Even if the Big Ten just tinkers and snaps up Nebraska and the BigXII grabs another school to replace them and that's the only change this offseason -- if/when the PAC10 gets a network too and tries to expand by taking all the FBS programs in Texas, **** will hit the fan again.

I don't see how ND can stay independent in this climate. Either the conferences will all create money-printing TV networks that dwarf the dollars ND can get from NBC, eventually putting them at a huge and unique competitive disadvantage much worse than their academic standards, or the college football explodes into the mega-conference model to make their networks more appealing to cable/sat providers. ND either joins up with a conference or the program withers away trying to stay nationally relevant just playing Army and Navy and never having a conf. championship and showcasing themselves in conference postseason tournaments where that kind of stuff will be even more valuable than it is now.

I don't think your numbers are correct. The article you linked says that according to Illinois, they're getting a total of 14.9 million from all television sources, ESPN and the BTN included. That's a far cry from 20 million plus ESPN money, I have zero idea where you got that. More recent articles have put the ND NBC deal at around 15 million per year, plus then you throw a couple million more on top for the Big East basketball money, and suddenly things aren't so clear cut. Then when you factor in the fact that any expansion of the Big Ten would most likely be cutting the pie 16 ways, it's even more questionable whether or not there are actually big bags of money at the end of the conference rainbow.

yeah dv, it's 20m per team, not just for the btn

Mea culpa

They're getting 15 mil from all TV sources combined:



Even granting ND gets say 17-20 mil from TV (I suspect the $15 mil is right because NBC reupped ND through 2015 and they're probably getting a few mil from the Big East hoops pie plus NCAA tournament revenue etc), that gets ND essentially (and just for the moment) ~15-25% more than schools like Indiana and Northwestern in terms of TV money. And BTN revenues project to grow and ND is locked into NBC for another 5 seasons. More on growth:

Right, but:

Increasing the size of the conference = increases the footprint = increases the pie, so yes, if they took on 5 more teams, they'd divide it 16 ways instead of 11, but ostensibly, those 5 teams would increase the footprint by a lot and the revenue pie would be that much larger to split.

Re: Growth.

http://frankthetank.wordpress.com/20...g-ten-network/

Looks like adding Nebraska will (again, just a guess) add another ~55 mil to the revenue pie, so dividing the old number+$55mil by 12 instead of 11, it's worth another another ~$3-$4 mil to each school.

I don't think I can take a model seriously that thinks that BC is worth more than ND.

The model explains why... it brings in a new (and pretty large) market. Notre Dame doesn't do that at all. It brings in more viewers, but it comes with a lot of overlap. Bringing in an entirely new market is huge for revenue.

BC brings Boston. Notice on the chart that the cable increase for BC is $15mil while it's $0 for ND. From the link:

Well, if the model says so, it must be right!

Care to offer an argument then? At least the model explains itself.

dudd -- there is this explanation that makes sense. It's not just "this model exists, therefore it's right". It's "there's this explanation that makes sense". Frankthetank is a good blogger and has been on top of this from the start.

BTN in Boston area = more and new money. BTN is already in Chicago/Indiana basic cable tiers so...no new money. ND's wide appeal is captured in the "Est. Increase In the Current Footprint" column; it's going to increase ad revenue for sure because ND has a rabid fan base. No one is discounting "ND is worth more than BC" in important ways but given the current geographical reality of the BTN, BC is worth more (I mean they're basically equal) because it gets the BTN on basic cable in the northeast and carriage fees are a big part of the revenue pie. The situation would be drastically different if we were talking about a fictional SEC network that was on basic cable in the south but on the upper digital tiers everywhere else, and they were deciding between ND and BC for an expansion partner. Of course ND would be worth a lot more than BC then.

But that's not the case here.

BC is not going to deliver the Boston market because no one gives two ****s about BC football in Boston. Sometimes a little common sense goes a long ways.

I'm pretty sure they don't have to deliver anything. They just have to be in Boston. If BC is in Boston, then the Big10 Network gets $.88 per subscriber as opposed to $.05 for all Boston area (maybe all Massachusetts) subscribers. That is why all this talk about Rutgers makes sense but is very confusing. Sure no on in NYC cares about Rutgers football. But if the Big10 Network can command $.88 per cable subscriber in NYC since it is in the same state and therefore in the footprint, then $$$$$$$$$. Delaney is a genius.

The key flaw is assuming that the BTN would instantly be snapped up by cable companies just because there is a local team. BC is basically a slightly better version of Northwestern. They drew 33k and 25k to their first two home games this year ffs, and weren't even able to sell out their 44k seat stadium in conference play. There is a zero percent chance that whoever the Boston cable company is will just hand over a couple million dollars a month for a cable channel that hardly anyone in the Boston market will even know exists. The same goes for teams like Syracuse and Rutgers, there is no guarantee that the BTN will suddenly be on basic cable in the NYC market if you add those teams. As the saying goes, garbage in, garbage out.

BTN won't allow teams in the footprint on non-basic cable (ie, digital/upper tiers), so in the hypothetical scenario where BC joins the Big Ten but cable carriers refuse to put BTN on basic cable results in their subscribers not getting to see Boston College football at all.

As with happened with cable carriers all over the midwest back in 2007, including those that serve markets where people don't really care that much about the college football teams (places like Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana), the cable carriers put up a valiant fight but pretty much every single one gave up once the first football game hit the air and customers were bolting to satellite TV to get the BTN, and the BTN is now uniformly on basic cable all across the midwest.

http://espn.go.com/blog/bigten/post/...internal-faith

BTN literally pwned pretty much every single cable carrier in the midwest, including in places where college football ratings are historically comparable to lesser Big Ten schools. BC bloggers admit their games aren't well-attended but the TV ratings for their games are very good.

A little knowledge of the world of college football beyond South Bend goes a long way.