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MUST-READ Dan Wetzel column

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FlabLoser

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http://rivals.yahoo.com/n...?slug=dw-expansion060610

Anyone that has ever loved college football must read Dan Wetzel's latest, "Big 12 blew it by eschewing playoff".

The article is more than that. It explains how the Big 10 has been blowing smoke, lying to everybody, about why they've been opposed to a playoff. Its been their goal all along to function as the strongest oligopoly possible. They filibustered and otherwise roadblocked a college football playoff long enough to get their conference expanded and to get The Big10 Network off the ground so that they could control college football access to as many TV sets as possible.

While a playoff would have been more profitable, controlling the most TV sets possible would be highly profitable too and more importantly, guaranteed money. They don't give a **** about the BCS. They don't give a **** about playoffs. They don't give a **** about college football. They care only about TV sets.

Shame on anyone and everyone, especially the Big 12 commissioner, who bought their lies about concerns over missed classroom time, schedule length, and all the other lies they came up with to oppose a playoff.

And kudos to Wetzel for pointing out that it not entirely too late for the Big 12 to play hardball - unmask the man behind the green curtain, and sell the willing nation on how essential playoffs are for the survival of college football as we know it (and as we'd like to know it).
 
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jcdawgman18

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is how their network is so successful. Any Big 10 game is typically a very boring game to watch. Not much athleticism, usually a plodding game. Guess that is considered good football up that way, though.
 
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Irondawg

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Dec 2, 2007
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Big 10 games are boring but there are so many alums from those big schools that they still watch. Heck, MSU has been horrible for the better part of the decade but I still try to watch every game somehow if I can.

That's a good article though and I'm not personally a fan of going to these super conferences, mostly b/c I think it's bad for MSU. If we were to add 2 more conference games every year our bowl chances decline greatly. If they never move to a playoff then the BCS standing are going to be a mess b/c it will be hard for teams to go through conference and conference title games unscathed.

I'm with Wetzel that the best solution is just to implement a college playoff system which the general population has been in favor of for years now.
 
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HippyDawg

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A playoff might be good for them as a casual fan but a college football playoff will be bad for the fans & alumni of schools not in a select 20-30 top teams. If we were smart in this state, which we are not, we would merge the schools into one on a new campus in the Jackson area. Not for just sports but academically and economically it would be better as well. <div>
</div><div>There will be further consolidation 10 or so years down the line after this superconference expansion and there is a good chance MSU will get put to the curve. Mississippi really only needs one team represented in such a conference and you are fooling yourself if you think Ole Miss would not be the preferred choice. </div><div>
</div><div>Free Market economics at work. </div><div><div>
</div><div>
</div></div>
 
mstateglfr

mstateglfr

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Northwestern aside, Big10 schools have 2.5x the enrollment of MSU.
That translates into a crap ton more alum as well.

Add to it the population of the Big10 states is massively larger than SEC states.

The audience is huge because the populations of everything involved is huge.
 
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Johnson85

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Nov 22, 2009
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but add to the many reasons it'll never happen the thought that it would be in Jackson. I'd rather pick the exact geographic center of the State and start a town from scratch. I'm guessing lots of other people would to.
 
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FlabLoser

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HippyDawg said:
A playoff might be good for them as a casual fan but a college football playoff will be bad for the fans & alumni of schools not in a select 20-30 top teams.
<div><div>
</div></div>
Click to expand...
Playoffs + bowl games for teams not in playoffs = win-win-win for all. What? This makes the lower bowl games mean less? Less than they mean now? I doubt it.

Also, I think the number of post season games would not increase much if at all. You'll just see the upper half of bowl games, like the Chick Fil A Bowl for example, become the primary sponsor of a playoff game. Heck, it still might be called the Chick Fil A Bowl.
 
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rebelrouseri

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hide the cost by burying it in a cable package w/ a bunch of other crap you don't want or need?
 
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FlabLoser

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I believe with DirecTV, it is in a sports package that gets you out-of-network Fox Sports channels (which black out almost everything interesting due to broadcast rights) and some other stuff I'd never watch.
 
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FlabLoser

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Baylor is like Texas's Ole Miss. Baylor is very well politically connected within the state. It was Texas' government that got Baylor into the Big 12 instead of Houston. And it is Texas government that is insisting Baylor be part of a package deal to keep Baylor together with Texas' better schools.

Says here
http://texas.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1091537
...the president of Baylor is Ken Starr. Yep, that Ken Starr - the guy who busted Bill Clinton's balls over Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky. Interesting.
 
615dawg

615dawg

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They have 40,000,000 subscribers at $0.80/month per subscriber.

$32,000,000/month in revenue for the Big Ten Network.

Fox owns 49%, so the Big Ten is raking in $16.3 million per month.
That's about a $1.36 million/month for each school/$16.3 million annually for each Big Ten school. When you add in ESPN/ABC/CBS Big Ten revenues, the TV share per school is close to $22 million.

By comparison, the SEC gives out about $17 million total for television, BUT allows schools to have their own deals like we have with CSS (worth about $2 million to us) or LSU with COX (worth about $7 million to LSU).

So, if the Big Ten were to add the right five teams, it could get another 20,000,000 subscribers, worth another $8.16 million/month (total $24.4 MM)

Divide that by 17 shares, and each school is still bringing in $17.2 million a year

a million subscibers means an additional $400,000 for an 11 team Big Ten and $288,000 for a 16-team Big Ten.

estimates that I read recently
Notre Dame +15 million subscribers
Texas +10 million subscribers
Texas A&M +6 million subscribers
Nebraska +7 million subscribers
Missouri +4 million subscribers
Rutgers +4 million subscribers
Syracuse +3 million subscribers
Connecticut +2 million subscribers

Obviously, if ND would come, the Big Ten would stop at 12 and all of this would be over. But if they took Texas/Texas A&M, Nebraska, Missouri and Rutgers, that's an approximate 31 million additional subscribers.
 
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urethrafranklin

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HippyDawg said:
A playoff might be good for them as a casual fan but a college football playoff will be bad for the fans & alumni of schools not in a select 20-30 top teams. If we were smart in this state, which we are not, we would merge the schools into one on a new campus in the Jackson area. Not for just sports but academically and economically it would be better as well. <div>
</div><div>There will be further consolidation 10 or so years down the line after this superconference expansion and there is a good chance MSU will get put to the curve. Mississippi really only needs one team represented in such a conference and you are fooling yourself if you think Ole Miss would not be the preferred choice. </div><div>
</div><div>Free Market economics at work. </div><div><div>
</div><div>
</div></div>
Click to expand...
why is ole miss the preferred choice? what does free market economics have to do with anything? how do you know so much about the future?
 
Villagedawg

Villagedawg

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it's Carthage. Or really close to Carthage. Wanna go to college in Leake County? :) <div>
</div><div>ETA: There is more than one reason they call it the "Square County."</div>
 
DesotoCountyDawg

DesotoCountyDawg

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I have a good friend who is a Baylor grad and he is not worried at all about being left out of anything with the rest of the Texas schools because of the politics in Texas.
 
mstateglfr

mstateglfr

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rebelrouseri said:
<span class="post-title">I was just wondering what each person has to shell out per...</span>month to watch their substandard college football.
Click to expand...
I live in Iowa, it is part of my cable package...never really asked for it or thought twice about it being included.

I have friggin Oxygen, Lifetime, Soap, The Game Show Channel, etc without a choice, so having the Big10 Network is WAY down on my list of channels i would give the axe to if given the chance.
 
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MedDawg

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Villagedawg said:
it's Carthage. Or really close to Carthage. Wanna go to college in Leake County? :) <div>
</div><div>ETA: There is more than one reason they call it the "Square County."</div>
Click to expand...
"We ARE.....LEAKE STATE!" <div>
</div><div>"Let's go Leake!"</div><div>
</div><div>The actual geographical center is 9 miles NNW of Carthage--really in the middle of nowhere:</div><div>
</div><div>http://www.mapquest.com/m...16664&geocode=LATLNG</div>
 
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sardis

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Dec 3, 2008
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to kill Baylor. Announcement at 3pm Wed and Omaha papers reporting Neb. could announce B 1? Friday. Bets are now on Baylor to try to replace OSU. I could see the Ok teams coming to SEC and A&M if they could hurdle the Tx politics.
As one Tx poster said, "Games won't be over till 1am in the Pac 16".
 
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