New TV Contracts

[longtimefan]

"CBS decided to exit the negotiations for college football's most-watched TV package after making an aggressive bid in the neighborhood of $300 million per season -- a massive increase from the $55 million it currently pays annually."

The new SEC contract is supposedly going to ESPN/Disney and that should mean and additional $20-30 million per school every year in the new contract. The landscape is going to change massively in the next decade.

https://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/...19/12/SEC.aspx

[Lobot]

Speaking of which ESPN is trying to tweak the AAC package becuase of UConn. I think the inference by ESPN is that we need to have a 12th team eventually and do divisions again.

[Bearcats1232002]

Speaking of which ESPN is trying to tweak the AAC package becuase of UConn. I think the inference by ESPN is that we need to have a 12th team eventually and do divisions again.

But who do you add? There isn't a team left that brings something to the table for football AND basketball. Appalachian State for football? VCU for basketball? I think the Big East will go after VCU so they will have 12. I think this is the most pressing issue for UC athletics going forward and I don't think there are any good solutions other than a power 5 invite.

[longtimefan]

Basketball only would have to be Dayton. Big time fan base, and a lot of upside in a better league. And of course, somebody in the league that's less than an eight hour drive.

[Lobot]

But who do you add? There isn't a team left that brings something to the table for football AND basketball. Appalachian State for football? VCU for basketball? I think the Big East will go after VCU so they will have 12. I think this is the most pressing issue for UC athletics going forward and I don't think there are any good solutions other than a power 5 invite.

I think VCU for basketball would be a decent addition. I don't see value in Appalachian State in football. It's not that they aren't good enough. It's in Boone NC which is closer to Knoxville TN and Blacksburg VA than it is to Winston Salem, or Charlotte which are the closest NC cities to it. I can't imagine it would deliver a TV market. All those places have college teams already and Charlotte is a pro town. On the other hand, the football program is trending in the total opposite direction from UConn so there's that.

[Illuminerdski]

I would look into adding Northern Illinois, Eastern Michigan or Buffalo. All would be in larger metro areas and Buffalo would allow a New England-ish presence lost by UConn.

[Lobot]

I would look into adding Northern Illinois, Eastern Michigan or Buffalo. All would be in larger metro areas and Buffalo would allow a New England-ish presence lost by UConn.

NIU would be worth looking into possibly if the conference wants to go north. I don't think EMU moves the needle much in any form. Buffalo would be interesting but has the same issue for the conference that UConn did. They're a geographic outlier on the conference footprint and no one wants to travel there. All of these schools are north of UC and I suspect the conference would expand to the middle or south if it does expand. With UConn gone, Temple is currently the northern most school in the conference and they are also the eastern most school as well.

I'm not sure that geographics play a huge role in these decisions but the geographic center of the league is Nashiille where there's no team. The HQ for the AAC is about to move to Dallas from Providence RI and the basketball tourney is in Fort Worth for a few years. This all leads me to believe they'd prefer the conference to expand in a southern or western direction. I think you try and poach Colorado State or maybe add UAB or FAU. I'd revisit Air Force but the current administraction at the AFA seems to think that the MWC is too difficult for them to deal with due to travel and conference strength.

[swilsonsp4]

I'd revisit Air Force but the current administraction at the AFA seems to think that the MWC is too difficult for them to deal with due to travel and conference strength.

That would eliminate AFA. The AAC is stronger in most sports and travel would be worse for the Air Force.

If the AAC finally decides to expand, TV will have a major say in any pickup. ESPN/CBS would want a decent market. NIU, while in northern Illinois, isn't going to draw the Chicago market.

FAU had very poor attendance this season. The Owls drew 30K for UCF, but how many of those people drove down from Orlando to Boca Raton? The next largest crowd was 17,700. FAU is in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale TV market (#16, per Neilsen), but how many TV's were set to Owls' games?

From a TV standpoint, GA State would make sense, to an extent (#10 Atlanta market), but they'd drag down the AAC from a football perspective, unless they beefed up their program. Sagarin Predictor ranked them #118, which would be third worst in the AAC.

In a nutshell, there really isn't a prime G5 candidate. If there was, Aresco and Company already would've pulled the trigger.

[RedRocker]

With a new stadium on the way and their recent success on the football field and history with UC, I’d look at UAB. Decent metro market although 3rd FBS program behind Alabama and Auburn.

[Geaux Juan]

With a new stadium on the way and their recent success on the football field and history with UC, I’d look at UAB. Decent metro market although 3rd FBS program behind Alabama and Auburn.

I was thinking the same thing when I was in Birmingham. Their FB program is on the best footing it's ever been, and historically they've had good BB programs. And Birmingham is equidistant from Cincinnati as to Memphis, so it would tie for the closest AAC opponent.

So, IF we have to add another member, this is where I would look. A caveat to this is that program poaching is so distasteful, and we'd be very upset if one or more AAC schools not named UC were taken, so this is not my favorite exercise.

[Binturong05]

If you approach this purely from the standpoint of demographic trends then you want to pick up a southern or western market, that's where the population growth is occurring and is projected to continue to occur. Northeast and Midwest populations have been stagnant or declining. Metro areas may still grow in those regions but total state-by-state population in the rust belt is trailing that seen in the sunbelt.

Here's a visual of population trends:

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/u-s...nty-2010-2018/

[Lobot]

A little OT but the Mountain West just signed with CBS/FOX. I have a sense the streaming media deal that the MWC, CUSA and Sun Belt signed are headed down the drain.

[red_n_black_attack]

Would we benefit from a media deal that includes streaming content in the tv package? Sometimes you can get to a tv and the digital content is already on hand.

[Lobot]

Would we benefit from a media deal that includes streaming content in the tv package? Sometimes you can get to a tv and the digital content is already on hand.

I think we basically have that with the ESPN+ portion of the contract starting in July. It streams through the ESPN app for $4.99/month.

The other conferences were using Stadium, Facebook Live and Twitter to stream which were mostly free but pretty terrible as far as production quality went unless CBSSN or ESPN3 was doing the feed like we saw with the Marshall football on Facebook.

The part of the AAC contract that irked some of the conference members was that for ESPN+ broadcasts, the home team is responsible for the production. Some of the conference members don't have a broadcast media department and suddenly had to figure out how to to do all that inside their Athletic Dept budget. We're in good shape here with the Bearcats TV crew but others were not ready for this. There were still question marks about this whole issue when Bohn departed for USC. Aresco and company at AAC HQ pretty much screwed this part of the contract up I think, to ESPN's monetary benefit. Since Aresco used to work in TV with CBS, you'd figure he have a better understanding that some schools don't have the budget for this.