So What Happens to Colorado?

Submitted by psychomatt on

Per the Dallas Morning News, "In a Twitter post, Pete Thamel of the New York Times reported that Baylor 'appears to have bumped' Colorado in the expansion sweepstakes."

Full story:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/spt/stories/060710dnspoexpa…

Could the Buffaloes find themselves homeless along with Kansas? Would B10 want them to get the Denver market?

psychomatt

June 6th, 2010 at 6:52 PM ^

Travel costs would be high and it is in a different time zone.  It also is not much of a power in anything other than skiing, though maybe the football will return to respectability soon.  But the it would be a fun road trip for games every few years. And no way you can not want the Denver market if you could make it work within all the other constraints.

After ND, I think the B10 wants to make further inroads into the Northeast media markets (esp. NY). If they keep taking teams to the West (i.e., NU, MO, CO), there will be no room left for Rutgers and/or Syracuse.  You could also make a similar argument about Kansas, though it doesnt bring a media market like Denver.  In the end, I think KS and CO simply will be one too many mouths to feed.

Michigan_Mike

June 6th, 2010 at 6:55 PM ^

Why is everyone so enamored with Syracuse and Rutgers? New York City doesn't care about college football. If you are going to try and make that a reality then anything less than taking both of those as well as UConn would suffice.

psychomatt

June 6th, 2010 at 7:06 PM ^

UConn is a non-starter. My guess is it will be absorbed by ACC. ND is the only team that will get an AAU exception, and that is not only because of the money involved but because they actually have excellent undergrad academics.

As for the New York DMA, PSU and Michigan have large numbers of alumni and a solid brand name in that part of the country. Adding ND would further enhance the attractiveness of BTN to the Northeast college sports fans. By adding Rutgers (and maybe Syracuse), the B10 might believe the entire combo would be enough to get on basic cable.  Additionally, New Jersey alone has a population of nearly 9 milliion.  Even without New York City, picking up NJ would be in itself be valuable (it would rank behind ony IL, PA, OH and MI in the B10 footprint).

david from wyoming

June 6th, 2010 at 7:08 PM ^

New Jersey is part of the New York City tv market. The way I understand it, either a channel (in this case, big ten network) gets the entire market or it gets none of it. Adding Rutgers and thinking that you will get New Jersey without NYC doesn't work.

psychomatt

June 6th, 2010 at 7:35 PM ^

You are thinking in terms of broadcast television (i.e. airwaves).  That is because when you broadcast over the air in NYC it spills into NJ, Connecticut and even Philly. So historically that is how they mapped out DMA's, based on broadcast TV signal coverage. I apologize because I probably should not have used the term New York DMA above -- it was misleading.

Cable and satellite TV is measured by TV households, which is the number of TV sets a provider serves in a given area. The goal is to get the major cable provider for a particular area to carry the network.  I do not know how it splits out exactly, but I know there are multiple providers throughout NYC and NJ. Time Warner and Cablevision are two.  Not sure if Comcast is there or what they have.  But the more you can convince the different cable and satellite TV providers that the viewers in their area of coverage would like the content on your network, the more likely you are to get it onto basic/expanded basic and the more they will be willing to pay per TV household. I am sure Delaney & Co. have studied the cable providers' footprints and even had some preliminary discussions as to what might be possible. They would never add Rutgers unless they were fairly confident it would help them pick up some cable providers in most of NJ and a portion of NYC.

david from wyoming

June 6th, 2010 at 7:36 PM ^

No, I mean cable provides. I am not an expert on this at all, so I asked my friend who is an on-air meteorologist in a major tv market. He wasn't 100 percent sure either, but he said that a cable company wouldn't (or couldn't) split a tv market up. So Time Warner could not carry the big ten network in Jersey but not in New York City.

But again, he wasn't entirely sure...

I do agree with you about Delaney. He isn't going to jump in the deep end of the pool without knowning if he can swim or not.

SoCalGoBlue

June 6th, 2010 at 7:05 PM ^

Having lived in both New Jersey and Boulder, people definitely care more about college football here that in NJ (not that either are anything close to the midwest).  The rivalry CU has with Nebraska is actually pretty decent, bringing in both teams would add significantly more on the football side than bringing in Rutgers & UConn.  I certainly don't know enough about the TV stuff to comment on that.  Plus being able to play away games in Boulder and Lincoln would be far cooler than New Brunswick and wherever the hell UConn is.

psychomatt

June 6th, 2010 at 7:10 PM ^

And I sort of like Colorado (no idea why, but I think it goes back to Bill McCartney). I also can't imagine anyone not preferring to visit Boulder every few years than anywhere in NJ.  Let's face it, if NJ wasn't sitting right next to NYC, we wouldn't be talking about Rutgers at all.  This is not about Rutgers.  It is about NYC.

CalGoBlue

June 6th, 2010 at 8:15 PM ^

It's not that nobody cares about college sports, it's that there are no good college teams.  When St. John's is good in hoops, interest picks up.  Syracuse is not a big school and is hundreds of miles away.  Although they have plenty of alumni in tne NYC area, there are not enought to make cable systems want to pick up the BTN.

As for Rutgers, it is the State University of *NJ*.  Which means no one from NY State or CT cares about them.  The reason to offer Rutgers is not to "get the NY market", because you won't, but to get cabel systems in NJ, which is a populous state.  Is it worth it to get NJ?   I don't know.

Lastly, Syracuse is culturally a terrible fit for the Big Ten.  It is known as a medicore school, is private, is relatively small, and, unlike Nebraska (also a small market). has no national following.   At least ND is an excellent school, has traditional ties to the Big Ten, and has a national following.  Of all schools rumored to join the Big Ten, I seriously object to Syracuse.  It's simply not Big Ten material.

CalGoBlue

June 6th, 2010 at 8:19 PM ^

It's not that nobody cares about college sports, it's that there are no good college teams.  When St. John's is good in hoops, interest picks up.  Syracuse is not a big school and is hundreds of miles away.  Although they have plenty of alumni in tne NYC area, there are not enought to make cable systems want to pick up the BTN.

As for Rutgers, it is the State University of *NJ*.  Which means no one from NY State or CT cares about them.  The reason to offer Rutgers is not to "get the NY market", because you won't, but to get cable systems in NJ, which is a populous state.  Is it worth it to get NJ?   I don't know.

Lastly, Syracuse is culturally a terrible fit for the Big Ten.  It is known as a medicore school, is private, is relatively small, and, unlike Nebraska (also a small market), has no national following.   At least ND is an excellent school, has traditional ties to the Big Ten, and has a national following.  Of all schools rumored to join the Big Ten, I seriously object to Syracuse.  It's simply not Big Ten material.

SoCalGoBlue

June 6th, 2010 at 9:40 PM ^

I totally agree, It's just hard to find schools that fit all categories.  It would be awesome to have UConn, Syracuse, Villanova and Georgetown from a bball standpoint but it just doesn't seem to make much sense for the "whole package" school.  It's almost like the Big Ten is settling for Rutgers because it's a big state school (in the right location) with division 1 football, BBall & decent academics. There just aren't other schools that have all three on the east coast; although BC is an intetesting option, especially if we can grab ND, then you'd retain their rivalry and add it to the Big Ten.  I

t's crazy, I feel like someone is just gonna drop the bomb and take everyone by surprise when all the shit finally hits the fan.

Raoul

June 6th, 2010 at 7:14 PM ^

I like the idea of Colorado in the Big Ten but agree that travel costs and the addition of a third time zone would seem to make this unlikely. I remember reading somewhere that the Big Ten wants to stay within two time zones.

But aren't these same issues at play with the Texas schools joining the Pac-10? For example, the distance between Austin and Los Angeles is actually greater than the distance between Ann Arbor and Boulder.

On the other hand, for any of these superconferences, teams will be arranged into geographically based divisions, so the schools that are farthest apart wouldn't play each other every year. So perhaps travel costs aren't as important as they might first appear.

 

 

psychomatt

June 6th, 2010 at 8:49 PM ^

Yes, the time zone thing is going to be a problem for the Pac 16. No matter how much of a national following TX and OK think they have, many people on the East Coast are not going to want to stay up and watch games that end at midnight. This is one of the reasons the Pac 10's TV revenues are much lower than they should be given the size of their markets on the West Coast. Viewership on the East Coast suffers due to the time zone difference. Incidentally, the Pac 10 sees this deal as a "bonus" in terms of time zones, because now more of their games will be played in the Midwest.

Despite TX many advantages, this is far from a perfect deal for them. They would make more money by keeping the B12 together and starting a B12 Network or their own network. If they had not been so arrogant and pushed around the other B12 teams the way they have the past 14 years, maybe they could have achieved that. It is sort of their own fault that, with all they bring to the table, the best deal they are going to end up with is one in which they still will be likely making less TV money than teams in the B10 and SEC.

maizenbluedevil

June 6th, 2010 at 7:55 PM ^

Nebraska is obviously a serious contender for expansion....  So from a geography/travel cost perspective, is Colorado really that outrageous?  Most B10 schools not called Iowa will have to fly when playing at Nebraska.  I'm guessing flights to Nebraska and flights to Colorado are comparable in cost from most places in the B10. 

From a time zone standpoint....  I just don't buy that this is a factor.  Just seems really insignificant.

Plus I'd rather have Colorado than Rutgers or UConn....probably rather have them than Syracuse, too.

SoCalGoBlue

June 6th, 2010 at 10:09 PM ^

That's so true & it got me thinking.   Having grown up on the east coast where you can cross 4 states in like 3 hrs, then moving to Michigan where I thought the states were enormous, & now living in Colorado, I am amazed at how huge these states are and how long it takes to get from point A to point B.  To put this into perspective; the closest Big 12 school to CU is Nebraska which is 505 miles away.  The farthest Big 10 school from Michigan is Minnesota which is 649 miles away, the second farthest school is Iowa which is 447 miles away from Ann Arbor.  Therefore, the farthest school within the Big 10 from Ann Arbor is closer than the 2nd closest Big 12 school from Colorado.  I'm sure this would get skewed depending on which two schools you picked within each conference & isn't really fair since CU is way out in the middle of nowhere & A^2 is pretty central within the Big 10, but even so, it's still like an order of magnitude with the travel.  That said (in way too many words), all this talk of cost of travel for non-revenue sports seems a bit exaggerated since Colorado, (a school that doesn't give a shit about athletics) can afford travelling 900 miles to A&M for some backwood sport & I haven't heard any bitching.  I feel like the giant midwest schools would be able to handle this as well.

Don

June 6th, 2010 at 10:29 PM ^

David Brandon said specifically not too long ago that travel costs are a big concern to him, as well as the related travel time issues.

Regarding Colorado's budget situation, isn't it true that they are so strapped for cash they couldn't afford to buy Hawkins out last year even though they wanted to fire him, and had to let him coach another year so the amount would go down? Maybe the built-in costs of travel for non-revenue sports do affect things greatly.

Where in CO do you live? I'm going to be coming out there this month. Can't wait to get back in the mountains.

SoCalGoBlue

June 6th, 2010 at 10:37 PM ^

It's a really interesting thing to consider & would be very hard to quantify without any real information from the schools themselves.  It seems like the variables involves would be the percent of trips where you have to fly and the cost of those flights vs the cost of travelling by bus, i.e. how many more road trip would the women's volleyball team have to fly or bus & how much more would it cost to fly.  Additionally, does it actually cost more for PSU to fly to Minneapolis than Boulder, even though Boulder is a few hundred more miles.  Beyond that, for teams like Iowa, Minn, & Wisc, it's actually a shorter road trip to go to Boulder than NJ or UConn.  I've got to imagine it's an extremely complicated algorithm for the brass within the Big Ten to figure out what is worth it and what isn't.  I just have a feeling like the increased quality of competition to generate money at the top end will outweigh the travel costs when all is said and done.  It really is very interesting to watch this play out & it'll tell you exactly what the presidents & commissioners actually believe the important things are visa-vi making money.

Raoul

June 6th, 2010 at 10:59 PM ^

If travel costs are a key factor, then neither the Pac-10 nor the Big Ten make sense for Colorado. They probably have to hope the Big 12 stays intact.

Mark Kiszla has a column in the Denver Post suggesting CU join the Mountain West--not the Pac-10. A number of commenters there have heaped ridicule on this notion, but it makes a lot of sense from a travel cost and rivalry perspective.

They would instantly become a very big fish in a smaller pond.

 

SoCalGoBlue

June 6th, 2010 at 6:45 PM ^

As I sit here in my house 1 mile from Folsom field, I don't even want to think of how awesome it would be to be able to watch Michigan come here and whoop some Buffalo ass every few years; that would be too much good luck for a UofM alum.  Please make it happen anyway.

M2NASA

June 6th, 2010 at 7:12 PM ^

It's going to be Syracuse and Rutgers.

The ACC's first call for expansion is going to be Syracuse and if the Big Ten takes only one of Syracuse, Rutgers, and UConn, the ACC is going to take the two others.  The Big Ten isn't going to let that happen.

Wolverine In Exile

June 6th, 2010 at 7:51 PM ^

Kansas, Kansas St, Iowa St, and Baylor/Colorado. Say the exodus goes as discussed leaving these four teams. Would they still hold the title of "Big 12" schools? If so, instead of the four leftovers going to to the Mtn West or Conf USA, they could make a play to accept all the Mountain West Schools + Boise St into an expanded Big 12, and since the BCS contract doesn't expire for a couple years, would that mean that they still keep the "Big 12" auto bid? If this happened, you now would have it setup for a 10 team playoff down the road:

Autobids: ACC, Big East, SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac 10 champs

Play-ins: MAC champ, Conf USA champ, 2 at large bids from the rest

Good bye Div I: WAC & Sun Belt

Big East dies, another 1-3 at-large teams open up...

 

EDIT: And for basketball, a conference with Kansas, Baylor/Colorado, Utah, BYU would not be half bad...

Brodie

June 6th, 2010 at 8:05 PM ^

I'd happily take Colorado. They fit the Big Ten profile to a tee... but I'd question our ability to hold a conference stretching from State College to Boulder together over 3 timezones.

Bosch

June 6th, 2010 at 8:43 PM ^

Screw Rutgers.

Taking both Colorado and Nebraska makes some sense considering their rivalry.

For the record:  State College to Boulder is basically the same distance as Boston to Miami.  If the SEC can manage, so can the Big Ten.

Of course, the TV markets are no where near comparable.......

Bosch

June 7th, 2010 at 1:22 PM ^

The ACC is pretty non existent in all of this expansion talk.

But, yeah..... thanks for pointing that out.  I'm surprised that I didn't get neg banged, much less get some up votes.

Bosch

June 7th, 2010 at 2:23 PM ^

They didn't clinch a spot in the ACC championship game until they beat Clemson on November 17.  People then had two weeks to book their trip to to Jacksonville from Boston. 

I'd blame the attendence more on the ACC for not picking a venue for the conference championship game more centrally located than on BC for not travelling well in such a short moments notice. 

Granted, their stadium isn't huge (44k) but I think they fill up for home games.

M2NASA

June 7th, 2010 at 2:24 PM ^

Two weeks is a lot more time than most other championship games.  And this isn't that it was a crowd on the smaller side.  It's no crowd at all.

They can't draw flies for bowl games either.

Even in Boston, nobody cares about BC.

Bosch

June 7th, 2010 at 3:55 PM ^

According to the records, they are at near capacity for most games.  And was it all MSU at their bowl game two years ago?  That had over 40k in attendence also.

Regarding the championship game location, there is only one ACC team south of Jacksonville.  Seems pretty rdidiculous to me.

M2NASA

June 7th, 2010 at 4:43 PM ^

What does being south of Jacksonville have to do with anything?  Florida State, Georgia Tech, Miami (That Miami), South Carolina, and Tobacco Road are all within driving distance.

As for BC, they've still delivered less additional revenue than the average for the ACC.  They've been a negative net present value proposition.

Don

June 6th, 2010 at 8:46 PM ^

Greyhound buses have the ability to alter the time/space continuum such that a trip from Ann Arbor to Ypsi seems to take an eternity. This effect is made possible by the careful placement of a passenger on the seat next to you who smells like they haven't bathed in several months.

Don

June 6th, 2010 at 10:48 PM ^

That's why I'd guess that a 12/14/16 team conference will be divvied up along geographical lines, just to minimize the travel costs and times as much as possible.

While I've been a CU fan since I was a kid and would love to see them in the B10, I just can't see it happening. I think the B12 makes a lot of sense geographically as it is, and the proposed move to the Pac10 also seems nuts to me from that standpoint.