Coincidence? Big Ten Expansion and the NY Market
i must be missing something; many of the things in the 2 pictures are not the same.
The point are the two items themselves. Syracuse... New York's College Team.
Like this:
If this thread were titled better, I never would have clicked here.
EDIT: That's better.
I live in NYC and they have been running these adds for 4+ years. On taxis and in subways there are ads claiming the Orange are "New York's College team". I think it is actully an SNY promotion. They are trying to get anyone to watch college programming on a local sports network.
It's an SU Athletic Department campaign aimed at selling Syracuse as NYC's team with an eye on the Big Ten expansion.
Coupled with Big Ten scheduling (Penn State, Minnesota, and Northwestern last year, Illinois, Iowa, Purdue, in recent years, and Ohio State before they backed out), this has shown some great foresight on the part of Daryl Gross.
Did you miss the part where he said they have been running these ads in NYC for 4+ years or do you believe that this is all part of Syracuse's 4+ year master plan to get the Big Ten's attention?
Syracuse isn't considered part of the NY metro area. They're considerd out on their own like say the Buffalo teams. Their games aren't on the local broadcast and the local papers don't follow them. The NYC/NJ papers follow Rutgers for football and St.John's, Seton, Hall, and Rutgers in basketball. Their fans do drive down for the Big East tournament but that's about it.
Saw "NY Market"
Got set for an epic facepalm
Open thread: face safe
Rugers is NYC's choice. Basically because they are the only D1 team in the area but they are still followed nonetheless.
I dunno where you live jerseyblue, but I've lived in the city for 2+ years and upstate (well below Albany) for 22, and I have seen literally a single-digit number of Rutgers fans here ever. I was at the Garden for the Michigan-Rutgers NIT final 7ish years ago, and not only were there a ton of empty seats, it was easily 1/3+ Michigan fans in Rutgers's "backyard."
I have seen next to no coverage of Rutgers football here; it's not on at bars, it's not talked about anywhere. I've seen streets flooded with Syracuse fans, bars flooded with Pitt fans (for whatever reason), etc., but never a sizeable Rutgers contingent. It's possible (no sarcasm) I'm just in the wrong places, but seriously, based on TV/sports bars/walking around, Rutgers is completely off the radar.
So "Rutgers is NYC's choice" seems WAY off the mark, and to the point of the thread, there are a TON of Cuse fans down here (I'm not one of them).
Rutgers football games are on SNY, if they're not broadcast nationally. They share games with UConn and I think Syracuse has some games, but this is rare.
Syracuse is 4 hours away from the city and well upstate. They do have passionate basketball fans, though.
Rutgers and UConn makes more sense than Syracuse IMO becuase most of NJ and CT are part of the NYC market. Hartford is close to UConn itself and would follow UConn as well IMO. South Jersey is part of the Philadelphia market that would be shored up with Rutgers in the same conference as PSU. You might not get NYC, Long Island or Westchester, or maybe just tangential interest, but getting all of NJ and CT is not too shabby either.
It should also be noted that there are tons of subway alums in NJ, CT and NY. I don't think this push would make sense unless ND joins the conference. If that's the case, there could be some real interest in NYC, definitely Long Island and Westchester. And NJ would be a total lock.
Nobody in NYC cares about college football. Seriously. They care about the NFL.
NFL is bigger, but a ton of people here care about college football. There just isn't anything approaching a unified fanbase. Go to a bar on Saturday though, it'll be packed with fans of whatever team that school supports. I've seen full bars of ND, Michigan, Pitt, PSU, Florida that I remember.
I'm from, essentially, suburban NY, so I'm familiar with the area. Obviously, there are fans of of college football, but a school like Rutgers or Syracuse won't deliver the "NY Market" - the people there that like CFB are, as you say, widely diverse. It would be like saying Northwestern delivers the Chicago market.
Invariably this is brought up in every expansion thread, and every time a New Yorker has to be like "Um, about that..."
Pretty much Agree with Chitown, only thing I would add though, is that the "NY Market" includes Northern NJ. I can't speak on behalf of them (I'm not from NJ), but I'm pretty sure they're more likely to support Rutgers than say, a local NYer.
I've been last year's Rutgers-WVU game, and it was pretty fun, though I think the general tone of the fanbase is "It's nice and fun to go to a game." (Note: They hate WVU and had some pretty funny signs to heckle West Virginians.) Their alumni and students are interested in RU football, but not as invested as we are. In all reality though, how many fanbases are?
As for NYC bars being filled on College Football Saturdays, that's 100% true, however because alumni from other schools have moved here and have alumni club outings at bars. Not because Local Larry from Queens is that interested in Local College sports.
I grew up in the city, and had barely even heard of this thing called "college football" until I went to college out of the city, and friends introduced me to Michigan football during Desmond's Heisman campaign. The bars you are talking about? Those are imports, or New Yorkers who went to school out of town and returned - not representative of the typical New Yorker.
In surveys I've posted previously done by ESPN and the NYT, of the top-10 football programs by interest, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, UConn, and BC show up. Michigan is #7, Ohio State is #9... Rutgers doesn't even make the top-10. Rutgers football was even behind Syracuse basketball.
Nobody cares about Rutgers in northern Jersey, much less NYC. The myth of Rutgers is based on an epically terrible football program that became mediocre by scheduling an embarrassing set of baby seals in the non-conference (Howard, Florida International, Army, Texas Southern). Rutgers still has yet to finish higher than 3rd in an 8-team Big East.
Rutgers can't even outnumber SU fans in their own buildings. Note the crowd.
there seems to be about three people who live in the NYC area who say that SU support dwarfs RU's. To me it makes sense that no college team is the team of choice in the NYC area, since none of them are actually in the city. It depends on who's winning. I don't think that RU games showing in Times Square means NYC is Rutgers territory any more than TV stations in Detroit showing MSU basketball means that Detroit is MSU territory. It just means that RU football has been somewhat successful. Media outlets in big cities like to "claim" a nearby college team is "our team" for general marketing/PR reasons. If RU football simply stank like it used to, TImes Square wouldn't waste its time putting RU football up on whatever big screens are there. The Detroit media love to bathe in the glow of MSU basketball, but if MSU went into a nosedive and UM rose to its former prominence, the Detroit media would give themselves whiplash changing their "loyalty" from the Spartans to the Wolverines. After all, they're just whores who use sports enthusiasm to sell papers and advertising space.
I would take Rutgers over Syracuse, and that's saying something.
new natural rival for Penn State; lots of money and good coach recently invested in by the school; and--the thing people here have overlooked--the way Rutgers BECOMES interesting once in the B10, playing Michigan, OSU, etc. (Intrinsically, yeah--some serious historical suckage.)
Not saying this clinches the argument, but I don't see Rutgers as a cut and dried failure. Bringing in Syracuse, of course, helps too. But having lived in NY and NJ much of my life, I never saw Syracuse as NYC's team. People are interested in them, yes, esp. when they're good (but they'd rather have St. John's BE good).
Now how about when Syracuse and Rutgers play each other as part of the B10? Then you begin to generate some annual new buzz.
I think all this is a pretty enticing prospect for the Presidents and Chancellors, and I will be surprised if they pass it up. My add five to make sixteen, therefore, is: Nebraska, Mizzou, Syracuse, Rutgers, and Pitt if Notre Dame turns us down (after which they can and will rot in a dank hell of their own making).
If getting into the B10 helps Rutgers in recruiting (and duh) it might take PSU down a peg--a lot of their boys come from NJ.
I've seen a lot of dissin' of Rutgers on this site, and with some good reason; but I think there remains a strong case.