Trying to make some sense of the current super-conference realignment mess. Well as usual, “It’s all about the d.o.e. so if money is the root I want the whole damn tree.” — Dr. Dre
Dre must have received his doctorate in philosophy and done his dissertation in economics because he truly understands what life is really about here in America. But where does all that money come from? Where’s the consumer demand that sets the price curve?
Here’s a great link from the New York Times blog that goes deep like Justin Blackmon on media markets, fan base size and other revenue generating factors. Let’s crunch some numbers and get our dismal science on.
From the Quad:
Surveys find that about one-quarter of the United States population, or between 75 and 80 million people, follow college football regularly. But which teams do they align themselves with?
This question is not easy to answer, but we’re going to make an effort to resolve it, and then use the results to shine a light on college football’s increasingly complicated realignment picture.
The premise of the study is this: take the 210 television media markets in the United States, figure out how many college football fans they have, and then allocate them between the 120 current Football Bowl Subdivision programs.
The first part of the problem isn’t as easy as you might think, because enthusiasm for college football varies radically across different parts of the country — far more than for other sports.
“Luciano in all amounts, that’s all that counts….hella swiss or mozzarella, pockets swella, getting money like a bank teller.” The Big Ten is the most powerful conference in this scenario, so they get to kind of play by their own rules. Given the schools already in the fold, they have the upper hand. Going back to the paper of record…..
…..The Big Ten can afford to be picky. Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State are the three most popular college football teams in the country, according to our study. Seven Big Ten teams, including new addition Nebraska, rank in the top 20 nationally. And all but one Big Ten school is in the top 50, the lone exception being Northwestern, which has the Chicago market and strong academics going for it.
The only plausible additions that would allow the Big Ten to improve upon its average of about 1.5 million fans per team are Notre Dame (2.3 million fans) and Texas (also 2.3 million). But good luck adding those schools.
read the whole thing here (it has charts and graphs)
Paul M. Banks is CEO of The Sports Bank.net, an official Google News site that generates millions of unique visitors. He’s also a regular contributor to Chicago Now, Walter Football.com, Yardbarker, and Fox Sports
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