(10-19-2017 09:15 AM)Jacque Wrote:  

(10-18-2017 08:08 AM)beefcake0520 Wrote:  

(10-18-2017 07:27 AM)ThreeifbyLightning Wrote:  Friday night pretty much sums up our TV deal and dearth of leadership all at the same time. There are only two C-USA-specific games on an ESPN network. MT/Marshall on Friday and UTSA/La Tech in November. There are only three on CBS Sports Network.

Yet, the league managed to have the top four teams from the East (as projected in the pre-season) compete against each other at the same time. One on ESPN (the aforementioned MT/Marshall game) and the other on CBSSN (ODU/wkcc).

Think about that. We only have five nationally televised league games between these two networks and the league managed to have two of the five go against each other and the four teams were picked one, two, three, and four in the east.

Is there a more perfect example of the incompetence of this league's leadership than this?

Poor leadership all around to be honest, kinda hard to lay it all at the commissioner's feet when the AD's balk at doing what the MAC and belt does.

CUSA's biggest mistake happened during 2.0, ESPN was the carrier of pretty much all games, then came a bidding war between ESPN, CSTV (fox sports came later). CSTV allowed us, at that time, to keep Saturday games (and Thursday games) because they mainly carried the top two G5 conferences in CUSA and the MW (the WAC wasn't dead yet). They also were willing to outbid ESPN to gain a foothold in college sports media. It was short term thinking on CUSA's part. We know the rest of the story, CBS buys them out, our days were numbered as a primary partner. We did everything to piss off ESPN in that ordeal, and now we are faced with edging ourselves back to their side, giving free air time..........Let all that sink in for a minute. Now look how much the landscape has changed since 2005, conference shakeups etc.

Marshall fans can recall how bad things were in the MAC, playing midweek games, getting basically nothing for it, operating in the red if you went to a bowl, it was a given. We were excited to move on to CUSA and the extra $$ that would be available. One can say the MAC paid their dues and got the deal they deserved after all the crap they accepted before, but on the other hand, the death of the WAC and CUSA leaving ESPN opened the door very wide for them.

There is no simple reason, answer, or solution for CUSA at this moment, losing 90+% of the original makeup since 2004 greatly affected the prestige level and in turn the value.

One advantage that the MAC has in regards to midweek games is their much smaller footprint compared to CUSA. The only way to get decent crowds would be for midweek games to be between closely situated campuses, i.e. FAU-FIU, MT-WKU, etc.. The problem with that is even though that would generate better attendance on a Thursday night than would USM vs. Marshall, the attendance would be much lower than a WKU-MT game generates on a Saturday.
It all comes back to $$$. More TV money vs. more ticket money. Unfortunately, the TV money is pretty much non-existent.

Live gate only seems to matter for just a handful of schools currently though. How many of our schools average, even in tickets sold, more than 22K a game on Saturdays? I have no idea what the ticket price averages per school is, so that matters as well. The MAC is not well attended for the majority, doesn't matter if they are close to each other or not or what day they play on. If Marshall averages 25K a game, for 6 games, at 28$ average ticket, that's 4.2 Mil before expenses. If mid week game or two dropped the average to say 22K, that's a loss of 600K. If TV was offered, similar to the MAC, you make that money up plus get the exposure. Just an example. Not that I am fond of the idea of midweek games, but that is the reality we face if you want exposure on live TV.