(11-01-2010 10:27 AM)TigerPete Wrote:  

(11-01-2010 10:01 AM)Bob Barker Wrote:  West Virginia AD, Oliver Luck is very familiar with Houston from his days running the Houston Dynamo and the Houston Sports Authority. His opinion will outweigh yours, TigerPete.

Great comeback Barker. So we can't have opinions...you have no idea who I am.

Last year Houston went 10-4 and averaged 25,242 in football attendance. By the way their basketball averaged 3,202. They don't support! But you and Oliver are right they are a great candidate:)

Not to say the BE won't add them....it would just be a mistake.

There are 2 ways to look at these decisions.

1. Take the sure thing with a school that can deliver a smaller market.
2. Take the school in the bigger market because it has a higher ceiling for greater market potential.

Neither is right or wrong. If you're a salesman who likes a challenge & prefers the high risk/high reward option, you go for #2. If you prefer a more conservative approach, you go for #1.

The basic idea with the #2 strategy is that you can't sell your product in a market that you're not in. Well . . . you can, but it's much harder. So, those who prefer #2 want to get into the market & then develop their product to the level that they have a shot at selling it to more people, winning more fans.

These decisions are made with long term implications decades down the road. Some people just don't want to be locked into the limitations of a smaller market when things change. Who could have predicted the explosion of college basketball 30 years ago when the BE was formed, for example? At that time membership decisions were made on where the big arenas were because live attendance was the audience. TV came along later, which is when the advantage of being in big markets paid off. No one really knows how each of these decisions will pay off or place limits over the coming decades.

It's not a simple decision one way or the other. There are valid arguments for both sides.