(07-17-2017 04:34 PM)megadrone Wrote:  

(07-17-2017 08:23 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(07-16-2017 09:31 PM)nzmorange Wrote:  

(07-16-2017 07:09 PM)_C2_ Wrote:  

(07-15-2017 09:36 AM)ctx48c Wrote:  UCONN is not AAU
UCONN has a poor football program
UCONN does not have a great market.

You could argue UConn has a market that stretches from New Jersey to Boston. I'd say that's a solid market. Even if exaggerated, they have all of Connecticut and an inroads to NYC, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. You can dock many things but they have a solid market.

Markets don't matter. Fans matter. Random people living in an arbitrarily-defined geographic area doesn't create value.

I agree with that, except that Rutgers got a Big 10 invite seemingly on the NYC market potential given the nature of the BTN's revenue mechanism. I don't think it was because of existing fan interest, but could be wrong.

Well, fan interest is there and it wasn't for many years. Rutgers wouldn't have gotten an invite in 1998 when we drew about 25K / game.

We're also not the Giants, who will always be the most popular football team in New Jersey.

There's enough interest and subscribers to support the Big 10 network revenue model. So we got an invite.

RU was added because of RU's own virtues (RU fan support, local recruiting, etc.) + PSU lobbying w/ a credible threat to leave the conference outweighed the cost of adding RU. I won't speculate how much weight went where, but I'm pretty confident that RU wasn't added because of its TV market.