(01-17-2018 06:31 PM)Lord Stanley Wrote:  

(12-19-2017 09:38 PM)bullet Wrote:  It will be interesting to see how the MAC does over the next 10 years, having sold their soul to ESPN for T & W night TV appearances.

Does the visibility help them? Or do the T & W night games kill their programs since fans don't show up anymore?

Here is what the visibility does for the MAC: a bunch of sports fans in other states know NIU and other schools play good football. I wear a fair amount of NIU stuff around MN and I get a lot of positive comments, many related to NIU football playing on ESPN.

This visibility has contributed zero in terms of donations, advertising, or enrollment growth and has destroyed the student, alumni, and local fan bases. NIU is averaging +/-11,000 fans per game.

Quote:In six home football games at Huskie Stadium during the 2017 season, NIU averaged 11,291 fans a game, down nearly 10,000 fans from five years ago, when the Huskies drew 21,000 fans in 2013.

http://www.daily-chronicle.com/2018/01/1...e/ac1hugc/

All that for a 6pm start time on ESPN 2. It's a disaster with no solution in sight.

If you ask me the next step for the MAC should be to make the ESPN and streaming experience on par with an NFL TV experience, with interactive channels, player interviews, Sky Cam, 4K HD broadcast, and very targeted sight and camera lines to hide the empty seats in a stadium. Let's get Oregon crazy uniforms, EWU red or Boise blue fields, WWF style rivalry promotions, and anything else gimicky that can be used to increase donations, advertising dollars, and TV exposure. Fan attendance is dead as long as the MAC makes teams play weeknights and that reality is inarguable.

Football is marketing and branding now as much as it is Ws and Ls, so let's have the MAC play the marketing and branding game.

Andy Reid said a big reason they drafted Kareem Hunt was because he saw him on ESPN all the time when he was at the office on the MACtion games.