mattsarz Wrote:What I find laughable is that somehow Matt Hayes connects that markets are the big deal for PAC-10 expansion, then goes and says BYU and Utah, who share the same TV market in Salt Lake City (#35), yet schools in the Denver DMA (market #18, Colorado & Colorado St.) or San Diego St. (#27) don't seem to be ideal.
And if markets were such a big deal, Washington St. (part of the Spokane, market #77), Arizona (Tuscon, #68) and both of the Oregon schools (Eugene, #120) would be nowhere near the PAC-10.
We already know what the Pac-10 presidents will be looking for - should they ever decide to expand. Tom Hansen told us this:
"While the Pac-10 has not talked about expansion except in the broadest sense (see point No. 1 below) since the mid 1990's, I have never heard a discussion of academic freedom related to BYU during any discussion of possible expansion of the Conference.
Here are factors which have been prominent in relation to expansion of the Pac-10 and to BYU as a possible candidate.
1. The Chief Executive Officers of the member institutions about 1997 determined that they were pleased with the current membership of the Conference and would no longer consider or discuss the subject of expansion, thus ending discussion which had begun in 1990 when Penn State moved into the Big Ten.
2. Our Athletics Directors do not want to add members because they do not want to be forced to divide into two divisions. Further, there is no interest in a football playoff. They have judged that such a game would be likely to hurt the Conference's chances to advance teams to the BCS National Championship Game and other bowls.
3.
The primary reason a I-A conference expands is to enlarge its home area for the sale of television rights in football. The Pac-10 claims about 19 per cent of the nation in its home area. Thus any new member would have to bring more than 1.9 per cent of the nation's television households to enlarge the home area enough to provide sufficient additional income to increase the rights paid each member of the Conference. While I have not checked the numbers for some time, when we checked out every Western Division I-A university in the mid 1990's Utah had about .7 per cent of the nation's TV households.
In comparison, we were interested in Texas because that State has approximately 7 per cent of the nation's households.
4.
The single most important factor to the Pac-10 were it ever to expand would be the academic nature and standing of any institution under consideration. Many sports fans probably would find that difficult to understand, but our CEOs made that clear. The Pac-10 members are all major research institutions, and any institution being considered would have to be in that category. BYU is a fine academic institution, but it is primarily dedicated to undergraduate education rather than research, according to those who know about such things. That would be a major impediment for it."
Even if Matt Hayes is blowing wind out of his arse, sounds like Texas and Texas A&M are the only pair that the Pac-10 would expand for.
Cheers,
Neil
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Inside Dish: Pac-10 could soon face expansion-Sporting News Article
