(06-05-2012 01:23 PM)BJUnklFkr Wrote:  Sounds like the days where I find something else to do than watch bowls is rapidly approaching, kind of like what I did while Cincy was still in C-USA.

Lol....did you see last years bowl ratings. That day has already arrived for many.

As long as 50-70 year old men are selecting the bowl participants, Franks logic will continue to rule the day. Younger people who were raised in an era where there was much more media exposure to the second tier teams have less "big" name bias. They were not raised in an erea where just 3 or 4 big name college games were televised on a weekend. When the younger guys take over the selection process, that conventional wisdom may begin to change a bit.

It isn't that. It's the fact that these games have a pre-season feel to them. What is possibly at stake in these games? Hell, early regular season OOC matchups have more on the line than most Bowl games.

Okay, you will never have a 16 team playoff or some tournament incorporating a plethora of bowls. But literally nothing is on the line for these schools, other than payouts and marketing factors/exposure.

1. Eliminate not only 6-6 but 7-5's. 7-5 teams give you nothing. Otherwise, to be fair, rate the strength of schedule or strength of a conference. If you have an SEC team at 7-5, maybe make an exception. Not a 7-5 Big 10 or Pac 12 team.

2. Learn how to schedule games. Why do you have crap like the Go Daddy Bowl after New Year's? That is supposed to get us amped up for the BCS title game? It's a joke.

3. Distribute the schedule evenly throughout the Holiday season:

a) Stop scheduling early bowl games featuring horrible teams from craptacular conferences on December 17-20th or post January 1st. Open the Bowl season with a lucrative prime time matchup.

b) Don't feature all the decent bowl games on New Year's day and blow your load. New Year's day should be about the Final Four, and maybe one or two appetizers in the noon slot.

c) Holiday stretch, the 24th-31st, where are all the decent prime time games? Tuesday night, I want to see a big time SEC/B1G game there. Wednesday, give me a big time ACC/PAC 12 matchup. Why are these BCS games shoved after New Year's day? People can't take out an entire night in the middle of a regular work week to watch football. The big games need to be in PRIME TIME and BETWEEN the 24th-1st. Not before, not after. All the other crap before and after needs to be eliminated.

(06-05-2012 03:31 PM)RUScarlets Wrote:  It isn't that. It's the fact that these games have a pre-season feel to them. What is possibly at stake in these games? Hell, early regular season OOC matchups have more on the line than most Bowl games.

Totally agree.

Quote:Okay, you will never have a 16 team playoff or some tournament incorporating a plethora of bowls. But literally nothing is on the line for these schools, other than payouts and marketing factors/exposure.

To be fair, those are more important to university presidents than actual performance on the field.

Quote:1. Eliminate not only 6-6 but 7-5's. 7-5 teams give you nothing. Otherwise, to be fair, rate the strength of schedule or strength of a conference. If you have an SEC team at 7-5, maybe make an exception. Not a 7-5 Big 10 or Pac 12 team.

Noble, but I don't see it. I think it's going to be tough enough to get the 6-6 requirement dropped, much less making 8-4 the prerequisite to being bowl-eligible.

Quote:2. Learn how to schedule games. Why do you have crap like the Go Daddy Bowl after New Year's? That is supposed to get us amped up for the BCS title game? It's a joke.

I think this will end up changing under the new system. You're probably not going to see any bowl being played after the 2nd semifinal game unless there are TV interests involved (which I'll get to in a moment).

Quote:3. Distribute the schedule evenly throughout the Holiday season:

a) Stop scheduling early bowl games featuring horrible teams from craptacular conferences on December 17-20th or post January 1st. Open the Bowl season with a lucrative prime time matchup.

b) Don't feature all the decent bowl games on New Year's day and blow your load. New Year's day should be about the Final Four, and maybe one or two appetizers in the noon slot.

c) Holiday stretch, the 24th-31st, where are all the decent prime time games? Tuesday night, I want to see a big time SEC/B1G game there. Wednesday, give me a big time ACC/PAC 12 matchup. Why are these BCS games shoved after New Year's day? People can't take out an entire night in the middle of a regular work week to watch football. The big games need to be in PRIME TIME and BETWEEN the 24th-1st. Not before, not after. All the other crap before and after needs to be eliminated.

This is a matter where what's best for traveling fans and what's best for TV diverge. Traveling fans are best served by bowls being from December 27th to New Year's Day. That's when they have the most time to travel and don't have Christmas obligations. It's not an accident that the vast majority of power conference tie-ins (including all Big Ten and SEC bowl games) occur during that stretch. All of the power conferences besides the Pac-12 refuse to play bowl games prior to Christmas, which is why those early major prime time matchups don't and won't occur.

On the flip side, the TV networks are best served by games on weeknights in January. That's when they have much larger available audiences compared to the week between Christmas and New Year's (which is actually the least-watched TV week of the year overall). This has been statistically shown over and over and over again, which is why the BCS bowls are always in January and never on low-rated TV nights such as Friday or Saturday (unless New Year's Day actually falls on one of those days).

It's not an easy situation. The schools and bowls want the bowl season to end as close to New Year's Day as possible, but the TV networks will pay more when the games are on January weeknights. Guess whose interests usually win out?

Well at least the kids are still out of school (college students) and you need something to pass the time while you are itching for Wild Card weekend and what not. The same has been said for baseball with first pitches at around 8:30 ET ish. How are you supposed to finish a World Series at a reasonable time with that kind of start. I am not going to make this an east coast vs west coast thing. I get that you don't want these games tipping off at 4:00 pm on the west coast when people are still at work. I haven't watched a minute of NBA playoffs because there is no way I can get a good sleep before heading out early next morning if I watch Spurs/Thunder up until the end.

But this is football. It's not an every day (or every other day) sport. It is not meant to be played on a freaking Tuesday. Wtf are executives thinking with this crap. Honestly who wants to watch a big time football game by themselves or with a girlfriend/wife that could care less on a Tuesday or Wednesday? Okay maybe you are a die hard fan that wants to be alone with your team, but that is not applicable to viewers in other parts of the country. For them, there is probably nothing else on and guys turn on the football game, but therein lies the problem. It doesn't feel like an event. It is your programing by default. That's a problem.

You air football when people are at home with the family. That's how you cultivate a fan base. That's how you make it an event. I mean how many people watched Boise OU in the Fiesta a few years back. One of the greatest games ever and nobody watches it. No way does that happen on a Saturday it just doesn't. I think people just look at the first half ratings and use that as their stats. If it is a blow out, viewers tune out. If it is an overly long half time (which they all are) and not much going on in the game, casual fans may not feel they are missing out if they either go to bed or tune in to concurrent regular prime time programming on other stations. But nope, 30 million viewers at kickoff means 30 million viewers... hooray for TV execs.

It's common sense. I don't care if they do this for a living. These business and advertising people are clueless and don't know two ****s about how to build up ratings over time. Ratings are down across the board. Once you take it out of the hands of the people that actually have a clue, you never have a decent result. Pretty much applicable to the entertainment industry as a whole. Enough with that rant.

(06-03-2012 10:49 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(06-03-2012 08:07 AM)Bearcats#1 Wrote:  Unless the Big East/ACC can do a deal where the champion of each meets on the Orange Bowl neither the BE or the ACC will get the same revenue on a regular basis as the "big 4" (other than placing a team in the four team playoff, which we can do...at least it's an option for us but how realistic is that option to occur regularly?)

We need an agreement with a "major bowl" and so does the ACC.

The problem is, the ACC knows that if the agree to play the BE in the Orange Bowl (#1 vs #1) then they are essentiall admitting they are equal to the Big East and not in the cool kid club. Which may be true in reality, but they don't want to admit it. I would be surprised if this every comes to fruition. And it's too bad because it makes sense and would be good for both conferenes.

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Playing ACC #1 would clearly make sense for us. But for the ACC? That is questionable. They might, just might, be able to get the SEC to match their #3 in something like the Orange Bowl versus their #1, in which case it would make sense for them to do that.

It's a close call, and as you note, the intangible here is the ACC's prejudice against doing anything that will be perceived by the rest of college football as being "down there" with the Big East.

Heck, on the ACC board, some posters are lamely/vainly trying to refer to a "Big Five" in college football.

How can u call yourself a major conference worthy of consideration for a national championship if you would match your Conf. Champion with a team that is not a Conf. Champion on a contractural basis ... !!!

You're eliminating yourself from the discussion ... !

(06-05-2012 07:11 PM)RUScarlets Wrote:  Well at least the kids are still out of school (college students) and you need something to pass the time while you are itching for Wild Card weekend and what not. The same has been said for baseball with first pitches at around 8:30 ET ish. How are you supposed to finish a World Series at a reasonable time with that kind of start. I am not going to make this an east coast vs west coast thing. I get that you don't want these games tipping off at 4:00 pm on the west coast when people are still at work. I haven't watched a minute of NBA playoffs because there is no way I can get a good sleep before heading out early next morning if I watch Spurs/Thunder up until the end.

But this is football. It's not an every day (or every other day) sport. It is not meant to be played on a freaking Tuesday. Wtf are executives thinking with this crap. Honestly who wants to watch a big time football game by themselves or with a girlfriend/wife that could care less on a Tuesday or Wednesday? Okay maybe you are a die hard fan that wants to be alone with your team, but that is not applicable to viewers in other parts of the country. For them, there is probably nothing else on and guys turn on the football game, but therein lies the problem. It doesn't feel like an event. It is your programing by default. That's a problem.

You air football when people are at home with the family. That's how you cultivate a fan base. That's how you make it an event. I mean how many people watched Boise OU in the Fiesta a few years back. One of the greatest games ever and nobody watches it. No way does that happen on a Saturday it just doesn't. I think people just look at the first half ratings and use that as their stats. If it is a blow out, viewers tune out. If it is an overly long half time (which they all are) and not much going on in the game, casual fans may not feel they are missing out if they either go to bed or tune in to concurrent regular prime time programming on other stations. But nope, 30 million viewers at kickoff means 30 million viewers... hooray for TV execs.

It's common sense. I don't care if they do this for a living. These business and advertising people are clueless and don't know two ****s about how to build up ratings over time. Ratings are down across the board. Once you take it out of the hands of the people that actually have a clue, you never have a decent result. Pretty much applicable to the entertainment industry as a whole. Enough with that rant.

I understand this viewpoint, but this is the minority in terms of how people actually *act*. Statistically, the numbers of available TV viewers on Sunday through Thursday CRUSHES/PUMMELS/DESTROYS the number of available TV viewers on Friday on Saturday. The time on each of those evenings where the most people are watching TV is at 9 pm ET/8 pm CT, which is why TV networks almost universally put their most popular TV programs in that time slot and sporting event times are made to ensure that as much of the game is shown in that particular hour as possible.

College conferences and teams will still play on Saturday because that's what's best for people attending in person (and as much as we talk about TV money here, schools still make the most money off of game attendance by a massive margin). So, power conference schools that have high attendance have an incentive to keep playing games on Saturday despite the lower TV ratings. For pure TV purposes, though, you want games played at prime time starting at 9 pm ET/8 pm CT on Sunday through Thursday. Getting the most people in the beginning is much more important to the TV networks than having them stay awake until the end (because there's a higher probability that you'll stay with a game if you start watching it from the beginning than you switching over near the end). These TV networks know exactly what they're doing here: it's been proven over and over and over again by literally decades of viewing statistics.