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CUSA TV Deal released
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BeatWestern! Online
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Post: #61
RE: CUSA TV Deal released
(11-10-2022 09:45 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  
(11-10-2022 08:44 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(11-09-2022 09:27 PM)The Sicatoka Wrote:  I've seen crowd shots of mid-week MACtion games, and I'm being generous with "crowd".

So when CUSA mid-week attendance wanes, will the NCAA waiver on the "15k average attendance" rule or will CUSA get creative with attendance like the MAC?

OK, but what was CUSA attendance to begin with? I doubt games being played now are packed to the rafters in many of them. I would bet that many CUSA games are played in front of largely empty stands, regardless of the "official" attendance numbers.

Right - it’s not like we’re talking about high attendance schools here.

The NCAA also simply hasn’t ever cared to enforce the attendance rule. It’s a great focus on this forum (as a lot of people here seem to be obsessed with finding ways to kick schools out of FBS and/or Division I entirely), but the decision-makers clearly don’t care to apply it.

Finally, I really think a lot of people are underestimating how much value having a game for 3 hours on ESPN or even CBSSN means for simple name recognition for an entire school. All of us here are probably in the 99th percentile of knowledge about colleges and their locations across the country, but that’s the not the case for the vast majority of people. When you see what schools have to spend on simply getting people to know their name in direct mailings, email campaigns, college fair visits, etc., and how thousands of other schools are doing the same thing in an overloaded marketplace, you start seeing why colleges make decisions to spend money on athletics programs even if no one shows up to their games. That football or basketball game on TV can at least get some name recognition implanted a lot more quickly and effectively than pretty much any other form of advertising out there.

Frank is absolutely on target!

Central Michigan's 31-27 comeback win over Buffalo on ESPN2 last night was great exposure for CMU, as was the Chippewas win over Washington State in the Sun Bowl last December.

Much of the media chatter this morning is about the performance of CMU true freshman QB Bert Emanual Jr. in leading the Chippewas second half comeback last night after trailing the Bulls 24-7 at halftime.
11-10-2022 10:04 AM
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Post: #62
RE: CUSA TV Deal released
(11-10-2022 09:53 AM)The Sicatoka Wrote:  
(11-09-2022 09:30 PM)DoubleRSU Wrote:  There is no rule and it’s not enforced

There is a rule (NCAA DI Manual 20.9.9.3) but as Frank says ...

(11-10-2022 09:45 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  The NCAA also simply hasn’t ever cared to enforce the attendance rule.

and as someone else says (and I've pointed out) there are "creative" ways to get around it.

Well its now based on tickets sold, so every other year Eastern Michigan gets a sponsor to buy up a bunch of tickets and give them to underprivileged kids. And they might couple it with a deal like Rice had about 15 year ago-end zone season seats for $99 for a family of 4.
11-10-2022 10:05 AM
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quo vadis Online
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Post: #63
RE: CUSA TV Deal released
(11-10-2022 09:53 AM)The Sicatoka Wrote:  
(11-09-2022 09:30 PM)DoubleRSU Wrote:  There is no rule and it’s not enforced

There is a rule (NCAA DI Manual 20.9.9.3) but as Frank says ...

(11-10-2022 09:45 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  The NCAA also simply hasn’t ever cared to enforce the attendance rule.

and as someone else says (and I've pointed out) there are "creative" ways to get around it.

I think someone pointed out a few months back that the NCAA does enforce the attendance rule. It's just that the rule is written with ludicrous loopholes, like schools being able to buy back their own tickets, that the only way a school can realistically fail to meet the rule is if it just decides it doesn't want to, which is tantamount to a decision to drop down to FCS.

For example, in 2018, NIU only averaged about 7,300 actual fans in the stands at its football games. So it had to buy 56,000 tickets, at a paltry $5 each, to meet the requirement, which IIRC is to average 15,000 per game once every two years.

But they did go through that charade of buying their own tickets, because the rule is out there and I guess it is enforced enough for the school to do this and thereby avoid violating it.

https://collegefootball.nbcsports.com/20...uirements/
(This post was last modified: 11-10-2022 10:16 AM by quo vadis.)
11-10-2022 10:15 AM
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Post: #64
RE: CUSA TV Deal released
(11-09-2022 09:02 PM)sstaedtler88 Wrote:  MAC games are in November in cold weather in Michigan. CUSA teams in October will be a bit warmer. Certainly attendance will suffer, but not as much as the MAC.

That has it reversed. Losing 40% of your attendance for a cold weather November game in Michigan for a mid-table MAC team when compared to kicking off on Saturday is not losing as much of your attendance as losing 40% of your attendance for a CUSA Saturday game in October.

So CUSA is giving up more of its attendance.

If they get ESPN2 in the deal, they are giving it up for 300,000 or so watching the games on ESPN2.

Anyway, now we know why they added Kennesaw State. They needed the even numbers so they didn't have to spread their byes through the season, because they needed the byes to swing into "#CUSAction" (or whatevs).
(This post was last modified: 11-10-2022 10:20 AM by BruceMcF.)
11-10-2022 10:16 AM
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Post: #65
RE: CUSA TV Deal released
Part of the problem with the MACtion attendance is that it's freezing at night in November in those states. That won't be as much of a problem for Conference USA.
11-10-2022 10:18 AM
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Post: #66
RE: CUSA TV Deal released
(11-10-2022 10:18 AM)Poster Wrote:  Part of the problem with the MACtion attendance is that it's freezing at night in November in those states. That won't be as much of a problem for Conference USA.

For the MAC schools, it's also often bad weather leading to low attendance on Saturday afternoon in November. The attendance is low for #MACtion, but the average attendance would be substantially lower in November than in September or October anyway.
11-10-2022 10:39 AM
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Post: #67
RE: CUSA TV Deal released
(11-10-2022 09:44 AM)bullet Wrote:  The MAC schools with good attendance-Toledo, Ohio, Western Michigan, Central Michigan, have been hurt. The ones with no fans, Eastern Michigan, Kent and Akron have actually improved, perhaps because of exposure, perhaps because being in big metros their fans were always local, perhaps simply because they are no longer at the top of the bottom 10. It definitely puts a cap on attendance.

There's been a clear decline overall, but not a huge decline.

Ohio hasn't been hurt by midweek. 17k-20k is normal for midweek home game. Homecoming is 23-25k.

MACtion
Nov.1
Ball St @Kent St 6,455
Buffalo@Ohio 16,401
Nov.2
NIU@CMU 6,055
WMU@BGSU 7,584
11-10-2022 10:41 AM
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BeatWestern! Online
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Post: #68
RE: CUSA TV Deal released
(11-10-2022 10:16 AM)BruceMcF Wrote:  
(11-09-2022 09:02 PM)sstaedtler88 Wrote:  MAC games are in November in cold weather in Michigan. CUSA teams in October will be a bit warmer. Certainly attendance will suffer, but not as much as the MAC.

That has it reversed. Losing 40% of your attendance for a cold weather November game in Michigan for a mid-table MAC team when compared to kicking off on Saturday is not losing as much of your attendance as losing 40% of your attendance for a CUSA Saturday game in October.

So CUSA is giving up more of its attendance.

If they get ESPN2 in the deal, they are giving it up for 300,000 or so watching the games on ESPN2.

Anyway, now we know why they added Kennesaw State. They needed the even numbers so they didn't have to spread their byes through the season, because they needed the byes to swing into "#CUSAction" (or whatevs).

Bingo!
11-10-2022 10:53 AM
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Post: #69
RE: CUSA TV Deal released
(11-10-2022 10:04 AM)BeatWestern! Wrote:  
(11-10-2022 09:45 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  
(11-10-2022 08:44 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(11-09-2022 09:27 PM)The Sicatoka Wrote:  I've seen crowd shots of mid-week MACtion games, and I'm being generous with "crowd".

So when CUSA mid-week attendance wanes, will the NCAA waiver on the "15k average attendance" rule or will CUSA get creative with attendance like the MAC?

OK, but what was CUSA attendance to begin with? I doubt games being played now are packed to the rafters in many of them. I would bet that many CUSA games are played in front of largely empty stands, regardless of the "official" attendance numbers.

Right - it’s not like we’re talking about high attendance schools here.

The NCAA also simply hasn’t ever cared to enforce the attendance rule. It’s a great focus on this forum (as a lot of people here seem to be obsessed with finding ways to kick schools out of FBS and/or Division I entirely), but the decision-makers clearly don’t care to apply it.

Finally, I really think a lot of people are underestimating how much value having a game for 3 hours on ESPN or even CBSSN means for simple name recognition for an entire school. All of us here are probably in the 99th percentile of knowledge about colleges and their locations across the country, but that’s the not the case for the vast majority of people. When you see what schools have to spend on simply getting people to know their name in direct mailings, email campaigns, college fair visits, etc., and how thousands of other schools are doing the same thing in an overloaded marketplace, you start seeing why colleges make decisions to spend money on athletics programs even if no one shows up to their games. That football or basketball game on TV can at least get some name recognition implanted a lot more quickly and effectively than pretty much any other form of advertising out there.

Frank is absolutely on target!

Central Michigan's 31-27 comeback win over Buffalo on ESPN2 last night was great exposure for CMU, as was the Chippewas win over Washington State in the Sun Bowl last December.

Much of the media chatter this morning is about the performance of CMU true freshman QB Bert Emanual Jr. in leading the Chippewas second half comeback last night after trailing the Bulls 24-7 at halftime.

I'm not so sure how valuable this kind of football exposure is to a school. Now sure, if you are Notre Dame, it is worth a huge amount. But for G5 schools?

Just taking CMU as an example, undergraduate enrollment was 19,000 in 2015 and has plummeted to 11,000 today, or as of Fall 2021. That, despite all the alleged exposure that CMU football receives. Is the argument that enrollment would be even lower without football? That's pretty fanciful, IMO and absent an alternative control universe, impossible to prove.

And CMU football probably requires a boatload of fees and transfers to keep itself afloat.
(This post was last modified: 11-10-2022 11:05 AM by quo vadis.)
11-10-2022 11:03 AM
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Post: #70
RE: CUSA TV Deal released
(11-10-2022 11:03 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  I'm not so sure how valuable this kind of football exposure is to a school. Now sure, if you are Notre Dame, it is worth a huge amount. But for G5 schools?

Just taking CMU as an example, undergraduate enrollment was 19,000 in 2015 and has plummeted to 11,000 today, or as of Fall 2021. That, despite all the alleged exposure that CMU football receives. Is the argument that enrollment would be even lower without football? That's pretty fanciful, IMO and absent an alternative control universe, impossible to prove. ...

Most things that marketers do studies of are impossible to give the kind of double blind controlled experiment proof that are required to roll out a new pharmaceutical. That just goes with the territory.

Clearly the MAC schools have FBS football as an implicit part of their marketing budget, and the schools feel that enrollment would indeed be lower without the football. The challenge given the enrollment decline facing many of the schools at the level of MAC schools, which has both regional and a national components, the question is going to arise whether a given share of students that can be attributed to that marketing spend translates into an actual number that justifies the marketing spend.
11-10-2022 11:17 AM
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Post: #71
RE: CUSA TV Deal released
(11-10-2022 11:03 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(11-10-2022 10:04 AM)BeatWestern! Wrote:  
(11-10-2022 09:45 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  
(11-10-2022 08:44 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(11-09-2022 09:27 PM)The Sicatoka Wrote:  I've seen crowd shots of mid-week MACtion games, and I'm being generous with "crowd".

So when CUSA mid-week attendance wanes, will the NCAA waiver on the "15k average attendance" rule or will CUSA get creative with attendance like the MAC?

OK, but what was CUSA attendance to begin with? I doubt games being played now are packed to the rafters in many of them. I would bet that many CUSA games are played in front of largely empty stands, regardless of the "official" attendance numbers.

Right - it’s not like we’re talking about high attendance schools here.

The NCAA also simply hasn’t ever cared to enforce the attendance rule. It’s a great focus on this forum (as a lot of people here seem to be obsessed with finding ways to kick schools out of FBS and/or Division I entirely), but the decision-makers clearly don’t care to apply it.

Finally, I really think a lot of people are underestimating how much value having a game for 3 hours on ESPN or even CBSSN means for simple name recognition for an entire school. All of us here are probably in the 99th percentile of knowledge about colleges and their locations across the country, but that’s the not the case for the vast majority of people. When you see what schools have to spend on simply getting people to know their name in direct mailings, email campaigns, college fair visits, etc., and how thousands of other schools are doing the same thing in an overloaded marketplace, you start seeing why colleges make decisions to spend money on athletics programs even if no one shows up to their games. That football or basketball game on TV can at least get some name recognition implanted a lot more quickly and effectively than pretty much any other form of advertising out there.

Frank is absolutely on target!

Central Michigan's 31-27 comeback win over Buffalo on ESPN2 last night was great exposure for CMU, as was the Chippewas win over Washington State in the Sun Bowl last December.

Much of the media chatter this morning is about the performance of CMU true freshman QB Bert Emanual Jr. in leading the Chippewas second half comeback last night after trailing the Bulls 24-7 at halftime.

I'm not so sure how valuable this kind of football exposure is to a school. Now sure, if you are Notre Dame, it is worth a huge amount. But for G5 schools?

Just taking CMU as an example, undergraduate enrollment was 19,000 in 2015 and has plummeted to 11,000 today, or as of Fall 2021. That, despite all the alleged exposure that CMU football receives. Is the argument that enrollment would be even lower without football? That's pretty fanciful, IMO and absent an alternative control universe, impossible to prove.

And CMU football probably requires a boatload of fees and transfers to keep itself afloat.

A comparison would be Wayne State, a big state school in Detroit or nearby. Enrollment 27000 in 2015 to 17000 in 2021.
Wayne State Factbook 2016 but TBH I just read the google blurb
Same deal for "Wayne State enrollment 2021"

(Of course I only know that Wayne State exists because they get brought up as a possible Division I upgrade.....but I'm not anywhere near their target market of Detroit-area high school seniors)
11-10-2022 11:20 AM
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Post: #72
RE: CUSA TV Deal released
(11-10-2022 11:03 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(11-10-2022 10:04 AM)BeatWestern! Wrote:  
(11-10-2022 09:45 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  
(11-10-2022 08:44 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(11-09-2022 09:27 PM)The Sicatoka Wrote:  I've seen crowd shots of mid-week MACtion games, and I'm being generous with "crowd".

So when CUSA mid-week attendance wanes, will the NCAA waiver on the "15k average attendance" rule or will CUSA get creative with attendance like the MAC?

OK, but what was CUSA attendance to begin with? I doubt games being played now are packed to the rafters in many of them. I would bet that many CUSA games are played in front of largely empty stands, regardless of the "official" attendance numbers.

Right - it’s not like we’re talking about high attendance schools here.

The NCAA also simply hasn’t ever cared to enforce the attendance rule. It’s a great focus on this forum (as a lot of people here seem to be obsessed with finding ways to kick schools out of FBS and/or Division I entirely), but the decision-makers clearly don’t care to apply it.

Finally, I really think a lot of people are underestimating how much value having a game for 3 hours on ESPN or even CBSSN means for simple name recognition for an entire school. All of us here are probably in the 99th percentile of knowledge about colleges and their locations across the country, but that’s the not the case for the vast majority of people. When you see what schools have to spend on simply getting people to know their name in direct mailings, email campaigns, college fair visits, etc., and how thousands of other schools are doing the same thing in an overloaded marketplace, you start seeing why colleges make decisions to spend money on athletics programs even if no one shows up to their games. That football or basketball game on TV can at least get some name recognition implanted a lot more quickly and effectively than pretty much any other form of advertising out there.

Frank is absolutely on target!

Central Michigan's 31-27 comeback win over Buffalo on ESPN2 last night was great exposure for CMU, as was the Chippewas win over Washington State in the Sun Bowl last December.

Much of the media chatter this morning is about the performance of CMU true freshman QB Bert Emanual Jr. in leading the Chippewas second half comeback last night after trailing the Bulls 24-7 at halftime.

I'm not so sure how valuable this kind of football exposure is to a school. Now sure, if you are Notre Dame, it is worth a huge amount. But for G5 schools?

Just taking CMU as an example, undergraduate enrollment was 19,000 in 2015 and has plummeted to 11,000 today, or as of Fall 2021. That, despite all the alleged exposure that CMU football receives. Is the argument that enrollment would be even lower without football? That's pretty fanciful, IMO and absent an alternative control universe, impossible to prove.

And CMU football probably requires a boatload of fees and transfers to keep itself afloat.

11,434 undergraduates to be exact, with an additional 4,031 graduate students for a total enrollment of 15,465. Yes, the state's declining population of prospective students has hurt, not just CMU but all public universities in the state not named Michigan or Michigan State. The recent pandemic, of course, has hurt enrollment as well.

The Oct. 6 article linked below does a good job outlining the current enrollment challenges and way ahead for CMU and its peer in-state institutions:

https://www.bridgemi.com/talent-educatio...enrollment
(This post was last modified: 11-10-2022 11:28 AM by BeatWestern!.)
11-10-2022 11:28 AM
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Post: #73
RE: CUSA TV Deal released
(11-10-2022 10:39 AM)BruceMcF Wrote:  
(11-10-2022 10:18 AM)Poster Wrote:  Part of the problem with the MACtion attendance is that it's freezing at night in November in those states. That won't be as much of a problem for Conference USA.

For the MAC schools, it's also often bad weather leading to low attendance on Saturday afternoon in November. The attendance is low for #MACtion, but the average attendance would be substantially lower in November than in September or October anyway.


The late time start for MacTion is why those games are so cold. Not because they're being played on weekdays.

About 7-10 years ago, when the MAC was playing some November games on weekdays and some on weekends, the weekend games drew about 25% better than weekday games.
11-10-2022 11:44 AM
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Post: #74
RE: CUSA TV Deal released
(11-10-2022 11:03 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(11-10-2022 10:04 AM)BeatWestern! Wrote:  
(11-10-2022 09:45 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  
(11-10-2022 08:44 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(11-09-2022 09:27 PM)The Sicatoka Wrote:  I've seen crowd shots of mid-week MACtion games, and I'm being generous with "crowd".

So when CUSA mid-week attendance wanes, will the NCAA waiver on the "15k average attendance" rule or will CUSA get creative with attendance like the MAC?

OK, but what was CUSA attendance to begin with? I doubt games being played now are packed to the rafters in many of them. I would bet that many CUSA games are played in front of largely empty stands, regardless of the "official" attendance numbers.

Right - it’s not like we’re talking about high attendance schools here.

The NCAA also simply hasn’t ever cared to enforce the attendance rule. It’s a great focus on this forum (as a lot of people here seem to be obsessed with finding ways to kick schools out of FBS and/or Division I entirely), but the decision-makers clearly don’t care to apply it.

Finally, I really think a lot of people are underestimating how much value having a game for 3 hours on ESPN or even CBSSN means for simple name recognition for an entire school. All of us here are probably in the 99th percentile of knowledge about colleges and their locations across the country, but that’s the not the case for the vast majority of people. When you see what schools have to spend on simply getting people to know their name in direct mailings, email campaigns, college fair visits, etc., and how thousands of other schools are doing the same thing in an overloaded marketplace, you start seeing why colleges make decisions to spend money on athletics programs even if no one shows up to their games. That football or basketball game on TV can at least get some name recognition implanted a lot more quickly and effectively than pretty much any other form of advertising out there.

Frank is absolutely on target!

Central Michigan's 31-27 comeback win over Buffalo on ESPN2 last night was great exposure for CMU, as was the Chippewas win over Washington State in the Sun Bowl last December.

Much of the media chatter this morning is about the performance of CMU true freshman QB Bert Emanual Jr. in leading the Chippewas second half comeback last night after trailing the Bulls 24-7 at halftime.

I'm not so sure how valuable this kind of football exposure is to a school. Now sure, if you are Notre Dame, it is worth a huge amount. But for G5 schools?

Just taking CMU as an example, undergraduate enrollment was 19,000 in 2015 and has plummeted to 11,000 today, or as of Fall 2021. That, despite all the alleged exposure that CMU football receives. Is the argument that enrollment would be even lower without football? That's pretty fanciful, IMO and absent an alternative control universe, impossible to prove.

And CMU football probably requires a boatload of fees and transfers to keep itself afloat.

The argument in a lot of enrollment circles is that it may actually be even *more* important to the CMU-types compared to the Notre Dame-types. ND is always going to get a huge applicant pool based on its academic prestige. The vast majority of the P5 schools are either public flagships, flagship equivalents, or top privates that are largely the winners in the consolidation of the higher education market because they are name brand schools with or without football.

In contrast, CMU is in that morass of hundreds or even thousands of other colleges that are all competing over the same applicant pool that is declining rapidly. The difference in enrollment between 2015 and 2021 at a place like CMU isn't so much about the fact that having a football team didn't stem the decline, but rather how much worse it could have been if CMU didn't have at least base-level name recognition that comes from having FBS football.

Now, can you point to a direct "applications rose because of football" or "applications didn't rise because of football" or "applications would drop if we dropped football" statistic in any of these cases? Generally speaking, no. However, like I've mentioned before, you effectively have to consider the athletic department to be part of the advertising budget at a lot of these types of schools. Think of it as comparing whether $10 million in advertising spending is as effective in getting name recognition for a school as having a $10 million budget for football and men's basketball that gets a handful of games on ESPN per year.

Similarly, if a school is competing against hundreds or thousands of other schools that are essentially of similar academic quality, then the differentiators certainly matter and can be magnified (e.g. whether it has football or Division I sports, where it's located, etc.). In an environment where the domestic college enrollment pool is shrinking (and that's only going to accelerate over the course of this decade), schools that aren't in the top tier almost *can't* afford to give up any differentiators that they might have. Maybe it's not a good enough differentiator for a school to start up a brand new football team, but certainly no one that currently has a football team is going to be willing to give that up. This class of schools has to lean into whatever differentiators that they may have in order to simply survive. You can't cut your way to growth in higher education.
11-10-2022 11:54 AM
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Post: #75
RE: CUSA TV Deal released
(11-10-2022 11:54 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  
(11-10-2022 11:03 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(11-10-2022 10:04 AM)BeatWestern! Wrote:  
(11-10-2022 09:45 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  
(11-10-2022 08:44 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  OK, but what was CUSA attendance to begin with? I doubt games being played now are packed to the rafters in many of them. I would bet that many CUSA games are played in front of largely empty stands, regardless of the "official" attendance numbers.

Right - it’s not like we’re talking about high attendance schools here.

The NCAA also simply hasn’t ever cared to enforce the attendance rule. It’s a great focus on this forum (as a lot of people here seem to be obsessed with finding ways to kick schools out of FBS and/or Division I entirely), but the decision-makers clearly don’t care to apply it.

Finally, I really think a lot of people are underestimating how much value having a game for 3 hours on ESPN or even CBSSN means for simple name recognition for an entire school. All of us here are probably in the 99th percentile of knowledge about colleges and their locations across the country, but that’s the not the case for the vast majority of people. When you see what schools have to spend on simply getting people to know their name in direct mailings, email campaigns, college fair visits, etc., and how thousands of other schools are doing the same thing in an overloaded marketplace, you start seeing why colleges make decisions to spend money on athletics programs even if no one shows up to their games. That football or basketball game on TV can at least get some name recognition implanted a lot more quickly and effectively than pretty much any other form of advertising out there.

Frank is absolutely on target!

Central Michigan's 31-27 comeback win over Buffalo on ESPN2 last night was great exposure for CMU, as was the Chippewas win over Washington State in the Sun Bowl last December.

Much of the media chatter this morning is about the performance of CMU true freshman QB Bert Emanual Jr. in leading the Chippewas second half comeback last night after trailing the Bulls 24-7 at halftime.

I'm not so sure how valuable this kind of football exposure is to a school. Now sure, if you are Notre Dame, it is worth a huge amount. But for G5 schools?

Just taking CMU as an example, undergraduate enrollment was 19,000 in 2015 and has plummeted to 11,000 today, or as of Fall 2021. That, despite all the alleged exposure that CMU football receives. Is the argument that enrollment would be even lower without football? That's pretty fanciful, IMO and absent an alternative control universe, impossible to prove.

And CMU football probably requires a boatload of fees and transfers to keep itself afloat.

The argument in a lot of enrollment circles is that it may actually be even *more* important to the CMU-types compared to the Notre Dame-types. ND is always going to get a huge applicant pool based on its academic prestige. The vast majority of the P5 schools are either public flagships, flagship equivalents, or top privates that are largely the winners in the consolidation of the higher education market because they are name brand schools with or without football.

In contrast, CMU is in that morass of hundreds or even thousands of other colleges that are all competing over the same applicant pool that is declining rapidly. The difference in enrollment between 2015 and 2021 at a place like CMU isn't so much about the fact that having a football team didn't stem the decline, but rather how much worse it could have been if CMU didn't have at least base-level name recognition that comes from having FBS football.

Now, can you point to a direct "applications rose because of football" or "applications didn't rise because of football" or "applications would drop if we dropped football" statistic in any of these cases? Generally speaking, no. However, like I've mentioned before, you effectively have to consider the athletic department to be part of the advertising budget at a lot of these types of schools. Think of it as comparing whether $10 million in advertising spending is as effective in getting name recognition for a school as having a $10 million budget for football and men's basketball that gets a handful of games on ESPN per year.

Similarly, if a school is competing against hundreds or thousands of other schools that are essentially of similar academic quality, then the differentiators certainly matter and can be magnified (e.g. whether it has football or Division I sports, where it's located, etc.). In an environment where the domestic college enrollment pool is shrinking (and that's only going to accelerate over the course of this decade), schools that aren't in the top tier almost *can't* afford to give up any differentiators that they might have. Maybe it's not a good enough differentiator for a school to start up a brand new football team, but certainly no one that currently has a football team is going to be willing to give that up. This class of schools has to lean into whatever differentiators that they may have in order to simply survive. You can't cut your way to growth in higher education.

I don't know, the Wayne State numbers tell me it doesn't seem to make any difference. On the other hand, getting rid of FBS would be a big change, and it's not like the President of Hartford U is getting any medals for dropping to Division III.
11-10-2022 12:10 PM
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BeatWestern! Online
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RE: CUSA TV Deal released
11-10-2022 12:13 PM
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nickp Offline
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RE: CUSA TV Deal released
No more Facebook or Stadium
11-10-2022 12:18 PM
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johnbragg Online
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RE: CUSA TV Deal released
(11-10-2022 12:13 PM)BeatWestern! Wrote:  C-USA official release:

https://conferenceusa.com/news/2022/11/1...-deal.aspx

Nuggets of information:

The broadcast partners will share C-USA’s October weeknight football games on linear television across CBS Sports Network, ESPN, ESPN2 or ESPNU.

So no weeknight ESPN+ games.

ESPN linear networks will carry eight midweek football games per season via the October midweek scheduling

Which leaves 8 for CBS-SN, plus 10 more CBS-SN games over the rest of the season.

In addition, ESPN+ or ESPN3 will carry all additional regular season football games

No mention of any ability to upgrade to ESPN linear, but I doubt there's anything worth showing on ESPN-U in September or November after CBS-SN has made their picks
11-10-2022 12:20 PM
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CUSA TV Deal released
The press release offers some clarity regarding ESPN's half of the pie. Decent number of linear games for football and men's hoops. Hopefully that number grows as the product on the field and hardwood improves.


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11-10-2022 12:22 PM
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Huan Offline
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RE: CUSA TV Deal released
Is there a pro rata clause?
11-10-2022 12:28 PM
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