(04-18-2022 08:06 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(04-18-2022 12:07 AM)Transic_nyc Wrote:  

(04-17-2022 11:27 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(04-17-2022 10:21 PM)Transic_nyc Wrote:  

(04-16-2022 02:22 PM)Rube Dali Wrote:  The question in my mind is not whether ESPN needs the B1G or not, but the reverse. I'm not convinced the B1G, even if it does get $1 Billion a year over its contract, is willing to stay with ESPN. This exclusion will not go over well with fans or recruits.

That the 4-letter College Sports World Order narrative working on you. The irony of being blackpilled is that the most negative attitude helps create the very thing one says is most afraid of happening. Being redpilled is a much better assumption. Knowing that ESPN hates the Big Ten should help you understand what is needed to best go forward.

Monetizing on the share of BTN would be a good bet, since Fox Corporation is now grossly undercapitalized. Fox was a good partner when the College Sports World Order tried to lowball the Big Ten. But now Fox can no longer front the cash needed to stay ahead but is somehow hanging on the BTN share as a leverage play. Comcast, Discovery, as well as Apple or Amazon have much greater market cap. To me, the play should be selling BTN to Comcast, which would also buy up the Pac Networks. Comcast has both linear and digital options to play with, so there wouldn't be a difficult transition from one to the other.

But the last thing the Big Ten should do is stay at a corporation that wants them dead. We are much better than that.

(04-16-2022 02:47 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  I disagree. I think the only way that there isn’t *some* Big Ten content in ESPN is if Disney truly and utterly presents a terrible offer.

Kevin Warren just attended an upfront presentation with ESPN last week. There’s no personal animosity whatsoever. It’s all in fans’ heads about the emotional part of it (e.g. SEC bias at ESPN). If the Big Ten gets the right exposure and money from ESPN, then they’ll sign with them. They’re not turning down ESPN with all things being relatively equal, much less if ESPN presents an even better offer. I said the same thing a few years ago when the Big Ten was negotiating their current deals and lots of people were trying to say the same thing about the league leaving ESPN entirely. Cooler heads prevailed all around: both sides ultimately need each other (or at least stronger with each other).

Kevin Warren isn't dumb enough to flip the bird at a current rights holder when he doesn't know who would make the best offer. Still, I despise that network and everything they stand for. Maybe you're satisfied when Illinois makes an occasional appearance at the 4-letter network during football season. I'm not. When they talk football they don't talk Illinois. When they talk basketball they don't talk Nebraska. Yet, they make no distinction when it comes to the SEC and ACC teams.

I'm not the one that first made it personal. The corporation did. I'm simply the messenger who is relaying that fact, to too many deaf ears, it seems.

Everyone knows that I’m a Big Ten partisan.

However, I’ll say this: Big Ten fans as a whole whine waaaaay too much about supposed ESPN bias.

No, ESPN doesn’t talk about Illinois football much… but that’s because we’ve generally been terrible. Have you really heard much ESPN talk about Vanderbilt or Mississippi State more compared to the dregs of the Big Ten? You think anyone other than Clemson gets ESPN coverage in the ACC? Sure, ESPN talks a lot about the top of the SEC like Alabama and Georgia, but it’s difficult for me to blame them based on the results on-the-field. They certainly talk plenty about the top Big Ten brands like Ohio State and Michigan, as well. Note that their two primary (and highest paid) College GameDay commentators are Ohio State and Michigan alums, respectively.

Bottom line: too many Big Ten fans are getting completely myopic about ESPN at this point that they’re not seeing the forest for the trees. We can’t be insular when ESPN (and more importantly, the Walt Disney Company) is still the single most important entity for the Average Joe T-shirt Sports Fan that gives the Big Ten such outsized value in the first place.

We ALL think ESPN is biased against our favorite teams just like we ALL think referees are biased against our favorite teams. For every fan that thinks that ESPN is biased toward the Yankees/Cowboys/Lakers/Alabama/Duke, there’s a Yankees/Cowboys/Lakers/Alabama/Duke fan that thinks ESPN is constantly biased against them as heels on all of their blabbering talk shows.

Simply put, if we want more favorable subjective coverage, then we need to win freaking more games and championships. I actually have little sympathy for the argument that media coverage is biased when it is really just covering the winners the most. That’s actually how it’s supposed to be.

Once again, I’m not saying that the Big Ten should take a bad offer from ESPN just to stay with them. However, it’s also insane to me to suggest that the Big Ten should actively *avoid* ESPN.
Not even the NFL, who TRULY had personal animosity with ESPN for several years to the point where their respective top executives weren’t talking to each other, would end up divorcing from ESPN (and the NFL has the ultimate ability of anyone to waive off the power of Disney in all of sports and entertainment).

The New York Knicks is a great counter point to your argument. They have not won anything of note since the early 1970s. I was only a baby the last time the Knicks won an actual championship. Yet, they get national coverage. The Domers haven't won a championship since 1988. Yet, they're on NBC. Then there is the famous Chicago Cubs 100+ years of futility and the Cleveland...uh...Guardians now.

It is the classic chicken-or-egg conundrum. Is my team not on TV because they suck or do they suck because they're not on TV? If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to see it, did it make a sound?

There are teams all over the country scrapping to get a little attention and, yet, don't get nearly the attention of the Knicks or Notre Dame.

Mindshare.

Mindshare is what convinces the casual fan to check out a game. Mindshare doesn't appear out of thin air; it's the outcome of carefully-crafted narratives pushed by corporate image-makers, influential fans, yes, even message board users.

The Big Ten Network has done more for the Big Ten than CBS, NBC, Fox, and, certainly, ESPN, combined. Why? Because they give all the teams, not just the big names, the opportunity to convince fans that they should be checked out. Don't like one Big Ten team? Check out another Big Ten team? Or maybe you'll stick with the big names. But you'll never know if you want to follow a team until you check 'em out.

Of course, the teams have to do something to keep the fans coming back for more. Then again, the Knicks don't have to do much and fans still watch. LOL

But who's to say that Vanderbilt wouldn't gain new fans just because Vanderbilt football is on TV? Who deemed Vanderbilt football to be unworthy of attention? Who is the judge, jury and executioner here? If that was the logic, then teams like the New York Knicks or Chicago Cubs should've been shut down long ago.

If college sports were ran like the pros then at least 75% of teams wouldn't exist today. It's that uniqueness of the experience that differentiates it from the pro counterparts. The 4-letter network wants to kill the goose that laid the golden egg because they believe they know better than fans, alumni, the student-athletes who give all they have to give fans what they want. That is what I'm objecting to, not wins and losses.

About teams like the NY Knicks, Chicago Cubs and Notre Dame football - those teams get coverage even when they are lousy because of their track record. They are "famous" programs in big markets and fans are interested in them, which is ultimately what drives network coverage decisions.

I emphasize winning for programs that want attention sooner, because winning is usually a fast-track way to grow fan interest. Gonzaga doesn't have any kind of historical pedigree, but their hoops draws a lot of media coverage because they have been winning.

And about TV coverage, before 1984, there was very little college football on TV, the NCAA had a strangehold on the TV deals. IIRC, in 1979, there were a grand total of 23 regular season college football games televised, basically two per week. And a school was limited to one appearance, so they couldn't show Alabama or Notre Dame every week. Nobody had much national exposure.

And yet, Alabama and Notre Dame were nationally-famous college football programs in 1979 just like they are now. Because they had built up huge fan-interest in their football over the years, despite the lack of TV.

Ultimately, it isn't the casual viewer that makes a program famous. it is local support, which every school can foster. If my USF put 55,000 students in the stands each game, and all of our alumni tuned in for games, we'd get better TV deals and a higher profile too. That's entirely in our hands to do, whether bigwigs at ESPN talk about us or not.

The other thing is that it's not the job of any TV network to provide equal access. Their sole job is to put on programming that they believe that will get the most viewers. There's no Big Ten or SEC or ACC or any other bias. The ONLY bias is for the color green (AKA money).

There are plenty of reasons to critique ESPN, but their programming decisions aren't different than any other network. Look back at the games that Fox picked for Big Noon Saturday last year. EVERY game featured at least one of the following 5 teams: Michigan, Ohio State, Texas, Oklahoma and/or Wisconsin (with the 2 Wisconsin games being against blue bloods Penn State and Notre Dame). ABC actually had a greater variety and mix of Big Ten teams for its games last year than Fox.