(08-05-2016 12:23 AM)Wedge Wrote:  The actual data shows some increase for TCU but not a huge jump up. Utah's percentage increase was even smaller, because their attendance was ahead of TCU's in the MWC.

TCU 2009 average in MWC: 38,187
TCU 2015 average in Big 12: 46,767

Utah 2009 average in MWC: 45,155
Utah 2015 average in Pac-12: 46,533


TCU just recently renovated their stadium. They didn't expand to 60,000; they kept their capacity under 50,000. Utah looked at expanding their stadium to 60,000-plus and decided to put that project on hold until a later date.

And IMO that's what any new Big 12 team is looking at. TCU increased attendance 8,000 a game or so; Utah was already close to capacity and decided that the demand didn't increase quickly enough to justify adding 10,000-15,000 new seats.

You can increase ticket prices. And donations should go up quite a bit. But the experience of TCU and Utah shows that 60,000 tickets sold per game is way too much to expect for any team that isn't already close to that number before joining. Also, as Utah (and I assume TCU) found out, it's easier to increase ticket prices and those minimum season-ticket donations when you keep the capacity at the level of overall demand, not the level of Game-Of-The-Year demand.

2010 - 42,466 (Rose Bowl season; before announcement to play in the big east)
2011 - 33,686 (Stadium under construction over 100% of capacity; invited to big 12 in October)
2012 - 46,047 (first season in Big 12 and fully renovated stadium; over 100% seating capacity)

TCU joined the big 12 at the perfect time. The first season of the fully renovated Amon Carter Stadium was the first season TCU was in the big 12. TCU has a small but wealthy fan base that was stumbling over each other to get club seats/luxury boxes not to mention regular tickets. TCU was able to ask for an absurdly high amount for club seats because the fans were finally ready to make it back to the big leagues. To this day clubs seats are nearly impossible (without a large donation) to get because they get almost a 100% renewal rate. TCU generates a lot more money from their 45K seat stadium than they would with a 55K-60K stadium. They have created a supply shortage (especially in the with the high cost seats) that has allowed them to increase season tickets prices regularly and request large donations from alumni. It has become a much harder ticket to get and forces people to purchase season tickets. If there were lots of seats available, I think many fans would just purchase tickets for whichever individual games they wanted to go to. As a TCU fan, I hope we do not have any plans for expansion, however, I would not be against renovations to add clubs, etc.

(08-04-2016 09:32 PM)bullet Wrote:  Houston and Cincinnati don't have the fan support that the P5 schools have (with only 3 or 4 exceptions of the 65). That is one area where they are lacking.

Neither does TCU.

In terms of attendance, you have to look at Cincinnati and UConn when they were in the Big East 2.0 -- that's a little more realistic, especially for UConn, since they are playing against a bunch of schools they have no history with. Cincinnati as a Big East school filled Nippert and did well in the big games at PBS. UConn, when in the Big East and playing winning football, sold out the airport.

The only downside for UConn in football is that New England doesn't have a large talent pool to pull from. Cincinnati can do very well recruiting OSU leftovers -- there is that much talent in Ohio.

UConn is just an anomaly in the Big 12 from a geography point of view, but the comparisons to them and Kansas are on-point. The question is does the Big 12 want another outlier?

(08-04-2016 08:46 PM)Dr. Isaly von Yinzer Wrote:  I agree with that. People are GROSSLY understating the quality of the leading expansion candidates.

Let's be real for a second: what's the difference in the profiles of Kansas and UConn? And yet is anyone demanding that KU be expelled from the Big 12? Of course not, that would be absurd.

You can play the same game with TCU and Cincinnati, Texas Tech and Houston and Oklahoma State and BYU. The expansion candidates are at least as strong as their would be league-mates/comps.

I don't disagree, but when you have the "value" of one group of schools at over 20 million per school and the other at 2 million per school it's perceived as adding weaker links. Of course the truth is if you swapped Cincy and Kansas State (just picking 2 examples you really could name just about any AAC team and just about any non UT/OU/KU B12 team) between the 2 leagues the AAC wouldn't be any more valuable and the B12 wouldn't be any less valuable. There are only a few schools in each league that are actually "worth" what the annual payment is, and the rest are pretty much just leeching off the top.

(08-05-2016 12:20 AM)Kronke Wrote:  

(08-05-2016 12:14 AM)bullet Wrote:  

(08-04-2016 10:41 PM)Kronke Wrote:  

(08-04-2016 09:42 PM)Section 200 Wrote:  

(08-04-2016 09:32 PM)bullet Wrote:  Houston and Cincinnati don't have the fan support that the P5 schools have (with only 3 or 4 exceptions of the 65). That is one area where they are lacking.

Not sure about Houston, but Cincinnati has at least mid pack P5 support. They certainly have more football support than Indiana, Purdue, Illinois, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, Kansas, Rutgers, Pitt, Syracuse, Boston College, Wash St, Ore St, etc etc etc.

I'd agree that Cincy and Houston's fan support would be accurately portrayed as middle of the pack P5, but both of their upsides is considerably higher. UH/OU is sold out at 72k+, and the word from NRG officials is that it will be 2/3rd's UH fans. If you are to believe them, that's in the ball park of 45-50k Coogs. If it were a team of OU's caliber that wasn't so close, we could have sold more. OU obviously ate up their fair share. I also wouldn't be surprised if UH sold out every game at TDECU this year.

There's no doubt that Cincy could also sell out big, showcase-type games at Paul Brown.

Just wondering, what is Cincy's current season ticket base? Granted we're coming off a strong season, but we're at 23-24k right now, which will be close to a 30k final number after adding in the students (which I think most schools include when touting season ticket numbers).

It's not out of the realm of possibility that we could hit 35-40k season tickets with a Big 12 schedule and continued success, as TCU saw a 40% rise two years after joining the Big 12.

You should know better. Houston was in the SWC. We pretty much know what their potential attendance is. They will be low for a P5. I don't think Houston ever did much better than 40k and hit as low as 15k.

Comparing 1970's UH to 2016 UH.. really?

You're better than that.

80s, 90s. UH was in the SWC for 20 years. The school isn't much bigger.

Its why my choice would be Memphis to go with BYU. They're a risk that they would revert to cellar dweller form, but they are the only one of the contenders that could turn into a school that regularly drew 60k. Memphis loves football. They really supported the USFL and WFL and support the Tigers when they get up to mediocre (unfortunately that hasn't been that often).

(08-05-2016 08:09 AM)EvilVodka Wrote:  

(08-04-2016 09:32 PM)bullet Wrote:  Houston and Cincinnati don't have the fan support that the P5 schools have (with only 3 or 4 exceptions of the 65). That is one area where they are lacking.

would you say FAN support could be relative to the quality of their opponents?

I mean, if Houston, BYU and Cincinnati are hosting Texas and Oklahoma, their attendance #s are going to go up dramatically

trying to build an argument on attendance is dumb dumb dumb

BYU has great attendance. Louisville and Utah developed good attendance without being in the ACC or Pac 12. And Houston was in a major conference once and had pretty weak attendance. If you have good attendance, it gives you a lot better chance to generate the revenues to compete consistently. When schools move up in competition, normally the W/L gets worse. That drives attendance down, offsetting the opponent factor.

(08-05-2016 08:48 AM)megadrone Wrote:  In terms of attendance, you have to look at Cincinnati and UConn when they were in the Big East 2.0 -- that's a little more realistic, especially for UConn, since they are playing against a bunch of schools they have no history with. Cincinnati as a Big East school filled Nippert and did well in the big games at PBS. UConn, when in the Big East and playing winning football, sold out the airport.

The only downside for UConn in football is that New England doesn't have a large talent pool to pull from. Cincinnati can do very well recruiting OSU leftovers -- there is that much talent in Ohio.

UConn is just an anomaly in the Big 12 from a geography point of view, but the comparisons to them and Kansas are on-point. The question is does the Big 12 want another outlier?

Cincy is truly the only no brainer addition. They have history, basketball, geography, recruits, atmosphere, and location. If Ohio State took care of instate schools like Texas does, Cincy would be P5 right now. Unfortunately, they work against them.

(08-04-2016 09:42 PM)Section 200 Wrote:  

(08-04-2016 09:32 PM)bullet Wrote:  Houston and Cincinnati don't have the fan support that the P5 schools have (with only 3 or 4 exceptions of the 65). That is one area where they are lacking.

Not sure about Houston, but Cincinnati has at least mid pack P5 support. They certainly have more football support than Indiana, Purdue, Illinois, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, Kansas, Rutgers, Pitt, Syracuse, Boston College, Wash St, Ore St, etc etc etc.

LOL! That is definitely overstating your case but I do agree that UC is definitely a P5 caliber program.

(08-05-2016 09:13 AM)bullet Wrote:  

(08-05-2016 08:09 AM)EvilVodka Wrote:  

(08-04-2016 09:32 PM)bullet Wrote:  Houston and Cincinnati don't have the fan support that the P5 schools have (with only 3 or 4 exceptions of the 65). That is one area where they are lacking.

would you say FAN support could be relative to the quality of their opponents?

I mean, if Houston, BYU and Cincinnati are hosting Texas and Oklahoma, their attendance #s are going to go up dramatically

trying to build an argument on attendance is dumb dumb dumb

BYU has great attendance. Louisville and Utah developed good attendance without being in the ACC or Pac 12. And Houston was in a major conference once and had pretty weak attendance. If you have good attendance, it gives you a lot better chance to generate the revenues to compete consistently. When schools move up in competition, normally the W/L gets worse. That drives attendance down, offsetting the opponent factor.

It's been long ago proven in realignment that attendance doesn't matter and is almost universally ignored. ECU got added to the Big East/AAC after Memphis, UCF, SMU, Houston, Boise, SDSU, Temple, and even Tulane despite consistently outdrawing all of them (and some more than doubling their attendance). Attendance matters to the school itself, but conferences clearly consider it at best of minor concern.

(08-05-2016 08:43 AM)firmbizzle Wrote:  

(08-04-2016 09:32 PM)bullet Wrote:  Houston and Cincinnati don't have the fan support that the P5 schools have (with only 3 or 4 exceptions of the 65). That is one area where they are lacking.

Neither does TCU.

Yes we do, and keep in mind less than 5000 of our seats are for students. The rest are full priced seats, club seats and suites. That means 40,000+ are paying top dollar. That is not a school lacking fan support.

(08-04-2016 10:59 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(08-04-2016 09:42 PM)Section 200 Wrote:  Not sure about Houston, but Cincinnati has at least mid pack P5 support. They certainly have more football support than Indiana, Purdue, Illinois, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, Kansas, Rutgers, Pitt, Syracuse, Boston College, Wash St, Ore St, etc etc etc.

That's exaggerating things by quite a lot.

59 of 65 P5 schools had higher average attendance than Cincinnati in 2015. (2015 attendance numbers here.) In 2014, every P5 team except Wake had higher average attendance. (2014 attendance numbers here.)

Cincy has an awesome old school on campus stadium right in the middle of the city. They can't hold a lot of fans. When they were in a BCS conference they had the place packed and rocking. Like the bearcat fans said above it's hard to go from Pitt, WVU and UL to Tulane and Tulsa. Give them a P5 schedule and they will be just fine with attendance.

bullet,

I'm a bit confused by your posts. It almost reads like you don't think it's a fact that the Texas schools are a bloc with strong committed support for Houston. (probably in exchange for favors to be paid at a later date by Texas state gov)

If true, is that just your hope & wish, or do you have something to oppose all the reports that it is in fact true??

(08-05-2016 12:23 AM)Wedge Wrote:  

(08-04-2016 11:43 PM)Kronke Wrote:  

(08-04-2016 11:35 PM)Wedge Wrote:  No one doubles their attendance just by joining a P5 conference. Compare P5 to pre-P5 attendance for Utah and TCU.

I already noted earlier in the thread that TCU saw a 40% rise in season ticket sales two years after joining the Big 12.

The actual data shows some increase for TCU but not a huge jump up. Utah's percentage increase was even smaller, because their attendance was ahead of TCU's in the MWC.

TCU 2009 average in MWC: 38,187
TCU 2015 average in Big 12: 46,767

Utah 2009 average in MWC: 45,155
Utah 2015 average in Pac-12: 46,533

(08-04-2016 11:43 PM)Kronke Wrote:  No, we wouldn't play OU every week, but we also would no longer play schools that our fans don't care about and bring tens of fans to Houston.

You would still play teams like that, even in conference games. Kansas football is still in the Big 12. And that's just one of the teams located too far away from Houston to send any significant number of fans to your stadium. Further, any likely divisional alignment in the Big 12 will mean only half of the Texas/Oklahoma teams are in your division; the remainder of the division will be too far away to drive to Houston.

(08-04-2016 11:43 PM)Kronke Wrote:  We would probably have to expand to 60k just to accommodate visiting fans.

TCU just recently renovated their stadium. They didn't expand to 60,000; they kept their capacity under 50,000. Utah looked at expanding their stadium to 60,000-plus and decided to put that project on hold until a later date.

And IMO that's what any new Big 12 team is looking at. TCU increased attendance 8,000 a game or so; Utah was already close to capacity and decided that the demand didn't increase quickly enough to justify adding 10,000-15,000 new seats.

You can increase ticket prices. And donations should go up quite a bit. But the experience of TCU and Utah shows that 60,000 tickets sold per game is way too much to expect for any team that isn't already close to that number before joining. Also, as Utah (and I assume TCU) found out, it's easier to increase ticket prices and those minimum season-ticket donations when you keep the capacity at the level of overall demand, not the level of Game-Of-The-Year demand.

This a good summary.

We increased revenue via the renovation and premium seating. Our average attendance hasn't been much different. Theres been a big increase in season tickets, although it is difficult to separate out whether the new league or new stadium had a bigger impact. When we reseated the stadium, people could buy 4 more tickets than they previously had. That had the biggest immediate impact on season ticket sales, IMO. People bought more season tickets for their "max" instead of their typical crew size.

Makes sense. If you know you can split them with people, definitely get the max.

Being a "commuter" school or not, doesn't mean squat.

No one is going to care if 90% of you students don't live in university owned housing, if your average attendance is 60k+. It's only ever used as an argument to explain why attendance is low.

(08-05-2016 12:26 PM)Kronke Wrote:  

(08-05-2016 09:08 AM)bullet Wrote:  

(08-05-2016 12:20 AM)Kronke Wrote:  

(08-05-2016 12:14 AM)bullet Wrote:  

(08-04-2016 10:41 PM)Kronke Wrote:  I'd agree that Cincy and Houston's fan support would be accurately portrayed as middle of the pack P5, but both of their upsides is considerably higher. UH/OU is sold out at 72k+, and the word from NRG officials is that it will be 2/3rd's UH fans. If you are to believe them, that's in the ball park of 45-50k Coogs. If it were a team of OU's caliber that wasn't so close, we could have sold more. OU obviously ate up their fair share. I also wouldn't be surprised if UH sold out every game at TDECU this year.

There's no doubt that Cincy could also sell out big, showcase-type games at Paul Brown.

Just wondering, what is Cincy's current season ticket base? Granted we're coming off a strong season, but we're at 23-24k right now, which will be close to a 30k final number after adding in the students (which I think most schools include when touting season ticket numbers).

It's not out of the realm of possibility that we could hit 35-40k season tickets with a Big 12 schedule and continued success, as TCU saw a 40% rise two years after joining the Big 12.

You should know better. Houston was in the SWC. We pretty much know what their potential attendance is. They will be low for a P5. I don't think Houston ever did much better than 40k and hit as low as 15k.

Comparing 1970's UH to 2016 UH.. really?

You're better than that.

80s, 90s. UH was in the SWC for 20 years. The school isn't much bigger.

It's not how much bigger UH is, it's how much it has transformed over the past 20-30+ years.

Without getting too far down the rabbit hole with stuff you don't care about, I'll offer just a couple points that may get you wondering about what you "know" about UH:

1) UH now has the 2nd most beds *on campus* in Texas behind A&M. Yes, I understand that UT has a number of dorms that are considered "off-campus" that are right across the street, but just take that fact for whatever you think it's worth. UH is shedding (or at least attempting to) it's reputation as a "commuter" school. Yes, we'll always have a significant portion of our kids commute, but so does UCLA, Berkeley, etc. I think those schools are the model for UH.

2) UH's SAT average is now higher than Texas Tech, and within striking distance of A&M.

New scoring system
A&M - 1240
UH - 1200
Tech - 1180

Old 1600 scoring system
A&M - 1181
UH - 1139
Tech - 1116

This is all true, but Texas Tech is "The" University of West Texas. People who have no affiliation to Texas Tech that live in west Texas love the red raiders, watch them on tv, and drive to games. Houston will never truly become the university of Houston because there are too many allegiances for people living there (LSU, UT, TAMU, etc.) On top of that A&M is located within an hour and half from Houston.

IMO, the big difference between UH and a "mid-tier" P5 school is that if UH loses one or two games, all the enthusiasm comes crashing down.

Take Georgia Tech as an example... They went 3-9 in 2015, but still averaged over 50k (in a 55k stadium).

If UH went 3-9, their attendance would be in the low 20's. UH might have a lot of casual fans, but they don't have the LOYALTY.

(08-04-2016 09:42 PM)Section 200 Wrote:  

(08-04-2016 09:32 PM)bullet Wrote:  Houston and Cincinnati don't have the fan support that the P5 schools have (with only 3 or 4 exceptions of the 65). That is one area where they are lacking.

Not sure about Houston, but Cincinnati has at least mid pack P5 support. They certainly have more football support than Indiana, Purdue, Illinois, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, Kansas, Rutgers, Pitt, Syracuse, Boston College, Wash St, Ore St, etc etc etc.

While I agree that Cincinnati has at least middle of the P5 support, Rutgers is the one school you need to remove from your list. While our fanbase isn't what one would call a mile wide, it is a mile deep. Our attendance is definitely middle of the road P5, our ability to travel is an area where we punch above our weight, our TV ratings not too shabby (and when it's a match-up to get excited about because Rutgers is showing signs of being good it's excellent.) I'd argue Pitt and Illinois might not belong on that list as well for similar reasons. On the field, Cincinnati has been better than Rutgers (and certainly all the schools you listed) even during our we are no longer horrible phase we've been in for the last 11 years or so. No arguing that.

Back to your point, Cincinnati deserves a spot in the P5 on a large number of different qualifications. I and many others have been saying this since the old Big East broke up.

At the very least, it should say something that the people who were with us in a high level conference are ones who support our inclusion at the highest levels of the sport. It's pretty consistent that people from Pitt, UofL, WVU, Rutgers, Syracuse, and the like show support for our inclusion.

Now, it's more complicated than just that, but it certainly says something that they are in our corner after we were with us for a long time. We proved it to a group of power institutions at least.

Cincy's best hope is to convince Iowa St/KU/K St/OK St/OU that adding Cincy is in that bloc's best interest, as the Texas schools' bloc believes about Houston.