I posted this in another thread, but I think this deserves to stand by itself. I was shocked how current and future B1G teams consistently outperformed SEC teams in rating. Even ND crushed it. I found this on Eagleoutsider.com. Read the bottom part of the post:
Re: Maryland may actually be leaving the ACC
by Dick Rosenthal on Tue Sep 07, 2021 2:41 pm
DrJackRyan {l Wrote}:Iowa would not be in North....still in Big 10 right?
innocentbystander {l Wrote}:Okay so Texas and Oklahoma are out, BYU, Central Florida, Houston, and Cincinnati are in.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/spor...s-join-byu-houston-ucf-cincinnati/5721822001/
All 4 will join, why wouldn't they? So I'm thinking the conference will not do something ACC retarded and split the conference in some bullshit way. They will split geographically:
Have the conference championship in Arrowhead Stadium or maybe in St Louis. That would be reasonable. Its going to suck for Central Florida no matter which division they are placed. But Miami has been dealing with the same crap for decades.
- North
- Cincinnati
- Kansas
- West Virginia
- Iowa
- K-State
- Iowa State
- South
- BYU
- Houston
- Central Florida
- Baylor
- Texas Tech
- Oklahoma State
I don't think they are going to want to wait until 2025 when Oklahoma and Texas are out. Why wait? Just expand to 14 if only temporarily. Texas no longer has any clout or say, they are leaving. Since BYU is independent they could probably join immediately. The others have to break their contracts with whatever shitball conference they are currently in.
Forget the Big !2, it's irrelevant. The SEC, Texas, Oklahoma and the south in general need to figure out their looming TV issues. Just looking at the ratings for this weekend as a microcosm for what they are facing. Clemson-Georgia, an epic showdown draws 7.8 million viewers at its peak on Saturday Night. Pretty good, except that Notre Dame-FSU on a Sunday Night dwarfed it with 8.8 million viewers at its peak. There was also much crowing about Clemson-Georgia possibly being the second highest Saturday kickoff primetime game in ABC's history, although it now looks like that will not be the case, finishing behind Ohio State-LSU and millions and millions of viewers behind Notre Dame-Texas. It gets worse for southern football when you look at the highest rated Saturday night games over the last 15 years (that's how far back the data goes that is findable). Despite having a bevy of primetime games with national title implications, the top primetime performers for ABC have been Notre Dame-Michigan, Notre Dame-USC, Ohio State-Penn State and its even worse with respect to the 3:30 national slot where there are five iterations of Ohio State-Michigan, a Michigan-Michigan State showdown, and two Penn State-Michigan games before you get to the top-rated SEC game on CBS. And before we start stating that it is easier to draw ratings on ABC than on CBS, it should be noted that the Notre Dame has had six games in the 3:30 time slot that outdrew the SEC's best on CBS. And just for shits and giggles, in comparing primetime games, Notre Dame-Clemson on NBC last year is the second highest primetime college football draw of the last 15 years, narrowly clipped by the aforementioned ND-Texas game. The highest rated college football game of all time continues to be the 1993 version of ND-FSU, which drew 23 million viewers for a Saturday afternoon game (in an admittedly different media environment).
The point of all of this is that mediocre northern/midwestern football crushes the absolute apex of what southern football brings to TV sets/laptops/smart phones. Rather than wasting their time getting into a regional arms race they can't win, the SEC should use the cyclical advantage it has now to figure out a way to draw the much larger northern audiences. We are headed to a 64 team league one way or the other, might as well do it now while the south has a lot of leverage. If things flip, as they seem to do every twenty years or so, and USC, Notre Dame, Michigan join Ohio State as posing a threat to SEC dominance, the Bamas, Auburns, and LSUs of the world are going to get a far less robust deal.