College Athletics- When Does the Bubble Burst?

Since you're doubling down on it, here are the franchises that moved in:

Arizona Coyotes
Arizona Diamondbacks
Arizona Cardinals
San Jose Sharks
Colorado Avalanche
Colorado Rockies
Los Angeles Rams (barely counts, since they were there 30 years ago)
Los Angeles Chargers
Oakland Raiders (always in PAC 12 territory)
Anaheim Ducks

I'll be damned if I can figure out what number 11 is.

What do you think is the bigger issue -- four new hockey teams in the west, or millions of alums like me can't see the games on TV?

 

The Las Vegas Golden Knights?
Still need more, though, since the Sonics left Seattle in that timeframe.

 

Competition for fans attention mainly. And since they added Utah and Colorado, I threw in the Broncos and Jazz and Nuggets - didn't include Raiders. If you go back to '78 when it became the P10, you can throw in the Clippers who moved up from SD, the Mariners and the Seahawks (1977, same diff). My main point was that most of the conference schools are in metro areas and sports markets that are far different than where the conference was 45 years ago. A lot of these schools (Arizonas, Washington, Utah) were THE big local sports team, throw in added competition for sports dollars, the ability peoplte have of being able to follow whatever team they wish and not just the local team by default and I would say it is unique to the Pac 12. Next closest would be the ACC.

 

It’s not lost. There really won’t be much money to pay them one day. Unless the shoe companies step in.

 

I got where you were going with it. Just treating it like a trivia question.
And you're not wrong. I don't think many would argue it's a big reason why the SEC has remained as popular as it is. It's the reverse Pac-12, where only a handful of markets are competing with pro teams and even some of those (like Atlanta, Florida and Texas) are pretty apathetic to the pros. The Alabama and Mississippi schools have no competition at all.

 

Competition from the young upstart Denver Broncos franchise is not what is working against the PAC 12. The PAC 12 problems, in no particular order:

• Fans in the west just don't care about college sports like they do in places like the south. They never have, never will. The only exception is USC football and (maybe) UCLA basketball in its prime. The passion will never exist like it does elsewhere.
• The geography of the PAC 12 is ridiculous. It's a massive area. That means neutral site games like the football championship will never work.
• To go to the PAC 12 from the PAC 10 they added two schools no one cares about. As a result they don't play every team in football anymore because they have to add games with Colorado and Utah. Utah adds absolutely nothing to the league, and Colorado is about 20 years removed from anyone caring.
• The PAC 12 now puts its games on its own network and is incompetent at negotiating carriage for that network, guaranteeing that a huge portion of the fan base can't see them.

There's nothing they can do about the first three. They can fix the last one easily but they refuse to.

Competition from the Utah Jazz and Anaheim Ducks isn't the issue.

 

I’m angry at The Advocate...I’m angrier at what Advance did to the Times-Picayune so many years ago.

I’m generally sad at the state of things. It just didn’t have to be this way.

 

Wrong thread. Or is there some hidden meaning that relates to the T-P essentially being closed and the cable deals of NCAA schools?

 

Everything here is spot on.

If I lived in the PAC 12 cities, I wouldn’t care about college sports the way I do here in the Big Ten.

I’d be out running. Or going to the mountains.

I’d just be active outdoors instead of cooped up watching some useless Nebraska-Rutgers game.

 

Here in Boston, the country's biggest college town, we are notorious for not caring about college sports, for one thing, there are too many colleges so fan loyalties are split, and the schools are so different in size, mission, etc. that hockey is the only sport where they compete on equal terms. That's why it's the most popular college sport. BC is the only FBS school. All the alums of the other schools either hate or ignore the Eagles in the fall, and the school's boneheaded move to the ACC eliminated all interest in college basketball. In the '80s, Big East games could and did fill the Garden. Duke, UVa. or North Carolina comes to town and nobody thinks of holding a game there. I should add nobody here, especially college students, seems too put out by Boston being a pro sports town only.

 

One thing that is not widely recognized about the Pac 12 states is that a larger percentage of the population lives in the largest population centers. For example, the Indianapolis metro area is about a third of Indiana's population while Denver is about 50% of the population of Colorado and Phoenix around 70% of Arizona's population. And in most large metro areas the local pro teams attract a lot more interest than the college teams.

 

Do you foresee the Big Ten Network being able to renew their cable contracts at anything like their current rate. Their football games are invariably awful. The basketball schedule appears to be more interesting because the conference has more decent basketball programs, but the best match ups still go to the national network. But I don't think many cable viewers are going to miss watching an Iowa-Wisconsin game.