As Predicted By Anyone With A Brain, The ACC Is NOT Getting A TV Network

[JayRU09]

........how was RU and UMD a desperation move by the Big Ten? The richest conference grabbing two members based on eyeballs and potential screams more 'sound long term investment' than 'desperation strategy'.

 

[btstimpy]

...how was RU and UMD a desperation move by the Big Ten? The richest conference grabbing two members based on eyeballs and potential screams more 'sound long term investment' than 'desperation strategy'.

Jim Delaney has said it. They felt threatened when the ACC added Pitt, Syracuse, and then Notre Dame. They know that the country's demographics are growing slowest in the midwest, and they were concerned about losing Penn State long term. They didn't grab based on any eyeballs. Not that many eyeballs look at those two new members. You can tell that based on attendance. They grabbed based on cable subscribers in those states. We'll have to see how that works out.

 

[JayRU09]

'You can tell based on attendance'

'ACC grabs Pitt and Syracuse'

Keep going, this is funny.

 

[WestCoastHusky]

I have to laugh when you bring up E. Gordon Gee. He just took over at West Virginia University last week. They are rated worse than Louisville academically. The irony is hilarious. Maybe this is his shot at helping them learn to read and write. LOL.

You think Louisville was a desperation move by the ACC. I know Rutgers and Maryland was a desperation move by the Big Ten. Two financially challenged athletic departments grabbed life rafts. We'll have to see how it all works out in the long run.

It is laughable that you think UL is a good add. They only pimped up their revenue last few years. Their revenue is mostly based on completely ripping off city of UL with their YUM center. Also, they are in a tiny TV market in the middle of the Kentucky.

Maryland and RU are both in much bigger TV markets with way bigger potentials. In addition, both are light years ahead of UL in terms of academics.

 

[JayRU09]

lol is he really calling WVU worse than Louisville academically?

Cause oh man, going #161 to #170 means so much!

What happens when Syracuse becomes bad at basketball? What is their worth to a conference? Same thing with Louisville?

You're left with a small unattractive private school and a terrible academic school.

If RU and UMD are bad, guess what? Still huge schools that are top notch academically and do loads of research.

 

[Sea Goat]

I have to laugh when you bring up E. Gordon Gee. He just took over at West Virginia University last week. They are rated worse than Louisville academically. The irony is hilarious. Maybe this is his shot at helping them learn to read and write. LOL.

You think Louisville was a desperation move by the ACC. I know Rutgers and Maryland was a desperation move by the Big Ten. Two financially challenged athletic departments grabbed life rafts. We'll have to see how it all works out in the long run.

Stimpmeister - don't die on a beach defending; in any way, shape or form, the ACC's adding Louisville. It is really beneath a Cavalier to do so.

 

[btstimpy]

'You can tell based on attendance'

'ACC grabs Pitt and Syracuse'

Keep going, this is funny.

Yes as in Maryland has a 18,000 seat arena that had only 9000 there last night. Rutgers draws about 4000 to theirs.
In football, Maryland averages about 20,000 vacant seats per game.

http://www.pressboxonline.com/2013/11/26/terps-home-football-attendance-is-low-for-big-ten

Rutgers averaged 46,000 in 2013, which is better than Maryland and right in line with Pittsburgh.
And with 2 of the top 5 highest nielson ratings for college basketball games ever on an ESPN property this season, Syracuse impresses me with eyeballs actually. 35,000 butts in seats for basketball games impresses me too. We only average about 12,000.

Like I said, the Big Ten wasn't after eyeballs. They were after cable boxes.

 

[btstimpy]

Stimpmeister - don't die on a beach defending; in any way, shape or form, the ACC's adding Louisville. It is really beneath a Cavalier to do so.

Louisville has a larger and more prosperous athletics department than UVA does. They fill up a huge arena for their basketball, much bigger than ours. And their football team leaves ours in the dust at the moment until we can get ours corrected. UVA will have a lot of work to do to compete with Louisville's men's and women's basketball teams and football team effectively. I have no problem defending Louisville athletics.

And months ago I stated on here that outside the top 50 ranking academically, they all run together. They should stop ranking at 50 and put everyon past that into Tier 2. Sure if we added Rice to the ACC it would bump the academics. But I'm not impressed with Rice's basketball team.

 

[JayRU09]

Oh, he brings up cable ratings on ESPN how cute!

No, we've never attracted eyeballs there.......

Rutgers in the NYC Metro:

4 out of the 5 highest rated football games on ESPN.

5 out of the 5 highest rated football games on ESPN2.

Highest rated football games on ESPNU.

So once you're done with talking about the kiddie games of basketball, you can come join the big leagues and discuss football, the sport that matters in this whole conference realignment shindig.

And btw, Pittsburgh got a bump in attendance from FSU and Notre Dame visiting, let's not kid ourselves here. Big name opponents equal good attendance. The same will hold true for us this year.

 

[btstimpy]

Oh, he brings up cable ratings on ESPN how cute!

No, we've never attracted eyeballs there..

Rutgers in the NYC Metro:

4 out of the 5 highest rated football games on ESPN.

5 out of the 5 highest rated football games on ESPN2.

Highest rated football games on ESPNU.

So once you're done with talking about the kiddie games of basketball, you can come join the big leagues and discuss football, the sport that matters in this whole conference realignment shindig.

And btw, Pittsburgh got a bump in attendance from FSU and Notre Dame visiting, let's not kid ourselves here. Big name opponents equal good attendance. The same will hold true for us this year.

LOL. College football fans in the NYC metro watch NBC.

 

[JayRU09]

'Brings up ratings on ESPN'

'Counters with ESPN ratings'

'LOLOL NO MAN LET'S NOT TALK ABOUT ESPN LET'S TALK ABOUT NBC'

And your beloved Syracuse:

"The Rutgers-Louisville game on ESPN2 had more than twice the viewers in New York City than the Syracuse-West Virginia game on ESPN. Both started at 8 on Friday night. Rutgers-Louisville drew a 1.45 share in New York City compared to 0.7 for West Virginia-Syracuse, according to the Nielsen ratings."

 

[UPitt]

'You can tell based on attendance'

'ACC grabs Pitt and Syracuse'

Keep going, this is funny.

For what it's worth.

http://fs.ncaa.org/Docs/stats/football_records/Attendance/2013.pdf

Ville 52514
Pitt 49741
Rutgers 46549
Maryland 41278
Cuse 38277

Not too much difference in numbers here. I really don't think a few thousand fans a game makes a huge difference in revenue.

I assume this is measured attendance, because Pitt sold well over 50K season tickets this past season if you include student ticket sales, due in large part to the home schedule. Also, the attendance numbers reported by Pitt are likely to be inaccurate due to a ticket scanning issue that required tickets to be ripped and counted the old fashion way.

 

[JayRU09]

Let's see what those attendances numbers were before a season with FSU and Notre Dame on the home schedule.

We had about 47k with USF/Cincy/Houston/Norfolk State/Eastern Michigan/Temple/Arkansas (Sell out basically) as our home schedule.

Arkansas, a not so good (some would say terrible) team from the SEC drew a sell out for all intensive purposes. What do people expect to happen when Michigan and PSU come to town?

Like with all things northeast, it's who you're playing and/or how good you are. Pitt's attendance in 2012 was 41K. That's a 8k swing on schedule alone. We're at 46k with a god awful schedule. We were at 49k in 2012 with an even worse schedule but a better team. Northeast football.

 

[Fishy]

Attendance numbers are essentially fantasy numbers.

Schools are putting prettying up the corpse with their reported numbers - there's zero chance there were 50,000 people at the average Pitt game or 47,000 at a Rutgers game.

Sorry, but no.

Anyone see the Pitt-Syracuse game? It was empty, but I bet Syracuse told the world that 35 or 40 thousand people were there.

 

[btstimpy]

'Brings up ratings on ESPN'

'Counters with ESPN ratings'

'LOLOL NO MAN LET'S NOT TALK ABOUT ESPN LET'S TALK ABOUT NBC'

And your beloved Syracuse:

"The Rutgers-Louisville game on ESPN2 had more than twice the viewers in New York City than the Syracuse-West Virginia game on ESPN. Both started at 8 on Friday night. Rutgers-Louisville drew a 1.45 share in New York City compared to 0.7 for West Virginia-Syracuse, according to the Nielsen ratings."

I'm talking national ESPN ratings for basketball games.

You're talking ESPN ratings in the New York Metro for college football when the NY Metro watches college football on NBC on Saturdays if they watch college football at all. 1.45 is actually pretty bad. The Syracuse-Duke basketball game was 4.2.

 

[btstimpy]

Attendance numbers are essentially fantasy numbers.

Schools are putting prettying up the corpse with their reported numbers - there's zero chance there were 50,000 people at the average Pitt game or 47,000 at a Rutgers game.

Sorry, but no.

Anyone see the Pitt-Syracuse game? It was empty, but I bet Syracuse told the world that 35 or 40 thousand people were there.

Syracuse claimed 35,000 for Pitt and 37,000 for Boston College in football. If the place holds 50,000 then it would look somewhat empty. What's wierd is that they get 35,000 for some of these basketball games. How do the people in back see anything? Syracuse was added mostly for their basketball brand. I don't think there is any dispute there.

 

[JayRU09]

1.45 doubled what 'New York's College Team' did, so.............what's your point? You're arguing why it was smart to take Syracuse over Rutgers and all you have is basketball ratings, which would matter if football didn't exist.

We're still the most followed team in the NYC metro for college football (unless if you forget that a good portion of New Jersey is in the NYC metro, in which case you're just arguing without knowing anything).

And national ratings for basketball? Call me when basketball is driving the bus.

 

[UPitt]

Let's see what those attendances numbers were before a season with FSU and Notre Dame on the home schedule.

We had about 47k with USF/Cincy/Houston/Norfolk State/Eastern Michigan/Temple/Arkansas (Sell out basically) as our home schedule.

Arkansas, a not so good (some would say terrible) team from the SEC drew a sell out for all intensive purposes. What do people expect to happen when Michigan and PSU come to town?

Like with all things northeast, it's who you're playing and/or how good you are. Pitt's attendance in 2012 was 41K. That's a 8k swing on schedule alone. We're at 46k with a god awful schedule. We were at 49k in 2012 with an even worse schedule but a better team. Northeast football.

Did you look at the 2012 Pitt schedule? Its makes the schedule you listed above look good. Pitt was scheduled to play WVU at home in November and replaced that game with Rutgers. The school then marketed a home game against Rutgers as the marquee game for the season. What does that say about our schedule for 2012? Try looking at the previous ten years and you will find an average near 50k.

I agree Rutgers and Maryland will get a boost in attendance by playing teams from the B1G, but it will be much smaller than you expect. If your stadium only seats ~52,500 and you play a few bad OOC games, how high do you really expect the actual average attendance to be?

 

[JayRU09]

WVU was terrible in 2012 and got replaced with a team that was ranked going into the Pitt game.

I expect our average attendance to go to about 50K-51K.

And please, 50K average for Pitt? You must have some weird water out there turning fans into chairs cause there is no way that's actual attendance.

 

[Fishy]

Syracuse claimed 35,000 for Pitt and 37,000 for Boston College in football. If the place holds 50,000 then it would look somewhat empty. What's wierd is that they get 35,000 for some of these basketball games. How do the people in back see anything? Syracuse was added mostly for their basketball brand. I don't think there is any dispute there.

Thanks for the lesson, but we're kinda familiar with the Carrier Dome, you know. (They don't sell seats in the back - the truly awful seats are opposite one of the corners....you have a pretty good view of the game from there provided that you're a falcon or eagle or some sort of freaky-sighted bird of prey. But they have heat and beer which basically makes it more desirable than 99% of the places in Syracuse on a given day.)

Any way, for the harder to convince...

The official attendance tally announced by Syracuse University for Saturday's 17-16 loss to Pittsburgh at the Carrier Dome was 35,317.

OK, let's get this out of the way. At no point were there 35,317 butts in those seats, even if you started counting people twice.

ESPN Radio's Chris McManus reported on his post game radio show Saturday night that a source in the know told him the actual turnstile count at Saturday's game was around 21,000.

Linky

 

[UPitt]

Syracuse claimed 35,000 for Pitt and 37,000 for Boston College in football. If the place holds 50,000 then it would look somewhat empty. What's wierd is that they get 35,000 for some of these basketball games. How do the people in back see anything? Syracuse was added mostly for their basketball brand. I don't think there is any dispute there.

Have you been to the carrier dome? It looks funny if you take a picture from the ceiling, but it's actually pretty cool the way they set it up. They cut the stadium in half and set up temp bleachers on the football field. I actually think if you can get the fans and have a dome, its a great set up. And I am sure you have additional home court advantage due to the increased lack of backdrop behind the hoops (similar to the complaints you hear from players when they play in other football stadiums). As fans, you are still much closer to the court than you are when watching a football game or than you are when the final four is played in a football stadiums.

 

[UPitt]

WVU was terrible in 2012 and got replaced with a team that was ranked going into the Pitt game.

I expect our average attendance to go to about 50K-51K.

And please, 50K average for Pitt? You must have some weird water out there turning fans into chairs cause there is no way that's actual attendance.

You sound really stupid claiming that Pitt would see an increase in ticket sales by replacing WVU with Rutgers. The Rutgers game drew ~38k, where as WVU would have been a sell out as usual with nearly 65k+. Also, that terrible 2012 WVU team started the season 5-0 with two wins over ranked teams, and lost by 1 to a highly ranked OK team. Maybe Rutgers doesn't have a close rival, but records do not matter when Pitt plays WVU (or PSU/ND).

And if you do a little math, playing Rutgers cost Pitt nearly 30k fans for a six home game schedule. With that extra 5k fans per game average that WVU would have provided, Pitt would have been right in line with other years and on pace with your precious Rutgers.

Thank you Rutgers for causing a down year in attendance in 2012, signed Pitt.

 

[btstimpy]

Have you been to the carrier dome? It looks funny if you take a picture from the ceiling, but it's actually pretty cool the way they set it up. They cut the stadium in half and set up temp bleachers on the football field. I actually think if you can get the fans and have a dome, its a great set up. And I am sure you have additional home court advantage due to the increased lack of backdrop behind the hoops (similar to the complaints you hear from players when they play in other football stadiums). As fans, you are still much closer to the court than you are when watching a football game or than you are when the final four is played in a football stadiums.

I have never been to the Carrier Dome. One of these days I'd like to get there. Given that Syracuse is in the Atlantic Division and not the Coastal, I'll probably have to go there for basketball. We won't be playing Syracuse in football very often.

 

[UPitt]

I have never been to the Carrier Dome. One of these days I'd like to get there. Given that Syracuse is in the Atlantic Division and not the Coastal, I'll probably have to go there for basketball. We won't be playing Syracuse in football very often.

Its nothing special for football, but worth a trip for basketball. And if Virginia keeps it up, that will be a game to watch next season.

 

[Pat125]

I agree on UConn and perhaps WVU. WVU needs a little work though. But keep in mind that the two Syracuse vs Duke men's basketball games this season are two of the top 5 most watched men's college basketball games in the history of any ESPN property. Syracuse has spent most of this season at Number 1 in the AP poll. And Syracuse defeated Minnesota in their bowl game this season. Syracuse is a great lacrosse addition. New York's College team has been a positive addition. Pittsburgh won their bowl game as well. Their basketball team will finish in the top 6 of the league. Wresting won the league. I think Pitt will be fine.

You mention Rutgers, and several here have previously. I don't think Rutgers has been to a NCAA men's basketball tournament in over 40 years. They don't look like a threat to get there any time soon. Rutgers has won 1 NCAA championship in its history in the 1940s. They have been to a hand full of minor bowls in the past decade while playing a Big East schedule. I'm not sure they have dominated the Big East or AAC in any sport ever. What is your attraction? You are not the only one as I've said. I've heard it here before. But I don't see them ahead of any other school that the ACC has invited.

When the ACC was considering its 12th member, WVU seemed like a logical choice, since the ACC was still contained in the southeast. Academically, they appear to me to be at least on the level of Louisville. I understand there is a great difference of opinion on that point. Also, WVU seemed to be good enough in football and basketball. But apparently, the ACC did not want to settle and was interested in moving northeast.

I mentioned Rutgers in the context of being a better choice than BC. Why? Some bias here, as I went to Rutgers-Newark as an undergrad. Rutgers is closer than BC. Rutgers is more like the institutions in the ACC, and better academically. And at least as good in athletics. Yes, Rutgers has definitely had its struggles, and still does, I could make the argument that it would have improved in the ACC. But I understand that argument doesn't necessary hold, as it apparently hasn't helped BC.