Expansion Study

[Jimbo]

You want me to change all my data sheets and re-calculate everything because of your re-ranking of your media market size? Even if it's accurate, that's a lot of work to appease a few people on a UConn message board. Do you insist that every national reporter that uses your actual media market size give you those extra 10 points?

Many argue that BYU is the most followed/favored team in the Las Vegas Market. Do we get to add that to our numbers too? Did I do that?

In your insular view you don't seem to understand how complex it is to truly value fan bases and media markets for each individual school.

You really still don't get it. One more time: UConn is a STATE flagship university. As a result, UConn (predictably) dominates the attention and viewership of its STATE when it comes to college sports. Therefore, when it comes to counting up viewers or cable boxes, focusing myopically on solely the Hartford/New Haven DMA understates UConn's reach because it ignores a sizable portion of the STATE that UConn dominates. As another poster said, would you really measure Ohio State's reach within Ohio by focusing solely on the Columbus DMA, or might you also think Cleveland and Cincinnati worthy of consideration?

BYU, by contrast, is not a state flagship university, nor is Las Vegas in Utah to begin with, and thus your Las Vegas argument makes no sense. This isn't about arbitrarily increasing the size of a media market to take into account fans that live in other random places. It's about recognizing the fact that the reach of a state flagship university like UConn extends (at least) out to the state line, not merely to the boundary of a DMA that excludes part of the state that the school represents. So go ahead, omit Fairfield County if you're so determined to ignore that part of the picture, but I sincerely doubt that any conference decision-makers will be relying on data that omits it.

As far as whether or not you want to recalculate your data, I don't really care. You deserve credit for the amount of work you've obviously put into this, but I would be wary that your failure to understand relatively simple issues like this one (as evidenced by your raising this Las Vegas nonsense) threatens to undermine the credibility of what you've created.

 

[upstater]

You really still don't get it. One more time: UConn is a STATE flagship university. As a result, UConn (predictably) dominates the attention and viewership of its STATE when it comes to college sports. Therefore, when it comes to counting up viewers or cable boxes, focusing myopically on solely the Hartford/New Haven DMA understates UConn's reach because it ignores a sizable portion of the STATE that UConn dominates. As another poster said, would you really measure Ohio State's reach within Ohio by focusing solely on the Columbus DMA, or might you also think Cleveland and Cincinnati worthy of consideration?

BYU, by contrast, is not a state flagship university, nor is Las Vegas in Utah to begin with, and thus your Las Vegas argument makes no sense. This isn't about arbitrarily increasing the size of a media market to take into account fans that live in other random places. It's about recognizing the fact that the reach of a state flagship university like UConn extends (at least) out to the state line, not merely to the boundary of a DMA that excludes part of the state that the school represents. So go ahead, omit Fairfield County if you're so determined to ignore that part of the picture, but I sincerely doubt that any conference decision-makers will be relying on data that omits it.

As far as whether or not you want to recalculate your data, I don't really care. You deserve credit for the amount of work you've obviously put into this, but I would be wary that your failure to understand relatively simple issues like this one (as evidenced by your raising this Las Vegas nonsense) threatens to undermine the credibility of what you've created.

He's just going to ignore you.

As he has ignored the fact that a sportschannel already charges all corners of the state a monthly fee for showing UConn sports. On basic cable no less.

 

[CL82]

You want me to change all my data sheets and re-calculate everything because of your re-ranking of your media market size? Even if it's accurate, that's a lot of work to appease a few people on a UConn message board. Do you insist that every national reporter that uses your actual media market size give you those extra 10 points?

Dude, I think you are a little too invested in your spreadsheet. I understand that it must have been a lot of work. Surely you understand that it is deeply flawed, from creating irrelevant categories for which you have data only for BYU to being flat out wrong on the numbers you were using.

That's fine though, it is a fan created spreadsheet. It's not a big deal that it has issues. Why get your panties in a bunch when the flaws are pointed out to you? What did you expect to happen when you brought it here? Did you really believe that we go "well gosh much of it is pointless or wrong, but golly there are a lot of columns?" You had to expect it to be critiqued, right? Once you start posting "well you are right but I'm not going to correct it to appease a few UConn fans" you go from being a fan of a different program with a different viewpoint, which we welcome here, to a troll.

So take a breath and take it easy. Don't be so defensive. It's a spreadsheet not your schools hopes and dreams.

 

[HuskyHawk]

He's just going to ignore you.

As he has ignored the fact that a sportschannel already charges all corners of the state a monthly fee for showing UConn sports. On basic cable no less.

It's really amazing that people won't do basic research. The LHN pulls in an estimated .35 to .40 per subscriber. SNY in CT gets an estimated $2.65 per subscriber for UConn.

People like Dodds who think this is "all about football" are almost a decade behind. If there is a Network involved, I'd argue that UConn is light years beyond every G5 and most P5 in value. Network value isn't about football, those rights are elsewhere. It's about the passion of your fanbase for all your sports, and UConn has that in spades.

 

[Dooley]

You have to be very careful when you're looking at ratings. You can't compare an AAC game on ESPNews to a BYU game on ESPN. A lot of the AAC games got relegated to U and News because ESPN has (had after B1G leaves) so much Saturday content. There's never a highly rated ESPNews game because so few people actually get the channel. The AAC does pretty darn warn well when they actually have an ESPN time slot.

10000x Likes. When doing a ratings compare, you have to compare channel-to-channel (and game time, time slot competition, etc), not a broad strokes comparison. The ratings comparisons between programs played on the same channel are the best representation and, as we can all research, our games on ESPN and ESPN2 this past season (there were 3 of them), did quite well nationally and locally.

1. 9/19 at Missouri (Saturday Noon EST kickoff): 1.903M TVs national/4.1 local rating. Head to head games on "major" networks - Air Force vs Michigan St (2.531M on ABC); Illinois vs UNC (590K on ESPN2)

2. 10/2 at BYU (Friday night 10PM EST kickoff): 1.24M TVs national/Local rating not found. Head to head game - None, but Memphis vs USF drew 1.155M before our game

3. 12/26 St Pete Bowl vs Marshall (Sat 11am EST day after Christmas): 2.4M TVs national. No head to head game. Other B12 candidate bowl game ratings:

Houston vs FSU Thurs 12/31 (NYE 6 Peach Bowl) Noon EST 5.604M TVs
BYU vs Utah Sat 12/19 3:30PM EST 3.675M TVs;
Tulsa vs Virginia Tech (Frank Beamer's last game) Sat 12/26 6PM EST ESPN 3.416M TVs
Memphis vs Auburn Wed 12/30 Noon EST ESPN 2.412 M TVs
Cincinnati vs SDSU Thurs 12/24 (8PM EST Christmas Eve) ESPN 1.636M TVs
USF vs Western Kentucky Mon 12/21 2:30PM EST ESPN 1.152M TVs
*UCF played in the 0-12 Toilet Bowl in 2015

Lots of crappy time slots for the bowl games but even still, UConn pulled a very solid number at 11AM local, morning after Christmas, in an admittedly boring game against a mediocre brand opponent.

The game to note is obviously the first one listed: the Missouri game. A 4.1 local rating is very solid. No, it's not Birmingham, AL on Alabama gameday solid, but solid nonetheless. The fact that UConn/Mizzou outdrew Illinois/UNC by 300% on the ESPN networks gives additional weight to the rating.

The myth about UConn football TV ratings being "too low" for the Big 12 has been busted time and time again...including in 2015, coming off of a dismal 2-win season.

 

[CallMeBruce]

In case anyone was wondering why BYU hasn't gotten into a P5 yet despite all of their incredible football history, it's because this is how their fans generally behave.

 

[Matrim55]

• Academics are a wash. Both are fine schools well above the mean for the league. Giving either any points for this or that is just stupid. It's data that is looked at only to determine whether the school will drag down or lift up the league in general. Both lift it up. Memphis, UCF and USF would drag it down. Cinci is average.

Undergrad, yeah. Postgrad is all UConn, though:

NSF – NCSES Academic Institution Profiles – Rankings by total R&D expenditures

I just don't see them as a p5 school. The only thing they bring is a decent football program that's still the #2 draw in their very small home market.

 

[HuskyHawk]

Undergrad, yeah. Postgrad is all UConn, though:

NSF – NCSES Academic Institution Profiles – Rankings by total R&D expenditures

I just don't see them as a p5 school. The only thing they bring is a decent football program that's still the #2 draw in their very small home market.

The point is that those differences don't matter. There is an academic cut line of sorts...beyond that they don't care. Sweating the details is pointless.

BYU has pretty good basketball. They have a strong national following through the LDS. It means that their nationally televised games often do well. Like a mini ND in that regard. The question is whether the Big XII and its network partners feel that they can monetize that and whether it offsets the fact that outside of Provo they don't do much even in Utah.