Week 1 College Football Thread: Seven Years of College Station Down the Drain

[Patchen]

Seems like MAC schools and the like chased a big-time dream - and sometimes had favorable results - but the system is stacked against them. I agree that they would be better off playing on Saturday afternoons in reasonably sized stadiums with the focus on campus, community and so forth. But, that may be unlikely as they continue to chase dollars.

 

[2muchcoffeeman]

M-I-Z!

Z-O-U!

S-U-X!

 

[micropolitan guy]

G5 schools are starting to get some decent run on linear networks between more channels getting in on coverage and the Mouse needing to fill programing holes without the Big 10. For this Saturday only I count four games where a G5 team hosts a game on national TV, and six the following Saturday. (For this purpose I excluded Wazzu, Oregon State and the service academy games on CBSSSN.)

I'm not so sure those opportunities are still there if those schools drop down to create a tweener subdivision.

Would Wyoming, AFA, CSU or Nevada fans really miss not playing on CBSSN at 7:30 p.m. in November? Would Boise State fans miss playing half of their schedule on Thursday or Friday nights?

Streaming makes those awful kickoff times unnecessary, if it can be monetized enough.

 

[Hermes]

According to the latest USA today chart the 12 MAC schools subsidized college athletics to the tune of more than 250 million dollars last year. Given the number of people who actually care about MAC sports I find this expenditure to be one of the largest taxpayer funded boondoggles in our country.

https://sportsdata.usatoday.com/ncaa/finances

We were told attending sporting events were free in the early 2000s. Check the fine print of your tuition and you were paying about $600 a year to athletics. I'm sure that has only gone up. It's why I blanched when MAC schools like the one I attended claimed NCAA tournament appearances and bowl game appearances were like "free advertising" for the university.

They weren't free. They were just shouldered by the students — most of whom would never watch a minute of a game.

 

[dixiehack]

Would Wyoming, AFA, CSU or Nevada fans really miss not playing on CBSSN at 7:30 p.m. in November? Would Boise State fans miss playing half of their schedule on Thursday or Friday nights?

Might miss the checks.

 

[Hermes]

You get scheduled butt whippings early from the conferences that stole your starting quarterback the preceding preseason and frigid weeknights late in exchange for the honor of existing.

 

[micropolitan guy]

Might miss the checks.

Yes, which is why the post had another line.

"Streaming makes those awful kickoff times unnecessary, if it can be monetized enough."

 

[TigerVols]

S-U-X!

No one asked you.

 

[UPChip]

Saban still working out the kinks on adjusting to retirement.

I never want to hear the phrase "Daddy time in the tub" again.

 

[Inky_Wretch]

So everybody outside of Boulder is rooting for North Dakota State tonight, right?

 

[UPChip]

For the six MAC teams in Ohio, and I'm guessing the three in Michigan, literally nobody in those states is watching (or attending) MAC games on Saturdays when the Big MAC is playing.

I was still in school at Central when MACtion as we know it was first coined. My last rivalry game vs. Western as a student was played on a Friday night (when it rained sideways. I think my clothes from that game are still wet but I digress).

Here's the thing about MACtion. They actually have it timed out fairly well. The Tuesday and Wednesday games don't start until the first of November, which in many of these locations is when the weather has basically turned irreparably anyway.

Even then, unless you're in contention for the title, attendance for most of those games has already nose-dived. Yeah, some of it has to do with Michigan and/or MSU, but a lot of these students at schools like Central are going home on the weekends unless there's a special occasion, and freezing your ass off to watch a four-win team is not a special occasion. For example, Nov. 20, 2004, CMU hosted Ball State (in a game that pitted none other than Brian Kelly in his first year with the Chips against Brady Hoke in his second at Testicle Tech). Chips spotted BSU 27 points, then pulled them all back by halftime and ended up winning a 41-40 thriller. I'm pretty sure my roommate and I had a lot of wide open space in the student section to get behind the guys, and that we did. I don't think I missed a home football game in five seasons in MP (graduated in 4 1/2 years).

Attendance? 10,169. Heck, even when the weather was decent, CMU's only other non-rivalry conference home game that year was on Sept. 18 and drew 12,292 against Kent State. That CMU team went 4-7 (Ball State was 2-9) and had both Matt LaFleur and Robert Saleh as grad assistants.

My point is MACtion kicks in when the value of the inventory sinks to such a level that the value of getting uninterrupted time on an ESPN network supersedes that of having an even meager gate.

 

[Alma]

Rutgers QB looks a helluva lot like the Minnesota QB from last year who wasn't any good.

Come to think of it...